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> people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can m

> people realize most EVs are vastly, vastly inferior to what they were supposed to replace I don't know how anyone with any knowledge of EVs whatsoever can make this argument in 2023. Maybe this was forgivable 10 years ago, but now? This feels like bad faith. > The future is hybrid The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. Why? Because you no longer need any of the trappings of an internal combustion engine. People forget why cars were awesome in the first place -- because you didn't need a horse anymore. In the same way, the big gain in the BEV is NOT adding the battery and the electric motor, it's getting rid of the ICE.

bluGill 3y ago
People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. They care about power, enough range to get where they want (including recharge time, and the recharging network), and total cost. Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  > People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. People didn't care about getting rid of the horse at first, either.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Mostly because the horse was a rich person's toy that most people could not afford. Horses as farm animals was only really a thing for maybe 70 years, for most the ox was much better: it ate less and was more mild mannered. The American prairie need the faster speed of the horse to make the plow needed work, otherwise they wouldn't use them. Coyboys also used the horse for roundup, both niches that started in the mid 1800s. My grandpa remembered the horses and didn't miss them at all. They had an ugly temper and you had to feed them daily even if you didn't leave the farm. They were purely a cost sink worse than a car or tractor.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
      I know it's beside the point, but that's surprising. I live with horses and draft horses by far have the mildest, most gentle temperaments. But then again, they aren't working. I guess I'd get pissy too if I had to pull a plow all day long :-(
- nicoburns 3y ago
  > If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it. Seems likely that it won't be long until 90% of people won't need gas for anything. Just a single doubling of range from current levels, and a reasonably build out of charging infrastructure would do the trick. I'd be surprised if we don't see both of those in the next 20-30 years. And of course for many people the tipping point will come earlier.
- waynesonfire 3y ago
  People disagree, people don't want to deal with ICE maintenance.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    You bring it in for an oil change every few months, that isn't a big deal. Modern ICEs are very reliable in general, and there are many other parts on a car to break that are common to the EV.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      Who changes their oil every few months?
      - smileysteve 3y ago
        Locations will become more difficult to find once society reaches 30% ev adoption, maybe even less. Much of the 100k mile maintenance programs is because people don't like making the choice.
        gnicholas 3y ago
        I'm not sure you understood my point. I was pointing out that oil changes are less frequent than this. I take my ICE in once every two years, and my PHEV even less than that. It may be true that when 30% of vehicles are EVs, oil change locations will be hard to find, but I doubt it. Even if dedicated oil change chains cease to exist, people will still need tires, alignment, etc, and those shops will presumably provide oil change services. Regardless, it's going to be a while before 30% of vehicles on the road are EVs — isn't it like 1-2% of new cars sold? If vehicles stay on the road for 20 years, then EVs won't be 30% of the total fleet for a long time.
        Symbiote 3y ago
        Globally, 10% of sales are EVs. For the European Union it's 12% and the United States 6%. The EU has a lot of variance (Sweden 32%) and I assume the USA does too. https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-vehicles-fastest https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-veh... Average car age in the EU is 12 years.
- stcredzero 3y ago
  Tesla owner in California since 2020. For the most part, you don't need an ICE car for long road trips anymore. Even in places like Big Sur, Mendocino, there are superchargers. Even in the worst situations, like near Carmel, rolling up to a supercharger on a busy weekend that's packed, with a line of a dozen cars, you're still in an out in an amount of time I normally see with rest stops. Biggest problem for me has always been just wrangling everyone back into the car! I've almost never spent longer than 15 minutes charging on long car trips, unless we're also going to a restaurant. And even then, we usually don't have to, and could have made it a 15 minute stop if we wanted to. Most of the time, the car is done charging enough faster than we could stop for coffee, and I have to extend the charge using my app. That said, there was one occasion in a trip through Big Sur, when the Ventana supercharger went offline, when I did a 45 minute charge session, and I drove 30 minutes out of the way to catch a supercharger on another occasion. So 2 occasions like that in nearly 3 years. The situation is pretty good now. In another few years, it will be even better!
  - jewayne 3y ago
    > Most of the time, the car is done charging enough faster than we could stop for coffee, and I have to extend the charge using my app. This. The haters think that Level 3 charging takes 60+ minutes. There are times I wish it did. Instead, if I leave my car on the Supercharger next to Denny's and get seated right away, I will finish charging and have to move the car before my food comes. Every time. Maybe someday we will actually have large numbers of free Level 2 chargers at shops and restaurants, so we can eat a leisurely lunch in peace while our cars charge.
- conk 3y ago
  Getting rid of ICE was the #1 factor when I bought an EV. No stinky gas fumes in my garage, no more trips to a gas station to fill up. Worth the premium IMO. ~300 mile range, charge time, and charger network hasn’t been a problem yet.
  - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
    > my garage This is one of the big issues. EVs are for the class of people who own houses with garages, in the suburbs of large metros.
Turskarama 3y ago
The problem with BEVs isn't actually any single vehicle, BEVs really are good enough for anyone, today. The real issue is going to be scaling up battery manufacturing to the point that we make enough for everyone to have a BEV, which really is not as much of a given as people seem to assume. EV sales are still at only around 20% of the market, which is a lot! But given that the majority of lithium batteries are already going into EVs now total battery production needs to go up by something like a factor of 5 by 2030 just to meet EV sales. That's a huge amount of growth for any industry, let alone high tech manufacturing. I would not be surprised to see the relative growth of EV sales stall soon as manufacturers have trouble sourcing enough batteries, and in response we may see some Hybrids or EREVs coming onto the market to meet the shortfall. After all, a battery that gets you 50km is good for 90% of trips for a significant number of people, but you couldn't buy it without a range extender because of that last 10%.
anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. If fossil hydrogen ever gets off the ground I still have hope for fuel-cell/battery hybrids. Since they generate water vapor as a side product they'd also be beneficial to a small extent for arid climates. I'm not happy if the harvesting of fossil hydrogen harms the subterranean ecosystem, but then I'm not happy about the ecosystem harms of oil or mining either.
- jewayne 3y ago
  Hydrogen never took off for good reason. Actually, multiple reasons. Having to build yet another ecosystem for delivery might be the biggest one, though. Whereas we already have a vast network for the delivery of electric power. In fact, one of the most beautiful things about BEVs is that their energy isn't delivered via an expensive and inefficient physical supply chain, like gasoline and presumably hydrogen would be.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
People will keep getting ICE cars. Do you know why? Because IT DOESN'T NEED A BATTERY. The battery is the single most fragile, heavy, dangerous, expensive, stressful ("range anxiety") and annoying component of an EV, and one which degrades at an alarming rate, just by using it normally. Guess what, a fuel tank doesn't shrink every time you fill it. And it doesn't shrink even FASTER when you fill it to the top. Or let it go empty. Or run in cold weather. Or hot weather. Or you drive fast. Or too slow. Or when you fill the tank too fast. Where "too fast" is dripping it in for 30 to 60 minutes a pop. Or when you don't drive the car for too long. On top of that, the starting range of the top BEV is half an ICE car. That's on a new car, before all the magical "shrinking" happens. Batteries are WORSE than anything the automobile industry has from the past 50+ years. And people are slowly realizing that.
- stavros 3y ago
  Batteries aren't worse than having to breathe in exhaust or having my baby wake up at 2am because some idiot decided to rev outside my house.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    Ah yes. Nothing better than waking up in the morning and smelling lead, nickel and cobalt from a li-ion battery that caught fire somewhere in your neighborhood. Or in your garage.
    - stavros 3y ago
      About the same as smelling burning tyres and diesel from a car whose tank caught fire.
      - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
        Not the same at all. First, a gas car doesn't simply catch fire while sitting in a dense parking lot. That's the most likely place for an EV to catch fire, as it's charging. Second, when a gas car catches fire, it's almost always after a car incident. Firefighters arrive, and put the fire out easily. Do you know what firefighters do when an EV catches fire? Nothing can stop this fire. Literally nothing. So firefighters have to evacuate everyone at least half a mile in radius. Then let it burn down. Which may take a full day. Or more. Read the protocols.

bluGill 3y ago

People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. They care about power, enough range to get where they want (including recharge time, and the recharging network), and total cost. Getting rid of the ICE is only an indirect benefit. It makes the car lighter and cheaper. If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it.

crooked-v 3y ago
> People don't care about getting rid of the ICE. People didn't care about getting rid of the horse at first, either.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Mostly because the horse was a rich person's toy that most people could not afford. Horses as farm animals was only really a thing for maybe 70 years, for most the ox was much better: it ate less and was more mild mannered. The American prairie need the faster speed of the horse to make the plow needed work, otherwise they wouldn't use them. Coyboys also used the horse for roundup, both niches that started in the mid 1800s. My grandpa remembered the horses and didn't miss them at all. They had an ugly temper and you had to feed them daily even if you didn't leave the farm. They were purely a cost sink worse than a car or tractor.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    I know it's beside the point, but that's surprising. I live with horses and draft horses by far have the mildest, most gentle temperaments. But then again, they aren't working. I guess I'd get pissy too if I had to pull a plow all day long :-(
nicoburns 3y ago
> If you don't need gas for anything, then getting rid of it is worth it. However if you need the gas for something (long trips?) then you need it. Seems likely that it won't be long until 90% of people won't need gas for anything. Just a single doubling of range from current levels, and a reasonably build out of charging infrastructure would do the trick. I'd be surprised if we don't see both of those in the next 20-30 years. And of course for many people the tipping point will come earlier.
waynesonfire 3y ago
People disagree, people don't want to deal with ICE maintenance.
- bluGill 3y ago
  You bring it in for an oil change every few months, that isn't a big deal. Modern ICEs are very reliable in general, and there are many other parts on a car to break that are common to the EV.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Who changes their oil every few months?
    - smileysteve 3y ago
      Locations will become more difficult to find once society reaches 30% ev adoption, maybe even less. Much of the 100k mile maintenance programs is because people don't like making the choice.
      - gnicholas 3y ago
        I'm not sure you understood my point. I was pointing out that oil changes are less frequent than this. I take my ICE in once every two years, and my PHEV even less than that. It may be true that when 30% of vehicles are EVs, oil change locations will be hard to find, but I doubt it. Even if dedicated oil change chains cease to exist, people will still need tires, alignment, etc, and those shops will presumably provide oil change services. Regardless, it's going to be a while before 30% of vehicles on the road are EVs — isn't it like 1-2% of new cars sold? If vehicles stay on the road for 20 years, then EVs won't be 30% of the total fleet for a long time.
        Symbiote 3y ago
        Globally, 10% of sales are EVs. For the European Union it's 12% and the United States 6%. The EU has a lot of variance (Sweden 32%) and I assume the USA does too. https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-vehicles-fastest https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-adopting-electric-veh... Average car age in the EU is 12 years.
stcredzero 3y ago
Tesla owner in California since 2020. For the most part, you don't need an ICE car for long road trips anymore. Even in places like Big Sur, Mendocino, there are superchargers. Even in the worst situations, like near Carmel, rolling up to a supercharger on a busy weekend that's packed, with a line of a dozen cars, you're still in an out in an amount of time I normally see with rest stops. Biggest problem for me has always been just wrangling everyone back into the car! I've almost never spent longer than 15 minutes charging on long car trips, unless we're also going to a restaurant. And even then, we usually don't have to, and could have made it a 15 minute stop if we wanted to. Most of the time, the car is done charging enough faster than we could stop for coffee, and I have to extend the charge using my app. That said, there was one occasion in a trip through Big Sur, when the Ventana supercharger went offline, when I did a 45 minute charge session, and I drove 30 minutes out of the way to catch a supercharger on another occasion. So 2 occasions like that in nearly 3 years. The situation is pretty good now. In another few years, it will be even better!
- jewayne 3y ago
  > Most of the time, the car is done charging enough faster than we could stop for coffee, and I have to extend the charge using my app. This. The haters think that Level 3 charging takes 60+ minutes. There are times I wish it did. Instead, if I leave my car on the Supercharger next to Denny's and get seated right away, I will finish charging and have to move the car before my food comes. Every time. Maybe someday we will actually have large numbers of free Level 2 chargers at shops and restaurants, so we can eat a leisurely lunch in peace while our cars charge.
conk 3y ago
Getting rid of ICE was the #1 factor when I bought an EV. No stinky gas fumes in my garage, no more trips to a gas station to fill up. Worth the premium IMO. ~300 mile range, charge time, and charger network hasn’t been a problem yet.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
  > my garage This is one of the big issues. EVs are for the class of people who own houses with garages, in the suburbs of large metros.

Turskarama 3y ago

The problem with BEVs isn't actually any single vehicle, BEVs really are good enough for anyone, today. The real issue is going to be scaling up battery manufacturing to the point that we make enough for everyone to have a BEV, which really is not as much of a given as people seem to assume. EV sales are still at only around 20% of the market, which is a lot! But given that the majority of lithium batteries are already going into EVs now total battery production needs to go up by something like a factor of 5 by 2030 just to meet EV sales. That's a huge amount of growth for any industry, let alone high tech manufacturing. I would not be surprised to see the relative growth of EV sales stall soon as manufacturers have trouble sourcing enough batteries, and in response we may see some Hybrids or EREVs coming onto the market to meet the shortfall. After all, a battery that gets you 50km is good for 90% of trips for a significant number of people, but you couldn't buy it without a range extender because of that last 10%.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

> The future of personal transport vehicles is battery-electric, full stop. If fossil hydrogen ever gets off the ground I still have hope for fuel-cell/battery hybrids. Since they generate water vapor as a side product they'd also be beneficial to a small extent for arid climates. I'm not happy if the harvesting of fossil hydrogen harms the subterranean ecosystem, but then I'm not happy about the ecosystem harms of oil or mining either.

jewayne 3y ago
Hydrogen never took off for good reason. Actually, multiple reasons. Having to build yet another ecosystem for delivery might be the biggest one, though. Whereas we already have a vast network for the delivery of electric power. In fact, one of the most beautiful things about BEVs is that their energy isn't delivered via an expensive and inefficient physical supply chain, like gasoline and presumably hydrogen would be.

3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago

People will keep getting ICE cars. Do you know why? Because IT DOESN'T NEED A BATTERY. The battery is the single most fragile, heavy, dangerous, expensive, stressful ("range anxiety") and annoying component of an EV, and one which degrades at an alarming rate, just by using it normally. Guess what, a fuel tank doesn't shrink every time you fill it. And it doesn't shrink even FASTER when you fill it to the top. Or let it go empty. Or run in cold weather. Or hot weather. Or you drive fast. Or too slow. Or when you fill the tank too fast. Where "too fast" is dripping it in for 30 to 60 minutes a pop. Or when you don't drive the car for too long. On top of that, the starting range of the top BEV is half an ICE car. That's on a new car, before all the magical "shrinking" happens. Batteries are WORSE than anything the automobile industry has from the past 50+ years. And people are slowly realizing that.

stavros 3y ago
Batteries aren't worse than having to breathe in exhaust or having my baby wake up at 2am because some idiot decided to rev outside my house.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  Ah yes. Nothing better than waking up in the morning and smelling lead, nickel and cobalt from a li-ion battery that caught fire somewhere in your neighborhood. Or in your garage.
  - stavros 3y ago
    About the same as smelling burning tyres and diesel from a car whose tank caught fire.
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
      Not the same at all. First, a gas car doesn't simply catch fire while sitting in a dense parking lot. That's the most likely place for an EV to catch fire, as it's charging. Second, when a gas car catches fire, it's almost always after a car incident. Firefighters arrive, and put the fire out easily. Do you know what firefighters do when an EV catches fire? Nothing can stop this fire. Literally nothing. So firefighters have to evacuate everyone at least half a mile in radius. Then let it burn down. Which may take a full day. Or more. Read the protocols.