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The Inconvenient Truth About Electric Vehicles

13 points by SirLJ 4y ago

travisporter 4y ago
Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast. I'm surprised, I assumed the author's residence of LA would be a great place to own an EV. Is it not profitable?
- trieste92 4y ago
  > Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast Really? You would expect the increase in air quality to be something everyone can get behind
  - sobkas 4y ago
    > > Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast > Really? You would expect the increase in air quality to be something everyone can get behind Rolling coal. Cut your nose to spite your face.
  - sacnoradhq 4y ago
    It's a lack of leadership and will to bring systematic infrastructure investment. The US is stagnating and slipping backwards in time on multiple fronts.
donatj 4y ago
https://archive.is/hKn7G https://archive.is/hKn7G
gopalv 4y ago
The EV revolution is about saving the car industry from climate change, not saving the planet, but every little thing adds up when it comes to these technologies. The charge and range anxiety problems are basically early-adopter problems, because it takes way more effort to run a gas station than a charger stop. Gas has a giant supply chain which needs to be kept moving to feed the cars (& predict usage/refills), while the electricity is just run a wire (sure, it's not that easy, but no humans need to carry it around in trucks) and use as much as you want. Hell, you don't even always have to run a wire to the place. At least one person said they saw an EV used off-grid in an Alaska cabin. And it had a Polaris EV all-terrain thingy and it was much easier to maintain than a gas vehicle, because there were hardly any consumables which needed to be shipped in or put into the vehicle periodically - no gas, no engine oil, no big radiator. On the plus side, for a hunter, it was also entirely quiet while idling. I think it's called the Ranger EV. Sure, it only charges slowly, which is the real cost of the range issue once there's charger in every Dennys and Waffle house out there. Time - the speed of charging when you are out there. I think PHEVs are much more likely than a pure BEV future while we work through the infrastructure, but as long as you can put 50+ usable miles into it every night off a 1KWH wall plug, that'll mostly never need gas. But it suffers from the maintenance problems, same as a regular car, though not transmission or gearboxes. I think the new Ariel EV has a jet turbine range extender on it which revs at some insane speed & much lighter without a gearbox.
sacnoradhq 4y ago
It's a failure of the US government to democratize change for all. There incentives early on, but those were mostly clawed back. The Norwegian subsidy approach made them cheaper to acquire and own than most other vehicles.

13 points by SirLJ 4y ago

Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast. I'm surprised, I assumed the author's residence of LA would be a great place to own an EV. Is it not profitable?

trieste92 4y ago
> Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast Really? You would expect the increase in air quality to be something everyone can get behind
- sobkas 4y ago
  > > Charging infrastructure at work and in apartment buildings are currently deplorable in the southeast > Really? You would expect the increase in air quality to be something everyone can get behind Rolling coal. Cut your nose to spite your face.
- sacnoradhq 4y ago
  It's a lack of leadership and will to bring systematic infrastructure investment. The US is stagnating and slipping backwards in time on multiple fronts.

donatj 4y ago

https://archive.is/hKn7G https://archive.is/hKn7G

gopalv 4y ago

The EV revolution is about saving the car industry from climate change, not saving the planet, but every little thing adds up when it comes to these technologies. The charge and range anxiety problems are basically early-adopter problems, because it takes way more effort to run a gas station than a charger stop. Gas has a giant supply chain which needs to be kept moving to feed the cars (& predict usage/refills), while the electricity is just run a wire (sure, it's not that easy, but no humans need to carry it around in trucks) and use as much as you want. Hell, you don't even always have to run a wire to the place. At least one person said they saw an EV used off-grid in an Alaska cabin. And it had a Polaris EV all-terrain thingy and it was much easier to maintain than a gas vehicle, because there were hardly any consumables which needed to be shipped in or put into the vehicle periodically - no gas, no engine oil, no big radiator. On the plus side, for a hunter, it was also entirely quiet while idling. I think it's called the Ranger EV. Sure, it only charges slowly, which is the real cost of the range issue once there's charger in every Dennys and Waffle house out there. Time - the speed of charging when you are out there. I think PHEVs are much more likely than a pure BEV future while we work through the infrastructure, but as long as you can put 50+ usable miles into it every night off a 1KWH wall plug, that'll mostly never need gas. But it suffers from the maintenance problems, same as a regular car, though not transmission or gearboxes. I think the new Ariel EV has a jet turbine range extender on it which revs at some insane speed & much lighter without a gearbox.

sacnoradhq 4y ago

It's a failure of the US government to democratize change for all. There incentives early on, but those were mostly clawed back. The Norwegian subsidy approach made them cheaper to acquire and own than most other vehicles.