8 ms·

I disagree. The sustainable alternative to EVs is hybrids, not gas guzzlers. Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these ma

• SEJeff 3y ago
  Hybrids have the most maintenance and catch on fire more than 10x more than EVs. They are solving a problem that shouldn't be solved.
  • screye 3y ago
    Car fires aren't the a significant enough cause of car crash deaths to matter. Maintenance seems to be a manufacturer problem more so than a hybrid vs others problem. Toyota Priuses have been the beater Taxi of America for a good decade now. These hybrids are troopers. If Rivian and Tesla maintenance stories are any indication, Full-EVs seem to be an order of magnitude behind on dealing with problems during the ownership period.
    • sitkack 3y ago
      Maintenance has nothing to do with EV vs gas. I have a 2011 Nissan Leaf. Maintenance is keeping the tires inflated and changing the wiper blades. 50k miles and still on its first set of brake pads.
• jnsaff2 3y ago
  Damage to roads goes up with the FOURTH power of axle weight. ALL passenger cars create insignificant road wear compared to heavy trucks. https://x.com/ajisuzu1/status/1681123111364620294?s=46 https://x.com/ajisuzu1/status/1681123111364620294?s=46
  • oblio 3y ago
    I can't see that thread, I don't have a Twitter account. Also, aren't heavy trucks much fewer than regular cars plus don't they have designated routes?
    • ivann 3y ago
      You don't need an account to see a thread: https://nitter.net/ajisuzu1/status/1681123111364620294 https://nitter.net/ajisuzu1/status/1681123111364620294
    • infecto 3y ago
      Volume does not matter, same with routes. You could probably reduce it to the following, passenger vehicles do no damage to roads. If a road is only driven on my passenger cars it will probably succumb to age/weather damage before weight.
    • thechao 3y ago
      The equation is: A * (W / A) ** 4 So, a 2 ton car is 1 unit of damage; a fully loaded 18 wheeler is 20,000 units. On top of that, we expect a 30 mile/day drive from the car, but more like 300+ from the truck. So, throwing in mileage: car = 30 units truck = 6 million units If trucks are just 1% of the vehicles on the road, they'd still be 99.9% of the damage. Dump trucks are even worse.
    • Enginerrrd 3y ago
      Transportation engineer here. They are much fewer, and they do tend to have different travel patterns than other vehicles, and there is an equivalent average daily traffic for truck traffic where you convert each truck into a large number of other vehicles. When you do that, the wear due to truck traffic still absolutely dominates almost always.
• ttfkam 3y ago
  I disagree. The sustainable alternative is to get an EV for 98% of the time and rent a purpose-built vehicle for the edge cases whether those edge cases are for long distance, towing, or hauling. Let the rental companies keep and maintain the gas cars.
  • bonestamp2 3y ago
    I agree, but most people don't want to think that way. Plugin hybrids are a great answer for those people, but they're not buying those either. I mean, roughly 90% of car trips in the US are under 30 miles roundtrip. Therefore, nearly every PHEV is designed to handle 30 miles of fully electric driving. That means they are an EV 90% of the time for the average consumer. The problem is, most consumers don't understand this so when they see that a PHEV only has 30 miles of range they think that's absurd when most of the time it's actually more than enough. Of course there are outliers and people who they wouldn't be right for, but we're just talking about most people.
    • ProjectArcturis 3y ago
      I would love to drive a PHEV, but the math just doesn't work out. They're $10-$20k more than the ICE equivalent. At best I'm going to save like $1000 a year on gas.
      • bonestamp2 3y ago
        You're right about the math. I don't blame you for making the decision based on the cost difference, but not everyone makes a car buying decision that way so it's important to point out the other benefits for the folks who are willing to pay more for those other benefits.
  • brtkdotse 3y ago
    Every time I suggest “just rent a ICE for the edge case trips” people look at me like I’ve just kicked their dog
    • 3y ago
• realusername 3y ago
  That's because the American car market is pure nonsense, it's not a problem of EV. My own electric car is close to half the weight of a petrol F150. So the F150 uses more petrol and wears more tire as well. Those kind of massive cars are only needed for farmers and construction workers in the first place.
  • ProjectArcturis 3y ago
    And yet millions of people who don't work in those industries chose F150s. You can't solve the climate problem by telling people what they should want.
    • realusername 3y ago
      And yet that's exactly why they got this vehicle in the first place, because of some tax rebates on larger vehicles. Somebody else already chose it for them. Pigouvian taxes also work in the car industry and this industry isn't that special.
  • jjav 3y ago
    > My own electric car is close to half the weight of a petrol F150. Looking at the Ford website, a F-150 starts at just over 4000lb. So your EV is a bit over 2000lb? Which one is it?
• chakintosh 3y ago
  Totally agree. Hybrid still make a lot of sense and It's a real shame most brands released half-baked hybrids and jumped straight to EVs, other brands never even bothered with hybrids. I drive a Volvo XC40 PHEV and I can go a whole month without running the engine, I only do so on long trips or idle it for fluids to run through it. And it only added $20 to my electricity bill (not living in the US).
• eemil 3y ago
  I doubt there is any sustainable alterntive to a privately owned two-ton vehicle that is also a privately owned two-ton vehicle. They're all just incredibly inefficient, and pollute in their own way. > Hybrids can be smaller, cheaper, lighter and gentler on the grid. Each of these matter. EVs do not affect the grid as much as you would think, and might even benefit the grid once vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home technology (+corresponding economic incentives) becomes more common. Think about it: right now we have enormous amounts of battery storage, sitting idle most of the time, that has already been paid for. Most people do not charge their EV from empty to full every day, most people aren't using DC fast charging and not during peak hours. Most days the average EV owner probably drives 30 km and charges that amount at home, overnight. There are probably millions of electric ovens/stovetops in any given country. If they were all turned on at the same time, it would definitely overload the electrical grid. But this doesn't happen, because of their sheer number. We can safely assume each oven will use a fraction of its rated power on average, possibly with a small peak when the average person gets off work.
  • igrekel 3y ago
    From my experience, having an EV for daily driving actually changes the electrical consumption less than the months where the pool motor is on. Which makes sense since the pool motor runs all the time (even if it's dual speed).
• infecto 3y ago
  Hybrids are indeed really neat but I think your math is off. Yes EVs are heavier but 1,000lbs more is not causing the type of wear to roads that you think it is. Model y is something like 4,300lbs. Max load capacity of a semi is 80,000lb distributed across multiple axles. Most trucks are probably not loaded to max but I could see the axle weight hitting 20k lbs. Heavier vehicles are definitely going to need heavier compound tires or potentially cause more wear on the tires. I don't think tires is a worthy argument. Even a Hybrid is going to be consuming tires and then you are going to have to get into the argument of which is the lesser evil, potentially increased tire wear or increased point of use pollution. The grid is just fine. Most charging happens at night and EVs have the potential to reall help out the grid. There is a large push for smarter home devices to min/max use depending on the grid condition. In times of overgeneration, EVs can soak up that energy.
• m463 3y ago
  beware, lots of hybrids are basically scams. Range extenders probably aren't what you expect - You still have to charge. For example the bmw i3 range extender won't let you drive on gas. It will put charge in the battery while you are driving or stopped, but it won't generate nearly enough power to keep up with freeway driving. Other hybrids are basically ICE cars that can capture a little power and feed it back. and hybrids have twice the complexity - all of ICE + all of EV.
  • galangalalgol 3y ago
    The complexity is the killer for me. I think with the advances in efficient (>90%) propane synthesis and direct fuel cells, we will see some fuel cell hybrids to give the fuel cells time to warm up. But even then, the extra complexity is very high.
• Enginerrrd 3y ago
  I'd really like to see a plug-in hybrid pickup where I can do 10-20 miles on a charge without needing the gas engine to even kick on. I get that by the time you put all that infrastructure in, an engineer starts asking why we don't just omit the ICE and add batteries for range... but I think there is an unmet need. That would allow me to do at least 50-70% of my miles all electric. I do quite a lot of truck stuff: 2-3 major construction projects a year, gathering / transporting multiple cords of firewood at various stages annually, commercial landscaping, driving forestry roads for engineering work and hunting, etc. And I have a motorcycle that works a lot of the time for commuting needs. BUT, I also have kids and so I do end up needing a passenger vehicle, a need which is unfortunately filled by my truck since my wife has to also commute. There is no way an electric vehicle would allow me to do the stuff I do. My truck offers 385 miles of range, and I usually carry enough extra fuel to get double that when I go into some extremely remote locations where there will simply NEVER be charge infrastructure. And I absolutely need it sometimes. I saw some poor guy driving that road get stuck in a Tesla out in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what that guy was thinking but he ended up getting towed out after failing to get a charge off of a gas generator after running it for 8 hours. It's bad fire country out there and he's very lucky that wasn't a concern at the time.
  • briffle 3y ago
    > I'd really like to see a plug-in hybrid pickup where I can do 10-20 miles on a charge without needing the gas engine to even kick on. Next year, the 2025 RamCharger https://www.ramtrucks.com/revolution/ram-1500-ramcharger.html https://www.ramtrucks.com/revolution/ram-1500-ramcharger.htm... 92-kilowatt-hour battery pack paired with a 130-kilowatt generator
    • screye 3y ago
      This is the ideal middle ground. I would like for the market to stabilize around PHEV for a decade while the rest of the infrastructure catches up.
    • Enginerrrd 3y ago
      That looks awesome!
• w0m 3y ago
  Honestly; as a guy who traded in his pickup for an EV - I won't buy a Hybrid. Too many moving parts and performance is generally crap until you get into price ranges I'm not willing to pay. Re: Range - ~250 miles is perfectly fine for me and mine 99% of the time. I haven't paid for charging since (checking...) July 2023. Roughly 6mo. Else, we take the Mrs 600mile range SUV the 1-2x/year it would be awkward to take my car. If my wifes car died today? I have absolutely no idea what I'd replace it with. Dailying an EV for ~4 years now, I'm not sure I'd be ok going purely EV household yet.