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Re:Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to e... by echelon on Monday July 26, 2021 @01:17PM (#27962109)
There are a number of problems with EVs that ICEs handle much better.

Trucking and logistics is very time dependent, so stopping to recharge imposes severe logistical constraints. You can't have every truck stay at the same pit stop. There isn't enough space or time.

Large apartment complexes are plentiful. A 1,000-resident building complex full of EVs will draw a lot of power. Can the grid handle it? What happens when the power goes out?

How will residents of states that snow over in the winter will fare? Do they have to stop using their vehicles?

Long trips by car suddenly become more painful, which will likely shift more traffic to air travel.

------ Edit -----

I have a "bad contributor" flag on my account [1]. I had a response to this comment [2] that I wanted to make but can't. I'll include it here for lack of an ability to post on HN:

I just looked at my coke zero can (bad habit), and it's using potassium citrate as an acid buffer.

Inflammation is a tax on the immune system and puts it in a state that is mainly intended for dealing with pathogen and cancer clearance. Over time, endothelial and genetic damage can accrue, resulting in hastened aging and system dysfunction. Increased cell population recruitment from the thymus also diminishes the organ's size in age, reducing immune system capacity to deal with these threats.

Not news I wanted today, but something I needed to hear.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27959642

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27963171

Re:Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to e... by fossuser on Monday July 26, 2021 @01:25PM (#27962242)
Trucking has tradeoffs in both directions - EVs are cheaper, and easier to maintain, trucks are huge and can have a lot of battery capacity. I think what's better depends on specific circumstance.

For large apartment complexes there will probably need to be some load balancing, but seems manageable. Power going out doesn't seem like that big of a deal, more likely to have some charge in the car and it's more likely to find power than gas in a crisis (long lines at gas stations etc.)

Long trips by car via super charger are pretty easy for everything except 700+mi trips which are very rare for vast majority. Unlikely to shift anything to air travel, if anything lower EV fuel costs could shift other direction.

For snow my parents have had only EVs in Buffalo and have been fine. They also drive down the east coast to Florida.

Re:Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to e... by Animats on Monday July 26, 2021 @03:22PM (#27964087)
While electric sports cars and the electric Ford F-150 gets most of the attention, the boring Ford Transit, America's work van, is about to come out in electric.[1] In a few years, most businesses where all the vans spend the night in the fenced company parking lot will probably be going electric, just to save on fuel cost.

The electric version is still US$7K more than the gasoline version. When that price differential disappears, it's all over for the IC engine.

[1] https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/2022/

Re:Toyota is quietly pushing Congress to slow the shift to e... by ygjb on Monday July 26, 2021 @01:54PM (#27962682)
No one is arguing any of these points. The problem is that currently the increased efficiency of ICEs are externalized from the people who are profiting from it.

Pollution, noise, power distribution (fuel vs electric) and the toll on public infrastructure are all externalized costs for these businesses.

The detail that is really exciting is that as EV technology is improving and people are becoming more aware of the realities of climate change and our complete inability to practically affect change as individuals, more and more people are starting to look to sustainable choices, and ICEs based on fossil fuels simply aren't one of them. AFAIK hydrogen fuel cells still aren't simply because the cheapest source of hydrogen is still fossil fuels, by a long shot (unless there is a more recent study that shows otherwise).