651–660 of 1001 posts
The most disingenuous part of this article is labeling a slowing growth rate (which is still a very healthy double digit percentage growth rate) to “fewer people buying” electric cars. That’s not how growth works. It also needs to be pointed out that the auto industry as a whole is slowing down. The other thing that needs to discussed is interest and financing. This is a terrible time to buy any car. I’m not personal…
> But an analysis from CarGurus found that EV prices were still 28% higher than gas-vehicle prices on average. To me that is bonkers. When EVs were becoming popular, I was expecting to see super cheap, under $10k vehicles. That was the promise: forget about all the IC complicated gears, alternators, transmission, fuel pumps and imagine getting a motor and batteries, what could be simpler!". But no, we ended up with m…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. The sustainable alternative to EVs is hybrids, not gas guzzlers. Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter. Heavier cars cause significantly higher road wear [1], particulate pollution [2] and occupy more space. EVs by necessity, are heavier. This is especially evident in America's favorite product categories : SUVs and Trucks. The Ford- F150 lightning is 1.5x…
That's because the American car market is pure nonsense, it's not a problem of EV. My own electric car is close to half the weight of a petrol F150. So the F150 uses more petrol and wears more tire as well. Those kind of massive cars are only needed for farmers and construction workers in the first place.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo. > We need a dining room for when we have parties (has a party once every 2 years; room sits empty 99% of the time) > We need a guest bedroom (guests could stay at the hotel down the street) > I need a pickup truck (driver is an accountant who maybe picks up a couple bags of mulch from Lowes twice a year) I'm glad I live in a prosperous society where…
On the pickup truck example — maybe the person only buys mulch a few times a year, but the person has the capabilities of the truck all year. When I lived in the U.S., I had a home backup generator. Only really become useful once or twice, but when it was useful, it was extremely useful. Certainly one could instead rent a generator right? Except you don’t necessarily know when you’ll need it and that’s assuming there…
The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
Do a 700 mile roadtrip through the center of the US in an EV in the middle of winter and you'll understand why I have range anxiety around EVs. I have range anxiety in my gas powered car in a few spots in the US and there are many more gas stations than there are charging stations! I'd absolutely buy an EV as a second car for my more local trips right now...but I don't need a second car and the production carbon costs of a car outweigh the gas carbon costs of not having a second car (not to mention the economic costs of having a second car!). Eventually once the second hand market improves, that around town+ EV might make sense for me to have. But not until then (but by that time, charging infrastructure should be highly improved and it might make sense to go full EV!).
I want an EV to be more reliable and save me more money in the long run. EVs start out ~10k more than the Corolla most people should buying. They then compromise the long term reliability and maintenance cost with high tech gee whiz features. I’d sooner have manual roll up windows than touch screen controlled air vents. When you integrate sensors and software controls into every little thing, we know those things wil…
The new Prius prime finally has EV range comparable to the Volt. That should be most people’s sedan pick if they aren’t looking for a budget option.
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> Sure, sales of EVs keep going up — a record 300,000 cars sold in the US in the third quarter of 2023 were electric — but the pace of adoption has markedly slowed, and analysts have suggested the country is no longer on track to hit the government's sales targets.
And the EV share of new vehicle sales from this other article [0] indeed does show that the percentage of new vehicle sales that are EVs is increasing. Possibly not as quickly as before (but this is hard to tell from this graph).
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/automakers-over-estimated-el...
I think EVs give me LESS range anxiety overall. In my gas car days, atleast once a month I was late for work or an event AND low on gas. Having to remember and think about getting gas was constantly on my mind because I have a pretty long commute. With an electric car, I start every day, always, with a full tank. No matter how late I'm running, I know there won't be a surprise that I need gas in addition to being lat…
The article talks about range concerns as if they're simply incorrect or ill-founded: > Niedermeyer said that while an electric car can meet most people's driving needs, it struggles with edge cases like road trips because of the need to recharge. Since Americans have been promised a one-to-one substitute for their gas cars, this seems like a failure; an EV should be able to do everything a gas car can. This idea per…
Tesla will say that it has, idk, 310 mile range or something. It never has this range, period.
- You cannot run it down to 0%, much like you can't run a gas car to 0% and then be stuck on the side of the road.
- You cannot run it to really even 10%, because you're advised that this is stressful on the battery, and while there is high probability of a gas station within 30 miles of anywhere in the US, there is near-zero probability of there being accessible and reliable public EV charging. If it is cold out, the vehicle will advise you to never let it drop below 20%.
- You cannot really charge it to 100%, because you're advised that anything above 80% is stressful on the battery, supercharging above that level is quite slow (its oftentimes actually faster to just stop at 80% and also charge at the next supercharger, and the Tesla nav knows this, which is quite cool). Some superchargers will even charge you extra for going above 80%, if they're crowded.
- What this means is that, functionally, you're not dealing with 100% of the battery / 310 miles of range. You're working with 60% of the battery (80%-20%) / 186 miles of range. On the top of the line EV humanity makes. On long trips, you can eek that up a bit to maybe 70% of the range, but realistically given the distance between superchargers, its not going to make a difference.