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Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so. But if you're commuting 3 hours a da
by jaggederest 14y ago
Honestly, electric cars are never going to be completely practical for people with a daily commute beyond 150 miles or so.
But if you're commuting 3 hours a day total, you have bigger issues with your life, to be honest. Move closer to where you commute!
- madisp 14y agoI'd say a 150+ mile daily commute isn't practical :)
- SudarshanP 14y agoMaybe with the hyperloop even 150 miles will be "nearby" someday. See http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-hyper-loop-2012-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-hyper-loop-2012-9
- adriand 14y agoFrankly, if I can't get there in less than 1/2 an hour on my bicycle, I don't think I'm interested.
- freehunter 14y agoTry doing that in the midwest. Finding jobs gets hard and apartments are rare and low quality, so it's not uncommon to have to settle on a 20 minute (or much more) commute by car on the freeway. There are also no bike lanes. Commuting long distances isn't great, but moving more people into the city isn't always the best option either. We learned that in the 1900's
- warfangle 14y agoMoving more people into an _early 1900s_ city wasn't the best option, unless you wanted a non-farm job. And then the GI bill (given predominately to white veterans over black veterans) jumpstarted white flight and the beginnings of suburbia.
- eru 14y agoI guess one should move out of the midwest then, where moving people into cities works better?
- troels 14y agoDepends on the speed with which you can travel. During rush hour, even 1.5 miles is unbearable.
- eru 14y agoJust walk. Or take a bike.
- protomyth 14y agoI'm doing 86 miles (43 one way) a day if I don't go into town (then its and extra 13 one way). Housing shortages will do that to you. My commute here takes less time than my 30 mile (15 one way) commute in the Twin Cities.
- NDizzle 14y agoMiles aren't really the deal breaker - it's the time. I had a 130 mile commute in the 90s in Arkansas that took me.. 130ish minutes. Now I have a 32 mile commute that takes around 2 hours and is 15 miles driving, BART for 35ish minutes, and walking for 20 minutes.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoNever? You're telling me that in a thousand years, we won't have electric cars able to sustain a 300 mile daily commute? This isn't a discussion of if. It's a discussion of when.
- kamaal 14y agoI think he is saying even a thousand years from now 300 mile daily commute even though possible is not practical on the part of the person traveling.
- walkon 14y agoWith 1,000 years, feel free to think bigger: teleportation!
- sjm 14y agoBeware the telefrag.
- jaggederest 14y agoNo no, I'm saying a three hour commute. Regardless of the distance there's still going to be 24 hours in a day. Spending 12% of your day commuting is bonkers.
- mdonahoe 14y agoI hope that in a thousand years we don't commute at all.
- betterth 14y agoI think people don't understand how disruptive electric cars will be, when combined with autonomous cars. When all you do is pull out your cellphone, select a route and a car picks you up in 5 minutes, takes you to your destination, and leaves... you don't worry about range and electricity and recharge. You just use it, and the system can intelligently maintain battery levels and recharging across the fleet, ensuring efficiency. Heck, such a system could provide gasoline or hybrid cars for trips that required them.
- jsight 14y agoThe Tesla has ~180 mile range on a 30 minute charge. 150 miles one way with a charger at the office sounds quite practical based on that. It'd actually be less disruptive than a gasoline vehicle.
- havemurci 14y agoRight, and iron horses will never replace real ones in farming because they are too heavy and use up too much coal. Take a look into graphene-based supercapacitors. It _is_ possible to charge an electric car in a few minutes. It's just a matter of time. [and no, we're not talking EEStor. We're talking multiple research universities actively looking into the technology. Angstron Materials is one.]
- nancyhua 14y agoI read about this charging issue being addressed in Israel with a company called Better Place that does battery swapping. The reasoning was Israel is small enough to roll out something like this on a large scale. Battery swapping sounds great because they were saying it'd only take a few minutes, which is comparable to fueling up with gas.