Re:Homemade Electric Motorcycle Stopped on M25 in Hertfordshire
by VBprogrammer on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @07:17AM
(#20745596)
I agree with what you are saying. The tradeoffs are complex between an electric car and something else. In many cases the only reasonable solution is to have both and use the appropriate vehicle for the appropriate trip. The downsides of that are many unless you already need two vehicles.
However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater.
Re:Homemade Electric Motorcycle Stopped on M25 in Hertfordshire
by masklinn on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @07:28AM
(#20745671)
> However, you seem to have illustrated exactly my point. An electric car has some limitations compared to a conventional car. But the gap from an electric car to an electric velomobile is probably even greater.
The difference and point (as noted in the second paragraph) is that it is much more feasible to have a car and a velomobile than to have two cars.
I mean that's understandable, if the car you buy can only handle small commuting that means at the very least the additional cost of using other transport methods or renting a car or having a second car (all of which may be problematic or impossible) when you need to see friends, your family, or go on holidays. And that's not "par" money as the EV is not going to be significantly cheaper than an equivalent ICE.
A small and cheap comfy-ish EV might actually be a good option there, as it lets you have a regular car when you need to e.g. go to Ikea (which might be out of range of an EV depending where you live) or drive to the next country or go see your sister a few hundred miles away without significant additional costs, but it needs to be small (so it's not an issue e.g. for people living in cities who may not have access to a garage at all let alone a multi-car one) and cheap (so it's not a drain on resources, or at least not a big one, compared to just using the one car all the time).
Incentives are a thing, and currently EVs mostly incentivise using something else if you don't have fuck you money and more surface than you can use. As-is, plug-in hybrids are probably a better option for single people or single-car households.