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EVs are, in their current form, still a nightmare. Extremely cold intolerant, battery chemistry is less than amazing (tho that is hopefully changing soon), etc

by helf 4y ago

EVs are, in their current form, still a nightmare. Extremely cold intolerant, battery chemistry is less than amazing (tho that is hopefully changing soon), etc etc. I really don’t see why more hybrids haven’t been done and more effort put into them. I adore my Volt and will not go pure EV anytime remotely soon for a variety of reasons. I’m not going to own two vehicles just so I can travel easier and I’m not going to rapidly kill my EVs batteries by raping them with insane amperage charging to get remotely close to fill up times on a gas/diesel vehicle. waits for the peanut gallery to pop up telling me I shouldn’t drive for more than 2 hours without a 20-30mins rest stop anyways and so it’s a nonissue because it’s not an issue where they* live or for their lifestyle.*

timbit42 4y ago
I think calling EVs a 'nightmare' and 'extremely cold intolerant' is overstating these problems. They're not perfect but nothing is. The amount of energy EVs lose in the cold varies from 10% to 40% depending on the model, so if that's important to you, buy a model that isn't cold intolerant. Older EVs have resistive heating but newer ones have a heat pump which uses a lot less electricity. Regarding, HEVs and PHEVs, I agree. Until battery components are more plentiful, HEVs can reduce fuel usage by almost half and PHEVs by up to 90% and require a fraction of the batteries to do it. PHEVs typically have 1/10th the range of an EV and thus use about 1/10th the batteries and require 1/10th the electricity to charge. This means instead of building an EV that reduces gasoline use by 100%, we could build 10 PHEVs that reduce gasoline use by 90%, because 90% of daily usage is less than the 30 mile range of the PHEV battery. Those 10 PHEVs together, reduce gasoline use by 900% compared to 100% with an EV with 10x the batteries. Also, PHEVs don't have range anxiety. We have one vehicle. It's an HEV but we're planning to upgrade to a PHEV. If we got a second vehicle, it'd be an inexpensive EV for short trips when the PHEV is already being used, but we'd still keep the PHEV for those longer trips and road trip vacations.

by helf 4y ago

timbit42 4y ago

I think calling EVs a 'nightmare' and 'extremely cold intolerant' is overstating these problems. They're not perfect but nothing is. The amount of energy EVs lose in the cold varies from 10% to 40% depending on the model, so if that's important to you, buy a model that isn't cold intolerant. Older EVs have resistive heating but newer ones have a heat pump which uses a lot less electricity. Regarding, HEVs and PHEVs, I agree. Until battery components are more plentiful, HEVs can reduce fuel usage by almost half and PHEVs by up to 90% and require a fraction of the batteries to do it. PHEVs typically have 1/10th the range of an EV and thus use about 1/10th the batteries and require 1/10th the electricity to charge. This means instead of building an EV that reduces gasoline use by 100%, we could build 10 PHEVs that reduce gasoline use by 90%, because 90% of daily usage is less than the 30 mile range of the PHEV battery. Those 10 PHEVs together, reduce gasoline use by 900% compared to 100% with an EV with 10x the batteries. Also, PHEVs don't have range anxiety. We have one vehicle. It's an HEV but we're planning to upgrade to a PHEV. If we got a second vehicle, it'd be an inexpensive EV for short trips when the PHEV is already being used, but we'd still keep the PHEV for those longer trips and road trip vacations.