34 ms·

No, over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. The hope is for better batteries, but developmen

by amelius 9mo ago

No, over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. The hope is for better batteries, but developments are excruciatingly slow.

DangitBobby 9mo ago
Crucially the flat EV curve puts them mostly ahead of where ICEVs have been for their entire history.
- Spivak 9mo ago
  It's not really an ICE vs EV thing, more that "EVs as hip new technology improving leaps and bounds annually" isn't really a thing and they're the car version of air fryers. This is, to me, actually a good because there's no longer any early adopters remorse anymore so no reason not to buy one now because it won't be outdated in six months.
  - DangitBobby 9mo ago
    I believe you have a mistaken impression. First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. Buyers remorse also for the switch from the previous US charging standard to Tesla's. And people are generally waiting with bated breath for advancements in battery technology for charging speeds, longevity, and capacity. Accurate or not, people are waiting for the technology to mature so they don't have an EV that isn't worth what they paid for it.
    - rootusrootus 9mo ago
      > First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. I feel this directly. On paper I've lost more money on my Model 3 than I have on the previous half dozen cars combined, I'm pretty sure. But on the other hand, Ford canceling the Lightning has (at least temporarily) improved the resale value on my Lightning considerably. I couldn't really sell it today for what I paid for it, but I wouldn't be that far off. Problem is that I don't really love the Tesla, but I do love the Lightning. Ha! So I keep them both but for differing reasons. > the switch from the previous US charging standard to Tesla's As an aside, this is finally happening for real! Several models coming to market now are shipping with J3400 (aka NACS) ports standard. Yay! I look forward to a time where the days of various adapters being required are firmly behind us.
    - formerly_proven 9mo ago
      > First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. The very high deprecation is often noted but the comparison is mostly in relation to sticker price, but the high discounts plus subsidies mean that the average discount for an EV was way higher than on ICE cars. Most of the high depreciation disappears once you take into account what the first buyer would have actually paid for the vehicle (often a five-digit discount), at least in my used car market. Some models seem to actually hold their value remarkably well, particularly those with no/few known issues and no real successors.
      - DangitBobby 9mo ago
        I bought my car in the very brief period (a few months) where my purchase did not qualify for the tax credit. After 3.5 years of ownership, cars like mine sell for $15k, roughly 50% what I paid for it. The car works perfectly and the model has no widespread issues. I'm definitely planning to keep it, but my original plan was to trade it in for something newer when battery tech got battery. Seems like that's no longer in the cards.
        formerly_proven 9mo ago
        Yeah, but if you had the tax credit that presumably almost all other buyers got, then the amount of depreciation would be completely normal or even relatively low, depending on how high the EV subsidy was in your state (I'm assuming something in the 5-10k range?). Another example would be small EVs (Zoe, e-up etc.) - the list price on these was often really high, like 25+k (and they were technologically obsolete already 5-6 years ago). But then you got 5k+ in EV subsidy, with the OEM also matching the subsidy, and you would've ended up actually paying like 15k for them. Now, 3-4 years later, these go used for 12-13k. So in reality they lost barely any value (20% deprecation over 3 years), but the published deprecation figure would be 60+%. This explains why despite these "EVs suffer huge deprecation" claims there are actually very few bargains on the used market to make.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
  - julianeon 9mo ago
    I hear people say this, but I also see announcements from Chinese carmakers like this: "NEW: Latest EV model boasts full charge (200 miles) in only ~5 minutes" To me, that seems like a leaps & bounds improvement.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> No, over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat Engine and battery performance are analogous.
mynameisash 9mo ago
> over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. This may be true, but my family's "daily" ICE vehicle costs us about $0.162/mile to run; our actual daily EV costs about $0.028/mile -- almost one sixth as much. It doesn't matter how much more improvements ICE vehicles achieve, they're not going to catch up to the "mostly flat" EV curve.
rootusrootus 9mo ago
The curve is mostly flat for EVs because they started with such high efficiency to begin with. At their best, internal combustion engines are quite terrible so there has been more room to make improvements. Even so, the vast, vast majority of cars in the past 100 years have had all of the technical innovation of a washing machine (and that might well be underselling the washing machine!). > developments are excruciatingly slow 10% a year on average, something like that? ICEVs haven't had that kind of incremental improvement in a loooooong time.
- amelius 9mo ago
  You have to zoom out a bit. EVs are still improving of course because they are relatively new. It's not fair to compare that to the last few decades of car history. You can make any flat looking graph look steep by zooming.
  - ponector 9mo ago
    EVs are as old as ICE vehicles, people should compare both on the same scale.
  - rootusrootus 9mo ago
    The only part of an electric car that hasn't been in development for at least as long as any ICE vehicle is the battery. So really it all comes down to that one thing.
hvb2 9mo ago
> there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. Uh yes, because it's really hard to improve the efficiency of something that is 4 to 5 times as efficient... https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10963 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10963
tencentshill 9mo ago
EVs are incredibly efficient. It's why aerodynamics matter so much and they all look so weird. The electricity from fossil sources they use is also efficiently generated at scale and in many states, mostly from renewables. It's equivalent to driving an ICE car that gets 200mpg in the absolute worst case.
- malfist 9mo ago
  Hence the eMPG.
unclejuan 9mo ago
If you compare a 2012 tesla model s 70D (the most efficient model tesla had then and arguably the gold standard) it had 33.4 kWh/100mi EPA, the 2025 LR is 27.2kWh/100m which is nearly 22.8% less and this while being larger. What's even crazier is that a tesla 2008 tesla roadster had 28kWh/100mi EPA combined, which is more than today's model S. Literally there isn't a single combustion car (not including hybrids) which comes anywhere close to this improvement. Also I don't know about other countries, but I'd argue that in 20 years at least in Europe the fuel economy of diesel cars has gone worse due to emissions, I'm talking about real world usage, regardless of what this WLTP non-sense says.l
abenga 9mo ago
What vast improvements in ICE? From 20% to 40% efficiency?

by amelius 9mo ago

No, over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. The hope is for better batteries, but developments are excruciatingly slow.

DangitBobby 9mo ago

Crucially the flat EV curve puts them mostly ahead of where ICEVs have been for their entire history.

Spivak 9mo ago
It's not really an ICE vs EV thing, more that "EVs as hip new technology improving leaps and bounds annually" isn't really a thing and they're the car version of air fryers. This is, to me, actually a good because there's no longer any early adopters remorse anymore so no reason not to buy one now because it won't be outdated in six months.
- DangitBobby 9mo ago
  I believe you have a mistaken impression. First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. Buyers remorse also for the switch from the previous US charging standard to Tesla's. And people are generally waiting with bated breath for advancements in battery technology for charging speeds, longevity, and capacity. Accurate or not, people are waiting for the technology to mature so they don't have an EV that isn't worth what they paid for it.
  - rootusrootus 9mo ago
    > First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. I feel this directly. On paper I've lost more money on my Model 3 than I have on the previous half dozen cars combined, I'm pretty sure. But on the other hand, Ford canceling the Lightning has (at least temporarily) improved the resale value on my Lightning considerably. I couldn't really sell it today for what I paid for it, but I wouldn't be that far off. Problem is that I don't really love the Tesla, but I do love the Lightning. Ha! So I keep them both but for differing reasons. > the switch from the previous US charging standard to Tesla's As an aside, this is finally happening for real! Several models coming to market now are shipping with J3400 (aka NACS) ports standard. Yay! I look forward to a time where the days of various adapters being required are firmly behind us.
  - formerly_proven 9mo ago
    > First, the bottom has fallen out of the used market creating significant buyers remorse for early adopters. The very high deprecation is often noted but the comparison is mostly in relation to sticker price, but the high discounts plus subsidies mean that the average discount for an EV was way higher than on ICE cars. Most of the high depreciation disappears once you take into account what the first buyer would have actually paid for the vehicle (often a five-digit discount), at least in my used car market. Some models seem to actually hold their value remarkably well, particularly those with no/few known issues and no real successors.
    - DangitBobby 9mo ago
      I bought my car in the very brief period (a few months) where my purchase did not qualify for the tax credit. After 3.5 years of ownership, cars like mine sell for $15k, roughly 50% what I paid for it. The car works perfectly and the model has no widespread issues. I'm definitely planning to keep it, but my original plan was to trade it in for something newer when battery tech got battery. Seems like that's no longer in the cards.
      - formerly_proven 9mo ago
        Yeah, but if you had the tax credit that presumably almost all other buyers got, then the amount of depreciation would be completely normal or even relatively low, depending on how high the EV subsidy was in your state (I'm assuming something in the 5-10k range?). Another example would be small EVs (Zoe, e-up etc.) - the list price on these was often really high, like 25+k (and they were technologically obsolete already 5-6 years ago). But then you got 5k+ in EV subsidy, with the OEM also matching the subsidy, and you would've ended up actually paying like 15k for them. Now, 3-4 years later, these go used for 12-13k. So in reality they lost barely any value (20% deprecation over 3 years), but the published deprecation figure would be 60+%. This explains why despite these "EVs suffer huge deprecation" claims there are actually very few bargains on the used market to make.
        deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
- julianeon 9mo ago
  I hear people say this, but I also see announcements from Chinese carmakers like this: "NEW: Latest EV model boasts full charge (200 miles) in only ~5 minutes" To me, that seems like a leaps & bounds improvement.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> No, over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat Engine and battery performance are analogous.

mynameisash 9mo ago

> over 100 years there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. This may be true, but my family's "daily" ICE vehicle costs us about $0.162/mile to run; our actual daily EV costs about $0.028/mile -- almost one sixth as much. It doesn't matter how much more improvements ICE vehicles achieve, they're not going to catch up to the "mostly flat" EV curve.

rootusrootus 9mo ago

The curve is mostly flat for EVs because they started with such high efficiency to begin with. At their best, internal combustion engines are quite terrible so there has been more room to make improvements. Even so, the vast, vast majority of cars in the past 100 years have had all of the technical innovation of a washing machine (and that might well be underselling the washing machine!). > developments are excruciatingly slow 10% a year on average, something like that? ICEVs haven't had that kind of incremental improvement in a loooooong time.

amelius 9mo ago
You have to zoom out a bit. EVs are still improving of course because they are relatively new. It's not fair to compare that to the last few decades of car history. You can make any flat looking graph look steep by zooming.
- ponector 9mo ago
  EVs are as old as ICE vehicles, people should compare both on the same scale.
- rootusrootus 9mo ago
  The only part of an electric car that hasn't been in development for at least as long as any ICE vehicle is the battery. So really it all comes down to that one thing.

hvb2 9mo ago

> there have been vast improvements in efficiency in ICEVs. In EVs, the curve is mostly flat. Uh yes, because it's really hard to improve the efficiency of something that is 4 to 5 times as efficient... https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10963 https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10963

tencentshill 9mo ago

EVs are incredibly efficient. It's why aerodynamics matter so much and they all look so weird. The electricity from fossil sources they use is also efficiently generated at scale and in many states, mostly from renewables. It's equivalent to driving an ICE car that gets 200mpg in the absolute worst case.

malfist 9mo ago
Hence the eMPG.

unclejuan 9mo ago

If you compare a 2012 tesla model s 70D (the most efficient model tesla had then and arguably the gold standard) it had 33.4 kWh/100mi EPA, the 2025 LR is 27.2kWh/100m which is nearly 22.8% less and this while being larger. What's even crazier is that a tesla 2008 tesla roadster had 28kWh/100mi EPA combined, which is more than today's model S. Literally there isn't a single combustion car (not including hybrids) which comes anywhere close to this improvement. Also I don't know about other countries, but I'd argue that in 20 years at least in Europe the fuel economy of diesel cars has gone worse due to emissions, I'm talking about real world usage, regardless of what this WLTP non-sense says.l

abenga 9mo ago

What vast improvements in ICE? From 20% to 40% efficiency?