4 ms·

People are being sold a range reduction of 50 to 90% and are being told this is good for them. Traveling long distance is made much harder and refueling times a

People are being sold a range reduction of 50 to 90% and are being told this is good for them. Traveling long distance is made much harder and refueling times are long. The faster you refuel the more exponentially quickly you permanently damage the battery. Energy density is a massive problem. Electric cars are excellent if you fit their use case but AWFUL if you don't. You have to go into the purchase of an electric with your eyes wide open. They are NOT as versatile as ICE vehicles.

bilsbie 4y ago
Range reduction?
- orangepurple 4y ago
  For the VW ID.4: When equipped with a level 1 120-volt outlet, it takes approximately 50 hours of charging time to go from 0 to 100% charge. A level 2 240-volt outlet takes an estimated 7.5 hours while the DC fast charging battery charges from 0 to 80% in just 38 minutes. You have to be lucky to find a fast charger for this vehicle, and even if you find one, charging is not cheap, and you permanently damage your battery by charging the battery this quickly. Visiting family with a road trip across Germany is still a hassle with these things and you permanently damage the expensive battery by fast charging
  - awillen 4y ago
    Why pick the VW ID.4 instead of a Tesla Model 3, which is a much more common electric car to own? Fast chargers for it are much more common and charge 0-80% in about 20 minutes.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      We can't all afford Teslas in Europe
      - awillen 4y ago
        Sure, but we're talking about general adoption of EVs here, so it's more appropriate to use the much more highly adopted example than one that's relatively uncommon.
        orangepurple 4y ago
        The VWs will be mass adopted in Europe when production ramps up and protectionist policies which punish Tesla will be implemented when VW is threatened. It's business as usual in Europe. That's why I use VW as an example. It's what Europeans will drive when they go hard on electric. When it comes to cars VW is "Europe, Inc." and resistance is futile. I jest. Many European megacorporations also offer electric cars as a job perk because personal car ownership is heavily taxed in many countries. The megacorps will choose home market manufacturers run by their friends preferentially.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > and you permanently damage your battery by charging the battery this quickly. This issue is improving with every new EV generation. And it's not even always true. On my Leaf, with a passively cooled battery, I need to be careful with temperatures. High temps will cause damage. I wouldn't quick charge every day. An occasional road trip is fine. Newest EVs? Even a 250KW charger won't make a lick of a difference for a battery that can accept 4x that amount of power. By the time EVs are widespread I don't expect to see many ID.4 in the streets.
- surfmike 4y ago
  Compared to ICE cars. A normal gas-powered car has a median 412 mile range. Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-939-august-22-2016-all-electric-vehicle-ranges-can-exceed-those-some-gasoline https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-939-august-22-2016...
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    If you plan on driving 1000 miles in a day (typical for family road trips) your effective daily range will be much less because of charging times. 38 minutes fast charging permanently damages the battery. If you go anywhere in Africa you're screwed too. It's all about optimizing for the appropriate use case. ICE cars are the most versatile, period. I can get gasoline for my car delivered to remote African villages in Coca Cola bottles cheaply.
    - nemothekid 4y ago
      It's hard for me to take your counterpoints seriously. Sure, an ICE might work for you, but I can't imagine most people are taking 1000+ mile roadtrips with any sort of frequency that would affect their decision making of their primary vehicle. San Francsico to Los Angeles is 400 miles; any longer than that I would image most people would just fly; much less an 1000 miles. And I'm not sure how often people consider "can I get gas delivered in this remote area" either. Sure there will be always a market for ICE vehicles, but that doesn't mean everyone should buy M1 Abrams because they might need something for a trip to Afghanistan.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        That's fine then. Buy an electric car today! So much of the world is ready for them. But some of us prefer the versatility of ICE because we're crazy and do crazy things and go crazy places.
        sliken 4y ago
        Sure. For the vast majority of daily use EVs are fine. There are corner cases, but I can always just rent an ICE if that's a better fit.
theshrike79 4y ago
I really want to meet some of these mythical beasts that drive 1000km+ trips regularly and don't take any breaks. Maybe 3 minutes maximum to refuel and they're off again. Don't they eat? Get tired? Need to relieve themselves? The Ioniq 5 can charge itself from 10% to 80% (400km+ range) in 18 minutes. That's about the time it takes to stuff a gas station sandwich in your face and do a quick toilet run. Is that really a dealbreaker? Even when it's 80% cheaper to drive that way?
- frogpelt 4y ago
  Probably not. What if you're having to wait on 10 other Ioniq drivers to refuel their cars for 18 minutes each?
  - outworlder 4y ago
    What if your gas station is full and you have to wait a long time for your turn... Oh wait, that happens every day at Costco.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    There will be more chargers and better integration with the car in the future. Tesla already does this: their systems automatically know where you need to charge and will reroute if all stalls are taken. The car will even heat the battery to optimal charging temperature to save charging time at the cost of range. But they have better vertical integration than other manufacturers. Other manufacturers are slowly following. The tech is there, it's just an API call. But for now it's all in the hands of lawyers and MBAs.
  - sliken 4y ago
    Heh, dunno, seems like EV chargers are springing up everywhere. In my city they have them at various destinations like hotels, golf courses, Target, whole foods, . The city funded a few as well. Definitely more locations for charging than gas, but not sure how many cars/hour could be filled/charged for each. I do think that it would be worth providing an incentive for businesses with big parking lots to cover at least some of the area with solar. The ground temperatures decrease (less heat island effect), less AC for nearby buildings, less AC in cars (which won't be as hot to begin with), and of course more solar power for the grid.
ceeplusplus 4y ago
A lot of ICE cars have much crappier range than a hybrid like a Prius. I know my old econobox only goes about 300-350 miles on a tank, which is comparable to a Tesla. Not everyone has 55 mpg cars that sip gas. The refueling problem is big though. Maybe if they can cut it to 15 mins for a 15-90% charge it'll be good enough.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  If you cut down the charge time you damage the battery. It's a fundamental limitation of physics. The damage is caused by physical expansion of the battery (and later contraction). The expansion is uneven and eventually wears out the film that separates the anode and cathode and develops pin holes (short circuits and sparks). The membrane is designed to lose ionic conductivity at elevated temperature and that spot becomes inactive by design and doesn't conduct electricity to protect the battery to prevent fire. Larger pin holes vaporize electrolyte, blows up seals, and causes a fire. That's why they don't want you to pack lithium batteries in checked luggage.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    Correct. But what you can do is to cut the time it will take for you to get the mileage you need. By having a bigger battery, you can charge more cells at the same time. Say you need 100 miles to finish your trip. If your range is 160 miles you are going to spend about 30 minutes to get the mileage you need, and you are going to stress your battery. But if your total range is 400 miles? You can pump way more power, charge the 25% you need, in just a few minutes.
- sliken 4y ago
  If you can charge at home this is generally not an issue. How often do you drive 400 or more miles in a day? Generally I save WAY more time not going to gas stations, oil changes, smog checks, and related than I do occasionally hanging out for a 550 mile/hour charger to give me enough range to get home/next charger. Most people think of the extra time at a charger as a weekly thing, in reality it's pretty rare for most. Often if you've been driving for 5 hours at 60 mph you are ready for a snack/bathroom break anyways. I do wish that gas stations didn't waste so much time. What kind of gas? Oh did you want the weather? How about a car wash? Prepay for a drink inside? Donate to a charity? Oh, did you want to see another ad? What is your zip code? Oh, insert your credit card. Tesla is literally grab the handle, push the button, and insert to charge in the car.
owenwil 4y ago
This is not my experience with an EV (and I'm a relatively new EV owner). My range is ~480km (300-350 miles) to a charge–the same as my previous ICE car. I can charge from ~20% to 80-90% in about 15 minutes on a 250kW charger, which is not rare where I live and more are being installed regularly. By the time I've gone to the restroom and grabbed a coffee, the car is fully charged again–I've never found myself standing around waiting for it to finish, and even faster chargers are already being installed out there en-masse right now. I have to stop every 4ish hours for a quick break/stretch legs/bathroom or it's unsafe anyway, so it's really never been a hassle. On top of that, I always leave my house with a "full" tank and 90% of the time I charge at home...when I need to charge out in the world I've never had a problem finding a fast charger. The "damage" from fast charging over the lifetime of the car is minimal at best, most older Teslas (10+ years) still retain more than 75% of their capacity despite using superchargers regularly. Why wouldn't it improve over time from here, which is pretty good and acceptable for most people's usage? It seems odd to assume that the technology won't get a lot better quickly, as it has in the last few weeks. It might take thinking about it for 5 seconds longer than an ICE car at the start of the trip, but overall it's not changed much about the realities of roadtrips for me.
hollerith 4y ago
Maybe in the future, when a family wants to take a long trip, they will rent a gas-powered electrical generator on a trailer.
- Thorentis 4y ago
  Battery trailers might be a good idea. A charger station will have a bunch of trailers with different size batteries for rent. If you need to get somewhere fast and don't want to wait to recharge, or if you want to go on a long trip, you can rent one. To be honest, this just logically leads to hotswapping car batteries. If a car manufacturer was able to make their batteries quickly hot swappable and then sell spares to gas stations (who could have large charging racks) then you could solve the charging time problem nicely.
  - sliken 4y ago
    Seems silly. How long of a trip do you think you'll need to take where driving extra distance to the local battery/trailer repo, hooking up the hitch, and the power cables ... for your make/model... waiting in line/signing paperwork. Of course you have to drive extra and more time for dropping it off. I drove nearly half way across the USA (1200 miles) in an EV, it's just not a big deal. Sure it took 21 hours instead of 19 or some such, not a big deal unless you do it often. I save many more hours with avoiding trips to the gas station, smog testing, oil changes, and related.
- orangepurple 4y ago
  My fever dream has been one of an electric road train where any cars hook into an exoskeleton which autonomously travels between cities.
outworlder 4y ago
> The faster you refuel the more exponentially quickly you permanently damage the battery. Eh, not exactly true. Sure, if I take my Leaf's battery and somehow jury-rig a quickcharger delivering twice the current, assuming I won't fry any contacts, the battery would die a very early death. However, note that batteries are made out of cells. They all can charge in parallel. If you compare older EVs with small batteries against more modern ones with much more range, you'll notice that the charging times haven't changed all that much, as long as the charge can provide the current requested. Newer EVs generally have larger batteries, with more cells. Sure, if your metric is filling back up to 100%, that's a problem. But if the metric is getting enough range for your next leg, then the charging times have been _decreasing_
- orangepurple 4y ago
  See my other reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32391433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32391433
- sliken 4y ago
  A neighbor had a leaf, had a battery pack die, and was under warranty. Which dies ... out of warranty, so they bought a 3rd party replacement battery ... which also died. They ended up buying a Tesla 3 years ago, and has had no problems since.
  - timbit42 4y ago
    What year was their Leaf? Early Leafs didn't have proper battery cooling which reduced their lifespan.
zip1234 4y ago
Even in the US, only 5% of trips are longer than 30 miles. 60% were 5 or less. For the ~50% of households with more than one car, one of them could easily be electric. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1042-august-13-2018-2017-nearly-60-all-vehicle-trips-were-less-six-miles#:~:text=Data%20collected%20on%20one%2Dway,are%20ten%20miles%20or%20less https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1042-augu....

bilsbie 4y ago

Range reduction?

orangepurple 4y ago
For the VW ID.4: When equipped with a level 1 120-volt outlet, it takes approximately 50 hours of charging time to go from 0 to 100% charge. A level 2 240-volt outlet takes an estimated 7.5 hours while the DC fast charging battery charges from 0 to 80% in just 38 minutes. You have to be lucky to find a fast charger for this vehicle, and even if you find one, charging is not cheap, and you permanently damage your battery by charging the battery this quickly. Visiting family with a road trip across Germany is still a hassle with these things and you permanently damage the expensive battery by fast charging
- awillen 4y ago
  Why pick the VW ID.4 instead of a Tesla Model 3, which is a much more common electric car to own? Fast chargers for it are much more common and charge 0-80% in about 20 minutes.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    We can't all afford Teslas in Europe
    - awillen 4y ago
      Sure, but we're talking about general adoption of EVs here, so it's more appropriate to use the much more highly adopted example than one that's relatively uncommon.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        The VWs will be mass adopted in Europe when production ramps up and protectionist policies which punish Tesla will be implemented when VW is threatened. It's business as usual in Europe. That's why I use VW as an example. It's what Europeans will drive when they go hard on electric. When it comes to cars VW is "Europe, Inc." and resistance is futile. I jest. Many European megacorporations also offer electric cars as a job perk because personal car ownership is heavily taxed in many countries. The megacorps will choose home market manufacturers run by their friends preferentially.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > and you permanently damage your battery by charging the battery this quickly. This issue is improving with every new EV generation. And it's not even always true. On my Leaf, with a passively cooled battery, I need to be careful with temperatures. High temps will cause damage. I wouldn't quick charge every day. An occasional road trip is fine. Newest EVs? Even a 250KW charger won't make a lick of a difference for a battery that can accept 4x that amount of power. By the time EVs are widespread I don't expect to see many ID.4 in the streets.
surfmike 4y ago
Compared to ICE cars. A normal gas-powered car has a median 412 mile range. Source: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-939-august-22-2016-all-electric-vehicle-ranges-can-exceed-those-some-gasoline https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-939-august-22-2016...
- orangepurple 4y ago
  If you plan on driving 1000 miles in a day (typical for family road trips) your effective daily range will be much less because of charging times. 38 minutes fast charging permanently damages the battery. If you go anywhere in Africa you're screwed too. It's all about optimizing for the appropriate use case. ICE cars are the most versatile, period. I can get gasoline for my car delivered to remote African villages in Coca Cola bottles cheaply.
  - nemothekid 4y ago
    It's hard for me to take your counterpoints seriously. Sure, an ICE might work for you, but I can't imagine most people are taking 1000+ mile roadtrips with any sort of frequency that would affect their decision making of their primary vehicle. San Francsico to Los Angeles is 400 miles; any longer than that I would image most people would just fly; much less an 1000 miles. And I'm not sure how often people consider "can I get gas delivered in this remote area" either. Sure there will be always a market for ICE vehicles, but that doesn't mean everyone should buy M1 Abrams because they might need something for a trip to Afghanistan.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      That's fine then. Buy an electric car today! So much of the world is ready for them. But some of us prefer the versatility of ICE because we're crazy and do crazy things and go crazy places.
      - sliken 4y ago
        Sure. For the vast majority of daily use EVs are fine. There are corner cases, but I can always just rent an ICE if that's a better fit.

theshrike79 4y ago

I really want to meet some of these mythical beasts that drive 1000km+ trips regularly and don't take any breaks. Maybe 3 minutes maximum to refuel and they're off again. Don't they eat? Get tired? Need to relieve themselves? The Ioniq 5 can charge itself from 10% to 80% (400km+ range) in 18 minutes. That's about the time it takes to stuff a gas station sandwich in your face and do a quick toilet run. Is that really a dealbreaker? Even when it's 80% cheaper to drive that way?

frogpelt 4y ago
Probably not. What if you're having to wait on 10 other Ioniq drivers to refuel their cars for 18 minutes each?
- outworlder 4y ago
  What if your gas station is full and you have to wait a long time for your turn... Oh wait, that happens every day at Costco.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  There will be more chargers and better integration with the car in the future. Tesla already does this: their systems automatically know where you need to charge and will reroute if all stalls are taken. The car will even heat the battery to optimal charging temperature to save charging time at the cost of range. But they have better vertical integration than other manufacturers. Other manufacturers are slowly following. The tech is there, it's just an API call. But for now it's all in the hands of lawyers and MBAs.
- sliken 4y ago
  Heh, dunno, seems like EV chargers are springing up everywhere. In my city they have them at various destinations like hotels, golf courses, Target, whole foods, . The city funded a few as well. Definitely more locations for charging than gas, but not sure how many cars/hour could be filled/charged for each. I do think that it would be worth providing an incentive for businesses with big parking lots to cover at least some of the area with solar. The ground temperatures decrease (less heat island effect), less AC for nearby buildings, less AC in cars (which won't be as hot to begin with), and of course more solar power for the grid.

ceeplusplus 4y ago

A lot of ICE cars have much crappier range than a hybrid like a Prius. I know my old econobox only goes about 300-350 miles on a tank, which is comparable to a Tesla. Not everyone has 55 mpg cars that sip gas. The refueling problem is big though. Maybe if they can cut it to 15 mins for a 15-90% charge it'll be good enough.

orangepurple 4y ago
If you cut down the charge time you damage the battery. It's a fundamental limitation of physics. The damage is caused by physical expansion of the battery (and later contraction). The expansion is uneven and eventually wears out the film that separates the anode and cathode and develops pin holes (short circuits and sparks). The membrane is designed to lose ionic conductivity at elevated temperature and that spot becomes inactive by design and doesn't conduct electricity to protect the battery to prevent fire. Larger pin holes vaporize electrolyte, blows up seals, and causes a fire. That's why they don't want you to pack lithium batteries in checked luggage.
- outworlder 4y ago
  Correct. But what you can do is to cut the time it will take for you to get the mileage you need. By having a bigger battery, you can charge more cells at the same time. Say you need 100 miles to finish your trip. If your range is 160 miles you are going to spend about 30 minutes to get the mileage you need, and you are going to stress your battery. But if your total range is 400 miles? You can pump way more power, charge the 25% you need, in just a few minutes.
sliken 4y ago
If you can charge at home this is generally not an issue. How often do you drive 400 or more miles in a day? Generally I save WAY more time not going to gas stations, oil changes, smog checks, and related than I do occasionally hanging out for a 550 mile/hour charger to give me enough range to get home/next charger. Most people think of the extra time at a charger as a weekly thing, in reality it's pretty rare for most. Often if you've been driving for 5 hours at 60 mph you are ready for a snack/bathroom break anyways. I do wish that gas stations didn't waste so much time. What kind of gas? Oh did you want the weather? How about a car wash? Prepay for a drink inside? Donate to a charity? Oh, did you want to see another ad? What is your zip code? Oh, insert your credit card. Tesla is literally grab the handle, push the button, and insert to charge in the car.

owenwil 4y ago

This is not my experience with an EV (and I'm a relatively new EV owner). My range is ~480km (300-350 miles) to a charge–the same as my previous ICE car. I can charge from ~20% to 80-90% in about 15 minutes on a 250kW charger, which is not rare where I live and more are being installed regularly. By the time I've gone to the restroom and grabbed a coffee, the car is fully charged again–I've never found myself standing around waiting for it to finish, and even faster chargers are already being installed out there en-masse right now. I have to stop every 4ish hours for a quick break/stretch legs/bathroom or it's unsafe anyway, so it's really never been a hassle. On top of that, I always leave my house with a "full" tank and 90% of the time I charge at home...when I need to charge out in the world I've never had a problem finding a fast charger. The "damage" from fast charging over the lifetime of the car is minimal at best, most older Teslas (10+ years) still retain more than 75% of their capacity despite using superchargers regularly. Why wouldn't it improve over time from here, which is pretty good and acceptable for most people's usage? It seems odd to assume that the technology won't get a lot better quickly, as it has in the last few weeks. It might take thinking about it for 5 seconds longer than an ICE car at the start of the trip, but overall it's not changed much about the realities of roadtrips for me.

hollerith 4y ago

Maybe in the future, when a family wants to take a long trip, they will rent a gas-powered electrical generator on a trailer.

Thorentis 4y ago
Battery trailers might be a good idea. A charger station will have a bunch of trailers with different size batteries for rent. If you need to get somewhere fast and don't want to wait to recharge, or if you want to go on a long trip, you can rent one. To be honest, this just logically leads to hotswapping car batteries. If a car manufacturer was able to make their batteries quickly hot swappable and then sell spares to gas stations (who could have large charging racks) then you could solve the charging time problem nicely.
- sliken 4y ago
  Seems silly. How long of a trip do you think you'll need to take where driving extra distance to the local battery/trailer repo, hooking up the hitch, and the power cables ... for your make/model... waiting in line/signing paperwork. Of course you have to drive extra and more time for dropping it off. I drove nearly half way across the USA (1200 miles) in an EV, it's just not a big deal. Sure it took 21 hours instead of 19 or some such, not a big deal unless you do it often. I save many more hours with avoiding trips to the gas station, smog testing, oil changes, and related.
orangepurple 4y ago
My fever dream has been one of an electric road train where any cars hook into an exoskeleton which autonomously travels between cities.

outworlder 4y ago

> The faster you refuel the more exponentially quickly you permanently damage the battery. Eh, not exactly true. Sure, if I take my Leaf's battery and somehow jury-rig a quickcharger delivering twice the current, assuming I won't fry any contacts, the battery would die a very early death. However, note that batteries are made out of cells. They all can charge in parallel. If you compare older EVs with small batteries against more modern ones with much more range, you'll notice that the charging times haven't changed all that much, as long as the charge can provide the current requested. Newer EVs generally have larger batteries, with more cells. Sure, if your metric is filling back up to 100%, that's a problem. But if the metric is getting enough range for your next leg, then the charging times have been _decreasing_

orangepurple 4y ago
See my other reply https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32391433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32391433
sliken 4y ago
A neighbor had a leaf, had a battery pack die, and was under warranty. Which dies ... out of warranty, so they bought a 3rd party replacement battery ... which also died. They ended up buying a Tesla 3 years ago, and has had no problems since.
- timbit42 4y ago
  What year was their Leaf? Early Leafs didn't have proper battery cooling which reduced their lifespan.

zip1234 4y ago

Even in the US, only 5% of trips are longer than 30 miles. 60% were 5 or less. For the ~50% of households with more than one car, one of them could easily be electric. https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1042-august-13-2018-2017-nearly-60-all-vehicle-trips-were-less-six-miles#:~:text=Data%20collected%20on%20one%2Dway,are%20ten%20miles%20or%20less https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1042-augu....