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Comment by kjellsbells | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the speed/weight tradeoff is on a Ferrari though. Eg on a Bugatti they can put in a beast of an engine (heavy) because their buyers care only about power output and if it gets 8 miles to a gallon who cares.

On an electric sports car, where does the break lie between extra weight for a powerful battery and too much weight to make the car go vroom?

Side note: I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.

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Manufacturers like Ferrari, Porsche and Lotus focus on HP per KG. This is why they build ultralight versions of their cars. Porsche's 911 GT series trade glass windows with plexiglass and badges with stickers. Ferrari omits carpets and inner body panels leaving welds bare. Lotus re-invents everything make things lighter and with less material.

Mercedes, Bentley and Bugatti likes to build road missiles. Fast and comfortable, luxurious cars with insane straight line performance and stats, but not made to be thrown from corner to corner in a track. Since these cars are heavier and have somewhat higher center of gravity, they can't pull higher G numbers on skid pads and tracks. They also have somewhat slower lap numbers (Maybe Mercedes' SLR McLaren is an exception to this, but it's half McLaren, so...).

If you want to go to the edge of it, see McLaren and Pagani. They take the track-optimized, lightweight car design to extremes. Esp. McLaren.

Edit: I mixed up CLK-GTR with SLR. My bad, brain haze. Sorry.

> Side note: I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.

Sure, except the very poor will be eco criminals (due to being unable to maintain their equipment to relevent emission standards/pay the associated offset fees) and will be selectively hounded and exploited by law enforcement.

At least in some jurisdictions, cars old enough (eg 30 years) are considered antiques and are exempted from emissions requirements.

Only if there are very few of them. If there's a critical mass of EV refuseniks in the future they will be banned.

>EV refuseniks

What about the EV unafordaniks?

New EV prices are still falling for entry-level models. This is not the Ferrari, of course.

In a few years new EVs prices will be below equivalent ICE vehicles. Total cost of ownership already often is.

Second-hand EVs already are a bargain. EV owners complain about poor resale prices, but that's good for the buyer.

At some point EVs will be cheaper on the sticker price and cheaper to run. The US car industry is desperately trying to prevent this, but it looks like China is crossing that point.

(I would be very interested in sticker price / fuel price / subsidy / tax accounting EV vs ICE breakdowns from inside China)

I think they're already cheaper in China, especially on the low-end where (as per Vimes' Boots) sticker price matters more than TCO.

China's got this, for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV

That's extremely cute. The Euro version is as low as E13,000: https://nikrob.lt/ ; let's not forget that depreciation will make secondhand versions even cheaper.

What's the crash safety on that electric carboard box versus a 13k used ICE VW?

Laws can always change as more and more people make use of loopholes to avoid taxes. Same how EVs lost their subsidies as more and more people are buying them. Governments always adapt to losses in tax revenue by finding new things to tax, it's the only thing they're efficient at.

And in some jurisdictions, there are "incentives to scrap older, more polluting cars in exchange for a grant or discount towards a newer, cleaner vehicle"

e.g.

https://carowl.co.uk/wisdombase/selling/car-scrappage-scheme...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System

  and will be selectively hounded and exploited by law enforcement.

So, no different than today.. (with other political instruments)

At some point, the petrol stations start closing, and petrol vehicles start having range anxiety. The antiques get served by a little EV bowser service that comes round and delivers, but you won't be able to drive them in cities.

(diesel will hang on a lot longer, so there may be a period of refinery retuning and petrol stations serving only diesel?)

Well you cant just get rid of Gasoline in the refinery process. Crude oil essentially gets destilled. The different fractions are split based on boiling point/weight. Heavy fuel oil-> Diesel-> Kerosene->Gasoline-> Naphta-> Propane/Butane whatever. That is why making new Plastic is so incredibly cheap. You need (i think) ethylene to make plastic. Ethylene is a byproduct of oil refining. If no one buys it, the whole refinery grinds to a halt because you are not allowed to burn it anymore. They practically give this stuff away. Same thing would happen to gasoline. If fewer people need Gasoline, it will become crazy cheap since you cant really do anything with it, except burn it. So it really isnt that easy. IF you get rid of Diesel/Gasoline you will also get rid of the entire petrochemical industry.Elastomers, plastics, lubricants. A huge lot depends on the sweet dino juice.

Plastic isn't a single material. Some plastic materials (e.g PE, polyethylene or PVC, polyvinyl chlorine, but also others that use ethylene derivatives as intermediates) require ethylene, but there certainly are plastic materials which are produced without any involvement of ethylene or other petrolium derivatives.

Cracking and chain lengthening* were covered in my GCSE in chemistry, and given GCSEs are the UK school leaving qualification, anything in them can't be particularly difficult or mysterious in industrial practice.

Not claiming this would be free or anything like that, just that a well-known possibility exists.

* I forget the technical name, my GCSEs were 26 years ago

> (diesel will hang on a lot longer, so there may be a period of refinery retuning and petrol stations serving only diesel?)

Perhaps, but don't diesel engines also run on used chip fat lightly sieved to get rid of the potato solids?

In 20 years there will be no shortage of cheap, old EVs on the used car market. Petrol cars will be just for the enthusiasts and collectors.

Look at horses, they used to be a commodity used for transport, now they're pets of the rich, being taken care of and used for recreation.

I guess the poor get donkeys...

Horses were always for the rich - knights would use a horse in battle and ride the horse other places to show off their money. The "common man" walked - you (unless you are handicapped - yes I know you are very out of shape) can walk as far in a day as a horse. When the "common man" needed to haul a load they would prefer oxen which while slower than a horse were overall a lot cheaper to feed.

We think about farming with horses, because in the American West the type of plow that worked best needed faster speeds than the oxen could handle and so for 100 years the horse is what farmers used. Horses were also useful for cowboys chasing cows - again an activity most common in the western planes.

> I wonder if, in 20 years, petrol cars will the preserve of the very rich and the very poor.

That's certainly the way it's worked out with horses after petrol cars took over.

We will have some Amish people driving around in petroleum cars, trying to preserve the old days and the old ways.

It won't be Amish, but there'll be for sure people cherishing the old days when cars were simple/fun/different.

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