For people living in apartments, with the building providing no way to charge your vehicle, especially when parked outside, the value proposition is a lot less tempting.
Takes 5 minutes to get gas, gas stations are everywhere, but having to find a charging station for your EV and having to sit there for an hour or longer is just not appealing if the tradeoff is the good feelings of one's microscopic contribution to saving the planet. You want me to pay more for extra inconvenience.
I'm sure that will change eventually, but at this point it works best for home owners with garages, which isn't everybody.
An EV fire is at least 10x worse than a gas vehicle fire. Hybrid fires due to batteries are also misclassified as petrol fires. If you catch a gas fire in time it can be put out with a bit of water or a fire extinguisher. It is also exceedingly rare. An EV fire is not extinguishable, burns several times hotter than any petrol fire, may reignite for weeks or months, and emits shocking volumes of toxic gasses that can injure anyone around. Although the fires can't be extinguished, firefighters still spray hundreds of thousands of liters of water onto battery fires, and that water is polluted and not captured. The whole thing is a nightmare.
The possibility of EVs catching fire all together inside an underground parking garage in a high rise should scare the hell out of anyone sane. Sprinkers will do nothing for that, and all that heat could permanently damage the building. The gasses could suffocate anyone unlucky enough to get stuck down below.
> Observations during the fire indicate that electric vehicles did not contribute to the fire development beyond what is expected from conventional vehicles.
That's very funny. If you have ever seen these EV fires you'll know that they are no joke. Have a look at this: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13005001/london-bus... Have you EVER heard of even one petrol-powered bus catching fire, much less multiple in a few weeks in one city?
Insurance companies are drastically raising rates on EVs as more information comes in: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/sep/30/the-quotes-wer... There are many reasons for this, among them the fire hazard. The EVs cost more to fix, of course, but EV batteries can reignite weeks or months after being damaged or catching on fire. So they must also be stored very far apart while being repaired.
This firefighting expert says why these fires are much worse than ICE fires in a thorough presentation at a conference. The audio sucks but the info is gold: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AIXTP-TgPEw
I can't say if this battery replacement costs more than the car because of fire hazards. But I think it was deemed in need of replacement because of possible fire hazards. You be the judge: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/yikes-the-60000-hyundai-i...
If you do a little actual research about lithium battery fires, all of what I'm saying will be very obvious. Idk where your slides came from but they sound very wrong.
I have done research. You have basically hit all the EV bingo misinformation points in one post, and you’ve swallowed it all up apparently. You’re not even distinguishing between the different chemistries.
There are 100k vehicle fires every year in the UK yet the small amount of EV fires make headlines. The petrol and diesel fires are so common you don’t even hear about them.
The fact that you quote the daily mail is the cherry on top - remember when the diesel car burned down Luton airport? The daily mail commenters were calling for the banning of EVs over this.
One ferry company with two ferries banned EVs as an overreaction.
Insurance costs went up for lots of cars, but for EVs it was the high repair costs.
If you do even a little research you will see that EV fires are at least 20x less likely than ICE car fires. The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Even with the larger proportion of NMC batteries out there the fires are 20x less likely. LFP batteries are even less likely to go into thermal runaway and they are becoming more prevalent.
Sorry but you're just wrong. We'll see how "safe" these batteries are when they're 10 to 20 years old and still on the road, banged up, subjected to extreme conditions for years, etc.
What exactly is misinformation about insurance rates going parabolic? Or the fact that these fires are self-oxidizing and much hotter than others? Or that ferries in progressive countries don't want to carry them? Or the videos and testimony of an expert at a fire safety conference showing that poison gasses rapidly escape from batteries as they enter the well-known process of thermal runaway? Or a replacement battery for the Hyundai Ioniq costing $60k, more than the MSRP of a brand new one?
>The spreaders of misinformation will have you believe that ICE cars are easier to put out - maybe, but why didn’t the TWO fire extinguishers put out the diesel car before it burned down the car park at Luton? What about the car park at Liverpool?
Many people believe that the media is lying about Luton, and that it was a hybrid battery that caught fire. Regardless of that, isn't it a huge problem if any EV catching fire can cause inextinguishable, toxic fires to spread through a whole car park full of them? I don't know about Liverpool off the top of my head. There are so many terrible parking garage fires now. I never heard of it happening in my whole life until recently, and I'm sure it's because EVs make it dramatically more likely to happen and more damaging.
You ought to consider the incentives behind the media push to assure people that EVs are safe. A large number of politicians behind mandating these death traps would be very embarrassed if the truth was recognized. Instead of waiting for the technology to develop and mature naturally, if that is even possible, they want to force it on us against our will. So forgive me for not giving two shits what any fake stats say on the issue. It will take much more time to settle the question of safety than these jokers are suggesting.
> Li-Ion batteries in electric vehicles pose a significant fire risk, which was further emphasized after the Felicity Ace cargo ship sank almost a year ago.
The Felicity Ace sank and therefore no cause was found. How are they coming to these conclusions? And YOU talk about the media pushing a narrative?
> Statistics tell us that electric vehicles catch fire from time to time, although those fires are far less common than people imagine.
> Only 23 fires were reported in electric vehicles in 2022 making up just 0.004% of Sweden’s fleet of 611,000 EVs.
> In contrast, over the same period, some 3,400 fires we reported in 2022 from Sweden’s 4.4 million petrol and diesel cars representing 0.08% of the fossil car fleet.
> This means that in 2022 a petrol or diesel car in Sweden was around 20 times more likely to catch fire than an electric vehicle.
> Furthermore, fires in electric cars are declining. The MSB says the number of fires in electric cars has been around 20 a year over the last three years, although the number of electric cars over that tie has almost doubled. Presumably, this is due to EV makers improving fire suppressing designs in newer models.
Back to your article:
> It’s unclear what started the fire, but the hundreds of electric cars onboard made it impossible to extinguish.
That’s what they said about The Fremantle Highway when it was on fire, let’s see what happened when they towed it back to port:
> However, between 900 and 1000 cars including the EVs appeared to be in good condition, the chief of salvage company Royal Boskalis Westminster NV, Peter Berdowski, told media last week.
Huh, that’s weird. Looks like the daily mail readers were wrong about that too (surprise!).
The Driven |https://thedriven.io › 2023/08/14Sorry EV haters, big ship fire probably wasn't caused by electric cars
1,000 cars burnt out in a car park fire in 2018. How many EVs do you think were in there 6 years ago? One? Two? It was 99% ICE vehicles along with the one that caused it. I’m sure no toxic fumes were produced as a result of the ICE cars burning lol.
> Many people believe that the media is lying about Luton
Many daily mail readers were saying it was an EV before the fire service even said anything. Here’s what they said:
> The fire service can confirm the initial vehicle involved in the fire was a diesel car.
The video gives an excellent view of those TWO fire extinguishers that failed to put out the fire too. Those ICE vehicles sure are easy to put out!
Facebook and YouTube algorithms are feeding people scary videos and the daily mail and its ilk will happily feed the narrative too. The stats and facts simply don’t back the level of FUD they are amplifying. It’s like refusing to fly over driving over safety fears after looking at a few plane crashes.
> You ought to consider the incentives behind the media push to assure people that EVs are safe.
You ought to do the same, who is pushing the anti-EV narrative? They tried to spread misinformation about range, battery replacement costs (bingo on your post), fires and so much more yet people are realising EVs are viable and cheaper to run. I run my EV for 3p/mile and certain people don’t like that. They are ramping these articles up since sales are still going up ( despite the headlines saying it’s “slowing”). It’s a shame so many people believe it without questioning it.
>Sorry EV haters, big ship fire probably wasn't caused by electric cars
Even if it wasn't caused by EVs somehow, isn't it a huge problem that this cargo is so dangerous in the event of a fire? Ships are very expensive.
>Many daily mail readers were saying it [the Luton tinderbox] was an EV before the fire service even said anything.
Again, the car from Luton may have been a diesel hybrid. If the battery caused the fire or made it far worse, it counts as an EV fire. Here are some thorough discussions. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zk0MWDsueMY and https://youtube.com/watch?v=QZEku6lHfDM . But how dare anyone investigate independently based on video footage? Furthermore, will the same government that is mandating EV adoption be honest about this? Will the fire chief risk defamation and losing his job to say the right thing, knowing that the media will bury him?
>The video gives an excellent view of those TWO fire extinguishers that failed to put out the fire too. Those ICE vehicles sure are easy to put out!
Ok, there's something I have to clear up here. Car fires are not "easy" to put out because there is a lot of flammable stuff on board a car. But it can be put out relatively easily. On the other hand, an EV getting too wet can cause it to catch fire, and even being submerged will not put it out!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1zaV-JSwzzA
Even the mainstream media admits the truth on rare occasion, mixed with lies like "don't worry, it's SUPER rare!" https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/29/electric-vehicle-fires-are-r... These cars need to be resilient against normal wear and tear, accidents, and also not cause amazingly bad situations in the event of arson.
>They tried to spread misinformation about range, battery replacement costs (bingo on your post), fires and so much more yet people are realising EVs are viable and cheaper to run.
NONE of this is misinformation. The batteries are notoriously expensive and difficult to diagonose. If even Hyundai won't replace its own battery at any dealer for less than the cost of the same car new, that sucks. There are people with an axe to grind for EVs but this is simply a reaction to evil media misinformation.
>Facebook and YouTube algorithms are feeding people scary videos and the daily mail and its ilk will happily feed the narrative too. The stats and facts simply don’t back the level of FUD they are amplifying. It’s like refusing to fly over driving over safety fears after looking at a few plane crashes.
No, I have to go out of my way to find information about this stuff. Youtube and Facebook are beholden to their advertisers and the governments of the world. If this information was easy to get, EV sales would be even more pathetic than they are.
>They are ramping these articles up since sales are still going up ( despite the headlines saying it’s “slowing”).
>I run my EV for 3p/mile and certain people don’t like that.
I don't care if you manage to run it at 3p per mile. If that offsets the extra 10-20k£ and time wasted while charging, go for it. Just as long as I'm not subsidizing it, and your EV does not put me in danger, and nobody is forcing me to get one, and you pay for all the infrastructure that has to be fixed or upgraded due to increased EV usage. That includes: roads, parking garages made to carry double the weight of current ones, fire suppression systems, power plants, and power distribution systems.
I can’t speak to the other things but I looked into the “sales slowing” thing and what’s happening is that we still sell more EV every year than the year before, but the rate of growth has slowed. Despite the misleading title, the article you linked supports this too.
So all this means is that the growth is slowing. Meaning, we’re not on a pure exponential curve but we’re on an s-curve. This is absolutely normal and expected of all new technologies.
Did a famously over-optimistic car company use a pure exponential in their predictions and thus fail to meet predictions? Yes. Are manufacturers of overpriced EVs blaming this instead of their own poor choices? Yes. Are the media trying to make everything much more dramatic than it really is? Also yes.
Point is, EVs are following the absolutely normal trajectory of new tech. They are running low on early adopters and must adapt to the desires of the mainstream buyers - or of they don’t, chinese makers will.
>Point is, EVs are following the absolutely normal trajectory of new tech.
Except that whole mandate thing.
>They are running low on early adopters and must adapt to the desires of the mainstream buyers - or of they don’t, chinese makers will.
The Chinese hate their own EVs too! https://youtube.com/watch?v=DwhnArkZTu8 Unfortunately for them their government is basically forcing them to use those too.
> isn't it a huge problem that this cargo is so dangerous in the event of a fire
There are much more dangerous things shipped all the time? Do they need updated procedures? Maybe? But as we saw at Liverpool and the Fremantle any car fire is dangerous even when EVs are not involved.
> Again, the car from Luton may have been a diesel hybrid.
Again, Nope. Why do we need analysis? We have the fire brigade telling us it was diesel. We have the plate, and the DVLA says it was diesel. Or is this all part of a larger conspiracy?
> But how dare anyone investigate independently based on video footage?
JAQing off is a common tactic when distorting the truth, you should learn to identify it. Watch 2 mins of Tucker and it’s as clear as day.
> I don't care if you manage to run it at 3p per mile. If that offsets the extra 10-20k£ (bingo) and time wasted while charging (bingo), go for it.
I’m on a lease. No upfront cost. My time spent waiting to charge is 0 mins - I actually spend less time waiting than you wait filling up your ICE. It charges while I sleep. If you spend 5 minutes a week filling up that equates to 4 hours a year you are standing at a pump that I don’t have to.
> Just as long as I'm not subsidizing it
You wouldn’t like a world like that. We subsidise innovation all the time. And we would have to remove subsidies for fossil fuels too to be fair, which would be bad news all round since we still need it.
> your EV does not put me in danger, (bingo)
thoroughly debunked I think. No point in going over it again but it does appear on the bingo card.
> and nobody is forcing me to get one, and you pay for all the infrastructure that has to be fixed or upgraded due to increased EV usage. That includes: roads, parking garages made to carry double the weight of current ones(bingo),
Forced? Do what you like. Roads? Good news, they can use the same roads as normal cars!
> On average, an EV weighs 200-300kg more than a petrol car because of the weight of the battery and electric motors.
Let’s look at some car figures to compare: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-...
Tesla Model S - Curb weight 4,647 lbs Audi A8 - Curb weight 4,751 lbs BMW 7 series - Curb weight 4,244 - 4,848 lbs
Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs
Looks like you’ll be banning German ICE vehicles from car parks too?
> EV sales would be even more pathetic… EV sales ARE slowing
Slowing… by still rising as expected? The pace of growth is slowing. Just because you are accelerating less doesn’t mean you are slowing. The headlines would have you believe sales are going down.
> LONDON, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Global sales of fully electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) rose 31% in 2023, down from 60% growth in 2022, according to market research firm Rho Motion.
> "The pace of growth is slowing, but that's what's expected in growing markets like this," Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester told Reuters. "You can't double every year."
> Lester said global EV sales last year were largely in line with the 30% growth Rho Motion had forecast. For 2024, the firm forecasts global EV sales growth of between 25% and 30%.
> The highest peak electricity demand in the UK in recent years was 62GW in 2002. Since then, the nation’s peak demand has fallen by roughly 16% due to improvements in energy efficiency.
> Even if we all switched to EVs overnight, we estimate demand would only increase by around 10%. So we’d still be using less power as a nation than we did in 2002, and this is well within the range the grid can capably handle.
Not sure if I covered everything but it gets exhausting addressing every point knowing that you’ll just ignore them and pull out more of the bingo points.
I don’t think there is much point in continuing. There is a narrative that you want to believe and that’s that. YouTube has claimed another victim. It’s sad to see since it happened to a few of my friends with Covid misinformation and they are also eating up this EV stuff same as you. Same story playing out again, despite excess mortality proving them wrong about the covid stuff. The worst part is it’s not even the persons fault, they are just impressionable and the algorithms feed it.
Just to be clear, I did not back down from this argument even after we both said we will not continue. You said several things I disagree with and misrepresented my points again. I think you are arguing in bad faith in this whole thread, just to troll me. I would have replied to your final wall of text but there is no reply button under the message. I guess we hit the reply limit. Just as well since we both kinda wanted to stop anyway.
You just had your ass handed to you on a platter several times.
You've proven again and again that you have terrible sources of information, you believe unsubstantiated calculated lies, and you repeat them as truth, and refuse to stop believing and repeating them once you're presented with better more correct information. Why should anyone trust anything you have to say?
Wow you are delusional. You've refused to acknowledge any of my points, authoritative sources, reasonable conjectures, etc. All while assuming this holier than thou snobbish attitude. I am only stopping because this conversation is unproductive, like arguing with a religious zealot, and not because my arguments are wrong. You're an obstinate cuck, repeating marketing lies and political propaganda, with delusious of grandeur. I am ashamed to have wasted my time talking to you because I should have known you were disingenuous from the second reply. Happy trolling, asshole.
>More bingo points, I’ll call them out for people following at home.
You know, you being so pretentious is wearing thin on my patience. You don't know better than me about any of this. You merely believe what the media says, and don't accept that the corporate interests behind it have their own designs for you. And worst of all you think that makes you a genius. I am humble enough to admit I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt it.
>JAQing off is a common tactic when distorting the truth, you should learn to identify it. Watch 2 mins of Tucker and it’s as clear as day.
Tucker has his faults but it's clear he has 1000% more integrity than the average journalist in the MSM.
>I’m on a lease. No upfront cost. My time spent waiting to charge is 0 mins - I actually spend less time waiting than you wait filling up your ICE. It charges while I sleep. If you spend 5 minutes a week filling up that equates to 4 hours a year you are standing at a pump that I don’t have to.
I spend more time on the toilet than filling up my tank, and I read in both cases. I can also rapidly refill my tank over and over until I get where I'm going with no anxiety at all. But hey, if the EV works for you and you feel it's worth the price, have at it. Just don't tell me it's for everyone, because it's obviously too inconvenient for that.
On the subject of roads, EVs wear roads down quicker due to increased weight and torque specifications, and regenerative braking. They are not currently being taxed at all to pay for the roads in most places. Gas cars pay for this via gas tax, typically. So you should have to pay too.
>Let’s look at some car figures to compare: https://www.quora.com/Is-a-Tesla-heavier-than-an-ICE-car-of-... Tesla Model S - Curb weight 4,647 lbs Audi A8 - Curb weight 4,751 lbs BMW 7 series - Curb weight 4,244 - 4,848 lbs Tesla Model 3 - Curb weight 3,627 to 4,072 lbs Audi A4 - Curb weight 3,450 to 3,627 lbs BMW 3 series - 3,582 to 4,010 lbs
The difference is EVERY EV is heavy. If you load up a garage full of maximal German cars or EVs, you will likely be exceeding its specifications. If someone comes out with a German car mandate I might be on your side here.
>The headlines would have you believe sales are going down.
>The UK national grid got so fed up with people spreading nonsense about the grid it made a page about it
More government propaganda. If you do the calculations you'll quickly realize that 100% EV adoption would drastically outstrip production in every country it's been considered. Furthermore, the electricity used by EVs is often produced by dead dinosaur juice. So they aren't even green.
>Not sure if I covered everything but it gets exhausting addressing every point knowing that you’ll just ignore them and pull out more of the bingo points.
You didn't actually cover anything except maybe sales. You ignored most of what I said and said "nah uh" to the rest, didn't watch the videos, and came at me with this bingo shit. I could have said the same about every single thing you said but I have the basic common sense to know that insulting a person's intelligence is not a good way to argue.
>I don’t think there is much point in continuing. There is a narrative that you want to believe and that’s that. YouTube has claimed another victim. It’s sad to see since it happened to a few of my friends with Covid misinformation and they are also eating up this EV stuff same as you. Same story playing out again, despite excess mortality proving them wrong about the covid stuff. The worst part is it’s not even the persons fault, they are just impressionable and the algorithms feed it.
I too don't think there's any point continuing. You believe your propaganda so fervently that you will not entertain the possibility that the government and media have their own dishonest motivations, and that is essential to reach any kind of understanding on this issue. If you take anything from this, it should be a sense of humility. You're not the genius you think you are, just because you believe what the TV tells you. God help us if "geniuses" like you get the authority to tell us what we can and can't say.
No point in continuing as you said. If you were capable of admitting you were wrong you could have done it on any number of points so let’s just stop here. You’ve even gone on to the green issue and there plenty of stats out there to show break even after x miles so maybe that’s a good place to start for you without me feeding you the numbers.
It’s sad people buy in to the conspiracy stuff. If you ever find a way out, please let me know as I’d like to help my friends overcome it too.
One thing with the conspiracy angle that absolutely baffles me that maybe you could explain is the whole “agenda” / control narrative that gets pushed, as if EVs are somehow evil and controlling. Can you explain how having a vehicle that you can take completely off-grid, and even fuel yourself by solar panels is controlling? I’ve never understood what the logic could even be here.
>No point in continuing as you said. If you were capable of admitting you were wrong you could have done it on any number of points so let’s just stop here. You’ve even gone on to the green issue and there plenty of stats out there to show break even after x miles so maybe that’s a good place to start for you without me feeding you the numbers.
I was not wrong on even one of these points, except perhaps sales. You couldn't even admit that EV fires are considerably worse than petrol fires despite being provided a video of a car burning underwater.
>It’s sad people buy in to the conspiracy stuff. If you ever find a way out, please let me know as I’d like to help my friends overcome it too.
It's sad people believe everything "authorities" tell them. If you ever start thinking for yourself and doing your own research, let me know as I'd like to help my friends overcome it too.
Seriously, conspiracies are common. You have to be pretty naive to deny that or say it's all in the past. Conspiracies happen all the time. The same people who smear others about "conspiracy theories" only seem to have trouble with admitting the possibility when it suits their imagined vision of reality. They will come up with their own conspiracy theories if it suits them, all the while smearing "conspiracy theorists" who do the exact same in equally plausible situations.
>One thing with the conspiracy angle that absolutely baffles me that maybe you could explain is the whole “agenda” / control narrative that gets pushed, as if EVs are somehow evil and controlling.
They aren't inherently evil, they are just inferior tech that was known and abandoned a hundred years ago. Now it's back with improvements (sort of).
>Can you explain how having a vehicle that you can take completely off-grid, and even fuel yourself by solar panels is controlling? I’ve never understood what the logic could even be here.
Most people can't afford enough solar panels to charge an EV. EVs are expensive and inferior to ICE cars yet they are being mandated. They are loaded with tech that monitors your every action. It's only a matter of time before EVs drain the grid so much that "smart charging" will be mandated to control when you are allowed to charge, and that will be another level of surveillance and control. So I'm going to fight this until all of these problems are addressed.
> I was not wrong on even one of these points, except perhaps sales.
lol, that must be the humility you are talking about. When presented with actual figures and facts you post 25 minute long YouTube videos as a response. Your own research apparently doesn’t even involve understanding the articles you yourself try to use as evidence, just believing some random from YouTube. Same as two of my friends sadly.
> You couldn't even admit that EV fires are considerably worse than petrol fires despite being provided a video of a car burning underwater.
The whole point is the risk is so low. Amplifying it is misinformation. Do I worry about ICE car fires even though they are 20x more likely? No. Do I worry about an EV fire? No. Do I worry about plane crashes? No.
You can tell the people who’ve been influenced in to believing that EVs are bad since they list off the bingo points. They don’t have conviction on any one of them so they just cycle through them as they are shot down. When all else has failed they turn to the “they’re not even green” point as a last resort, and you just point out that they break even within the vehicles lifetime even when powered by mostly COAL and they slink off. Mine is powered by wind by the way: https://electricityproduction.uk/in/scotland/
If you just stick to one point then it would be more believable but after it was proven that the risk of fires was lower you had to admit you were wrong or pivot I guess.
One point of cognitive dissonance with the fire angle that I don’t get - you are literally surrounded by batteries of similar types - your phone, laptop, watch and so on. Everyone you know has the same. You must know thousand of people in your extended network. How have you been convinced that there is a significant risk of EV fires when nobody in your network has had any incidents with batteries in these devices? How many of your friends/colleagues etc have had houses burned down as a result of a battery fire from their phone? If you don’t trust these types of batteries, why do you still have them in your house? Why haven’t you made that link?
Another good exercise is to take the number of vehicle fires you have ever seen and divide it by 20. Do you get a number greater than one? Didn’t think so. That should give you the perspective you lack on the risk factor here. It isn’t just about the ferocity of the fire, it’s the risk of fire in the first place. Any vehicle fire is bad news for you and the cars around you. LFP batteries will be even lower than the 20x reduction of risk.
> EVs are expensive and inferior to ICE cars
You are talking for everyone here so you are wrong for some. Let’s explore how it is for me:
* charge exclusively at home, wake up to a fully charged, preheated and defrosted car
* Less waiting than my ICE - no filling up (“reading” in your case)
* Costs 1/4 of the price to run
* Fast, quiet ride
* 900L of storage
No downsides that come to mind. You can get second hand EVs that also get most of these benefits so vehicle cost isn’t really the issue. Are they suitable for everyone? No. Are they viable for many? Yes.
> They are loaded with tech that monitors your every action.
This has nothing to do with the drivetrain.
> "smart charging"
Totally optional. Plug in to an outlet if you like, they can’t track that. Smart charging already exists and allows me to get a special rate in electricity during the night. They can track that all they like as long as I get 0 - 60 in 4 seconds for 3p/mile.
That's definitely true, but that still leaves a pretty large potential market for home owners with garages (i.e. people for whom an EV is a decent value proposition) that is far from saturated. My guess is that by the time the garage owner market for EVs is getting tapped out, the charging problem for everyone else will have been solved as well.
I also think the market forces work the other way around. I currently own my home, but it's a condo with a shared parking lot and no way to charge an EV. I've been looking to upgrade at some point, and one of my non-negotiable requirements is that whatever I buy next needs to have a way to charge an EV at home (private garage with power, shared parking with the ability to install charges, etc). As EV market share increased, I expect this to create more and more pressure on the housing market to meet home charging needs.
Here in Geneva, Switzerland there is exactly one place with superchargers, metro area easily over 1.5 million and some of the wealthiest and most powerful folks live here or often move through here. I think they have 24 chargers altogether in that spot.
Next nearest in Switzerland is some 120km away. That's basically a non-existent network. Colleague who has model S told me he can charge at his house cca 9km/hour. With commuting he ends up almost empty at the end of the work week, and has this additional worry constantly. Service outside warranty is supposedly sky high. Not that great a proposition.
While technically true for Geneva proper, there are 4 in the metro area within 15 minutes apart, including Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, Archamps, and Annemasse, for a total of 64 superchargers.
To be fair service outside of warranty for luxury cars in general is pretty sky high, especially absent a trusted independent mechanic who you can work with.
But, yeah, I haven't seriously considered an EV. There isn't a model in my sweet spot, I don't drive much on a day-to-day basis and, when I do, it can be fairly long drives to fairly remote areas. Maybe someday but I'm either on a road trip or fuel stops are generally weeeks apart from each other.
And you can go grab a Starbucks without sucking down a bunch of carcinogenic fumes during that time.
I have a home charger but never use it. I have never once wished I could go to a gas station, and whenever I drive a dinosaur fume contraption and end up at a gas station I’m reminded of what a filthy end to end system the age of fire was. I’m glad to see the age of Maxwell begin.
I will never buy and EV as long as I’m beholden to the tyranny of PG&E’s constant gamification of my power.
They keep raising and raising prices and there’s nothing attractive about putting all my eggs in the electric basket in California as long as the rates are controlled by cartels.
PG&E will exploit any electric car progress for themselves and rip off their customers as hard as they can as soon as they thought they had a critical mass worth really rate exploiting and could get away with it.
I know lots of people disagree with me, but low institutional trust is the main reason we don’t have one.
That and we tend to buy and keep our vehicles for decades and I’m quite sure I don’t believe the rhetoric around durability and reliability.
When it’s truly a superior product from a quality and reliability standpoint and not a car body stapled to a battery with a smartphone quality warranty, and I have choice in how to fuel it beyond predatory power companies controlled by corrupt institutions, I’m in.
Nobody ever talks about the profound lack of diversity in the power suppliers, but it’s more than a minor existential risk to electric car viability in many parts of the country.
Long term, my plan is to buy a cheap EV like a Bolt as well as a powerwall or other home battery in a part of the world with good sunlight and build a nice little solar farm to power the house and car.
Solar panels just keep getting cheaper and this plan seems increasingly like a way to nearly do away with power bills all together while still staying on grid.
But until then I tend to agree, EVs aren't as appealing when you can't predict what energy prices will be over 10 years
Yea, we’ve been discussing this as an option, especially now that there are such high quality integrated controllers and batteries. It’s become viable to do this, but it’s really rough as it kind of abandons everyone else to the meat grinder.
Having enough personal solar for your car charging solves this problem for now but who know what kind of fuckery there will be around home solar rules in California in the future.
Indeed. That was the story. The reality is after all these rate hikes PG&E, which so desperately complained about their future being in jeopardy, forcing worker concessions, and undergoing a 58 billion dollar wildfire fueled restructuring, paid their CEO more than 40 million dollars and cleared more than 25 percent pure profit last quarter.
Oh, and this most recent rate hike was justified to bury cables. All while becoming the most expensive provider in California.
And did I mention that, after announcing a massive across the board rate hike, they decided to start the very expensive program of giving dividends to stock holders.
But wait! THEN they announced that instead of paying for what you use, you’re going to pay for how much money you earn and that you would now need to report income to them like they are the Government. A private corporation? Every rate payer pays on household incomes?!? What?
Maybe a residential power generation owners union (association?) could coalesce enough collective action power. Residential producers go on strike by disabling their systems on a coordinated random Saturday each month causing spikes in power cost and headaches for PG&E until the solar rate structure is negotiated with the union on fair terms.
Local areas can create public districts for power, and there are many throughout California. They generally work quite well, though the creation of new ones can be time consuming to get control over existing PG&E areas.
That’s pretty smart. Might change the dynamic somewhat if they knew there was substantive resistance. But at the end of the day it’s pretty hard to beat regulatory capture unless you start threatening the politicians.
Yeesh… assuming that is all accurate that is quite a raw deal for customers.
I don’t know much about the regulatory environment in CA but I thought there was either deregulation which allowed you to pick your provider or strong monopoly regulation which restricted utility margin. Is CA neither of those?
A lot of folks (like me) just use high speed charger infrastructure, which would intermediate you from PG&E
I would note that drilling, refineries, distribution, and point of sale for oil have all been and still are an assortment of disgusting cartels, monopolies, and nefarious governments hell bent on screwing you and the planet. But they’re definitely at more arms reach as a consumer than PG&E.
I just can’t agree with you anymore. I think companies that are government supported monopolies are a lot more difficult to change than those subject to competition. There’s just so little incentive to change and it’s baked into regulatory capture on so many levels that changing a company that appears to be available but actually isn’t is probably harder than making change when market forces can create incentives for that change.
I used to believe what you wrote, but my opinion has changed.
EVs are still too compromising or expensive. All I want is an electric no-frills version of my Civic at a comparable price. Honda themselves, or any other manufacturer, have been unable to offer that.
I have no interest in buying another ICE vehicle, so I'll continue to maintain my current car, but I'm ready to buy once they offer something I'm looking for.
> All I want is an electric no-frills version of my Civic at a comparable price.
The US car industry seems really determined not to allow anything affordable on the market. It's not just EVs. They also push overpriced bloated gas guzzlers.
Eventually someone will get a cheap reliable decent-range EV like you want into the market and steamroll the entire industry.
Probably just about everyone is a lot better than they were a few decades ago. I had a Honda Del Sol that I donated right before the pandemic. I think the last time I took it into the dealer, mechanics gathered around the 1997(?) model which I had kept garaged in the winter for a number of years because they hadn't seen a recent example that didn't have rusted-out wheel wells.
That notwithstanding, perceived Toyota quality (perhaps in particular) was a big part of their success in probably the 80s/90s.
Overpriced according to whom? There's no big conspiracy here. Manufacturers earn larger profits on more expensive vehicles. If consumers are willing to buy expensive cars then why bother making cheap ones?
Some of the legacy mainstream brands used to offer an affordable entry-level model as essentially a loss leader to build brand loyalty with younger consumers. The theory was that those consumers would return in a few years and trade that cheap car in for a more profitable model. But now the brands have largely abandoned that strategy.
As for fuel economy, it costs more to build an efficient vehicle. If consumers are willing to pay a premium for efficiency then manufacturers will be happy to build it.
Me, and apparently many others since manufacturers are cutting their forecasts?
As a consumer I don't really care what makes manufacturers more profit, I just want a product that meets my needs, and the first one to do so gets my money. Many, many cars are sold at a Civic's price band, and it wouldn't be happening if it wasn't profitable.
Legacy car makers can twiddle their thumbs all they want, but upstarts like BYD are going to eat their lunch if they don't become competitive. They're making competitively priced EVs, and building a plant in Mexico, so competition is about to heat up.
The answer for me is just that I'll buy one when it's better.
Particularly for larger vehicles such as vans it just doesn't make sense. It's more expensive both to buy and to run, the payload is reduced due to the additional weight, and the range is lower.
I imagine in 5-10 years that won't be the case, but for now, there's no point in me being an early adopter.
To get a decent daily cross the city charger installed in my garage, I have to spend some $3,000 just on electrical work because I have to upgrade service. Currently unsubsidized because my government doesn’t believe climate change is real. This is before the average $700 to install the charger.
Vehicle prices have skyrocketed, and while my family makes well in to 6 figures, cars are just not a thing we want to spent lots of money on. Dropping 80k on a vehicle is WAY past what we’d ever consider.
Critical infrastructure is non-existent for highway trips (again, government doesn’t believe in climate change).
For me it’s simply not practical. There’s too many annoying barriers.
Just curious, why did you use "80k" as a figure for car prices? That's very deep into luxury car prices. You can easily get a fully electric 2023+ model car used with less than 10k miles for $25k, and new ones in the 30s.
Not sure which government but the US has a pretty complete super charger network for Tesla owners and opening up to other brands. I actually have a charger at home but never use it. I just drop by the super chargers around town or along all the highways and grab a 15 minute charge while I grab a Starbucks or lunch once a week.
Why would you need such a lot of work done? A normal domestic 230 V 10 A supply is enough to add 10 km of range per hour so if you plug it in at 20:00 and unplug at 06:00 you have added 100 km. That's far more than the average daily distance for the vast majority of users.
> Dropping 80k on a vehicle is WAY past
You can get perfectly useable EVs for under half that in Europe. Are they not available in the US?
It’s Canada, where we have a price premium for “shipping” even for products that are built here. Gouging is the Canadian way.
But that said, I see that we do have the very low trim options for ranges I would entertain starting at 50k rather than my initial 80k. That’s still more than we’ve ever spent on a vehicle. I will have to wait for better used options, but at the moment, there is no “practical” difference between used or new, at least not in Canada. There is literally no “not abused by someone else” value at all. Value now is basically just choosing kilometers, and even that floors somewhere around 20k (seeing 10 year old vehicles with 300,000 kilometers for 20k was regular when we were shopping a couple years back).
If government truly believed in climate change they would ban passenger cars. Both for taxis and private use. Or gave out very limited purchase licenses.
EV utility is less than ICE cars, but far worse than commuter rail. Most of the pollution in the bay area is from car tires. So if they really want to clean that up, they need to switch to light rail and inter city express rail
The Bay Area's pollution is very low compared to most other cities in the world. People from those cities wish that their pollution primarily came from car tires.
Not light rail, you want and automated metro. the difference is small - sometimes even the same trains are used on both. However the automated metro is cheaper to run (in the US operating costs are a big deal), and so you run it high frequency all day long. Metro systems also tend to run faster than light rail and people care about their time. This in turn means people will choose to take the train as they know it will be there when they want to go. Light rail makes people dream of having a car (possibly self driving) because the car is ready to go when they want to and is fast.
Of course in the US building the above is often not affordable. We need to fix that problem, the more we can afford to build the more we will build and the faster we get away from the car only mindset.
Most of the pollution in the Bay Area is actually from wood smoke. In the summer it's wildfires; in the winter it's wood stoves. A significant portion of Bay Area housing is still on wood heat, which is terrible for outdoor air pollution.
> wood heat, which is terrible for outdoor air pollution
FYI, newer wood stoves have a catalytic combustor and burn the gasses as they leave the wood box 2 or even three times. They are much, much more efficient and drastically less polluting (because all the particulates are burned instead of going out in the air)
They're law for all new installs in many, many places.
Yes, but most of the remaining wood heat in the Bay Area is from houses built in the 1920s-1950s. If the homeowner has money to upgrade, they usually re-do the whole place with updated electrical & heat pumps.
We've got 4 of these houses on our street, all built in the mid-50s with owners who are senior citizens now and probably could never afford to live in their current home if it weren't paid off and subject to Prop 13. Their yearly housing cost is $3000. Our monthly housing cost is $10K. They can't really afford to upgrade anything, but as soon as the house is sold, it's going to get a full gut remodel and probably a second story.
I'm aware that car tires create a lot (most?) of the microplastic pollution in the Bay Area, but are you sure it's most of all pollution? Do you possibly have a citation?
The more people who switch to mass transit the more the experience of using mass transit becomes (better used systems tend to have money to build/run more transit). And eventually you reach a point where mass transit is strictly better than the car as well, though in the short term you make the car better.
Honest question, tires, or brakes? I was under the impression brake dust was the worst polluter. I'm sure tires aren't great either, but they should be equivalent between EV's and ICE cars. Brakes last significantly longer on EV's and therefore would help with pollution.
That's wild, didn't know that. Is anything doable about car tires short of not driving a car? Are people perhaps looking into better materials for this problem?
For at least one of the most toxic additives in tires, Washington State's Department of Ecology and some West Coast tribes are leading the push to prohibit, with the caveat that researchers are still looking for a suitable replacement:
Isn’t the automotive space filled with lobbyists wanting to maintain the status quo? I’ve witness many families go electric and none have gone back. Self selected bias?
I’ve had an EV for over seven years now. We are on our second Tesla and looking at a Rivian. I could not go back to an ICE vehicle and this is coming from a long time automotive enthusiast who has competed in rallys and track events. For my family’s lifestyle it is just so simple to own an EV with low to no maintenance, home charging, solar panels cost savings, pet modes, simple to operate, and almost appliance like. We have one vehicle and a motorcycle. When I ride I can focus on manual operations like changing gears or using two brakes. But if I am honest it is rare I want such a taxing ride. I still commute at least twice per week on a two wheels. Eventually, I will get an electric motorcycle.
I had range anxiety in my first month of EV ownership but you quickly realize that most trips rarely require a charging stop. Admittedly, I am in California but even traveling through the desert only one time did I need to use my mobile charger.
If you own a house, an EV is a no brainer. I drive an ICE vehicle and my wife drives an EV. My car feels like antiquated technology after driving the EV. It is hard to describe how simple, cheap and fun they are to operate. To date we haven't had to use a charging station because charging at home or at the office (for free) has been sufficient. We had range anxiety maybe the first few weeks but that is long gone. It just works.
If you have a house odds are you live in a family situations. Maybe you can justify one non-EV truck for towing or trips, but an EV will do everything you need from the other cars.
"a disaster" is very vague and could still be true if EV sales were growing faster than expected as it would still be better if they were higher.
The articles discussed often specifically claimed the sales were dropping (at least in the headline, usually admitting that's not true in the text) which would give a much less wishy-washy headline.
The FUD that continues to come from big money around EVs is impressive, if not a little boring and dumb.
These graphs are getting mighty steep with no letting up. Any business or market segment in the world would be hailed a massive success with growth like that. [1]
The Tesla model Y is the 2nd best selling vehicle in the US, behind only the F-150. The sales compared to legacy OEMs are insane. And that is just Tesla, there are plenty of other EVs that are selling in huge numbers now, with more showing up every day.
Anyone who says EVs are not a smashing success is blatantly denying the hard facts as they exist, and clearly is not interested in being truthful. Akin to someone saying solar is not growing and has no demand.
> The Tesla model Y is the 2nd best selling vehicle in the US, behind only the F-150.
While this doesn't change the point you're making, according to this, the Tesla Model Y was 5th best selling in the U.S. in 2023. Can you show me where you got 2nd?
It appears that insideEVs article used 4 months of Tesla sales to represent a quarter, which is misleading. If we look at monthly figures, it's around 100k per quarter now, which is in line with the 385k they sold in 2023. And that explains why it seemed like they were number 2 when they were actually trailing several models.
Currently it peaked in April (and repeated the same number in June) but is selling around 30-31k Model Y each month in the U.S. There's no current sign of acceleration.
I get that there are lot of people who like to drive fun cars, and I have no problem with that (as long as they obey traffic laws and drive safely on public roads), but for me speed, agility, and fun are pretty low on my list of priorities in a car. I would rank practicality, safety, comfort, and affordability well above speed.
For me there aren't any EVs on the market that hit the balance of practicality, comfort, and affordability that I am looking for. I'm still optimistic though that by the time I am ready to replace my current car, there might at least be options worth considering.
I'm jumping right to an e-bike. Seems like a no brainer since I can get to work in the same amount of time (because of heavy traffic), and the electric part means I don't have to get sweaty doing it.
I just purchased a new truck within the last 6 months and I was considering Ford's F-150 Lightning but ended up going with a diesel 2500 Silverado instead. The lightning boast 350 miles but it's not clear what kind of mileage I would get when pulling my camper. I also like to travel to some of the more remote parts of the US and I just don't have the confidence that it wouldn't become a pain in my butt.
As for anecdotal evidence I don't see a lot of EVs driving around in my mid sized midwest town (~200k pop). At most I notice 2-4 Teslas a week and as of today I've seen my first Rivian. If they're popular they ain't popular around here.
Yup I don't think EVs are suitable for towing, yet.
> We had been warned to expect the range to be cut in half when towing, but the effect of towing these travel trailers proved even more significant. With the smallest and lightest trailer, we measured a range of just 115 miles. That figure fell to 100 miles with the middleweight camper and sank to a mere 90 miles with the 7,218-pound Grand Design trailer. [1]
Maybe when solid state batteries make their way into EVs by the end of this decade, that will change. [2]
Pickup EVs will be much more viable when the GMG Graphene Aluminum Ion battery is released in 2025. One of the biggest perks is supposed to be high power applications and Rio Tinto is expected to use them in their mining equipment.
Takes 5 minutes to get gas, gas stations are everywhere, but having to find a charging station for your EV and having to sit there for an hour or longer is just not appealing if the tradeoff is the good feelings of one's microscopic contribution to saving the planet. You want me to pay more for extra inconvenience.
I'm sure that will change eventually, but at this point it works best for home owners with garages, which isn't everybody.