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I’d really like having a small electric car I can drive around home but electric cars and infrastructure has a long way to go before I’m willing to give up my h

I’d really like having a small electric car I can drive around home but electric cars and infrastructure has a long way to go before I’m willing to give up my hybrid. A friend and I recently did a 2,000+ mile drive (round trip ~16 hours each). Stopping to charge would easily push the drive long enough we couldn’t safely do it, which means 4 days of travel instead of 2. If I wasn’t using a gas car, I’d never been able to do the trip. None of the available alternatives were feasible, given the amount of stuff we had with us.

radicalbyte 4y ago
The infrastructure where I am (The Netherlands) is great as long as you can charge at home. Germany is just backwards which is odd - they're a car country and EVs are faster and more efficient than ICE so it's surprising they've not already gone all-in.
- martin8412 4y ago
  And where I'm at I'd have to pull an extension cord from my electric stove out the window from the fifth floor to wherever within some 100m I found a free parking spot on the street.
namdnay 4y ago
Everything is feasible if there’s a real incentive. There’s an unrealistic expectation that somehow we must be able to keep the same level of “transport easiness” in the post carbon era. That just won’t be the case. We won’t be going back to pre-industrial levels, but we definitely will be going back a bit
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  In a post-carbon world, travel will be more expensive and I will not have the additional income necessary to travel as much as I do now. That’s quite the opposite of feasible. Incentive doesn’t magically make more resources available to me. Incentive and resources don’t magically remove a person’s physical limitations.
  - namdnay 4y ago
    Feasible as in “if it’s a major life event you will be able to manage it”
heresie-dabord 4y ago
> A friend and I recently did a 2,000+ mile drive That's about 4400 km. How often do you do such trips? And if you discount such trips, what is your typical weekly distance travelled by passenger car?
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Most of my long trips are about half that. Maybe six per year on average. Add two more of my company didn’t pay for a flight and rental car. Typical weekly distance? I work from home. So maybe 200 miles per week now. Pre-pandemic, 500 miles per week. Which is why I’d like an electric car as my primary vehicle. In total, I’ve averaged 12,000 miles per year over the last 9 years. One year was over 20,000. There is also the issue of comfort which people tend to forget. I have back issues and all chairs are not created equal. I can sit in my car for 20 hours. I can’t sit anywhere else that long.
  - heresie-dabord 4y ago
    Doing a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation (well, awk in a terminal), I guess you could probably save 1/4 to 1/8 of your annual petrol cost if you were driving an EV. If you currently drive a PHEV with a small 18 kWh battery, you are at least eliminating about half the vehicle's local emissions during the week. All told, if you do 6 long trips each year ( 6 * 4400 km ), a PHEV would make the most sense. Or, as I am sure you have considered, you could use a rental vehicle for your long annual trips. To really offset the cost of a large-battery EV, it makes a big difference to be able to charge at home (Level 2). A large-battery EV saves money especially if one has the possibility to charge at home. Motorway charging takes time and can be expensive.
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      I’ve done the math. :) The cost of buying a used EV greatly exceeds the cost of fuel and maintenance for the remaining life of my car. 12,000 miles/40mpg = 300 gallons * $4 = $1,200. I’d estimate maintenance and parts are $700/yr average. (Last year is bumping this significantly.) Let’s call total cost $2,000/yr, which is roughly $167 per month. I figure the car will run another 10 years. $20,000 is barely enough to start looking at used EVs. The cost of a rental vehicle for long-distance travel would be much higher than owning my current car.

radicalbyte 4y ago

The infrastructure where I am (The Netherlands) is great as long as you can charge at home. Germany is just backwards which is odd - they're a car country and EVs are faster and more efficient than ICE so it's surprising they've not already gone all-in.

martin8412 4y ago
And where I'm at I'd have to pull an extension cord from my electric stove out the window from the fifth floor to wherever within some 100m I found a free parking spot on the street.

namdnay 4y ago

Everything is feasible if there’s a real incentive. There’s an unrealistic expectation that somehow we must be able to keep the same level of “transport easiness” in the post carbon era. That just won’t be the case. We won’t be going back to pre-industrial levels, but we definitely will be going back a bit

kayodelycaon 4y ago
In a post-carbon world, travel will be more expensive and I will not have the additional income necessary to travel as much as I do now. That’s quite the opposite of feasible. Incentive doesn’t magically make more resources available to me. Incentive and resources don’t magically remove a person’s physical limitations.
- namdnay 4y ago
  Feasible as in “if it’s a major life event you will be able to manage it”

heresie-dabord 4y ago

> A friend and I recently did a 2,000+ mile drive That's about 4400 km. How often do you do such trips? And if you discount such trips, what is your typical weekly distance travelled by passenger car?

kayodelycaon 4y ago
Most of my long trips are about half that. Maybe six per year on average. Add two more of my company didn’t pay for a flight and rental car. Typical weekly distance? I work from home. So maybe 200 miles per week now. Pre-pandemic, 500 miles per week. Which is why I’d like an electric car as my primary vehicle. In total, I’ve averaged 12,000 miles per year over the last 9 years. One year was over 20,000. There is also the issue of comfort which people tend to forget. I have back issues and all chairs are not created equal. I can sit in my car for 20 hours. I can’t sit anywhere else that long.
- heresie-dabord 4y ago
  Doing a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation (well, awk in a terminal), I guess you could probably save 1/4 to 1/8 of your annual petrol cost if you were driving an EV. If you currently drive a PHEV with a small 18 kWh battery, you are at least eliminating about half the vehicle's local emissions during the week. All told, if you do 6 long trips each year ( 6 * 4400 km ), a PHEV would make the most sense. Or, as I am sure you have considered, you could use a rental vehicle for your long annual trips. To really offset the cost of a large-battery EV, it makes a big difference to be able to charge at home (Level 2). A large-battery EV saves money especially if one has the possibility to charge at home. Motorway charging takes time and can be expensive.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I’ve done the math. :) The cost of buying a used EV greatly exceeds the cost of fuel and maintenance for the remaining life of my car. 12,000 miles/40mpg = 300 gallons * $4 = $1,200. I’d estimate maintenance and parts are $700/yr average. (Last year is bumping this significantly.) Let’s call total cost $2,000/yr, which is roughly $167 per month. I figure the car will run another 10 years. $20,000 is barely enough to start looking at used EVs. The cost of a rental vehicle for long-distance travel would be much higher than owning my current car.