> I mean, what buying a gas car is like in 2022. It’s like holding onto your flip phone in 2012. It’s like trying to find your hotel in a strange city after a red-eye with a paper map. It’s like putting your retirement savings into coal-mining investments.
This piece comes from a place of privilege. I bought a gas car out of the necessity of a growing family within the last year. Within my market, there are no options to buy a new electric without waiting for a very, very, very long time. Also, travelling out of province to buy is not an option given the pandemic and a small baby at home.
Things are a bit messed up in the car market in general, with a lot of long long time waits for ICE vehicles too.
We bought the first generation plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivan five years ago and we've been very happy with it. In Chicago it's effectively an EV 9 months of the year (it likes to run on gas in the winter, likely to feed the heaters). I do think that when we downsize to a non-minivan in a few years that we're likely looking at an EV (perhaps renting an ICE car for vacations where we'll be doing a lot of driving and have inconsistent access to charging).
There is definitely some infrastructure that needs to change still. A lot of rental properties (perhaps almost all) don't have the ability to manage EVs which is going to be a challenge going forth, but I think that we're definitely on the precipice of EVs becoming dominant. I'd say it's not quite flip phone in 2012, but it is flip phone in 2008.
That's a great analogy. In 2008 iPhones were fabulously expensive ($700 doesn't seem so bad, but remember that $700 was the contract-locked subsidized price, and that phone didn't have an app store), and it still wasn't certain whether iPhone would beat Blackberry. The rich bought an iPhone or Blackberry, but average Joe's were best off limping along with their old flip phone an extra year, and if they couldn't, buying the cheapest thing they could to hold them over.
And this applies even more in early 2022. All cars, new or used, EV or ICE are stupidly expensive right now. In 12 months time, the used car market should have settled, Teslas should no longer be supply constrained and may have more reasonable prices, and some really nice vehicles like the Hyundia/Kia Ioniq5/EV6 should be widely available. So this is the year to repair your beater rather than replacing it, IMO.
And remember that it's still somewhat environmentally responsible buying a used ICE car. reuse/reduce/recycle is the mantra, and that first R still has meaning.
I still remember the first smartphones were crazy expensive, and as an average person, I couldn't afford one. I still agreed that the smartphone was the future.
Same arguments, buying an ICE is staying in the past technology, and so what.
While having two babies in a North-American city, I needed a car, so I bought the cheapest safe car (97' E Class for $2K) and a cargo bike. I know my car is an ICE, but I agree with the author.
To add on to this: his whole argument about range not mattering assumes that there is an easy place to plug the car into every night, something that is not true for most people that live in an apartment (and could be true for many people that rent their homes and don't have a pre-existing place to plug the car in).
Nontrivial amounts of cars don't overnight anywhere near an outlet, and that particular use case is not handled very well by existing electric cars at all.
You are correct that it's very hard to find an apartment with access to an outlet, but it's less of an issue than you would think.
Having owned a Tesla in San Francisco and street-parking it for 2 years without access to a charger, I treated it much like one would with a gas-powered car: I went to the charging station about once every week or so and "filled up". The only inconvenience is that it took longer to recharge the car than to fill up an ICE vehicle. Everything else was the same basically. I never found myself in a position where I couldn't charge the car.
After I moved to a place where I had access to an everyday power outlet (120v, like you'd plug a desk lamp into), it pretty much eliminated my trips to the charging station.
The ONLY time it was every a question was when I took a trip to visit family in a rural part of the country where the closest supercharger at the time was 2+ hours away. My family doesn't do a lot of driving, so it was easy for us to just plug my car in and I had no problem leaving.
I ended up putting about 40k miles on the Tesla before I sold it, and I have no qualms about getting another electric vehicle.
If the 2022 price is any indication, moreover, the author has something like $40k to drop on an electric car, and deems himself price sensitive when comparing to… $60k cars.
Either way, this is crazy money. $40k is about a year’s salary for the average American, and more than a year for the rest of the world. Yes, you’ll save a bit on gas, but still!
https://www.edmunds.com/most-popular-cars/ suggests that the Ford F-series is the most popular car in much of the US, and a quick search for its price suggests that the prices of some typical configurations are somewhere around $40k.
The top few results mention $29k, $35k and $53k, and the highest price I found in a 30 seconds of glancing was >$90k. Of course, one may still regard that as crazy money, no matter how typical. ;)
Well, if he's so environmentally conscious I sure hope he doesn't buy a new electric car every year, and (to be fair) it doesn't sound like that from the article (the "What I'd buy" section starts with "Suppose a meteorite hits [his current car]"). But yeah, the fact that many people still can't afford an EV seems to have slipped his mind...
I leased my first EV this past summer, a VW id4, and had a 240v/30A charger installed at home. I live in the Boston metro area.
It's really nice the majority of the time - I never need to go on a gas run, acceleration is _significantly_ better than any previous car I've had, there's much less maintenance involved.
Range on longer trips is an issue, with us going to Maine for vacation or to see in-laws in Connecticut we needed to plan around chargers. I was really surprised by the amount of range lost in the winter, going from ~260 miles to ~200.
I'm still very happy with the decision, but it feels like we're in early adopter territory for at least five more years.
…but it feels like we're in early adopter territory for at least five more years.
You’re probably right, but as an owner of one of the first Nissan Leafs to roll off the line (still have it), my spouse and I view the current market as a luxury of choices and any number of which could easily be our only car. Some of it is perspective: folks will comment on the need to find a charger on a road trip, but never mention that they haven’t had to go out of their way on the way home to find gas since…well, since they bought their EV. Some of it is legitimate, since chargers aren’t as common as gas stations.
But c’mon, even a 200 mile range on a trip is more “minor inconvenience to find a charger on the map on the dashboard that will route me there” rather than “early adopter”, and that’s just once in a while.
I think of it as more 'late stage early adopter' compared to a decade ago with the Leaf. When talking to in-laws about our car we need to bring up "long trips are fine, we just need to stop at a Walmart in New London for 45 minutes on our way back" and that does not make an EV sound appealing to them. This is something that will be eventually solved with more and faster chargers, but we're not there quite yet.
The early Nissan Leafs had abysmal range at around 80 miles of range total, but they seemed like the perfect "in town" car. A former manager of mine had a 2012 Leaf and he LOVED it. I always wanted to see how an EV's value would hold up when there was next-generation battery technology that could potentially be retrofit into an older car like the early-model Leaf.
I drive a 2019 Toyota Plug-in Prius. This past summer I was getting about 30 miles of electric range. This morning, it was down to 23 miles.
In my case, running out of electric range isn't catastrophic, since it automatically switches to gas when the battery is out. The difference in acceleration performance between gas and electric modes is noticeable. After all, it's a Prius so I'm not winning any drag races, but in electric mode it is very responsive.
I'm pretty happy about this car, I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. The majority of my driving is electric, without the range anxiety. If my daily commute were longer (mine is about 12 miles each way), that might tip the balance into driving full electric with a longer range or just falling back to gas entirely.
The uk for example, there are a bunch of EVs that are now coming nito the second hand market. For example Zoes and leafs.
Sure the range isn't great, but if you are in london, you don't pay congestion charge(£15 a day), or road tax(70-300 a year, https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables). Plus city driving, you're not doing 100miles a day, its more like 20.
But the secondary point is this, whats new now, in five years will be affordable to the rest of us (once this ridiculous shortage is out of the way) Cars value exponentially decays, so the more rich people buy them now, the better it is for the rest of us later.
I just bought a 2014 Chevy Spark EV for ~ $6500US with 66K miles.
Drives like new - it is an amazing car.
If you don't have any charging available to you at your home, it would be a hard car to own otherwise it is the best $$$ I've spend. Before that I owned a Chevy Volt for 8 years and put 110K (and 30K gas) miles on it.
We bought a used car a year and a half ago, and the number of second-hand EVs available was tiny. (Looking nation-wide with Carvana.) I'm guessing it gets significantly better with each passing year, but at the time there just wasn't something at the price-point we wanted.
We also couldn't decide on the environmental impact of buying a used ICE (ended up with a 2014 Mazda 3) or a new EV.
We ended up deciding that, with the small amount of driving we do, a used ICE was better. We weren't going to burn all that much gas anyway.
Which person trusts the battery on a ten-year-old early-generation electric vehicle?
What down payment is required before leasing a new electric vehicle for two or three hundred United Kingdom Quids? How much insurance must be carried for such a vehicle?
I do not doubt that the electric vehicle is a fantastic choice for the financially secure person. But many are not so fortunate.
A fair criticism, but one that should work itself out as EVs gain more marketshare among new vehicles. Used car prices in general are a little crazy right now due to shortages of new cars, but it won't be that long before used EVs start flooding the market, making them more accessible at tons of price points. Right now most used EVs for sale are very early designs and/or compliance cars which were never that good to begin with, but it won't be long before lessons learned cars are available used. I suspect early VW ID.4 coming off lease in 1-2 years will be excellent bargains, for example. It's a shame VW isn't bringing ID.3 to north america since they'd be even better.
Batteries are also continuing to come down in price and economies of scale are starting to kick in for EV manufacturing, so new EVs are becoming available at more accessible price points.
I think we have crossed the threshold where spending money on a new ICE passenger car doesn't make sense, but I think there is tons of value to be had in fuel efficient used cars, particularly Toyota's hybrids that have bulletproof drivetrains. Chevy Volt gen2 is also an excellent gateway (PH)EV.
Buying an electric car in 2022 is like buying the iPhone in 2007. I can also make comical platitudes. One thing that struck me while reading this is the author implies that he would consider the Taycan, a car that retails for > 100k USD, if it weren't for the lack of storage space. We are definately not in the same bracket so its hard to take this piece of writing seriously. I certainly cannot and will not consider spending that much on a car. Even the 70k USD asking for an i-pace is too much.
> author implies that he would consider the Taycan, a car that retails for > 100k USD
Which is the same price as a tesla model x.
However I get your main drift. I'm not pissing away 40-80k on a thing that will depreciate 3/4 of that value in 4 years. No matter how much the wife insists, buying a new car is a fool's errand.
Looking at used Teslas for sale, almost all of them I can see ~ 3-6 years old in my country are only 10-20% cheaper than new. It seems currently they're depreciating 1/5 max in that 4 years.
> Charging speed · Remember, this only matters if you do a significant amount of long-haul driving. But then it matters a lot. At this point, Tesla still has a lead, because there are more Superchargers and the cars (recent models at least) charge damn fast.
I bought into a great charging network and got a pretty good car to use it with. I can't imagine... I don't understand!... buying an electric car not integrated with Tesla's supercharger network. Plus, I would hate being limited to 100kW charging, after having easy access to 150 and 250kW.
> The Niche · IF you need to travel 500km (about 300 miles) on a regular basis, AND IF you really can’t handle that trip taking an extra hour, well then, suck it up, live in the past, get a vehicle that’s less reliable and more expensive to run and more damaging to life on Earth.
Or gosh, get a Supercharger network and your choice of Tesla and add 0-15 minutes.
> And I think their experiment in moving all the interaction to a tablet off to the driver’s side can be declared a failure.
The age of cars trying to look like fighter jet cockpits with switches filling all available space is over. The tablet brings a superior navigation experience, really good music apps, great driving information display not hidden behind a (usually too low) steering wheel. Looks-wise the Tesla interior is delightfully spare. Don't take my tablet.
>"IF you need to travel 500km (about 300 miles) on a regular basis, AND IF you really can’t handle that trip taking an extra hour, well then, suck it up, live in the past, get a vehicle that’s less reliable and more expensive to run and more damaging to life on Earth"
I did not need to read past that. It is truly insulting and inconsiderate. The article is written by a jerk.
he's wrong in the sense that there are other reasons not to buy electric:
* price
* options & availability
* (for long trips) lack of charging infrastructure along desired route
* lack of charging infrastructure at home
also kind of a laugh to think that a person who buys a $70k luxury vehicle is saving life on Earth. I guarantee his carbon footprint could be smaller. Who's to judge what's small enough?
Being/not being wrong and being a jerk are two different things.
As for blanket reason. I have a rich friend. He has Tesla. He does not give a flying fuck about carbon footprint. The only reason he bought is is that famous acceleration.
Interesting piece. Definitely have to read it from a lens of a highly paid tech worker, nothing wrong with that either.
Buying an electric vehicle right now if you aren't a highly paid engineer is a bit of a wedge I'd say though.
We're only just approaching a cross roads of fuel/electric competition in vehicles.
If you buy a car and expect to hold onto it for 5 or more years, slightly under the length of the avg new car loan, then you want to be really sure the one you pick is stable and the right choice. To me that removes most of the EV options available, regardless of how much I like their style (looking at you rivian).
I'm excited to see what's available on the market in 5 years but right now it still feels early to buy a brand new EV if you aren't a high earner.
A used leaf or bolt still looks like the best bet to dip into the EV market and drive something cheaper until full adoption and kinks are worked out by the big car companies.
I have owned some electric vehicles, so not trying to be a hater of it, quite the opposite.
> Range - So, here’s the thing: Range doesn’t matter. No, really, it doesn’t.
False. Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.
Claiming range doesn't matter simply fails to consider what it means when the entire fleet is electric. Over-building the fast charging infrastructure to support a national fleet of low range EVs is wasteful.
Longer range means less time at fast chargers and more time slow charging over night. Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.
This is taken out of context a bit. What's said is that range doesn't matter if you're not doing long hauls (which he defines as 150+ miles).
I tend to agree with him, as the majority of drivers are rarely driving over 150 miles in a day. In that case any car with 200+ miles of range will easily meet day to day needs with no fast charging. I've personally found this to be true as I come up on 6 months of EV ownership. I've only needed to fast charge 1x, and that was due to me accidentally not plugging my car in all the way one night.
He explained his viewpoint more thoroughly in a post linked just after your quoted line:
> What's said is that range doesn't matter if you're not doing long hauls (which he defines as 150+ miles).
Yes, he's only thinking about an individual driver. He's not thinking about the requirements across the entire fleet. There will always be plenty of people doing long hauls across the whole fleet.
Interesting argument (from a waste perspective). If 99% of all trips are 10-20 miles isn't over-building battery capacity more wasteful than building out charging stations with a much higher utilization? Cars would be more expensive, and, presumably heavier and do more damage to the roads. Charging infrastructure is relatively cheap compared to the millions of additional cells that would require mass quantities of non-renewable resources
There are a few counter arguments to that idea, many of those linked to battery weight. An efficient car with a 40-50 kWh battery could weigh at least 200-250kg less than a 85kWh one. This has a direct effect on:
- energy consumption. Having to drag along 250kg is not free.
- maintenance cycles. Tires, brakes and more need more frequent maintenance on a heavier car.
- road maintenance (!)
A simple 7.2 kW charger is more than enough to charge a 40-50 kWh battery overnight. That's plenty for a large majority of use cases. Proper charging infrastructure can help one along on the exceptional further trip.
Also, don't underestimate the number of people that don't want or can't spend 5000€ on a car.
Every point you've made is an argument for ICE vehicles over BEVs. ICE is the no-compromise option in your scenarios. The best BEV you could get under the terms you've set wouldn't be worth owning.
The amount of unnecessary battery that you are hauling around for 400+ range is crazy. If anybody is going to go long range they need to do it via a removable boost battery that you can leave at home for the 99% of your driving where you don't need it. I have a plugin that only gets 29 miles of battery and I go for months of time occasionally sipping at the tank before I need to fill up.
> If anybody is going to go long range they need to do it via a removable boost battery that you can leave at home for the 99% of your driving where you don't need it.
Cars with swappable batteries enable you do up- and downsize the pack as needed. Nio does 70 kWh to 100 kWh packs with a 150 kWh option supposedly on the way this year:
Because having a fleet of car with a range of 400miles to commute 50miles is not wasteful ?
I like that at the moment the top comment is that people do not have the money to follow the autor ideal and you want even bigger battery pack which is I believe the most expensive part of the car ...
There's that lack of ambition. Instead of making excuses for cars with compromises, you want better batteries: cheaper, safer, more energy dense, more power dense, faster charging, more recyclable, longer duty cycle.
> Longer range means less time at fast chargers and more time slow charging over night. Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.
Typical driving profiles already mean that you rarely need fast chargers. The bottleneck will be holiday seasons and similar, when suddenly the demand for fast charging will go up 100-fold or more.
> Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.
High-end BEV already have similar range to comparable (on horsepower) ICE cars. They don't need much more.
> Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.
At a highway rest stop, why would a fast charger that can charge 1 car in 6 minutes be any more expensive than a bank of slow chargers that can charge 10 cars in 60 minutes?
While the peak usage is the same, they have other differences. The ten-charger setup will cause many fairly modest load changes on the electricity network, while the one-charger setup will cause a few giant changes. That may plausibly have some impact on the price of the infrastructure needed and what the power company will charge.
In order to charge 10x faster, you need to deliver 10x the current. That means all the wiring and electronics need to be upgraded to handle the huge increase without melting.
Also, the rest stop won't just be installing a single fast charger, it would install more than one. So you can't really compare 10 slow chargers against a single fast one. That means the wiring service for the entire rest stop would likely need to be upgraded as well.
Readit News
This piece comes from a place of privilege. I bought a gas car out of the necessity of a growing family within the last year. Within my market, there are no options to buy a new electric without waiting for a very, very, very long time. Also, travelling out of province to buy is not an option given the pandemic and a small baby at home.
We bought the first generation plug-in hybrid Chrysler Pacifica minivan five years ago and we've been very happy with it. In Chicago it's effectively an EV 9 months of the year (it likes to run on gas in the winter, likely to feed the heaters). I do think that when we downsize to a non-minivan in a few years that we're likely looking at an EV (perhaps renting an ICE car for vacations where we'll be doing a lot of driving and have inconsistent access to charging).
There is definitely some infrastructure that needs to change still. A lot of rental properties (perhaps almost all) don't have the ability to manage EVs which is going to be a challenge going forth, but I think that we're definitely on the precipice of EVs becoming dominant. I'd say it's not quite flip phone in 2012, but it is flip phone in 2008.
That's a great analogy. In 2008 iPhones were fabulously expensive ($700 doesn't seem so bad, but remember that $700 was the contract-locked subsidized price, and that phone didn't have an app store), and it still wasn't certain whether iPhone would beat Blackberry. The rich bought an iPhone or Blackberry, but average Joe's were best off limping along with their old flip phone an extra year, and if they couldn't, buying the cheapest thing they could to hold them over.
And this applies even more in early 2022. All cars, new or used, EV or ICE are stupidly expensive right now. In 12 months time, the used car market should have settled, Teslas should no longer be supply constrained and may have more reasonable prices, and some really nice vehicles like the Hyundia/Kia Ioniq5/EV6 should be widely available. So this is the year to repair your beater rather than replacing it, IMO.
And remember that it's still somewhat environmentally responsible buying a used ICE car. reuse/reduce/recycle is the mantra, and that first R still has meaning.
Same arguments, buying an ICE is staying in the past technology, and so what.
While having two babies in a North-American city, I needed a car, so I bought the cheapest safe car (97' E Class for $2K) and a cargo bike. I know my car is an ICE, but I agree with the author.
Nontrivial amounts of cars don't overnight anywhere near an outlet, and that particular use case is not handled very well by existing electric cars at all.
Having owned a Tesla in San Francisco and street-parking it for 2 years without access to a charger, I treated it much like one would with a gas-powered car: I went to the charging station about once every week or so and "filled up". The only inconvenience is that it took longer to recharge the car than to fill up an ICE vehicle. Everything else was the same basically. I never found myself in a position where I couldn't charge the car.
After I moved to a place where I had access to an everyday power outlet (120v, like you'd plug a desk lamp into), it pretty much eliminated my trips to the charging station.
The ONLY time it was every a question was when I took a trip to visit family in a rural part of the country where the closest supercharger at the time was 2+ hours away. My family doesn't do a lot of driving, so it was easy for us to just plug my car in and I had no problem leaving.
I ended up putting about 40k miles on the Tesla before I sold it, and I have no qualms about getting another electric vehicle.
Either way, this is crazy money. $40k is about a year’s salary for the average American, and more than a year for the rest of the world. Yes, you’ll save a bit on gas, but still!
The top few results mention $29k, $35k and $53k, and the highest price I found in a 30 seconds of glancing was >$90k. Of course, one may still regard that as crazy money, no matter how typical. ;)
1: https://quillette.com/2019/11/16/thorstein-veblens-theory-of...
Deleted Comment
It's really nice the majority of the time - I never need to go on a gas run, acceleration is _significantly_ better than any previous car I've had, there's much less maintenance involved.
Range on longer trips is an issue, with us going to Maine for vacation or to see in-laws in Connecticut we needed to plan around chargers. I was really surprised by the amount of range lost in the winter, going from ~260 miles to ~200.
I'm still very happy with the decision, but it feels like we're in early adopter territory for at least five more years.
You’re probably right, but as an owner of one of the first Nissan Leafs to roll off the line (still have it), my spouse and I view the current market as a luxury of choices and any number of which could easily be our only car. Some of it is perspective: folks will comment on the need to find a charger on a road trip, but never mention that they haven’t had to go out of their way on the way home to find gas since…well, since they bought their EV. Some of it is legitimate, since chargers aren’t as common as gas stations.
But c’mon, even a 200 mile range on a trip is more “minor inconvenience to find a charger on the map on the dashboard that will route me there” rather than “early adopter”, and that’s just once in a while.
In my case, running out of electric range isn't catastrophic, since it automatically switches to gas when the battery is out. The difference in acceleration performance between gas and electric modes is noticeable. After all, it's a Prius so I'm not winning any drag races, but in electric mode it is very responsive.
I'm pretty happy about this car, I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. The majority of my driving is electric, without the range anxiety. If my daily commute were longer (mine is about 12 miles each way), that might tip the balance into driving full electric with a longer range or just falling back to gas entirely.
Is renting a car for these types of excursions possible?
For those of us with smaller budgets, but who still need a car because of lack of viable alternatives, there still isn't a choice.
It depends on what market you're in.
The uk for example, there are a bunch of EVs that are now coming nito the second hand market. For example Zoes and leafs.
Sure the range isn't great, but if you are in london, you don't pay congestion charge(£15 a day), or road tax(70-300 a year, https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables). Plus city driving, you're not doing 100miles a day, its more like 20.
But the secondary point is this, whats new now, in five years will be affordable to the rest of us (once this ridiculous shortage is out of the way) Cars value exponentially decays, so the more rich people buy them now, the better it is for the rest of us later.
Drives like new - it is an amazing car.
If you don't have any charging available to you at your home, it would be a hard car to own otherwise it is the best $$$ I've spend. Before that I owned a Chevy Volt for 8 years and put 110K (and 30K gas) miles on it.
We also couldn't decide on the environmental impact of buying a used ICE (ended up with a 2014 Mazda 3) or a new EV.
We ended up deciding that, with the small amount of driving we do, a used ICE was better. We weren't going to burn all that much gas anyway.
But, you can lease a brand new low-end EV for around £200-£300 per month.
What down payment is required before leasing a new electric vehicle for two or three hundred United Kingdom Quids? How much insurance must be carried for such a vehicle?
I do not doubt that the electric vehicle is a fantastic choice for the financially secure person. But many are not so fortunate.
1p/mile, £0 tax per year. And same year model is on sale for more than £6500 today
Batteries are also continuing to come down in price and economies of scale are starting to kick in for EV manufacturing, so new EVs are becoming available at more accessible price points.
I think we have crossed the threshold where spending money on a new ICE passenger car doesn't make sense, but I think there is tons of value to be had in fuel efficient used cars, particularly Toyota's hybrids that have bulletproof drivetrains. Chevy Volt gen2 is also an excellent gateway (PH)EV.
Which is the same price as a tesla model x.
However I get your main drift. I'm not pissing away 40-80k on a thing that will depreciate 3/4 of that value in 4 years. No matter how much the wife insists, buying a new car is a fool's errand.
> Charging speed · Remember, this only matters if you do a significant amount of long-haul driving. But then it matters a lot. At this point, Tesla still has a lead, because there are more Superchargers and the cars (recent models at least) charge damn fast.
I bought into a great charging network and got a pretty good car to use it with. I can't imagine... I don't understand!... buying an electric car not integrated with Tesla's supercharger network. Plus, I would hate being limited to 100kW charging, after having easy access to 150 and 250kW.
> The Niche · IF you need to travel 500km (about 300 miles) on a regular basis, AND IF you really can’t handle that trip taking an extra hour, well then, suck it up, live in the past, get a vehicle that’s less reliable and more expensive to run and more damaging to life on Earth.
Or gosh, get a Supercharger network and your choice of Tesla and add 0-15 minutes.
> And I think their experiment in moving all the interaction to a tablet off to the driver’s side can be declared a failure.
The age of cars trying to look like fighter jet cockpits with switches filling all available space is over. The tablet brings a superior navigation experience, really good music apps, great driving information display not hidden behind a (usually too low) steering wheel. Looks-wise the Tesla interior is delightfully spare. Don't take my tablet.
I did not need to read past that. It is truly insulting and inconsiderate. The article is written by a jerk.
* price
* options & availability
* (for long trips) lack of charging infrastructure along desired route
* lack of charging infrastructure at home
also kind of a laugh to think that a person who buys a $70k luxury vehicle is saving life on Earth. I guarantee his carbon footprint could be smaller. Who's to judge what's small enough?
As for blanket reason. I have a rich friend. He has Tesla. He does not give a flying fuck about carbon footprint. The only reason he bought is is that famous acceleration.
Buying an electric vehicle right now if you aren't a highly paid engineer is a bit of a wedge I'd say though.
We're only just approaching a cross roads of fuel/electric competition in vehicles.
If you buy a car and expect to hold onto it for 5 or more years, slightly under the length of the avg new car loan, then you want to be really sure the one you pick is stable and the right choice. To me that removes most of the EV options available, regardless of how much I like their style (looking at you rivian).
I'm excited to see what's available on the market in 5 years but right now it still feels early to buy a brand new EV if you aren't a high earner.
A used leaf or bolt still looks like the best bet to dip into the EV market and drive something cheaper until full adoption and kinks are worked out by the big car companies.
I have owned some electric vehicles, so not trying to be a hater of it, quite the opposite.
False. Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.
Claiming range doesn't matter simply fails to consider what it means when the entire fleet is electric. Over-building the fast charging infrastructure to support a national fleet of low range EVs is wasteful.
Longer range means less time at fast chargers and more time slow charging over night. Slow charge infrastructure is much cheaper to build out.
The Lucid Air gets 500 miles highway range:
https://insideevs.com/reviews/562511/lucid-air-range-test-re...
Less expensive EVs should aspire to 400 miles range as a minimum.
I tend to agree with him, as the majority of drivers are rarely driving over 150 miles in a day. In that case any car with 200+ miles of range will easily meet day to day needs with no fast charging. I've personally found this to be true as I come up on 6 months of EV ownership. I've only needed to fast charge 1x, and that was due to me accidentally not plugging my car in all the way one night.
He explained his viewpoint more thoroughly in a post linked just after your quoted line:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2021/09/01/How-Much-...
Yes, he's only thinking about an individual driver. He's not thinking about the requirements across the entire fleet. There will always be plenty of people doing long hauls across the whole fleet.
Not with better batteries. Until there are better batteries, use swappable batteries.
Or you could always go fuel cell. They do well for long range driving, even in the cold:
https://electrek.co/2022/01/03/hyundai-nexo-sets-hydrogen-en...
- energy consumption. Having to drag along 250kg is not free.
- maintenance cycles. Tires, brakes and more need more frequent maintenance on a heavier car.
- road maintenance (!)
A simple 7.2 kW charger is more than enough to charge a 40-50 kWh battery overnight. That's plenty for a large majority of use cases. Proper charging infrastructure can help one along on the exceptional further trip.
Also, don't underestimate the number of people that don't want or can't spend 5000€ on a car.
Cars with swappable batteries enable you do up- and downsize the pack as needed. Nio does 70 kWh to 100 kWh packs with a 150 kWh option supposedly on the way this year:
https://insideevs.com/news/537644/nio-4-million-battery-swap...
Other brands are introducing cars with swappable batteries as well:
https://electrek.co/2022/01/22/geely-backed-maple-leaf-60s-l...
https://thedriven.io/2021/04/28/nsw-based-janus-electric-pre...
Plus much cheaper to use and (presumably) less damaging to the battery.
I like that at the moment the top comment is that people do not have the money to follow the autor ideal and you want even bigger battery pack which is I believe the most expensive part of the car ...
Batteries need improvement in all metrics.
Typical driving profiles already mean that you rarely need fast chargers. The bottleneck will be holiday seasons and similar, when suddenly the demand for fast charging will go up 100-fold or more.
> Of course range matters and making excuses for the limitations of BEVs lacks ambition.
High-end BEV already have similar range to comparable (on horsepower) ICE cars. They don't need much more.
At a highway rest stop, why would a fast charger that can charge 1 car in 6 minutes be any more expensive than a bank of slow chargers that can charge 10 cars in 60 minutes?
Also, the rest stop won't just be installing a single fast charger, it would install more than one. So you can't really compare 10 slow chargers against a single fast one. That means the wiring service for the entire rest stop would likely need to be upgraded as well.