I decided a few years ago that I was sick of standing in the snow at a gas station waiting for the person inside the building to finish selling that lottery ticket and turn the pump on so I can stand there some more babysitting it while it fills up and I freeze. The answer, of course, was to buy a car that didn't need gasoline, one I could plug into the house and go inside where it's warm.
I'm not a rich man, I'm a pensioner who is still paying a mortgage, so I looked for an affordable EV. Used ones are almost nonexistent, and I found out why when I finally bought one: it has a ten year warranty. They haven't been making them much longer than that.
I swore off new cars decades ago when my month old VW stranded me ninety miles from home with a bad alternator, but if you want an EV, new is your only choice. I kept seeing the Chevy Bolt advertised, but could never find one for sale at all. Then I found that they had stopped making them two years earlier.
Why? Well, battery problems, they claimed. Why just the not so expensive one, $30,000? GM is still selling electric Cadillacs and Corvettes, why no cheap cars?
I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle. Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s.
My car cost $40,000. It's absolutely the nicest, roomiest (except for the minivans) car I ever owned. My Dad had a Checker when I was about ten, they no longer make them. They were designed for taxicabs and I've never seen more back seat leg room than in one. My new Hyundai has more leg room except Dad's Checker than any other car I've ever seen, and although the '74 LeMans was a much bigger car, my new EV is much roomier. It's a lot roomier than the '02 Concorde that was the same size as my new car on the outside. Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are? I never realized how much space engines, transmissions, and gas tanks take up.
I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging. I didn't want to stand there in the snow filling a gas tank, but judging from most Facebook comments I've seen, I must be the only one who realized that. People seem to think you have to stand there when they charge. Why aren't they advertising this benefit?
Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?
Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one.
Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?
Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs? That's an easy question to answer. The automakers are under laws from our and other governments that their fuel mileage average of all the vehicles they sell has to be under a certain number. The easiest way to do that is to make the expensive cars, the ones with big V-8s, electric. When your fastest car doesn't use traditional fuel...
But this, of course, begs a second question: why only the expensive ones? Because they don't want to make electric cars at all. The obvious reason is that they hate EVs. But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?
EVs threaten their business model. The businesses are set up so that GM makes almost as much profit from aftermarket parts, like spark plugs, belts, hoses, pumps, and so forth as they do on the cars themselves.
Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance. They're needy things, expensive to maintain, and the car company gets a cut of every repair of every car they sell. The drive train is a Rube Goldberg mess with thousands of moving, interlocking parts, any one of which fails can cripple the vehicle. A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge. The repair shop got half, Pontiac and other companies got the rest.
My new car doesn't have a fuel pump. Or spark plugs, or belts, or fuel injectors, or any of the other moving parts all the other cars I've owned since 1968 had and needed replacing. The motor's shaft IS its drive train! When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?
More than likely that new 1976 Vega that cost $3,000 garnered more than that for GM in aftermarket parts. There may still be some on the road still earning money for GM. An EV has few aftermarket parts; tires, brake pads, windshield wiper blades are all I can think of. Hyundai won't make any more money from my new EV like they would if it had a big six cylinder piston engine.
Which is a shame, because electric motors are all far, far superior to piston engines and transmissions in every way. But the nearly zero cost of maintenance is why the thieving billionaire car companies don't want to sell affordable EVs. In fact, they want to sell as few EVs as possible. If it wasn't for fuel mileage restrictions, Tesla and the Chinese would likely be the only electric cars you could buy.
But isn't this just a conspiracy theory? No, there was never a conspiracy, nothing needed to be said. Those people aren't moral, but they're not stupid, either. Ford and Chevy aren't making cars for a hobby, nor are they charitable organizations. All they care about is profit, and EVs threaten their gravy train.
Related Stories
Automakers accelerating release of upgraded models, unlike typical 5-year cycle for gasoline cars; Hyundai introduces updated Ioniq 5, and BYD will soon unveil refreshed SEAL; how will this impact used car market?
In recent weeks, two refreshed car models have been launched: Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and BYD's SEAL. Both models, introduced in 2021 and 2022 respectively, are receiving significant updates ahead of the typical five-year facelift cycle. This global automotive industry standard generally involves cosmetic upgrades to keep cars relevant.
However, these updates are more than just aesthetic. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 now features a substantial battery upgrade, increasing from 72.6 kWh to 84 kWh. This enhancement boosts the top model's range from 480 km to over 550 km. Other upgrades include new wheel designs and interior materials, but the major improvements lie beneath the surface.
[...] These updates reflect a broader trend among electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers, who have announced major enhancements to existing models. Unlike mid-life upgrades in gasoline cars, which often focus on superficial enhancements like sound systems and wheel designs, EV upgrades are core technological improvements. This trend is driven by several factors.
[...] Recent trends in the used EV market show that the introduction of significantly upgraded models or superior competing models can deter buyers unless substantial discounts are offered. The new Ioniq 5's increased range and the SEAL's faster charging capabilities could negatively affect the resale value of older models.
Related:
- Auto Woes
- EU Battery Passport - Lifetime Record of BEV and Other Large Li Batteries
- "Corolla Killer:" BYD Launches $US15,000 EV in Direct Attack on Legacy Makers
- A Chinese EV Squeezed 650 Miles Of Range From Its 150 kWh Battery
- Why are All the EVs so Expensive?
Losing ground in the race to produce electric vehicles, German and French carmakers are heading toward a disruptive wave of factory closures:
Volkswagen AG is considering factory closures in Germany for the first time in its 87-year history, parting with tradition and risking a feud with unions in a step that reflects the deep woes roiling Europe's auto industry.
After years of ignoring overcapacity and slumping competitiveness, the German auto giant's moves are likely to kick off a broader reckoning in the industry. The reasons are clear: Europe's efforts to compete with Chinese rivals and Tesla Inc. in electric cars are faltering. (full article is paywalled)
"If even VW mulls closing factories in Germany, given how hard that process will be, it means the seas have gotten very rough," Pierre-Olivier Essig, a London-based equities analyst at AIR Capital, told Bloomberg. "The situation is very alarming."
[...] Car sales in Europe are down nearly one-fifth from prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and EV demand has slackened as Germany and Sweden have removed and reduced incentives to purchase the vehicles, Bloomberg reported. As a result, Chinese EV manufacturer BYD has jumped into the European market, pricing its Seagull model at just $9,700 before tax, a far cry from the European's average EV cost of $48,000 in 2022.
VW began downsizing in July, with its Audi subsidiary cutting 90% of its 3,000 person workforce at its manufacturing plant in Brussels, Belgium, according to Bloomberg.
The company's share price is now approaching the lows of its 2015 "diesel crisis," when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency accused the company of installing illegal software in its cars in order to artificially improve its results on diesel emission tests, BBC News reported. The company also posted a €100 million net cash flow loss on its automotive business in the first half of 2024.
Related:
- South Korean EV Battery Makers Reporting Big Losses as EV Demand Slows
- General Motors Lays Off Hundreds Of US Workers
- Auto Woes
- Why are All the EVs so Expensive?
Last week, the House approved a resolution to block the Biden administration's emissions rule that would require more than half of the automobiles sold in the new-car market to be electric by 2032. The 215 representatives who voted for the bill, including eight Democrats, are far more in tune with most of the country than the White House:
Nationwide, the inventory of unsold EVs had grown by nearly 350% over the first half of 2024, creating "a 92-day supply — roughly three months' worth of EVs, and nearly twice the industry average," says Axios, which is 54 days for gasoline-powered vehicles.
Ford, which lost nearly $73,000 on each EV it sold in the second quarter of 2023, continues to yield to reality, now ditching its plans to build a large electric SUV. This "course change," says Just the News, "comes amid lower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles."
[...] "Based on where the market is and where the customer is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions," said John Lawler, Ford's chief financial officer.
[...] "Of the U.S. consumers planning on purchasing a new vehicle in the next 24 months, only 34% intend to purchase an EV, down 14% from 48% in the 2023," says Ernst & Young's Mobility Consumer Index, "a global survey of almost 20,000 consumers from 28 countries."
The story is much the same in Britain. EVs "are losing value at an 'unsustainable' rate as a slowdown in consumer demand sends used car prices tumbling," the Telegraph reported last week. Meanwhile in France, "the EU's second largest market for battery electric vehicles behind Germany," deliveries have fallen by a third.
Germans are likewise losing interest, as the country has "suffered a 'spectacular' drop in electric car sales as the European Union faces growing calls to delay its net zero vehicle targets," the Telegraph said in a separate story.
Related:
- Stellantis Lays Off Thousands of Workers after Pocketing Hundreds of Millions in EV Subsidies
- VW Turns on Germany as China Targets Europe's EV Blunders
- South Korean EV Battery Makers Reporting Big Losses as EV Demand Slows
- Tesla Lays Off 'More Than 10%' of its Global Workforce
- Why are All the EVs so Expensive?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:31AM (4 children)
What kind of hellhole do you live in, where you have to actively go into the gas station and...what, pre-pay the cashier? give him a secret handshake? before you can fill up?
I don't know about you, but near me we live in the 21st century where we can just put our credit card in the pump and fill up without ever interacting with another human being (although we have to ignore those fucking LED screens in the pump that advertise at us as we're filling).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:37PM
I wasn't talking about going inside, that would actually not be so bad because I'd be warm while the attendant was selling that ticket, but instead I'm freezing in the cold after I already have the credit card back in my pocket.
It was a needless, uncomfortable hassle. Why should I put up with it when I could buy an EV and from then on, plug it in and go inside the house.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:09PM (2 children)
Pay at the pump became a thing while I lived in Miami - it cut a whole level of social interaction out of the filling station and opened up large areas of town to using the gas stations that you previously would not have due to "the vibes" you get while inside the shop waiting for the cashier.
This was brought home to me when I went to a station I had used for years, but Pay at the Pump was broken and I had to go inside - for the first time anywhere near that part of town. The malcontent of the patrons and cashier was palpable, maybe worse than normal due to the malfunction, but still... open hostility, several not-so-concealed carry weapons, small cramped space with bad lighting and poor ventilation... yeah, next time Pay at the Pump is broken I'll just keep going, thanks.
Read somewhere recently that the Cybertruck charge time is an "amazingly low 20 minutes" when all the stars align just so... I thought I wanted a Cybertruck 4 years ago at $40K, I definitely don't want one now at $61K.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:24AM (1 child)
Why would you want a Nazimobile when you could have an F-150 lightning?
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:37AM
I put the $100 deposit down on the Nazimobile when it was announced, and Muskie hadn't bought Twitter yet, it was a really long time ago...
I got my $100 back over a year ago, figured - apparently correctly - that a $40K Nazimobile was an unrealistic pipe dream at that point, plus the fact that I would never want anything like that from the first year of production - probably not the first two years of production, so even if I did eventually decide we wanted one (which will never happen now that we've refreshed our Dodge Ram 1500 forward from a 1999 with 150Kmi up to a 2019 with 15Kmi) it would be best not to be tempted to get an early example.
I don't mind the styling, I do mind the lies, exaggerations, political posturing and everything else that ended up attached to the Nazimobile over the past 3-4 years.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:38AM (39 children)
This is by (political) design. It is not possible to produce enough electricity out there necessary for all the EVs replacement needed for classic cars in current use.
So, it comes to new social stratification again: it is imperative the low income population must be deprived of deliberately using EV cars. That's neofeudalism.
Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
Rust programming language offends both my Intelligence and my Spirit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 07 2023, @12:54PM (15 children)
> It is not possible to produce enough electricity
This is a quite extraordinary statement. What is your evidence to support this?
(Score: 1, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:11PM (8 children)
Do a little research... start with the gasoline equivalent of kWh that would be required to replace the whole US personal vehicle fleet today.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:23PM (1 child)
If they used gasoline as the source of electricity they'd already be well ahead of the current status quo, more efficient.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:34PM
Yes, but... you've got to build out the gasoline generation capacity, the distribution infrastructure, etc.
In round numbers, EVs are 4x more energy efficient (take 25% of the energy) of ICE vehicles. All we need is $21T worth of electric grid overhaul (and ramped up lithium mining capabilities, and a few other things) to get that efficiency. Thing is, (in the US) we're only consuming about 135 billion gallons of gasoline per year, call that $500B in gasoline, so the electric grid overhaul has a 40 year ROI even if the additional electricity for EVs were produced for free, closer to 55-60 years if you're going to simply power the grid with gasoline (or whatever is being used to make the gasoline) for the higher EV efficiency.
Yes, it would be worth it "for the future" - but 50 years ago was the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, it will take that long again for the switchover to start paying off. Maybe a little less, if population keeps growing...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:54PM (3 children)
Do a little research yourself.
EVs are far more efficient than ICE cars: those 130+ eMPG figures are based on equivalent energy of gallons of gasoline.
So your "start with the gasoline equivalent of kWh" is ridiculous and simply shows your ignorance.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @08:12PM (2 children)
Look further down the thread - when I ran the numbers the basic conclusions were this:
EVs are indeed more efficient than ICE vehicles, roughly 4.5x as efficient on average - that's great.
The current US appetite for motor vehicle gasoline is roughly energy equivalent to the current US electrical energy generation capacity - that's not so great, this indicates that a roughly 25% capacity increase in electrical generation (and delivery) capacity will be required to fully accommodate EV needs if we are to get to a 100% EV fleet. Such estimates are highly dependent on assumptions, but the cost to upgrade the US electrical grid is bandied about in the $21T region, that's $60K per person, which sounds high, until you consider the cost of millions of miles of high voltage electrical wires, 25% more generation capacity than we currently have, etc. Also, consider my neighbors who put in a $90K solar system on their home - which only meets about 30% of their total electric power needs for 2 adults, three children, two yappy dogs and 0 EVs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:57PM (1 child)
You ignore the time of day factor.
Much EV charging is done at night, when there is typically spare capacity.
I have no idea how your neighbors were able to spend so much on a solar system. My system cost about $16k and, averaged out, covers about 80-90% of our electricity usage. We don't have children in the house, but our electricity usage wasn't significantly higher when we did.
Your example is an anecdote that describes a case that is clearly outside normal bounds.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:09PM
>describes a case that is clearly outside normal bounds.
Granted, Florida is clearly outside normal bounds, but: Air Conditioning - if you don't use it much, then you can't relate to our electric consumption patterns. Their house is a bit bigger than average, and their base bill averages in the $400 per month range before the solar system was added.
When it's 95 outside and 72 inside of your 4000 square foot Mini McMansion with those fabulous floor to ceiling windows... that takes some kWh to maintain, even with a modern heat pump.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:29AM (1 child)
Do a little research
Next time you jump to a conclusion you might want to at least ask Google. You would find that my EV will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline. The only infrastructure problem is chargers for traveling.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:10AM
>You would find that my EV will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline.
You're missing the bigger picture. Yeah, so you can go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to produce a gallon of gasoline - I'll give you that one.
Where is that electricity that's being used to produce our gasoline currently available? Not in Montana.
The current gasoline burning motor vehicle fleet in the US consumes as much energy from gasoline as we produce in electrical generation, that's what Google told me.
Now, even if the new EV fleet that replaces it just magically appeared tomorrow, with efficiency 5x better than gasoline (in MPGe), we'd need 20% additional generation and distribution capacity at the points where the EVs are being charged. 20% is significant. Maybe there's some time-slice chicanery (night charging) that takes the actual infrastructure upgrade need down to 10% - do you know what 10% of the US electric grid, built with broad government subsidies over the last 100+ years, costs? They're throwing around numbers like $21T for the cost to upgrade the US grid - those numbers are going to be wildly variable depending on a whole pile of assumptions, but $21T is around 4 years of the total federal budget - even if they've blown up their numbers by 10x what we actually need, $2.1T would be $6000 per capita for every US citizen of every age - that's more than our annual military spending (of $1.5T).
Yeah, your EV that you toodle into town once a month in doesn't raise your electric bill, I get that. My neighbors with teenage kids are putting 60K miles on their family vehicles per year with mom, dad, and now one or two kids spending several hours a day each on the road going here, there, wherever - it all seems very important, to them. Even if they get 120MPGe, they'll be consuming 500 "electric gallons" (33.7kWh) per year, which is 16.8 megawatt hours per year, 1400 kWh per month which will be boosting their electric bill by about $200 per month. That's a great deal, they currently buy around 200 gallons of gas per month costing them about triple that, but... their current electric bill is around $300 per month, so this will be a 66% increase in the average demand they're putting on the grid.
Our family? We drive big old V8s that ping if you don't feed them premium fuel, because we just don't drive that much to care about the cost of fuel - the cost of replacing the vehicles with something more efficient would buy all our gasoline for years to come, much more than the savings of the more efficient vehicle (though, I must confess, we went from a 5.9 liter V8 in the 1999 truck down to a (more powerful) 3.6 liter V6 in the 2019, and while they both get around 12mpg in town, the V6 will get 25mpg on the highway where the V8 was doing good to get 16mpg, and the new V6 doesn't pout when you give it regular gas - so that's a big savings there too.) If we switched to EVs, I think we might notice a 10-20% increase in our electric bill, tops... but we're not exactly typical.
Oh, and I'm building a carport for the 2019 pickup (+ our family sedan) so the 2019 doesn't get as stinky as the 1999 that lived under the big oak tree for the past 10 years. All in slab and structure will be less than $20K. I very diligently looked at putting solar panels on the roof of that carport and no matter which way I sliced it, the structure to hold a roof full of panels was going to cost $10K EXTRA over and above what the complete structure that doesn't hold all that would. A big kink was single slope facing south vs traditional gable that half faces north. The higher price options includes those bare frames that hold panels as the roof. Not to mention the added hassle of getting something weird like a solar carport approved by the local zoning board. Then, if those solar panels would do anything other than charge an EV (that we don't have yet), there would be another $5K in buried cable and power transfer equipment to get the solar power back to the house, $20K+ for the panels and inverters and maybe batteries thrown in on that too for another $10K. All that buys a LOT of kWh from the local utility at current rates.
Another fun figure I ran lately is the LiFePO4 pack + inverter by Anker I recently bought for $700. It holds roughly 1kWh of charge, and is rated for 3000 cycles. That's 3000kWh of capacity, and give the battery pack credit for only being $500 of the total cost. $500 / 3000kWh is $0.16/kWh for power that is stored and released by that battery pack - as compared to our electric rates that vary between $0.11 and $0.14 / kWh from the grid. Even if the pack gets charged for free, I'll be paying more for using the battery than electric power is currently costing from the grid. I imagine the same is true of electric vehicle battery packs, so take that 120MPGe and roughly cut it in half for your TCO when you start paying for the cost of the batteries you're using.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:06PM (5 children)
The average house uses on the order of 20 kwh per day. A "tank" full for an EV is about 80 kwh. The average use case would see the EV use that "tank" every few days.
To a reasonable approximation, converting to EV's would see domestic electricity power usage double. (This is increased by houses averaging more than one car, but reduced by second and third cars generally seeing less mileage.)
You could do a similar calculation for industry, but I don't know even approximate amounts for electric power vs fuel usage for that.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:48PM (1 child)
Bullshit. You're telling me the average person uses an entire tank of gasoline every "few days"?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @11:20PM
No you moron. Read it again. An EV needs the equivalent of a full charge every few day. Four days in the example above. Seems about right. Look at it another way. EV's get less about 200 miles on a charge, most people use their cars for 15 to 20 thousand miles a year, that means they need to charge them about 75 to 100 times a year. Approx twice a week.
Wow, math checks out.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:35AM (2 children)
Sorry, bud, but experience trumps books, as much as I hate to say that as anauthor. You're simply ignorant. I charge my car every couple of weeks when it goes below half full. My 110 volt charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly a couple hundred watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, microwave a thousand.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:35AM
Somebody or something is lying to you. At 200 watts it would take 400 hours to charge a 80kwh battery. That's sixteen days continuous charging.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @10:43PM
Putting it together from the bits of info you drop in various posts, your charger puts out 1.8 amps into the battery at 800 volts.
That's about 1.5 KW it's drawing from the house circuit. At 110 volts, somewhere between 13 and 14 amps. That also matches up with the charging times you give.
Some basic E facts:
Power = Voltage * Current
Energy = Power * Time
It is pointless and confusing to keep referring to Power as Current without specifying the Voltage.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:27PM (11 children)
I mean, there's already social stratification in transport. Currently, there are approximately 3 tiers:
Bottom: Can't afford to own a car or can't drive (e.g. has a seizure disorder, or under 16). Gets around mostly on foot, on bikes, or on public transit, with the occasional ride share. Because of the way public transit systems are designed and managed, it is likely that there are places this person can't reasonably get to, at all, and other places where they can only get there at particular times of day.
As an example of a location that they often try to avoid making it possible to get to: Convention centers. By avoiding any public transit to that facility, they keep the poors out, you see. Ditto for certain neighborhoods or entire municipalities trying to keep their area "nice" by keeping the undesirables out.
As an example of a location where you can only get to it at certain times of day: Malls. They'll have 2-3 buses a day to get the workers there, but because of the length of time between each bus showing up it's not a viable option for most shoppers. Again, to keep the poors out unless they're there to do the often-low-paid often-menial jobs available at the mall.
This is more manageable in countries that didn't tear up most of their public transit infrastructure in the 20th century, like Japan and the UK.
Middle: Has a car to get around. Can get pretty much anywhere locally, with the occasional road trip further away. May decide to use intercity bus, rail, or commercial plane to go longer distances, and will probably rely on either a rental car or a friend or ride share once they get to that other city.
American cities are largely built to accommodate these people, so this isn't too terribly bad, but does have problems. For starters, there's the problem of where to put the car when it's not going anywhere - street parking has capacity problems, parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient. And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there. Yes, there are things you can do to change your odds, but ultimately there's always a luck element.
Top: Has access to a private jet, and may also use helicopters to get them around major cities. Sometimes has to slum it on the roads in a car or limo, although typically somebody else will be doing the driving for them while they lounge around in the back.
It's worth noting that despite being largely insulated from any of the problems we have with transit, these people are the ones that keep on proposing solutions to fix our transit problems once and for all. I for one don't think they should be listened to all that much, because again they have no clue what the problems actually are.
--
EVs would sit somewhere around the high end of the middle tier. But you're right that to address transport of humans at scale, it's likely that a lot of the people currently in the middle tier will end up in the bottom tier. Which is part of why there are lots of people out there trying to make the bottom tier suck less.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:50PM (1 child)
I modded you up, but
parking lots are ugly, parking garages are ugly and inconvenient.
One of many disadvantages of an apartment or a condo.
And then there's the twice-daily ritual of rush hour, where there's dice roles involved about (a) whether you get where you're going at all, and (b) how long it takes for you to get there.
Dew knot truss yore spill checker.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:36PM
This isn't just a question of where the car is parked when it's at home though, it's also about where it's parked when you're at work, out shopping, at a restaurant, enjoying some live entertainment, visiting friends, etc etc. Go to Google Maps in pretty much any office park in America, look at the satellite view, and you'll see what I mean - it's not uncommon for there to be more parking lot than building.
Thank you for the spelling correction - whoopsie, I missed that. That doesn't change the point I was making.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:37PM
There's a lot of froth in those levels...
>Why aren't the auto companies advertising how roomy EVs are?
Good point. Our most recent auto selection was a 2002 Mercedes S430, in 2018 with 44,000 miles on it for $12,000 - that's an example of the top tier product becoming available to the middle tier - if you are lucky or patient enough to find a good one used. We have two sons (with autism) who are currently 6'1" and 6'4" and unlikely to be leaving home anytime soon, so backseat space is important, and the S-Class is as big as our full-sized pickup truck on the outside, but the car trunk is half the size of the truck bed and that space goes into the passenger compartment. Not quite enough room for a 3rd row of seats, but close, and all given to the two rows of seats it has. Rear wheel drive means there's a tunnel making a 5th passenger somewhat uncomfortable in the middle of the back, but with 4 passengers it's humongous.
The S-Class is a rare beast among sedans. These days most people who want that kind of room end up getting a 3 (or 4) row SUV and removing some of the seats. The $12K price for a low miles car that originally sold for $80K+ all came down to FUD. The big German V8s of that era had a nasty reputation for maintenance costs - and it's true, in the ensuing 100K miles we have put over $8K in maintenance, but I'm still happy with the car at an all-in cost of $20K for 100K miles of air-suspension comfort, V8 power, ultra luxury quiet ride, an AC system that can handle the Saharan desert... YMMV, but we like ours.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @06:03AM (7 children)
One of the hidden costs of this sort of thing. In a rational world, we'd be trying to get more people into the middle tier rather than figuring out how to make the sacrifice of dubious choices sting a little less in the bottom tier.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @12:06PM (6 children)
No we wouldn't. There's nothing rational about our love of cars and trucks.
When moving stuff, the way to minimize the cost of moving them is to minimize the size, mass, and speed of the thing being moved until you reach acceptable numbers, because that's how Newtonian physics works. When you're talking about moving a single person and a bit of stuff they can fairly easily carry, that means the most cost-efficient ways to move them are, in approximate order:
1. Walking there. (0 pounds extra for the vehicle)
2. Bicycles, skateboards, scooters, etc that are all on average very cheap to make and maintain, anywhere from 10-40 pounds.
3. A 55-pound e-bike or e-scooter that's more expensive to make than a bicycle, but still way cheaper than the next options.
4. A 500-pound motorcycle. These things easily get 50 mpg without any of that mucking about with hybrid batteries, for example.
5. A car from the smallest possible (so-called "smart cars" that seat only 2 people) to the largest. (1500-4000 pounds)
6. An SUV or pickup, again from the smallest to the largest. (3500-6000 pounds)
7. A box truck or similarly sized vehicle. (12500-33000 pounds.)
8. A semi or bus. (25000-35000 pounds.)
9. A train. (30000 pounds per car, so easily 120000-180000 pounds)
10. An airplane. (337,000-485,000 pounds)
For any of the vehicles in question, you can make them more efficient by either (a) moving more people in each one, or (b) using them more continuously rather than making 1 trip and parking them, e.g. an Uber handling a bunch of passengers in an hour is more efficient than each passenger driving their own car. That's why public transit can be so efficient if people are actually using it: For example, the train can move 100 people per car, so dividing that 30,000 pounds of train car by the 100 people is now 300 pounds per person.
TL;DR: For solving the problem of transportation for a whole lot of people, putting everybody in their individual car isn't even close to the most efficient solution. As anybody who has ever had to deal with rush hour traffic should know full well.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @12:26PM (5 children)
Aside from point to point travel being the best form of travel? I suggest you think about it.
Only if not moving stuff is your goal.
And when you're not, then the rest of your post is a waste of time. We get this same stilted thinking all the time. For example:
Why is your goal merely making transportation more efficient? This is bike shed [wikipedia.org] effect. Understanding the complexity of transportation and why people do it is hard. But saving a small amount of fuel is easy to understand and thus, an obsession to minimize near trivial parts of society develop.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 08 2023, @01:11PM (2 children)
How are you measuring "best", exactly?
There have been times when I've had a car in good condition, and opted not to take it to work. Why? Because there was public transit going from approximately 50' from my front door to within 400' from my office, and the public transit pass cost about 1/3 of what a parking pass would have cost, plus I could read a book while on transit.
I guess I wasn't clear: Yes, if you need to move a semi's worth of stuff, you're going to have to put it in a semi or something bigger like a train or cargo plane or split the load among a bunch of different vehicles. My point is that if you're using a semi to move a suburbanite from their home to an office park, that's not a very efficient use of resources, because you're doing the transit equivalent of using an industrial metal press to open a pistachio, which will work for 1 person who really wants to do that but is a problem as you start scaling.
Because I want as many people as possible to get to where they want to go using a finite pile of resources (including their available time) to do it.
You obviously want to drive your car or truck and feel good about it. And maybe you really are hauling a bunch of stuff every day, say you work construction and have a bunch of materials and tools in the back. OK, fine. But wouldn't you rather have as many other people as possible off the roads so they aren't in your way? And the way you do that is provide them with viable alternatives to hopping in their car to get where they're going, and then some of those people will choose those alternatives because they're cheaper, easier, faster, etc. Optimizing for "maximum number of people in cars" makes sense only if you're benefiting from selling and fixing cars or building and repairing roads.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @01:15PM
So multiple modes of transportation, when one mode will do? And it's not much of a problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @06:50PM
I'll note also for that specific case, public transit was almost point to point. The rub comes in when you have to start hopping multiple transport modes because something isn't close to either your start or destination, or has low enough frequency that it's constraining your schedule. For example, when I worked on my PhD at UC Davis and worked daily in the office, I had to walk about half a mile to the bus station and ride in the 10 miles on the hourly bus. UC Davis helped make that a viable choice by making parking ridiculously expensive.
Anyway, there were times when I missed the last bus back home (absent minded quite a bit). So I'd stay overnight and just return the next day. How many people can do that? With a car, gas or EV, you have the power to decide when you come and go, not some bus schedule. And because the car is an enclosed environment, you can go in weather that would be hard to do with a bike (another point to point system). For example, one day it was raining strongly with 60 MPH winds. I decided to eat the cost and drive in rather than walk to the bus station. No drama aside from slower than usual traffic.
You can treat a car as an irrational object, or you can choose to recognize the power and flexibility it gives you.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:47AM (1 child)
You made the same mistake the Drake equation makes; Fermi's "paradox" isn't real, the Drake equation is missing variables and correct values for some of the existing variables, in your case missing the cost of fuel. My EV weighs twice what a comparable sized piston car weighs, has more room, and costs two dollars worth of electricity to go from Springfield, IL to St Louis, when a gasoline car costs ten.
It's the classic spherical cow in a vacuum.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:37AM
Your EV is point to point and thus, part of my category.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:41PM (10 children)
It is not possible to produce enough electricity out there necessary for all the EVs replacement needed for classic cars in current use.
Nonsense spewed by EV opponents like mechanics and oil executives who certainly know better. My car will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline, so that big Dodge crew cab's gasoline uses more electricity than my car does.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:16PM (7 children)
>My car will go twenty miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline
Yes, but that refining capacity is in-place (and making profits) whereas redirecting that energy to make it available to end-users across the country would require significant infrastructure investment with a long ROI horizon.
Our generation capacity is at-limit in places (like California) so those would have to be built up, and distribution of all the currently used gasoline energy as electricity to all the homes in the burbs will require a lot more conductor and transformer capacity than most places have.
It's a good project, long term. Short term, plenty of powerful people would rather party on their current profits than play the long game in which they'll be dead before payoffs come around.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:40PM (6 children)
My charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly 190 watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, my microwave a thousand.
When I bought the dishwasher I noticed an increase in my electric bill, but not after buying the car.
The grid will be fine. Well, maybe not in Texas but that has nothing to do with EVs.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @03:20PM (5 children)
>The grid will be fine.
Not if we continue to drive like we (collectively) do... easy math:
>In 2022, about 135.06 billion gallons (or about 3.22 billion barrels)1 of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States, an average of about 370 million gallons per day
>EPA's formula, in which 33.7 kilowatt hours of electricity is equivalent to one gallon of gasoline
So, we will need, roughly, 12.5 billion kWh additional generation capacity per day, 520 million kW (neglecting things like peak load, which commuter recharging will have in spades...)
>In 2022, about 4,231 billion kilowatthours (kWh) (or about 4.23 trillion kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States.
O.K. they want to play in kWh per year, so 12.5 * 365.25 = roughly 4.5 trillion kWh, just to replace the gasoline energy with electricity, at the EPA's conversion rate of 33.7 kWh per gallon - which, to be honest, sounds a little suspiciously high - at $0.11 per kWh that's $3.70 for an "electric gallon of gas" - O.K. what's missing here is the higher mpgE efficiency of EVs. at 1:1 efficiency, we would need to double the current US electric generation capacity. Yes, some savings would be had in Texas and other places where fuel is refined, but you can't just magically transport that energy from Houston to Bozeman, unless it's in a petroleum pipeline...
Trying again:
>(EPA) shows the average 2021 model year new vehicle fuel economy was 25.4 miles per gallon, which was the same result as in 2020
vs
>The average electric vehicle (EV) gets 114 miles per gallon equivalent (MPGe).
so that 4.5 trillion kWh of annual electric capacity generation increase comes down to 4500*25.4/114 = 1 trillion kWh to feed EVs the same amount of miles worth of energy as our ICE fleet currently drives (assuming most gasoline sold in the US is used in ICE vehicles...) That's still a 25% increase over current generation output - we certainly don't have 125% generation capacity in all areas, and even in the places where we do, that will need beefing up to handle peak loads.
>My charger pulls 1.8 amps, roughly 190 watts. My countertop dishwasher pulls 700 watts, my microwave a thousand. When I bought the dishwasher I noticed an increase in my electric bill, but not after buying the car.
Have you considered that your ratio of microwave dinners and dishes washed to miles driven is considerably higher than the average American commuter lemming?
>Another working day has ended
>Only the rush hour hell to face
>Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
>Contestants in a suicidal race
Synchronicity - released in 1983, and today even more of us are still doing it.
>As of 2023, 12.7% of full-time employees work from home, while 28.2% work a hybrid model.
>the United States 2023 population is estimated at 339,996,563 / The estimated population of the United States on March 1, 1983 was 233,567,000
a 45% increase, fully nullifying any work from home or hybrid work reductions in commuter trips per year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:14PM (4 children)
He's also wrong about that 1.8 amps. He's stated it before and also given charging times and basic electric calculations show he is out by a factor of about 10. Personally, I think he is mis-reading 1.8 kw as 1.8 amps.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:53AM (3 children)
Closer to 200 amps. Let me get my calculator, my brain is analog... 198. Close enough approximation. The 1.8 amp figure comes from the car's dash.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:25AM (2 children)
Yeah, you aren't pulling 200 amps through a house socket either.
Given the figures on charge time you posted last time this discussion came up, the most likely scenario is that your charger is pulling 1.8 KW. If it's on 110 volts that's about 16 amps. Do-able on a heavy circuit. If it's on the 220 volt circuit it's only 8 amps and is what the 220 volt circuits are for.
The other possibility is that your car has a 480 volt battery and that 1.8 amps is at the battery and means nearly 900 watts from the wall. In that case though, you were overly optimistic in your charge times.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @01:34AM (1 child)
I think you are close when you mention the current into the battery (DC). I believe that the submitter has a Hyundai Ioniq 5 with a nominal 800 volt battery, see https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/eco/ioniq5/technology [hyundai.com] From that page:
> IONIQ 5 is one of the first production vehicles with an 800 V battery system. It charges ultra-fast, performs consistently high, and is optimized for weight and space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 10 2023, @06:15AM
You nailed it. Two posts up he says the 1.8 amps comes from the car dash.
1440 watts + efficiency loss from the wall socket. Conversion is pretty efficient these days so I would guess his charger is drawing about 1.5 KW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:48PM (1 child)
So let's say for the sake of argument that the 20 miles = 5 kwH of electrical usage = 1 gallon of gasoline refining is true. I'll note that you're parroting pretty much word for word a claim made by an EV car manufacturer CEO who is known for being loose with the truth, so that equation is dubious at best, but let's pretend it's true.
The average car gets 25 mpg, and often more than that (e.g. my fairly cheap used Ford Taurus almost 20 years ago got around 30 mpg). Which means that the only way you get the EV to be better than the ICE car is if you can come up with another 1-2.5 khH of electrical usage per gallon or so: Not necessarily impossible due to things like pipeline pumping and running gas stations, but also not a slam-dunk case just because you introduced math into the discussion. Plus it's not like creating an EV and especially the associated batteries is free from electrical usage either.
Of course, the bigger problem is that if you're drawing that electricity ultimately from power plants that are burning oil and coal, that's not really helping the environmental issue EVs allegedly address, it's just moving the cost from your vehicle to somewhere else and making it Somebody Else's Problem.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:06AM
I'll note that you're parroting pretty much word for word a claim made by an EV car manufacturer
Entirely possible, Google gave no citation.
Of course, the bigger problem is that if you're drawing that electricity ultimately from power plants that are burning oil and coal, that's not really helping the environmental issue EVs allegedly address
I make no environmental claims, I've said that the environment is the least of the EV's many advantages.
Let me tell you about math. Figures don't lie but liars figure. The EPA claims my car will travel 340 miles on a charge, it does good doing 240. Another spherical cow in a vacuum disregarding necessary variables. When I get home from my friend's house, a 215 mile trip, it tells me my average mileage in m/kwh and how much electricity the trip used. The math is really easy since my electricity is a dime point something a kwh. It costs me four dollars in electricity to get 215 miles, it took twenty bucks worth of gas in my old four cylinder.
I'm reminded of a Dilbert cartoon I saw years ago, about PHB asking about massaging the numbers. Massaging the numbers is a bad idea at NASA, I'm sure.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 3, Disagree) by darkfeline on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:13AM (3 children)
They're expensive because they're expensive to make.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pTamok on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:28AM (2 children)
Nope.
Far fewer components to assemble makes EVs cheaper to make. The cost of some of those components (batteries, motors, high-voltage electrical system) gives some of the answer, but the actual assembly is far, far cheaper than an ICE car.
It might be that ICE cars are cheaper per car right now, down to economies of scale, because you can spread out the costs of production over more cars, but EVs are considerably simpler than ICE cars in component count. If they were built in comparable numbers, the costs of assembling EVs would be considerably lower than ICE cars (clue: they already are).
Then why is the headline in this article true?:
Inside EVs: EVs Are Still 45% More Expensive To Make Than Combustion-Engined Cars [insideevs.com]
It turns out that the cost of the battery is the main decider.
Cost of ICE to build: 13,900
Cost of EV to build (without battery): 12,200
Cost of EV battery: 8,000
And to support mcgrew, here's some interesting data on a comparison of the energy cost to travel 100 km in an EV and an ICE: To EV or not to EV? A clear cost analysis between electric vehicles and ICE cars [thedriven.io]
I doubt that 8,000 spondulick batteries will drop in price to 1,700 spondulicks to make the total manufacturing cost equal, but the running costs of EVs appear to be lower than ICEs (until governments start taxing them more to make up for lost revenue on fossil fuel taxes), so until government EV usage taxes rise, it looks like that in the longer term, EVs are the cheaper option.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:12PM
> Far fewer components to assemble makes EVs cheaper to make.
Perhaps some day, but maybe not now?
Thousands of cells are assembled into battery modules, and multiple modules make up the overall pack in a long range BEV (the number of cells may be reduced in recent Teslas, due to larger cell size). Each cell (or each module) has individual temp and voltage sensors, with suitable wiring harness to get that data back to the battery control computer. Most high power packs are water cooled so there are seals to keep the water from leaking along with pump(s)/radiator/plumbing/sensors.
Ah, but then you qualify and say "moving parts" and I counter that Li-ion batteries expand when charged and shrink when discharged--they are moving, slowly, all the time they are in use. This leads to cracks or other internal damage and the life of each cell depends on how quickly the damage accumulates to reduce the cell capacity. Looking at it this way, a BEV may have *more* "moving parts" than an ICE powered car.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:22PM
>Far fewer components to assemble makes EVs cheaper to make.
Agreed, but, it's not just economies of scale, it's also sunk costs into the existing capacity - not just manufacturing but also service, support and even recycling. We've got massive complex systems already built and paid for which manufacture the complex beasts of I4, V6 and V8 power. Component manufacturing, distribution, training of service technicians and even customer service people - all that is a much bigger consideration than the cost or efficiency of the individual cars. (Yes, some people can be easily retrained, some.) As you point out, economies of scale have been ramped up over a century for ICE vehicles, thousands of times as much investment in getting to where we are today than has been put into EVs so far. We won't have to duplicate that massive investment before EVs become more economical overall, but we will have to do more than we have so far - and that kind of investment is bad for the quarterly bonuses of the people who make the decisions of whether to do it or not.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:29AM (16 children)
"it has a ten year warranty"
So do a lot of cars.
"I discovered after buying an EV that the only two advantages of a piston car to an electric one are the lack of infrastructure for long trips, and the high purchase price of the vehicle."
Please remember this, it's critical to what comes after.
"Why high? Because only their flagship autos have electric motors, the ones that formerly had V8s."
Most flagship autos throughout Europe have nothing like a V8 and the electric cars are not only the flagships. They are still expensive because... electric cars are new and expensive and include "all your fuel" for the next 10 years (remember the warranty?) literally inside the car, including extra "fuel" to counter the weight of the "fuel" (my fuel tank is 50kg... an EV battery can be 10 times as heavy. It's a block of metal that occupies a huge portion of the car that you have carry everywhere you go, remember.
"My car cost $40,000."
That's more than I've ever paid for any car ever, including one from brand-new (a Mondeo which is sold as a Fusion in the states... interestingly the Mondeo is identical except the engines go from 1.2L to 2.0L but the Fusion STARTS at 2.5L. This, also, is crucial to your problem.
My car that cost half that is a perfectly serviceable car for four or five grown adults to ride in, I've put 9ft Christmas trees in it and dismantled a 12ft shed into it, and even MOVED HOUSE - literally every piece of furniture, belonging and appliance, using just my Mondeo hatchback. Empty space you don't use is wasted money.
"I started trying to buy one when I realized that you don't have to babysit them when you're charging."
Yes, but the charging takes far longer. Why don't you mention that? Also, for the sake of once or twice a month standing for about 3-4 minutes in the cold to refill my car is not a great chore worthy of dropping $40k on a machine to remove. Especially given other problems.
"Why aren't they telling you that your car can now heat your garage, unlike a piston car? Why aren't they advertising the fact that rather than the heat coming on when you get to where you're going, you have heat before you're out of the driveway?"
What kind of cars are you driving that can't already heat the car in literally seconds, and why would you want to heat your garage from your car? Because you can already do that, but why would you?
"Why aren't they telling you how well EVs handle, thanks to its crazy low center of gravity? Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?"
Because almost every car on the market handles just well enough. The low center of gravity is because of that 450kg+ of weight you carry around. Two sets of brakes are available on many, many decent affordable cars.
"Why aren't they advertising the fact that electricity is five times cheaper than gasoline and diesel? The only way I found out was by buying one."
You don't read your electricity bill? P.S. it would cost a significant portion of the car cost to legally fit a compliant home charger to my home - not least probably being required to upgrade my house electrics to do so.
"Why aren't they advertising all the advantages of EVs?"
They are. But also, see your lines above. There aren't many, very, very few of them are unique to EVs and they're rather limited in scope, and vastly cancelled out by the cost.
"Why are only the top of the line autos like the Mustang or Cadillac EVs?"
Again... American problem.
"But why do they hate them and love the incredibly inefficient (my car will go 20 miles on the electricity it takes to refine a gallon of gasoline), obsolete Rube Goldberg device with thousands of moving parts to wear and break?"
They don't. Consumers are not purchasing enough of them yet to justify the switch, and with a ICE switch-off in a few years they are maximising their patent portfolio and existing tooling before it becomes obsolete forever. There will come a point where you can't get spares for the old ICE cars because they simply aren't making enough any more. That point is not yet. Hence it's still cheaper to repair ICE cars than buy EV cars for the moment.
"Gasoline and diesel vehicles all need periodic maintenance."
So does your EV, it's a condition of that 10 year warranty, I'll bet.
"A bad fuel pump stranded me in the bad part of town last year, and the repair was nearly $900 not counting the towing charge."
That was a new car, you said. Thus it was under warranty because you were maintaining it, yes? Why are you paying for anything?
Also, mechanical failures can happen to all cars. More, less, maybe, who knows with the current numbers on the roads. There was a time when towing an EV destroyed it, by the way. They were expensive to deal with.
"When was the last time your ceiling fan needed servicing?"
Your ceiling fan does not move at 70mph on a motorway for hours on end for countless years dragging 450kg of battery with it. It's not even vaguely comparable.
There is no conspiracy theory here - electric cars are very viable. My next car WILL be an EV. Because the law dictates so and I'm not going to try to cling onto an ICE once it becomes taxed to oblivion, penalised on the roads, parts aren't available, support is non-existent, etc. etc.
But the simple fact is - as a homeowner who purchased an ICE car from brand new and uses (and abuses) it every day to move house, go to work, etc. I can tell you: I can't afford an EV at the moment. I have a plan before 2030 (when ICE will be banned in my country) to put a charger on the wall of my house. This is a long-term plan, and will cost a lot in itself.
If my car makes it to then, I still won't change. I'll drive it until it's not economically viable any more compared to an EV. Fact is, I could buy my car and nearly 300 tanks of fuel for the price you paid for your EV. A tank every 2 weeks, that's 11.5 years of fuel. When you then account for your electrical costs, and take off my "maintenance" costs, let's say five year's worth. I could literally buy my car over, plus fuel and parts enough to get through the ICE ban, cheaper than I could buy and run your EV to that point.
Until that changes - EV coming down in price, my fuel being taxed to oblivion, my car being banned from the road, etc. - I will ask just one question:
Why would you think I would move to an EV except out of "the goodness of my heart" at the moment? Economically it makes no sense whatsoever. Environmentally, yes. But economically, no. And, sorry, but I'm not in a position to enjoy the luxury of dropping $40k on a car just to feel better about my carbon emissions. If I were, I'd have done it a long time ago.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday December 07 2023, @11:20AM
One reason for EV is luxury.
The pinnacle showoff of ICE propulsion is putting a coin on its edge on a Ferrari Flat 12 and pulling the throttle without the coin falling over. Messieurs Rolls and Royce stated (I hope I quote correctly) that their ideal was an engine that is not noticeable while always having sufficient power. An electric motor delivers on both of that. The heavy battery not only lowers (if it's in a skateboard design) the centre of gravity, but also improves the sprung-vs-unsprung weight ratio for a smoother ride. (The power usage penalty isn't that bad if the brake energy gets recovered, e.g. if one doesn't slam the brakes hard to heat it off, at 80% efficiency, 400 kg battery becomes an 80kg penalty on average).
Of course, with a Mondeo Estate, and claiming cars handle good enough (which is true for practical purposes), all this luxury stuff, or ride & handling fetishism, doesn't apply to you. ;)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:01PM (1 child)
At some point I did an estimate of integrated cost for EV vs petrol, including reasonable estimates for a few years of operation. The EV came out a bit cheaper. It relies on doing a reasonable amount of mileage to offset the up front cost. It sounds like you have done the same estimate, and come out with 5 years of running as the "crossing point". Well, I run my car for more than 5 years (in fact I have a 20 year old car on the driveway), so for purely cost grounds it makes sense to buy an EV.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:26PM
> ... I have a 20 year old car on the driveway
So do I. It was given to me at 115,000 miles by an older friend who was unable to drive anymore. It's not a great car (the same friend gave his Porsche to his brother!), but it is one known for long life and I recently passed 130K miles with minimal expenses (one starter motor and a set of tires).
Since it's unlikely that anyone is going to be giving or willing me a BEV in the next 10(?) years I'm so far ahead of any BEV cost scenario that there is no economic reason for me to change to electric.
Another piece of the cost of ownership is insurance and my 20 year old car is less than $500/year with collision coverage. Electric cars, or really any expensive car, are considerably more expensive to insure.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:13PM (12 children)
Just a pure "give no fuck capitalist" will tell you ...do your math properly.
A gasoline car toyota corolla for e.g is >$25K (so $15K extra upfront) ...how much servicing a year cost ..first few years $1000 a year ...after 5 to 8 years can be as high as $3K per year (you know water pump, fuel pump, carbon build up on piston, MAF clogging, timing belt, etc etc)...so easily $20K over 10 year in servicing..vs 5K i am presuming for electric...you know breakpads or heat pump failure etc. I'll assume . Just in terms of servicing you would have saved money with an electric car if you keep it for 10 years. now fuel...if your are charging at home on the average it is cheaper (20% the cost of gasoline)...in Europe etc it can be as low as 5% of the cost of gasoline. 10K miles per year....25mpg car cost you 400 g of fuel.. say $3/gal $1200 vs $300 for electric.. so $900... or nearly $10K over a period of 10 years ...so you'd easily save 10K to 15K over the 10 year of ownership...In Europe or wherever gasoline is not subsidized (like in the US or Arab) countries...the amount you spend to keep and run a gasoline car over 10 years would pay for the electric car !
Exxon and subsidiaries say thank you for doing what you are doing and feeling you are saving money ! What do we call it when somebody does something against his economic interest and feel good about it ? Charitable donation to Exxon ...yeah for you.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:31PM
Bullshit.
I'm currently driving an ICE that is more than 20 years old. The engine is 4.1l, it has AC, a good stereo, is comfortable, powerful and easy to drive. I bought it for $3000, 13 years ago and it has cost me an average of about $800 per year in service and repairs since then.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday December 07 2023, @06:42PM (7 children)
My car, bought from new, being a "cheap" Ford, is 8 years in and has required nothing but tyres, oil and filters.
All of which are consumables on an EV too.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:02PM (6 children)
I don't believe you. You would certainly need brakes on an ICE vehicle in 8 years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ledow on Friday December 08 2023, @01:05AM (2 children)
I'll give you a small point - a single advisory (i.e. not required) on one MOT out of 5, nothing more.
£20.
Again, a consumable, that you could argue wasn't on an electric car, but not anywhere near the suggested maintenance pricing.
I just checked all my historical MOTs since the car was "born" (I'm the only owner in its history), that was literally the only thing I missed.
Even the windscreen wipers are original (but I have a spare pack in the back, just in case).
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Friday December 08 2023, @04:30AM (1 child)
20 pounds!! An advisory?
Perhaps you don't own a car at all, because those figures are pure fantasy when considering an ICE vehicle.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday December 08 2023, @08:47AM
MOT results are public knowledge and I'd love to be able to share them with you but it would literally identify me and my home address immediately.
Yes. An advisory.
Date tested
18 December 2020
PASS
Advisory: Front Brake pad(s) wearing thin (1.1.13 (a) (ii))
The vehicle was purchased late 2015, you don't even have to do an MOT until 3 years after purchase. This was thus the third MOT (done early because of the horrible dates).
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:22AM (2 children)
My first truck had brakes done twice in 34 years (240k miles).
Doing more coasting than braking probably had a lot to do with that. (I am a cheap bugger, I resent paying for consumables...)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:12AM (1 child)
Also, if it was a stick shift it had engine braking, one reason you change brakes less often in an EV.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:46AM
Mine are all automatics, but you can use engine braking there too (as I do in winter, because it's a good deal less slippy -- on ice I usually gear down before I touch brakes).
I just don't lean much on the brakes. I had to spend gas to get going, I'm going to get as much coasting out of it as I can before I stop. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @04:54AM (2 children)
I don't know where you're doing your maintenance, but I worked out what my first pickup (bought new for $5600) cost me across 34 years, and it came to $700 per year -- including a full rebuild end to end. And that was mostly SoCal shop prices. 240,000 miles (and it worked for a living).
Current truck (bought used, for the primo sum of $3000) across 10 years has cost me on average $580/year, including a full transmission and brake rebuild. It has 258,000 miles on it, but had a new engine just before I got it, and is functionally a new truck. It will probably not need any significant repair for the next 8-10 years.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:26AM (1 child)
A new pickup for $5600? Before the bicentennial. So if you got it in '72 and traded in '02 those first few $700 years were a whole lot more in today's money, cigarettes were thirty cents a pack in 1972 and gas was a quarter. 1974 destroyed all math having to do with the price of anything.
And 240,000 miles on a work truck in 34 years? You must not have worked much, I bought a '74 Le Mans in '78 with 30,000 miles on it and it had 300,000 when I traded it in '84 or '85. I'd replaced a thermostat, a water pump, a clutch and fixed a hose with duct tape, the only maintenance except oil changes and tuneups and all the other maintenance hassles piston engines have. That maintenance is a hell of a lot more expensive than it used to be, too.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:43AM
1978. Brand new what was then the F100 (tho it had an F150 rear end, somewhat to the mechanic's puzzlement). I work at home, with occasional business trips, so no, there wasn't commute miles on it. But it got to haul bed loads and sometimes trailers pretty much every time it went anywhere.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:53AM (1 child)
My line of thought always was that the western corporations have become so bloated that they need to sell "premium" products to survive. (A variant of "Enshittification"?)
The Ford Fiesta is an example: Legendary hatchback, 20 million made (nearly as many as VW beetles), 9 million of them in Cologne. The production was cancelled in 2023 in favour of an electric SUV (which certainly will have a higher price tag, and I have no idea who would buy it). The 'smart' car is another example. Despite big pricing for this small and simple car, they never were able to make a profit out of it and moved production to China.
China, on the other hand, is still able to manufacture without much of the overhead. Exhibit: The Wuling Nano, which I happen to know only because I was looking hard for a replacement for my Gen 1 'smart' car, with the main requirement that's not longer (i.e. 2,50m or below). Wikipedia says the entry price is equivalent to $7,697. The battery at 24kWh is fine for the tasks of such a car, but hey could double the price for a few chassis reinforcements and an airbag, and it'd still be a steal.
But you can't buy it in the West. Despite the manufacturer being a joint venture "SAIC-GM-Wuling" - yes, it's THAT "GM". So the assumption has to be that the fat pigs around here are making damn sure that no one takes away their trough. (It could be worse, because Tesla set them a hard bar for their pricing with the Model 3. I suspect the pricing would be even more offensive without that.)
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Thursday December 07 2023, @01:01PM
At least some of the difference in price will be down to the engineering of the car to allow the occupants to survive crashes and the difference in government regulations in the different markets.
Some will also be down to consumer preferences, like whether you want air-conditioning, or just heating and windows that can open, and the finish of the interior. Enough Western consumers are prepared to pay for luxury to influence the economics of which model type are most profitable to sell. It doesn't matter if you are happy to put up with fewer creature comforts if all your neighbours are prepared to pay more for the electric seats with heaters, massage, and position memory for different drivers. It becomes uneconomic (or at least, much less profitable) to sell the basic model.
Marketing will ensure that features that are inexpensive and popular can only be obtained by buying an expensive package of 'upgrades', giving you exterior colour changing LED lighting, 'low-profile' wheels and a leather-trimmed steering wheel, as well as the reversing camera you actually want. You can only have a bacon sandwich if you order a club sandwich and throw away anything that isn't bacon or bread (see also the character Robert Dupea ordering side order of toast in Five Easy Pieces [youtube.com][Triggers: YouTube, Jack Nicholson]),
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @12:10PM (23 children)
> Or how much faster they can stop, thanks to having two sets of brakes?
How fast you can stop depends on the friction available between tires and road. Any modern car (with ABS disabled) has more than enough brake torque available to lock the wheels, and also (with good driver control) maintain the tires at a suitable slip ratio to get optimum braking force from the tires. The optimum depends on tires/road/condition(wet/dry/etc)/temperature and other environmental factors. For dry pavement the best slip ratio is often in the range of -5% to -10%, the tire rotation rate is slowed compared to rolling freely. With ABS brakes, the computer tries to maintain the tires near this optimum slip ratio for you--all you have to do is stand on the brake pedal (note: may not be true on loose surfaces like gravel or slush, then locked wheels often give the best braking...but with loss of steering control).
How fast you can stop has nothing at all to do with whether the brakes are friction or regen to a battery or some blended function of the two. You may have been confused by a change in the brake pedal force required when you changed cars? The pedal force can vary quite a bit, depends on the car design and perhaps different friction characteristics when brake pads are changed.
(Score: 2, Redundant) by mcgrew on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:34PM (20 children)
and also (with good driver control) maintain the tires at a suitable slip ratio to get optimum braking force from the tires.
Besides my dad teaching me to drive, and the high school class, I was a driver in the Air Force. It's a lot more training than you'll get in high school. But besides someone with military grade driver training and possibly CDL training (I'm ignorant of what that entails), nobody on the road has good driver control. My '02 Concorde was the first car I had with ABS, and it could stop on ice faster I could without ABS.
My next car was an '04 four cylinder with rear drums that I would have killed two people with had it not been for my military training. People fear self-driving cars, but people suck at driving them.
How fast you can stop has nothing at all to do with whether the brakes are friction or regen to a battery or some blended function of the two.
The point wasn't either/or, it was one or both. That Concorde stopped faster than any car I'd driven previously; the military vehicles were all old and had drum brakes. The Concorde's braking was great thanks to its huge disks made possible by its 18 inch wheels.
Traditional brakes work by changing kinetic energy into heat. The faster you can turn motion into heat, the faster you will stop. With an EV you not only have the traditional brakes that turn motion into heat, but a second braking system that changes momentum into electricity.
The Hyundai stops even faster despite weighing twice as much. If I'm doing less than 20 mph (33.1/3 kph) it doesn't slide, it just stops dead right there. "It stops on a dime" is an old cliche but with this car it's actually true, at least at slow speeds.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:49PM (5 children)
The main thing that the double braking system has the capacity to improve is: brake disc/pad overheating. You usually don't encounter it in normal driving though, the stock brake pads on our 1999 Dodge Ram 1500 would overheat and fade in a single stop from 80mph with just two passengers and no load in the bed, I replaced the pads with a more competition oriented compound and that improved significantly.
Where this typically becomes a factor is in racing, where you are doing many heavy brakings in a short span. Racers will put larger pads and rotors on to help dissipate the heat before it gets to a point that makes the brakes slippery, but that only works up to a point. If you have a low power (sub 100hp) engine, it generally doesn't take an unreasonably large brake disc to dissipate all the heat that engine can get into the brakes before reaching seriously challenging temperatures. With more power, you can heat the brakes faster and hotter. But... if you drive on the street in a way that challenges the brakes like racing does, you'll get pulled over for suspicion of driving like you are guilty of something / afraid of someone chasing you - even if you aren't speeding.
The regen braking system in some EVs does take some load off of the traditional disc and pad system, but I doubt it's enough to make up for the extra weight of today's battery packs - and if you go racing your super-high power and torque EV, I bet you're going to hit the same brake issues as high power ICE racers - especially if you put on grippy race tires that can handle the weight and speed of your EV.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:32AM (4 children)
I doubt it's enough to make up for the extra weight of today's battery packs
Doubt away if you wish. Drive one once and you will no longer doubt.
if you go racing your super-high power and torque EV, I bet you're going to hit the same brake issues as high power ICE racers
At my age, I've been past that for a long time.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:51AM (3 children)
So, before kids I used to (solo) race my Miata.
In street driving the Miata never had a brake fade problem. In solo racing with 116hp it started to fade a bit, but upgraded pads fixed that for the 3 minute course I raced on.
Then I turbocharged it up past 200hp and the brake fade came back, only on the track.
If you drive your stock EV hard enough on a track, I would be seriously surprised if the brakes didn't eventually overheat and fade, probably in a minute or two of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake cycles.
Will this ever affect you driving normally on the street? I would hope not. If it does, your manufacturer seriously cheaped out on an important safety system in your car.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:09PM
> If you drive your stock EV hard enough on a track, I would be seriously surprised if the brakes didn't eventually overheat and fade, probably in a minute or two of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake cycles.
In addition, the battery pack or a stock EV will also start to overheat with race track usage, often within one or two hard laps of a road course. At that point the system protects itself and de-rates (reduces available power for drive or regen).
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 10 2023, @08:25PM (1 child)
Judging from city traffic, I'm the only one who doesn't drive like that!
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 10 2023, @08:59PM
City traffic around here tends to accelerate with about 80-100hp, and braking is nowhere near limits, as it should not be. It can seem like racing, when I drove a 60hp Honda Civic it was all that 1600lb hatchback could do to keep up, but it could outbrake traffic, even on 155-70/12 tires.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @04:45PM
> That Concorde stopped faster than any car I'd driven previously;...
> The Hyundai stops even faster despite weighing twice as much.
Tires continue to improve, your Hyundai has about 20 more years of tire development and the changes over that period are many. Looking back further, the tire-road friction available now for ordinary cars rivals what was available for race cars with special "sticky" tires in the 1960s or 70s. Rubber compounding and other aspects of tire design are being continuously improved, although no one makes a big deal about it. Once again, it's the available friction between tires and road that normally determine how fast yo9u can stop a car.
As pointed out elsewhere, in any normal highway driving the brakes are not likely to fade, they will always be able to make enough torque to lock the wheels.
Not only did your military vehicles likely have poor brake hardware, they also likely had long-lasting, very hard rubber tread and, this translates to low peak friction capability between road and tire.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by vux984 on Thursday December 07 2023, @07:20PM (5 children)
"Traditional brakes work by changing kinetic energy into heat. The faster you can turn motion into heat, the faster you will stop."
Traditional brakes have already been able to stop the tire rotation sufficiently fast for years now, such that you'll lose friction with the road and slide if they engage fully. The limit of braking is tire grip. The better stopping distance of a sports car or racing car is primarily due to lower mass, plus wider and softer tires resulting in better friction. The larger, and/or exotic ceramic brakes on them dissipate heat faster and run hotter without loss of performance in race conditions where they are in constant and extreme use - but wouldn't make much difference vs 'regular brakes' at stopping from 20mph, as even those can easily stop the wheel rotation fast enough to hit the limit of tire grip in those conditions.
It's actually well documented that EVs generally have WORSE braking than ICEs precisely because they weigh so much more and most of them spec to run narrower tires specifically to REDUCE friction (enabling better range).
I can't comment on your anecdotal experience with the Hyundai; tire technology is constantly improving, tires are getting better, the technology that goes into the rubber and the tread is pretty advanced, and maybe you just have really good new tires on your EV and had cheap crappy old technology tires on your previous vehicle(s).
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday December 07 2023, @08:07PM (4 children)
Got a link for that, or is it just more fossil-fuel propaganda?
(Score: 5, Informative) by vux984 on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:53PM (3 children)
Is basic physics "fossil fuel propaganda"?
Do EVs run narrower tires, and run lower rolling resistance tires to extend range? yes.
Do EVs weigh more than ICE vehicles? yes.
Do these characteristics impact braking distance? yes. Go look up any manufacturer's articles about the EV tires they make they'll all say stuff like this.
What exactly are you disputing here?
Even the tire manufacturers acknowledge these issues:
"Increased weight means longer braking distance"
"the demand for a long range and lower emissions comes an even greater need for minimal rolling resistance"
https://www.continental-tires.com/products/b2c/tire-knowledge/electric-vehicle-tires/ [continental-tires.com]
"Ford brought in Pirelli to help with rolling resistance to increase the Mach-E’s driving range"
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a45529565/pirelli-p-zero-e-tires-for-ev-market/ [autoweek.com]
Here's an article about hybrids and evs sacrificing braking distance for fuel economy:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/hybrids-evs/sacrificing-braking-distance-for-hybrid-fuel-economy-a3970563268/ [consumerreports.org]
And here's an article about telsa getting a software update to improve resolve it's then terrible braking distance:
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/tesla-model-3-gets-cr-recommendation-after-braking-update/ [consumerreports.org]
Now think about it, and put aside the breathless reporting aside.
First, why was the braking distance so bad in the first place?
And second? How can a software update improve braking distance? The physics of braking haven't changed. The car weighs the same, the tires are the same, etc.
Now obviously, right out of the gate we know that if the car could be made to stop any faster than it already was then that tells you that it was NOT braking at the limit of tire grip. If it was, then well, that's the *limit*, and if you brake any faster you'd lose traction and slide.
This means they were deliberately limiting the braking speed to some point less than the limit of grip for... reasons. The two reasons would be a) to reduce wear on the tires (note that EV tires are already more expensive and already wear out faster because EVs are so heavy) and b) to allow for more regenerative braking to take place, increasing range.
So... hurrah, Tesla reduced the braking distance of their car with a software update, which is great. But its not fucking magical. They retuned the braking parameters to prioritize braking distance a bit more. So now the tires will now wear out some amount faster, and the effective range will be some amount less. It was likely the correct thing to do, and good on them for doing it, but it was a re-balancing of trade offs, it wasn't "free".
It's not a knock on EVs -- range anxiety is real and makes more sense in a vehicle where charging infrastructure is still far from universal and charging times are relatively slow. But ICE cars have the same trade offs -- and there's a reason your family runabout isn't using the same massive tires as a Porsche or Lamborghini -- because the ultra high performance high grip tires come with a price, not just in the higher initial purchase price -- they lower the fuel efficiency, lower the range, and they wear out faster.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:37AM (2 children)
Do EVs run narrower tires, and run lower rolling resistance tires to extend range? yes.
Apparently you have never looked at a single EV in your life. My tires are a little wider, and the extra weight gives extra traction.
So... hurrah, Tesla...
Fuck that Nazi.
No blind man has ever convinced anyone that colors don't exist. Drive one, until then you're speaking from ignorance.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday December 13 2023, @08:50PM (1 child)
"Apparently you have never looked at a single EV in your life."
3 of my neightbors have them, 2 Tesla 3's and a Chevy Bolt. I've seriously evaluated buying a Taycan.
"My tires are a little wider"
A little wider than WHAT though? Compare with cars that are available in multiple configurations, like, say the VW Golf.
The e-golf specs 205mm wide tires, same as the Golf TDI (the turbo diesel which is also targeted at people who want maximum range/fuel efficiency). The Golf GTI, a more performant variation takes 225mm and the Golf R the highest performance variant takes 225mm or 235mm.
Now, yes the Tesla S Plaid (the most extreme hyper performance version) specs 285mm in the rear; and those are seriously wide tires, but there's really nothing to compare that to. I mean, a Porsche 911 Turbo S runs 315mm in the rear and the Porsche weighs ~2000 pounds less. (That's a whole 80s Toyota MR2 in extra mass on the Tesla plaid -- sitting on 30mm narrower tires -- but i don't know what conclusions you'd really try to make from that.)
"and the extra weight gives extra traction."
mcgrew -- are you serious? Can a dump truck full of gravel stop faster than an empty one? I've got to believe you know that's absurd. And that you know it is absurd because more mass requires more force to accelerate (or decelerate). So, sure, yes, you get more friction force from the higher weight, but the the amount of stopping force you need to apply to slow down is also much greater - the net effect is that braking distance is LONGER by adding weight.
"Fuck that Nazi."
Someone shit in your cereal this morning?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 16 2023, @08:04PM
a dump truck's weight isn't on the bottom. It adds to handling, not stopping.
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 4, Informative) by owl on Thursday December 07 2023, @09:35PM (5 children)
Uh, no... well, up to a point that is.
The maximum speed at which you can stop is determined only by the friction between your tires and the road surface. If you can produce negative torque on the tires sufficient to match, but not exceed, the friction force between the tires and road surface, it does not matter how much "more" negative torque you can produce, nor how (heat gen or electricity gen) you simply can not stop faster than what that friction allows for.
It also does not matter how the negative torque is generated, you can not stop faster than the tire to road surface friction allows.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @05:11AM (4 children)
Many moons ago I had an Olds F-85, which had the sort of automatic transmission that let you shift directly from low to reverse (P-N-H-2-L-R, not what we usually see today). With studded snow tires on glare ice and an emergency in front of me, I discovered that it would stop much faster if I shifted to reverse.
(Probably sub-optimal for the Olds, but better than becoming a Participant headed for the ditch.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 08 2023, @06:11AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @06:55AM
I wasn't sliding (four studded snow tires = had to give up whirligigging in the grocery parking lot, because it would not slide, at all), the guy ahead of me was, in my direction. So I needed to stop or better yet back up a whole lot quicker than normal.
Those old transmissions seem to have been made to handle this, tho... in the day, we all did the low-to-reverse bump to climb out of ice ruts, and none seemed any the worse for it. You just had to be careful to brake between, however briefly.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:58AM (1 child)
Studded snow tires on an icy surface is another beast altogether, in reverse you could be tearing up the ice and making a higher friction surface for yourself.
Rubber on pavement doesn't do this in normal situations. Bleach on drag tires at the launch pad of a drag strip being one notable exception. Simple heating of race rubber being another. Those exceptions have nothing whatsoever to do with street tires on normal driving surfaces.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:49AM
That's true. That car became downright sticky even on the worst ice. Way more difference than you'd expect for 2WD -- you don't realize how much the front end slides until it doesn't.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Friday December 08 2023, @05:04AM
My F350 (6000 pounds even) stops like that. Dually (extra tire patches) and oversized brakes. At 20mph, step on the pedal and it stops dead. A pleasant shock when I thought I was going to T-bone some idiot who jumped out right in front of me -- nope, stopped with room to spare.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:40PM (1 child)
If the ABS system is any good, it can keep all 4 tires near the limit of rolling friction in a way that no driver with only single pedal input can.
My Miata has no ABS. Braking at the limit I will inevitably reach locking point of one tire long before the other three, need to modulate, and can stop dramatically quickly, but not as quickly as a 4 wheel ABS system can when the driver just mashes the brake pedal as hard as possible.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 07 2023, @05:05PM
Yep, agreed, well-tuned 4 wheel ABS can be very good.
But, here (NE USA) we often have slush on the road, a mix of brine (road salt) and ice/snow. In those conditions, older ABS has given me several close calls--the control algorithm keeps the tires rolling to give steering control...and the available *rolling* friction is so low that the car feels like it's not slowing down at all. The pedal was pulsing hard, I was well into the ABS range.
The solution is to pull the ABS fuse on slushy days so it becomes possible to "pump the brakes" old style. Locked wheels build up a wedge of slush in front of the tires and slow the car down, but the car slides straight, no turning possible (it will slide down any road slope). Every cycle of releasing the brakes so the wheels roll, allows some steering to be done. A skill routinely taught to young drivers around here...before ABS. I learned how to pump the brakes (not on public roads) before age 10.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by datapharmer on Thursday December 07 2023, @12:33PM
1. They don't want to lose their meal ticket. As the author stated, they make a great deal of money on after sale parts and labor, but they also have a huge investment in existing manufacturing capability. It is expensive to retool and retrain, so run the same thing as long as you can.
2. Limited capacity. See above. As they have only so much dedicated production capacity it becomes a supply and demand problem, so they will meet the demand of the highest profit margin units first.
3. Limited resources. Even if they ramped production lines, there is only so much lithium and so many batteries to be had. Why build 3 $20k vehicles using 43KWh of battery each when you can sell 1 90k+ vehicle with 130KWh battery.
4. Public charging capacity. This is still being built out, and other than Tesla isn't very reliable yet from what I've heard. If you flood the market with more vehicles it will exacerbate the problem, especially since these are probably the same buyers that are less likely to have the ability to charge at home (higher income homeowners can afford to install a fast charger in their garage at home; apartment renters often can't charge at home).
If we have a breakthrough with a better/cheaper/more abundant battery chemistry it will help substantially. Without that we will simply see more mid-market to entry-market downward pricing pressure once Tesla eventually releases a Model 2 and the other manufacturers switch to NACS and the other charging companies make the transition as well.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 07 2023, @02:51PM (2 children)
That's why they push self driving EVs so hard. Its not like a gas burner car inherently can't self drive LOL the point is you can't register a car in my state if there's a code in the car computer, and you'll have a code if there's even one anti-lock brake sensor out or really anything.
So the strategy is sell self driving cars with 100+ sensors and web cams and other gadgetry no one wants, that can only be replaced with a genuine $2K part when it inevitably breaks.
GM can't sell you a set of fuel injectors for an EV but they can take a $20 webcam, slap a "genuine GM part" sticker on it, and sell the same webcam for $2K for a self driving car.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday December 07 2023, @08:37PM (1 child)
You don't need the vehicle to be self-driving or have an electric power train for this insanity to happen. Have you heard about this $5600 tail light repair [thedrive.com] on the Ford F-150?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Touché) by VLM on Friday December 08 2023, @12:34PM
The point of self driving is having 10x the number of sensors will increase "repair part sales" of exotic sensors by a factor of 10x. So instead of 2 brake lights with built in radar sensors imagine 20 of them dotted around the car.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday December 07 2023, @03:14PM (1 child)
There's multiple things going on but one interesting one is social class vs advertising in 2023, only poor people watch advertising in 2023 so the advertising is aimed at poor people and there's a long tradition of aspirational advertising among all products, so naturally you advertise $100K cars to poor people just like you advertise $1K phones to them or $5K rims or whatever stuff like that. The idea is to sell the poor people on the idea that if they were millionaires they'd buy the $100K EV Cadillac, with the hope that they know someone who somehow temporarily advances to the middle class and they can pressure them to buy the unmentioned $30K EV because its kinda like the Cadillac but its cheaper.
The other thing going on is generations since the 1970s of the standard anti-EV rant being, well, sure that's impressive that your new EV can drive X miles, but I can't buy one until it can drive (X * 1.5) miles. And that scam has been going on as a tradition since lead-acid conversions in the 70s that only went 10 miles on a charge. I assume if they ever ship a working Mr. Fusion that can drive 100K miles without refueling, most of the bitching about the vehicle will revolve around "oh sure that's nice but I can't buy one unless it can go 110K without refueling, so check back with me after they improve it a bit". So that's how we end up with EVs that can drive 500 miles in theory but cost $90K although I'd buy an EV that "only" goes 100 miles for $20K. I don't think I've driven over 100 miles in one driving leg since at least pre-covid...
Another point worth making is most advertising about batteries is lies. I've seen a pretty strong push to call a battery in a box that you can recharge a "generator", everyone knows all cell phone and watch battery claims are outright lies at least 2x what you'll get. So if you want people to believe the opposite of your list of "Why aren't they advertising" items, just have them advertise those items and everyone will assume they're all lies. Its almost 2024, why would they spend millions on a Superbowel TV commercial unless they were pushing a lie?
Another EV problem you did not mention is its not just parts, its labor. The dealership network makes "most" of its money, most of its profit, anyway, changing oil. The dealers are not going to want to sell a car that does not need to sit in their shop every three months. Charge the customer $125/hr, pay the auto tech $18/hr, maybe less, pocket the difference. Even if the big automaker made EVs, no one can force the dealerships to sell them, and in many states the dealerships have enough political power to make it illegal to sell cars without them (see some Tesla drama from recent years).
A final part is only "rich" people can do long term accounting. Poor people can occasionally scrape up $95 for an off brand set of imported clone brake disks, but even if someone loaned then $100K to buy an EV (to go with their hyperinflated $500K house mortgage) they can't scrape up $3K to replace a motor controller or $30K for a replacement battery "when the time comes". So even if the average cost is cheaper for EVs, the peak monthly expense for gas cars is much cheaper. Poor and whats left of the middle class people can afford a "surprise" fuel pump replacement but cannot afford a "surprise" EV battery replacement. Used EVs are unaffordable for most people. "If anything breaks, tow it to the junk yard you can't afford to fix it" only works for $200 clunkers and EVs aren't THAT cheap yet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:13AM
>I don't think I've driven over 100 miles in one driving leg since at least pre-covid...
This past week we took a family trip 265 miles each way, one pee break stop no fuel each way.
Our 2019 Dodge Ram 1500 has over 600 miles of range on a full (26 gallon+ reserve) tank.
I would consider an affordable EV with a range down to about 120 miles, and rent an ICE vehicle for longer trips. However, my wife likes to travel with half the house in the trunk, and the covered pickup bed does that even better than a Mercedes S class. And you can't easily rent a pickup with a covered bed...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday December 07 2023, @10:31PM (6 children)
This is a bit to the left of the OP's post, but seems as good a place as any to drop it in.
I'm a little unclear on why Taxpayers should be paying for a portion of my electric car. I wasn't a fan when taxpayers paid for the cash for clunkers auto subsidy program, and EV subsidies give me the same vibe. They made sense when the technology was just being developed, but at some point, that argument is no longer valid.
How long should taxpayers keep making my car payments?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 08 2023, @03:50AM
In the case of a BEV Hyundai, I think enough of it was made outside USA that the subsidy (tax credits in USA) are either low or zero? I think this is the right page to use a calculator to find out what Federal credits are available-- https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/tax2023.shtml [fueleconomy.gov]
Once I put in a date range for 2023, Hyundai was not on the pick list...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday December 08 2023, @12:37PM (2 children)
I'm not saying I agree with the analysis and I wouldn't even guess a dollar figure but it seems to be an overall harm minimization scheme where every dollar spent on EVs would theoretically in the long run save $X of military adventurism in the middle east.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday December 08 2023, @02:42PM
It's a reasonable argument. That said, I have bedrock faith our military industries will find some conflict to keep the money flowing; Oil has been a convenient go-to, but there's plenty of other reasons too. :(
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday December 09 2023, @12:29AM
Except my tax dollars shouldn't be paying for military adventurism in the Middle East, either....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday December 09 2023, @01:44AM
I'm a little unclear on why Taxpayers should be paying for a portion of my electric car.
What I'd like to know is if they're so worried about global warming, why are they giving the oil industry subsidies? Why are none of these fascists whining about welfare for the poor (which ended in the US in 1996) not caring a bit about subsidies to billion dollar monstrosities?
Poe's Law [nooze.org] has nothing to do with Edgar Allen Poetry
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 09 2023, @02:35AM
>I'm a little unclear on why Taxpayers should be paying for a portion of my electric car.
Try this:
While gas powered vehicles have been hovering in the 20-30mpg range ever since the 73 Arab Oil embargo, with 50mpg barely possible in rare cases, the average EV today gets 114mpge (a figure that equates the energy in a gallon of gasoline to 33.7kWh, which you can buy in most of the country for less than $4).
So, EVs are roughly 4x as energy efficient to operate compared with ICE vehicles which have over a century of development and refinement in their current designs. In my book, pushing the national fleet to be 4x as energy efficient (or more) is worth a lot of tax incentives: we will all benefit from the change after EVs come down in purchase price and the technology improves due to economies of scale.
I would rather pay for this through taxes than a regressive approach where we start taxing fossil fuels to pay for their myriad of currently externalized costs.
>I wasn't a fan when taxpayers paid for the cash for clunkers auto subsidy program
I'm with you there, CFC struck me as corporate welfare, yet another auto maker bailout wearing a tiny green fig leaf.
>They made sense when the technology was just being developed, but at some point, that argument is no longer valid.
I think EV subsidies make sense up until they reach 50% market share vs ICE. The current EV battery tech still needs a lot of development both for cost and environmental concerns. EVs are near TCO cost parity with new ICE vehicles, but older ICE vehicles are still much more attractive than equivalent used EVs.
Make me king, I will fix everything. Meanwhile, expect a continuing stream of corporate welfare to accompany most policy changes for the foreseeable future.
🌻🌻 [google.com]