71–80 of 85 posts
EVs may be great for someone with a home and garage to charge it, but for renters or more normal folks who have to park on the street, no ones going to add hours to their day sitting at a charging station.
Only if you do this weird unrealistic math. Usually you need to install some infrastructure or deal with overnight slow charging. Thats if you even have a spot at home for this. Factor in your time hunting for a charger or waiting around for the car, depending on how you value your time, and maybe filling up the gas car for $40 in 3 minutes really is cheaper when you’ve accounted for all the inconvenience you might b…
Also in most countries of this world, charging an EV effectively means charging with a majority of energy derived from burning gasoline (or equivalents).
Burn it in a combined cycle power plant to convert it to electricity and there are still substantial loses to waste heat but much less than when burning it an ICE car. There will be some smaller losses in the power grid and charging infrastructure to get that electricity into your battery, and some small losses in your EV's electric powertrain, but in the end around 40% of the energy of the fuel ends up going toward propelling your vehicle.
So much wrong information in the comments here (or, rather, lack of information, because most comments are ill-informed). See for example https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... for a good debunking of many common myths (good showing here). Yes, one should not accept the all-rosy picture of EVs being all-clean and ideal. But my EV a) is 4-5 times more efficient overall in converting energy int…
One thing EVs need to address is the cost of repairs. Yes an ICE engine needs regular maintenance, but currently that cost savings in an EV is offset by the larger repair costs as well as wait times for repairs (due to parts availability, like dearth of OEM parts, like you can’t go down to NAPA and get parts.
So much wrong information in the comments here (or, rather, lack of information, because most comments are ill-informed). See for example https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-... for a good debunking of many common myths (good showing here). Yes, one should not accept the all-rosy picture of EVs being all-clean and ideal. But my EV a) is 4-5 times more efficient overall in converting energy int…
I would love to have one, but I cannot afford one. Well, I could, I could easily get finance, but I wouldn't do it. I think if you live in the US, the way people on HN talk about cars, they must be cheaper there, finance is cheaper and wages are higher, such that you can just get a new one rather than making an agonising decision over months, even years.
We're just about to replace our 15 year old car with a 4 year old 7 seater because the kids are fighting over space in the back too often. There was 1 EV on the market with enough space (as an aside, all newer cars have less space across the width because of more safety features in the doors) and it's 2.5x my budget. A new hybrid is 1.7x my budget. You can buy a hell of a lot of petrol in that price difference, more than we'll use in 10 years of driving. So we'll keep this one until some of our offspring have left and the next car might hopefully be an EV.
A while back I did the math for Chevy Bolt vs an ICE car that gets 39 mpg.
The results were charging the Bolt would be cheaper per mile than filling the ICE car whenever G/E > 9.4, where G is the price of a gallon of gas and E is the cost of a kW of electricity.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing EVs need to address is the cost of repairs. Yes an ICE engine needs regular maintenance, but currently that cost savings in an EV is offset by the larger repair costs as well as wait times for repairs (due to parts availability, like dearth of OEM parts, like you can’t go down to NAPA and get parts.
That like OPs post is also a mixed bag. The high repair costs are largely because of EV manufactures trying out new things, like unibodies that are very expensive to replace, lack of 3rd party mechanics trained on them, and less commonly available parts at auto stores as you mention. The great news is that none of these are inherent with EVs, the traditional manufactures are using more construction in common with the…
If they fix the above then yes, repair costs should come down and make their total cost of ownership make sense.
As it is people try to convince others that because there are fewer moving parts on the drive train, that TCO is in theory lower, in practice it’s not yet due to all the above issues you mentioned.
https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/191tybu/driving_my...
EVs may be great for someone with a home and garage to charge it, but for renters or more normal folks who have to park on the street, no ones going to add hours to their day sitting at a charging station.
> for renters or more normal folks who have to park on the street I think categorizing people into "with garages" and "normal" might be a little contentious. A quick search indicates 63% percent of all housing units have a garage or carport[1]. Housing Unit includes apartments and condos. I'm sure it's very geographic, and in large cities the number will be much lower - but many many Americans live in suburbs, where…
the math is clear on what's more normal
Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to Wikipedia, the injuries from gasoline in these communities resulted from deliberately using it as an inhalant (to get intoxicated). This can hardly be compared with standing at a gas pump outdoors for five minutes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opal_(fuel) From that article: "Opal is a variety of low-aromatic 91 RON petrol developed in 2005 by BP Australia to combat the rising use of petrol as an inhalan…
I'm not comparing it to standing at a gas pump. I'm talking about this statement on the CDC site you linked: "There is not enough information available to determine if gasoline causes birth defects or affects reproduction" Borderline criminal.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/austra...
Since we're talking about EVs, note that if "electricity" had an MSDS, it would also be full of lawyer-speak warning about risks :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
EVs are fantastic for long road trips. Unless you buy your EV from a legacy automaker in which case there is no good charging network.
Let’s not forget crappy drivers assist I’m on bus right now to pick up my ICE vehicle from repair shop. Will need to drive back home for 45 mines MYSELF!