12 ms·

> BEVs are a superior technology While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. They’re (in most cases substantially)

by jmb99 2y ago

> BEVs are a superior technology While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. They’re (in most cases substantially) more expensive, less energy dense by mass and volume, and require planning for refuelling (especially if used in areas outside of main city centres or for long driving, or if you live in an apartment without access to a charger at home). Not to mention most grids being nowhere near able to support the entire population of car drivers fast-charging their cars during rush hour. Gasoline-powered cars are objectively easier to own and use. The real solution is public transit, and convincing people for whom public transit is impossible that switching to BEVs is worthwhile, even with their drawbacks. Telling people that BEVs are superior technology is counterproductive though, when there are still very clear problems with them.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> They’re (in most cases substantially) more expensive, less energy dense by mass and volume, and require planning for refuelling (especially if used in areas outside of main city centres or for long driving, or if you live in an apartment without access to a charger at home). The most popular BEVs already cost less than the average new car and the price will continue to decline as long as battery prices do. Ranges of ~300 miles are common, meanwhile the average commute is 42 miles, so charging at home is sufficient for the vast majority of usage and is more convenient than buying gas. Apartments will install chargers as electric vehicles become more common. For long trips, you begin your day having charged overnight and then add 200 miles of range at a supercharger in 15 minutes. That 500 miles is more than 8 hours of driving at 60MPH and it cost you 15 minutes. For people who make such long trips on a regular basis there will be cars with larger batteries and more range so that "overnight plus once in the middle" gets back to being just overnight. > Not to mention most grids being nowhere near able to support the entire population of car drivers fast-charging their cars during rush hour. This is the least interesting problem. Upgrading power grids is a known process involving only widely deployed existing technologies. > The real solution is public transit Public transit doesn't work in the suburbs, the majority of the population lives in suburban or rural areas and changing that would take decades of new housing construction which is currently prohibited by law.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  Why wouldn’t it work in the suburbs?
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    Current suburbs are quite low-density due to roads and front-yards pointlessly wasting space. It works fine with Japanese-style suburbs, but car-centric suburbs need those front yards to cut down on the sound of fast-moving cars directly outside the house (and reducing speed limits in suburbs down to 5 or 10 is utterly unthinkable for most people), and they also need a 2-car garage with another 2 car spots on the driveway and then another 3 spots on the curb, in case they need to park 7 cars at once for some reason and all their neighbours do too.
    - lazyasciiart 2y ago
      It works in plenty of Australian suburbs, which seem pretty car centric. I don’t know how they compare to Japanese suburbs.
      - Qwertious 2y ago
        Australian housing prices are literally some of the highest in the world; we're in the middle of a housing crisis. It might "work" in that sense that with sufficient mineral exports, we haven't gone bankrupt yet, but it's horrifically inefficient. Sydney housing prices are higher than in Tokyo.
        lazyasciiart 2y ago
        That’s totally irrelevant to whether you can implement public transit in a suburb. If you were actually talking about Australian suburbs in your first comment then you were wrong.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > Why wouldn’t it work in the suburbs? The number of cars per hour during most of the day on a suburban street is commonly around one. If a bus runs that frequently it would have one passenger and all you've done is replace one midsized car with one large bus at significant expense. If the bus runs less frequently than that it would have zero passengers because people will buy a car and drive it themselves rather than wait that long for a bus. This is already being somewhat generous by assuming that people would be willing to wait the balance of an hour for a bus. For mass transit to actually work you want service every five or ten minutes.
cloverich 2y ago
> Not to mention most grids being nowhere near able to support the entire population of car drivers fast-charging their cars during rush hour. Feels a bit like a straw man. Most commuters aren't extending beyond the range of their vehicle for work commutes, and would charge at home or office on solar. I agree they should not be sold as though there are no trade offs, but after extensive research it feels that for a primarily commuter scenario, never having to stop for gas, charging at home, etc, would be not only practical but actually superior. I frequently have to gas up mid week and with a busy job and kids, it is an actual hassle that would be nice to be a nice upgrade.
slashdev 2y ago
I can tell you don’t own a BEV. The range is a non issue 99% of the time when you’re driving around in your city. Charging at home is both cheap and super convenient. Maintenance is cheaper, the car lasts longer. I don’t know a single person who buys a BEV and goes back. I know many who go the other direction. And as adoption rises and technology improves the case will get stronger and stronger.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jmb99 2y ago
  > I can tell you don’t own a BEV. I don’t - my daily cost $1400USD, I don’t think there’s an EV on the planet that will work out cheaper before its batteries fail. Ignoring that I’d prefer one that could tow at least 5k lbs (which I make use of fairly frequently on my daily), seat 6 adults, cost only ~$300/year in maintenance (including tires and brakes), and go 750km without thinking about refuelling. And ideally would be comfortable and have good ride quality, which the vast majority of modern cars simply don’t (unless you spend far too much money). > The range is a non issue 99% of the time when you’re driving around in your city. Charging at home is both cheap and super convenient. I don’t live in the city, and trips to the city are minimum 50km round trip. Doable with most EVs, but that’s assuming I don’t actually go anywhere in the city. I also have to account for winter temperatures going below -30 relatively frequently, so would have to divide advertised range in half to account for regular worst-case conditions. And for used cars, maybe even more, especially if trying to hit anywhere close to the price point I pay for gas cars (and having to buy a car with older batteries). I don’t go into work frequently, but when I do, it’s over 100km round trip, assuming I make no stops. That rules out pretty much all small “city” EVs when taking into account range loss in the cold. Charging at home would be convenient, but I live 30 seconds from two gas stations, so I doubt it would be notably more convenient than that. > Maintenance is cheaper, the car lasts longer. Which EVs are known to last 3-400k miles without needing new batteries or having substantial range reduction? That’s what I anticipate out of my current car with only a ($1000) transmission rebuild at ~250k miles. The engine should outlast the car. Suspension components last ~200k miles, front brakes last 75k, rears last 150k. Tires last 40-60k and cost $500 for good ones. > I don’t know a single person who buys a BEV and goes back. I know many who go the other direction. Offhand I know at least 4. Mostly when they realize that “hey, my range has cut in half during this cold snap and I won’t be able to make it to X” or when they do the math and realize the extra $6-20k they spent they’re not saving in gas and maintenance before they buy another new car in 3-5 years. The ones who keep buying EVs usually do it for the image, or because they’re willing to spend substantially more money and sacrifice some convenience to drive a greener car. Most of both of those types (at least in my experience) also own a new luxury truck for hauling toys and taking kids to hockey, going on camping trips and that sort of thing. > And as adoption rises and technology improves the case will get stronger and stronger. I agree! But they’re not there yet. I would really like them to be, so that fewer people are buying gas cars who just want “a car.” I’d be happy to buy one myself if it made sense, but unfortunately it doesn’t.
cyberax 2y ago
> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. This hasn't been true for a couple of years. China is an excellent example of that, its market flipped to EVs virtually overnight once the benefits of EVs became clear. Last year, 48% of all the new cars sold in China were EVs, and this year it's projected to be around 60%. > The real solution is public transit No, it's not. Public transit is nothing but a distilled misery concentrator. Transit is also _not_ more CO2 effective than small-to-medium EVs when the carbon footprint of their _drivers_ is taken into the account.
forgetfreeman 2y ago
Mass transit is fine in the tiny fraction of areas where there's sufficient population density to make it viable. The total area of major metro areas in the US is something like 110,000 sq mi, or slightly larger than Colorado. What are your proposals for the rest of the country?
- Qwertious 2y ago
  ~80% of the population lives in cities. If we transition over cities, then we've solved most of the problem already.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Uh uh. That 80% figure includes suburbs, exurbs, and all manner of low density residential settings where mass transit is uneconomical. So now what?
    - protimewaster 2y ago
      If you only include sufficiently dense areas, what percentage of the population do you get? I suspect it's still high enough to make a big difference. And, honestly, I think some number of people would be willing to move into denser areas if there was good transit, so it's a problem that might work to solve itself in time.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        I'd love to figure out a way to come up with concrete numbers here. Any ideas?
        defrost 2y ago
        ArcGIS or other geospatial program and access to quality population density polygons via r/datahoarders or other community that can point out sources for you. (and recommend tooling - PostGIS is likely ok for this kind of thing without too much effort (fingers crossed)) It's a learning curve if you haven't done such things before, perhaps worth it if such questions interest you. You'll also be doing some seat of the pants Fermi estimations so it's be handy to run your thoughts past others that are into that kind of thing.
adrianmonk 2y ago
> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. There are multiple dimensions in which they differ. Cost, reliability, emissions, safety, convenience, driving enjoyment, etc. To compare them and say one is better overall than the other requires you to define the weight that you place on each of those factors. Many of those weights are subjective. Some people value convenience a lot. Some people don't. Some people passionately love driving a stick shift, and some people hate driving. Some people believe climate change is the most important issue of our time, and some people don't care if the planet is trashed as long as it doesn't happen within their own lifetimes. Since the weights are subjective, it is a logical impossibility for one of them to be objectively inferior or superior.
Qwertious 2y ago
Agreed on public transport being the real solution, but BEVs will be much cheaper (than ICEs) in the long run - they have far fewer moving parts, and they're only near the beginning of their learning curve, unlike ICE cars which have been expensively mass-produced for over a century at this point; they're not getting much cheaper.
- tremon 2y ago
  but BEVs will be much cheaper (than ICEs) in the long run That presupposes leaps of improvements in battery technology and battery recycling. Right now, the maintenance cost of a BEV is roughly $1,000 per year on battery replacement costs alone, and while I'm sure those costs will go down over time, they need to drop by 90% to be cost-competitive with ICE cars. That requires new materials that aren't on the science horizon yet, FAFAIK.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    That's funny: maintenance only costing $1,000/year sounds great compared to the ICE vehicles I'm accustomed to.
    - jmb99 2y ago
      You should buy more reliable vehicles, then, if you care about maintenance costs. Ignoring tires, my maintenance budget for my daily is about $200/year, and including them, averages ~$300/year. With above average mileage per year.
      - marssaxman 2y ago
        Life is full of trade-offs: if I did that, I'd have to carry a loan, which would in turn require a more expensive insurance policy, and then I'd be committed to a greater monthly outlay for the vehicle's financial maintenance than I typically have to expend for its physical maintenance. That kind of leverage probably makes sense for people who have a car at the center of their life, but that's not a way I'd like to live, so I accept the occasional mechanic's bill as the price of greater flexibility in my life as a whole.
Pxtl 2y ago
> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. Saving the world may require some effort and inconvenience.

by jmb99 2y ago

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> They’re (in most cases substantially) more expensive, less energy dense by mass and volume, and require planning for refuelling (especially if used in areas outside of main city centres or for long driving, or if you live in an apartment without access to a charger at home). The most popular BEVs already cost less than the average new car and the price will continue to decline as long as battery prices do. Ranges of ~300 miles are common, meanwhile the average commute is 42 miles, so charging at home is sufficient for the vast majority of usage and is more convenient than buying gas. Apartments will install chargers as electric vehicles become more common. For long trips, you begin your day having charged overnight and then add 200 miles of range at a supercharger in 15 minutes. That 500 miles is more than 8 hours of driving at 60MPH and it cost you 15 minutes. For people who make such long trips on a regular basis there will be cars with larger batteries and more range so that "overnight plus once in the middle" gets back to being just overnight. > Not to mention most grids being nowhere near able to support the entire population of car drivers fast-charging their cars during rush hour. This is the least interesting problem. Upgrading power grids is a known process involving only widely deployed existing technologies. > The real solution is public transit Public transit doesn't work in the suburbs, the majority of the population lives in suburban or rural areas and changing that would take decades of new housing construction which is currently prohibited by law.

lazyasciiart 2y ago
Why wouldn’t it work in the suburbs?
- Qwertious 2y ago
  Current suburbs are quite low-density due to roads and front-yards pointlessly wasting space. It works fine with Japanese-style suburbs, but car-centric suburbs need those front yards to cut down on the sound of fast-moving cars directly outside the house (and reducing speed limits in suburbs down to 5 or 10 is utterly unthinkable for most people), and they also need a 2-car garage with another 2 car spots on the driveway and then another 3 spots on the curb, in case they need to park 7 cars at once for some reason and all their neighbours do too.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    It works in plenty of Australian suburbs, which seem pretty car centric. I don’t know how they compare to Japanese suburbs.
    - Qwertious 2y ago
      Australian housing prices are literally some of the highest in the world; we're in the middle of a housing crisis. It might "work" in that sense that with sufficient mineral exports, we haven't gone bankrupt yet, but it's horrifically inefficient. Sydney housing prices are higher than in Tokyo.
      - lazyasciiart 2y ago
        That’s totally irrelevant to whether you can implement public transit in a suburb. If you were actually talking about Australian suburbs in your first comment then you were wrong.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > Why wouldn’t it work in the suburbs? The number of cars per hour during most of the day on a suburban street is commonly around one. If a bus runs that frequently it would have one passenger and all you've done is replace one midsized car with one large bus at significant expense. If the bus runs less frequently than that it would have zero passengers because people will buy a car and drive it themselves rather than wait that long for a bus. This is already being somewhat generous by assuming that people would be willing to wait the balance of an hour for a bus. For mass transit to actually work you want service every five or ten minutes.

cloverich 2y ago

> Not to mention most grids being nowhere near able to support the entire population of car drivers fast-charging their cars during rush hour. Feels a bit like a straw man. Most commuters aren't extending beyond the range of their vehicle for work commutes, and would charge at home or office on solar. I agree they should not be sold as though there are no trade offs, but after extensive research it feels that for a primarily commuter scenario, never having to stop for gas, charging at home, etc, would be not only practical but actually superior. I frequently have to gas up mid week and with a busy job and kids, it is an actual hassle that would be nice to be a nice upgrade.

slashdev 2y ago

I can tell you don’t own a BEV. The range is a non issue 99% of the time when you’re driving around in your city. Charging at home is both cheap and super convenient. Maintenance is cheaper, the car lasts longer. I don’t know a single person who buys a BEV and goes back. I know many who go the other direction. And as adoption rises and technology improves the case will get stronger and stronger.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jmb99 2y ago
> I can tell you don’t own a BEV. I don’t - my daily cost $1400USD, I don’t think there’s an EV on the planet that will work out cheaper before its batteries fail. Ignoring that I’d prefer one that could tow at least 5k lbs (which I make use of fairly frequently on my daily), seat 6 adults, cost only ~$300/year in maintenance (including tires and brakes), and go 750km without thinking about refuelling. And ideally would be comfortable and have good ride quality, which the vast majority of modern cars simply don’t (unless you spend far too much money). > The range is a non issue 99% of the time when you’re driving around in your city. Charging at home is both cheap and super convenient. I don’t live in the city, and trips to the city are minimum 50km round trip. Doable with most EVs, but that’s assuming I don’t actually go anywhere in the city. I also have to account for winter temperatures going below -30 relatively frequently, so would have to divide advertised range in half to account for regular worst-case conditions. And for used cars, maybe even more, especially if trying to hit anywhere close to the price point I pay for gas cars (and having to buy a car with older batteries). I don’t go into work frequently, but when I do, it’s over 100km round trip, assuming I make no stops. That rules out pretty much all small “city” EVs when taking into account range loss in the cold. Charging at home would be convenient, but I live 30 seconds from two gas stations, so I doubt it would be notably more convenient than that. > Maintenance is cheaper, the car lasts longer. Which EVs are known to last 3-400k miles without needing new batteries or having substantial range reduction? That’s what I anticipate out of my current car with only a ($1000) transmission rebuild at ~250k miles. The engine should outlast the car. Suspension components last ~200k miles, front brakes last 75k, rears last 150k. Tires last 40-60k and cost $500 for good ones. > I don’t know a single person who buys a BEV and goes back. I know many who go the other direction. Offhand I know at least 4. Mostly when they realize that “hey, my range has cut in half during this cold snap and I won’t be able to make it to X” or when they do the math and realize the extra $6-20k they spent they’re not saving in gas and maintenance before they buy another new car in 3-5 years. The ones who keep buying EVs usually do it for the image, or because they’re willing to spend substantially more money and sacrifice some convenience to drive a greener car. Most of both of those types (at least in my experience) also own a new luxury truck for hauling toys and taking kids to hockey, going on camping trips and that sort of thing. > And as adoption rises and technology improves the case will get stronger and stronger. I agree! But they’re not there yet. I would really like them to be, so that fewer people are buying gas cars who just want “a car.” I’d be happy to buy one myself if it made sense, but unfortunately it doesn’t.

cyberax 2y ago

> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. This hasn't been true for a couple of years. China is an excellent example of that, its market flipped to EVs virtually overnight once the benefits of EVs became clear. Last year, 48% of all the new cars sold in China were EVs, and this year it's projected to be around 60%. > The real solution is public transit No, it's not. Public transit is nothing but a distilled misery concentrator. Transit is also _not_ more CO2 effective than small-to-medium EVs when the carbon footprint of their _drivers_ is taken into the account.

forgetfreeman 2y ago

Mass transit is fine in the tiny fraction of areas where there's sufficient population density to make it viable. The total area of major metro areas in the US is something like 110,000 sq mi, or slightly larger than Colorado. What are your proposals for the rest of the country?

Qwertious 2y ago
~80% of the population lives in cities. If we transition over cities, then we've solved most of the problem already.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Uh uh. That 80% figure includes suburbs, exurbs, and all manner of low density residential settings where mass transit is uneconomical. So now what?
  - protimewaster 2y ago
    If you only include sufficiently dense areas, what percentage of the population do you get? I suspect it's still high enough to make a big difference. And, honestly, I think some number of people would be willing to move into denser areas if there was good transit, so it's a problem that might work to solve itself in time.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      I'd love to figure out a way to come up with concrete numbers here. Any ideas?
      - defrost 2y ago
        ArcGIS or other geospatial program and access to quality population density polygons via r/datahoarders or other community that can point out sources for you. (and recommend tooling - PostGIS is likely ok for this kind of thing without too much effort (fingers crossed)) It's a learning curve if you haven't done such things before, perhaps worth it if such questions interest you. You'll also be doing some seat of the pants Fermi estimations so it's be handy to run your thoughts past others that are into that kind of thing.

adrianmonk 2y ago

> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. There are multiple dimensions in which they differ. Cost, reliability, emissions, safety, convenience, driving enjoyment, etc. To compare them and say one is better overall than the other requires you to define the weight that you place on each of those factors. Many of those weights are subjective. Some people value convenience a lot. Some people don't. Some people passionately love driving a stick shift, and some people hate driving. Some people believe climate change is the most important issue of our time, and some people don't care if the planet is trashed as long as it doesn't happen within their own lifetimes. Since the weights are subjective, it is a logical impossibility for one of them to be objectively inferior or superior.

Qwertious 2y ago

Agreed on public transport being the real solution, but BEVs will be much cheaper (than ICEs) in the long run - they have far fewer moving parts, and they're only near the beginning of their learning curve, unlike ICE cars which have been expensively mass-produced for over a century at this point; they're not getting much cheaper.

tremon 2y ago
but BEVs will be much cheaper (than ICEs) in the long run That presupposes leaps of improvements in battery technology and battery recycling. Right now, the maintenance cost of a BEV is roughly $1,000 per year on battery replacement costs alone, and while I'm sure those costs will go down over time, they need to drop by 90% to be cost-competitive with ICE cars. That requires new materials that aren't on the science horizon yet, FAFAIK.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  That's funny: maintenance only costing $1,000/year sounds great compared to the ICE vehicles I'm accustomed to.
  - jmb99 2y ago
    You should buy more reliable vehicles, then, if you care about maintenance costs. Ignoring tires, my maintenance budget for my daily is about $200/year, and including them, averages ~$300/year. With above average mileage per year.
    - marssaxman 2y ago
      Life is full of trade-offs: if I did that, I'd have to carry a loan, which would in turn require a more expensive insurance policy, and then I'd be committed to a greater monthly outlay for the vehicle's financial maintenance than I typically have to expend for its physical maintenance. That kind of leverage probably makes sense for people who have a car at the center of their life, but that's not a way I'd like to live, so I accept the occasional mechanic's bill as the price of greater flexibility in my life as a whole.

Pxtl 2y ago

> While BEVs have a lot of benefits, they are still objectively inferior to ICE vehicles. Saving the world may require some effort and inconvenience.