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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
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The motors have never been the problem, it’s always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.
This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.
I think people forget that petroleum is condensed and distilled solar energy. One gallon of gasoline is the results of years of solar energy.
Spelling
Non renewable solar energy unfortunately.
Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.
If you’re making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don’t really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don’t, there’s still NOx, but that’s what cat piss is for).
Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn’t consuming.
Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you’d want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.
I was thinking about fuels like HVO. They work well, but have their own ecological implications.
Ah. I’m generally skeptical of any plant-based ‘green fuel’ because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food
No, it’s renewable. But… not in any practical timeframe.
That’s not the definition of renewable.
It is iv we use it sustainably.
Not really. Its trees from a time before micro organisms evolved the ability to eat dead trees. These days, the solar energy collected by trees will get used to power the metabolisms of fungi before those trees can get buried and eventually become new coal & petroleum.
I suppose an impact from a sufficiently large asteroid could turn the entire crust of the planet into magma, sterilizing it and therefore opening the possibility that new oil might be created some day.
IIRC it is actually mostly from algea. A small amount from some fern-like plants. By the time trees existed, they were being broken down by bacteria.
I think I read somewhere that oil will not be produced anymore because now bacteria can break down that biomass that it previously didn’t. Hence, non-renewable even on long timescales.
Only if we bring back the dinosaurs. There are six movies (and counting!) explaining why this is not a good idea.
Technically no. Only if we erase bacteria capable of breaking down trees.
Energy density is a huge advantage which most people find hard to give up especially when the biggest problem that we face is invisible to most people. We can’t fix a problem if we ignore the cause.
Happy cake day!
A lot of people have been having their cake days recently. Guess it’s the first anniversary of the Reddit exodus.
oops you posted irrelevant pedantics that verge on misinformation 😧
sure it’s distilled solar energy that cannot be renewed. relevant language highligted. no one “forgets,” this. literally no one. it’s just not relevant to a timespan less than millions of years. cheers! ☀️
Petroleum can’t be renewed, but biofuels can be.
v true but i also dislike how biofuels get smorked into yet more CO2 which is kind of a problem rn
Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO2 when burned, but it doesn’t matter because that same CO2 had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.
In theory true. In reality not true.
While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study
Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.
My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that’s left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.
Um piss off. It is not irrelevant or misinformation. That is exactly what petroleum is.
You clearly can’t understand a factual statement from an opinion I never said it was good I never said it was bad I just said it was. If you’d bother to take a moment to think about it. You would realize that I was referring to the fact that petroleum is extremely energy dense. For the very reason I stated. That is fundamentally why petroleum has become a successful energy source and why it’s been so difficult to replace.
You’re welcome to point out where I said it was renewable. I think you’re going to have a difficult time finding that statement.
As for being a pedantic ass that’s clearly your territory. A pedantic ass that it likes to put words in other people’s mouths.
Your post was bordering on irrelevant to the original comment. In light of that the information you provided can really only be interpreted is as pro-fossil fuel.
Just because you can only interpret it that way doesn’t mean it is true.
mean comment alert 🚨 opinion invalidated
I hope you are not talking about battery locomotives.
With overhead wires the train has a practically unlimited battery capacity.
There are use cases for battery trains. In remote, mountainous locations where the cost for electrifying a track is very high it is not uncommon to use electric trains with batteries. Here in Germany we have several regions where diesel trains have been replaced by them.
Oil is honestly an amazing product, chemistry wise there is so much we can do with it and energy wise it’s a extremely concentrated and easily transported form of energy.
Energy wise one liter of oil is equivalent to 10 person working for a day !
I repeat, using one liter of oil is like having 10 “slaves” working for us for a day.
Its easy to see why oil became the base of our modern civilization, and easy to see why we don’t manage to stop using it even though it’s destroying us.
Not really. Battery tech has always been advancing. Even today electric vehicles have barely come up with anything new, battery wise. Everyone wants something better than lithium base. No one can get anything to market.
It advanced at a glacier pace because there was no massive driving force. It only kicked off a bit with cell phones and then in any substantial way with laptops. (Yes, batteries existed before that for different things, but there was no massive driving force.) Now imagine what would have happened if we funded it starting in the 1970s.
Didn’t sodium batteries start getting marketed recently?
Yes, but no one’s even glancing at it for use in vehicles. The one that’s finally getting into production is 70wh/Kg. Not nearly energy dense enough yet for ev’s. Lithium batteries are closer to 300wh/Kg. In other words, they take up 1/4th the space and weight. EV’s are already a thousand pounds heavier than non ev’s and that’s already causing extra tire pollution issues and having to overbuild suspension parts and bearings. Making them another 3,000 pounds heavier than that is just out of the question. Let alone making the space to fit the battery.
Sodium is going to change the world with its power storage capabilities connected to solar. Anyone on like 75% of the planet could 100% live off the electric grid problem free with enough solar panels and a big sodium storage battery.
Wasn’t aware that EVs were already that heavy. Then yeah, I guess that’s definitely not feasible, at least not at the moment.
Yep. A size of vehicle wise comparison would be that a tesla model s sedan weighs around 4,600 pounds. A toyota Corolla weighs around 1,600 pounds less at around 3,000 pounds.
Even the newest and most powerful mass produced American made car ever, the “C8 Corvette Z06” with its big V8 gas engine with 670 horsepower weighs in at around 3,650 pounds.
pretty sure most trains are powered by either overhead wires or third rails? considering that urban rail systems are always electrified and those have A LOT of trains.
Freight trains are diesel electric.
Not in America
okay? i’m talking about the world though, so typical for people to just assume america is all that matters lmao
The point is about utilization of electric motors, if it happens anywhere on earth it’s possible. You’re trying to insinuate that it isn’t true. And it is. Being American has nothing to do with it you dunce
Exactly this. Imagine if gas powered motor could recharge in mere 12 hours and run for up to half the distance. Ah, that would be the dream.
And if you and 5 of your neighbors decide to refuel at the same time during peak hours you have a real chance of overloading your neighborhood grid. And your fuel tank is dead in 5 years, replacing which is more than half of your used cars cost.
Everything non-portable uses electric motors from the time the first wire was invented.
Boy it sure is easy to win a debate when you use fictional information
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I am being serious - can you factually counter those points? I’d like to know the truth of the matter.
I can. Electric car batteries last 10+ years, often longer than the body work of the car. Lookup Lithium Iron Phosphate, this has around 5-10x the cycle life of conventional lithium batteries. Combine this with the complex heating and cooling systems, battery and charging management in modern EVs and you have something that lasts as long or longer than even a diesel engine.
Cell phone batteries die quickly because both their construction and the way they are managed favour capacity, cost, and charging speed over longevity. Car battery design is much more focused on longevity by comparison. They are also cycled more often and more completely than most EVs.
Grid issues are a real problem. Cars can be used to make this worse or better depending on how they are deployed. If they are charged during peak energy production from solar they can actually help rather than hurt the grid.
You can also rapid charge a car in like 30 minutes. You don’t need 12 hours.
Thanks, I’m not sure why I was downvoted for asking a legitimate question.
I suspect people just assumed you were the same person who wrote the sarcastic comment before the one you replied to and that you were just being combative
Well.
To fully charge a leaf at a public fast charging station takes an hour. https://www.nissanusa.com/experience-nissan/news-and-events/nissan-leaf-charging-101.html
My up! can get about 260 miles out of its 30ish liter tank. That is about 1/3rd more than a new leaf. Hardly half the distance.
The electric grid will be fine. This is not the first time it’s expanded because of new technological demand. And I’ve never heard of 5 EVs overloading the grid.
And if the person above could read they’d see that all of these are battery problems, something the original comment said we should have put our focus improving on long ago.
Edit: I’ll just add that I love my ICE cars as much as the next petrol head, but the future is electric cars for at least daily driving. We’ve pretty much perfected combustion engines at this point. F1 engines sit around 50% thermal efficiency, and we’re not gonna get any meaningful amount above that (but I will be happy if it turns out I’ll have to eat my hat in the future). I just hope petrol engines don’t become banned in the future for the enthusiasts.
Batteries don’t fail after 5 years, for starters. Source: literally any used car site
15 minute recharge adds hundreds of miles of range
No, you see, that’s not how it works. The battery needs to be filled to 100%, just like a gas tank. And you should only ever charge once you’re under 10-20%, just like a gas tank (it’s silly to top up every day, that’s just a waste of time). We must be able to exactly replicate the current paradigm for people to be able to adjust.
I drive about 150 miles a week and get gas every couple of weeks. It takes 5 minutes. If I have to go to a charger I’ll be there for hours. It’s absurd.
Tap for /s
/s
When you look at fueleconomy.gov you will see that the furthest a compact ev can go is 149 miles while the furthest a ice compact car can go is 594 miles
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/why-the-ev-boom-could-put-a-major-strain-on-our-power-grid.html You can read cnbcs article on how the grid is already pretty spread thinn with us already increasing our power demand by almost 3,000% in the last decade without even considering ev charging
https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-an-ev/
According to motor trend DC charging is the fastest way to charge your EV and it still takes just under two hours Couldn’t find a source that studied how long a ice takes to recharge but considering how ices are currently extremely common you can easily test that yourself and probably already know it’s so quick you don’t even think about it
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/
According to car and driver those lithium ion batteries you mentioned while yes they can last a decade most cars typically stay on the road for give or take 30-35 years and lithium ion batteries are inherently expensive and prone to thermal cascading ie catching fire also full charge and depletion wears the battery down over time
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-battery-replacement-costs.html According to Edmunds.com the average cost of ev battery replacement costs anywhere from 5,000$ to 15,000$ So what point was made up
You have all kinds of nonsense in your post. Like you limit it to just compact cars for no reason. When you don’t limit it to just compact cars then you get EVs with 516 mile range
And charging a car for 15 minutes gives you hundreds of miles of range
https://www.tesla.com/supercharger
Etc.
“On the other hand gas has a much higher energy density than batteries and a much faster refuel rate.”
It’s exactly this. Convenience. We’ve become accustomed to how convenient it is and don’t want to be put out.
On the other hand, it’s super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank. So if you drive less than 60 miles a day, and have acess to another car for long trips, an electric is even more convenient.
That’s basically 90% of every car owner.
It’s one of those things where people feel like they’re going to take a road trip every weekend, but most people are just using their car to commute to and from work and maybe take one or two longer trips per year. The time saved by not having to stop at a gas station throughout the the year is less than the additional time taken at a fast charging station for the rare road trip.
Or just use the clothes dryer circuit… Charge the car overnight… Get all the range.
it’s super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank
But, to make that possible, you basically have to have a “gas station” at home. If you own your own house you can modify it to install a charging spot. If you rent, you might not have that option.
Are those two things actually important?
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.
Plus the technology to battery swap is well in use for electric vehicles (see Nio, who have thousands of battery swap stations in China and some in Europe too). 3 mins and you have a full battery.
It matters to people who drive more during the day than their range allows. They don’t want to wait 20 minutes for the car to charge every time they venture 300km out and back /s
Why do people still pretend it takes longer than 20 minutes to get a 50% charge increase?
Because it’s currently easier to find a gas station than a charger that will do that performance. Now I’m willing to wait 8 hrs for 10%, but others certainly aren’t.
You must live in a red state or the middle of nowhere. It’s easy to find chargers everywhere I’ve been.
Yes, my point. I have to charge my car at home because of charging stations are either far, or Tesla owners park in them to do shopping.
Saying I live somewhere shit doesn’t disprove my point that gas is more readily available.
Yeah because the conservative government of those areas is actively suppressing them from being built.
My parents live in the sticks, in a red state, and I have no problem finding charging stations within twenty miles from them.
Wait, I’m confused (out of date??) I thought it took hours to charge. Has that changed?
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I don’t have enough charge for my trip. I’m also thirsty.
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I go to a grocery store with a fast charger.
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I buy a drink.
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I have enough charge.
If it’s a long trip where I need more charge, I choose a car snack, and I’ll have enough.
If I’m on an actual long car trip and I want to charge all the way from the warning light to 100%, I will need to eat a meal anyway. I just find a McDonald’s/cafe,/restaurant/whatever with a fast charger, and it’ll be full before I’m done.
But finding a store/eating place with a fast charger is still waaaay less convenient than just finding a place where I can get diesel in seconds, and find a different place to get drinks/food/snacks.
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Fast chargers can fully charge my car (range ~400mi) in about an hour
Most cars will charge to 80% pretty fast. 20%-70% is really fast on most.
fast charging on modern HV battery packs will get you to 80% from 0 in like 15-20 minutes. I’ve seen lower, but it’s really fucking usable now.
Why /s? Road trips are a thing, and you’d be hard pressed to find a combo restaurant/charging station that’s along your path.
restaurant/charging station combo
The people providing the charging infrastructure here haven’t figured out this important point yet. Gas stations are a terrible place to put chargers, no one wants to stop at a gas station for fifteen minutes to an hour at a time. Charging stations need to be in places people will be stopping anyway, or at the very least places that provide something to do while waiting. Restaurants, shopping centres, tourist traps, whatever.
Here it’s exacerbated by the fact that the fastest chargers we have only deliver about 60kW. Not even close to the 200+ some EVs need to get the fast charging times they advertise. But that 60kW would be perfectly fine if I could spend the time in a restaurant instead of standing around at a gas bar in the middle of nowhere.
Hell, even cheap (or free) “level 2” chargers outside restaurants and shopping malls would be a huge help.
I live in Denmark, here the chargers are placed where people park anyway. Grocery stores, parking lots, rest stops…
It’s getting so easy to find a fast charger/resto combo, that we don’t even plan it from home.
I’ve seen few 200+ watts chargers without looking for them, but the car is ready faster than I am anyway.
As it should be, and I agree that those crazy fast 200+ kW chargers are rarely necessary.
It’s kind of a weird reaction to consumer hesitation and people complaining that they don’t want to wait for charge times as compared to the time it takes to fill a tank. Making charging as fast as possible to address the complaint (while still being one or two orders of magnitude slower at best), because that’s easier than getting people to change their driving habits, or making them realise that they’re always going to start the day with a full charge at home.
Even if all you have is relatively paltry north american 110V at home you need to drive way more than average per day for that not to keep up.
Road trips are a tiny fraction of all vehicle use, it’s fine to relegate them to specialty vehicles.
Quick Google says a great majority of Americans take road trips. Even though it’s a tiny fraction of their driving, it’s still a deciding factor for many when choosing a car. Not all people have the luxury of affording a second car just for road trips.
Public transportation would be good, but there’s less flexibility to it. For example, just yesterday, on a return from a roadtrip, I got stomach sick and had to request frequent stops. That wouldn’t fly on a train.
I’d love it if we had affordable and flexible public transport for getting all across the country, though.
I take road trips in my EV. It’s fine. You get to pee and walk the dog. The extra time isn’t much and it’s actually way more relaxing
It’s weird how defensive people get over their cannonball road trips. It’s great to take a few minutes on a break while taking a long trip.
That sounds good.
Unless you’re taking road trips literally every other week you could just rent a gas vehicle when it’s time for a road trip. Rather than make the decision of the car you’re going to drive every single day based on something you only do maybe once a year.
It’s why I don’t own a pickup truck, I actually do haul cars, help people move and all that shit that people say is why they need a pickup truck but I just go to fucking U-Haul and rent either the Sprinter van or the pickup truck for 30 bucks plus mileage when I need one. And I do actually keep track of my financial records with a double Ledger Finance app I just went and looked and I’m still nowhere near the cost of a used pickup truck from all of that renting
Good idea. I hadn’t thought of that.
Take road trips how often? Once a year? Maybe twice?
Yeah, but road trips can be expensive. Suppose you want to go from Harrisburg PA to Rockford IL with 2 adults and 1 teenager from November 15 to 22.
- By car that’s about 1500 miles. An average car gets 21 mpg, so that’s about 71 gallons. Gas is around $3.5 per gallon, so the trip costs about $250 in gas. You’ll need a hotel. I picked a random one in Ohio. $110 for the way up, $185 for the way back. I guess that’s a Thanksgiving price hike. $545 total.
- By train, let’s say Amtrak because that came up first. $438 up, and that includes boarding a train at midnight and sleeping on the train, and then riding a bus from Chicago to Rockford for 2 hours. $483 back down, and this time when you sleep on the train you have to wake up by 5 AM to get off. Also this is coach class, and those seats aren’t great for sleeping. At least you don’t need a hotel. $921 total.
- By plane, it’s $650 round trip, simple as, but you have to leave at 6 AM on the way up and 5 AM on the way back. It can cost $200 more to get a more convenient time, but let’s assume you’re going for economy alone. $650 total.
That’s not accounting for food prices along the way. That could bring the car ride up to the same price as the plane if you don’t pack food, but if you’re spending extra on convenience there, you’re probably willing to spend extra for convenience on the plane too.
So it’s probably safe to say that, for this group, the car saves about $100 per year, but helping to protect the environment is worth that price. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the flexibility and ease of planning on a car. For a bigger family, cars would be a way better option, and for a family without kids or a lone traveler, planes are the way better option. Trains are right out.
I’m so glad here in Germany they do that more often now. We have a quite a few large charging parks next to restaurants and bakeries. I just made a 9 hour trip to Denmark and it was a pretty nice experience overall. Only downside is you have to plan ahead if you want this convenience because the majority is still spots with 1-2 occupied chargers at some ugly, smelly Autobahn rest area.
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Although own an electric car, I believe range is still an issue. I was specifically addressing fuel density and charging time. EVs have their issues, but I believe they will be solved over time even though they are unlikely to beat an ICE in fuel density or charge rate for a long time. But I don’t think those things are actually important, because the problem is solved in a different way.
Yes, for people who can’t charge at home. I’d love to swap to electric, but 1 hour trip to go charge the car at the nearest charging station is not realistic - especially since I’d need to do it twice as often as 10min trip to refuel.
Also there’s the EV prices, starting at 2-3 times more than my current whip lol
This is exacerbated by that battery technology is at its limit, and the battery companies are unwilling to drop the battery price.
My point is that we should be focused on the outcomes we want. It isn’t really important that fossil fuels are a lot more energy dense if the electric cars can travel twice as far. They can’t, but I’d be willing to bet we will get to that point with fossil fuels still being more energy dense.
But also as I mentioned in the comment you relied to, Nio have a vast network of battery swap stations where you can get a full charge in a couple of minutes, the same as filling up at a gas station.
The price of EVs are a problem, and not the only problem, but my point was that the specific things mentioned don’t stop us having better EVs than ICEs, because we will get the same outcome in a different way.
I absolutely agree that we should work on improving EVs, charging network and whatever technologies makes it better and more suitable for more people. But every person in need of a car has unique hard requirements for the car that can’t be ignored as “inconvenience” - and many of those people have to drive with fossil fuels still.
Also, battery swap stations being available in X location doesn’t matter to people living in Y location, nor should people in Y location buy EV in hopes that it will be better in Z years
I agree completely. I am not trying to argue that everyone can or should go out and buy an EV.
I was specifically addressing the points that seemed to be claiming EVs are not the right direction for cars or engines to be advancing towarda, by pointing out that the barriers aren’t blocking all paths.
I honestly believe the person starting the thread was on the same wavelength, just pointing out the reason so many still choose ice
Are those two things actually important?
For some people? Absolutely.
Yes, somewhat.
Not as much, to most people, as most people think though.
Are those two things actually important?
yes, they are. they make difference between actually usable technology and engineer’s dream.
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
i doubt we even have enough rare metals for 8 or 16 billion batteries. most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.
efficiency matters, it is not a question of how good single battery is.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.
oh good. YOU have it solved, so the rest of the world does not matter, i assume…? fuck all these people, right?
Hey mate I’m just here for some friendly discussion, I’m not here to argue until I’m blue in the face.
There is a difference between your above points and the original claim.
Fuel density doesn’t matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.
Charge time doesn’t matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.
For your new point of rare earth materials, this isn’t related to the original energy density or charge time points, but high density batteries that don’t use rare earth metals already exist, the problem is cost. That will change over time.
Also you’re ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground.
Fuel density doesn’t matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.
Charge time doesn’t matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.
- they matter for the reason i explained. you are acting like we can simply build as much batteries as we want, which is not true
- and change them as conveniently as filling up the gas tank, which is also not true.
- and the whole “just swap the battery” concept leads to need of more batteries -> go to (1)
Also you’re ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground
i am not, i am not defending fossil fuel, i am just pointing out that the ev concept has problems that are not widely talked about.
just because some other strategy has problems doesn’t mean your strategy is problem free.
most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.
Has that ever stopped everyone, though?
I wonder if looking at the system as a whole for both systems would reveal a different difference. (infra needed to transport and fill those gas station tanks vs infra needed for level 3 charging stations)
On the one hand the Nokia 3310’s battery lasts a week. On the other hand the iPhone 15…
Just plug your car in when you’re not using it like you’d charge your phone overnight. It’s only a problem if you can’t charge at home (due to on street parking and no charging facilities on that street) and you can’t charge somewhere you usually take your car (eg a workplace).
If you don’t drive for work–and I mean get paid to drive hundreds of miles every day, not just a long commute–or take a road trip every month, and have a place to charge at night (most people do, at least in North America), then an EV is just better.
Otherwise, a plug-in hybrid or a “gasoline boosted EV” like a Volt is sufficient. ICE cars for regular people shouldn’t have even existed once the Volt proof of concept was proven!
PHEVs for the win.
But remember, electric motors also require next to no maintenance and can last for many years of runtime. Pros and cons.
And no gearing, so no complex moving part assemblies…
Unfortunately, brushless motors are also trivial to waterproof.
Uh, maintenance is one thing where ICE wins (until very recently, thanks fucktards in car industry). Cars have been generally very easy to work on, with anyone with a toolbox being able to do most their repairs in a shed
That’s a user-hostile feature, not a property of electric engines. An electric car has far simpler mechanical parts, and the circuitry isn’t very complicated either. It could be made incredibly easy to repair, modify, and upgrade, mostly at home even, if they designed them that way
This isn’t a function of the engine though right? Electric engines are inherently simpler and should therefore be easier to maintain (putting aside company fuckery)
High voltage is scary as fuck, but also the fact that absolutely everything from doors to gas pedal and chairs are controlled by a computer you need specialized proprietary equipment to investigate.
This is an issue with new ice cars too to be honest
EVs have a High voltage disconnect. I repaired my EV(inverter) with normal hand tools in my garage. I did have to buy a license and tool for flashing the firmware, but this is a problem in nearly every new vehicle, gas or electric.
That’s true. But since now it’s all messed up shit that you can’t fix yourself they’re on fairly equal line there.
Real answer: power density. Pound for pound, gas still contains more energy than our best batteries. The weight of energy storage is still a massive deal for anything that cannot be tethered to a grid or be in close practical proximity for frequent recharging, from rockets, planes and cars (sometimes) to chainsaws and lawnmowers (sometimes).
The price. The price is the problem for all us poors.
Only thing stopping me having one is cost.
Gas engines have decent range. Gas engines are cheaper (as the electric engine prices are artificially inflated, just look at Chinese prices), with gas engines you can listen to the sound of the engine to diagnose problems before they occur, batteries don’t degrade (you still have car batteries, but when they degrade, you can still drive a car for as long as with the new battery. You can refuel it in a couple of seconds. Anyone can make one sided arguments. There isn’t a best thing for everything.
Gas engine makes good noises. Checkmate.
It’s incredible how certain people are conditioned to think the sound of a gas motor and shifting because your puny motor is out of optimal torque and rpm range are manly.
Vroom vroom is fun.
Shifting is fun.
Fun is good.
Never said anything about it being manly, but it can sound good.
I’m a car guy and far from manly. I drive a loud annoying stick shift because it’s fun and life is too short to be bored while driving.
Life is too short to have to fucking drive everywhere.
Yeh, but unless I uproot my life and move to a different country, I’m stuck doing it, so I can either bitch and moan about how much I hate it, or have the best time I can doing it 🤷🏾♂️
For sure, I used to drive stick when I drove, but I also argued for town planning that would make driving optional. Personal choices to deal with the reality you’re given, public policy activism for the reality you want.
There you go pointlessly gendering again!
Yeah, I guess all those professional female race car drivers are doing it to feel “manly”
“Good” = “manly” to you? Wow. Sexist.
The ioniq 5 N has that covered, evidently: https://youtu.be/DSIguemKIbQ?si=Do2diTJm8-_Hb9Ro
Or playing cards in the wheels
Lol i would definitely buy that. And i don’t own a car…but if i would
I don’t see how making noise is good. I live in a street that doesn’t get much traffic, but even one car is loud enough to be bothering.
I don’t want to pause my music and conversations just because someone decided that vroom vroom sounds were more important than me hearing literally anything else.
Even more that noise pollution is definitely a thing, and affect both mental health and physical one.
The majority of sound for cars are not the motor but the wheels compressing air, after I think 50kph, the sound of an ev or a ic is basically the same.
Well, in a neighborhood, cars won’t always be driving 50 km/h. And the engine will be especially loud, when they need to accelerate after a turn or whatever.
Either way, I do hear the difference when an electric car goes by.
Vehicles making noise actually is good, for pedestrians’ sake, but yeah ICE vehicles make far more than they need to. Some (? many? I’m not sure how standard it is) electric vehicles make a sort of beeping sound for that reason.
If you’re in an area where pedestrians may be crossing the road, traffic should be slow enough to use permeable brick pavers, which increase road noise, help with rainwater drainage, and add a little green to the road if find right.
Well that sounds cool; what about those of us who live in conservative hellscapes? I’m pretty sure ‘road maintenance’ is a sin here
I dunno, maybe take their conservative advice and violently overthrow your government?
Real talk, you’ll have a hell of a time arguing for the upgrades, but even so, I only suggest switching to bricks when the road needs to be resurfaced anyway. The road works well enough as-is, this is just an improvement.
Oh, the road needs resurfacing, most of them here do. Decades of conservative government will do that
When you’ve inevitably barricaded yourself in city hall, just remember: we never met, this conversation didn’t happen. Revan? Never heard of 'em.
Think of the most annoying sound you know. Whether it’s country music, rap, lawnmower before 8am on sat, etc that is your “good noises” sound like.
There is a huge difference between a finely tuned V8 with an appropriate muffler versus a gas lawnmower, but to each there own.
Great username btw
Mr. Monkey subjectively your finely tuned v8 sounds like a 400lb basement dwelling gorilla someone has fed laxatives and recorded from the bottom of a well used coachella porta potty.
I dunno, I’m “team electric is objectively better in every way” but I gotta agree, a fancy tuned racecar engine sounds like angry beast and that’s pretty sexy.
The jolt of max acceleration of an electric motor in complete silence is also extremely sexy, though.
Lol ok I get it you’re all Car-o-sexuals. It’s cool but can you guys just keep it to your bedrooms and rest stops?
I don’t care much about cars overall but I do like angry beasts…
In today’s edition of lemmy: poetry.
Think of the nicest sound you know. A well-tuned instrument performing a delicate melody, a passionate singer performing their heart out, a cacophony of songbirds. That’s what my good noises sound like when done right.
Obviously nobody wants to hear a fart can Honda Civic at 4am, but a fantastically engineered Italian V10 has its own melody that can’t really be replicated otherwise. These examples will be missed, and the survivors will be sought after like a vintage violin.
Between the fart can and the Lambo, which are you more likely to hear?
So total fucking silence? I swear to God it’s like the call to stroke each other off for you guys.
Huh?
You just gonna sit there and yuck the mainstream yum like your opinions are better than everyone else’s?
When accelerating my Leaf makes a “woooooooooooOOOOOOOOP” noise I’ve seen described as the “UFO sound”
Tbh I like it a lot more than the vroom of even my motorcycle cuz it’s funny
I do love the whine of the drive units when going full throttle on EVs, it reminds me how much current is surging through those wires
Yeah, but does it make Oscar Winner Hans Zimmer kind of noises? https://www.bmw.com/en/magazine/innovation/hans-zimmer-individual-drive-sounds-as-identity-for-electric-vehicles.html
He is not wrong, but he is not adressing the actual criticism of electric vehicles, so it is kind of pointless.
This comic is clearly about lawn mowers people. Who discusses cars when wearing a hat like that?
It’s about the battery, nerd. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
Yeah but petrol cars go brum brum
Gasoline motors can be recharged in a couple of minutes.
Electric cars is not the solution. Sure, it’s an improvement, but for a real solution you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation. Trains, trams, busses, whatever. Build it in a way that doesn’t suck. Assuming american, the US had (past tense) amazing train/tram networks decades ago. Every warehouse had a rail spur, and since walking was considered ok people weren’t obese fatasses.
I drive a scooter. It is possible to live without a car, although it does have some difficulties sometimes. If your job is within 10 miles of your home or less, then you don’t need a car for your commute. If I can do it so can you. I’d still rather take a bus, if it existed.
Just came back from Tokyo. Tokyo’s public transportation is awesome. You do also need to walk a lot at times and the first few days our legs were quite sore. But towards the end of the trip I can feel my leg strength again, felt healthier, and did not miss my car at all. To go to certain places, you do have to plan a little bit ahead, for example, a day trip out to Mt. Fuji area requires booking tickets because right now there’s a ton of tourists. But within the city, the subways are so convenient.
I want an EV. I think its 98% the right choice for me. I also 100% with you. Cars are a terrible solution at a certain density, which is what most industry and thus where people live makes sense.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view. Sure it’s better to have good public transportation, but in a lot of places there won’t be for the foreseeable future. Sure it’s better to use bicycles, but sometimes it’s just not an option.
Electric cars won’t fix traffic, but for the planet they’re still a vast improvement. It’s like a viable 95% solution that is dismissed because there might a 100% one somewhere in the next 200 years.
The issue with this stance is that it’s one of those all-or-nothing points of view.
Not it isn’t. Every single individual person who decides to live without a car is an improvement. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
I think they were trying to say that every individual who uses their car less is an improvement.
I live outside Boston, which has among the best transit in the US but it doesn’t take me everywhere. My town is quite walkable but also hilly and with weather. I do choose to walk, or ride the train when I can, but I still need a car. Improving this enough for most prople to dispense with cars will be a very long time. In the meantime, my use of EV, walk, train is a huge improvement of my brother in the Midwest using ICE car for everything
My job is within 10mi of my home. If I walk there, I get there in 2 hours. If I take public transportation, it takes me 1h45m to 2h20m depending on the day.
I also live in a community where our electricity is from 90% renewable resources, 10% nuclear. Switching to an electric car is a 100% reduction in carbon usage for my commute. Using the bus isn’t.
Why not get an electric bike then? Reasonable price tag, will get you to work within a reasonable timeframe, significantly less congestion on roads, and charges with that renewable energy without using a lot of it.
Also, their point was that adding infrastructure for public transport (aka improving the public transport you’re complaining about) will have a huge effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions across a population and is more easily electrified. Your focus on an individual case is irrelevant to their argument.
Switching to an electric car is a 100% reduction in carbon usage for my commute.
Is it really? Are you positive?
How is your electricity generated. Coal, natural gas, or oil? Congratulations, your carbon usage is HIGHER with an EV than with an ICE! Is it hydro? Go look at the methane produced by those huge reservoirs. I haven’t seen the calculations, but it’s not neutral.
Oh, I know. You use solar and/or wind. Now look up the environmental costs of producing those. And of mining the special metals needed for the batteries. Or if you’re nuked, the costs of mining uranium.
Switching to an EV is not the simple “zero carbon” solution you seem to imagine it to be.
Because building non renewable power doesn’t have a carbon cost right? And buying a petrol powered car doesn’t have a carbon cost, right?
I’m talking about my commute. The carbon cost of driving to work from my home.
Don’t strawman if you want your argument to be taken seriously - because what I read above translates to
I drive a scooter.
Friend and coworker of mine was recently in a deadly accident on her way to work on a scooter. Those vehicles are great but on a road that is still primarily built for cars (and is now inhabited by ever more massive giant pickups) it can be a serious safety risk.
you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation
This is really the heart of it. It’s an infrastructure problem. Frustratingly, this is the most difficult and time consuming problem to solve.
I’ve lived in a city with really good transit, and even then, I’d prefer a car if it were affordable here.
TINY ELECTRIC GO CARTS
Idk why ppl are down voting this, bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Ig it’s all the insecure pickup truck bros
Edit: typos
I think people (not me, I agree with glitchdx, overall) are probably down voting because it’s a classic example of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, with a healthy dose of smug mixed in. Smugness is a great dialectical tactic if you hope to entrench people deeper into their views, rather than convince them to consider alternatives through reasoned discussion.
Do I agree that ideally we’d have robust public transit and increased usage of smaller, greener personal transport solutions? Of course I do.
But, incrementalism is progress. Valuable progress. We could argue whether it’s more likely to get us to the aforementioned vision of robust public transit or not, but history has proven time and time again that progress takes time and is resisted tooth and nail by monied interests. I don’t like it either. I want to wave a wand and have everything change. OP is right. Electric cars are not the solution. But treating symptoms while you work on curing the disease is best practice.
bro is literally just advocating for public transportation
Seems to me that bro is arguing against EVs when that may be the best choice in an individuals control. Even if we’re all for public transportation, that takes years and millions to improve, so EVs may be the best choice available for the time being
Not everyone lives where public transportation is really feasible. He’ll EVs aren’t even practical where I live.
So we shouldn’t bother with it anywhere then?
You’re missing the forest for the trees
I never said that, thanks for speaking for me I really appreciate it though. I am simply saying moving away from ICE just isn’t feasible everywhere right now.
From personal experience, you also need a garage to keep an electric car in if you’re in an extreme cold climate, those batteries can fail if in the deep cold for long enough and those car companies do NOT have the replacement parts in stock to fix it quickly.
This is why modern EVs need heating and cooling systems for their batteries. Did you have a Nissan Leaf by any chance?
Nah, Chevy Volt
First Gen?
Final gen
I live in an area with the exact opposite issue (my battery MELTED) so I’m probably wrong, but isn’t that what the battery blankets they try to sell you on when you buy an EV is for?
I live in Canada and own a Bolt. Its a pretty unremarkable EV from a tech standpoint. It keeps the batteries at the right temp by heating and cooling them. It really doesnt require any extra effort or special equipment.
I think in certain areas for your EV you want a gas powered heater for the battery and cabin. That’s how I think EV transit buses should do it too.
