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Mechanically, over 300 miles, you take an airplane rather then drive 5 hours to your destination if it’s a life of death situation. Making bigger batteries is a

Mechanically, over 300 miles, you take an airplane rather then drive 5 hours to your destination if it’s a life of death situation. Making bigger batteries is a giant waste of resources there.

phtrivier 3y ago
Not sure how you're going to travel the ~100km from the closest airport to the place you need to go, if you happen to have the audacity to dare having to reach people living in "the middle of nowhere". I completely agree this is a giant waste of resource to do that with the current battery tech, and that it results in completely unaffordable, suboptimal cars that most people can neither afford nor agree to buy. Which is also why we need better tech yesterdecade. The situation really has to improve a lot before the end of the 20s arrive, otherwise we'll see civil unrest unlike anything you can imagine. Our next election cycles in Europe will be 50/50 immigration ("they're coming from your job") and transportation ("they're coming for you car !"). Guess who wins this game ?
yurishimo 3y ago
Good luck getting a flight that fast. Sometimes driving overnight can still be faster. Especially if you need to get somewhere after you get to the airport as well. Unless you're flying directly into your final destination, I would argue driving is probably faster for everything assuming you need to leave in 12 hours or less. Not to mention exponentially cheaper (ignoring depreciation). In Europe, I would agree that flying could often be easier and/or cheaper. In the US, I can drive 500 miles (800~km) in 8 hours or less, passing through a few major cities with light/moderate traffic. When you take into account airport travel, security time, the actual flight time, and leaving the airport, that is often 4+ hours for a 1 hour flight. Short haul flights also only tend to run once or twice a day unless you're traveling between busy cities, so you need to factor that waiting time in as well. For a middle-age (+) person with friends and family that are starting to die of old age, being able to drop everything and drive overnight to say goodbye could be really important to them. This is something I had not really considered before when thinking about EV charging speeds. Until now, I had really only thought about vacations or business travel, which is not that time sensitive.
- digger495 3y ago
  If you ask for a bereavement fare, you can easily find a flight within a day for a reasonable price.
- phtrivier 3y ago
  Good thing that we read the front page of HN every day, so we can just hop in the closest Hyperloop for the bulk of the trip, then travel the last mile in an autonomous electric flying robotaxi to visit our loved ones - who are not dying anyway because their desease has been crispr-ed away in the metaverse by an AGI. Or something like that.

Mechanically, over 300 miles, you take an airplane rather then drive 5 hours to your destination if it’s a life of death situation. Making bigger batteries is a giant waste of resources there.

phtrivier 3y ago

Not sure how you're going to travel the ~100km from the closest airport to the place you need to go, if you happen to have the audacity to dare having to reach people living in "the middle of nowhere". I completely agree this is a giant waste of resource to do that with the current battery tech, and that it results in completely unaffordable, suboptimal cars that most people can neither afford nor agree to buy. Which is also why we need better tech yesterdecade. The situation really has to improve a lot before the end of the 20s arrive, otherwise we'll see civil unrest unlike anything you can imagine. Our next election cycles in Europe will be 50/50 immigration ("they're coming from your job") and transportation ("they're coming for you car !"). Guess who wins this game ?

yurishimo 3y ago

Good luck getting a flight that fast. Sometimes driving overnight can still be faster. Especially if you need to get somewhere after you get to the airport as well. Unless you're flying directly into your final destination, I would argue driving is probably faster for everything assuming you need to leave in 12 hours or less. Not to mention exponentially cheaper (ignoring depreciation). In Europe, I would agree that flying could often be easier and/or cheaper. In the US, I can drive 500 miles (800~km) in 8 hours or less, passing through a few major cities with light/moderate traffic. When you take into account airport travel, security time, the actual flight time, and leaving the airport, that is often 4+ hours for a 1 hour flight. Short haul flights also only tend to run once or twice a day unless you're traveling between busy cities, so you need to factor that waiting time in as well. For a middle-age (+) person with friends and family that are starting to die of old age, being able to drop everything and drive overnight to say goodbye could be really important to them. This is something I had not really considered before when thinking about EV charging speeds. Until now, I had really only thought about vacations or business travel, which is not that time sensitive.

digger495 3y ago
If you ask for a bereavement fare, you can easily find a flight within a day for a reasonable price.
phtrivier 3y ago
Good thing that we read the front page of HN every day, so we can just hop in the closest Hyperloop for the bulk of the trip, then travel the last mile in an autonomous electric flying robotaxi to visit our loved ones - who are not dying anyway because their desease has been crispr-ed away in the metaverse by an AGI. Or something like that.