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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.
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.
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
Freight trains are diesel electric.
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.
The price. The price is the problem for all us poors.
Yeah they’re great. Just gotta pull out a diesel generator to charge them when it’s minus 40
Probably easier than thawing the gasoline in the ice engine, which freezes at -40. And your diesel generator won’t run either unless you kept it plugged in to keep the fuel from turning to gel (that process starts at -10).
As a person who got trapped because our family’s diesel car got gelled in cold weather, I’m not sure your generator is going to help.
Don’t forget to plug in your block warmer so you can start up your diesel generator in the cold.
The reason I’m pretty much undecided about EVs is the rare metals in the batteries. The pollution by gathering and the inhumane treatment of the workers who extract these resources. I’m still hoping for better alternatives in the energy storage medium
They’re still working on this. I’ve more or less been holding my breath on the battery tech.
I want to see, either easily recycled materials that are common (sodium cells seem to fit here), or batteries that last the useful life of the vehicle and beyond (solid state batteries are a good example here). I don’t really care which.
Cheap sodium based batteries, with adequate recycling technology would be a fine solution. Alternatively, even fairly “expensive” (in terms of rare metals) solid state batteries, would also be fine, since a single set of batteries may survive over several vehicles, depending on what solid state batteries can do when they finally hit the mass market.
I just don’t want to have to replace the battery at nearly the cost of a whole ass new EV, well short of the useful life of the rest of the vehicle. Either the battery cost and environmental impact comes down, or we remove the need to replace the batteries with a version that lasts as long or longer than the rest of the vehicle.
I like EVs. I want an EV. I don’t want to buy the current EVs on the market.
Also, if any vehicle designers are reading this, can we cut the shit where anything hybrid or EV looks ridiculous? IMO, a big reason why Tesla was so successful, is that they made it into a car. The model S, though unique in design, isn’t a significant departure from pretty much every other sedan, in terms of design. Compare with something like the Prius, which is generally only a funny looking hatchback, or the Volt… Which also looks pretty dumb IMO. Just give me a regular car.
… Okay, the Prius and Volt probably aren’t the best examples. I’ll put a better one here… The BMW i3. Just… What the hell.
Let’s not forget that EVs are heavier than their ICE equivalent classes of vehicle, meaning they use more energy. Which is a problem because a) they store ever so much less energy, and b) they’re ever so much less energy-efficient. So you need more energy to move them, and charging inefficiency mounts on top of that, but hey, at least you have shorter range!
EVs are not what is going to save the environment. Indeed depending on your source of electricity (most of the world still uses fossil fuels to generate electricity, recall!) you could well be making things worse by switching to an EV.
You know what will save the environment? Ending personal automobile ownership and instead beefing up public transportation.
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).
Thing is that pound of gas is gone, that pound of battery is still there and ready for recharge.
A dead battery is far worse than an empty jerry can, atleast the jerry can is light. Hell there are even some real nice collapsible ones and thats not even accounting for fuel bladders. Electric is useful but it is also rather rigid as well.
I’ll keep my ICE and ride a bike. I’ll still do less environmental damage than you because I am human powered for all but the trips to the mountains, and then I don’t have to worry about being stranded without a plug.
And I have yet to hear a convincing argument that taking my perfectly working vehicle off the road to buy another manufactured product is still more environmentally friendly than… not buying anything at all.
I don’t give a fuck about initial torque. I’m going to be laughing in my wheetabix when there’s not a single EV older than a decade on their original batteries.
Downvotes don’t make me wrong, chuds.
I’m going to be laughing in my wheetabix when there’s not a single EV older than a decade on their original batteries.
You lost this one the instant you posted the comment.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last-study-says-longer-than-you-think
This excludes major battery recalls, such as the Chevy Bolt and Hyundai Kona.
Boy… if all those 2010 Leafs are still on the road, why can’t I find any used for sale??
It’s almost like they didn’t do any investigative work and just regurgitated a Nissan spokesperson. It’s fucking Forbes after all.
So two strikes to you. Wanna try again?
Gasoline motors can be recharged in a couple of minutes.
My EV sits in the driveway and soaks up excess production from my PV setup.
My main problem is it’s never really empty enough.If I’m on the road, a high voltage DC charger gets me from 10% to 50% in about 10 minutes. Barely enough time for a coffee and a leak, then it’s another 2 hours of driving. Rinse, repeat.
Sure, you can’t barrel down the Autobahn for 10 hours straight without stopping but who wants that?
I make a 9-10 hour drive to see my family multiple times a year. I normally stop twice to get gas and use the bathroom, and that’s it. Sounds like you’d be adding most of an hour to my travel time each way. I’ve tried stopping longer and grabbing food, it’s not worth it for me.
With that said, I drive 25-40 miles a day the other 360+ days of the year, so it’d really make much more sense for me to have a short range EV and rent something for travel when I have too much luggage to fly.
Maybe don’t do that? Catch a train it’s significantly cheaper anyway.
No passenger rail. It’s car or a once a week bus that doesn’t even stop in the town my family lives in.
That’s an infrastructure problem you can help solve and regardless going on long trips for most people is 100% optional.
That would become a 15+ hour trip then…
Edit: On further investigation, it’s also not significantly cheaper than flying, and is much more expensive than fuel for driving.
You should just live near the place you’re driving to.
I’m glad you think I can afford to triple my rent, but that’s not happening.
Edit: If you mean the road trip scenario, my family works in various different industries, and the opportunities are better in different cities. That’s also not happening.
Why on earth do you get down votes? This is the truth. Downvoters just straw man argue pointing out that ‘just charge your car at home’, which isn’t the matter of discussion. There isn’t even a discussion to be had - it is faster to refuel a car than recharge. Might this matter to you? Maybe, maybe not.
If the car is recharged at home, you may never need to stop to add gas. Electric is the future bro, get over your hangups.
Charging the car at home is for middle class people and above, generally speaking. Not everyone gets to park their car next to an outlet.
You can plug into the standard 120V outlet at home. You don’t require the high amp charging and the installment costs associated
I plug my car in in seconds
And then wait an hour to get acceptable charge levels for range. Filling up at a gas station is much faster.
This is not to say electric vehicles aren’t a good idea, the charge rate and convenience while traveling are issues we need to improve on.
I hear this complaint a lot about charging times, but for 99.99% of people they are never in a single day going to drive beyond their cars range, meaning even a standard level 1 slow charger over night at home can manage their entire car usage.
It’s only people doing long distance road trips that have to worry, and that’s by far a minimum. Instead of boosting gas cars for that we could be looking at investing in rail so people don’t have to make the longer trips in a car anyway.
And for about 50% of Americans, they don’t have a place to plug in an electric car at night. It’s only people above a certain level of wealth who have the luxury of their own parking space with a charger.
For the rest of us, we must take time out of our day to sit in a grocery store parking lot while the car charges.
EVs generally have adapters that allow you to plug into a standard home outlet, it’s just significantly slower to charge to full due to the lower amperages. And even if you only have 1 plug in your garage, it’s not hard or expensive to add more.
The only real hurdle for that is if you rent a house and aren’t allowed to make those easy changes
Not only that, people going on those long trips are going to be looking for something to eat in a similar time frame that their EV takes to fully discharge. It takes EVs about 15-20 minutes to get from 0-80% charge. That’s less time than it takes to sit down and eat at a restaurant
I rarely go inside restaurants to eat on a long trip. I grab a burger and wolf it down and go again. I eat the fries while I’m driving and they’re gone in an instant, and i’m still going.
Sounds like a you problem then
If you’re driving more than 300miles a day you’re just admitting your a much larger slice of the shitty pie.
Fuck you, I drive so other people don’t have to.
By being eager to gauge people’s location in “the shitty pie”, you’re just admitting your (sic) a much large slice of the shitty pie
That just isn’t true, you just said you could ride a train. You choose not to, that’s a big difference.
But saying rail is significantly slower you narrow your nationality to maybe 5 major nations one happens to be significantly more represented on Lemmy. The “need” to drive safe over reaction to the guess means I’m almost certainly correct. Am I not?
They said they’re an Uber driver…
An optional “profession” that steals money from qualified taxis and is also super abusive towards its employees. That’s not an excuse, that’s an explanation an kinda of a bad one at that.
An optional “profession” that steals money from qualified taxis
It’s not stealing if it doesn’t take it out of their wallet. Maybe the issue is instead the expensive restrictions on becoming a taxi driver? Or the virtual monopoly many taxi companies have. Or just that almost always a taxi is a worse experience.
That’s literally what it does. Taxis didn’t have monopoly, they have a licensed job specifically because unlicensed taxis were dangerous and people at the time were getting shanghaied.
Only thing stopping me having one is cost.
A 2 year old Polestar 2 with 12,000 miles just cost my buddy slightly less than $25k. You can’t even get an Accord with that age and mileage that cheap these days! Hertz dumped a bunch of them on the market recently, they were too much fun to be a profitable rental so they’re absurdly cheap right now
Sounds good until you have to replace the battery. I want one of the rivian rts but they are still too pricy even used.
you drive your cars for 300000 miles?
My 2010 wagon has 180k and I can still take it to the mountains and not worry about finding a broken charge port on the way home.
How the hell would you break a charge port? If you managed that then no vehicle is safe.
Oh, the charging station. Charging port I think would mean the port it plugs into on your car. Yeah, I guess that could be an issue, but it’s not really something that needs to be considered by a consumer. The fact that you’re much less likely to have mechanical issues I think more than makes up for the rare case of vandalism, which can happen to any piece of the infrastructure, for gas and electric.
If you read comments on Instagram and the like, people hate electric cars because…
…they don’t do the vroom-vroom noise.
That’s a very real issue that car enthusiasts have a hard time with. There’s just something about a great sounding engine that is the cherry on top of a car you like. My weak spot is a 4 rotor screaming like a banshee from Mazda’s Le Mans car.
Car enthusiasts are weird.
The whole notion of loud = fast falls apart with electric engines.
Not many people buy cars just because they sound good. It’s usually the engine that makes it sound good.(+exhaust, etc). Which means tha there’s still the need for speed.
But if you want speed, you need to go electric.
The whole macho V8 rumble and manually shifting gears is now less effective than a one-pedal, one-gear, quiet electeic setup.
This must such a huge disconnect in their heads, that they go about posting “electric = gay” on car videos.
Just like listening to loud music with windows down, the loud fart cans are just for seeking attention.
A loud engine is now an equivalent of a dog that barks, but doesn’t bite.
I agree that there are many cars that sound incredible (four rotor Mazdas, Porche Carerra GTs, Black or Brabus Mercs, you name it), but disliking electric cars because they make a silly quiet noise just makes one a poser, IMO.
Electric cars are fun, and I don’t personally mind they’re basically silent. But nothing will replace the fun of a manual transmission ICE.
I don’t think most people get a loud exhaust for attention either, but because they like it. But windows down blasting music is pointless and toxic, IMO.
Also saying if you want speed to go electric is too generic, IMO. What kind of speed and when you’re going to use it is important. For example, if you want speed from a standstill, then sure electric. Want speed once you’re already moving, like a race track, then ICE is fine since you’ll be high RPMs.
so my sisters Mazda MX-30 has more HP than my uncles Peterbilt 389? cool, I’ll use it to haul my horse trailer. define “more powerful”. Makes the point but XKCD usually does better.
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.
Range anxiety is largely a perception thing. The vast majority of car journeys are well within the range of an EV, you just need to get in the habit of plugging in like you would your phone. For journey’s long enough for it to be more than a single charge you really should be stopping for more than a few seconds anyway as you need recharging.
Okay, but it is still jumping through hoops which doesn’t exist with gas cars. What if I have 3 people driving, like in a road trip? You can’t continuously drive after refueling anymore. It isn’t just a perception thing, it absolutely requires planning and stops you wouldn’t take otherwise.
You jump through all sorts of hoops with gas cars. We’ve all made it part of the habits of our lives and don’t think about them, but they’re absolutely there.
I’d honestly love to just plug in every night instead of having to spend time getting gas every week. Sure it’s only a few minutes, but that’s probably a few hours of my life every year. Getting an electric vehicle and renting cars for road trips would honestly make much more sense for me.
Unfortunately, it looks like it’d be financially irresponsible for me to buy an electric car right now while I still have a perfectly functional ICE car.
In which world electric motors are more expensive than combustion engines?
The EV motors are cheaper but we need to include the battery. An empty gas tank does not cost much. An uncharged car battery is pretty expensive.
You’re moving goalposts. Electric motors are cheaper. The end.
The motor yes. But an electric car does not move with a motor only.
By just calculating the motor we are making up cost comparisons that do not reflect the actual cost of the car.
Are you having trouble understanding the English language? The OP clearly stated the following:
Gas engines are cheaper
Which is patently false.
Your argument is with electric cars vs ice cars. xkcd likely specifically was talking about engines just so all the range arguments don’t work. It’s just engine vs engine and there electric is far superior.
That’s like saying a sword is a better weapon than a gun because the sword can bei used for cutting, hitting und thrusting and also as a tool while the gun can only hit and shoot while needing additional components to function that quickly run out while being more complex to build. You cant just ignore the context to make your argument. He’s clearly talking about cars here.
He is not wrong, but he is not adressing the actual criticism of electric vehicles, so it is kind of pointless.
And what exactly is the criticism of electric vehicles according to you?
They still are…cars. We don’t need no more cars on our streets. Yeah, they could help to replace some old combustion cars but they still are worse than public transport and bicycles.
I’m all for efficient public transports in downtown, I use them daily myself, but people on suburbs won’t really see a benefit to this.
On the other hand, just switching to electric is a nice start, otherwise we won’t be able to live much longer.
Especially people in suburbs would benefit from public transport and suburbs built for walk ability and cycling.
That’s the problem, only switching the transportation method isn’t enough, there’s a whole infrastructure behind that needs to be built.
In most city centers you can kinda refurbish pre-existing systems, but in suburbs you need to build from scratch, and the distances are way bigger which imposes another challenge.
Don’t get me wrong, im all for it, but we need to acknowledge these problems first.
Suburbs are intentionally designed to not be walkable.
To get to the neighbor behind my house, without cutting anybody’s yard, I have to walk about a mile. We aren’t far. His daughters play with my sons through our shared fence.
And that’s a modest example. Plenty of cul de sacs that are “close” to the main street, as a crow flies but a lot further if you’re an East Asian Chinchilla Monkey running as fast as you can.
Love it or hate it, they aren’t intentionally designed not to be walkable, they’re intentionally designed to discourage traffic from driving through them.
The reason communities like yours and the one behind your house aren’t connected is to reduce the amount of cars driving down your block. To make it safer for your kids to play outside.
Yeah, unfortunately the Levitt-town style of suburbs (which are all that’s allowed to be built nowadays) are largely incompatible with public transport. We need to fix zoning laws to allow pre-war style suburbs to be built again to make public transport feasible. And all of this will take awhile to fix
Cool but they sound like shit. No aesthetics in evs. You don’t feel connected to the car. Don’t feel the engagement. But hey, cars are all about stats, right, right??
Edit: ok so I get downvoted for having a differing opinion from the majority of Lemmy users here. I’m wrong in saying that EV engines sound like shit?PLEASE one downvoter, explain to me how such a statement deserves a downvote?
Majority of you probably just use your car as a means of transportation. I don’t. I also drive to have fun. That’s also why I never drive automatic as it is (to me) more engaging and challenging with a manual gear box. Let me give you another example: weight. EVs are heavy, always. I don’t like heavily cars because I don’t find them enjoyable to drive on small roads.
Please understand that there is more to the world of cars than numbers.
Because “better overall” is a silly concept to use here, and is bring deliberately done to “both sides” the debate.
For driving really fast: petrol
For not killing our planets ability to sustain himan life: electric
Its not that hard
Driving really fast is electric, still. Driving fast and quite far is not.
Except that EVs don’t do shit to save the planet. Personal vehicles are the problem. Making a slightly different version of them is worthless.
Eradicating personal vehicles is not feasible.
Not owning a personal vehicle is only okay if you live in the heart of a city and don’t go outside of that little bubble. All other scenarios massively benefit from a personal vehicle; even going from one side of a city to another.
Not owning a personal vehicle is only okay if you live in the heart of a city …
Like most people in the western world (and indeed likely in most of the world) do.
… and don’t go outside of that little bubble.
Because rental of smaller vehicle services (like taxis, etc.) is totally not a thing.
The problem here is that you have the American disease (even if you’re not American). You’re so infused with the cultural insistence that there’s only one way to do things … the way things are done now … that you literally cannot conceive of a life without cars (or guns, or with public health care). Despite this being, you know, the norm for most of the world.
