Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

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I also own an EV. Mine is a Seik MG4 (long range) - a Chinese beastie with an old school British marque slapped on it. I went to school in Abingdon, Oxon, which is where the Morris Garage comes from. My car didn't!

There is a standard for range - WLTP - does the US subscribe to it? The W stands for Worldwide.

My car has a WLTP range of 323 miles. I've managed better than that. The standard itself is pretty decent and far better than the old one.

EVs are different to ICEs. Mind you they are both pretty efficient at around 50mph - funny that. EVs hate cold but if you pre-heat the battery, then its not so bad. An ICE can always have a bigger tank and you can easily pop a 15l can in the boot (trunk) to grab an extra 50 miles or so. EVs don't have that flexibility.

However, I pay 7p per KWh to charge my car and I fuel up at home instead of at Tesco. My "tank" costs about £5 and I can get about 300 miles out of it.

My other car (Renault Clio) costs about £70 at the moment (it has been far worse) to fuel up and I'll get roughly 700 miles out of it.

In Europe I think that EV vs !EV is almost certainly won but I do get that in the Americas, where it can get proper chilly at times and the distances involved can be huge means that an EV might not be indicated without a lot of caveats. EVs mostly do cost more too for the initial purchase, which isn't helpful.

Despite all that, do note I routinely pay roughly £5 for 300 miles, and I don't have to piss around with garages. My car plugs into my house!

The US uses EPA testing instead of WTLP. WTLP is closer to EPA than the Chinese standard but it's not uncommon for the EPA range to be 10-20% lower. Ofc people assume they'll get the EPA range if they're driving 80mph into a headwind which is when they run into trouble

Oh and I should probably ask how you felt when you first floored the pedal on your Tesla and realised it was sodding dangerous!

EVs have ferocious acceleration - no gears and no need to "wind up".

I used to own a Honda S2000 which was pretty funky - it could lift off in sixth gear and run up to around 150mph. EVs basically destroy ICEs - no gear box.

I did rather enjoy the S2000 when it hit 6500 rpm and then it decided to kick in and go a bit mental.

Previous poster mentioned he owns an MG, not Tesla.

I can't speak about their particular models but all EV have accelerator by wire were acceleration/power is electronically managed to avoid risks of wheelspins. Not all brands offer gimmicks such as "ludicrous mode" and launch control systems and most will prefer offering a default power management that favors range over acceleration.

So many can accelerate faster than comparable ICE vehicles, but not necessarily stupidly fast nor dangerous. Some even launch ridiculously slowly in standard settings.

Tbh an S2000 nowadays is somewhat slow. Fun and cool but not quick. Electrics do stupid good launches 0-30 but past that you're just comparing a brand new likely 4-500hp car to a very peaky, old, 240hp car.

Somewhat slow compared to what, though? It didn't cost a fortune. A 2.0L MX-5 ND is the nearest modern equivalent and they should both do the 0-60 in ~6s.

I mean, those two were never "performance cars" (though the S2000 should be rather good in the bends for a convertible), but this isn't slow nor quick in my books.

I'm talking strictly acceleration since the parent was about that. No dig at Miatas or S2000s for being light, cheap to run, fun cars but a dig at the comparison since it feels apples to oranges and a note on I guess the development of acceleration in the past years.

20 years ago when S2000s were the shit everyone was running 100hp shitboxes. Locally, one of the local car guys in the early 2000s became a legend with an Opel Astra pulling about 200hp with nitrous and every mod he could afford.

Now the affordable and reasonable "enthusiast" cars are 250-400hp. You can get a 10-15 y/o Cayenne that does 0-100 in the 4-5s while being a nice New York apartment on wheels for 15k (converted from eastern european pricing, your local market may vary) or a remapped (~300HP) 330d E90 for ~5k.

What I mean is that if you put someone blindfolded in the S2K 15 years ago chances are he'll think it's very quick, nowadays I think he'll think "it's a'ight". It's interesting how quickly people get used to acceleration and we now have very quick, affordable cars on the market so I believe people have a higher standard for what's quick. Something feels fucking insane, you do 50 pulls over a month and it's normal (assuming it's not a deathtrap spinning at stupid speeds).

I don't think comparing it to used or modified cars is very fair. I understand what you mean, though, and yes, the S2000 isn't that impressive anymore. Still, its straight line acceleration is very respectable for what it cost at the time, even when adjusting for inflation and average power isn't the only thing that went up, weight did too.

What can you get that trounces it for the price? Even a Golf GTI doesn't do much better (and you can't even get it in manual anymore).

I'm comparing it to used cars because it's a used car nowadays and because people don't drive exclusively new cars (which sets their expectation for acceleration) and because old cars are often so cheap you can't even get a Sandero for the price. I don't know how much an S2K costs now used but last I checked non molested ones were essentially collector items. They were in the nice Porsche Boxster territory. That was corona midlife crysis market though.

I looked up the price of the S2k new, apparently MSRP was ~32k$ for the AP1, inflation adjusted ~55k$. It's quite a bit. You can get a B58 Supra, M240 (again B58) or like an S3/TypeR. The S3 doesn't have a manual but the others do.

The Supra is probably the closest because RWD and it's an available in manual, 4s car with a B58 if eventually potentially you want to make stupid power in the future. Much heavier than the S2K but only the Miata and exotics exist in the lightweight convertible/coupe space nowadays. You do get an IMO lexusesque interior though.

Last minute thoughts:

Maybe a Caterham but then you're getting into stupid impractical territory.

Oh, actually the BRZ/GR86/etc is pretty interesting. It's not as quick and the engine is more boring (revs) but it's ~30k$ new and the same weight and power in coupe format. So a slightly more daily version for <60% of the price.

> EVs have ferocious acceleration

Not all of them. It's pretty easy for manufacturers to make ridiculously fast accelerating cars, and it seems those cars get all the attention. But there are others. I drive a Volvo XC40, which comes in two variants: one with two motors, one with a single engine. The two motors variant does 0 - 100 kmh in 4.9 seconds, which is pretty fast; to get that acceleration in an ICE car you'd need a pretty sporty sport car. But the variant with a single engine (which is the one I drive) does it in about 8 seconds, which is plenty fast for me but certainly not in ferocious acceleration territory.

I have no numbers on relative market shares of very fast vs more normal EVs. It wouldn't surprise me that the share of normally accelerating EVs will increase over time as we get cheaper cars meant for a larger public instead of expensive cars for enthusiasts.

BTW that fast acceleration of EVs is mostly at lower speeds. At higher speeds the benefits of an electric drive train diminish and depending on the specifics the EV might very well accelerate slower than an ICE.

> In Europe I think that EV vs !EV is almost certainly won

For people living in single family homes or in appartments with dedicated parking space, yes.

But lots of people are still living in apartments without a dedicated parking space. If you can't charge at home EV life is immediately a bit more compicated and expensive.

In the Netherlands, there is street charging everywhere. It is indeed a bit more expensive if you do not have a dedicated parking place, but not more complicated. By law, public charging has to be available in 'reasonable walking distance' from any EV owner. 'Reasonable walking distance' is defined by muncipalities, and tends to be higher in rural areas. Therefore it varies between a maximum of 150-500 meters depending on municipality.

Netherlands is a rather rich country even by european standards.

Here where I live people sometimes struggle to park their car in a 2km radius from their home and there are like 4 public street charging outlets in a 4-5km radius. We might eventually get there but it will take a while.

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