Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 780 posts

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#211

Post by toast0 »

yurishimo wrote: post #167
vundercind wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

They aren't more widely supported because they are more expensive and more complicated to manufacture with a higher potential for more stuff to go wrong. Until the engine that powers a PHEV is nearly drop-in ready for a replacement (for example, going to your local auto parts store and buying a replacement like a battery) then companies need to have service technicians and production lines to support these "engines"…

> PHEV is just too complicated to support long term (imo).

PHEV isn't that much more complex than an ICE. The transaxle is typically mechanically simpler, and you have two electric motor/generators instead of an electric motor (starter) and an electric generator (alternator). There's a big battery you need to find room for, and the power wiring. And the engine control is significantly different, but if it doesn't work, swap the ECU works as well for an ICE and PHEV.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#212

Post by eunos »

preommr wrote: post #31
worik wrote: post #24

The Chinese are going to clean this market up. The British made the same mistake back in the day with motorcycles. "Who cares about the market for 125 cc machines?" they said. The Japanese did, and now they have the market, the British used to have, for luxury and high powered motor cycles. As well as most of the 125cc market

> The Chinese are going to clean this market up. Not if our governments start putting tariffs on everything. I am Canadian, but it also applies to other governments (including the US). The politicians know that it's not going to be easy to do the actual right thing and build up a competitive industry. Instead, it's much easier to just slap some tariffs and make lagging productivity the next generation's problem.

North Americans can have their Auto Galapagos. Even Aussies and the UK aren't listening to the White House's histrionics (for now).

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#213

Post by slices »

lumost wrote: post #162
vundercind wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

PHEV means two drive trains, more parts and in turn more weight. Do you really want a plugin car that loses its charge in 30 minutes?

Since 90% of my car trips are under 30 minutes, yes that would be worthwhile.

The other 10% are beyond any practical battery range, so a BEV isn't an option.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#214

Post by wlesieutre »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #37
wlesieutre wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm hoping for manufacturers to pull back on the "all controls are via touchscreen" and "you can't have carplay because we want to charge you our own monthly fees" trends. Taking Chevy for example, they have physical HVAC controls, but they're counting on the average consumer being too clueless to realize they only have Google Maps in their car because it came with a free OnStar trial. Eventually people are going to…

The trend to exclude CarPlay and/or Android Auto really is awful. Not only is there a high risk of notoriously underpowered head units becoming increasingly laggy over time with updates, there’s also the risk of the automaker deciding that shipping new updates for your only slightly old EV is too much of a cost to bear and dropping support, making the head unit slowly become more and more useless over time as apps st…

"Escape hatch" is exactly how I describe it. I don't care how good a car's screens are today, I know they get software updates and I don't trust them to not screw it up down the road.

Yeah, we could go back to suction cup phone mounts on the windshield if we had to, but that feels pretty stupid when the car has a 12" screen in the dashboard.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#215

Post by short_sells_poo »

f1refly wrote: post #156
vundercind wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't make great use of a full EV but would love more AWD PHEV options, of which there are currently few and they're mostly very expensive. A PHEV can be my everything-car that runs entirely on electricity for 90% of trips. I assume there's some reason they're not a more widely-supported option, but damn, I wish they were more common.

Maybe because PHEV are a really dumb idea? You're lugging around two complete powertrains the whole time, a massive waste of energy!

Nobody wants this, but in an imperfect world, one has to make suboptimal compromises.

You can get an EV, and then have to deal with half a dozen barely competent charging networks each with their own donkey, slow and insecure app, their own quirks and pricing schemes, etc. For some, the tradeoff is worth it, for others it isn't.

You can also get a PHEV, which could allow you to use one car for commuting purely on electric power - even if you are lugging around an entire ICE power train - and then also take the family out to the countryside over the weekend. Without the having to deal with a bunch of annoyed passangers when you are stuck midway through your journey and the charging station you are trying to use is giving you the massively helpeful error message of "Charging failed, please try again later".

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#216

Post by lkbm »

Swizec wrote: post #25
jopsen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, their daily trips are well within the range of what an EV can do. And most people don't do long trips every week. Personally, I try to optimize my life to avoid spending a considerable part of it in a car. With charging at home EVs are just easy. For long trips charging every 2-3 hours isn't too bad (most humans benefit from a break anyways).

> And most people don't do long trips every week Most people don’t own multiple cars and wouldn’t rent a car for those rare use-cases when they already own a perfectly fine car. It may be overall cheaper to do that, but people don’t think that way. One or two annual holiday roadtrips to go see the family and oops that EV starts looking like an annoying option. Every friend I have who doesn’t own a house and bought an…

It's only 57%, so a good chunk who don't, but according to [0], the median US household does own two cars. I assume that a fairly large majority of married people have multiple cars (between the two of them), and only a very small minority of unmarried people do.

[0] https://www.autoinsurance.com/research/car-ownership-statist...

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#217

Post by j_bum »

gradus_ad wrote: post #208

Why isn't there more focus on plain old Hybrids? Not PHEV's... Aren't they a best of both worlds approach? What am I missing.

Right? I drive an accord hybrid (2023) and get ~53 mpg city and ~48 mpg interstate.

I have a hard time imagining switching to a full EV or going back to traditional ICE.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#218

Post by matt-attack »

gradus_ad wrote: post #208

Why isn't there more focus on plain old Hybrids? Not PHEV's... Aren't they a best of both worlds approach? What am I missing.

Um because people really want to be done burning petroleum in their cars. Hybrid is just an old gas car that’s gets improved gas mileage. It’s not a real fix.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#219

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

gradus_ad wrote: post #208

Why isn't there more focus on plain old Hybrids? Not PHEV's... Aren't they a best of both worlds approach? What am I missing.

> Aren't they a best of both worlds approach? What am I missing.

They have the mechanical complexity of both, in a package of roughly the same size. And usually far smaller batteries and thus far less battery-only range than a pure EV. There are plenty of downsides.

Re: The withering dream of a cheap American electric car

#220

Post by pton_xd »

gradus_ad wrote: post #208

Why isn't there more focus on plain old Hybrids? Not PHEV's... Aren't they a best of both worlds approach? What am I missing.

Japan went all-in on hybrids, not exactly sure why though. Skip forward a few decades and it'd make a lot more sense to unify behind a fully electric charging solution than maintaining two fueling methods.
Post reply on HN