5 ms·

The climate benefits of retiring an operational combustion engine vehicle

38 points by toomuchtodo 3mo ago

toomuchtodo 3mo ago
Original title “The climate benefits of retiring a fully operational internal combustion engine vehicle” compressed to fit within title limits. A new lifecycle study in the journal Science concludes there are substantial climate benefits to swapping an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle for an electric vehicle (EV) even if the ICE or hybrid vehicle is brand new, if driven more than ~7,054 km/year (4,384 miles/year).
twobitshifter 3mo ago
It looks like they have the BEV lasting just as long as ICE car without any battery replacement. Has it turned out that way? Seems like owning an electric car for 18 years really hasn’t been a thing since the model s was released in 2012, but is it projected to last that long.
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  Yes. EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments) New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ev%20batteries%20last&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.
  - FabCH 3mo ago
    Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides. There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up. Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
    - gibspaulding 3mo ago
      > Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up. While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example). No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
      - joshdont 3mo ago
        Personal experience backs up. Had a 2009 Prius, let it go because I did a terrible job handling rust buildup. Was still running great on the original battery pack with nearly 200k miles when we sold it. Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
      - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
        >you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math. With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
- FabCH 3mo ago
  As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator. Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 3mo ago
  4% of Toyota engines need to be replaced before 250,000 miles; 3% of Tesla batteries need to be replaced before 250,000 miles. "More reliable than a Toyota engine" is pretty high praise.
- wcunning 3mo ago
  The issue is less the wear and tear of the battery and motors and more the wear and tear of everything else -- suspension and brake components are going to need replacing, along with radar and ultrasonic modules, etc. These parts will be at least partially end-of-life and hard to get by the end of that 20 year period. Federal law requires some amount of parts availability for 10 years + some release of part designs to the aftermarket after that, but I have a hard time getting parts for 21 year old Ford designs that were less than popular, so I would be surprised if early Tesla models are having an easy time 20 years on. This gets much much worse as you start to look at the number of abandoned EV models from the Big 3, the abandoned/dead/dying companies (Fiskar, Lucid, Lordstown, etc). That doesn't hit the vast majority of all EVs, which are just Tesla, but it does put a dent/makes the buying decision harder. Now expand that to not just Tesla, but what does Tesla do with a Cybertruck? Like all things, the specific product decision matters a lot, and this is a new area (even at 14 years old) so there will be lots of people who optimized for cost and not maintainability.
  - coderenegade 3mo ago
    The surprising thing is that parts availability is even worse for new cars. Sensors are built into every part now, so it's no longer just a windscreen or a bumper. If those sensors are critical to the driver assist systems, the car can be a write-off for trivial damage because of the difficulty of getting parts. And in many places, you can't just disable those systems and get on with things, even if the car is otherwise perfectly fine, because the law states that roadworthiness requires the original safety systems to be intact. Even more alarmingly, the speed of revisions now is such that vehicles can have parts that were only used for a very short run before being updated and replaced. Your particular vehicle batch may not necessarily have identical parts to other batches even within the same generation. We're a long, long way from the way things used to be, when parts commonality stretched for decades.
- rsynnott 3mo ago
  Nissan Leaf went production-scale in 2010. There are still a surprising number of the very old ones around, even though the Leaf had a particularly _problematic_ battery by EV standards.
jmclnx 3mo ago
The US Post Office was slated to use EVs as replacements for worn out mail delivery vehicles. For many areas, especially urban areas, those would have been perfect and cheaper in the long run. I know because I knew a lot of Mail cCarriers and I know how these are used. As a kid I was driven around a route one day with a relative. But Trump and the Postmaster General cancelled that and went to use gas guzzlers instead. I wonder how that is working out now.
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  Still happening. https://news.usps.com/2025/12/01/usps-is-delivering-its-new-fleet/ https://news.usps.com/2025/12/01/usps-is-delivering-its-new-... > The Postal Service’s $9.6 billion upgrade of its delivery fleet is proceeding apace. The organization plans to roll out 106,000 new vehicles by 2028, including 45,000 battery-electric next-generation delivery vehicles and 21,000 commercial-off-the-shelf battery-electric vehicles. > Additionally, USPS is upgrading infrastructure at its facilities with the addition of charging stations for the zero-emission electric vehicles, of which over 14,000 have already been purchased. > So far, more than 35,000 new vehicles are on the road. > “The new fleet rollout is proceeding well, aligned with our plan,” said Justin Glass, the Postal Service’s fleet management senior director. (USPS spends ~$500M/year for fossil fuels, so it’s a no brainer to electrify)
  - virgildotcodes 3mo ago
    Wow, a small glimmer of good news. I almost want to hide this comment over fear of drawing attention to this thing that got away from the powers that be.
    - stockresearcher 3mo ago
      The ICE version of the new vehicle uses a 2-liter turbo 4-cylinder engine and an 8-speed auto transmission, both straight out of the Ford parts catalog. Calling them gas guzzlers is a bit much. They will be significantly more fuel efficient and cleaner-burning than what they’re replacing. Not to mention cheap parts and service everywhere in the US. (Yes, they would have been better as EVs)
bitwize 3mo ago
Propaganda for "Scrap your old car now and buy new—now with AI driver spying features as mandated by Congress, and personal data sales to insurance companies!"
- trollbridge 3mo ago
  The "get rid of a working car" is particularly suspect, and reminds me of the "cash for clunkers" scheme which was basically a giant sop to the auto industry. Why not just have EVs replace ICE vehicles when they break down and aren't worth repairing?
  - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
    The TLDR is “Replace your combustion vehicle with an EV if you’re a high mileage driver; a low mileage driver can then buy the combustion vehicle for low mileage use.” An EV sold to someone who drives 1k miles a year is somewhat inefficient at this point of the adoption curve, versus someone who drives 5k-15k miles a year. You want to maximize EV miles traveled to minimize CO2 emissions. 25% of total annual global vehicle sales are already EVs. We’re just arguing timeline to get to 100%. Peak combustion vehicle sales was 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/09/chinese-electric-car-sales-surge-to-a-record-high-in-europe https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/09/chinese-ele... https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-technology/evs-take-49-16-of-australia-s-new-car-market-in-record-breaking-june-quarter https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-technology/evs-take-...
    - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
      Dude, everything you post is borderline propaganda. There's probably a few people who'll keep their 2017 Mazda an little longer because of who the message is coming from. >Peak combustion vehicle sales was 2017. Peak oil was every year starting decades before I was born.
      - toomuchtodo 3mo ago
okr 3mo ago
Can we not finally close all volcanos?
SoftTalker 3mo ago
The fact of the matter is that the only thing that matters to most people is what makes economic sense to them. As for me, no way am I trading my 20 year old, fully paid for, cheap to insure, cheap to register ICE vehicle for a new EV with payments, higher insurance, and higher registration fees.
- cucumber3732842 3mo ago
  >higher insurance, and higher registration fees. And higher propensity to beep and whine at you and higher propensity to pull a "I'm sorry dave" at any given time.
  - coderenegade 3mo ago
    This is a big part of it for me. With 'driver assist' systems that intervene when you're driving now being mandatory for all new vehicles sold in my country, I don't want anything newer than 2024. Practically , probably nothing newer than around 2020. You can disable driver assist, but for most modern vehicles, you need to do so every time you start the car. Insurance will eventually be used as a hammer to force compliance on this. Removing safety equipment that came with the vehicle already makes a car unroadworthy, so that's not an option either. I'll be driving my old cars to the bitter end.
- jeffbee 3mo ago
  The economy does not occur naturally. We can turn the knobs on this equation by just having some taxes. For example, carbon taxes. That should change your calculus pretty significantly.
  - unnamed76ri 3mo ago
    How very tyrannical.
    - thelastgallon 3mo ago
      Yes, lets continue on with the $7 trillion subsidies/year (worldwide), 10M deaths from air pollution, almost all diseases/cancers linked to pollution. Its sacrilege to talk about fossil fuel subsidies.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
PlunderBunny 3mo ago
We replaced our 2010 Ford Transit (diesel) with a 2022 Ssangyong (LDV) eDeliver 9 (battery electric), and one of the benefits I didn’t expect was just how much quieter it is in the cab - a conversation with my partner when we’re driving is much easier/more pleasant. (It’s not due to better insulation - both these vehicles are basically steel frames on wheels) - I don’t see this mentioned much in articles comparing EVs and ICEVs.
- rsynnott 3mo ago
  This is _very_ noticeable with buses. My local transport system uses a mixture of modern-ish (last 10 years) diesels, heavy/plugin serial-hybrid, BEV, and a small number of ancient (20 year old) diesels, all double decker. The BEVs are a shockingly different experience from the old diesels, noise and vibration-wise. (The most disconcerting are the hybrids, which go from near-silent to very noisy and back periodically.)
pir8life4me 3mo ago
I'd love a BEV but where do I charge it? If I use public chargers isn't that vastly more expensive?
joak 3mo ago
There is an element I haven't seen in this conversation: as the number of combustion engine cars goes down the number of gas stations also goes down. At some point, combustion engine drivers will start feeling range anxiety. So when you get rid of your fossil-fuel-burner vehicle, you are pushing others to do so. The full calculus of CO2 emissions reduction should also include the reduction induced in others.
- roryirvine 3mo ago
  That process has likely already started, with the long term trend towards consolidation having accelerated over the past five years. In the UK, for example, the number of petrol stations has fallen by around 75% in the past 50 years and drivers now have to travel twice as far on average to fill up. I'd expect the remaining sites in city centres to have entirely vanished by 2035. Out of town, they'll last a little longer but the distribution component of petrol prices will rise as the fixed costs are born by dwindling numbers of ICE drivers. By the mid 2040s, there'll only be a tiny market driven largely by enthusiasts who don't care much about price. Perhaps we'll see delivery services springing up, similar to those for home heating oil, but the traditional large petrol station will be all but dead.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 3mo ago
    Depends on country maybe? In Germany they make more by being small supermarkets, selling snacks, energy drinks, tobacco/vapes, alcohol, at insane prices, 24/7. In the USA similar, with even wider range of stuff, except alcohol, though that may depend on the state, or even county also.
karussell 3mo ago
I would like to get rid of it in the next few years but all new cars have only touch screen and phone home. Are there "stupid" e-cars too? I don't need much.
- sparklysoup 3mo ago
  Pretty much all new cars incorporate touch screens - that's the wrong thing to look at. What's important is if they retain physical/tactile controls for the things that matter (or matter to you). There are a number of cars out there that still have old-fashioned controls - Hyundai Kona is on my list for that reason.
karussell 3mo ago
Why not sell a fully operational car as a used car and buy a new electric vehicle? Then, when looking into all cars, the fleet will get one more electric vehicle, but at the same time fully operational cars are still used until the end.

38 points by toomuchtodo 3mo ago

Original title “The climate benefits of retiring a fully operational internal combustion engine vehicle” compressed to fit within title limits. A new lifecycle study in the journal Science concludes there are substantial climate benefits to swapping an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle for an electric vehicle (EV) even if the ICE or hybrid vehicle is brand new, if driven more than ~7,054 km/year (4,384 miles/year).

twobitshifter 3mo ago

It looks like they have the BEV lasting just as long as ICE car without any battery replacement. Has it turned out that way? Seems like owning an electric car for 18 years really hasn’t been a thing since the model s was released in 2012, but is it projected to last that long.

toomuchtodo 3mo ago
Yes. EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments) New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ev%20batteries%20last&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
trollbridge 3mo ago
Certainly not the case for hybrids like Priuses. The battery system lasts 10-15 years and 150k-200k miles. Any ICE car on the market now should be expected to last a lot longer than that; I drive cars that are 25+ years old and really don't need much significant in the way of repairs.
- FabCH 3mo ago
  Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides. There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up. Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
  - gibspaulding 3mo ago
    > Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up. While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example). No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
    - joshdont 3mo ago
      Personal experience backs up. Had a 2009 Prius, let it go because I did a terrible job handling rust buildup. Was still running great on the original battery pack with nearly 200k miles when we sold it. Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
    - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
      >you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math. With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
FabCH 3mo ago
As a data point: I’m at year 8 of Model X 100kWh with basically 0% capacity loss. If it exists at all, it’s less than 1-2%, so less than what I can reasonably measure with just the odometer and battery indicator. Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
bryanlarsen 3mo ago
4% of Toyota engines need to be replaced before 250,000 miles; 3% of Tesla batteries need to be replaced before 250,000 miles. "More reliable than a Toyota engine" is pretty high praise.
wcunning 3mo ago
The issue is less the wear and tear of the battery and motors and more the wear and tear of everything else -- suspension and brake components are going to need replacing, along with radar and ultrasonic modules, etc. These parts will be at least partially end-of-life and hard to get by the end of that 20 year period. Federal law requires some amount of parts availability for 10 years + some release of part designs to the aftermarket after that, but I have a hard time getting parts for 21 year old Ford designs that were less than popular, so I would be surprised if early Tesla models are having an easy time 20 years on. This gets much much worse as you start to look at the number of abandoned EV models from the Big 3, the abandoned/dead/dying companies (Fiskar, Lucid, Lordstown, etc). That doesn't hit the vast majority of all EVs, which are just Tesla, but it does put a dent/makes the buying decision harder. Now expand that to not just Tesla, but what does Tesla do with a Cybertruck? Like all things, the specific product decision matters a lot, and this is a new area (even at 14 years old) so there will be lots of people who optimized for cost and not maintainability.
- coderenegade 3mo ago
  The surprising thing is that parts availability is even worse for new cars. Sensors are built into every part now, so it's no longer just a windscreen or a bumper. If those sensors are critical to the driver assist systems, the car can be a write-off for trivial damage because of the difficulty of getting parts. And in many places, you can't just disable those systems and get on with things, even if the car is otherwise perfectly fine, because the law states that roadworthiness requires the original safety systems to be intact. Even more alarmingly, the speed of revisions now is such that vehicles can have parts that were only used for a very short run before being updated and replaced. Your particular vehicle batch may not necessarily have identical parts to other batches even within the same generation. We're a long, long way from the way things used to be, when parts commonality stretched for decades.
rsynnott 3mo ago
Nissan Leaf went production-scale in 2010. There are still a surprising number of the very old ones around, even though the Leaf had a particularly _problematic_ battery by EV standards.

jmclnx 3mo ago

The US Post Office was slated to use EVs as replacements for worn out mail delivery vehicles. For many areas, especially urban areas, those would have been perfect and cheaper in the long run. I know because I knew a lot of Mail cCarriers and I know how these are used. As a kid I was driven around a route one day with a relative. But Trump and the Postmaster General cancelled that and went to use gas guzzlers instead. I wonder how that is working out now.

toomuchtodo 3mo ago
Still happening. https://news.usps.com/2025/12/01/usps-is-delivering-its-new-fleet/ https://news.usps.com/2025/12/01/usps-is-delivering-its-new-... > The Postal Service’s $9.6 billion upgrade of its delivery fleet is proceeding apace. The organization plans to roll out 106,000 new vehicles by 2028, including 45,000 battery-electric next-generation delivery vehicles and 21,000 commercial-off-the-shelf battery-electric vehicles. > Additionally, USPS is upgrading infrastructure at its facilities with the addition of charging stations for the zero-emission electric vehicles, of which over 14,000 have already been purchased. > So far, more than 35,000 new vehicles are on the road. > “The new fleet rollout is proceeding well, aligned with our plan,” said Justin Glass, the Postal Service’s fleet management senior director. (USPS spends ~$500M/year for fossil fuels, so it’s a no brainer to electrify)
- virgildotcodes 3mo ago
  Wow, a small glimmer of good news. I almost want to hide this comment over fear of drawing attention to this thing that got away from the powers that be.
  - stockresearcher 3mo ago
    The ICE version of the new vehicle uses a 2-liter turbo 4-cylinder engine and an 8-speed auto transmission, both straight out of the Ford parts catalog. Calling them gas guzzlers is a bit much. They will be significantly more fuel efficient and cleaner-burning than what they’re replacing. Not to mention cheap parts and service everywhere in the US. (Yes, they would have been better as EVs)

bitwize 3mo ago

Propaganda for "Scrap your old car now and buy new—now with AI driver spying features as mandated by Congress, and personal data sales to insurance companies!"

trollbridge 3mo ago
The "get rid of a working car" is particularly suspect, and reminds me of the "cash for clunkers" scheme which was basically a giant sop to the auto industry. Why not just have EVs replace ICE vehicles when they break down and aren't worth repairing?
- toomuchtodo 3mo ago
  The TLDR is “Replace your combustion vehicle with an EV if you’re a high mileage driver; a low mileage driver can then buy the combustion vehicle for low mileage use.” An EV sold to someone who drives 1k miles a year is somewhat inefficient at this point of the adoption curve, versus someone who drives 5k-15k miles a year. You want to maximize EV miles traveled to minimize CO2 emissions. 25% of total annual global vehicle sales are already EVs. We’re just arguing timeline to get to 100%. Peak combustion vehicle sales was 2017. https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/09/chinese-electric-car-sales-surge-to-a-record-high-in-europe https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/09/chinese-ele... https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-technology/evs-take-49-16-of-australia-s-new-car-market-in-record-breaking-june-quarter https://www.evinfrastructurenews.com/ev-technology/evs-take-...
  - cucumber3732842 3mo ago
    Dude, everything you post is borderline propaganda. There's probably a few people who'll keep their 2017 Mazda an little longer because of who the message is coming from. >Peak combustion vehicle sales was 2017. Peak oil was every year starting decades before I was born.
    - toomuchtodo 3mo ago

okr 3mo ago

Can we not finally close all volcanos?

SoftTalker 3mo ago

The fact of the matter is that the only thing that matters to most people is what makes economic sense to them. As for me, no way am I trading my 20 year old, fully paid for, cheap to insure, cheap to register ICE vehicle for a new EV with payments, higher insurance, and higher registration fees.

cucumber3732842 3mo ago
>higher insurance, and higher registration fees. And higher propensity to beep and whine at you and higher propensity to pull a "I'm sorry dave" at any given time.
- coderenegade 3mo ago
  This is a big part of it for me. With 'driver assist' systems that intervene when you're driving now being mandatory for all new vehicles sold in my country, I don't want anything newer than 2024. Practically , probably nothing newer than around 2020. You can disable driver assist, but for most modern vehicles, you need to do so every time you start the car. Insurance will eventually be used as a hammer to force compliance on this. Removing safety equipment that came with the vehicle already makes a car unroadworthy, so that's not an option either. I'll be driving my old cars to the bitter end.
jeffbee 3mo ago
The economy does not occur naturally. We can turn the knobs on this equation by just having some taxes. For example, carbon taxes. That should change your calculus pretty significantly.
- unnamed76ri 3mo ago
  How very tyrannical.
  - thelastgallon 3mo ago
    Yes, lets continue on with the $7 trillion subsidies/year (worldwide), 10M deaths from air pollution, almost all diseases/cancers linked to pollution. Its sacrilege to talk about fossil fuel subsidies.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

PlunderBunny 3mo ago

We replaced our 2010 Ford Transit (diesel) with a 2022 Ssangyong (LDV) eDeliver 9 (battery electric), and one of the benefits I didn’t expect was just how much quieter it is in the cab - a conversation with my partner when we’re driving is much easier/more pleasant. (It’s not due to better insulation - both these vehicles are basically steel frames on wheels) - I don’t see this mentioned much in articles comparing EVs and ICEVs.

rsynnott 3mo ago
This is _very_ noticeable with buses. My local transport system uses a mixture of modern-ish (last 10 years) diesels, heavy/plugin serial-hybrid, BEV, and a small number of ancient (20 year old) diesels, all double decker. The BEVs are a shockingly different experience from the old diesels, noise and vibration-wise. (The most disconcerting are the hybrids, which go from near-silent to very noisy and back periodically.)

pir8life4me 3mo ago

I'd love a BEV but where do I charge it? If I use public chargers isn't that vastly more expensive?

joak 3mo ago

There is an element I haven't seen in this conversation: as the number of combustion engine cars goes down the number of gas stations also goes down. At some point, combustion engine drivers will start feeling range anxiety. So when you get rid of your fossil-fuel-burner vehicle, you are pushing others to do so. The full calculus of CO2 emissions reduction should also include the reduction induced in others.

roryirvine 3mo ago
That process has likely already started, with the long term trend towards consolidation having accelerated over the past five years. In the UK, for example, the number of petrol stations has fallen by around 75% in the past 50 years and drivers now have to travel twice as far on average to fill up. I'd expect the remaining sites in city centres to have entirely vanished by 2035. Out of town, they'll last a little longer but the distribution component of petrol prices will rise as the fixed costs are born by dwindling numbers of ICE drivers. By the mid 2040s, there'll only be a tiny market driven largely by enthusiasts who don't care much about price. Perhaps we'll see delivery services springing up, similar to those for home heating oil, but the traditional large petrol station will be all but dead.
- LargoLasskhyfv 3mo ago
  Depends on country maybe? In Germany they make more by being small supermarkets, selling snacks, energy drinks, tobacco/vapes, alcohol, at insane prices, 24/7. In the USA similar, with even wider range of stuff, except alcohol, though that may depend on the state, or even county also.

karussell 3mo ago

I would like to get rid of it in the next few years but all new cars have only touch screen and phone home. Are there "stupid" e-cars too? I don't need much.

sparklysoup 3mo ago
Pretty much all new cars incorporate touch screens - that's the wrong thing to look at. What's important is if they retain physical/tactile controls for the things that matter (or matter to you). There are a number of cars out there that still have old-fashioned controls - Hyundai Kona is on my list for that reason.

karussell 3mo ago

Why not sell a fully operational car as a used car and buy a new electric vehicle? Then, when looking into all cars, the fleet will get one more electric vehicle, but at the same time fully operational cars are still used until the end.