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

Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 54 posts

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

#31

Post by elliekelly »

edude03 wrote: post #22

While I definitely don't want to come across as unsympathetic or uncaring towards those with disabilities, I am quite frustrated by tone of this article. Yes, putting the battery in the floor makes the current ways that disabled people modify their vehicles to be more friendly easier, however, the need to modify the vehicle is not unique to EVs - they were already taking non friendly vehicles and making them friendli…

> however it fundamentally doesn't make sense to take any group brought together by a particular need and have them design something for mass consumption

I see this line of thinking a lot when disability discussions come up and I think it’s fundamentally flawed. People with disabilities aren’t a homogeneous “group of people brought together by a particular need” - quite the opposite. They have many different and varied needs. The accommodations they seek are often the same I see developers griping about on HN every day: interoperability, hardware standards, and enough flexibility for the owner to decide what works best for them rather than the manufacturer.

Why is it perfectly acceptable for us to have these complaints about MacBook hard drives and batteries but a “hit piece” when people in need of accommodation have similar complaints about Tesla batteries?

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

#32

Post by BB212 »

baron816 wrote: post #28
indymike wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the model t of electric vehicles was the Electrobat in 1894. EVs came before gas, and the ICE hit the pause button for a century on EV progress.

Model T wasn’t the first car. It was the first mass-market, “Everyman” car. What I’m talking about is a car that pretty much anyone who can afford a car can afford.

I'm fairly certain that Tesla's are way cheaper than the model T was.

It isn't like families could afford multiple cars back then. They were selling less than a million model Ts a years - which would have represented a large segment of the car market.

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

#33

Post by wolverine876 »

edude03 wrote: post #22

While I definitely don't want to come across as unsympathetic or uncaring towards those with disabilities, I am quite frustrated by tone of this article. Yes, putting the battery in the floor makes the current ways that disabled people modify their vehicles to be more friendly easier, however, the need to modify the vehicle is not unique to EVs - they were already taking non friendly vehicles and making them friendli…

> It kind of feels like a "hit piece"

Is your comment a hit piece? The comment is mostly about the article; it doesn't much add to our knowledge of disabled people using electric cars.

Every article posted on HN receives similar responses. They seem like hit pieces to me. What can we learn from those motivations?

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

#34

Post by felixlechat »

pepperberg wrote: post #19

"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 fe…

EVs CO2 emmissions depends of the carbon intensity of electricity consumed. So that is true that Germany with now 323gCO₂eq/kWh has a higher break even. But if you take the same data for exemple in France where electricity is much less carbon intensive, (now 32gCO₂eq/kWh), break even is as low as 15000km for an EV. Germany should just emit less carbon for electricity generation.

[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/transport/vehic...

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

#35

Post by wolverine876 »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #24
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…

The thing that struck me about the Tesla video is that they're still using after market mechanical controls for acceleration and braking. This is very similar to what my aunt used in her car back in the 80s. Since Tesla is at least partially drive-by-wire, it seems like actual controls on the steering wheel without a mechanical component would be trivial to add. Perhaps there are regulatory reasons for this or maybe…

> Perhaps there are regulatory reasons for this or maybe Tesla simply hasn't been asked for or prioritized this functionality.

My guess, which I understand to be true with many similar issues: There are enormous safety engineering issues. Unless someone can demonstrate an enormous benefit to changing from a mature, well-tested, safe solution that everyone is already trained on, it's not worth changing. And regarding training: Imagine someone decided to change the driving controls for everyone; imagine the cost.

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

#36

Post by wolverine876 »

blamazon wrote: post #12

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…

> This too shall pass.

Said John Maynard Keynes to other economists (1923):

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

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

#37

Post by jeffbee »

Cars in general are not that useful for disabled people. There are people for whom a car can be adapted to their disability, but there are tons of people for whom this is impossible, including everyone with vision disabilities. If you care about mobility for the disabled, you should not be trying to center your plans around cars with wheelchair lifts, but instead around compact urban forms with broad, flat sidewalks, minimal obstacles, low-floor transit vehicles, and no cars.

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

#38

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

> claiming that there is absolutely no future in electric vehicles for disabled people

Where does the article say that? Maybe I missed it. The article quotes one engineer saying,

“It’s not insurmountable, but companies have to start working with us now,” Frayne said.

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

#40

Post by fencepost »

Seems like the basic EV design of "thick slab with wheels at the corners and everything else flexible and bolted on" could actually be an advantage in a lot of ways. Slide out ramps may not fit, but lifts shouldn't be a problem and internal movement could be easier.

Heck, height adjustment of the entire body (or just one side) is probably not out of the question when you don't have to worry about mechanical connections to the engine because the motors are contained in the wheels.

Post reply on HN