Netherlands and mainland Europe is hardly indicative of the types of road trips you would experience in Africa, Americas, Australia

And now you have identified the real problem which has to be solved. And it possible at least in the USA.

Yeah whatever. It’s where we burn several millions of barrels of gasoline per year, stuff that should be kept in the ground instead.

Frankly the amount of Nirvana fallacies in this thread is indicative of the coping stress the petrol-heads are suffering.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/gasoline_consumpti...

Even if we swapped every ice vehicle for electric and had the charging infrastructure in place, we wouldnt leave all that oil in the ground. Its just to useful, it would be used for plastics, chemical feedstocks, fertilizers, insecticides, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, etc... All those hydrogen carbon bond we dont have to pay the energy for are just to danm useful and valuable for so many industries to leave in the ground.

It’s a solved problem in the US at least, as long as the car you buy comes from a manufacturer with a good fast charging network, of which there is currently exactly one. Australia is well on its way to being solved for most trips.

> It’s just FUD, BEVs are ready

Have you tried going to the mountains in France? Or anywhere not on the main roads, even? I mean actually traveling around, not just taking the highway across.

My ICE motorbike has a range of around 300 km on the highway, around 200 in the mountains if I'm enjoying myself. I've had range anxiety with it to the point I now cart around extra gas. None of the gas stations I visited had any kind of charging available (outside your regular outlet, but it's unlikely the attendant will let you hook up your car to the outlet inside the office – if it's even open).

Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.

> Not everybody has the same usage patterns as you do.

Sure, but keep in mind that bikers riding on the rolling hills of the French countryside are a significantly smaller demography than the millions driving across the highway infrastructure.

Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.

The feeling I get whenever these discussions come up is that there's a distinct lack of nuance, and a tendency to shove a one-size-fits-all solution down peoples' throats, even though the solution might only fit-most. I get that it's easier to reason with absolutes, and that sometimes some people may need a nudge to take the jump. But I also understand being pushed like this with no apparent concern for peoples' situations can make them close down to the argument, even if it could actually make sense for them in the end.

People complaining about range anxiety are usually told "nah man, it's just FUD!" Maybe it is just FUD even for a sizable portion of those complaining, but just dismissing their concerns out of hand doesn't seem like a good approach.

And this isn't just a bunch of people on a random discussion board. It's actual policies being enacted affecting peoples' actual lives.

Talking about France, in a few years' time my motorbike won't be allowed inside Paris (where I live). I rarely use it. I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment. Especially given that the newer model which complies with the current pollution standards consumes the same amount of gas as mine (judging by the manufacturer's specs). Of course, this law is stupid because it only considers the year the vehicle was sold, but it's just one example of many why people may have a knee-jerk reaction to being forcibly pushed to adopt new things.

> Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we should push everybody to ride electric bikes just because those riding in remote places are few and far between.

The situation you described is purely recreative. Others might argue that the climate is much more important than the personal hobby of a few motorcyclists and would warrant banning ICE vehicles altogether.

One can change recreational activities easily.

> I'd really love to see the proof that building and buying a new one, to replace the one that is in perfect working condition, is actually better for the environment.

I am with you on that one and I believe that if all this wasn't an hypocritical way to save the automotive industry, the governments would push and force car brands to develop and sell homologated EV conversion kits for all cars builds in the last 30 years.

The endless focus on hobbies involving ICE misses the forest for the trees and has pitted tons of large hobby communities against environmentalists for decades because many environmentalists would much rather pick a fight with car guys than with the inter-global corporations and the defense forces that actually make up most of the worldwide emissions pool.

International shipping is single-handedly the greatest contributor by a small margin, tons of which just does not need to happen, full stop. We send products around the entire world because it costs pennies less to package pineapple in one country than another, and most of it goes in the fucking garbage anyway. And the products that do require shipping could be done in a much, much more efficient manner to save tons and tons of ship traffic per year. The other major contributor is industry, which could be trimmed significantly if we put serious work into ending the production of stupid, useless, shitty items that no one actually wants (knockoff electronics, basically anything drop-shipped, single use fucking lithium phone chargers).

And all that's not even going into shit like the FIELDS of e-bikes and e-scooters being stacked in China because there's just nowhere to go with that.

Military dick-wagging especially but not solely by the United States accounts for absolute shit-tons of CO2 going into the atmosphere, too, absolutely none of which needs to happen. Military vehicles, construction vehicles, LTL trucks, service vehicles like garbage trucks: this is where we can make big dents in climate change. Not by taking away Jerry's Corvette that does, at best, 10k miles if he has a good year where he gets in a lot of track time. As far as I'm concerned this is just the "check your carbon footprint" garbage with extra steps: blaming consumers for the state of the environment while completely letting off the dozens of multi-national corporations actually holding the power and making the decisions that are collapsing the biosphere.

We are talking about things that are not mutually exclusives.

Certainly, but it's a matter of priorities. I recycle and minimize my consumption of useless goods, and all the rest. These are unambiguously good things to do. But at the same time, going after people for their recreational hobbies just because said hobbies are not something you find personal fulfillment in is shit activism when they are barely enough to be considered a rounding error in the larger problems of climate change.

If at some point in the far flung future, things like dirt bikes or even track monster race cars owned by folk turn out to be the biggest environmental problem, fine. Then we'll deal with it. But from my perspective we have an entire ocean of fish much bigger and far more worth frying first than them.

I felt compelled to mention the hobby vs need situation because it used to be one of my hobby too but I also acknowledged it wasn't necessarily a smart thing from my part.

Now despite still enjoying riding a motorbike I am doing more recreationnal cycling and only transportation focused motorbike riding[1]. I just embraced moving a but slower. Turns out that with a simple bicycle you can get way enough thrill in the downhills, and with much less risks. As an ex elite road cycling racer, I am no stranger to catching and overtaking cars and motorbikes descending mountain passes.

[1] I basically only ride my motorbike if I have my partner with me and I am going to a specific place we wouldn't be able to make it and back home within a time constraint.

Sorry but I’m not that sorry for your bike.

https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/2023-shatters-climate-reco...

This year we visited the Dolomites and the weather was insane. The place was full of old photo's of meters high snowfalls but all they got this year was a couple centimeters in early December. We need to change our habits, this pace is unsustainable

https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/2023-shatters-climate-reco...

So you're saying that trashing a perfectly good bike and building another one, only to be ridden what? 10000 km at most a year, is a good deal for the environment? And consume the same amount of gas, so put out the same amount of CO2? My bike was an example where the general one-size-fits-all solution is actually counter-productive.

This is exactly the issue I'm talking about.

I'm all for preserving the environment, I really am. And I think that moving the immense majority of (sub-)urban commuters from ICE to EV is great and will make a difference. Or, even better: stop commuting if possible!

Isn't the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle", "in that order"? How are we reducing or even reusing here?

But this whole "replace all ICE vehicles now" just screams of disguised "won't somebody think of the economy?"

Electric is quieter, so many people you probably would never even notice or be aware of, who are out there seeking a peaceful direct experience of the mountains, will appreciate the absence of your motorcycle in that respect.

Also you make a common mistake of motorcycle owners in equating the amount of gas consumed with the amount of pollution. Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.

Which is saying something even worse than saying their per-litre pollution is bad since motorcycles get more kilometers per litre. In other words even with their better per-kilometer gas usage, they still pollute more per unit of distance travelled. That is truly bad, from a pollution perspective. It’s a mistake to think the small amount of gas used means there is less impact.

So your motorcycle should be trashed, yes.

I would also love being able to ride a quiet motorbike. One of the reasons I have my specific model is that it's very quiet. I'm not against EV bikes, mind. I'm talking about practical issues, here, and saying that as of today, electric bikes' range combined with the existing infrastructure would have a hard time replacing ICE bikes.

I'm all for your considering that I shouldn't get to enjoy the mountains, but please, come out and say that, instead of dancing around the subject and saying that a newer ICE bike would be just fine. The argument just loses credibilty.

> Smaller engines are by far vastly more polluting per kilometer than larger ones.

How small are we talking, here? My motorbike's engine is bigger than many modern ICE cars' (I'm in Europe, so big-ass V8s aren't that common).

Be that as it may, you seem to ignore what I'd say is the most important part of my argument: I'm not complaining that I wouldn't be allowed to ride any bike. I'm complaining that the powers that be figured that a newer bike, with the same weight and similar sized engine (smaller, actually! – so more polluting?) and the same gas consumption is somehow better than my older model, and I should be allowed to ride that and not the one I already have.

Yeah I see what you're saying, it would suck if they forced you to change over abruptly. And if you have a bigger engine as you say the pollution is probably less of an issue. In any case the pollution picture is getting massively better as EVs roll out and I'm guessing the transition period will be long (as long as the lifetime of your current bike, maybe).

Then one would hope we will have swappable battery pack options for motorcycles in the future as well, which could make refueling more widespread. Easier to do for motorcycles than cars. And with a smaller battery by necessity, swapping makes more sense. Anyway I'm just rambling on here, who knows what will happen.

As far as you getting to enjoy the mountains, I had (maybe mistakenly) been thinking you were talking about a dirt bike, versus a road bike. I don't think of the sound of road bikes as annoying to anyone, especially a quiet one. Not quite as Edward Abbey would say, "if there's a road there, the place is already ruined" but definitely you get more leeway to make noise on a road.

Not the OP but I have been to the Pyrinees and Dolomites in my Model 3 and was perfectly fine. Many, maybe even most of the small villages had at the very least a 50kw charger somewhere on them, often at a hotel or supermarket. I don't think I've ever been further than 100km from a fast charger.

Yeah but what about continents other than Europe?

Everywhere in Australia is far away. I'm actually pretty keen on getting a Plugin Hybrid for where I live, we often go on 400KM+ drives into national parks or into state forest areas that get more and more remote as things go on.

Should we structurally stick with ICEs in EU and the US because everything is far in the Australian Outback and for that once in a lifetime road trip in the US?

NL? Sul serio? A completely flat tiny country?

The much longer stops translate into needing to sleep at a hotel rather than being at your destination. You clearly haven't accounted for that either.

NL, hai letto bene. I don’t know what to make of this statement though.

I’ve clearly accounted for everything dude, including my own endurance and that of my family: every couple hours we need to get out, stretch, have a coffee and use the toilet. Plugging a DC 150kW takes 2 minutes, and we were never stuck in a queue waiting for that.

In any case the worse time wasters are roadworks and traffic jams on the German highways and the abysmal wait at the Gotthard Tunnel. If not for them I could easily make it in one day with a Model Y

> Plugging a DC 150kW takes 2 minutes

More like 2 seconds in a Model Y.

Yeah, I have to say I’m dumbfounded by the brilliance of the UX.

all other designs where you have to present a card are simply a failure

Why not claim that it's completely 0 emissions (on 100% downhill trips) while at it?

You realise that you weren't in a queue because there are very few EVs around I hope?

Hotels can have electrical outlets. Not to mention chargers which are often faster than electrical outlets. Long trips in huge countries are easy peasy. Charging stops are like 10 minutes every couple hours and sometimes 20 when someone goes in a store for a few minutes. The long charging stops you are thinking of are non-Teslas.

I like how you completely forgot that a night at a hotel costs you 1 day of vacation, plus the cost for the hotel itself.

Most healthy people don't need toilet breaks every 2h, and you're not accounting for the line at charging spots. 10 minutes * 5 cars isn't a short stop really.

There are no lines though. And you are making things up. There is no need for a hotel. As an example, a recent long trip I took in a BEV (Tesla) was 1442 km in one day. No hotel needed. How is that a bad thing? Are you going to tell me that is a short distance?

95c/kwh at rapid chargers in Italy this summer, that's over €800 to recharge for your journey compared with petrol at €1.80, which would be about €400.

no man, 21€c/kwh at Tesla SC stations outside Italy, something x2 in the country. Besides, gasoline was outrageously priced last summer, an epic gouging.

Please, enough goalpost pushing

Paid 95c at several rapid chargers along the A1 between Florence and Naples in August. 65c in towns at slower places. 45 was the cheapest I paid.

I agree with you as that's my reality as well, however the original article is about the US market so the discussion here is for a US context and for them, as far as I understand it, their infrastructure is a lot poorer so the concerns are far more justified.