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until there are chargers for the masses or some kind of new tech comes along that can charge as fast as filling up the tank or the batteries can hold way more r

until there are chargers for the masses or some kind of new tech comes along that can charge as fast as filling up the tank or the batteries can hold way more range than they do it is not going to work for the majority of people with cars. too many people can't plug in overnight to charge. electrics are superior for the people that they are superior for.

slg 5y ago
>a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.[1] I agree we need more public chargers, but I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore. [1] - https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  Faster charger are coming, too. Tesla already announced 300 kW https://electrek.co/2021/07/15/tesla-upgrading-supercharger-network-to-300-kw-faster-charging/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/15/tesla-upgrading-supercharger-... and Ionity is already offering 350 kW https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html But the most important thing is the curve, not the peak rate. It's improving fast https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-plaid-charging-range-test-review/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-plaid-charging... and will improve further with the 4680 cells next year.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore. The problem is how many cars can be serviced by a single charging center in a given amount of time. Think about a weekend with good weather, or holiday weekends, when many people are taking trips on the same days. Normally, because filling a gas tank takes 5-10 minutes, cars can cycle in and out of ubiquitous gas stations very quickly. The same isn't true for charging, at least with the current footprint of chargers out there, especially with differences in charging architectures.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I say this as a Tesla owner. Chargers are still too slow to appease a LOT of people. A 15-30 minute charge every 2-3 hours is unacceptable to people who expect a 5 minute gas-up every 3-4 hours. And while the supercharger network is expanding, the fact is, for a road trip, you'll still likely want to plan your charging stops ahead of time, and many people don't want to do this. With a gas car, you can easily just wing it with zero planning since no matter where you are, there's a gas station within 15 miles. The "charge rates up to 1,000 miles per hour" is only accurate when your battery is under what, 30%? IIRC, charging speed falls off almost linearly with state of charge.
fossuser 5y ago
I'd bet against you. The majority of people with cars can use EVs today fine. There are some exceptional outlier cases and even those people can rely on super chargers or charging stations (which are expanding rapidly).
- derbOac 5y ago
  The majority of people I know who have cars would not be ok with EVs because they just don't have the range. The people I do know who are fine with EVs almost don't even need vehicles at all to be honest -- they could be using public transportation or biking or walking instead (I don't mean to suggest they shouldn't be using an EV, only that their alternatives often aren't combustion vehicles). I do think there are a lot of people who could be happily using EVs, but I don't think it's a majority. As for charging stations, I think many people who are still using combustion engines want to see a charging station at every gas station, or of equivalent geographic density. Distribution could be there but it's far from that now.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    Many people are afraid of the range, but don't actually drive anywhere near it day to day. EV range is also continuing to improve. I suspect/predict we'll see adoption continue to accelerate. I think a lot of the resistance is just status quo bias.
    - derbOac 5y ago
      FWIW, I think eventually EVs will dominate the market. It's a matter of when, not if (unless hydrogen makes a splash somehow). The issue with trips is yes, many people don't drive anywhere near that range on a daily per-trip basis. However, people don't buy cars on a trip-by-trip basis, they buy a car to handle the range of regularly encountered transportation scenarios they encounter. So even if people only make, say, 7% of their trips outside the range of an EV, they don't want to go and rent a car to do that if they already own a car. They want to have a car that will do that, plus the one or two trips per week that go well outside that range. They don't want to rent another car every week or two to do that. Add to that a conservative 50% reduction in range in the winter (per Consumer Reports), range is currently a concern. I guess I just think the range-per-trip metric can be misleading, because that can equate to a relatively large number of trips per time, especially given the expense of a car, regardless of technology.
space_rock 5y ago
We need some sort of infrastructure that delivers electricity around a country and only then will this work
- mlinhares 5y ago
  I see what you did here :D
  - space_rock 5y ago
    It always amazes me people use the infrastructure argument against EV adoption. Electricity infrastructure is nearly universal worldwide and clearly more available than gasoline. Also recharge times on new Teslas is very impressive of not irrelevant to most of the population that can recharge at home
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      And even if they admit that the infrastructure exist, they vastly overestimate the amount of power needed to charge an EV at home. People actually believe you need a 150kW+ charger at home, when reality is that if you have a socket that can handle an electric kettle, you can charge an EV from it.
RangerScience 5y ago
Until the demand for chargers hits a tipping point and starts replacing corner gas stations... Yes, you do still have the charge time issue, but that's why chargers get paired up with places. Right now there's two (slow) charging stalls at my mid-tier local grocery-store-etc mall (Albertsons), and (ofc) none at the low-tier (Big Saver). There's plenty of room for more, and while my local grocery mall doesn't have a gas station in it, most do. Replace those with charging infrastructure, and we'll get past that tipping point.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  In Finland the largest charger networks are owned by the two largest ... grocery chains. Their locations are already next to traffic hubs, stores already have a beefy electrical hook up and a car full of people stopping for 15-45 minutes to charge is excellent for business.
  - RangerScience 5y ago
    Yup! Because Tesla charges waaay more for time at a charger not charging, I'm starting to like the slower chargers since it gives more time for whatever I'm up to at the location. 30m is enough to pop into Trader Joe's, but not enough for a restaurant (as an example)
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      Electric motors are also superior to combustion engines in pretty much every way. The biggest issue is mobile energy storage in sufficient quantities. With a train-sized diesel generator the problem goes away :)
echelon 5y ago
There are a number of problems with EVs that ICEs handle much better. Trucking and logistics is very time dependent, so stopping to recharge imposes severe logistical constraints. You can't have every truck stay at the same pit stop. There isn't enough space or time. Large apartment complexes are plentiful. A 1,000-resident building complex full of EVs will draw a lot of power. Can the grid handle it? What happens when the power goes out? How will residents of states that snow over in the winter will fare? Do they have to stop using their vehicles? Long trips by car suddenly become more painful, which will likely shift more traffic to air travel. ------ Edit ----- I have a "bad contributor" flag on my account [1]. I had a response to this comment [2] that I wanted to make but can't. I'll include it here for lack of an ability to post on HN: I just looked at my coke zero can (bad habit), and it's using potassium citrate as an acid buffer. Inflammation is a tax on the immune system and puts it in a state that is mainly intended for dealing with pathogen and cancer clearance. Over time, endothelial and genetic damage can accrue, resulting in hastened aging and system dysfunction. Increased cell population recruitment from the thymus also diminishes the organ's size in age, reducing immune system capacity to deal with these threats. Not news I wanted today, but something I needed to hear. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959642 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963171
- fossuser 5y ago
  Trucking has tradeoffs in both directions - EVs are cheaper, and easier to maintain, trucks are huge and can have a lot of battery capacity. I think what's better depends on specific circumstance. For large apartment complexes there will probably need to be some load balancing, but seems manageable. Power going out doesn't seem like that big of a deal, more likely to have some charge in the car and it's more likely to find power than gas in a crisis (long lines at gas stations etc.) Long trips by car via super charger are pretty easy for everything except 700+mi trips which are very rare for vast majority. Unlikely to shift anything to air travel, if anything lower EV fuel costs could shift other direction. For snow my parents have had only EVs in Buffalo and have been fine. They also drive down the east coast to Florida.
  - 5y ago
derbOac 5y ago
My wife and I recently purchased a new car. We have strongly been considering an EV, but went with a hybrid because even though EVs were well within our price range, we couldn't depend on one. The infrastructure just isn't there, nor is the range. Maybe when we replace our other car it will make sense as that one is driven much shorter distances and we'd have the other one for longer distances (both are hybrids). This isn't even getting into issues with having to upgrade our electrical box and wiring to handle car charging in our garage. I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space, but I do give them a lot of credit and thanks for introducing competition in the area and turning EVs into a product to covet. To me that's always been the best way to handle these sorts of things, to introduce competition and win people over. Lightbulbs were the same way -- the arguments died when quality affordable LEDs came on the market and took away any argument for anything else. When there's big range, reliable and affordable EVs with quick ubiquitous charging, people will flock to EVs. Sometimes I feel like these discussions are in a bubble, to be honest. When I think of the people I know, and what's in the parking lot, getting them to migrate to a hybrid is really where there would be any movement. Maybe someday they'll just jump to an EV and skip hybrids but at the moment there's lots of people who won't even consider anything but a full combustion system. I also don't really fault Toyota for pursuing hydrogen and would really like to see that continue at least as a research focus. It is much more energy dense and solves a lot of problems. I realize it's not as fully there yet as EVs, but EVs aren't either if anyone is being completely honest. The article casts Toyota in a nefarious light, but in some ways I feel like if the government is going to get involved and start playing favorites, they should do so in a competitive and diversified way. Otherwise maybe they should get out of the way and just incentivize competition per se. In fact, if the EV market is so healthy, maybe the government should be subsidizing alternatives like hydrogen?
- evanrich 5y ago
  > I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space Out of curiosity, who do you see as a better option and why?
  - fossuser 5y ago
    I'm also curious - I looked at a lot of EVs (maybe all that were available?) before getting the Model 3 (and had a Fiat 500e prior to that). None of them really came close in features and most were not competitive on cost either.
woeirua 5y ago
The overwhelming majority of households use their cars such that one essentially is used only for commuting and running errands on the weekend. The second car, can quite easily be electric given the state of today's technology, and that's the sweet spot for it right now. Once prices come down I would be surprised to see people not have at least one electric car in their garage. Gas hybrids are vastly superior though for long distance traveling. The infrastructure just isnt there yet, and charging for an hour sucks.
- natch 5y ago
  Two EVs are way easier to manage than one EV and one ICE car. Because you can trade them off at a distant charger.
- Johnny555 5y ago
  That's exactly the model my household follows (or will follow once I return to my office commute) - one small EV (with a short, 110 mile range) for the daily commute, and one Hybrid for longer trips or hauling more stuff/people. We'd probably just have the EV and rent a car for longer trips, but we needed a second car for my spouse anyway who works from home full time.
ygjb 5y ago
Is this just your opinion, or do you actually have data to back up your claims here? I ask because there was a 5 year old study that illustrated that in 2016 87% of trips were within range for an electric vehicle with overnight charging. https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112 https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112 Range anxiety is a real thing, but we settled on a PHEV SUV with a 40km range last year due to not finding the right mix of towing capacity and range in an electric vehicle (we need to routinely use a trailer that can haul >1500 lbs for business reasons). That 40km range covers approximately 3/4 quarters (74.38) of our routine driving (I actually have this data, we were surprised that it came out to such a round number!) We expect to sell our current vehicle and switch to a full electric SUV with similar capabilities once they are available in 2021/2022.
- nradov 5y ago
  Range isn't the problem, lack of charging stations is. Drive around any city at night and look how many cars are parked overnight on streets and in parking lots with no chargers anywhere near. That infrastructure can be built but it will take decades.
  - fattire 5y ago
    Why would it take decades?
    - nradov 5y ago
      Equipment costs, limited city budgets, permit process, labor availability, local transformer capacity, etc.
      - theshrike79 5y ago
        A charging station costs an order of magnitude less than a petrol station Why would cities need to pay a dime for charging infrastructure? There are commercial vendors doing just fine. Which do you think is the hardest to get a permit for? 1) underground tank for thousands of gallons of explosive liquid that's bad for the environment if it leaks 2) overground tank of pressurised explosive gas known for its ability to leak out of every container 3) a big-ass electric socket As for labor, you need an electrician with a high voltage certificate. Not a exactly rare, hard to train, commodity. Maybe a dude with a backhoe to dig the wires. Local transformer capacity is highly variable, some areas might have issues, others might not. A charging station can bring stability to unstable networks if paired with a battery bank to offset the load. (And maybe even make $$ by charging it during low load and feed back during peak hours).
cronix 5y ago
I kind of like what Nio is doing with batteries in their cars - quickly swap them out and be on your way instead of sitting there for an hour+ charging. It obviously wouldn't work everywhere as it requires a substantial infrastructure compared to a charging station (so economical in dense populated areas). But it's essentially as fast as filling up with regular gasoline. Pull in, battery gets swapped in minutes, pull out. BaaS (Batteries as a Service). It also lowers the price of the car up front since you don't pay for the massive battery, which is the largest cost portion of an electric vehicle. https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-completes-2000000-battery-swaps https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-completes-2000000-battery-swaps
- bruceb 5y ago
  Maybe battery swaping will work this time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29
  - Animats 5y ago
    Even things that used to do battery swapping, such as forklifts, are moving away from that. Now that battery forklifts can get through a workday on one charge, it's easier to just recharge during off hours.
Server6 5y ago
Most people can charge at home overnight. According the US census 65% of adults own their own home. Sure infrastructure needs built out for the remaining 35% of renters. However the demand won't be there for a while since most renters are likely younger and/or lower income and not the current target market for EVs.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Some of those 65% (condo and rowhouse owners and places where on-street parking is prevalent) will also need some amount of shared/public charging infrastructure.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    It's easy to do. There are electric cables everywhere (every street lamp, for example). Also, I'm old enough to remember when one had to pay for wifi at hotels and restaurants. I bet we won't pay for charging a car at some point and/or at some time of the day (plugging your car will help the grid due to the share of renewables, you may even be paid for the service). See https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/own/california-virtual-power-plant https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/own/californi...
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  Owning a home does not imply the ability to charge a car. It is common for homeowners to park cars on the street out of necessity.
- natch 5y ago
  Some apartment renters can charge at home too. Just depends on the setup. But sure some can’t.
akudha 5y ago
A woman was saying (on Reddit, I think) that she is not comfortable sitting for an hour at the charging station. If I hadn't read that, I would've never thought of the safety angle for female EV owners. I hope EVs surpass gas guzzlers, but there are some issues to fix before that can happen.
- fattire 5y ago
  Leaving aside "sitting for an hour" (?), isn't it much safer to charge 99% of the time in your own garage and never have to regularly step out of your car alone at a dark gas station on the corner? Even on a long drive you leave home with a "full tank" without having that first stop to gas up.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    Yeah - plus superchargers are typically in busy public areas often with security (unlike many gas stations). It feels fairly contrived, I'm skeptical it's not just anti-ev motivated reasoning.
    - natch 5y ago
      No need for security, Tesla owners watch out for each other.
      - natch 5y ago
        To put it another way, people charging EVs tend to look out for each other and help each other. At Tesla chargers, since they have multiple plugs in one spot, there are often other friendly people there charging so you feel safer and more secure. So even without security guards it is a good setup for leaving your car or for being there in a strange parking lot.
- natch 5y ago
  People draw a lot of scary conclusions based on what they know about bad EV choices. It all depends on what car you choose. With Teslas at least, you don’t sit for an hour, since they have fast chargers all over the place. In other cars, yes. Some of our charges are 5-10 minutes. On a road trip most are 20-30 minutes. The longest charge is if you need to get to a place that is near the edge of your range, which is exceedingly rare, even on long road trips. In those highly unusual cases you might have to charge for 45-50 minutes for that one leg of the trip, if you didn’t arrive with half a charge already. Again this is with a supercharger. Other cars… yes, scary charge times. (You will hear about how some cars… Porsche… can charge at a faster rate, but the chargers to support this are rare, so their fast rate is often not possible and they are stuck at a slow charger for hours.) Also with other cars you are sitting there alone often at a single plug station. With Tesla chargers you are generally not alone, you are with other Tesla owners who have your back if anything suspicious starts happening around the area.
natch 5y ago
We owned two Teslas for two years with no place to plug in at home. But we did have local charging options. You would be surprised how easy it can be, if you live in the right place. However, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a big if. Now we manage to keep two Teslas charged with one single 110 outlet. It’s plenty for around town. We even have nights where we go to bed without plugging in either car, because they are both already 80% full, which is a good place to stop for battery health.
bananabreakfast 5y ago
They already have chargers for the masses. Superchargers are all over the place and charge nearly as fast as filling up a tank. Most people wildly underestimate how much time they spend at a gas station filling up gas anyway. Range is not really an issue either. Unless you're regularly road tripping 400+ miles, an EV will handle the trip just fine.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > Superchargers are all over the place and charge nearly as fast as filling up a tank. This is not at all true. Filling up even a larger 25 gallon gas tank can be done within 10 minutes. Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95% (https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-charging-analysis/ https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-chargin...). > Range is not really an issue either. Unless you're regularly road tripping 400+ miles, an EV will handle the trip just fine. Range can be an issue for numerous reasons. Your range changes based on load, temperature, and the road. If you're driving in cold conditions, uphill, with passengers and cargo, your range isn't 400 miles - it might be half that. Plus even the longest range Tesla currently gets only 396 miles under the ideal conditions of the EPA cycle. Unlike with gas cars, you can't just carry an extra can of electric charge to cover yourself for a rare longer journey.
  - nickik 5y ago
    > Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95% The thing is, you don't actually do that in practice. Go and actually listen to the insideev podcast. The Tesla will tell you where to stop for how long. Typically on a road-trip you actually make a few more stops and only charge from 5% to 60%. Unless you are a really extreme road tripper, peeing and getting a quick snake is more then enough. The guys on insideev actually do a huge amount of road tripping (with all kinds of cars) and they prefer EV to ICE for almost all trips. And in most cases the charging doesn't hold you up much at all. Also guess what, if you drive uphill with cargo in extreme temperatures you also use more gas and your car doesn't get its normal mileage. With an EV you actually get much of that energy back when going down the mountain on the other side. Also, this is probably less then 0.1% of all miles driven. So it really doesn't work as an argument and doesn't apply to 95% of the people. And for another 3% it likely doesn't apply for more then 1-2 a year. Nobody is saying that EV are literally perfect for every single case ever. But as a practical matter, they are simply better for the majority of people already.

slg 5y ago

>a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.[1] I agree we need more public chargers, but I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore. [1] - https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging https://www.tesla.com/blog/introducing-v3-supercharging

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
Faster charger are coming, too. Tesla already announced 300 kW https://electrek.co/2021/07/15/tesla-upgrading-supercharger-network-to-300-kw-faster-charging/ https://electrek.co/2021/07/15/tesla-upgrading-supercharger-... and Ionity is already offering 350 kW https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html https://ionity.eu/en/design-and-tech.html But the most important thing is the curve, not the peak rate. It's improving fast https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-plaid-charging-range-test-review/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-plaid-charging... and will improve further with the 4680 cells next year.
throwawaysea 5y ago
> I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore. The problem is how many cars can be serviced by a single charging center in a given amount of time. Think about a weekend with good weather, or holiday weekends, when many people are taking trips on the same days. Normally, because filling a gas tank takes 5-10 minutes, cars can cycle in and out of ubiquitous gas stations very quickly. The same isn't true for charging, at least with the current footprint of chargers out there, especially with differences in charging architectures.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I say this as a Tesla owner. Chargers are still too slow to appease a LOT of people. A 15-30 minute charge every 2-3 hours is unacceptable to people who expect a 5 minute gas-up every 3-4 hours. And while the supercharger network is expanding, the fact is, for a road trip, you'll still likely want to plan your charging stops ahead of time, and many people don't want to do this. With a gas car, you can easily just wing it with zero planning since no matter where you are, there's a gas station within 15 miles. The "charge rates up to 1,000 miles per hour" is only accurate when your battery is under what, 30%? IIRC, charging speed falls off almost linearly with state of charge.

fossuser 5y ago

I'd bet against you. The majority of people with cars can use EVs today fine. There are some exceptional outlier cases and even those people can rely on super chargers or charging stations (which are expanding rapidly).

derbOac 5y ago
The majority of people I know who have cars would not be ok with EVs because they just don't have the range. The people I do know who are fine with EVs almost don't even need vehicles at all to be honest -- they could be using public transportation or biking or walking instead (I don't mean to suggest they shouldn't be using an EV, only that their alternatives often aren't combustion vehicles). I do think there are a lot of people who could be happily using EVs, but I don't think it's a majority. As for charging stations, I think many people who are still using combustion engines want to see a charging station at every gas station, or of equivalent geographic density. Distribution could be there but it's far from that now.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Many people are afraid of the range, but don't actually drive anywhere near it day to day. EV range is also continuing to improve. I suspect/predict we'll see adoption continue to accelerate. I think a lot of the resistance is just status quo bias.
  - derbOac 5y ago
    FWIW, I think eventually EVs will dominate the market. It's a matter of when, not if (unless hydrogen makes a splash somehow). The issue with trips is yes, many people don't drive anywhere near that range on a daily per-trip basis. However, people don't buy cars on a trip-by-trip basis, they buy a car to handle the range of regularly encountered transportation scenarios they encounter. So even if people only make, say, 7% of their trips outside the range of an EV, they don't want to go and rent a car to do that if they already own a car. They want to have a car that will do that, plus the one or two trips per week that go well outside that range. They don't want to rent another car every week or two to do that. Add to that a conservative 50% reduction in range in the winter (per Consumer Reports), range is currently a concern. I guess I just think the range-per-trip metric can be misleading, because that can equate to a relatively large number of trips per time, especially given the expense of a car, regardless of technology.

space_rock 5y ago

We need some sort of infrastructure that delivers electricity around a country and only then will this work

mlinhares 5y ago
I see what you did here :D
- space_rock 5y ago
  It always amazes me people use the infrastructure argument against EV adoption. Electricity infrastructure is nearly universal worldwide and clearly more available than gasoline. Also recharge times on new Teslas is very impressive of not irrelevant to most of the population that can recharge at home
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    And even if they admit that the infrastructure exist, they vastly overestimate the amount of power needed to charge an EV at home. People actually believe you need a 150kW+ charger at home, when reality is that if you have a socket that can handle an electric kettle, you can charge an EV from it.

RangerScience 5y ago

Until the demand for chargers hits a tipping point and starts replacing corner gas stations... Yes, you do still have the charge time issue, but that's why chargers get paired up with places. Right now there's two (slow) charging stalls at my mid-tier local grocery-store-etc mall (Albertsons), and (ofc) none at the low-tier (Big Saver). There's plenty of room for more, and while my local grocery mall doesn't have a gas station in it, most do. Replace those with charging infrastructure, and we'll get past that tipping point.

theshrike79 5y ago
In Finland the largest charger networks are owned by the two largest ... grocery chains. Their locations are already next to traffic hubs, stores already have a beefy electrical hook up and a car full of people stopping for 15-45 minutes to charge is excellent for business.
- RangerScience 5y ago
  Yup! Because Tesla charges waaay more for time at a charger not charging, I'm starting to like the slower chargers since it gives more time for whatever I'm up to at the location. 30m is enough to pop into Trader Joe's, but not enough for a restaurant (as an example)
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Electric motors are also superior to combustion engines in pretty much every way. The biggest issue is mobile energy storage in sufficient quantities. With a train-sized diesel generator the problem goes away :)

echelon 5y ago

There are a number of problems with EVs that ICEs handle much better. Trucking and logistics is very time dependent, so stopping to recharge imposes severe logistical constraints. You can't have every truck stay at the same pit stop. There isn't enough space or time. Large apartment complexes are plentiful. A 1,000-resident building complex full of EVs will draw a lot of power. Can the grid handle it? What happens when the power goes out? How will residents of states that snow over in the winter will fare? Do they have to stop using their vehicles? Long trips by car suddenly become more painful, which will likely shift more traffic to air travel. ------ Edit ----- I have a "bad contributor" flag on my account [1]. I had a response to this comment [2] that I wanted to make but can't. I'll include it here for lack of an ability to post on HN: I just looked at my coke zero can (bad habit), and it's using potassium citrate as an acid buffer. Inflammation is a tax on the immune system and puts it in a state that is mainly intended for dealing with pathogen and cancer clearance. Over time, endothelial and genetic damage can accrue, resulting in hastened aging and system dysfunction. Increased cell population recruitment from the thymus also diminishes the organ's size in age, reducing immune system capacity to deal with these threats. Not news I wanted today, but something I needed to hear. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959642 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963171 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963171

fossuser 5y ago
Trucking has tradeoffs in both directions - EVs are cheaper, and easier to maintain, trucks are huge and can have a lot of battery capacity. I think what's better depends on specific circumstance. For large apartment complexes there will probably need to be some load balancing, but seems manageable. Power going out doesn't seem like that big of a deal, more likely to have some charge in the car and it's more likely to find power than gas in a crisis (long lines at gas stations etc.) Long trips by car via super charger are pretty easy for everything except 700+mi trips which are very rare for vast majority. Unlikely to shift anything to air travel, if anything lower EV fuel costs could shift other direction. For snow my parents have had only EVs in Buffalo and have been fine. They also drive down the east coast to Florida.
- 5y ago

derbOac 5y ago

My wife and I recently purchased a new car. We have strongly been considering an EV, but went with a hybrid because even though EVs were well within our price range, we couldn't depend on one. The infrastructure just isn't there, nor is the range. Maybe when we replace our other car it will make sense as that one is driven much shorter distances and we'd have the other one for longer distances (both are hybrids). This isn't even getting into issues with having to upgrade our electrical box and wiring to handle car charging in our garage. I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space, but I do give them a lot of credit and thanks for introducing competition in the area and turning EVs into a product to covet. To me that's always been the best way to handle these sorts of things, to introduce competition and win people over. Lightbulbs were the same way -- the arguments died when quality affordable LEDs came on the market and took away any argument for anything else. When there's big range, reliable and affordable EVs with quick ubiquitous charging, people will flock to EVs. Sometimes I feel like these discussions are in a bubble, to be honest. When I think of the people I know, and what's in the parking lot, getting them to migrate to a hybrid is really where there would be any movement. Maybe someday they'll just jump to an EV and skip hybrids but at the moment there's lots of people who won't even consider anything but a full combustion system. I also don't really fault Toyota for pursuing hydrogen and would really like to see that continue at least as a research focus. It is much more energy dense and solves a lot of problems. I realize it's not as fully there yet as EVs, but EVs aren't either if anyone is being completely honest. The article casts Toyota in a nefarious light, but in some ways I feel like if the government is going to get involved and start playing favorites, they should do so in a competitive and diversified way. Otherwise maybe they should get out of the way and just incentivize competition per se. In fact, if the EV market is so healthy, maybe the government should be subsidizing alternatives like hydrogen?

evanrich 5y ago
> I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space Out of curiosity, who do you see as a better option and why?
- fossuser 5y ago
  I'm also curious - I looked at a lot of EVs (maybe all that were available?) before getting the Model 3 (and had a Fiat 500e prior to that). None of them really came close in features and most were not competitive on cost either.

woeirua 5y ago

The overwhelming majority of households use their cars such that one essentially is used only for commuting and running errands on the weekend. The second car, can quite easily be electric given the state of today's technology, and that's the sweet spot for it right now. Once prices come down I would be surprised to see people not have at least one electric car in their garage. Gas hybrids are vastly superior though for long distance traveling. The infrastructure just isnt there yet, and charging for an hour sucks.

natch 5y ago
Two EVs are way easier to manage than one EV and one ICE car. Because you can trade them off at a distant charger.
Johnny555 5y ago
That's exactly the model my household follows (or will follow once I return to my office commute) - one small EV (with a short, 110 mile range) for the daily commute, and one Hybrid for longer trips or hauling more stuff/people. We'd probably just have the EV and rent a car for longer trips, but we needed a second car for my spouse anyway who works from home full time.

ygjb 5y ago

Is this just your opinion, or do you actually have data to back up your claims here? I ask because there was a 5 year old study that illustrated that in 2016 87% of trips were within range for an electric vehicle with overnight charging. https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112 https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112 Range anxiety is a real thing, but we settled on a PHEV SUV with a 40km range last year due to not finding the right mix of towing capacity and range in an electric vehicle (we need to routinely use a trailer that can haul >1500 lbs for business reasons). That 40km range covers approximately 3/4 quarters (74.38) of our routine driving (I actually have this data, we were surprised that it came out to such a round number!) We expect to sell our current vehicle and switch to a full electric SUV with similar capabilities once they are available in 2021/2022.

nradov 5y ago
Range isn't the problem, lack of charging stations is. Drive around any city at night and look how many cars are parked overnight on streets and in parking lots with no chargers anywhere near. That infrastructure can be built but it will take decades.
- fattire 5y ago
  Why would it take decades?
  - nradov 5y ago
    Equipment costs, limited city budgets, permit process, labor availability, local transformer capacity, etc.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      A charging station costs an order of magnitude less than a petrol station Why would cities need to pay a dime for charging infrastructure? There are commercial vendors doing just fine. Which do you think is the hardest to get a permit for? 1) underground tank for thousands of gallons of explosive liquid that's bad for the environment if it leaks 2) overground tank of pressurised explosive gas known for its ability to leak out of every container 3) a big-ass electric socket As for labor, you need an electrician with a high voltage certificate. Not a exactly rare, hard to train, commodity. Maybe a dude with a backhoe to dig the wires. Local transformer capacity is highly variable, some areas might have issues, others might not. A charging station can bring stability to unstable networks if paired with a battery bank to offset the load. (And maybe even make $$ by charging it during low load and feed back during peak hours).

cronix 5y ago

I kind of like what Nio is doing with batteries in their cars - quickly swap them out and be on your way instead of sitting there for an hour+ charging. It obviously wouldn't work everywhere as it requires a substantial infrastructure compared to a charging station (so economical in dense populated areas). But it's essentially as fast as filling up with regular gasoline. Pull in, battery gets swapped in minutes, pull out. BaaS (Batteries as a Service). It also lowers the price of the car up front since you don't pay for the massive battery, which is the largest cost portion of an electric vehicle. https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-completes-2000000-battery-swaps https://www.nio.com/blog/nio-completes-2000000-battery-swaps

bruceb 5y ago
Maybe battery swaping will work this time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place_%28company%29
- Animats 5y ago
  Even things that used to do battery swapping, such as forklifts, are moving away from that. Now that battery forklifts can get through a workday on one charge, it's easier to just recharge during off hours.

Server6 5y ago

Most people can charge at home overnight. According the US census 65% of adults own their own home. Sure infrastructure needs built out for the remaining 35% of renters. However the demand won't be there for a while since most renters are likely younger and/or lower income and not the current target market for EVs.

sokoloff 5y ago
Some of those 65% (condo and rowhouse owners and places where on-street parking is prevalent) will also need some amount of shared/public charging infrastructure.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  It's easy to do. There are electric cables everywhere (every street lamp, for example). Also, I'm old enough to remember when one had to pay for wifi at hotels and restaurants. I bet we won't pay for charging a car at some point and/or at some time of the day (plugging your car will help the grid due to the share of renewables, you may even be paid for the service). See https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/own/california-virtual-power-plant https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/own/californi...
jandrewrogers 5y ago
Owning a home does not imply the ability to charge a car. It is common for homeowners to park cars on the street out of necessity.
natch 5y ago
Some apartment renters can charge at home too. Just depends on the setup. But sure some can’t.

akudha 5y ago

A woman was saying (on Reddit, I think) that she is not comfortable sitting for an hour at the charging station. If I hadn't read that, I would've never thought of the safety angle for female EV owners. I hope EVs surpass gas guzzlers, but there are some issues to fix before that can happen.

fattire 5y ago
Leaving aside "sitting for an hour" (?), isn't it much safer to charge 99% of the time in your own garage and never have to regularly step out of your car alone at a dark gas station on the corner? Even on a long drive you leave home with a "full tank" without having that first stop to gas up.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Yeah - plus superchargers are typically in busy public areas often with security (unlike many gas stations). It feels fairly contrived, I'm skeptical it's not just anti-ev motivated reasoning.
  - natch 5y ago
    No need for security, Tesla owners watch out for each other.
    - natch 5y ago
      To put it another way, people charging EVs tend to look out for each other and help each other. At Tesla chargers, since they have multiple plugs in one spot, there are often other friendly people there charging so you feel safer and more secure. So even without security guards it is a good setup for leaving your car or for being there in a strange parking lot.
natch 5y ago
People draw a lot of scary conclusions based on what they know about bad EV choices. It all depends on what car you choose. With Teslas at least, you don’t sit for an hour, since they have fast chargers all over the place. In other cars, yes. Some of our charges are 5-10 minutes. On a road trip most are 20-30 minutes. The longest charge is if you need to get to a place that is near the edge of your range, which is exceedingly rare, even on long road trips. In those highly unusual cases you might have to charge for 45-50 minutes for that one leg of the trip, if you didn’t arrive with half a charge already. Again this is with a supercharger. Other cars… yes, scary charge times. (You will hear about how some cars… Porsche… can charge at a faster rate, but the chargers to support this are rare, so their fast rate is often not possible and they are stuck at a slow charger for hours.) Also with other cars you are sitting there alone often at a single plug station. With Tesla chargers you are generally not alone, you are with other Tesla owners who have your back if anything suspicious starts happening around the area.

natch 5y ago

We owned two Teslas for two years with no place to plug in at home. But we did have local charging options. You would be surprised how easy it can be, if you live in the right place. However, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a big if. Now we manage to keep two Teslas charged with one single 110 outlet. It’s plenty for around town. We even have nights where we go to bed without plugging in either car, because they are both already 80% full, which is a good place to stop for battery health.

bananabreakfast 5y ago

They already have chargers for the masses. Superchargers are all over the place and charge nearly as fast as filling up a tank. Most people wildly underestimate how much time they spend at a gas station filling up gas anyway. Range is not really an issue either. Unless you're regularly road tripping 400+ miles, an EV will handle the trip just fine.

throwawaysea 5y ago
> Superchargers are all over the place and charge nearly as fast as filling up a tank. This is not at all true. Filling up even a larger 25 gallon gas tank can be done within 10 minutes. Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95% (https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-charging-analysis/ https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-chargin...). > Range is not really an issue either. Unless you're regularly road tripping 400+ miles, an EV will handle the trip just fine. Range can be an issue for numerous reasons. Your range changes based on load, temperature, and the road. If you're driving in cold conditions, uphill, with passengers and cargo, your range isn't 400 miles - it might be half that. Plus even the longest range Tesla currently gets only 396 miles under the ideal conditions of the EPA cycle. Unlike with gas cars, you can't just carry an extra can of electric charge to cover yourself for a rare longer journey.
- nickik 5y ago
  > Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95% The thing is, you don't actually do that in practice. Go and actually listen to the insideev podcast. The Tesla will tell you where to stop for how long. Typically on a road-trip you actually make a few more stops and only charge from 5% to 60%. Unless you are a really extreme road tripper, peeing and getting a quick snake is more then enough. The guys on insideev actually do a huge amount of road tripping (with all kinds of cars) and they prefer EV to ICE for almost all trips. And in most cases the charging doesn't hold you up much at all. Also guess what, if you drive uphill with cargo in extreme temperatures you also use more gas and your car doesn't get its normal mileage. With an EV you actually get much of that energy back when going down the mountain on the other side. Also, this is probably less then 0.1% of all miles driven. So it really doesn't work as an argument and doesn't apply to 95% of the people. And for another 3% it likely doesn't apply for more then 1-2 a year. Nobody is saying that EV are literally perfect for every single case ever. But as a practical matter, they are simply better for the majority of people already.