4 ms·

I've expressed the same sentiment before. The problem is that even talking about electric cars gets people's knickers in a twist; they need to be able to drive

I've expressed the same sentiment before. The problem is that even talking about electric cars gets people's knickers in a twist; they need to be able to drive for 1000 miles straight while towing an apartment on wheels behind them and any vehicle which can't do that just isn't good enough. They'd rather be dead than have to drive one of these.

adwww 7y ago
See also "we can't have bike lanes because I'm a scaffolding contractor and need to deliver 40 tonnes of steel poles on my truck"
bananapear 7y ago
I’d love an electric car but I also like my caravan (nice cheap (£20 a night) walking holidays in the countryside). I had to settle for a small diesel instead. Towing isn’t something a lot of electric cars seem to be homologated for. I think the only current exception is the Tesla Model X. Unfortunately the post-1997 EU licence restrictions (in the UK) mean that lots of people are restricted to a total gross weight of 3500kg for the car and trailer, so towing even a small caravan with a car that has batteries would need the driver to do another driving test.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Towing should be a strong point of electric vehicles, with all that torque, shouldn't it?
  - kgilpin 7y ago
    Towing kills the range
    - epanchin 7y ago
      Additional batteries in trailers doesn’t seem unreasonable.
      - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
        Or, you could just put a generator on the trailer, and get unlimited range! =)
        VBprogrammer 7y ago
        There was an excellent old website (it when by the name Mr. Sharkey but is sadly no longer around except in some archives with missing photos) which detailed a guys experiments with an old VW Rabbit EV. He actually built a range extender trailer for it based on the front of another VW rabbit. One interesting thing is he wasn't powering a generator but actually pushed the car via the tow ball and the engine and transmission from the donor car. Found it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20121105135914/http://www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20121105135914/http://www.mrshark...
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        >but actually pushed the car via the tow ball and the engine and transmission from the donor car. I'm sure that handled spectacularly on on-ramps. It would be like flat towing another vehicle and coming into a corner too hot.
        VBprogrammer 7y ago
        I did say it was interesting! Safe, not so much. To be fair, I think he basically fired it up when he got to the interstate, manually set the throttle to the speed he wanted to cruise at then turned it off again before coming off the interstate.
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        The early days of EVs reminds me of the early days of rock crawling. People tried all these wacky things because there was no instruction manual to follow, they were writing it.
        7y ago
  - bananapear 7y ago
    I would think so, but I wonder what effect that has on the range? You can certainly feel the difference a 1300kg trailer makes to pulling away and accelerating, it effectively halves my miles-per-gallon.
    - ljf 7y ago
      Wow - interested to hear it is that dramatic. My only experience is towing a folding camper - this fits nicely in the 'slipstream' of my car, and I assume weighs less than your caravan no doubt. But since you are limited to 60mph towing, I often find that my MPG is the same if not better when towing, though pulling away and uphill is affected. Not sure my current car would cope with a caravan!
      - bananapear 7y ago
        I think the air resistance is the main factor. Even with the roof bars/cycle carriers on I notice maybe 5-10 less average mpg. They’re the Thule aero ones which are designed to reduce drag! Also my car has a 6th gear for more efficient cruising on the motorway, but you can’t tow in 6th, it just sounds like it’s struggling.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    The main limitations for towing with cars and car-like platform is tongue weight (not a big deal if you don't mind going slow) overall power and cooling. Don't get me wrong, easy starting from a stop is worth something but 90% of the benefit in that regard is gotten by going from a manual to automatic. Going EV isn't nearly as big of a jump in ease of use and it doesn't really solve any of the pain points so don't expect electric cars to revolutionize towing. As others have pointed out, the range also tanks when towing (it tanks with gas cars too but not as badly). This is a bigger deal in an EV because you can't just gas up in 5min but not that big a deal if you're taking a pre-planned trip IMO.
masklinn 7y ago
> The problem is that even talking about electric cars gets people's knickers in a twist; they need to be able to drive for 1000 miles straight while towing an apartment on wheels behind them and any vehicle which can't do that just isn't good enough. I mean that's understandable, if the car you buy can only handle small commuting that means at the very least the additional cost of using other transport methods or renting a car or having a second car (all of which may be problematic or impossible) when you need to see friends, your family, or go on holidays. And that's not "par" money as the EV is not going to be significantly cheaper than an equivalent ICE. A small and cheap comfy-ish EV might actually be a good option there, as it lets you have a regular car when you need to e.g. go to Ikea (which might be out of range of an EV depending where you live) or drive to the next country or go see your sister a few hundred miles away without significant additional costs, but it needs to be small (so it's not an issue e.g. for people living in cities who may not have access to a garage at all let alone a multi-car one) and cheap (so it's not a drain on resources, or at least not a big one, compared to just using the one car all the time). Incentives are a thing, and currently EVs mostly incentivise using something else if you don't have fuck you money and more surface than you can use. As-is, plug-in hybrids are probably a better option for single people or single-car households.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  I agree with what you are saying. The tradeoffs are complex between an electric car and something else. In many cases the only reasonable solution is to have both and use the appropriate vehicle for the appropriate trip. The downsides of that are many unless you already need two vehicles. However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater.
  - masklinn 7y ago
    > However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater. The difference and point (as noted in the second paragraph) is that it is much more feasible to have a car and a velomobile than to have two cars.
C1sc0cat 7y ago
Whist driving that hit anything or be hit by anything, would have a good chance of being dead, it looks like a DIY Sinclair C5.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Yes. It's somewhat chicken and egg. How do you get people into much lighter vehicles while everyone else is driving around in 3 tonne SUVs.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    You can still hit road furniture , and things like moose's
    - flyingfences 7y ago
      That vehicle looks like it would just go cleanly under the moose.
      - C1sc0cat 7y ago
        I am now imagining an updated Jeux Sans Frontières with the competitors driving those round a course avoiding mooses. For non Europeans it was a Europe wide televised game series which "featured teams from different European countries in outlandish costumes (often large latex suits) competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny games. "
growlist 7y ago
...in America perhaps.

adwww 7y ago

See also "we can't have bike lanes because I'm a scaffolding contractor and need to deliver 40 tonnes of steel poles on my truck"

bananapear 7y ago

I’d love an electric car but I also like my caravan (nice cheap (£20 a night) walking holidays in the countryside). I had to settle for a small diesel instead. Towing isn’t something a lot of electric cars seem to be homologated for. I think the only current exception is the Tesla Model X. Unfortunately the post-1997 EU licence restrictions (in the UK) mean that lots of people are restricted to a total gross weight of 3500kg for the car and trailer, so towing even a small caravan with a car that has batteries would need the driver to do another driving test.

chrisseaton 7y ago
Towing should be a strong point of electric vehicles, with all that torque, shouldn't it?
- kgilpin 7y ago
  Towing kills the range
  - epanchin 7y ago
    Additional batteries in trailers doesn’t seem unreasonable.
    - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
      Or, you could just put a generator on the trailer, and get unlimited range! =)
      - VBprogrammer 7y ago
        There was an excellent old website (it when by the name Mr. Sharkey but is sadly no longer around except in some archives with missing photos) which detailed a guys experiments with an old VW Rabbit EV. He actually built a range extender trailer for it based on the front of another VW rabbit. One interesting thing is he wasn't powering a generator but actually pushed the car via the tow ball and the engine and transmission from the donor car. Found it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20121105135914/http://www.mrsharkey.com/pusher.htm http://web.archive.org/web/20121105135914/http://www.mrshark...
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        >but actually pushed the car via the tow ball and the engine and transmission from the donor car. I'm sure that handled spectacularly on on-ramps. It would be like flat towing another vehicle and coming into a corner too hot.
        VBprogrammer 7y ago
        I did say it was interesting! Safe, not so much. To be fair, I think he basically fired it up when he got to the interstate, manually set the throttle to the speed he wanted to cruise at then turned it off again before coming off the interstate.
        dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        The early days of EVs reminds me of the early days of rock crawling. People tried all these wacky things because there was no instruction manual to follow, they were writing it.
        7y ago
- bananapear 7y ago
  I would think so, but I wonder what effect that has on the range? You can certainly feel the difference a 1300kg trailer makes to pulling away and accelerating, it effectively halves my miles-per-gallon.
  - ljf 7y ago
    Wow - interested to hear it is that dramatic. My only experience is towing a folding camper - this fits nicely in the 'slipstream' of my car, and I assume weighs less than your caravan no doubt. But since you are limited to 60mph towing, I often find that my MPG is the same if not better when towing, though pulling away and uphill is affected. Not sure my current car would cope with a caravan!
    - bananapear 7y ago
      I think the air resistance is the main factor. Even with the roof bars/cycle carriers on I notice maybe 5-10 less average mpg. They’re the Thule aero ones which are designed to reduce drag! Also my car has a 6th gear for more efficient cruising on the motorway, but you can’t tow in 6th, it just sounds like it’s struggling.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  The main limitations for towing with cars and car-like platform is tongue weight (not a big deal if you don't mind going slow) overall power and cooling. Don't get me wrong, easy starting from a stop is worth something but 90% of the benefit in that regard is gotten by going from a manual to automatic. Going EV isn't nearly as big of a jump in ease of use and it doesn't really solve any of the pain points so don't expect electric cars to revolutionize towing. As others have pointed out, the range also tanks when towing (it tanks with gas cars too but not as badly). This is a bigger deal in an EV because you can't just gas up in 5min but not that big a deal if you're taking a pre-planned trip IMO.

masklinn 7y ago

> The problem is that even talking about electric cars gets people's knickers in a twist; they need to be able to drive for 1000 miles straight while towing an apartment on wheels behind them and any vehicle which can't do that just isn't good enough. I mean that's understandable, if the car you buy can only handle small commuting that means at the very least the additional cost of using other transport methods or renting a car or having a second car (all of which may be problematic or impossible) when you need to see friends, your family, or go on holidays. And that's not "par" money as the EV is not going to be significantly cheaper than an equivalent ICE. A small and cheap comfy-ish EV might actually be a good option there, as it lets you have a regular car when you need to e.g. go to Ikea (which might be out of range of an EV depending where you live) or drive to the next country or go see your sister a few hundred miles away without significant additional costs, but it needs to be small (so it's not an issue e.g. for people living in cities who may not have access to a garage at all let alone a multi-car one) and cheap (so it's not a drain on resources, or at least not a big one, compared to just using the one car all the time). Incentives are a thing, and currently EVs mostly incentivise using something else if you don't have fuck you money and more surface than you can use. As-is, plug-in hybrids are probably a better option for single people or single-car households.

VBprogrammer 7y ago
I agree with what you are saying. The tradeoffs are complex between an electric car and something else. In many cases the only reasonable solution is to have both and use the appropriate vehicle for the appropriate trip. The downsides of that are many unless you already need two vehicles. However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater. The difference and point (as noted in the second paragraph) is that it is much more feasible to have a car and a velomobile than to have two cars.

C1sc0cat 7y ago

Whist driving that hit anything or be hit by anything, would have a good chance of being dead, it looks like a DIY Sinclair C5.

VBprogrammer 7y ago
Yes. It's somewhat chicken and egg. How do you get people into much lighter vehicles while everyone else is driving around in 3 tonne SUVs.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  You can still hit road furniture , and things like moose's
  - flyingfences 7y ago
    That vehicle looks like it would just go cleanly under the moose.
    - C1sc0cat 7y ago
      I am now imagining an updated Jeux Sans Frontières with the competitors driving those round a course avoiding mooses. For non Europeans it was a Europe wide televised game series which "featured teams from different European countries in outlandish costumes (often large latex suits) competing to complete bizarre tasks in funny games. "

growlist 7y ago

...in America perhaps.