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xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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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?
Different for many people. For us it is that we live in an urban area parking on the street and charging it, even with the faster chargers nowadays, just doesn't fit into our schedule. We'd have to cut working hours if we'd want to get an EV. But other people have other problems with them
Luckily me and the children can completly get around by public transportation, scooters and bicycles. My wife cannot (for now at least). So, at least we only have one car for the 4 ouf us.
But I already know that you'll belittle out problems and come up with half assed solution (yes I know we can charge while shopping, but we walk to the supermarket). I had this discussion often with EV fanatics. Please spare me.
"I can't charge at home" should be an easy way to shut down an EV evangelist. That should be a "get out of conversation free" card.
I say that as an EV evangelist myself, and I lived a few years in a condo with an EV and no EV charging in the garage (and adding charging was going to be cost prohibitive if even possible at all due to already crowded infrastructure). It sucked and ain't nobody got time for that.
Even being unable to charge at home has solutions.
Like when they upgraded the street lights in London to LED, while also incorporating a charger.
Yeah, but that is only in London and only 1300 street lights. Once they've done 10+ million of those in the whole of the UK this might get interesting. And it will still be much more expensive to habe an EV for people who cannot charge at home.
Sadly they haven't even started with that here in Germany. And tbh, I am quite annoyed by this. They keep blowing money into the assess of suburbanites, but completly ignore urban people. Thus subsidizing infrastructure wasting sprawling even more.
As the owner of a Bolt, the only significant criticism is range (mine's a 2020, gets ~180mi comfortably on the interstate) and charging rate (2020 bolts are limited to 50 kW, so kinda specific). Not great for road trips, but otherwise fantastic. As for electric fires... yeah I wasn't gonna be able to put that out anyway so the firefolk have it either way.
That is more of a criticism of the Bolt.
There are other electric cars on the market that get 2 ton3 times the range and 4 or 5 times the charging rate.
If you charge at home, it is already possible to have an electric vehicle where “refueling” is something you just don’t worry about 98% of the time. You just drive and the car goes as far as you want to go before you get home again. For longer trips, charging can happen in as little time as it takes to grab a bite, hit the washroom, and stretch your legs. You often have multiple charge stations to choose from so it is easy to pick one next to the amenities you want ( like food ).
Range anxiety” is becoming more something you need to worry about in your gas vehicle if you let the tank get low and are about to get on a highway where the next station is not for a while.
It is, definitely. We own our home and leave it on the level 1 charger all the time. It gets us around the metro just fine, no long commutes so it's great for us. And as someone mentioned somewhere around here, a longer charge time isn't necessarily bad if you're the only driver on long trips. I'm honestly more worried about having to stop in areas with only a couple chargers (Midwest here) and some asshole vandalizing them and leaving me stranded. But that's a concern that pops up once or twice a year at best. And the various charger apps are pretty good a letting you know they're down.
I do the same, metro commuting and a short trip to visit family (~50 miles each way) every couple weeks or so. I don't even have to plug in every time I get home, I only need to make sure I am charged up at least to 75% for the family visit. Level 1 charging is more than sufficient, I've only ever used a charging station just to see what it's like and try to use up some credit I got for them through my dealership.
For those without EVs: level 1 charging is just plugging into a standard 120V outlet. I have no special equipment at home, though I did need to confirm my breaker could handle it. For my 2023 Bolt EUV I charge about 1% per hour on the reduced charge setting (8 amps). If I do need to charge a little faster I can swap it to 12 amps, but I typically don't need to do that.
Yeah I rented a Mustang Mach-E and drove between Houston, Austin, Dallas, and back to Houston, without very much charger anxiety. And not being confined to a slow charger...except on the way back to the airport. The first charger I found was a slow charger and all the fast ones were occupied. But still had plenty of charge to find the next station and get it high enough to return
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.
Are you sure that the rules here allow reasonable comments like this?
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.
Which is ironic because it has the opposite effect by forcing every resident to get around via car
Correct. It can be done though. Getting stores and stuff into suburbs would help already, assuming we're talking us style ones.
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
We found the Dad with 4 kids that works 50 km from home. Get that man a bicycle.
you think too American!
Some of us are Americans and have to live with these constraints...
And some of us aren’t :) the meme is globally speaking.
I think people should consider an EV when it comes time for them to buy a new car.
I think most people should buy used cars, if only because new cars are almost always a bad financial decision
New-to-them I mean, but yes, I agree. New cars depreciate stupidly quick.
If an electric car catches on fire you can't put it out.
I'm certain that I won't be able to put out an ice engine either. That's fire people territory and I trust them to know their business.
Well, I guess it's a good thing they rarely catch fire compared to combustion engine cars then.
Source?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/nov/20/do-electric-cars-pose-a-greater-fire-risk-than-petrol-or-diesel-vehicles
https://www.driving.co.uk/car-clinic/are-electric-cars-more-likely-to-catch-fire-than-petrol-and-diesel-cars/
https://internationalfireandsafetyjournal.com/research-highlights-lower-fire-risk-in-electric-cars-compared-to-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles/
Etc etc
Interesting, just read the guardian article, I do think that probably if the ICE fires are less reported that does mean their less bad. But regardless yeah, that is interesting
That's true for a petrol or a diesel vehicle too.
I live in a city where electric vehicles are at least 10% of the cars on the road. I have yet to see an electric vehicle fire, even on the news.
You are accurate. What are the practical consequences?
Gas station fires are devastating. I have not seen one of those locally either so I am not selling my gas guzzler to prevent gas station fires. There are bigger problems.
100% and you know the first time it happens is going to be super covered too because of the potential for "controversy".