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You seem to be upset because it became cheaper to double the range of your decade-old car for cheaper than buying a new battery of the original style. When was

by coryrc 5y ago

You seem to be upset because it became cheaper to double the range of your decade-old car for cheaper than buying a new battery of the original style. When was the last time you were able to double the mileage of a decade-old gas car for less than its value? In most of the world poor people can't afford cars. We should be increasing the supply of places people can live without cars, not subsidizing more cars.

nullc 5y ago
No, the complaint was that Nissan wanted $12500 to replace the battery, instead of the $7500 we were quoted when we got the car. I probably shouldn't have mentioned the range except it was gulling that they wanted so much and it didn't even increase the range as a side effect. (and also that we did manage to fix it, and increased the range and spent what we originally expected). Even at the original/expected price the big lump sum cost would create cashflow problems for people who aren't wealthy. And I think this is a new consideration for EVs that doesn't exist for IC cars and should probably be a factor in our public policy. > When was the last time you were able to double the mileage of a decade-old gas car Range is not mileage. A standard IC car has a range many times what we're talking about here. We got the EV because we were prepared to make lifestyle affordances for the limited range. Range is also not dependent of battery life. These batteries have substantially better life if you charge them to only 80% most of the time, which was something we found we couldn't do on the shorter range battery, but have no problem with on the longer range battery. > In most of the world poor people can't afford cars. We should be increasing the supply of places people can live without cars In the US today people can afford cars and we've designed our cities and economies in ways where people need them. That's the cards currently in our hand. I agree that it is good to reduce the need for cars, but that is orthogonal to the impact that we'll have on the public when we push hard into EVs.

by coryrc 5y ago

nullc 5y ago

No, the complaint was that Nissan wanted $12500 to replace the battery, instead of the $7500 we were quoted when we got the car. I probably shouldn't have mentioned the range except it was gulling that they wanted so much and it didn't even increase the range as a side effect. (and also that we did manage to fix it, and increased the range and spent what we originally expected). Even at the original/expected price the big lump sum cost would create cashflow problems for people who aren't wealthy. And I think this is a new consideration for EVs that doesn't exist for IC cars and should probably be a factor in our public policy. > When was the last time you were able to double the mileage of a decade-old gas car Range is not mileage. A standard IC car has a range many times what we're talking about here. We got the EV because we were prepared to make lifestyle affordances for the limited range. Range is also not dependent of battery life. These batteries have substantially better life if you charge them to only 80% most of the time, which was something we found we couldn't do on the shorter range battery, but have no problem with on the longer range battery. > In most of the world poor people can't afford cars. We should be increasing the supply of places people can live without cars In the US today people can afford cars and we've designed our cities and economies in ways where people need them. That's the cards currently in our hand. I agree that it is good to reduce the need for cars, but that is orthogonal to the impact that we'll have on the public when we push hard into EVs.