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Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

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Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#11

Post by ADuckOnQuack »

Black101 wrote: post #3

I think hydrogen fuel cells are the future if we can't make nuclear work.

This doesn’t make sense, hydrogen fuel cells are essentially batteries/an energy store, and it takes a large amount of electricity to produce the hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells are closer in relation to lithium ion batteries or gasoline, you still need a massive energy producer to extract the hydrogen (like wind, solar, hydro, fossil fuel, or nuclear). So hydrogen is not an alternative to nuclear, if it ever took off it will really increase demand for large energy producers like nuclear.

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#12

Post by blamazon »

This too shall pass. The design of gas vehicles have not always been very friendly to disabled people, and bespoke upfitters like Braunability and MobilityWorks have done heavy duty engineering work to bring us into a golden age of affordable ramp vehicles. [1] As the EV market supercedes the gas market, someone will figure it out for EVs too. Smells like a promising market niche if you have a proclivity for hardware.

[1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/203485967149

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#13

Post by eplanit »

Retric wrote: post #7
bradknowles wrote: post #5

Counter evidence: https://youtu.be/cuZYROM4Vrs In fact, much of the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel is counter evidence for this claim, as Zack shows taking two electric bikes and welding them together for a seriously good and relatively inexpensive first pass at an “off road wheelchair”, and then ups the ante with his custom-designed “notawheelchair” a.k.a. “Rig”, and plenty of other videos with his lovely now-wi…

That’s got little to do with the article. Their primary issue is EV’s have batteries in the floor. This is great for driving as it lowers the center of gravity and adds space for a frunk, but adding a wheelchair ramp etc becomes extremely difficult. It’s fixable, but significantly more expensive to deal with. Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also f…

"Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also few charging stations have been added to disabled parking spaces."

Interesting. Why isn't the ADA used to require such affordances?

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#14

Post by dv_dt »

Retric wrote: post #7
bradknowles wrote: post #5

Counter evidence: https://youtu.be/cuZYROM4Vrs In fact, much of the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel is counter evidence for this claim, as Zack shows taking two electric bikes and welding them together for a seriously good and relatively inexpensive first pass at an “off road wheelchair”, and then ups the ante with his custom-designed “notawheelchair” a.k.a. “Rig”, and plenty of other videos with his lovely now-wi…

That’s got little to do with the article. Their primary issue is EV’s have batteries in the floor. This is great for driving as it lowers the center of gravity and adds space for a frunk, but adding a wheelchair ramp etc becomes extremely difficult. It’s fixable, but significantly more expensive to deal with. Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also f…

I don’t think it will be any more complicated then having a slightly different ramp. Existing disabled support vehicles in the article are already minivans or vans and they don’t have a particularly low floor to start with.

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#16

Post by rad_gruchalski »

ADuckOnQuack wrote: post #11
Black101 wrote: post #3

I think hydrogen fuel cells are the future if we can't make nuclear work.

This doesn’t make sense, hydrogen fuel cells are essentially batteries/an energy store, and it takes a large amount of electricity to produce the hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells are closer in relation to lithium ion batteries or gasoline, you still need a massive energy producer to extract the hydrogen (like wind, solar, hydro, fossil fuel, or nuclear). So hydrogen is not an alternative to nuclear, if it ever took off…

Hydrogen is more convenient to those who travel long distances often and / or do not have an opportunity to charge at home. As someone living half way through Germany, there is no way for me to drive up to Hamburg, neither to Munich in an EV without planning to stop at a charger at least once in both directions. Maybe that’s reasonable in the summer but in the winter, that’s an uninteresting offering. It makes a one day round trip pretty difficult. FCV would make that possible.

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#17

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Retric wrote: post #7
bradknowles wrote: post #5

Counter evidence: https://youtu.be/cuZYROM4Vrs In fact, much of the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel is counter evidence for this claim, as Zack shows taking two electric bikes and welding them together for a seriously good and relatively inexpensive first pass at an “off road wheelchair”, and then ups the ante with his custom-designed “notawheelchair” a.k.a. “Rig”, and plenty of other videos with his lovely now-wi…

That’s got little to do with the article. Their primary issue is EV’s have batteries in the floor. This is great for driving as it lowers the center of gravity and adds space for a frunk, but adding a wheelchair ramp etc becomes extremely difficult. It’s fixable, but significantly more expensive to deal with. Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also f…

Long distance driving is going to be a point of difficulty for electric vehicles for quite a while but for most day to day uses, charging will happen at home where everything can be set up to make charging easy for the wheelchair user. But the point about the vehicle floor is indeed something that will need to be addressed.

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#19

Post by pepperberg »

"The disabled community doesn’t want to drive gas-burning cars while everyone else zips around in zero-emission vehicles"

I do not understand this craze for EVs. The German Fraunhofer ISI found evidence [1] that it might take up to 93,000 miles / 150,000km until you hit a break even point with regards to emissions (58 kWh; compared to Diesel).

Is that also a factor in most buyer's decisions or is it just about the feeling of "zipping around" in a EV?

[1] https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/sust...

Re: Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

#20

Post by gtfoutttt »

Black101 wrote: post #3

I think hydrogen fuel cells are the future if we can't make nuclear work.

Hydrogen as a fuel is one of the biggest cases of successful astroturfing in modern times. It is not an ecologically friendly fuel, and currently the most popular source of hydrogen is crude oil.
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