7 ms·

Here we have motors that don’t require rare earth metals. The largest battery maker CATL is making breakthrough leaps in LFP batteries (which have no cobalt).

Here we have motors that don’t require rare earth metals. The largest battery maker CATL is making breakthrough leaps in LFP batteries (which have no cobalt). [1] Recycling large EV batteries is becoming cheaper and easier. [2] Are the EV FUDsters heads exploding yet? [1] https://www.catl.com/en/news/6091.html https://www.catl.com/en/news/6091.html [2] https://youtu.be/s2xrarUWVRQ?si=hBfD1lLd4dxEJI6b https://youtu.be/s2xrarUWVRQ?si=hBfD1lLd4dxEJI6b

vbezhenar 3y ago
I'm not EV fudster, but for me gasoline cars are better in every aspect. May be except maintenance (I'm not sure, but I expect that I don't have to change oil every year in an electric car). I don't have money to buy two cars, so I need one versatile enough car. I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range. I can charge it within 5 minutes, not 5 hours. It does not get worse with every year, because there's no degrading battery which costs like half a car. Probably the only thing that's better about EV is that electricity is the same everywhere, I can't charge it with bad electricity mixed with water in the old station, LoL. Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul.
- mlyle 3y ago
  > I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range This is the big advantage. > not 5 hours This one is mixed. You can charge the EV at home for ordinary use. That's better. For road trips, you can use DC fast charging to add a bunch of range in 30 minutes. This is worse, requiring combining charging and meal stops. PHEVs are a decent compromise, though: you can do basically all of your driving electrically, and then burn a little bit of gas on road trips. > It does not get worse with every year Sure gasoline vehicles become more maintenance heavy and terrible over time. EV degradation is probably around 10-15% range lost after 5 years typical today. > May be except maintenance Odds are you don't deal with brake pads anymore, and yes, no oil changes. The sheer torque of most models feels like a spaceship when you press down the gas pedal.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    18 minutes to 80% charge in the 800v cars. Furthermore: for all the whining people do about "sitting around waiting for it to charge", those people conveniently leave out all the time they spend driving to/from and waiting at a gas station...whereas many EV owners just get home and take about 30 seconds to plug in. So, for the tradeoff of having to wait ~20 minutes instead of 5 to fuel up on a long trip, you get to not spend ~5 minutes every week or two driving to a gas station and filling up. Most Americans don't even drive enough per day to make it necessary to have level 2 in-home charging.
    - jamiek88 3y ago
      And it works well too. My Kia ev6 goes from 20 to 80 percent in 18mins. Leaving home on full charge gets me around 280 miles on freeway (Circa 310 just pootling round town ev’s are opposite to ice like that). It’s better to drive at normal 75mph ish freeway speed and just fast charge rather than worrying about range and ‘hyper miling’. The 800v system is great real world. We are on west coast and charging infra is decent though even non Tesla.
  - hwillis 3y ago
    >> I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range > This is the big advantage. No, absolutely not. Who brings 160 lbs of gasoline with them anywhere? That's twice as much as an average cars gas tank. How many people do you know that have ever brought any gas on any trip ever? The "advantage" of being able to drive 12+ hours without taking a couple hours to charge is absolutely ridiculous. It's not something people do or should do. The only reasonable circumstance is if you're on a camping trip or something, and somehow driving hundreds of miles without passing a source of electricity- in which case yes, use a gas/ethanol car. In my honest opinion, it's a ridiculous demand that you should be able to drive 800 km without taking more than 5 minutes to stop. It's minimum 6 hours of driving, and like 30-40 minutes of charging. It's petulant to complain about that like it's a real issue. The real advantage is cost. It costs a lot of money to get a large battery that can charge quickly, when a $20k Civic can do it. Smaller the EV, the slower the charge, and the more inconvenient it is.
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  The SSL cert on your website is probably expired (cloudflare is warning about it). I suggest you just use letsencrypt and auto renew with certbot, or whatever they use these days.
  - vbezhenar 3y ago
    Thanks, that's weird because my website is basically github pages. I think I got it fixed, not in the very best way, but it kind of works.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  > Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. The idea of a transportation machine having a "soul" is ridiculous.
  - thsksbd 3y ago
    Some folks are excellent drivers. I find the ability to understand the concept of a car's "soul" to a very reliable way to separate them out. Why? Because "soul" doesn't mean the immortal soul endowed by our Creator. It refers to the feel and responsiveness of a car. The car's personality, if you will. It refers to every unique behavioral trait that the car has acquired through its design and life been driven. On my old truck the clutch would feel different after my wife drove it. It took a few miles to get the feel back. It drove better with a couple hundred lb on the bed. On my '13 golf I can feel a slight "give" on the steering from wear. I can feel the car and drive it through a corner with the wheels slightly squealing [1]. Thats the edge grip. On the KIA I can feel the difference in the engine and transmission (especially) behavior before and after the oil has warmed up. On the Golf, the shifter is "lazy" until she warms up. Within 10 miles of getting a new set of tires I know if I hate them or love them. I get a feel for their limits. I hate renting cars. Despite the low millage, they feel worn and lose. I also feel like a fish out of the water in a car that is not mine. As you add mechanical/electrical complexity these various feedbacks from the car are washed away. Professional drivers hate these aids. This is widely known in the aviation industry and many planes add artificial feel to give pilots feedback on the fly-by-wire systems. So ya, a good driver feels as if his car has a "soul" just like a good pilot can feel his plane's "soul". There's no immortal soul in a car, no consciousness, but there is a whole lotta love. [1] obviously on track days
    - svnt 3y ago
      It sounds like your assessment of the complexity of a vehicle is specifically tuned to mechanical features of cheap gasoline cars. I would suggest it might be more accurate to describe this as personality instead of soul. Unsurprisingly electric vehicles, which do not have clutches or transmissions at all, or temperamental engines with inconsistent power curves, will exhibit little signal in the areas you have tuned yourself to perceive. This does not indicate anything about them in a universal way. Your response indicates that you are perhaps incurious about the nuances of driving an EV. Since it sounds like you have invested a lot in sensing personality specifics of gasoline vehicles, this makes sense. Perhaps early EV attempts were muted in their expression of activity personality. Entry level Teslas certainly are not fun to drive in the same way as an old Golf. Have you tried the Ioniq 5?
- hwillis 3y ago
  > I'm not sure, but I expect that I don't have to change oil every year in an electric car The only critical replacement is brake calipers and fluids: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_eu/GUID-E95DAAD9-646E-4249-9930-B109ED7B1D91.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_eu/GUID-E95DAAD... Brakes tend to last much longer because the car uses the motor to brake. Some Tesla motors are oil-cooled, some are just air cooled and the reducer just uses grease[1] instead of oil. There are no piston rings, no blow-by, no sliding friction, no wear items, the temperature stays below 100 C, the pressure is always ambient, and the case is completely watertight. The oil/grease can last practically forever. > I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range. Driving 12 hours at a time is unsafe and you should not do it. If you are regularly driving 1500 km into wasteland, an electric car is not for you. If you only do it a few times a year, I recommend renting. > I can charge it within 5 minutes, not 5 hours. Have you not heard? They can charge 200 miles in 15 minutes. > It does not get worse with every year It's a car. They absolutely get worse every year. Driving at high speed over bad roads takes a toll and all cars fall apart over time. > Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. Did televisions, before flatscreens replaced them? I don't think so. I think it was just the nostalgia for a time when it was new and important. But a car now is a conveyance. 99.99% cars have as much soul as an elevator- another thing that used to be special and personal. If you want soul in the thing you drive to work, you always had to buy something special. You did not find it in a Honda Civic. If you want that, buy a motorcycle, or an E100 car. Those things will still exist even if EVs completely replace gasoline, because they just aren't the same thing. You are not afraid of electric cars replacing racecars, or grand tours through the mountains or deserts or forest. You are sad about electric cars replacing 8 lanes of LA traffic, of I-98 being quiet, of less children with asthma. That's a silly thing to be sad about. The soul of driving is not going anywhere. [1]: Because I NEVER tire of saying it: grease is amazing. It seems inefficient because it's thick like peanut butter, but it's the best. It's shear-thinning, so that as soon as it starts moving, it spreads into an incredibly thin low-viscosity layer that's just as frictionless as oil. Unlike oil, it never drips off, never needs pressure, always covers the surface. Contamination works itself out automatically (unlike in oil, where it's recirculated). It's chemically and thermally stable. Grease is the BEST.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  If you carry 100L of petrol around in your car you must admit you are a very niche segment. I've driven in dozens of countries, sometimes very far from fuel stops, but I've never once had the need to carry any additional fuel inside my vehicle. I think the furthest I can ever remember being from a petrol station is about 120 miles.
- screwturner68 3y ago
  I live in a large city, I drive a small car and I only drive about 3000 miles per year. Right now gas is ~$5.35/g at the station down the street and it's ~0.18/KW. It takes 114KW to "fill" a Tesla S, so ~$20.50. The range on a Tesla S is 405 miles, so ~19.75 miles /dollar. My VW gets ~30MPG or ~5.6 miles/dollar. The numbers make sense as does the range, I don't know many people who drive over 400 miles per day ever. The issue as I see it is quality and price, Tesla is sub-Kia quality at BMW prices. Honestly I think a lot of people are just looking for an excuse not to move to an EV, just like they did with going to unleaded gas or using LED bulbs. Everything is going electric and people that can't see that are just willfully blind -the Saudis knew this years ago, I'm not sure why so many people think it's a surprise. As far as soul, what is stopping auto makers from making cool looking cars, honestly I don't know. One of the things I thought was cool about the Tesla 1 was that it was a good looking convertible and not something that looked like a rolling doorstop (Prius). Maybe EV will usher in a new generation of car makers that will make good looking cars again, we can hope.
  - nullc 3y ago
    > Tesla is sub-Kia quality at BMW prices. Indeed. Plus locked down maintenance (using DRM to prevent you from fixing your own car), and constant invasive spying (including video from the cars cameras https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens... ). > not something that looked like a rolling doorstop (Prius) Cars are shaped the way they are today for aerodynamic reasons. > I live in a large city, I drive a small car and I only drive about 3000 miles per year. Hopefully you can see that what works for you doesn't work for everyone. Living in a city and only driving 3000 miles a year... Have you considered not owning a car at all? :) Given your figures, at 3000 miles per year it would take 108 years for the improved fuel economy of the Tesla S to pay for its added cost over a Kia with comparable build quality. This is part of the reason you don't see the improved $/mile being so heavily advocated for EV's especially high end ones: The improvement isn't enough to pay for the added cost, unless you're a very heavy user and heavy users have more range, recharging locations, and recharging time concerns.
  - nomel 3y ago
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Those are all pretty tired arguments, and already debunked thoroughly. I spend a lot less time refueling my EV than I ever did on my ICEVs. And it doesn't take me any longer for a road trip stop than it did before, I always took 15-20 minutes to take a leak and stretch. Almost nobody does a 5 minute in-and-out on a road trip. You might, but you also carry 100L of gasoline with you, which is very uncommon. And as someone who's owned vehicles with gas tanks in the passenger compartment, I strongly recommend against it. > Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. Now you're being honest. You don't like them because they're too quiet. That is a valid opinion. > I'm not EV fudster Yes you are ;-).
davewritescode 3y ago
There’s no doubt in my mind that EVs are the future, it’s just hard to fault people who don’t want to pay more for an objectively worse overall product. For the record, I think within the next 10 years that will change but I don’t think 5 ton EV trucks are the answer.
- starkparker 3y ago
  I mean, the first combustion-engine cars had the same market reaction. A recollection of the late 19th century and early 20th, from 1930: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ... The whole story has salient parallels — parts suppliers were either reticent or inexperienced, fuel was cheap but not widely available, motors were slow, investors put money in before the market was there, founders lamenting the state of the modern laborer, early adopters stuck needing parts for vehicles orphaned by suddenly defunct manufacturers, and the guy getting all the money and attention is a wealthy idiot making self-crashing death traps who relies on free advice from his witless fans to avoid failure and profit. There's even a cameo from early EV manufacturer Electric Vehicle Company in 1899. Tangentially, this is evocative: > In the uncertainty of what the public would want, a great many strange contraptions were put together. Joseph Barsaleaux, a blacksmith of Sandy Hill, New York, built a motor horse. In his device, the horse moved on a single wheel about two feet in diameter, with the wheel attached to the shafts just as was a live horse. Reins attached to the mouth of the horse served as a steering gear, because the machinery was inside the horse and had to be regulated some way. The contraption weighed about 550 pounds, had a cruising speed of six miles an hour, and attracted some serious attention. EV makers should probably stop trying to make mechanical horses — EV motors and cars that aren't competitive with ICE equivalents — and find a form factor that better suits both the market and the current state of the technology. Class 2 ebikes and small carts feel closer to that answer on short runs, but the long-haul equivalents are still missing. Hell, Winton in this story is a bicycle manufacturer who makes his first horseless carriage from bicycles.
  - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
    That doesn't disagree with what he's saying though; it's still in a transition phase. Range loss issues from cold weather and/or towing are still a concern, inability to charge at home is a concern, large upfront costs are still a concern, the weirdness of fast charging stations is still a concern. They're solvable issues and in time will be, but they're issues lot of people don't want to deal with while things are still in flux and don't see enough value in paying the cost of being an early adopter.

vbezhenar 3y ago

I'm not EV fudster, but for me gasoline cars are better in every aspect. May be except maintenance (I'm not sure, but I expect that I don't have to change oil every year in an electric car). I don't have money to buy two cars, so I need one versatile enough car. I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range. I can charge it within 5 minutes, not 5 hours. It does not get worse with every year, because there's no degrading battery which costs like half a car. Probably the only thing that's better about EV is that electricity is the same everywhere, I can't charge it with bad electricity mixed with water in the old station, LoL. Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul.

mlyle 3y ago
> I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range This is the big advantage. > not 5 hours This one is mixed. You can charge the EV at home for ordinary use. That's better. For road trips, you can use DC fast charging to add a bunch of range in 30 minutes. This is worse, requiring combining charging and meal stops. PHEVs are a decent compromise, though: you can do basically all of your driving electrically, and then burn a little bit of gas on road trips. > It does not get worse with every year Sure gasoline vehicles become more maintenance heavy and terrible over time. EV degradation is probably around 10-15% range lost after 5 years typical today. > May be except maintenance Odds are you don't deal with brake pads anymore, and yes, no oil changes. The sheer torque of most models feels like a spaceship when you press down the gas pedal.
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  18 minutes to 80% charge in the 800v cars. Furthermore: for all the whining people do about "sitting around waiting for it to charge", those people conveniently leave out all the time they spend driving to/from and waiting at a gas station...whereas many EV owners just get home and take about 30 seconds to plug in. So, for the tradeoff of having to wait ~20 minutes instead of 5 to fuel up on a long trip, you get to not spend ~5 minutes every week or two driving to a gas station and filling up. Most Americans don't even drive enough per day to make it necessary to have level 2 in-home charging.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    And it works well too. My Kia ev6 goes from 20 to 80 percent in 18mins. Leaving home on full charge gets me around 280 miles on freeway (Circa 310 just pootling round town ev’s are opposite to ice like that). It’s better to drive at normal 75mph ish freeway speed and just fast charge rather than worrying about range and ‘hyper miling’. The 800v system is great real world. We are on west coast and charging infra is decent though even non Tesla.
- hwillis 3y ago
  >> I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range > This is the big advantage. No, absolutely not. Who brings 160 lbs of gasoline with them anywhere? That's twice as much as an average cars gas tank. How many people do you know that have ever brought any gas on any trip ever? The "advantage" of being able to drive 12+ hours without taking a couple hours to charge is absolutely ridiculous. It's not something people do or should do. The only reasonable circumstance is if you're on a camping trip or something, and somehow driving hundreds of miles without passing a source of electricity- in which case yes, use a gas/ethanol car. In my honest opinion, it's a ridiculous demand that you should be able to drive 800 km without taking more than 5 minutes to stop. It's minimum 6 hours of driving, and like 30-40 minutes of charging. It's petulant to complain about that like it's a real issue. The real advantage is cost. It costs a lot of money to get a large battery that can charge quickly, when a $20k Civic can do it. Smaller the EV, the slower the charge, and the more inconvenient it is.
olddustytrail 3y ago
The SSL cert on your website is probably expired (cloudflare is warning about it). I suggest you just use letsencrypt and auto renew with certbot, or whatever they use these days.
- vbezhenar 3y ago
  Thanks, that's weird because my website is basically github pages. I think I got it fixed, not in the very best way, but it kind of works.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
> Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. The idea of a transportation machine having a "soul" is ridiculous.
- thsksbd 3y ago
  Some folks are excellent drivers. I find the ability to understand the concept of a car's "soul" to a very reliable way to separate them out. Why? Because "soul" doesn't mean the immortal soul endowed by our Creator. It refers to the feel and responsiveness of a car. The car's personality, if you will. It refers to every unique behavioral trait that the car has acquired through its design and life been driven. On my old truck the clutch would feel different after my wife drove it. It took a few miles to get the feel back. It drove better with a couple hundred lb on the bed. On my '13 golf I can feel a slight "give" on the steering from wear. I can feel the car and drive it through a corner with the wheels slightly squealing [1]. Thats the edge grip. On the KIA I can feel the difference in the engine and transmission (especially) behavior before and after the oil has warmed up. On the Golf, the shifter is "lazy" until she warms up. Within 10 miles of getting a new set of tires I know if I hate them or love them. I get a feel for their limits. I hate renting cars. Despite the low millage, they feel worn and lose. I also feel like a fish out of the water in a car that is not mine. As you add mechanical/electrical complexity these various feedbacks from the car are washed away. Professional drivers hate these aids. This is widely known in the aviation industry and many planes add artificial feel to give pilots feedback on the fly-by-wire systems. So ya, a good driver feels as if his car has a "soul" just like a good pilot can feel his plane's "soul". There's no immortal soul in a car, no consciousness, but there is a whole lotta love. [1] obviously on track days
  - svnt 3y ago
    It sounds like your assessment of the complexity of a vehicle is specifically tuned to mechanical features of cheap gasoline cars. I would suggest it might be more accurate to describe this as personality instead of soul. Unsurprisingly electric vehicles, which do not have clutches or transmissions at all, or temperamental engines with inconsistent power curves, will exhibit little signal in the areas you have tuned yourself to perceive. This does not indicate anything about them in a universal way. Your response indicates that you are perhaps incurious about the nuances of driving an EV. Since it sounds like you have invested a lot in sensing personality specifics of gasoline vehicles, this makes sense. Perhaps early EV attempts were muted in their expression of activity personality. Entry level Teslas certainly are not fun to drive in the same way as an old Golf. Have you tried the Ioniq 5?
hwillis 3y ago
> I'm not sure, but I expect that I don't have to change oil every year in an electric car The only critical replacement is brake calipers and fluids: https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_eu/GUID-E95DAAD9-646E-4249-9930-B109ED7B1D91.html https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modelx/en_eu/GUID-E95DAAD... Brakes tend to last much longer because the car uses the motor to brake. Some Tesla motors are oil-cooled, some are just air cooled and the reducer just uses grease[1] instead of oil. There are no piston rings, no blow-by, no sliding friction, no wear items, the temperature stays below 100 C, the pressure is always ambient, and the case is completely watertight. The oil/grease can last practically forever. > I can bring 100L gasoline with me to add 1000 km range on top of existing 500 range. Driving 12 hours at a time is unsafe and you should not do it. If you are regularly driving 1500 km into wasteland, an electric car is not for you. If you only do it a few times a year, I recommend renting. > I can charge it within 5 minutes, not 5 hours. Have you not heard? They can charge 200 miles in 15 minutes. > It does not get worse with every year It's a car. They absolutely get worse every year. Driving at high speed over bad roads takes a toll and all cars fall apart over time. > Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. Did televisions, before flatscreens replaced them? I don't think so. I think it was just the nostalgia for a time when it was new and important. But a car now is a conveyance. 99.99% cars have as much soul as an elevator- another thing that used to be special and personal. If you want soul in the thing you drive to work, you always had to buy something special. You did not find it in a Honda Civic. If you want that, buy a motorcycle, or an E100 car. Those things will still exist even if EVs completely replace gasoline, because they just aren't the same thing. You are not afraid of electric cars replacing racecars, or grand tours through the mountains or deserts or forest. You are sad about electric cars replacing 8 lanes of LA traffic, of I-98 being quiet, of less children with asthma. That's a silly thing to be sad about. The soul of driving is not going anywhere. [1]: Because I NEVER tire of saying it: grease is amazing. It seems inefficient because it's thick like peanut butter, but it's the best. It's shear-thinning, so that as soon as it starts moving, it spreads into an incredibly thin low-viscosity layer that's just as frictionless as oil. Unlike oil, it never drips off, never needs pressure, always covers the surface. Contamination works itself out automatically (unlike in oil, where it's recirculated). It's chemically and thermally stable. Grease is the BEST.
qingcharles 3y ago
If you carry 100L of petrol around in your car you must admit you are a very niche segment. I've driven in dozens of countries, sometimes very far from fuel stops, but I've never once had the need to carry any additional fuel inside my vehicle. I think the furthest I can ever remember being from a petrol station is about 120 miles.
screwturner68 3y ago
I live in a large city, I drive a small car and I only drive about 3000 miles per year. Right now gas is ~$5.35/g at the station down the street and it's ~0.18/KW. It takes 114KW to "fill" a Tesla S, so ~$20.50. The range on a Tesla S is 405 miles, so ~19.75 miles /dollar. My VW gets ~30MPG or ~5.6 miles/dollar. The numbers make sense as does the range, I don't know many people who drive over 400 miles per day ever. The issue as I see it is quality and price, Tesla is sub-Kia quality at BMW prices. Honestly I think a lot of people are just looking for an excuse not to move to an EV, just like they did with going to unleaded gas or using LED bulbs. Everything is going electric and people that can't see that are just willfully blind -the Saudis knew this years ago, I'm not sure why so many people think it's a surprise. As far as soul, what is stopping auto makers from making cool looking cars, honestly I don't know. One of the things I thought was cool about the Tesla 1 was that it was a good looking convertible and not something that looked like a rolling doorstop (Prius). Maybe EV will usher in a new generation of car makers that will make good looking cars again, we can hope.
- nullc 3y ago
  > Tesla is sub-Kia quality at BMW prices. Indeed. Plus locked down maintenance (using DRM to prevent you from fixing your own car), and constant invasive spying (including video from the cars cameras https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sensitive-images-recorded-by-customer-cars-2023-04-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens... ). > not something that looked like a rolling doorstop (Prius) Cars are shaped the way they are today for aerodynamic reasons. > I live in a large city, I drive a small car and I only drive about 3000 miles per year. Hopefully you can see that what works for you doesn't work for everyone. Living in a city and only driving 3000 miles a year... Have you considered not owning a car at all? :) Given your figures, at 3000 miles per year it would take 108 years for the improved fuel economy of the Tesla S to pay for its added cost over a Kia with comparable build quality. This is part of the reason you don't see the improved $/mile being so heavily advocated for EV's especially high end ones: The improvement isn't enough to pay for the added cost, unless you're a very heavy user and heavy users have more range, recharging locations, and recharging time concerns.
- nomel 3y ago
rootusrootus 3y ago
Those are all pretty tired arguments, and already debunked thoroughly. I spend a lot less time refueling my EV than I ever did on my ICEVs. And it doesn't take me any longer for a road trip stop than it did before, I always took 15-20 minutes to take a leak and stretch. Almost nobody does a 5 minute in-and-out on a road trip. You might, but you also carry 100L of gasoline with you, which is very uncommon. And as someone who's owned vehicles with gas tanks in the passenger compartment, I strongly recommend against it. > Electric cars probably are the future, but I don't like this future. They don't have a soul. Now you're being honest. You don't like them because they're too quiet. That is a valid opinion. > I'm not EV fudster Yes you are ;-).

davewritescode 3y ago

There’s no doubt in my mind that EVs are the future, it’s just hard to fault people who don’t want to pay more for an objectively worse overall product. For the record, I think within the next 10 years that will change but I don’t think 5 ton EV trucks are the answer.

starkparker 3y ago
I mean, the first combustion-engine cars had the same market reaction. A recollection of the late 19th century and early 20th, from 1930: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americas-skepticism-toward-first-automobiles/ https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ... The whole story has salient parallels — parts suppliers were either reticent or inexperienced, fuel was cheap but not widely available, motors were slow, investors put money in before the market was there, founders lamenting the state of the modern laborer, early adopters stuck needing parts for vehicles orphaned by suddenly defunct manufacturers, and the guy getting all the money and attention is a wealthy idiot making self-crashing death traps who relies on free advice from his witless fans to avoid failure and profit. There's even a cameo from early EV manufacturer Electric Vehicle Company in 1899. Tangentially, this is evocative: > In the uncertainty of what the public would want, a great many strange contraptions were put together. Joseph Barsaleaux, a blacksmith of Sandy Hill, New York, built a motor horse. In his device, the horse moved on a single wheel about two feet in diameter, with the wheel attached to the shafts just as was a live horse. Reins attached to the mouth of the horse served as a steering gear, because the machinery was inside the horse and had to be regulated some way. The contraption weighed about 550 pounds, had a cruising speed of six miles an hour, and attracted some serious attention. EV makers should probably stop trying to make mechanical horses — EV motors and cars that aren't competitive with ICE equivalents — and find a form factor that better suits both the market and the current state of the technology. Class 2 ebikes and small carts feel closer to that answer on short runs, but the long-haul equivalents are still missing. Hell, Winton in this story is a bicycle manufacturer who makes his first horseless carriage from bicycles.
- somerandomqaguy 3y ago
  That doesn't disagree with what he's saying though; it's still in a transition phase. Range loss issues from cold weather and/or towing are still a concern, inability to charge at home is a concern, large upfront costs are still a concern, the weirdness of fast charging stations is still a concern. They're solvable issues and in time will be, but they're issues lot of people don't want to deal with while things are still in flux and don't see enough value in paying the cost of being an early adopter.