21 ms·
Some* people are buying EVs because they're "better". Other people, like me, have zero interest in most modern vehicles, whether EV or not. I have zero interest
by thegrim33 4y ago
Some* people are buying EVs because they're "better". Other people, like me, have zero interest in most modern vehicles, whether EV or not. I have zero interest in a vehicle that gets software updates, or that can choose for itself to slam the breaks on, or that has the ability to upload my data for collection, or that can be remotely disabled, or that isn't built to be maintained easily in my garage, or that has giant touchscreen nonsense. I realize I might be in the minority, but that's OK.
I feel that most modern vehicles are designed and built purely to make as much money as possible, rather than to actually a good, reliable, maintainable vehicle. And it works, because the average consume either doesn't care or is easily to manipulate.
If you want to convert more people to EVs, start building some that I'm remotely interested in. That and invest into solid state batteries, I'm mostly waiting for that too. Solid state batteries would solve most of the issues with EV tech.
- dboreham 4y agoMonthly subscription for heated seats enters the room..
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoI raise you "your car repossesses itself to the dealership when you miss a payment" a la Ford.
- brewdad 4y agoWhat if, after hearing about the heated seats subscription, Ford patented the self-repossession so that BMW could never implement such a terrible idea?
- CatWChainsaw 4y agoWhat if Ford patented the idea so they could profit at a later date, with the added benefit of depriving competition of a revenue stream?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jim-jim-jim 4y agoYeah, I'm not touching EVs until Mazda makes a dumb and cute one with physical buttons and dials.
- burkaman 4y agoMazda is kind of lagging, but there are relatively cheap EVs with physical buttons now. It's not all Tesla-style luxury stuff. Example: https://www.miniusa.com/model/electric-hardtop.html https://www.miniusa.com/model/electric-hardtop.html They all do seem to have some sort of screen though, sorry.
- fiddlerwoaroof 4y agoI think the screen is more or less mandatory because backup cameras are mandatory.
- JKCalhoun 4y agoAgree. I'll be sad if all we do is simply electrify our shitty 5-ton asphalt tanks. With the price of modern automobiles you would think the industry was absolutely ripe for disruption. If IKEA came out with an electric tuk-tuk for $4K I suspect the Big Three would lose their shit. Hey, but I'm a dreamer.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago> If IKEA came out with an electric tuk-tuk for $4K I suspect the Big Three would lose their shit Seems like they already exist (not from IKEA of course), but that sort of vehicle isn't allowed on the road in the US so I don't think the Big Three are too concerned. https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-electric-passenger-tuk-tuk.html?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20230328173116&SearchText=electric+passenger+tuk+tuk&spm=a2g0o.productlist.1000002.0 https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-electric-passenger-tu...
- hotpotamus 4y agoIn the US, a 3 wheeled vehicle can be sold as a motorcycle and then the regulations are quite lax (though I think helmet laws might kick in). Look at a Polaris Slingshot as an example.
- rootusrootus 4y agoAptera has been threatening to produce one for how long now? I don't think most people are actually interested in a three wheel officially-a-motorcycle-but-effectively-a-tiny-car.
- hotpotamus 4y agoI had a co-worker who actually put $1000 down on an Elio years ago, but as far as I know, they've never come close to making one. I'd be fine driving something like an Aptera, but I just looked and it's like $33K, so I'm not really seeing the savings. I'm also keenly aware that I'm not most people.
- calvinmorrison 4y agoLike I, Robot (2004) is supposed to be near-futuristic dystopian, and the one super memorable scene I think was - will smith is driving his car and then, well the Tesla Analog - US Robotics shuts him down and tries to kill him. The government already has enough room planting bombs in cars and cutting brakes, I don't think I need a corporate overlord to have their thumbs in that.
- lastofthemojito 4y agoThe way the EV market has been going so far has reminded me of the NoSQL hype of the early 2000s. It suddenly became important to have "web-scale" datastores and a lot of new hotness didn't use SQL, so folks started associating NoSQL with scalability, regardless of whether some SQL databases could scale, or some non-SQL databases couldn't. Fast-forward to the present day where I've recently overheard someone say they "want an electric car so it can drive itself". Tesla has made self-driving (for some definition of self-driving") and over-the-air updates and giant tablet entertainment screens synonymous with EVs, to the point where it seems like every major manufacturer is including those features on every new EV they launch. I'd also like to see essentially an anti-Tesla EV - a simple, good car that happens to be electric, without it being a "smartphone on wheels". Make the entertainment system a double-DIN stereo and I'll know I've found the right car :)
- peter422 4y agoA number of existing EVs or plug-in hybrids would easily meet your needs. Toyota RAV4 prime for instance. Tesla is far and away more of a smartphone on wheels than any other car.
- AprilArcus 4y agoI like to describe it as an iPad strapped to four cordless drills.
- smilekzs 4y agoThat'd be a Rivian; Tesla has two /s
- gruez 4y ago>Fast-forward to the present day where I've recently overheard someone say they "want an electric car so it can drive itself". Tesla has made self-driving (for some definition of self-driving") and over-the-air updates and giant tablet entertainment screens synonymous with EVs There are even people in this very comment section that think that way ;)
- _ea1k 4y agoTBH, the maintainability probably isn't as bad as you've imagined. Short of full battery replacements, there isn't much on a Tesla 3 or Y that is significantly harder than other cars. And the factory service manual is available for free. Aside from HV parts, most parts are directly orderable from the service center as well.
- rootusrootus 4y agoBattery replacements shouldn't be hard. A lot less work than an engine, for sure. I had the battery replaced in my Bolt a couple months ago and it was about 6 hours from when I dropped it off to when I picked it up. I think the actual job is like 3 hours or something.
- koolba 4y agoA couple hours doesn’t seem u reasonable if the batteries are under the frame. Which you’d expect from a weight distribution angle.
- p1necone 4y ago"HV parts" I assume HV == High Voltage, if that's the case isn't that basically all the important stuff. I.e. the bits that do the actual automobile things.
- myself248 4y agoYes and no. The powertrain is big and expensive, but it's a fairly small fraction of the car's complexity. (And some parts of the cabin climate system are probably also high-voltage for power and packaging reasons, but that doesn't change the discussion here.) But everything else, the instruments, the infotainment and telematics, the ADAS, the windows and wipers and headlights, seats and airbags and lock solenoids, the list goes on... That represents a lot of complexity and cost, a lot of moving parts, and it's all still 12-volt. Partly for legacy reasons, partly for safety. (There was a push 20 years ago to go 42 or 48 volts to make the wire thinner while still being LV/SELV safety, but legacy held it back.) Plus all the undercar stuff, wheels and bearings and control arms and bushings, half-shafts and CV joints and boots and swaybars, wheels and tires and stuff, that just never changes, and since EVs tend to be heavier, they tend to be harder on all that stuff than their ICE counterparts. So there's plenty of stuff you can service with good old mechanic skills and tools, and plenty of it needs servicing.
- rootusrootus 4y agoEveryone says things like this thinking "Tesla" in their head, while in the real world there are all sorts of EVs that are just cars that happen to be electric.
- CyanLite4 4y agoTesla is just a generation ahead of other EVs. They’re an Apple iPhone and everybody else is the cheap knockoff Android phones from 2011.
- amatecha 4y agoYeah, I just drove a brand-new (16km on the odometer) Peugeot 308 for a trip in France. It was a complete piece of shit that I spent the entire trip yelling at. Always-online via 4G cellular (prompting for a system update on every shutdown and prompting me to go through their tutorial on every startup), glossy touch screens (zero analogue/physical gauges of any sort), constantly forcibly steering me back if I go near the painted line (such as when I'm trying to make extra space as I go around a driver who can't seem to stay in their own lane) which I was not able to turn off, beeping incessantly every single time I park because I am vaguely close to a curb or a random plant or small object (another thing I couldn't turn off), all controls on said touch screen with a horribly-designed UI... Oh the fuel gauge stopped working the night I was taking the car back to the rental company, gotta love that. They charged me for refilling 1/4 of the tank even though I completely refilled it - the gauge is simply faulty. I'm sure the charge will be reversed once we're done dealing with that, but you don't expect something as fundamental as the fuel level gauge to fail within ~4000km of driving. The steering wheel isn't even round, and of course because it's all "drive-by-wire" software-driven it literally feels like driving one of those arcade racing simulators, including the pedals. I don't know if new US/JP vehicles are like this but driving Peugeot and Renault rentals in EU has taught me that new cars appear to be total trash. I still can't believe people pay some tens of thousands of dollars for such atrocious computers on wheels.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y agoEuropean regulations require mandatory car tracking. You will be tracked regardless of what the UI looks like in your car. https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/statistics-and-analysis/statistics-and-analysis-archive/esafety/intelligent-speed-adaptation-isa_en https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/statistics-and-an...
- XorNot 4y agoThat is not what your link says. There is no mention of any type of live data tracking, just the deployment of black box loggers (which need not be online) for vehicle data to be used in the event of a crash.
- themitigating 4y agoCars barely made it to 100k miles decades ago. They didn't even have 6 whole digits on the odometer and rolling over was an event
- masklinn 4y agoHow many decades? Because mid-range and up euros routinely did that multiple times over in the 80s. So you’re either thinking 50+, or you’re thinking reliability issues on early direct injection.
- jjav 4y ago> Cars barely made it to 100k miles decades ago. They didn't even have 6 whole digits on the odometer and rolling over was an event That would be a lot of decades ago. Cars from the 80s routinely went well over 100k. The 70s cars I remember as more cantankerous but if taken good care of (which was simple because the cars were simple) they would as well. Ironically, a hundred years from now I predict that the only working museum/collector cars left will be those from the 1990s and earlier. Newer cars will not survive as long, with all the fragile electronics that require maintenance with factory equipment that will no longer exist in a century.
- themitigating 4y ago>" The 70s cars I remember as more cantankerous but if taken good care of (which was simple because the cars were simple) they would as well." What's more complicated about taking care of a car today? In fact it's easier as the number of maintenance items has gone down Cars still have oil, oil filters, transmission fluid, air filters, maybe differential fluid, and spark plugs Car NO LONGER have distributor caps, spark plug wires, power steering fluid[3], and timing belts. Finally you don't need to adjust the timing, the throttle cable tension, for FWD cars [8] you eliminate the need to change differential fluid, and you don't need to "lube" anything. ------------------------------------------------ > Cars from the 80s routinely went well over 100k That heavily depends on the brand. American cars were piles of garbage in my opinion and I'm sure I could find some source to support that. You are right about Japanese cars and that was a new phenomenon at the time. Here's a NY times article about how cars are now (in 2012) lasting more than 200k miles. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-k... My friend had a 91 Civic that lasted for about 250k but I had multiple GM cars (86 lesabre, 91 corsica, 88 6000) where either the transmission went or bent valves (exceeding the cost of the car at the time in the late 90s when I owned them) without even getting to 120k.[6] Anecdotal but again Honda and Toyota were so popular the US government made Japan limit the number of cars coming in.[3] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-01-28-fi-1076-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-01-28-fi-1076-s... ------------------------------------------------ Newer cars are less complex in key areas. I quickly mentioned this in the first section but there's more: - Spark plug wires are gone. Since they carried high voltage from the distributor cap they needed thick insulation and that insulation would crack due to heat cycling. once small cracks appear it would arc to the engine or other wires because of the high voltage. Now we have ignition coils which aren't considered a maintenance item (they last at least 100k but really more depending on use) - No more distribution caps (due to ignition coils). Caps were a maintenance item - No more power steering fluid, and power steering pump because of EPS racks. This also eliminates the hydraulic lines - Throttle by wire which eliminates the throttle cable that would get stretched out and sometimes break. This also allows for cruise control without the use of vacuum lines [9] - In the past cars have timing belts, timing belts can break and if your engine was an interfere engine the valves will contact the piston causing a massive repair bill. Today almost every car has a timing chain which lasts significantly longer to the point where it's not a maintenance item.[1] Starting the 80s we got OBD 1 then later 2 which provides sensor data. This allowed you to see the real symptom of the car instead of the apparent one. For example, car has a rough ideal but really it's running lean. Besides the massive performance and efficiency increase because the ignition timing can be based on the exhaust contents , temp, air flow levels, etc it also makes it easier to fix things by providing data on how the engine was operating. Today cars have even more computer diagnostic systems to help repair them. ------------------------------------------------ Finally let's get to the electronics you are concerned about. Cars now have more control modules, (which are mini computers for systems, like the door controls) then in the past. There's door modules[2], ambient lighting module, cruise control, etc. The point is you don't repair these modules you just replace them. You aren't soldering little resistors onto a board or something. It's no different than replacing a steering wheel. It's just a thing. [5] Many of these modules are for optional luxury items. If 20 years from now the ambient lighting and module doesn't work in my car who cares. If lane assist, blind spot detection, or the rear camera breaks then the car is just like the older cars you think are better. I'm sorry to make this accusation but you are probably letting nostalgia, the current climate of simmering anger at the world, and the desire for things you grew up with and are comfortable with to form your opinions. I want to put a millennial into a muscle car from the 60s and they'll see the over boosted power steering, the giant v8 that was overrated in power and get 10mpg, a body that leans in every corner, tires that can't grip, and a chassis that feels like a rubber band when you turn. A modern 4 cylinder turbo hot hatch would destroy them and outlast them. ------------------------------------------------ [1] Some older cars had timing belts and non-interference engines. This means that if the belt broke the piston wouldn't contact the valves and the only repair you'd have to pay for is the timing belt and towing. Still annoying but better. Timing chains make more noise and because of their weight create more drag on the engine but with engine covers and the power today it doesn't matter [2] In the past cars didn't have as many modules even for things like like power locks. Power locks used to just have control wires and power running directly to other parts of the car where relays might turn them on and off. The advantage of having a module is computer control. For example the following features are present on many new cars: - lock the car when you start driving - unlock in park - windows up when rain is detected - auto down and up windows (all the way). - car can't go into drive when the door is open - specific door warnings (though old cars had a general one) Doing all this by running wires around to other devices is insane so there's a module the window switches, lock switches, door sensor, door locks, window motor, and etc all connect to which then receives control info from other modules [3] A few performance cars and maybe some older models of mass produced cars still use hydraulic steering. [4] Mostly due to "perceptions" of American quality, small cars becoming popular, and the horrific engines in American cars in the late 70s and 80s as American manf had little experience with small engines that people wanted because of the gas crisis. There's also an emissions issue. American quality has somewhat equalized after the late 90s IMO [5] Modules do need to be programmed with the config for your particular car. Buying one for your model and in your country usually means it's fine. There are also programmers that aren't expensive and dealers will often do it for a fee. [6] My experience with American cars was everything breaking besides the engine, then that going. - Headliner would fall off and rub on your head - The door that controlled recirculation of air would break because it's a cable connected to the knob on the hvac controls - Plastic trim pieces came off or rattled - Door locks would stop working or require two key turns or if I had a fob two button presses - Rough idle and erratic idle - AC definitely didn't work past 60k, probably R12 leaks Rather have a cool new electronic feature break today than no AC [8] Most popular style drive config is to have the engine in the front and front wheel drive. The diff is built into the transmission in this situation (called a transaxle) If your car is AWD or RWD with the engine in the rear you need to replace the differential fluid every so often. Larger SUVs are AWD, some sedans, many pickup trucks. There are a few performance FWD cars that have a limited slip differential that requires a fluid change, super rare though (Elantra N, Golf GTI maybe R, Veloster?) [9] Vacuum lines were how cool features pre 2000s worked in cars, like cruise control. Problem is the lines got cracked and a slow vacuum loss was difficult to diagnose and often caused unusual issues. I've been in so many older cars where cruise control just wasn't working.
- irjustin 4y agoI think the criticism is fair - charging takes time. I'll speak personally from my parents who are pushing 70. They purchased a Tesla because of the EV credits and overall price attractiveness. My dad tells his friends about it because the driving experience is so much better. He presses the "gas" and it's instant and the handling is very good. He likes to say never goes to the gas station anymore. I think it's easily arguable that you could get a lot of the same benefits of drivability and handling in say a BMW or Audi. The last one is a paradigm shift. The way you've done things is now different, better (in that life is a bit easier). It's not yet a massive one, so I agree the numbers who are switching will be slow, but steadily it'll get there.
- brightball 4y agoGraphene Aluminum batteries solve the problems better than solid state at a lighter weight.
- jabl 4y agoThere are some very promising alternative battery chemistries out there, graphene-aluminium being one of them. Sodium is another that is perhaps closer to commercialization (there's some chinese EV already that has them).
- CyanLite4 4y agoRecent article (forgot the link, but I’m sure it’s on google) basically said BMW, VW, and many others are abandoning solid state batteries because of its negligible performance compared to LiFePo4 and regular NMC batteries that are easier to produce and are slowly improving their density and stability.
- worik 4y agoI am getting an electric car, a cheap one. It is one of the best cars I have ever driven. I like driving. I think the very heavy battery helps. That said, modern electric cars are given away for free (the one I'm getting is). The only thing you pay for is the battery. I found this out by pricing replacement batteries.... The whole model of car making is going to collapse if batteries become cheaper, but for now: By a battery and get a car thrown in.....
- theshrike79 4y agoThe used EV battery industry hasn't even started yet. Even the very first Nissan Leafs and Tesla Model S's are still running on their original batteries, way longer than the manufacturers expected. When we start actually getting used EV batteries on the market in masses there will be multiple industries repurposing them and thus giving "expired" EV batteries resale value. A 50kWh battery that's "unusable" for EV use (let's say 30% degraded) is still a 35kWh battery - which is insanely big for storing solar power in a home. Or it can be split to multiple sections and 3 RVs can get a 10kWh battery that they can charge at any EV charger or even at a campsite.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoDitto. At one point, car makers realized that if their cars lasted too long, they would not be able to sell more of them when most people had one. Modern cars have various unreliable and anti-maintenance features to make sure you are going to buy the next one in 10 years time. All these tracking is also a profit source since the data is sold.
- reducesuffering 4y agoThat’s hyperbolic. Toyota is still selling the same quality cars (if not better) than their 2004 - 2009 Prius I’ve seen go 550k and similar miles repeatedly.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qdog 4y agoThere are a lot of custom EV conversions if you really want to control everything, probably no modern new vehicle is going to meet what you describe. You can already buy lifepo4 cells, I've thought about making a boat, but time and money etc. But this is about the masses, the Toyota Camry sells well, and I'm sure those same people will eat up the Toyota Camry EV when it comes out.
- theshrike79 4y agoFuture cars will be moved forward by electric engines. That's not even debatable. The power, reliability and efficiency are in a whole different bracket than in ICEs. What IS up for debate is how the power for those engines is stored in the car. Currently we're going with batteries or liquid combustion fuels (PHEV and serial hybrids). Yes, there are very specific use-cases and industries where EVs don't work today, but the tech is developing insanely fast.
- fasterik 4y ago>or that can choose for itself to slam the breaks on Given the possibility that this feature could save your life or another driver/pedestrian's life, I don't see a strong objection to this. Driving is one of the deadliest activities that we tolerate as a society and the more we can do to reduce the risk the better. I agree with everything else though, I don't want an iPhone on wheels.
- bradknowles 4y agoUntil there is a weird reflection on the road and you get rear-ended to death by the Ford 750 tailgating you at 125mph in the right-most lane.
- fasterik 4y agoIt's an empirical question what the ratio of false positives to true positives is. If the ratio is 1 to 10000, for example, I think that's tolerable and a net positive. You also have to account for humans making similar mistakes.
- bradknowles 4y agoBut humans aren't always logical. Especially when it comes to low probability events that have a high impact if they do occur. Like plane crashes, or to a lesser degree car crashes.
- fasterik 4y agoYeah but in this case, the impact is the same whether you die from human error or automation error. I would rather reduce the overall probability of death by 50% even if probability death by malfunctioning equipment goes up by 1%.
- kragen 4y agoit can also end your life or another driver's or pedestrian's life; slamming the brakes on is how a tesla model s caused an 8-car pileup on the bay bridge a couple of months ago, though astoundingly that somehow failed to kill anybody https://jalopnik.com/tesla-fsd-causes-8-car-pile-up-on-sf-bay-bridge-1849970615 https://jalopnik.com/tesla-fsd-causes-8-car-pile-up-on-sf-ba... generally speaking individual people are better at choosing risk tradeoffs than governments are, both because they know more about their own situations and because their incentives are better aligned this is why liberal societies are not only much wealthier but also have much higher life expectancy than authoritarian societies. but governments aren't uniquely corrupt; they're just organizations with great unaccountable power, a somewhat more extreme version of any large corporation. we shouldn't entrust ford or tesla with the ability to kill with impunity any more than we should entrust the fbi with it, or for that matter pinkerton or peabody or pullman or the teamsters so you should be able to freely choose which slamming-on-the-brakes software to run on your own car, or to run none at all
- nindalf 4y ago> If you want to convert more people to <product>, start building some that I'm remotely interested in. This is such a peak HN comment. The best part is that the author admits they’re a tiny minority. If they are a minority, isn’t it rational to ignore them and make something the majority wants? Top HN comments will tell you all kinds of wild things about what HN commenters think are essential to succeed. For example, client software should never be written in electron and never contain telemetry if it wants to succeed. Most successful text editor used by 75% of all developers? That’s VS Code, written in electron and chock full of privacy busting telemetry. I’m reminded of the top comment on the original thread revealing Dropbox, asking “why would I want this when I can simply use ssh + curlftpfs + git”. I’m sure many HN users are capable of doing that, and yet Dropbox found more than a few takers in the real world. At this point I honestly believe that the top HN comment talking about a product is useful to read because it’s going to be the opposite of correct in every way. This thread is filled with “EVs don’t work because they don’t cater to my outlier use case today”. Firstly, you’re an outlier. EVs do well for the majority whose commute is less than 300 miles. Secondly, they don’t need to cater to outliers today, they can gradually fill niches as they become more mainstream.
- throw_a_grenade 4y ago> The best part is that the author admits they’re a tiny minority. If they are a minority, isn’t it rational to ignore them and make something the majority wants? I didn't see any data either way, so it remains to be seen if s/he is really in minority. Even sales number might be bogus for approx. the same reasons why A/B might be bogus. “Most consumers buy EVs with touchscreens, therefore they want touchscreens”. No, they don't, given choice they would choose differently. The big problem, which GP pointed correctly, is lack of decent choice, and it follows TFA. > This thread is filled with “EVs don’t work because they don’t cater to my outlier use case today”. Firstly, you’re an outlier. EVs do well for the majority whose commute is less than 300 miles. Secondly, they don’t need to cater to outliers today, they can gradually fill niches as they become more mainstream. They either need to fill the niches by 2035, or “EV transformation” will be a failure for a significant chunk of population, who will feel let down by whoever decreed that they need to change without providing viable alternative (solving existing problems within their purchasing power). Currently it doesn't take much to fall outside scope of the market: for example it's enough that you have 3 kids aged 4, 2, 0 and carrier fitting drastically reduces your choice (or bumps the price beyond reachabilty). EV won't happen if you can't be a low to mid income 5-people family, for whom lack of car means significant degradation of living standard.
- ano88888 4y agoYou made a very good point. We should have EVs without any of the other non-sense
- mrjin 4y agoBattery is not even half of the problem of EV. How to charge them in minutes is the biggest problem, and no viable solution anytime soon.
- nnnnc 4y agoCompletely agree with this. Additionally, the risk exposure of owning an EV is pretty bad. The initial cost is extremely high, the immediate depreciation is high, fluctuating energy costs impact TCO, fast chargers are effectively more expensive than petrol here limiting long range economy, longevity data is fairly limited, there are serious difficulties getting them repaired and the complexity results in reliability issues. At this point I don't know anyone who's bought an EV who didn't eventually replace it with another vehicle, apart from one guy who has a Model S as a drive ornament and never uses it. Seems like a poor investment. I'll stick with my 2014 Citroen which I can replace entirely for the first 20 nanoseconds of depreciation if I buy an EV. And the 5 year fuel cost is paid for by the second 20 nanoseconds of depreciation :)
- shever73 4y ago>Additionally, the risk exposure of owning an EV is pretty bad. I'm not sure where you're getting that data from, maybe it's different where you live. > The initial cost is extremely high, the immediate depreciation is high I dispute that the initial cost "extremely high". Higher, yes, but those prices are coming down. The depreciation here in Ireland is a lot less than a traditional ICE car. My 3 year-old Mini Electric had lost a lot less, percentage-wise, than the comparative ICE model when I traded it in recently. My service costs for those 3 years were zero. > fast chargers are effectively more expensive than petrol here limiting long range economy The key word in that is probably "here". In Ireland, I can do 300 miles per €25 of fast charge. My previous diesel car would have cost €50 for the equivalent distance.
- peterfarkas 4y agoHave you had the opportunity to charge your EV at home? I think in most countries, charging your EV at home is the only way to make EV cheaper to drive than ICE.
- shever73 4y agoI live in an apartment building with chargers in the underground carpark, so that's where I usually charge. It's cheaper than public chargers, but not quite as cheap as a home one. Having said that, fast charging is still cheaper than running an ICE, as I mentioned in the parent comment.
- FooBarWidget 4y ago"Some"? Try "most". I've never seen anybody outside HN and environmental communities who think of EVs in the context of saving the environment. Indeed, everybody I know use their EVs in very environmentally-unfriendly ways such as using fast charging often.
- rfwhyte 4y agoI too would love a vehicle that is both energy efficient and not designed solely as a way to extract as much money from me as possible, but sadly the corporatists who run our world have decided that we can't have such things as it would mean some very rich people would get richer less fast, which is the one thing that's truly not allowed in any circumstances the world today. Car companies know full well there's a huge market of people just like us that want exactly the vehicle you're describing, but it would make them less money than the subscriptions on wheels garbage they're forcing on us now, so get ready for a future where every car is over $100K and costs $10K a year in subscriptions.