I feel that most modern vehicles are designed and built purely to make as much money as possible, rather than to actually a good, reliable, maintainable vehicle. And it works, because the average consume either doesn't care or is easily to manipulate.
If you want to convert more people to EVs, start building some that I'm remotely interested in. That and invest into solid state batteries, I'm mostly waiting for that too. Solid state batteries would solve most of the issues with EV tech.
Fast-forward to the present day where I've recently overheard someone say they "want an electric car so it can drive itself". Tesla has made self-driving (for some definition of self-driving") and over-the-air updates and giant tablet entertainment screens synonymous with EVs, to the point where it seems like every major manufacturer is including those features on every new EV they launch. I'd also like to see essentially an anti-Tesla EV - a simple, good car that happens to be electric, without it being a "smartphone on wheels". Make the entertainment system a double-DIN stereo and I'll know I've found the right car :)
And at least in the U.S. it has had a 25 mile electric range for the past decade or so. Only the 2023 model claims to have a 40 mile electric-only range, and that hasn't been released yet.
What would be great is if Walmart released some kind of electric vehicle analog to their old Sceptre tv models. Steering wheel, pedals, battery, and of course a flash drive reader that autoplays any mp3s it finds. (Premium version could add a cigarette lighter.)
Lifetime 172 mpg over 60,000 miles!
It gets around 42 mpg when running purely on the gas engine. Based on the distance I have traveled and the amount that I have used the gas engine, it works out to 172 miles per actual gallon used.
MPGe is what you would refer to for your fully electric car.
I have a set from Thrustmaster for my combined driving and flight sim rig, it works really well for mfd input. (F16 mainly).
A set of blank buttons eg at the bottom of the display that could be mapped to in display functions would have been very useful.
(I've gotten used to how it is now - and actually really like it after a year - but not going to say it couldn't have been done better. It would look less minimalistic, however.)
There's one fancy thing from Prius I don't think anyone else does though - the heads up display, which looks amazing and I would really like to have. (It's still optional, so you don't lose the usual dashboard)
Give them another generation or two, and they might reach the point you're describing. But they ain't there yet.
The name does actually have a meaning: bZ(Beyond Zero emissions) 4 (based on Rav4) X (Crossover)
That said, I wish they had just called it the Rav4 Electric. I believe mass adoption comes from car companies integrating the electric models into what (non-cutting edge) consumers already trust (Chevy is the only one really embracing this idea)
Considering this model was announced before they asked Toyoda to step down for failing in EV adoption, I suspect it was named to not sully the reputation of an established model.
REV4.
- it's a Rav4
- it's an EV
- it revs
- it's a revolutionThere are some more. Peugeot has electric models with the same naming as their ICE models but an "e" on front (e-208, e-2008, etc.) Hyundai has the Ioniq in EV and non-EV versions. And there was also a Volkswagen eGolf, although I think that one has been abandoned to be replaced by models with electric-specific naming.
Toyota press people don't like people calling it the Beezey Forks. But much like the XBone, once you hear the name, it sticks.
There must be some solid reason as to why mid-capacity batteries in a hybrid don't make economic sense for car companies.
Packaging is also a big downside. Fitting a 10-20 kW battery and a full combustion drivetrain takes a lot of space, so BEVs with packaging advantages over even pure ICE cars priced around the same number suddenly look a lot more attractive to the potential buyers who overlap a lot between PHEVs and BEVs.
To make an ICE efficient, you want to give it a big transmission with a lot of gears so it stays in peak efficiency RP, undersize it, and put a big turbocharger on. This produces a relatively heavy drivetrain that has lag when you put your foot down.
When you have an electric engine and battery, you can take the same small engine, but instead of a transmission, you just steal energy and put it in the battery when you don't need power and give it back instantly when you put your foot down. This removes almost all the weight and complexity of the transmission, keeps your engine at peak RPM, and gives you the responsiveness of an EV.
Plus it's not just the mechanicals. You still need a gas tank, exhaust, catalytic converter and all the other ancillaries that come with combustion. That all adds to the bill of materials, engineering and assembly complexity, and packaging constraints.
I think a lot of this comes from seeing PHEV as "worse EV" rather than "better ICE". Car manufacturers see their business as building ICEs and EVs as a weird distraction that you have to throw money into as basically a PR expense (although this has started to change in the last couple years). The engineering cost here is expensive but not especially unique since it could pretty easily apply to the entire ICE fleet. The fact that the Prius has existed for 25 years, but most cars sold today don't have regenerative braking is kind of crazy. It's not like OEMs haven't put a ton of engineering into ICEs, they just haven't considered hybrids as "real engineering".
Sadly it never made it to market.
BTW, the volt was advertised/promoted as a serial hybrid, which was a really interesting idea ... right up till it shipped and it wasn't.
Our bmw 5 series from 2014 has it. It is amazing tech, easily the best improvement for me in car driving in past 2 decades. Constant visual contact with road and surroundings, while being aware of my current speed to the level of single kmh, speed limit, car navigation, switching songs/volume with knob on steering wheel, perfectly readable in all conditions and never obtrusive. I just dont look inside the car anymore. The problem is when I drive car without it, it feels severely lacking and ancient (like driving long stretches on highways and a lot of speed radars without cruise control).
I'd never buy a new car, price/value compared to used ones is ridiculously bad, not grokking who does that unless its like 1-5% of their annual salary. Even then its just throwing tons of money away. Electric cars seem to me much worse in this, hopefully this changes over time.
So no ultra expensive cars, you can have it for the price of really basic new cars (if I ignore maintenance but this can be managed by not using official repair shops, which is good idea anyway since they just love swapping whole expensive blocs instead of fixing actual problems). On top of massively better crash security, comfort, proper fun driving etc.
On the other hand, having an ex-demo car from a dealer meant no silly markup and when the transmission fell apart after 4 years, I got it replaced for free instead of paying thousands to an independent shop. There are pros and cons.
(And yes, completely new cars have silly markup, but used ones with low mileage don't)
The iPhone moment was often referred to as the smartphone revolution, but 15 years later, the experience it offers are not fundamentally different from advanced flip phones it replaced, just better. Technical aspects of an iPhone, such as touchscreen user interface, non-replaceable battery, jailbreakable OS, were not fundamental in disrupting the market.
Tesla is far and away more of a smartphone on wheels than any other car.
I'd be okay with this if they weren't f'ing it up.
Put Lidar in there and just get it right. Stop w/ this non-sense.
Personally, I'll never trust their self-driving product for anything more than lane-keeping unless they incorporate LIDAR
But I don't see how you could drive with it. It couldn't identify lane markings or exits or traffic lights or cones. And if you can do that well, you should be able to avoid hitting things.
Clearly Tesla hasn't solved that and maybe never will. But adding LIDAR wouldn't really solve the problem.
Maybe it is, but not today.
this is what Elon talked with Lex a year (or two?) ago. (they mentioned it as how to know you are in a school zone, and remember you are in a school zone, etc)
I agree a combo seems like the way forward.
Computers are nowhere near the capability of our brains in terms of image processing, object identification, path anticipation etc.
Until these things improve, self driving cars need to compensate for this gap with more data inputs to be reliable.
And cameras are really bad at noise levels at low light and don't nearly have the dynamic range levels needed for good night vision.
It’s possible their system is not that good, but eventually cameras will outperform the human eyes in every way if that’s not already the case.
Our perception is not that good, but our brain filter it out and make us believe that we see the full picture were if fact we see only what catch our attention.
Tesla FSD needs better planning strategies when faced with unusual obstructions like novel construction zone diversions. LIDAR can't help there.
Tesla FSD desperately needs more road sign reading skills. LIDAR can't read road signs.
Tesla FSD will eventually need to recognise law enforcement officers and respond to hand gestures. LIDAR cannot disambiguate a LEO from any random person, nor can it translate hand gestures into intent.
The long tail of driving is dealing with the extremely obscure and yet blatantly straightforward tasks. LIDAR is useful for none of them.
For item recognition the resolution gets low quick though with range.
IIRC Tesla does use LIDAR in their test vehicles to measure the ground truth of their 3D model maps. They just don't do that with every single car on the road.
Examples:
https://twitter.com/gbrulte/status/1395356317410287617
https://electrek.co/2020/06/29/tesla-spotted-testing-prototy...
Waymo talks about using LIDAR on their gesture recognition system: https://blog.wing.comhttps//blog.waymo.com/2022/02/utilizing...
If it can't make sense of something as simple as that, why would I trust it with hazards?
https://www.thedrive.com/news/teslas-can-be-tricked-into-sto...
(Self-driving seems to me to be somewhere you absolutely want as much defense in depth and redundant sensors as possible.)
If Tesla hasn't already tested this in simulation, I'd be astounded.
Also if a false tunnel good enough to fool FSD beta, I'd suspect it'd also be good enough to fool a decent proportion of human drivers too.
There are even people in this very comment section that think that way ;)
Now, that's an EV I'd consider buying.
But you can just turn off all internet connections and go on your way.
I believe there would be a huge market for a simple (but with safety equipment) golf cart style electric car.
My next car will definitely be an electric truck, but I agree, I want simplicity and probably wont get it.
https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/statistics-and-an...
Needless to say, almost no car in Europe has it. Simple upgrades to the model do not require an approval for manufacture.
French cars are total trash. This is a given. New cars are total trash would require more datapoints.
Sure, bits of it used to fall off with alarming regularity, and it’d just turn itself off when stopped at the lights periodically… but apart from that…
https://www.classic-trader.com/en/magazine/peugeot-205-gti-b...
Pretty opiniated statement.
I once owned a 306 Peugeot (90s) as a student vehicle and it went way over 350'000 km without any noticeable problem. The TU series engines of Peugeot were beast of a kind and pretty hard to kill as long as you minimum service them.
Recent Peugeots are like any recent, EU-made cars: full of electronics, fragile piece of tech and with turbo-compressed engine that favor fuel consumption over reliability. VW and German counterpart (which I also drove) tend to be the same crap.
Nowadays, almost only the Japanese constructors stand off for their reliability.
Can't tell about US cars but for JP manufacturers, aim for Mazda. They seem to get it right on all the points you described, and more (at least my Mazda 2 does)
Unfortunately that's not possible for me: Crit'air certificates (which are based on EURO ratings) are being enforced. Our city is going to ban anything above and including level 2 by 2025.
It means I will have to let go of my other car (a '08 Civic Type-R, rated level 2) which is a damn shame and completely absurd to have to scrap it given its overall (at ~100000km it's mint-like) and yearly (2000km/yr, emission contribution is well below the noise floor) mileage.
That's also why we bought a 2020 Mazda 2 (level 1). There's AirPlay but apart from that it's all good. 3 trim levels which basically add HUD, bigger wheels, leather. Everything else is included from the basic one, zero options, completely opposite mindset from the software-gated nonsense. The engine compartment has plenty of room for maintenance and I could swear it was designed to hold a much bigger engine. The screen is touch-able, but disables touch over, like, 2km/h. Ultimately I just use the dial joystick, which is just so good. So, definitely, you don't need to go back 20 years to get a car you are in control of.
This is working-as-intended. Some modern cars only have a very approximate sensor in the fuel tank, and then use computer modelling of fuel use to make the gauge look like it is going down smoothly. After all, the engine knows exactly how many ml it injects with every stroke, so can measure fuel use very precisely - the only unknown is what you are putting in.
Therefore, they assume that you never fill up less than say a half tank. If you fill up less, it will pretend you didn't fill up at all, and the gauge will still say three quarters when it is full to the brim.
The only way to get the gauge and actual tank back in sync is to use up at least half a tank, and then refill all the way.
So modern cars have millions of new shiny sensors, but cannot get accurate information on the fuel tank, something my old shitty car reliable can?
I'm not sure what is actually used instead, but I'd guess they just measure the pressure on the inlet to the fuel pump. An absolute pressure sensor only costs 3 cents and the fuel pump is probably already on the CAN bus.
Otherwise it was, like all things back in the good old days, incredibly precise +/- 10%
The sad thing is, if todays values are worse.
Going uphill? Gauge says 1/4 tank left.
Steep downhill? Out of gas.
Not sure which end the pump was on, but I never ran out despite what the gauge would say.
With the price of modern automobiles you would think the industry was absolutely ripe for disruption. If IKEA came out with an electric tuk-tuk for $4K I suspect the Big Three would lose their shit.
Hey, but I'm a dreamer.
Seems like they already exist (not from IKEA of course), but that sort of vehicle isn't allowed on the road in the US so I don't think the Big Three are too concerned.
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-electric-passenger-tu...
https://electrek.co/2023/03/22/wink-motors-test-drive-electr...
I don't think most people are actually interested in a three wheel officially-a-motorcycle-but-effectively-a-tiny-car.
I don't drive a ton of miles, but it's over roads where a bike would be literal suicide. A performant runabout with a bit of cargo space is exactly what I want, and if it only needs to be plugged in a few times a year, so much the better.
I'm keeping the A-Team van for when I need to move minicomputers and their peripherals, but an Aptera could do like 95% of my driving.
I'm gonna say no. I deal with months of snow and slush and a few miles of "70mph" (really 85+mph) highway.
Personally, as a 2012 Volt owner I certainly wish the Bolt looked like a regular sedan. It's an ugly modern American "cross-over" (they like the weird ugly "EUV" term in marketing) that isn't a proper sedan in any classic sense but also doesn't commit enough to being a proper hatchback or a light truck enough to make sense for why it is so "cross-over" looking. To me it is a very ugly duckling with no true home in car fashion.
I like the "dolphin tricycle" look of the Aptera. But I suppose I also like retro-futurism and science experiments and in general cars that look like they would take off for the sky if not caged to the ground.
As far as what I'd actually like, a Chinese maker already made it but I don't imagine it coming to the US ever - https://insideevs.com/news/614218/wuling-hong-guang-mini-ev-...
Or something like a Fiat 500 with a Cabrio top (they made a gas one, but not an electric as far as I know). Still a bit odd looking, but more cute than mean or science-experiment.
(That's such a dumb cycle: Americans forget that they love sedans until an importer starts importing them in bulk. The importer themselves forget Americans love sedans and move on to trucks/SUVs like everyone else. Some new importer needs to come along to disrupt the market again.)
(Related to that, I also fell in love with the Honda e and knew that to be futile love because Honda of America is a truck company.)
If you are past the age where you'd be in school, you can get the official state issued driving booklet and self study or you can attend a third party school which teaches the booklet. Either way you take the same exam.
Passing that exam entitles students to receive a learners permit that allows limited driving privileges (tags must be placed on the car indicating the driver is on a learners permit, restricted hours driving, must be accompanied by someone with a full license, etc.)
Permit holders must complete at least 6 hours of practice over a 6 month period under supervision.
After a year a driving test is conducted and that determines if you are eligible for a probationary drivers license or if you require more training time.
If you pass, you are upgraded to a probationary license. The probationary allows unsupervised driving but with other restrictions (time curfew) for 1 year. No incidents during that year allow you to graduate to a full unrestricted driving license.
[1]:https://www.state.nj.us/mvc/pdf/license/drivermanual.pdf
I want to hug you, how much has the world hurt you for you to think that? French drivers are terrible. Not the worst (they’re not italians, to say nothing of americans, or south-east asians) but they’re still really rather bad.
I’m not sure the prices I found (450k lira, 350k francs, and 4000 marks) are all correct though.
The Versa gets 32mpg. The Aptera is the same basic design as their original diesel model which got 300mpg, and it's electric. It'll be way cheaper to run, it won't require as much maintenance, and you'll be able to do your own repairs.
The current US average gasoline price is $3.42/gal. [2] If you drive 32 miles per day, that's $104/month in gasoline with the Versa. Using LendingTree's calculator for a 60-month loan, $104/mo is worth a $5900 difference in purchase price, and that doesn't count maintenance savings. [3]
So yeah, by modern new-car standards I think it's about as close to a people's car as you can get. And batteries keep getting cheaper.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/cheapest-new-cars-for-2023/#2023-nis...
The Versa gets 32mpg. The Aptera is the same basic design as their original diesel model which got 300mpg, and it's electric. It'll be way cheaper to run, it won't require as much maintenance, and you'll be able to do your own repairs.
The current US average gasoline price is $3.42/gal. [2] If you drive 32 miles per day, that's $104/month in gasoline with the Versa. Using LendingTree's calculator for a 60-month loan, $104/mo is worth a $5900 difference in purchase price, and that doesn't count maintenance savings. [3]
So yeah, by modern new-car standards I think it's about as close to a people's car as you can get. And batteries keep getting cheaper.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/cheapest-new-cars-for-2023/#2023-nis...
Not in any way relevant either. Semis could “do a job” and be properly accounted for in infrastructure damage still.
A socially awkward teenager gets more ass than rear seat of your average HNer's 4Runner or Model 3. IDK why the internet always shits on pickup drivers.
Regardless, I don't think you understand how impactful "a couple orders of magnitude" are. Even the heaviest of light vehicles, like a Hummer EV are of negligible effect on a road that has to handle any proportion of medium and heavy truck traffic.
Not gonna happen. Regulatory capture. And each line of regulation is backed by an ungodly number of people who will screech to high heaven if you even think about removing it. Like imagine for a second the vapid HN hand wringing and concern peddling that a headline to the tune of "NHTSA comprehending removal of backup camera requirement on some vehicles" would prompt. It's easier for the regulators, the analysts, the automotive companies, everybody, to just keep rolling with the status quo rather than amass the political capital to challenge it.
So long as society is rich enough to afford all the fluff cars will continue to have all the fluff.
My understanding is that NHTSA has a visibility requirement. You can make a car without a backup camera provided the driver can see behind them. Seems pretty reasonable.
In most of the USA, trying to navigate the world in an electric tuk-tuk surrounded by enormous pickup trucks and SUVs with distracted pilots is basically a death sentence. If an accident doesn't get you, the apathy and road rage toward small vehicles will — they may shove you into a ditch simply for fun.
Example: https://www.miniusa.com/model/electric-hardtop.html
They all do seem to have some sort of screen though, sorry.
Some Android Auto setups are bad either way, though, tbh.
As for why in the US: literally too many kids being killed by their parents in SUVs and trucks [2].
[1] https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/EN/Articles/StV/Roadtraffic/...
[2] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/110th-congress...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...
I mean, 100% agree on that.
As for the usefulness of backup cameras... I don't have one myself but I've rented a few cars with them and they do give you significantly more visibility when backing up than the rear window can provide, even in a reasonably sized sedan. But sure, rain might interfere. I don't think the fact that it's not perfect means it's not useful.
I haven’t priced out what replacing that little motor will cost someday.
And yes, it definitely makes parking in a tight spot easier.
If you won't use them, you should at least be happy that other people have them so they don't back into you. Cars are dangerous.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/03/the-danger-of-bl...
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/rearview-cameras-reduce-pol...
Something had to give, and that thing was visibility.
This was my first car after getting my driver's license so I'm afraid I'll never be able to park in a car without it...
Is what you just asked. Safety features are just that: they enhance passenger and pedestrian safety because humans make mistakes.
As for why, the safety data shows that cars with backup cameras are safer for the public than those without, same as seatbelts, airbags, or any number of other safety technologies. You shouldn't need any of them, but they're there to improve the situation when reality inevitably fails to meet our expectations.
Frankly I think all cars should come with those birdseye camera systems - it's 4 cameras and makes parallel parking a breeze.
Also: the backup camera is very nice. I can survive without one but it is oh so nice. I can hook up a hitch in one go.
The MX-30 EV is very expensive and has a tiny battery and consequently terrible driving range. It’s a city-only vehicle.
The Japanese auto industry, more than anywhere else, is on a burning platform.
Why arguably? The Leaf is awesome. Nissan blazed the trail with bidirectional charging.
If someone needs a commuter only car they are okay, but I think I'd get a bolt over a leaf if I wanted a cheap used commuter EV.
The Leaf was Ghosn's baby and some of the ouster of Ghosn was Japanese Nissan leadership getting cold feet about EVs (because none of their Japanese peers cared about EVs "so why should they?") right at the point in time where they should have accelerated. (The EV concerns being on top of/correlated with conspiracy theories that Ghosn was too friendly with French-owned Nissan sibling Renault because they were just about all-in on EVs and Ghosn was hoping for early economies of scale, faster, but that looked to Japanese investors too much like a French coup for Nissan ownership. Also, my favorite alleged part of that conspiracy was Ghosn saw Nissan of America as an SUV/Truck-loving albatross around Nissan's neck and suggested that the very profitable division get renamed back to Datsun to make it easier to pull the ripcord and jettison the entire division once EVs started to get popular enough and its absurd profits became absurd losses.)
I don't know if the truth will ever come out how much of a crook Ghosn was or was not, versus the spin of the Japanese court system and many conspiracy theories that came out of all that, but that saga definitely seemed to put the breaks on Nissan's EV efforts at a bad moment and they do seem to be lagging behind where they should be considering their head start with the Leaf. It's a fascinating story no matter what the facts were on the ground.
I.e. the underdog who didn't have a well oiled money printer jeopardize by bringing self-competing EVs to market.
Unfortunately they have a history of lagging in this space, either due to mentality or just the fact that they don't have the money to transition over without help (hence them partnering up with Toyota).
Fun fact: One of their chief designers: Franz von Holthausen just happened to become the lead designer at Tesla! Him leaving Mazda was well documented back in around 2010. He talked about how was frustrated that at Mazda any green initiative was always nothing more than a side project. Hopefully things have changed now.
I'll speak personally from my parents who are pushing 70. They purchased a Tesla because of the EV credits and overall price attractiveness.
My dad tells his friends about it because the driving experience is so much better. He presses the "gas" and it's instant and the handling is very good. He likes to say never goes to the gas station anymore.
I think it's easily arguable that you could get a lot of the same benefits of drivability and handling in say a BMW or Audi. The last one is a paradigm shift.
The way you've done things is now different, better (in that life is a bit easier). It's not yet a massive one, so I agree the numbers who are switching will be slow, but steadily it'll get there.
It is one of the best cars I have ever driven. I like driving.
I think the very heavy battery helps.
That said, modern electric cars are given away for free (the one I'm getting is). The only thing you pay for is the battery. I found this out by pricing replacement batteries....
The whole model of car making is going to collapse if batteries become cheaper, but for now: By a battery and get a car thrown in.....
When we start actually getting used EV batteries on the market in masses there will be multiple industries repurposing them and thus giving "expired" EV batteries resale value.
A 50kWh battery that's "unusable" for EV use (let's say 30% degraded) is still a 35kWh battery - which is insanely big for storing solar power in a home. Or it can be split to multiple sections and 3 RVs can get a 10kWh battery that they can charge at any EV charger or even at a campsite.
Given the possibility that this feature could save your life or another driver/pedestrian's life, I don't see a strong objection to this. Driving is one of the deadliest activities that we tolerate as a society and the more we can do to reduce the risk the better. I agree with everything else though, I don't want an iPhone on wheels.
https://jalopnik.com/tesla-fsd-causes-8-car-pile-up-on-sf-ba...
generally speaking individual people are better at choosing risk tradeoffs than governments are, both because they know more about their own situations and because their incentives are better aligned
this is why liberal societies are not only much wealthier but also have much higher life expectancy than authoritarian societies. but governments aren't magic; they're just organizations with great unaccountable power, a somewhat more extreme version of any large corporation. we shouldn't entrust ford or tesla with the ability to kill with impunity any more than we should entrust the fbi with it
Come one... I thought I was on a scientifically-minded website. That's not how things work. It's like saying seatbelts are bad because they sometimes trap people in burning cars. Yeah, that's true, but it happens orders of magnitude less than crashing and splattering your brains across the highway if you aren't wearing one. That's the point x)
So you went on a sci-minded website just for claiming unproved statements (seatbelt point is proved though)?
Worth noting this is referring to classic liberalism where individual rights and freedoms are a top property, not modern liberalism where universal rights are protected by larger governments and laws that limit individual freedoms in the name of the greater good
The power, reliability and efficiency are in a whole different bracket than in ICEs.
What IS up for debate is how the power for those engines is stored in the car. Currently we're going with batteries or liquid combustion fuels (PHEV and serial hybrids).
Yes, there are very specific use-cases and industries where EVs don't work today, but the tech is developing insanely fast.
You can already buy lifepo4 cells, I've thought about making a boat, but time and money etc.
But this is about the masses, the Toyota Camry sells well, and I'm sure those same people will eat up the Toyota Camry EV when it comes out.
And the factory service manual is available for free. Aside from HV parts, most parts are directly orderable from the service center as well.
I assume HV == High Voltage, if that's the case isn't that basically all the important stuff. I.e. the bits that do the actual automobile things.
But everything else, the instruments, the infotainment and telematics, the ADAS, the windows and wipers and headlights, seats and airbags and lock solenoids, the list goes on... That represents a lot of complexity and cost, a lot of moving parts, and it's all still 12-volt. Partly for legacy reasons, partly for safety. (There was a push 20 years ago to go 42 or 48 volts to make the wire thinner while still being LV/SELV safety, but legacy held it back.)
Plus all the undercar stuff, wheels and bearings and control arms and bushings, half-shafts and CV joints and boots and swaybars, wheels and tires and stuff, that just never changes, and since EVs tend to be heavier, they tend to be harder on all that stuff than their ICE counterparts.
So there's plenty of stuff you can service with good old mechanic skills and tools, and plenty of it needs servicing.
[0] https://insideevs.com/news/656775/tesla-switch-48v-voltage-s...
I would just love to see winches and stuff at 48v, a whole lot of things would just be dramatically less awkward.
For example, the charge port isn't a HV part, since it isn't energized by the car and requires no special skills to replace it. This is useful, since its also one of the most likely parts to take physical damage.
A lot of the other wear items are suspension related and are pretty conventional parts.
And, of course, there's a vibrant aftermarket of used parts for Tesla in general, so even HV parts are not necessarily hard to come by.
That would be a lot of decades ago. Cars from the 80s routinely went well over 100k. The 70s cars I remember as more cantankerous but if taken good care of (which was simple because the cars were simple) they would as well.
Ironically, a hundred years from now I predict that the only working museum/collector cars left will be those from the 1990s and earlier. Newer cars will not survive as long, with all the fragile electronics that require maintenance with factory equipment that will no longer exist in a century.
What's more complicated about taking care of a car today?
Oil, oil filter, transmission fluid, air filter, maybe differential fluid, spark plugs. All cars today have these in fact cars today don't have distributor caps, spark plug wires, and power steering fluid.[3]
So what is more complicated about performing maintenance? How was it easier in the past? I can't think of a required maintenance task that exists now but didn't exist in the past and isn't a replacement for something.
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> Cars from the 80s routinely went well over 100k
That heavily depends on the brand. American cars were piles of garbage in my opinion and I'm sure I could find some source to support that. Here's a NY times article about how cars are now (in 2012) lasting more than 200k miles.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-k...
My friend had a 91 Civic that lasted for about 250k but I had multiple GM cars (86 lesabre, 91 corsica, 88 6000) where either the transmission went or bent valves (exceeding the cost of the car) before 120k miles. Anecdotal but again Honda and Toyota were so popular the US government made Japan limit the number of cars coming in.[3]
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-01-28-fi-1076-s...
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Newer cars are less complex in key areas, including less maintenance [6]
- Spark plug wires are gone. Since they carried high voltage from the distributor cap they needed thick insulation and that insulation would crack due to heat cycling. once small cracks appear it would arc to the engine or other wires because of the high voltage. Now we have ignition coils which aren't considered a maintenance item (they last at least 100k but really more depending on use)
- No more distribution caps (due to ignition coils). Caps were a maintenance item
- No more power steering fluid and power steering pumps because of EPS racks. This also eliminates hydraulic lines
- Throttle by wire which eliminates the throttle cable that would get stretched out and sometimes break.
- In the past cars have timing belts, timing belts can break and if your engine was an interfere engine the valves will contact the piston causing a massive repair bill. Today almost every car has a timing chain which lasts significantly longer to the point where it's not a maintenance item.[1]
Starting the 80s we got OBD 1 then later 2 which provides sensor data. This allowed you to see the real symptom of the car instead of the apparent one. For example, car has a rough ideal but really it's running lean. Besides the massive performance and efficiency increase because the ignition timing can be based on the exhaust contents , temp, air flow levels, etc it also makes it easier to fix things by providing data on how the engine was operating. Today cars have even more computer diagnostic systems to help repair them.
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Finally let's get to the electronics you are concerned about. Cars now have more control modules, (which are mini computers for systems, like the door controls) then in the past. There's door modules[2], ambient lighting module, cruise control, etc. The point is you don't repair these modules you just replace them. You aren't soldering little resistors onto a board or something. It's no different than replacing a steering wheel. It's just a thing. [5]
Many of these modules are for optional luxury items. If 20 years from now the ambient lighting and module doesn't work in my car who cares. If lane assist, blind spot detection, or the rear camera breaks then the car is just like the older cars you think are better.
I'm sorry to make this accusation but you are probably letting nostalgia, the current climate of simmering anger at the world, and the desire for things you grew up with and are comfortable with to form your opinions.
I want to put a millennial into a muscle car from the 60s and they'll see the over boosted power steering, the giant v8 that was overrated in power and get 10mpg, a body that leans in every corner, tires that can't grip, and a chassis that feels like a rubber band when you turn. A modern 4 cylinder turbo hot hatch would destroy them and outlast them.
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[1] Some older cars had timing belts and non-interference engines. This means that if the belt broke the piston wouldn't contact the valves and the only repair you'd have to pay for is the timing belt and towing. Still annoying but better. Timing chains make more noise and because of their weight create more drag on the engine but with engine covers and the power today it doesn't matter
[2] In the past cars didn't have as many modules even for things like like power locks. Power locks used to just have control wires and power running directly to other parts of the car where relays might turn them on and off. The advantage of having a module is computer control. For example the following features are present on many new cars:
- lock the car when you start driving - unlock in park - windows up when rain is detected - auto down and up windows (all the way). - car can't go into drive when the door is open - specific door warnings (though old cars had a general one)
Doing all this by running wires around to other devices is insane so there's a module the window switches, lock switches, door sensor, door locks, window motor, and etc all connect to which then receives control info from other modules
[3] A few performance cars and maybe some older models of mass produced cars still use hydraulic steering.
[4] Mostly due to "perceptions" of American quality, small cars becoming popular, and the horrific engines in American cars in the late 70s and 80s as American manf had little experience with small engines that people wanted because of the gas crisis. There's also an emissions issue. American quality has somewhat equalized after the late 90s IMO
[5] Modules do need to be programmed with the config for your particular car. Buying one for your model and in your country usually means it's fine. There are also programmers that aren't expensive and dealers will often do it for a fee.
[6] I was also going to mention less oil changes but the argument there would have been massive. Oils are so much better than they've ever been that as long as you aren't burning it 10k / 1yr is probably for most people, 5k / 1yr for those that are worried.
You replace them if you can find a replacement. It's a lot harder to make ICs for outdated cars than mechanical parts for old cars, which was probably the OP's point.
Control modules are just software and you could probably make a generic one that takes different flashes with a variable pin layout, think raspberry pi.
This is done today to an extent with power upgrades. Take a look at a jb4 for a bmw b58. It intercepts data signals for different components, like the turbo, and changes values. It's just basic software.
That's not going to pass SMOG checks. It must be the factory control module, and it that's no longer in production, too bad.
For track cars it's fun to replace the electronics with customizable units, but you can't get away with that for a street car (in California at least).
Only cars prior to 1974 are not subject to smog check in California.
And part of the smog check is a visual inspection which will fail in the presence of any non-factory emission related equipment (such as engine control modules) even if their behavior is 100% identical to factory.
Electronics is what makes todays cars very difficult to repair down the road.
You're right in that when they are new it's actually easier to repair. Just plug in the diagnostic computer, it tells you what's wrong, you replace the whole module and done.
This gets very expensive though. For example I had a BMW with a brake light problem. In any old car that's a $0.25 bulb change, or worse case $10 in wiring if you need to replace all the wiring to it. Easy to do by anyone at home. On the BMW? It was a $1500 brake light control module that had to be programmed with a factory computer that only factory technicians have access to so on top I had to pay labor.
The real problems come when the cars get older. Any voltage variations from aging cables makes the whole system (everything is interlinked, unlike old cars) become very unpredictable. A friend is a BMW factory mechanic and the horror stories are endless.
As I noted in a peer comment, I had to sell for scrap a ~60K (when new) BMW that was mechanically and cosmetically perfect but had so many electronics glitches that it was impossible to repair without spending tens of thousands of dollars. What a waste. Such a problem is never possible with older cars, since the electrical system is simple and easy to diagnose and repair.
All the things you list as complex (spark plug wires, vacuum tubes, distributors, etc) are mechanically and electrically extremely simple devices. That's what makes repairs so easy at home without access to esoteric parts that might be out of production or factory tools not available to consumers.
No one is repairing an alternator, vacuum tube(what car has them), or a control module.
The government already has enough room planting bombs in cars and cutting brakes, I don't think I need a corporate overlord to have their thumbs in that.
This is such a peak HN comment. The best part is that the author admits they’re a tiny minority. If they are a minority, isn’t it rational to ignore them and make something the majority wants?
Top HN comments will tell you all kinds of wild things about what HN commenters think are essential to succeed. For example, client software should never be written in electron and never contain telemetry if it wants to succeed. Most successful text editor used by 75% of all developers? That’s VS Code, written in electron and chock full of privacy busting telemetry.
I’m reminded of the top comment on the original thread revealing Dropbox, asking “why would I want this when I can simply use ssh + curlftpfs + git”. I’m sure many HN users are capable of doing that, and yet Dropbox found more than a few takers in the real world.
At this point I honestly believe that the top HN comment talking about a product is useful to read because it’s going to be the opposite of correct in every way.
This thread is filled with “EVs don’t work because they don’t cater to my outlier use case today”. Firstly, you’re an outlier. EVs do well for the majority whose commute is less than 300 miles. Secondly, they don’t need to cater to outliers today, they can gradually fill niches as they become more mainstream.
I didn't see any data either way, so it remains to be seen if s/he is really in minority. Even sales number might be bogus for approx. the same reasons why A/B might be bogus. “Most consumers buy EVs with touchscreens, therefore they want touchscreens”. No, they don't, given choice they would choose differently. The big problem, which GP pointed correctly, is lack of decent choice, and it follows TFA.
> This thread is filled with “EVs don’t work because they don’t cater to my outlier use case today”. Firstly, you’re an outlier. EVs do well for the majority whose commute is less than 300 miles. Secondly, they don’t need to cater to outliers today, they can gradually fill niches as they become more mainstream.
They either need to fill the niches by 2035, or “EV transformation” will be a failure for a significant chunk of population, who will feel let down by whoever decreed that they need to change without providing viable alternative (solving existing problems within their purchasing power). Currently it doesn't take much to fall outside scope of the market: for example it's enough that you have 3 kids aged 4, 2, 0 and carrier fitting drastically reduces your choice (or bumps the price beyond reachabilty). EV won't happen if you can't be a low to mid income 5-people family, for whom lack of car means significant degradation of living standard.
Additionally, the risk exposure of owning an EV is pretty bad. The initial cost is extremely high, the immediate depreciation is high, fluctuating energy costs impact TCO, fast chargers are effectively more expensive than petrol here limiting long range economy, longevity data is fairly limited, there are serious difficulties getting them repaired and the complexity results in reliability issues. At this point I don't know anyone who's bought an EV who didn't eventually replace it with another vehicle, apart from one guy who has a Model S as a drive ornament and never uses it.
Seems like a poor investment. I'll stick with my 2014 Citroen which I can replace entirely for the first 20 nanoseconds of depreciation if I buy an EV. And the 5 year fuel cost is paid for by the second 20 nanoseconds of depreciation :)
I'm not sure where you're getting that data from, maybe it's different where you live.
> The initial cost is extremely high, the immediate depreciation is high
I dispute that the initial cost "extremely high". Higher, yes, but those prices are coming down. The depreciation here in Ireland is a lot less than a traditional ICE car. My 3 year-old Mini Electric had lost a lot less, percentage-wise, than the comparative ICE model when I traded it in recently. My service costs for those 3 years were zero.
> fast chargers are effectively more expensive than petrol here limiting long range economy
The key word in that is probably "here". In Ireland, I can do 300 miles per €25 of fast charge. My previous diesel car would have cost €50 for the equivalent distance.
I haven’t analyzed the whole world, but in the developed parts of Europe, EV fuel costs are clearly cheaper than ICE
compared to gas?
Car companies know full well there's a huge market of people just like us that want exactly the vehicle you're describing, but it would make them less money than the subscriptions on wheels garbage they're forcing on us now, so get ready for a future where every car is over $100K and costs $10K a year in subscriptions.
This is only true for people with a certain amount of spare money to pay the extra, since EVs are more expensive to purchase.
"The new EVs cost an average of $65,041 in November [2022], according to Kelley Blue Book, while gas cars averaged $48,681 that month"[0]
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-vehicles-prices-exp...
It wouldn't be ideal for a one-car family, but as a commuter it's better and cheaper.
Using an overly simplistic 80% used for 50 files would imply .63 miles per battery percentage. Meaning she only has slack of 12.5 miles to empty the tank. Which is less concerning when you can rely on ubiquitous gas stations.
I want EVs to work, and my next car is quite likely to be one, but limited locations for quick re-fueling are a real concern of mine.
1) A 10-year-old car
2) From a time when batteries were much worse than today
3) With low original range
4) Not including the extra 10-20 miles or so that most car makers add to the "0" point, similar to how a gas tank isn't quite empty when the display says it is.
I'm guessing OP bought it for relatively cheap and is saving $20-$30 a day running it like that. That's worth the taxi / tow / calling your spouse, when you get stuck twice a year.
the problem is scaling.
gas takes on average less than a minute per car to top up the tank (gas pump emits ~0.5 liters per second, my car tank capacity is less than 30 liters), if a battery charge requires say 15 minutes (I actually don't know the real number, but I have a feeling that it's usually more than that) that's 15 times longer waiting times and 15 times less capacity per station.
Or more stops.
Supercharger stations usually have dozens of spots; gas stations typically have maybe ten? An EV station just needs one parking spot per car, so they are much more space efficient than gas stations. The only real constraint is electrical infrastructure.
BTW it averages much more than 1m per car for fueling. Person gets out of the car, fishes around in their purse for the credit card, fiddles with the cryptic instructions on the pump, walks into store to piss and buy junk food... if you've had to wait at a busy station, you'd be acutely aware of just how long fueling actually takes. Humans are slow.
It actually is kinda bad, if you ask me.
> An EV station just needs one parking spot per car
Huge gas stations are not that common outside of the US
The average gas stations in my city are like this
https://c7.alamy.com/compit/2ak83cy/gli-operatori-e-auto-a-g...
They don't actually take that much space and serve hundreds of cars per day. They don't need to stay stationary for a long time.
> BTW it averages much more than 1m per car for fueling.
Not really.
On average people refuel, they do not fill up the tank.
BTW it could well be that my POV from a different country is biased.
That's exactly where the US and the rest of the World diverge.
In most of the rest of the World people in cities are precisely those who would not be charging at home, because it would be impossible.
Besides, my car is parked 5 minutes walking away from where my house is.
And I've been extremely lucky to find a parking spot so close.
Lamp-post charging is already being rolled out in parts of Europe https://ubitricity.com/en/driver/charging-network-map/
Once EVs are more common, it will make more sense for parking lot operators to offer charging services for more income.
You say that it will take over 20 years to roll out on-street charging, but somehow reducing the dependency on cars can be done quicker or easier?
I live in Japan, which is often touted as a very public transit-friendly society, but I have 2 kids and could not live without a car. Especially in the summer with 36C+ temperatures, or during typhoon season. Believing that we can have a future with zero cars seems very unrealistic.
A quarter tank for me is about 160-170kms.
Also consider that the tank in my car is very small, but the car is small too so I make ~70-80kms on reserve alone.
I've set my charge threshold to 70% now - so that's what I start with every single day -representing about 400km.
I'd have over 400km of range only with a relatively freshly filled car before. And from there it's easy enough to put off refiling until you absolutely HAVE to have more fuel.
On flat land. Throw in hills and the number of projected range miles used by every real mile goes up very quickly.
I don't remember the specific numbers anymore, but we had two Fiat 500e cars and commuting over a mountain drained a lot of projected miles even though the climb was just a few miles.
I went back to look for my notes on this and this is what I experienced: The Fiat would use up about 30-40 miles of indicated range to go uphill less than 10 miles. But it would only regenerate 2-3 miles (of indicated range) on the downhill side.
The Fiat does have a range penalty for cold weather (it occasionally gets below freezing in the part of California I live in) and running the heater (one way; usually it's warm enough by the trip home). My wife still gets home with > 10%.
Keep in mind this is a 10yo car with an 80mi range; newer cars have bigger batteries.
Tell that to my colleague, who due to an accident near a major junction, took over an hour to travel a key couple of miles on his commute home from work yesterday.
Some journeys are "predictably unpredictable" during rush hour.
In a cellphone you have just one cell, and the phone turned on can be pulling near its maximum power draw, so it's unstable and unpredictable.
In a BEV you have thousands of cells, so differences between individual cells average out, and you don't draw peak power unless you're racing (and the car is smart enough to not let you smoke tires at 1% battery).
So my closest charging option is a station 25 minutes away from me (on bus). And that station has 10 posts, while in the surrounding area live maybe 50000 people, or so. Not very time friendly. Also because of the charging time it means that there is even no point to leave car at the station and take a bus home, because by the time I will get there I would need to go back immediately (25+25 minutes=50 min, and charging is about an hour or two).
Also price. People charging at home use a cheap electricity, while station charges really high prices. In the EU city I'm right now, the difference is x4.5 times. So while me and a rich guy in a private house are paying the same price for the petrol now, tomorrow when we both have EVs I will be literally subsidizing him indirectly, by forced to use much more expensive public charging.
I really want to own EV since early Tesla years, and often check news about the progress in this industry, but really don't see how can I do it.
There are a lot of people who just can't afford a new car. That's a legitimate concern. EVs are gradually working their way into the used market.
EV conversion is another option that's currently only for moderately well-off people with a lot of free time, but with the right kits it could be a more routine thing.
$26,500? [0]
How much is a new Mitsubishi Mirage (for instance) where you are?
> There are a lot of people who just can't afford a new car
I'm talking about people who can afford a new ICE vehicle, but won't/can't pay the extra to get an EV.
https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-december-...
As a concrete example, the last time I used the official government calculator to compare ICE vs a comparable sized EV (e.g. size of Honda Accord), it gave the breakeven point at 7 years, with the following assumptions:
1. Gas at $7/gal (you pick the price and the chart adjusts accordingly - if I picked a more reasonable price the breakeven point was way far out).
2. It estimated repairs/maintenance for ICE at over $2000/year starting from year 1.
Bullet 2 above is ridiculous. I have all my car related transactions. In over 20 years of owning cars, I never came close to $2000/year. Note that:
1. I buy old cars (typically 8 years old when I buy them) - so they need more repairs than the one that's 1-3 years old.
2. I'm not a car person. I do whatever my mechanic recommends. I follow the maintenance schedule in the manual. I'm not cheaping out on repairs.
Similarly, the Edmunds TCO calculator also spits out some insanely high repair numbers.
When you track the expenses like I do, it becomes hard to believe that the up front extra cost for an EV will ever be compensated by gasoline and repair costs.
EVs are, frankly, really expensive right now.
(I will note that when I buy cars, I do thorough research on "reliability", with the aim of minimizing repairs).
My 2012 leaf has never been in a shop other than a tire shop. I haven't even had to change brake pads.
My 2004 Volvo and 2003 ranger were constantly throwing errors I spent thousands chasing, some of which required replacing the same part twice. Oh and don't forget about oil changes.
Also, if you haven't changed brake pads, I wonder how many miles you've driven it. Was this your primary car?
For me a Leaf wasn't an option. I can't go smaller than a Corolla/Civic, and prefer an Accord sized car - that's what I compared prices with EV.
Still, here are my numbers from 2012 onwards:
Repairs + maintenance = $5173.75 (includes tire changes). Gas = $9480.13 (about 110K miles)
Now the Leaf MSRP in 2012 was $36K. The equivalent sized Yaris was $17K. When you factor in tax benefits, the extra repairs the Yaris would need, and adjust the cost for fuel, it's not obvious that the Leaf was a better buy. Also, the real maintenance/repair costs would be significantly lower than what I quoted above, because those repairs were due to buying fairly old cars.
(And then factor in how much I actually spent on purchasing cars in that time period because I bought used: $12500 and the Leaf looks even less appealing).
Of course, the Yaris is way better if going out of town.
Anecdata, but everyone I know who bought a Leaf till about 2016 said it was not usable as a primary car - too short a range in cold weather. One person said "I can't commute to work and back, and do errands, without recharging."
As for Volvo/Ranger: Do you not take some responsibility for those purchasing decisions? When I was buying my first car, I was told to stay away from BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo. I was a student and was told I'd never be able to afford even minor repairs. In fact, a friend who was an engineer in Austin at the time bought a used Mercedes, and soon after the AC stopped working. He never got it fixed - he would use it only in the winter while he drove his Corolla the rest of the year.
Regarding the Ranger: I'm looking at reliability scores and they're poor, even for brand new ones.
I don't know about Leafs specifically, but brake pads usually last a long time in EVs due to regenerative braking. You might not use brakes at all if you can avoid doing any hard stops.
Buying 8 year old cars is a lower cost strategy ss your filtering out the lemons. You can’t buy the shitty BMW 3 series as it’s been converted to a Coke can by that time. :) Even then you’re lucky as stuff starts breaking due to age and mileage.
I drove a 2003 Pilot until 2019 and it hit a bunch of repairs at 125k and then at 250k major repairs came up just due to age and frame rust. I still miss that car!
Things definitely do break, hence the repairs I've done. I don't think I got lucky 3 times in a row - I researched and bought known reliable vehicles, and always paid a mechanic to go over the car before I bought it.
I've posted actual repair numbers since 2012 in this comment:
Minus $7500 for the tax credit, minus another $7500 in some states with rebates.
And even if you did pay $26.5K, saving 75% or more on fueling cost also helps a bunch with TCO.
Many of the most poor do not file taxes -- but they may still need personal transportation.
It's a shame the credit isn't refundable. It's weird that you can be too poor to get the whole subsidy.
Looking at a random local Mitsubishi dealer's website, it looks like a 2023 Mirage is around 19-20k. Which is cheaper than a Bolt, but if you qualify for the full federal rebate or have big state rebates it'd come out about the same price.
They do have a 2017 Mirage listed for $9,900, which is a lot less than the Bolt. The site doesn't say it's used.
> I'm talking about people who can afford a new ICE vehicle, but won't/can't pay the extra to get an EV.
What does a new battery run?
Having said that, I don't have first-hand experience refurbishing EV battery packs. Someone who does this kind of repair regularly might have a better idea of what you can or can't get away with.
This sounds great, for which EVs is this available?
"For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents [..] Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV's price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them.
While some automakers like Ford Motor Co (F.N) and General Motors Co (GM.N) said they have made battery packs easier to repair, Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has taken the opposite tack with its Texas-built Model Y, whose new structural battery pack has been described by experts as having 'zero repairability.'"[0]
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...
The cost to replace a Model Y battery is around $13K (no where near 50% of the cost of the vehicle). More than that, the battery will probably outlast the lifetime of the vehicle, with a design lifespan of approximately 500K miles.
Yes, eventually when the battery dies it won't be repaired as such - instead it is designed to be nearly 100% recyclable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Q0nNkQTCo
Here's where right to repair is exceedingly important. Obviously if it were up to Tesla, you'd only be allowed to go to them for repairs, at their full markup. But here's the secret - they have a huge markup, but no monopoly on electrical engineering. Like the video shows, 3rd party repair shops can repair these things. It's not rocket science - you're thinking of a Elon Musk's other company, SpaceX.
But $5,000, down from $22,500, is still more than "a couple hundred bucks to hundred bucks to tear the car down and expose the battery, and then identity the bad cell and pop in a new one". Now, in my haste, I wrote "cell" when I mean "module", sorry about that. The car for which I'm referring to that job is at the bottom of the segment - a first generation Nissan Leaf. They first came out in 2010 and here's a 12 year old used one for $6k (https://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/ctd/d/redondo-beach-20...). It's almost guaranteed to have at least one bad module if you're buying something that particular car (they didn't have battery cooling systems that generation) and that old (simply due to the number of charge cycles).
The procedure for finding the and replacing the bad module is documented at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiFEapky8s&t=24s
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVaCMbXKrd4&t=423s
For the module itself, you're looking at 3rd party supplier for a refurbished one. Here's one battery module for $90 on Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/354422211418?hash=item528535c35a:g:...
or another listing asking $250: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225422969988?hash=item347c418c84:g:...
Or via FB Marketplace for $60: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/5165480583467846/
If you take your Nissan Leaf to a shop that specializes in them, they'll likely have modules for cheap off salvaged cars, but we don't have access to those prices here. So let's say a refurbished battery module is anywhere from $60-250 and then kick $200 in labor to your cousin who's good with cars to watch those two videos and replace the bad module for you unless you're that cousin, then spend $250 on a battery module and buy yourself a nice voltmeter.
Official battery replacement jobs on a Nissan Leaf are going to run you much more (multiple thousands) but if you have a Nissan Leaf, or any electric car really, you should be aware that that's a total ripoff. Everyone knows you don't go to the dealer for repairs on an ICE unless you want to get ripped off, and the same is true for EVs.
Obviously there's some batteries that are tolerant of this (Prius' commonly have this repair on their NiMH batteries), but it's not universal.
Similar to many Apple or Xbox repairs, they swap it for one they've previously refurbed and tested, then add yours to the pile to be refurbed for another customer rather than make you wait for your specific battery to go through the process.
Not trying to be adversarial - genuinely curious. I only buy old cars (median is 8 years old), and I keep them for a while (5-10 years), and I often wonder whether EV cars that old would be a decent buy or not.
In theory, lithium iron phosphate batteries should last a very long time. That's what I'd go for if you want the best longevity, but they also have a lower energy density and can be damaged if you charge them in below-freezing temperatures. (Presumably all the cars with LFP have smart charging systems that disable regen and refuse to charge when the battery is too cold, and hopefully most of them have battery heaters.)
With batteries there's this weird dynamic that if it last for a reasonably long time, by the time you need a replacement the new batteries /should/ be much cheaper and more energy dense. Unfortunately, there aren't really any companies making 3rd party aftermarket batteries for old cars. Maybe that will change, and maybe the industry will standardize on some generic battery module design. For now, the replacement battery options seem to be a) buy a replacement from the OEM, b) find a replacement from a low-mileage junkyard vehicle or c) reverse engineer the BMS and install an equivalent custom battery constructed from new or used cells/modules, possibly using some kind of custom-fabricated battery box. It'd be great if you could just walk in to any auto parts store and buy a replacement battery pack, but we're not there yet.
This is only true for people with a certain amount of spare money to pay the extra, since cars are more expensive to purchase.
"According to Kelley Blue Book, gas cars averaged $48,681 that month" whereas horses typically cost between $1500-$10,000 https://www.joyfulequestrian.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-bu...
AAA reports that average annual operating costs for a car are ~$8500/year https://www.aaa.com/autorepair/articles/what-does-it-cost-to...
Whereas the average annual cost of a horse is under $4000/year https://cowgirlmagazine.com/cost-owning-horse/
Not wishing to be obtuse, but is that good? There are a lot of people who would never dream of paying that much for a new car.
Right, meaning there are a lot of car buyers who pay less than that. In many cases a lot less. I'm one of them(!)
The last time I bought a new car I paid $11k, although that was around five years ago. Since then, over many tens of thousands of miles, that vehicle has transported our family from A to B and back again.
I'd love to own an EV, but I can't afford to pay a significant premium for one.
My parents bought a Tesla a few months ago because their Leaf's battery life fell below the point where they could get to work and back reliably on a single charge and they spent months waiting for a battery replacement (they're still waiting). If their supply problems continue, people are going to start dumping more and more used electrical cars and going back to gas or to companies that can actually keep up battery supply like Tesla.
This vehicle segment has always been notorious for depreciation, look at all the stories about buying a used S-class "for cheap".
I could get a brand spanking new Prius for that.
That said, I wouldn't trade my Prius for a Tesla (well I would, but I'd then trade it for a new Prius). Whatever image they present, they're good cars.
Third party repair is ~5-20k + shipment costs. Tesla is ~15-20k.
My OH drove the best part of 200 miles, round trip, on the spur of the moment to pick me up at an airport late in the evening after my flight was badly delayed, she got to the airport just as I came through baggage reclaim so was at the airport less than 10 mins. That was just last week. By sheer coincidence I drove to pick her up at the same airport the week before, although at least I knew that journey was coming ahead of time.
What do used EV owners with smaller and/or degraded batteries say to each other in that scenario? "Sorry, I can't come and pick you up, the car's not charged?"
A car that can't manage to drive to a local airport and back in one go is exhibiting a fairly critical flaw, at least for people like us.
Isn't this a standard trade-off? I have a sedan rather than a SUV or a pickup, and last year when I wanted to move some large items I couldn't. That's fine, because the other 99.5% of days I don't need that much capacity. Unless you frequently need to go on 200 mile trips on a whim, it's not as big of a dealbreaker than you think.
I appreciate that there are a lot of happy Tesla owners, indeed there are two in the office I'm working in this week, their Model 3s are parked outside. I had a ride in one recently, it was fun. Not something I'd buy, though.
Is it possible that EVs still aren't the good fit you think they are for a substantial proportion of price-sensitive consumers?
Also, the political landscape around EVs may still be evolving. This month the EU's policy to ban the sale of new combustion engine cars in the bloc by 2035 was substantially weakened after pressure from Germany[0], and the UK's policy is as a result - shall we say - "wobbling"?[1]
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/24/cars/eu-combustion-engine...
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/28/net-zero-ban... or https://archive.is/R6zVZ
Not that I'm telling you to buy an EV, but EV's are like 6% of (new)sales this year iirc, I expect next year is 7-8%, then 9-11%? After 10% of sales and all the growth is in EVs I expect the market to change quickly, like gas car sales to just fall off a cliff as legacy automakers really start to scramble. Well, at least in the US, seems China has a much higher EV share.
Anyways, yeah, probably somewhere in the 4-7 year range from now, there will be some good options in cheaper, used EVs for people, and probably more than just the Bolt that has decent range at low end new pricing.
Until their a substantial used inventory and more deliveries, sure, EVs are not attractive to the people you refer to. At least in the US.
The reality is flipped around. The vast majority of consumers, even price sensitive ones, would be better served by an EV. The edge cases trotted out in conversations like this are the exception, not the norm.
That's why I added a conditional, because I can't read your mind.
I’ll be a bit longer that usual sorry. I need to fast charge.
Range anxiety is something you have before you get an EV in my extensive survey of 4 people.
That's definitely not for everyone.
Even the smallest range Tesla, Bolt, ID.4, or many others would be fine.
Most people looking at EVs though are more interested in the average rather than below average prices, so the EV market tends to gravitate to the $40k-$60k price range to chase that demand.
Except in Oregon! $7500 federal, $7500 state.
That certainly seems to be what Tesla thinks at least, unless they were completely lying to investors about the volume they hoped to achieve.
Tesla did take the most profitable business first. Now they're expanding to the mass market. You might disagree that it's the best strategy, but it's the one they're following; if you don't believe me, just watch Investor Day.
I bought my second EV for $39,995 out the door, and then got a $7500 tax credit, reducing my net cost to $32,495. That one is a 2023 Chevy Bolt EUV.
I'm not sure which is the best car I've ever owned, but they're in positions 1 and 2 in some order.
Right, exactly the reason why governments around the world first try to subsidize EVs through various schemes (tax rebates, discounts, etc), and then it doesn’t work - threaten to stop non-EV sales in 10 years. All of that because the EVs are a better product that consumers are screaming for. Right.
However I disagree with the GP’s statement that people are not buying them as a solution to climate change. People definitely believe they are part of the solution. I’ve heard of people installing induction stoves to remove their reliance on gas.
That's OK (ignoring all the other environmental costs of EVs and the continued car use, as opposed to public transit).
But it doens't fit with the "they buy them because they're better/fancier/cooler" narrative. As another person writes below: "I like driving, and my next car will most likely be an EV, not because it's "better' (whatever that means), but because the Australian Taxation Office has modified the treatment of EVs to make buying anything else financially stupid."
Rebates also help overcome the higher upfront cost. The total cost of ownership of EVs can be lower than an ICE car due to cheaper energy and low maintenance, but the upfront cost is a barrier.
And then there's the fact that a lot of people don't know how good EVs are, so they base their purchasing decisions on myths and assumptions, and need a push to even try them.
The range was simply not good enough for longer trips. We returned it for a normal car and are quite happy with the range.
Small commutes are done with our electric bike.
The future of EVs isn't even "battery electric car" so much as it is "new models of transportation". Tesla's business model was in the classic mode of consumer tech where it targets enthusiasts at a premium. The broader auto market, though, is getting nibbled away by a combo of new communication and transport services for each vertical - you can buy or rent an e-bike, hail a Waymo, have Wal-Mart deliver by drone, as well as "just" do more from home, online, and save a trip. Some of these things are early in their deployment but largely proven, others are already widespread but with room to go further.
In a disrupted market, you can't pick winners easily, but you should always bet on the new asset classes, because the alternative is a ghoulish non-future.
The only thing I know about is their acceleration but that isn’t important to me personally as I prefer to drive slowly.
Do American power points not charge an EV? It’s come up repeatedly on this thread that you need a home charger.
Please add remote/scheduled control of AC/heater, remote unlock to the list. These are seriously awesome.
On my 244v, the Tesla mobile charger that came with my 3 is plenty good enough. I try to charge from the PV, so an 8A cap from that isn't terrible.
Standard outlets (like what you plug your phone/computer charger into) in the US are 120V and 5-20A.
US homes sometimes also have outlets that are 240V/20-40A traditionally used for electric clothes dryers, and those are what home Level 2 EVSEs (not technically chargers) are usually plugged into, or sometimes a dedicated 240V/40A RV plug is installed for EV charging.
That said, if you don't need to charge fast, or don't drive more than 30 miles a day, a 120V outlet can more than suffice for daily charging needs.
danans is right about charging at 120v. It's doable for some, depending on their needs (at a charging speed of 3-5 mph). But I live in a townhouse, and my parking spot is far enough from my electrical panel that I'd have to run a cord past my neighbor's unit. I had to have a trench dug and conduit laid to bring power out to my spot, and at that point it just makes sense to go for a charger with 240v (which charges at 30-50 mph).
So, to the driver it feels like a CVT with very fast ratio adaptation, but mechanically there's no ratio being varied. It's all fixed gearing, and the variation is done with motor RPMs and torque.
The Chevy Volt and all current Honda hybrids work this way. The main motor spins the wheels directly at a fixed ratio. The engine primarily operates as a generator. Then they do have a lock up clutch to connect the engine to the wheels when their speeds align at cruise and there is an efficiency gain to be had from eliminating conversion losses. https://youtu.be/QLUIExAnNcE
Also, technically most Toyota hybrids are also fixed ratio, most of them use planetary gears with two electric motors to simulate gear ratios with respect to the engine. It is somewhat confusingly called an eCVT, although the variable part isn’t the gearing, it’s the speed of the motors connected to the gearing. What changes is the relative speeds of MG1/MG2. It’s like a differential in a car, but backwards.
Parallel hybrids are the ones that drive like regular cars. Like Honda IMA, Hyundai’s hybrids, anything labelled “mild” hybrid —- those all have old school transmissions.
But it's a quiet humming. Somewhat pleasant. Or at least not annoying.
I don't know how loud it is on the inside.
I believe whilst this has shifted over the years manual shifting is still more common than automatic.
We got ours in December, and the most unexpected benefit for me is sitting at stop lights, in traffic, or in a drive through. When the car is stopped, it's essentially off. No engine idling vibrations, no noise, no emissions. It's kind of peaceful. I hadn't really realized how much idling in a gas car bothered me before.
The cheery on top is its performance. It feels awesome to have a supercar available at a moments notice if you want too, although it gets normal and boring very fast. Also, it is scary to have loads of torque and you have to respect that.
Overall, electric cars offer a very good bang for the buck.
In the end, mechanically, the cars are very simple and you feel that simplicity. They feel polished and well engineered
That's a vehicle with advanced cruise control thing, not an EV thing.
1. As others have pointed out, the maintenance is much less. Not to mention, of course, the electricity costs much less than equivalent gas.
2. The cars are just so much cleaner for an individual. No gas smell, no oil changes, etc.
3. They are much quieter.
4. Even if you drive a lot more slowly, the smooth acceleration is much more pleasurable. Plus, the quick acceleration does come in handy when you want to get out of uncomfortable situations.
With my electrical costs in SF Bay Area, that cost was $94 per 1000 miles on a Tesla and $100 per 1000 miles on a Camry hybrid.
However Tesla was $20,000 more than a Camry and Camry had wider, more comfortable seats.
We went with a Camry and judging by its reliability record I would probably not have to worry about anything other than a fluid change for a decade or two
With the EV2-A rate plan [1] (which you should definitely use if you drive an EV any significant amount), the 1000 miles cost much less if you limit charging to the off peak times.
The Model Y gets 3.3-3.8 miles/kWh. Let's say 3.6 miles/kWh average.
1000 miles at 3.6 miles/kWh is 278kWh.
Off-peak EV2-A rate: $0.26/kWh 278 kWh * $0.26/kWh ~= $72
The savings in operational energy cost for the Tesla will never pay for the difference in price, but the Model Y and Camry are fundamentally different cars in performance and functionality, so it's not really an apples to apples comparison.
A more sensible comparison would be between a top-trim Camry XLE ($35000) and an entry-level trim VW ID.4 ($40000 - $7500 tax credit = $32500).
But you have a point that there are very few inexpensive midsize EV sedans on the market right now.
1. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
Sure you can try to shift your laundry to the morning, but I suspect there would still be higher overall energy costs with EV-A especially if you have a family.
The only way electric car would make sense with my rates is if I paid few thousands to install a second meter or paid tens of thousands to install solar.
I bought a used low mileage 2020 Camry hybrid LE with 47+ mpg and front hip room(ie seat width) 4 inches wider than that of model y for $26000.
Comparable mileage wise teslas model ys were being sold for about $47000.
I searched through MYLR forums and Facebook groups and landed on reported 0.27-0.265 kWh/mi which is pretty close to your estimate of kWh per 1000mi.
The biggest challenge for me was that I would not be able to arrive at $0.26 per kWh without further investments into my electrical infrastructure which would further reduce the cost savings from going electric.
Tesla MYLR while being better at acceleration is ultimately not a model s - it’s a family car like a Camry. There are some benefits to it being electric or a hatchback but they did not justify an upfront cost and a fairly negligible cost of driving reduction.
Note: this could be a CA issue as I’m aware that our energy costs are easily 3 times of some other states
PS I was specifically seeking out LE trims on Camry because they offer 5mpg advantage over more expensive trims
However the benefits of EV are subtle but great. Before buying I worried about range.
That’s not an issue. I never have to go to petrol stations, it’s quick to get to speed, it’s quiet, it’s fun.
100% love it. Would increase that rating if the charging interface allowed ‘charge to 80%’ without nasty hacks, and if it had a dog mode.
It wasn’t the cheaper option, and our fuel costs a lot more than it does in the US.
OTOH, I pay 4 cents per kWh to charge my EV after 10pm. I pay about as much in electricity costs per year as I was paying for gasoline per month on the last car.
What exact uncomfortable situations?
You can roll through the ramp doing your best impression of a semi truck at 20mph and then when you realize you're about to have 500ft to merge into traffic that's going 60-70mph you can mat it and be going traffic speed that time.
And the best part is that everyone will think the work van that wanted to carry 40mph through the ramp but couldn't because you were in their way is the one who's doesn't know how to merge when they can barely do 45 by the end of the ramp.
That’s just a random example.
Generally EVs are cheaper to operate, are quieter, have a lower centre of gravity, and are more spacious.
In theory they could be cheaper and more reliable, but currently Tesla makes mostly luxury models and has poor quality control. That’s just them, and isn’t anything to do with EV technology.
Other manufacturers will eventually make a cheap EV with better reliability than a Toyota.
Which is like, relevant inside a building only, at which point preheating and cooling isn't that useful
My garage in the winter would disagree throughly with that statement.
With EVs you need to heat the batteries, not just the cabin, so that's a huge amount of mass that needs to be heated up. If you try to run the batteries cold on an EV it's going to kill the range because current battery chemistry is not optimized for low temperatures.
There is also more than enough heat to get the battery into the right thermal conditions for optimal DC Fast charging on road trips when it's well below freezing. I have seen exactly the same charge curve in both summer and winter, peaking at 170 kW (max for Model 3 SR+) and slowly tapering.
I wish my Leaf had it.
They have a lot of power and because you don't have to bring an engine up to RPM and shift, and bring up to RPM, and shift.. and on..
That power is also instantaneous. However far down I push on the pedal, I'm at that speed basically right away.
Another huge thing, is that they are quiet. There is still a bit of road noise from wind and the physical contact of the wheels with the road. But compared with almost any typical car, its basically silent.
Also, they don't stink. You might not notice it, but your car smells. It gets on you and the people around you. My car doesn't smell like gas or exhaust or anything.
Oh and not to mention, basically nothing ever goes wrong. There is so much less to go wrong on an EV. We don't have a bunch of coolant and pumps sloshing around effectively trying to cool a giant, shaking, moving lump of iron. With out all that rattling, things just don't need as much maintenence.
I thought all mainstream EVs were liquid-cooled? I'm sure the motor and battery still need cooling, though perhaps less than exploding dino juice engines. If this weren't true, Tesla wouldn't sell branded jugs of coolant ;-)
The cooling system in an EV are much, much smaller. You're looking at maybe about 20kW for a Tesla Model 3 with 450hp motors, and this includes heat rejection from the air conditioner.
(on the other hand, the air conditioner on EVs is a _critical_ component, because the main battery can't tolerate being heated to more than +90C like regular ICE engines)
However, it seems reasonable once you think about it.
The mechanical power of a car is about 25-30% of the total heat generated. So a 150hp car actually generates about 450hp of heat energy. Most of that power is indeed lost in exhaust. The 1/3 of 150hp is 50hp, around 10% of the total.
(2013 leaf, btw. very basic. just kinda works.)
* they are quieter. * they are smoother. * you may not care about performance but lots of people do like it. * they require less maintenance (which is a cost saving, sure, but also a convenience issue) * if you can charge at home you don’t have to take time to visit the gas station.
Main points of difference:
Filling with gas vs charging.
Oil changes, transmission fluid changes, etc vs replacing battery in ~10(?) years.
That’s about it from what I can tell. No wrong choice. Just trade offs.
Since we are no longer commuting, we rarely need to buy gas. It is essentially an EV, that has the convenience of gas power when going on long trips.
In the event of economic uncertainty, the gas stations are the first to run out and begin rationing resulting in miles long lines. An EV has many, many options to keep you operating in a disaster scenario.
Plus, unlike gas cars, my EV is always fully charged ready to go every morning. How many people have a 1/4 or even an 1/8 of a gas tank sitting in their driveway right now?
They are excellent prep vehicles.
I’ve heard rumours of diff oil.
Even gas cars typically have 'lifetime' differential oil fills these days. With no chance of contamination from blowby, there's not really any other mechanism for degradation besides oil just degrading over time from heating/cooling.
No, they do not. Any car has brakes that can overcome its tires. All that is added by regenerative braking is the ability to lock the wheels more quickly.
Tires and weight (which EVs have a lot more of) are the larger factors in stopping distance.
Well yeah, that's why we have ABS right?
But there's more to it than that... having a good way to engine brake (and in this case regen) keeps your brakes cool and prevents them from overheating. Regardless of stopping power in ideal conditions, overheated brakes are not safe.
Brake discs on modern cars are vented and work like a centrifugal fan to cool them actively. They continually shed heat, so even dragging a brake pedal the entire way down a long mountain, as many drivers will do, is well within safety margins. So to overheat them, you have to get the heat in fast. Like 0-100-0-100-0-100-0 fast.
On the road, the only vehicles that experience brake fade are loaded trucks descending a grade, or suspects in a police pursuit.
A bit heavier, but not "a lot." A model 3 is between around 3600 and just over 4000 pounds, depending on trim. Not far off a similar size ICE vehicle.
To compare a car which is available in both ICE and EV, a 2018 Fiat 500e (electric, with a tiny battery bank good for only ~90 miles) weighs almost 3000 pounds, whereas the same car with ICE is ~2400lb.
25% more weight is a lot on a car.
That's all true, but I'm uncertain how much difference it can make. The bulk of the weight difference comes from the batteries, which will be there whether a retrofit or new design. Everything related to the ICE systems was removed, so it's not like there was any leftover weight from the conversion.
Weight distribution can likely be better in a chassis designed solely for EV, but total weight seems likely to be about the same either way.
- Much quieter ride
- Much less maintainence, less moving parts, brake pads almost never need to be replaced, no transmission, no oil changes
- Internet-connectivity-related features, generally much nicer user experience
- You can use them as a mobile office, they can be camped in with the heating on overnight, there's no concept of idling and no carbon monoxide issues with sitting in an EV with the car on as long as you want
- If either your home or office has charging, you basically leave full every time
Potential for remote shutoff is not a feature
It's quiet
It's fast -- you say you know, but it's not about the acceleration as much as it is the immediate response: put the pedal down, and you're accelerating. Doesn't matter if you're stopped, going 30, or going 60 -- you have speed on demand, and it changes how you drive.
I guess some people don't like it, but one pedal driving (letting the regen do the braking just by letting off the accelerator) was awesome for me: I used the brake pedal less than ten times over a week, and my gas car seems tedious to pedal now.
Not sure how to describe the rest, but it was just better. I like my gas car much less now.
Personally I'd rather have a PHEV with ~50km EV-only range at freeway speeds, which would mean using EV-only for ~90% of my driving, while being able to use petrol for towing & longer trips, but (a) there are none available yet with a sensible price / performance mix (in Australia at least), and (b) the ATO has already indicated they will not continue to treat PHEVs favourably in the long-term.
Can you elaborate on (b)? I hadn't read anything that indicated PHEVs are out of favour, but I haven't paid attention since the initial flurry of news.
"Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles - 1 April 2025 onwards From 1 April 2025, a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle will not be considered a zero or low emissions vehicle under FBT law."
However, I mis-remembered it - if you buy a PHEV by 1 April 2025 it will remain FBT-free.
(Also, the entire pit stop time for ICE is much more than a minute, so it's a false comparison)
I'm not saying you cannot road trip with an EV. Lots of people obviously do. But there is something about having to plan your route in detail before you leave and having all your stops dictated to you by your GPS which feels unappealing.
So will this never get any better? Will it still take hours to charge, 5 years from now? What was it like 5 years ago?
I personally do not have kids, but I love roadtripping my Tesla. With my ICE car, I used to drive as fast as possible, as long as possible thinking that's the way, but I'd also end up so burnt out after 8 or 9 hours of driving.
I'm going to make a 12 hour drive this weekend, it'll end up being around 13 hours with a Tesla, but my Fiancé and I are making a list cool things we'll do when we make the stops, and we'll actually enjoy making the trip over the 13 hours. Each stop will be around 15-20mins every 3 hours which is perfect for getting a stretch, snacking, or going to the washroom.
I'll also have the newest updated FSD11 for the highway which has been a large improvement over the previous autopilot on highways - the biggest for me is that it now bias's over to the left (or right), if I'm passing a large semi (or if the semi is passing me)
Have you done this? I picture burning some kid-energy during those breaks. I'm genuinely curious about how that ends up impacting the trip experience.
And absurdly subsidised[1]. And I suspect this figure doesn't include the indirect subsidies, such as exemptions from certain taxes.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1332156/average-ev-finan...
More on fossils fuels as a group, but this is disturbing. https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/climate-change/energy-subsidie...
Even if every single car across all of Europe and the USA were to magically become an EV overnight, the climate will not be "solved", although the power grid would instantaneously collapse.
China. India.
I don't want a giant button-less touch screen, for starters.
Next: I don't want to find myself stranded in my state the second I go a ways away from a major city, which is STILL an issue. (I'm almost 50, my parents are still alive. Their house is nowhere near a charging station. It is literally in the middle of nowhere)
Finally, I was close to buying a Tesla before...I wanted to do my part to help avoid Climate change. Then Elon Musk showed he was an asshole. Now I won't touch Tesla because Musk is involved. The fact that Tesla vehicles have suddenly become so pronounced in my state (A certain southeastern state that became internationally known for a school shooting yesterday) is testament to why he is doing things this way. He is just trying to drive new sales and he is seemingly succeeding by buying into republican nonsense.
Please don't be that idiot. Don't buy anything sold by Mr Musk.
Thanks.
I am waiting on Ford to ramp up the F150 electric production, however. Power my house in a power outage? Yes please. Haul what I want? Oh boyyy...
> I don't want a giant button-less touch screen, for starters.
Eh. I'm neutral on this. In some ways it's awesome, like when I want to orient myself on a map or scroll through my music options. In other ways I wish I didn't have to fumble around in a nested window to change climate settings. If Teslas had a few more physical buttons but kept the huge screen I'd be happy.
> Range anxiety, parents live nowhere near a charging station
I've gone on so many road trips and never once got into an iffy situation. 320 mile range gets you a lot of places. My parents also live two hours away from where I live (Seattle area), but there are superchargers on the route there and a couple of level 2 charging stations closer to their house. And I put in a level 2 charger at their house, so I can always leave with a full "tank".
> Elon
I'm in WA state, which is as blue as it gets. Despite that, Teslas everywhere. Some of my friends who are die hard Democrats (or even further left), still happy Tesla owners. For me, life is too short to filter everything I do through a political lens.
Although if I wasn't already in love with the cybertruck I would be considering a F150 lightning, so I guess we have that in common.
Re: being stranded, I used to live in TN, and I still routinely drive through there. My hometown is practically a village in the middle of nowhere and it still has a supercharger only 30mi from it. I'm having a hard time believing you can get "stranded" anywhere in TN. In the incredibly unlikely absolute worst case, pull out your mobile charger and charge from an RV or 120V outlet.
Re: Musk, I didn't like his antics when when I bought my 3 four years ago, and I liked his behavior even less when I bought my Y this year. If I didn't patronize businesses with executives who behaved in ways I didn't agree with, there would be no one left for me to do business with.
Good luck with the Lightning! Ford's projecting they will lose $3B on EVs this year, but I hope they pull through.
Unless you live in one of the large northern states, you probably can charge enough for a round-trip in a station along the way: https://supercharge.info
Or you can do a nice thing and install a charger at your parents' place.
Plug into a normal power socket like most EV users do.
Edit: it occurs to me that the US is 120V. This can’t help.
My car is charging from a normal socket at 2.7kW right now. I could go up to 3.6kW, but the included charger only goes up to 12A and I really don't need the extra charging speed.
I get 100-150km charge overnight easily. 5% -> 100% is ~17 hours and I rarely go under 40% in everyday driving even though I charge only to 80% to save the battery as per manufacturer instructions.
Doesn't solve the fine dust brake particles flying around at every intersection (many with asbestos) but it will radically reduce diesel particulates and other exhaust nastiness.
PS: 500-1000 stations per 1000000 of people with hundreds of thousands of cars is nothing really. Sure, they can service some luxury EVs now, and that's about it.
Define “better”? I need something to haul around a family of eight with enough towing capacity to add some fun to those trips. They don’t even make an EV that ticks those boxes, let alone something “better”.
I can't decide if this is trolling or not. I mean, it's an EV thread, so this kind of wild edge case gets repeated like it's everyone's use pattern instead of the 1 in a million case it really is.
Assuming it's true, there are damn few ICE vehicles that suit your needs either. You're looking at a full size (HD truck size) van. Chevy Express 3500 or something along those lines.
Though the few people I know that are in a remotely similar situation break it into two cars rather than try to find an 8 passenger daily driver.
Point I was trying to make is not everyone’s needs can be satisfied by a sedan with a 300 mile range.
You should have added "people with money". Regular people don't have the luxury of paying up to 50% more for a car that often times is inferior to what they currently have.
If that were true, there wouldn't be any such laws in discussions and in the books. Just like there never was a law to ban flip phones, people just migrated on their own.
There are lots of incentives to push people to EVs such as federal tax breaks and HOV lane access.
But
Until the infrastructure and manufacturing scale are bootstrapped, they can only reasonably compete with the help of subsidies.
And
You can also say that ICE cars, as a component of the hydrocarbon industry, get a lot of subsidy from the insane amounts of military cost deployed to ensure a steady oil supply.
Altogether societal beliefs that get people elected are having a strong influence in the way things go. In spite of EVs being better cars, if society decided to tilt back the balance of support towards ICEs, I think the market would snap back pretty quickly.
Aesthetics are one thing, although I find Teslas to be quite boring and even outdated, but the claim regarding Tesla's functionality is heavily debatable. Tesla is basically rediscovering why cars are the way they are and also struggling with quality.
The problem is that the media's endless obsession with Tesla means that criticism of their products become mainstream news, whereas criticisms of the average Toyota or Ford are never more than bullet points in car reviews. A few key points which contradict the assertion of Tesla "struggling with quality":
• Tesla products consistently get high satisfaction ratings by their customers. [0] (Perhaps panel gap consistency isn't as high on the list of customer importance as car reviewers think it is?)
• Tesla products have been consistently rated as among the safest cars on the road with respect to crash-worthiness. Most notably the recent assessment of the Model Y by Euro NCAP. [1] Maybe the panel gaps aren't perfect, but the chassis under the skin seems to have been well engineered.
• Toyota, the supposed world leaders in car manufacturing, recently admitted — in public no less — that the Model Y is "truly a work of art". [2]
[0] https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/tesla-tops-list-most-satisfie...
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/01/the-tesla-model-y-earne...
[2] https://thedriven.io/2023/03/01/toyota-admits-tesla-model-y-...
Consumer satisfaction is going to be heavily skewed and untrustworthy in a case like Tesla where one is buying a premium vehicle with a lot of hype and fraudulent marketing. I wouldn't associate it with quality. Personally, I have sat in several Teslas. They all feel cheaper than my Kia.
Safety is also loosely correlated with what is meant by quality. And another manufacturer's, particularly one going through a lot of drama and turmoil regarding EVs, anonymous sentiment is irrelevant.
The chassis, interior, and "technology" in combustion engine cars is largely the same for every manufacturer that produce EV + internal combustion because of economies of scale. So that's not a unique selling point.
I drive a part motorway, part countryside route that has very, very, few EV charging points, and on many occasions they've been full or broken, or both.
EV cars are good for cities and city to city along motorways. Anywhere else, not so much.
Based on time to charge vs time to pump gas, let's be charitable and say you need 30 minutes to charge an EV fully, vs. 5 minutes on a pump, so you'd need 6x the number of publicly available EV chargers to replace an existing gas station.
On my regular UK route, the motorway services have petrol garages that can fill 20 cars at once https://goo.gl/maps/wF7dxup3jBMAGqjg9, and only 6 EV points: https://goo.gl/maps/GXm2xoPNvXGZiMxU9 and they're always occupied when I pass through.
I'm sure every car park will eventually get more EV points, never one per space though, but we're not there yet. We're not even at 6x the gas station pump count yet.
I'm sure I'll be in the last group of people to buy an EV.
I think EVs are great - for short trips. They're clearly terrible for longer trips. We all hope they get better.
EV's won't be better for you any time soon; unless the solid state batteries with a higher energy density become the norm. For long road trips, ICE vehicles are more convenient. That being said; I've drive an electric car (Model S) twice from Norway to Spain (3700 km ~ 2300 miles), so it's definitely doable, but it does add time compared to a doing the same trip with a regular ICE car. At highway speeds you can probably add 1 hour per every 2-3 hours of driving.
Obviously others prefer to get there ASAP, but yeah, isn't necessarily clear cut.
My problem with long road trips in an EV are not just the time added. Especially if you drive across Europe and rely on the supercharger network, you will notice that they are very often located in the middle of nowhere; next to a gas station or McDonald's. Not cool places to hang out for 45 minutes. There was one supercharger on my way to Spain (I think it was outside Bremen?) that was located next to a shopping mall, or "factory outlets" for Puma/Adidas etc. At that location 45 minutes flies by like nothing, it's actually to little time. But at some random gas-station, hotel or McDonald's in the middle of nowhere, 45 minutes feels way to much…
Similar experience for me. Our family wrote off getting an EV until they're significantly better.
As I said in the other reply, there's a paucity of EV chargers in the UK that are not along a major route, there aren't a large number of them, and they're rarely 'superchargers'.
The Tesla Model 3 has a real world range of 300 miles [0].
You want to give yourself a 50 mile buffer. So you need to add about 13kWh of energy along the route. That's like 8 minutes with a 100kW charger round it up to quarter hour.
[0] https://ev-database.org/car/1591/Tesla-Model-3-Long-Range-Du...
I am just saying that having lived with a reasonable family-EV for a year, there has been nothing that would make me regret the decision.
Someone trying to convince me that I should have regrets is just gaslighting.
Several metrics. Clearly the only ones you care about is maximum range and minimal recharge/refuel time. But for many others there are other metrics that are more important, where a BEV is better.
For example, for us, being able to recharge at home is a major plus. It's been 6 months since we used a public charger, and our car is used daily. Especially my SO appreciates this, as she hated having to fill up with gas at the end of the day rather than going straight home to sleep. Not to mention it's way cheaper than gas, at least here.
Noise is another one. In slow moving traffic, it's so nice and quiet. We got an ICE rental last year while our car was being serviced (got hit by someone who didn't honor our right-of-way), and we'd completely forgotten how noisy (and stinky) an ICE car is.
Just some examples. Not saying BEVs are perfect, but range isn't the only metric that matters for everyone.
> The chassis, interior, and "technology" in combustion engine cars is largely the same for every manufacturer that produce EV + internal combustion because of economies of scale.
Precisely why I'm looking at BEV's that don't have an ICE variant. So much better with a pure BEV design.
The "recharging time" part is easily achievable with battery swapping, which is already big in China. The luxury car maker Nio is introducing it to Europe, Norway first.
Battery swapping also reduces the sticker price of cars. You don't pay for the battery up front; you pay for it over the lifetime of the car in swap fees. The advantage is if you don't need much range for the next week or so, you can choose an old partly used-up battery pack for a lower price than a brand new one.
Range is more difficult, but there are grounds for optimism that this won't be so much of a problem in 2035.
1. https://www.nio.com/blog/power-swapping-europe
Edit: Ample[2] is working with manufacturers in the west to try to create a "gas station" industry model for battery swapping, where any manufacturer's batteries work with any manufacturer's cars.
As someone who rode in a Tesla Model Y for the first time last week I disagree. It was horrible. Inside it was very spacious but felt plasticky and cold (I did like the glass roof through). The worst bit though was the ride. Every small bump was felt like a pothole. And within five minutes I felt motion sickness due to the persistent bouncing around. I can’t say anything about drivability (this was 30mins in an Uber) but if I see my Uber driver is in a Model Y next time, I’ll happily cancel and wait for someone else.
No, they are not. It may be for some particular use cases, but generalisation is naturally bad idea.
Objectively they are vastly inferior to combustion engine cars (unless we bring Tesla to comparison). Low mileage, slow refuelling, very low lifetime. Slow acceleration.
If they were better as you state, governments wouldn't come with all sorts of subsidies. Market would correct itself and combustion engines would be a part of the past. But it's not happening, and I assert would never happen in future.
Disclaimer: I am ignoring the environmental implications here.
Arguably they are not from many different POVs.
They are better for car makers, they can market them at any price they like and States all over the globe are subsidizing them, so that people can afford them.
In my Country buying an EV means paying 33% more for the same exact car, but with less autonomy, which is not a great proposition for the majority of the people living here that need a car.
The real solution would be removing cars from the streets as much as we can, which is about 50% of them more or less.
To follow on your analogy: saving car industry by switching to EVs would be like saving horse carriage industry by putting an engine on them in 1920.
Battery technology improvements will arrive. However, it takes time to productionise research prototypes.
During one of my holidays, I drove a self-charge BMW rental. It technically could still be sold after 2035. However, it had an electric range of less than 50 km before it switched to petrol. Car manufacturers will lobby for such loopholes to be allowed well beyond 2035.
I think this isn't as clear cut as it might sound. It depends on the usage pattern, local fuel cost etc. I drive a diesel too, but my next car will be an EV.
If you have cheap gas and/or regularly travel so far you need to charge on the road, then both the economy and convenience goes down the drain very quickly.
But if like me you have electricity at $0.10/kWh, you have 3x25A wires to your house, you can charge in your driveway, you very rarely need to charge on the road, and the diesel price is $10 per US gallon then the economy and convenience is completely different and much more favors EV.
I own one, I have never spent more than an hour waiting for any charge. The waiting time is also not wasted, I'll go eat or work on the laptop. Cumulatively over the year I have definitely spent less waiting at a charging station than I did with the fossil car I had previously. Most of the time it's just charged itself overnight when I slept.
It is SO MUCH CHEAPER to drive the EV than it is the ICE. Fuel cost ALONE pays for the monthly payments. Let alone having a modern car, better ergonomics, etc.
My partner and I both drive cars that are almost 20 years old, so do our parents. Oil changes, tires, and a monthly fill up for $60 or trip fillup of $120 for about 700 miles. That’s it.
Todays EVs are like cell phones from 1985 with styling that appeals to the Pokémon generation.
The only time I remember charging for 1h was when the charger happened to be a free 50kW charger. Why not.
During road trips it's much more like 15 minutes every 3 hours. Completely enough to keep going until people inside the car can't take it anymore, not a limitation of the car/battery. You make it sound like the stopping part is the hard part not sitting in a car that long.
Our typical usage of the car:
Wife drives for work to another city 185km away in the morning and back in the evening. So 370km round trip.
During summer: she leaves with the car charged to 90% and arrives back with more than 10% left. Zero time waited charging anywhere.
During winter -20C: she leaves with the car charged to 100% and battery prewarmed. Arrives at the destination with about 45% battery left. On the way back she spends 10 minutes at a 150kW fast charger next to a service station that happens to serve her favorite Goulash. Arrives home with more than 10% battery left.
This is what the article is trying to highlight. For many people, EV cars are perfectly fine to use right now. However, only 25% of cars on the road are plugin electric (UK figures). Most of these are hybrid cars, reverting to fossil fuels when the EV battery drains. If you want to get to 100%, the government needs to do more than formulate policies.
Technology will advance, and more superfast charging stations will be available soon. However, as the article highlights, there are still challenges. Unless you can charge at home, and unfortunately, not everyone can, EV trips can be more expensive. Time will solve this, however, that doesn't mean that the government can dictate policies without ensuring there is proper investment in EV infrastructure.
It forces car companies to plan for a certain future, not a possible one. That leads to an increased line up of cars for consumers, increases competition allowing consumers to afford those cars. It also forces everyone to thing about charging infrastructure etc.
The obvious point, of course, is that EVs will not solve climate change or anything close. Mass automobile ownership has 99 problems, of which EVs solve 1. The key to better quality of life, as well as stronger mitigation of climate change, is boring stuff like trains and trams and bike lanes and walkable cities.
Cars are great (1) for rural areas and (2) when they are at maximum occupancy. Anywhere else, especially cities, and they are a disaster at almost any level you can think of.
As the saying goes, public transit succeeds not when the poor can afford the bus, but when the wealthy choose the bus.
How are they better? Not obvious at all to me.
A lot of the advantages are dependant on a garage and mostly using the car to get around town and not road trips. If those don't apply to you then yea ICE cars are probably better.
These laws serve to create certainty around boardroom tables, which helps speed up investment decisions. For an automotive industry executive, it's easier to commit billions to convert your factories to producing EVs when you're not bothered by nagging "but what if there is still demand for combustion vehicles in the 2030s?" questions.
Could've fooled me. Firstly almost all Teslas look like ugly frogs to me. And a Tesla Model S was also the first time I've noticed a car have misaligned front and rear doors while walking past a car.
I'm also not sure about the functionally part, unless it's just "electric motors are nice". I still see Tesla owners complain about the lack of CarPlay. Then there's the various issues that have come up. The ones that I remember: seatbelts falling off, steering wheels falling off, doorhandles breaking, doorhandles being inaccessible due to ice buildup, non-automotive LCD panels breaking inside hot/cold cars, and infotainment system bricking eMMC chips due to excessive logging. The self-driving features also look suspect, with some cars being unable to parallel park themselves, causing some weird behaviour on road, or crashing into obstacles when using the summoning.
They're not, though. They make cheap plasticky ugly cars with an interior fit and finish on a par with 1990s Eastern Bloc cars, and expect you to somehow cope with a massive touchscreen while trying to drive, and then charge "proper car" prices.
Doesn't this depend on the criteria by which you're measuring "better"? Personally, aside from reduced climate impact, they aren't better on any any count that matters to me, and are worse on a few.
For regulators EVs have been a deal with the devil since they are driving affordable and efficient cars (e.g. Toyota Corolla class) out of the market. in exchange for big promises about the EV future, Detroit is free to sell all the oversized trucks and SUVS they want today.
This is a completely different scenario than what the article suggests, which is that EVs are some kind of medicine for climate change that society is trying to have discipline about. Not so. It's a life or death situation for the auto industry, they don't have a choice. They either join the race or die. This makes most concerns about the transition irrelevant. For example, laws banning gasoline cars by 2035 are as useful as laws banning flip phones by 2015 would have been.