Archive link (IA link). Heavy automobiles are harmful to society and their weight should be universally reduced wherever possible. Problems include, but are not limited to: Killing pedestrians at...
Archive link (IA link). Heavy automobiles are harmful to society and their weight should be universally reduced wherever possible. Problems include, but are not limited to:
Killing pedestrians at noticeably higher rates than lighter vehicles
Reducing range as the motor has to use more energy to move the vehicle
Damaging roads very quickly (weight and damage have a quadratic-ish correlation)
Increasing costs to the end-user due to reduced energy efficiency
Electric vehicles are particularly heavy due to traditional lithium-ion battery composition. Automakers don't care about human life, but they do recognize that "range anxiety" is a visible emotion among capital-wielding consumers. To maximize consumer spending on automobiles, they have decided, finally, that making their cars less heavy would be beneficial.
Most of the changes manufacturers are investigating are pretty minor:
"Every ounce of that weight reduction improves range," says Andrew Poliak, US chief technology officer of Panasonic Automotive. The company says it has developed components – such as the speakers and audio system used in cars – that not only weight between 30-60% less but also draw 60% less power from the car without affecting performance.
That'll get you a few more miles, but battery weight remains the crux of the issue, so some manufacturers are focusing on that instead:
Another major car manufacturer, Honda, is looking at a different key component in electric cars in the effort to shed weight – the battery itself. It has been making substantial investments in developing solid-state batteries, which are smaller and lighter than the conventional lithium-ion batteries currently standard in most electric vehicles on the road today. The battery technology also has the ability to charge faster and is less susceptible to heat-related damage from fast-charging.
Solid-state batteries are not yet commercially viable for automobiles. However, recent tests from Volkswagen suggest that lifespan duration is stronger than lithium-ion batteries. The article claims that some companies are "mass producing these cells, having largely solved all other issues on a lab scale." Key phrase is "lab scale"; I think "mass production" might be an overstatement, but this does seem like promising technology.
It's also worth noting that virtually all EVs currently on the market are large and heavy SUVs and pickup trucks. Moving this much mass requires even larger and heavier batteries, which further reduces range. So as a separate problem from the weight of speakers and batteries, having smaller and more lightweight sedans would go a long way toward addressing range anxiety and would also provide a useful vehicle that kills fewer Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs).
*in the U.S., outside the U.S. there is more choice available in more reasonable sizes. Having said that, also outside the U.S. there is more choice available the bigger the model.
It's also worth noting that virtually all EVs currently on the market are large and heavy SUVs and pickup trucks.
*in the U.S., outside the U.S. there is more choice available in more reasonable sizes. Having said that, also outside the U.S. there is more choice available the bigger the model.
US carmakers have been like that for a long time. In the 1970s my dad would go to American car dealers and they had every excuse for not having small cars in stock or why they couldn’t sell you...
US carmakers have been like that for a long time. In the 1970s my dad would go to American car dealers and they had every excuse for not having small cars in stock or why they couldn’t sell you one and if they did have one why you shouldn’t buy it. (One dealer told my dad an AMC Gremlin was a “piece of shit” and my dad found out the dealer was right and traded it in within 18 months.)
In the last 10 years Honda and Toyota dealers got the same disease. We had to settle for a used Fit because they didn’t have any new Fits because “the factory washed out in a flood” but they had 100 HR-Vs in a row made in the same factory that nobody wanted to buy,
Unfortunately he who pays the piper calls the tune so the automobile press incessantly repeats that American consumers insist on XXXL trucks or we hate hatchbacks (funny every S.U.V. is a hatchback… if anything consumers have no interest in sedans). There is some truth in that but he fact is that the dealer always wants you to get a size a few sizes larger than you want because from their viewpoint it is a disaster that you buy a $20k car and drive it for ten years when you could have bought a $40k car.)
This kills me. The HRV is just a shitty SUV thats smaller than a CRV and I'm guessing smaller inside than the Fit. Also the hate for minivans! It has been a popular thing among a certain class of...
American consumers insist on XXXL trucks or we hate hatchbacks (funny every S.U.V. is a hatchback
This kills me. The HRV is just a shitty SUV thats smaller than a CRV and I'm guessing smaller inside than the Fit. Also the hate for minivans! It has been a popular thing among a certain class of moms to refuse to own/drive a minivan and instead insist on buying (more expensive, inefficient, larger yet smaller inside) XL SUVs. I'll grant that a mid sized SUV (like a CRV) is worth the trade off but I don't believe there is a legitimate argument to own one instead of a minivan or other vehicle.
As a Gen Xer I think anybody who got driven around in a minivan in the 1980s has memories of being packed around like a suitcase and those feelings of a lack of agency means you'd never drive one...
As a Gen Xer I think anybody who got driven around in a minivan in the 1980s has memories of being packed around like a suitcase and those feelings of a lack of agency means you'd never drive one no matter what. My understanding is that younger people who didn't have that experience are more likely to perceive the practicality.
(My favorite conspiracy theory, which nobody else seems to accept, is that General Motors invented the schoolbus to make you hate the idea of riding the bus.)
I'm a millennial and I'm seeing this attitude from other millennials that both did or didn't have a minivan growing up. We had a minivan growing up as well; I don't have an issue with them but my...
I'm a millennial and I'm seeing this attitude from other millennials that both did or didn't have a minivan growing up. We had a minivan growing up as well; I don't have an issue with them but my sister is one of these "never minivan" people.
memories of being packed around like a suitcase and those feelings of a lack of agency
That's not specific to a minivan though. If you felt this way about a minivan then people would of course have similar feelings towards any vehicle type their parents owned. I don't see people how grew up in a Honda Accord saying "I REFUSE to own a mid sized sedan!" as adults.
I will say, this is one of the key reasons I think Hydrogen is the future. Here's an older study, which is a fairly accessible look at how compressed hydrogen (fuel cells included) will allow for...
I will say, this is one of the key reasons I think Hydrogen is the future. Here's an older study, which is a fairly accessible look at how compressed hydrogen (fuel cells included) will allow for far lighter vehicles than almost any traditional battery.
It's not there, yet. My money is that the time will come when there's a resource crisis ala the 70's gas crisis that results in making it economical to make a massive pivot.
There's a decent chance that in 20 years, a lot of our solid-state batteries will be hydrogen, especially if this pans out.
Hydrogen just has so many more issues than EVs, I really don't see them going anywhere other than maybe applications where energy density is crucial over every other variable (things like planes)....
Hydrogen just has so many more issues than EVs, I really don't see them going anywhere other than maybe applications where energy density is crucial over every other variable (things like planes). I certainly don't think they'll ever be a good solution for a ICE car replacement as the logistics of transporting and storing large amounts of hydrogen on the scale that you'd need for American car usage is quite literally insane. Not to mention the massive inefficiencies of generating electricity, to then use that to create hydrogen, to then once again use that hydrogen to generate electricity via fuel cells.
Trucking around compressed hydrogen isn't really any significantly different than trucking around the gas we do now. If anything, it'll be less burdensome because we'll be able to build more...
Trucking around compressed hydrogen isn't really any significantly different than trucking around the gas we do now. If anything, it'll be less burdensome because we'll be able to build more decentralized processing facilities.
Build a wind farm at every water treatment and garbage facility in the country. There are thousands of these facilities dotting every populated area in the USA. Use to help process stormwater and wastewater, sanitizing and electrolizing it.
Capture the methane generated during water treatment and garbage processing. Strip and collect the carbon in the processing plant. Heck, doing this now to the fossil fuel natural gas is still preferrable to burning it directly. I'd even place a long bet that stripping the oil we use now down to hydrogen would be a better alternative if it means shipping ligher cars sooner.
Along the coast, there will be a need for desalination facilities as it is. Baking in a bit of electrolysis as apart of that cycle is naturally complementary.
One of the biggest unsolved problems with green energy is reconciling its inconsistency with needing to provide base and peak loads. Right now, it's mostly natural gas doing that heavy lifting.
We're talking about trying to eliminate emissions, not just improve efficiency. It's nice when we can do both. But being able to half the weight of cars on the road will almost certainly make up for energy losses from conversion.
Gasoline doesn't need to be stored at incredibly high pressure and low temperatures. It would cost trillions of dollars to refit every gas station with the proper infrastructure to service...
Gasoline doesn't need to be stored at incredibly high pressure and low temperatures. It would cost trillions of dollars to refit every gas station with the proper infrastructure to service hydrogen cars. Generating hydrogen isn't the difficult part; its the cost of generating, storing, and distributing that really adds up. By the time you get to the end of the line, you've lost the vast majority of the initial energy you put in to efficiency and transmission losses. Something like 80% total loss of energy over the lifecycle of the process.
It's high pressure or low temps...doesn't need to be both. It's going to cost trillions of dollars to get a needed number of charging stations at every gas station anyhow. Gonna need a lot more...
It's high pressure or low temps...doesn't need to be both.
It's going to cost trillions of dollars to get a needed number of charging stations at every gas station anyhow. Gonna need a lot more than 1-2 per station if every car on the road is an EV. Cost of retrofit is a wash.
You also probably wouldn't need to retrofit every gas station in the country. The specific density of compressed hydrogen is so much higher than gasoline you could drop car weights and increase ranges to 1k miles or more.
You are either storing it at -253 C, 5000 PSI or 10000 PSI. Those are highly danger temperatures and pressures. I would not want to be in car crash where a cryogenic container gets breached, even...
You are either storing it at -253 C, 5000 PSI or 10000 PSI. Those are highly danger temperatures and pressures. I would not want to be in car crash where a cryogenic container gets breached, even less so for a high pressure vessel. People still to die in boiler accidents where the water boilers operate around 200 PSI, H is stored at orders of magnitudes higher PSI.
I'll take a Lithium Ion fire over a pressure vessel failure or cryogenic failure.
You may be interested to know the safety standards. 10k tanks have been safe for quite some time now. Bullet test video. Highly pressurized hydrogen will burn more like a torch or a quick fireball...
That was a hole versus a crack, show me the same test when its an impact from a blunt object causing a fracture rather than large high caliber relatively large route traveling at super sonic...
That was a hole versus a crack, show me the same test when its an impact from a blunt object causing a fracture rather than large high caliber relatively large route traveling at super sonic speeds. Not to mention, venting hydrogen after an accident with a plethora of ignition sources doesn't strike me as good idea.
That hydrogen tank vented it's entire contents in seconds so all it takes is it to find an ignition source, and there are plenty to be found around cars. Load of relays, which can arc, a dangling brake light with a shredded power wire lightly touching the frame, some idiot with a cigarette, etc. Show me that same test with an ignition source about 10 ft away.
Check the other link, about the studies showing no more dangerous. They get into that. No video for that one though. They used a 12.5mm rod to make the hole, which is just slightly smaller than a...
Check the other link, about the studies showing no more dangerous. They get into that. No video for that one though. They used a 12.5mm rod to make the hole, which is just slightly smaller than a 50cal round.
As discussed in the next section, Test 10 produced a clean venting of the gas and a relatively large hole for the gas to be vented. We believe that this size of hole, which is larger than typical tubing diameters used in plumbing high pressure tanks, is a reasonable maximum credible failure for a tank of this design. Hence, the present results suggest that the risks associated with storing high-pressure hydrogen are no greater, and perhaps less than, other fuels, such as gasoline or propane
The fracture load of high pressure cylinders is outside the presumed range in automobile collisions
It's somewhat counterintuitive: Highly pressurized hydrogen is more safe than no-pressure hydrogen. Because the gas is above the upper explosion limit, there's no way for enough oxygen to reach the gas to ignite it before it disperses. If the hydrogen was low or no pressure, a rupture could cause an explosion if the hydrogen was above the lower explosion limit.
You're not going to need nearly as many public EV charging stations as you have gas pumps. Something like 2/3 of homes are single-family. Most of them can charge at home. The need for public...
You're not going to need nearly as many public EV charging stations as you have gas pumps.
Something like 2/3 of homes are single-family. Most of them can charge at home. The need for public charging is going to be for road trips and people who can't charge at home for any of several reasons.
EVs are a different beast. In the most common scenarios you're not driving 75%+ of your range before you refill like you do with a gas car or you would with hydrogen.
I think it's worthwhile to continue hydrogen development. Maybe it could have a place as a gasoline successor in the future. But you're going to have a hard sell if you want me to give up my EV for a hydrogen car. Never having to stop at a pump is incredibly convenient.
Until we reach 100% saturation of 0 carbon energy (which will likely take decades if not hundreds of years) improving efficiency is the most important way to reduce emissions. Every watt of energy...
We're talking about trying to eliminate emissions, not just improve efficiency. It's nice when we can do both. But being able to half the weight of cars on the road will almost certainly make up for energy losses from conversion.
Until we reach 100% saturation of 0 carbon energy (which will likely take decades if not hundreds of years) improving efficiency is the most important way to reduce emissions. Every watt of energy we waste is another watt that is going to need to be generated by another method, often natural gas or worst case coal. Remember that while we're up to a respectable 30%~ renewables for the world's electrical generation, electrical usage is only a small fraction of the world's total energy usage for things like industrial heating and logistical transportation. The best path we have towards global decarbonization is to reduce energy waste as much as we possibly can, while also increasing our renewables production.
I encourage you to check out this video about the mathematics behind Hydrogen cars. The subject of this video is actually a combustion hydrogen engine instead of a fuel cell car, but he does go over a lot of the same issues that both cars face.
It’s that same issue over and over of we live too far from the things we need and have to drive everywhere to get it. Could call this version the plywood problem.
It’s that same issue over and over of we live too far from the things we need and have to drive everywhere to get it. Could call this version the plywood problem.
Range anxiety isn't related to real-world housing and development patterns. Given the current (usable, workable, functional, and adequate) state of US EV charging infrastructure along highways and...
Range anxiety isn't related to real-world housing and development patterns. Given the current (usable, workable, functional, and adequate) state of US EV charging infrastructure along highways and arterials, it is a purely psychological and frivolous hypothetical concern for an overwhelming portion of the population.
As far as "distances we need and have to [travel]" on a regular basis go, 99.2% of trips are under 100 miles and 97.7% of trips are under 50 miles. A typical EV range is 250 miles and models exist with ranges of 500 miles or more. There are very few places in the country where an EV charging station is not available within 50 miles; and those locations are geographically overrepresented relative to the country's population distribution, which is relatively clustered (even low-density suburbs are more concentrated along corridors than we might think). Range anxiety is not a concern for quotidian trips.
When people express concern over EV range, they are usually contriving an unrealistic scenario in which they drive several hundred miles (statistically rare) along non-interestate and non-state routes (very improbable). i.e. they come up with situations in which they are absolutely nowhere near EV infrastructure, which is actually rather plentiful along highways. While there are ultra-rural consumers for which this is a relevant possibility, "we all" do not live in places where it is.
With respect to range, the problem with EV adoption is not actually the density of charging infrastructure, it is the public's subjective and unreasonable impression of that infrastructure. Because of that perception, we have to over-build infrastructure to support voluntary shifts to electric. I'm OK with that because psychology will always be a relevant part of infrastructure, but careful readers ought to recognize that it is not strictly logical or accurate. This imagined need for 300+ mile EV ranges leads manufacturers to produce cars with much larger batteries, which significantly increases costs. This is one reason why there are very few affordable EVs in American markets.
Rather than long-distance range, real and significant issues with EV charging are much more to do with charging standards (now resolved), charger reliability (a concern), and hyper-local charging availability in urban areas (limited to nonexistent in multi-dwelling apartment units). There are many specific problems with EVs, but range anxiety is generally not a real one.
As a sidenote: in addition to not needing to drive as far as people anxious about range believe, it is not true either that most Americans (83% of whom live within a broadly urbanized area) technically need to drive absolutely everywhere. This is a voluntary lifestyle decision which in many cases is reasonable in practice. All the same, in most areas the census would classify as urbanized, various alternative methods of transportation do exist and are effectively used by residents. Thus for many people who live in broadly urbanized areas and own ICEs (and could own EVs without significant trouble), it is voluntary to use such a vehicle and its perceived unquestionable utility is not an immutable fact of life.
Well spoken, but I have a hard time siding with you because I’m in the group of people that does drive 300+ miles every month, and sometimes more often than that Additionally the places I drive to...
Well spoken, but I have a hard time siding with you because I’m in the group of people that does drive 300+ miles every month, and sometimes more often than that
Additionally the places I drive to are remote, rocky, or muddy. For me range anxiety isn’t just an unreasonable fear, it’s a definite limitation that prevents me from having an electric vehicle as my daily driver
I would love to have an electric setup one day, but until range improvements are made I don’t see my next vehicle being electric. Which honestly really sucks because while I LOVE those new Rivians I just can’t sacrifice the ability to make regular long-distance trips
I do also live in Texas though, where you do drive substantially more than most other states where things tend to be closer together. The bulk of my long-distance driving is from the Houston area, to West Texas (which is about a 6-7 hour drive that’s 400 miles one way)
Your use-case might be one to which my remarks don't apply. Looking at the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center map for NACS chargers (the new standard), the area of the United...
Your use-case might be one to which my remarks don't apply. Looking at the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center map for NACS chargers (the new standard), the area of the United States where there are fewer chargers to begin with is east of California and west of the Mississippi River. This distribution mostly follows population density. i.e. places where there no chargers contain almost no people (drivers).
Texas has a lot of EV charging stations, but almost all of them are in the Texas Triangle (Austin/San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston). If you zoom in on the maps you can see just how many there are (and a population density map will show you how many people there are in those cities too, and how few in rural counties). There are clusters in some other Texan cities, including El Paso, but the majority of the Texas desert is completely devoid of NACS chargers (and, again, people). All of the western chargers in the state that aren't in cities are along highway routes. But if you're consistently spending a long period of time driving in non-populated places that aren't near highways, especially off-road, that infrastructure isn't accessible to you.
I just think it's very very important to recognize how much of an outlier your travel patterns are relative to both the statistically median person as well as most people on the distribution. Your use-case is very real and in your case, a BEV just isn't a good choice for you (in January 2024). I imagine you could do fine with a PHEV with a gas engine. Even if you're driving 400+ miles once or twice a month, ~95% of your trips are still probably under 50 miles and a hybrid engine would cover the majority of those.
The reason I phrased my comment a bit sternly (?) or absolutely was because the discourse around EVs directly affects market behavior and policy around the vehicles, for better or for worse. I see lots of ostensibly well-intentioned people make uninformed remarks about how they want an EV but omg the infrastructure is just sooo lacking and the range isn't enough. When it's people with your use-case saying this, OK. But usually (anecdotally and statistically), it is someone who lives in a house with a garage, in an eastern, coastal, or metropolitan suburb near lots of charging stations, and doesn't take 300+ mile off-road trips in West Texas.
Americans understand how big the United States is, but they don't understand that the typical person (including, for the most part, them) don't live in and will never ever go to the majority of that geographic area for any reason, nor will they have any desire to. Most of it is physically inaccessible by car anyway. To be honest the nation is better thought of as a network of nodes and edges and not a Cartesian plane; as long as these nodes have charging stations, our energy needs are met; so few drivers attempt to move oblong through two-and-a-half-dimensional space into rocky and unpaved West Texas that, for the purposes of public policy, their use-case must not be overstated to the detriment of environmental and other concerns.
In other words, yes. I hear everything you are saying. I am just wary of highlighting the incredibly niche edge cases of the 0.01% of people who routinely take extraordinarily long car journeys through truly desolate and remote wilderness areas. Though valid, when these domain-specific concerns are highlighted to a non-rigorous audience (the public), it reinforces a perception among that uninformed audience that EVs are a failure (for them), cannot work (for them), and should be discouraged (for everyone), etc., even though those statements are true only for a specific domain or use-case, not universally. These are people for whom EVs are a perfectly valid vehicle and whose opinion is important in shaping public policy, because we live in a democratic country with freedom of expression. So whenever I talk about edge cases, I always try to be explicit with a preface emphasizing what the majority of the population, including the majority of readers/listeners, actually needs.
P.S. if you have thoughts on what kind of non-fossil fuels would be useful for your use-case, I would be interested in hearing more about that. I still wonder if your use-case cannot be solved with a slightly higher density of chargers, with or without slightly more range. I'm guessing you aren't driving a Lucid Air (516 miles) offroad, but a GMC Hummer (329 miles)... potentially? Even in West Texas, unless you are spending days at a time driving in areas that don't have any proper road access (like off-roading in circles?), I think infrastructure could still be accessible with a little bit more government investment. Anywhere there is a gas station, there could be an EV charging station, in theory. Anywhere there is electricity, there could be a charger. In a "charging desert" with a radius of 195 miles (the most anywhere in the country: near Hays, Montana), a single new charger in the center of that "desert" reduces the radius in half... just one charger! In Texas, I don't think any charging desert exists with a radius above ~75 miles (e.g. Knox City to Abilene). Were a charger installed in Knox City, the worst radii in that part of the state would be under 40 miles. Still not ideal, but also not unworkable by any means. Just making a visual guess from the map, I think it would only take around 25 well-positioned EV charging stations in Texas to completely eliminate charging desert radii above 50 miles. I think that once you get near a 50-mile radius, even edge cases start to be solved, including, potentially, yours.
I want to amplify that the people with range anxiety are often doing a lot more than 3/1000 trips over 100 miles. I am doing 4 (wad planning 5) within 7 weeks, including one trip (plus the...
I want to amplify that the people with range anxiety are often doing a lot more than 3/1000 trips over 100 miles. I am doing 4 (wad planning 5) within 7 weeks, including one trip (plus the cancelled trip) being about a thousand miles each way. I grew up and have parents + sister's family a bit over 250 miles away so I drive there for most birthdays and holidays plus several other events throughout the year because of all my connections to the area. I also drive 250 miles each way in a day a handful of times a year because my family has season tickets for a college football team. So that's maybe a dozen trips throughout the year. So not a ton, but an average of once a month is still relatively common.
But I do drive an EV, a Tesla. I really hate Elon Musk (much more than when I bought my car), but it was the only reasonable option for me and my needs if I wanted an EV. There are four different areas with superchargers along the route to my hometown, excluding the numerous superchargers once you get into the suburbs. On the way to the football games, I believe there are four places I can stop, depending on my route, but I've still had a fairly harrowing trip because my car was lying about its remaining charge after one supercharger stop. That was frustrating.
But otherwise, not only did Tesla have the only geographically reliable charger network, but they also had the only reliable chargers. I have heard horror stories from people having to drive to multiple third party chargers before they could find one that actually worked. The only times I've had trouble with chargers were the one time that I tried to use a generic charger and the freakish -20° F storm around Christmas 2022 when there was just ice inside the plug. Otherwise, Tesla has served me well, even if I kind of hate the car sometimes because it's too smart for its own good. But we still use the ICE car when we need guaranteed reliability on trips or when we need room for our 125 lb dog who absolutely ruins car interiors. God, that car is disgusting now.
Out of curiosity, what model/year is your vehicle? I'm not a Tesla owner, I'm just curious because this is a pretty shocking and unacceptable thing to experience from your car, especially one with...
I've still had a fairly harrowing trip because my car was lying about its remaining charge after one supercharger stop. That was frustrating.
Out of curiosity, what model/year is your vehicle? I'm not a Tesla owner, I'm just curious because this is a pretty shocking and unacceptable thing to experience from your car, especially one with a lot of tech in it.
From what you might have ascertained, is it your experience that this happens regularly? All the time? Only in certain usage patterns, like longer journeys? Certain temperatures?
This is a kind of baffling and ridiculous problem to me. I'm not an engineer and I understand that the technicalities of the software might be difficult to get right, but I don't know how a company like Tesla can feel good about releasing a luxury vehicle with shoddy range calculation software considering they're still underdogs in the auto industry at large. They don't have that much leverage in the market.
I mean, I guess I shouldn't really be surprised by that sort of behavior from Elon Musk given the recent lawsuits in California over lost range in cold weather, but it is kind of absurd and I wonder if your issue is partially just a technical problem with the software more than an engineering problem with the machine.
But otherwise, not only did Tesla have the only geographically reliable charger network, but they also had the only reliable chargers.
This seems to be what I hear as well. I know that the federal government has allocated $100 million toward improving reliability figures (apparently 4% of individual chargers are unreliable?). I wonder if the switch to NACS and improved maintenance regulations (or just funding) might not address this.
22 Y It has only happened the one time AFAIK. I guess it may not have been lying about the charge, just the remaining range, but it got the range remaining wrong by 30+ miles (I stopped to charge...
22 Y
It has only happened the one time AFAIK. I guess it may not have been lying about the charge, just the remaining range, but it got the range remaining wrong by 30+ miles (I stopped to charge at a hotel 27 miles from the supercharger and I would have started with some cushion) after I had been driving on the interstate all day--like I said, it was 250 miles out and then I charged 35 miles into the return journey and only made it 99 miles to the hotel.
I definitely remember the estimated charge at destination dropping below 10% (it eventually got below 0%) and I eventually turned off all my heat and music and slowed to 55 mph and the estimates kept dropping, which seems like it should be nearly impossible given the circumstances.
Other than this, Tesla's estimates are pretty spot-on, with allowances made for changing speeds, etc. I believe I have driven for 2+ hours and gotten to a supercharger with the exact original charge estimate many times. I have no idea what went wrong that one time. I even elected to stay on the highway and pass a few other superchargers while driving through one town because it seemed reasonable that I would arrive with plenty of charge remaining.
I know I come down like a load of bricks sometimes. I hold an axiom that common apathetic or nihilistic refrains about transportation infrastructure, which are usually not technical or scientific,...
I know I come down like a load of bricks sometimes. I hold an axiom that common apathetic or nihilistic refrains about transportation infrastructure, which are usually not technical or scientific, aren't useful. Virtually all of our problems can be solved with policy and engineering, but we have to understand them first.
There’s like a wave of knowledge that the way America’s is designed geographically that just really speaks to me, combined with how little of us actually have ownership at the place we work (most...
There’s like a wave of knowledge that the way America’s is designed geographically that just really speaks to me, combined with how little of us actually have ownership at the place we work (most of us work for somebody else).
Stuff like https://m.youtube.com/@ClimateTown covers. There’s some stuff about mixed zoning as well and how that shapes places like Japan.
I said “plywood problem” because just think about the logistics of getting a piece of plywood to your home. How do you do it, why is it difficult, and what are the repercussions of some the decisions you might make to get that plywood home. I run into things like, I might by a larger SUV just to fit the plywood, but realistically how often do I buy plywood? Why can’t I just get it delivered, why is the cost associated with that such an issue?
Earlier I was thinking about how we can incentivize the buying (and therefore production) of smaller, lighter vehicles: More parking spots for small vehicles Adjust the price parking meters,...
Earlier I was thinking about how we can incentivize the buying (and therefore production) of smaller, lighter vehicles:
More parking spots for small vehicles
Adjust the price parking meters, tickets, and highway and bridge tolls for car size
Reduced apartment garage parking rental because it's easy to double park
I've been thinking about buying a used Smart Car or at most a BMW i3 to scoot around San Francisco in.
I was thinking about how it's unfair that I'd pay the same parking costs as a big SUV even if I would take half its parking space or less. I really should be paying half the meter price, because another whole Smart Car could also fit in and utilize the same space.
I really do like ideas along these lines. I do wonder what the limits should be or if there should be any or what implications there are for it though. For example, should there be a lot of moped...
I really do like ideas along these lines. I do wonder what the limits should be or if there should be any or what implications there are for it though. For example, should there be a lot of moped sized parking spots? As much as I like the idea of staying in a smaller car, I also don't think I would ever want to be riding around in a moped with all the horror stories I've heard of larger vehicles not seeing motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles etc. and to an extent there's obviously an element of this with smaller vehicles too, but I suppose there's some kind of balance there. I haven't done extensive research but presumably smaller cars are significantly safer than motorcycles and such just because you're fully surrounded and they can essentially build a steel cage around you and incorporate a few other safety elements that those 2 wheeled vehicles don't have.
I've seen trucks parked across "economy car" parking spaces. I almost feel like things like that are asking assholes to be assholes unless you can get an unbiased enforcement of it. Additionally,...
I've seen trucks parked across "economy car" parking spaces. I almost feel like things like that are asking assholes to be assholes unless you can get an unbiased enforcement of it.
Additionally, California (and other states) have a "commercial" vehicle registeration for pickups, which I believe originated with being a heavier load on roads. (You can [still?] spot them by their plates; typical passenger/"non commercial" plates are in the format 1AAA1111, but the commercial trucks are 1A111111.) As CA shifts towards less vehicle gas usage, with it goes the large revenue from gas taxes... so why not charge the registration fee based on the weight? As scroll_lock mentioned, the roads are taking a severe hit based on vehicle weight, so why not have them compensate for the usage they're imposing?
Of course, this would pop EV owners right in the daddy bags, while scooping up the SUVs and likely a lot of others as well. I would love to own a smaller option (I have been eyeing options like Fiat) for my next car, simply because I do not feel that an EV is actually good overall for the environment yet (not due to reduction of carbon emissions, but to most of the other reasons pointed out here -- and that mining for the materials for the batteries isn't doing service to the world either), but in my current life situation, it's unfortunately not feasible.
I agree that parking spaces should be charged according to size. I don't know how one would technically accomplish that. It's unclear to me how a parking space would autonomously differentiate...
I agree that parking spaces should be charged according to size. I don't know how one would technically accomplish that. It's unclear to me how a parking space would autonomously differentiate between a small and large vehicle. Lacking such technology and relying on variable rates according to the space occupied, it would seem unfair to charge small vehicle owners for occupying a space that could theoretically also take a larger vehicle. And neither a public streets department nor a private parking garage owner would want to make variable-length parking spaces along streets when they could just make all of them the same size.
Registration and tolls should certainly be scaled far more than they presently are with vehicle height, length, width, and weight (mass). I think weight is the most important metric here, but having so many large vehicles is a safety hazard and a public nuisance, as well as contributing to uneconomic sprawl.
I'm just spitballing here, but right now I'm imagining a system where parking spots consist of 5' sub-blocks marked out on the road (instead of one monolithic block like we have now), and then at...
I'm just spitballing here, but right now I'm imagining a system where parking spots consist of 5' sub-blocks marked out on the road (instead of one monolithic block like we have now), and then at the electronic parking meter you would input how many sub-blocks your car occupies. This information is then somehow made available to parking enforcers to verify.
Petrol cars also benefit from being lighter, so why didn't this start sooner? I don't think this is entirely EV inspired and that this is partially because some parts can now be reduced in size...
Petrol cars also benefit from being lighter, so why didn't this start sooner? I don't think this is entirely EV inspired and that this is partially because some parts can now be reduced in size and weight where they couldn't before.
Racecars have seen continuous improvement in weight management and I guarantee some of these techniques have been implemented into regular cars too. Before EV range was even a thought in someone's mind, you could sell a car on mileage.
I'm not sure if EVs are fully the reason why, though I see substantial benefits because these batteries are so damned heavy. My own hybrid is a couple hundred KGs heavier than the non-hybrid version and it would do well to be slimmed down.
Consumer demand for larger vehicles (SUVs, light trucks) has outweighed consumer preference for energy-efficient vehicles for at least a decade. Average MPG ratings have been dropping steadily as...
Consumer demand for larger vehicles (SUVs, light trucks) has outweighed consumer preference for energy-efficient vehicles for at least a decade. Average MPG ratings have been dropping steadily as a result.
While many consumers would rather have a large, heavy ICE than a small ICE, some of them would also rather have a big EV than a big ICE. Their preferences have fundamentally changed to "I want big car" (baseline), but they still have other (secondary) preferences. These are manifold: environmental concerns, fuel savings, noise, feelings, vibes, in-vehicle storage space, hype, cults of personality, etc. (It is ironic to include fuel savings on that list; the takeaway that it has always been a concern, but luxury and comfort [size] is paramount.)
It is expensive for automakers to invest into weight-saving manufacturing techniques. Since consumers have been completely uninterested in fuel efficiency since SUVs began taking over markets, there has just been little impetus to make progress here. Automakers have (very incrementally) improved efficiency for many engines, typically because they were forced to by the EPA, but the weight of the chassis or electronic equipment was not something the EPA has necessarily cared much about. Since EVs have come onto the scene, and weight is a uniquely pertinent issue for them, consumers have begun paying attention to this metric more.
Petrol cars also benefit from being heavier. "Large cars are safer", is the common refrain, and it's due to basic F=MA. If you're bigger than the other guy, then you take less damage. What's more,...
Petrol cars also benefit from being lighter, so why didn't this start sooner?
Petrol cars also benefit from being heavier. "Large cars are safer", is the common refrain, and it's due to basic F=MA. If you're bigger than the other guy, then you take less damage.
What's more, fuel-efficiency regulations in the US (and most car companies worldwide prioritize being able to sell in the US market) actually discourage small vehicles, as smaller cars are required to have higher fuel-efficiency. In other words, if it's too expensive to meet the fuel-efficiency requirements of your car, then the fuel-efficiency regulations incentivize making the car bigger.
I don't think it applies to European automakers, but I'll admit I don't know enough to make a definitive statement so I'll leave it at a reluctance to assume this is the case everywhere.
I don't think it applies to European automakers, but I'll admit I don't know enough to make a definitive statement so I'll leave it at a reluctance to assume this is the case everywhere.
Afaik it does apply to European automakers as well, but indirectly through a different mechanism - emission tax. Bigger cars are usually more expensive so they subsidize it more. This is also one...
Afaik it does apply to European automakers as well, but indirectly through a different mechanism - emission tax. Bigger cars are usually more expensive so they subsidize it more. This is also one of the reasons why EVs tend to be big more often. Part of the profits is directly used to subsidize emission tax from cheaper, lower added value cars.
Subsidies do not target bigger cars specifically, in fact I'd pay more tax for a heavier car (wegenbelasting in my case). But, Europe and the EU not being monolithic, you may be right about...
Subsidies do not target bigger cars specifically, in fact I'd pay more tax for a heavier car (wegenbelasting in my case). But, Europe and the EU not being monolithic, you may be right about certain tax and subsidy rulings depending on the country.
Yes, I didn't mean that, I meant that bigger cars usually have more added value for the manufacturer because they tend to be more expensive and more "premium", so it's easier for the final price...
Subsidies do not target bigger cars specifically
Yes, I didn't mean that, I meant that bigger cars usually have more added value for the manufacturer because they tend to be more expensive and more "premium", so it's easier for the final price to cover the tax for each car and then some. And then the manufacturers can use the profits to cover the losses from emission tax of cheaper ICE vehicles, because their profits are slimmer. As in use higher profits from one class of cars to pay for emission tax of another another class of cars, that bring less money but the manufacturers still want to keep selling them in order to keep their place in the market.
Archive link (IA link). Heavy automobiles are harmful to society and their weight should be universally reduced wherever possible. Problems include, but are not limited to:
Electric vehicles are particularly heavy due to traditional lithium-ion battery composition. Automakers don't care about human life, but they do recognize that "range anxiety" is a visible emotion among capital-wielding consumers. To maximize consumer spending on automobiles, they have decided, finally, that making their cars less heavy would be beneficial.
Most of the changes manufacturers are investigating are pretty minor:
That'll get you a few more miles, but battery weight remains the crux of the issue, so some manufacturers are focusing on that instead:
Solid-state batteries are not yet commercially viable for automobiles. However, recent tests from Volkswagen suggest that lifespan duration is stronger than lithium-ion batteries. The article claims that some companies are "mass producing these cells, having largely solved all other issues on a lab scale." Key phrase is "lab scale"; I think "mass production" might be an overstatement, but this does seem like promising technology.
It's also worth noting that virtually all EVs currently on the market are large and heavy SUVs and pickup trucks. Moving this much mass requires even larger and heavier batteries, which further reduces range. So as a separate problem from the weight of speakers and batteries, having smaller and more lightweight sedans would go a long way toward addressing range anxiety and would also provide a useful vehicle that kills fewer Vulnerable Road Users (VRUs).
*in the U.S., outside the U.S. there is more choice available in more reasonable sizes. Having said that, also outside the U.S. there is more choice available the bigger the model.
US carmakers have been like that for a long time. In the 1970s my dad would go to American car dealers and they had every excuse for not having small cars in stock or why they couldn’t sell you one and if they did have one why you shouldn’t buy it. (One dealer told my dad an AMC Gremlin was a “piece of shit” and my dad found out the dealer was right and traded it in within 18 months.)
In the last 10 years Honda and Toyota dealers got the same disease. We had to settle for a used Fit because they didn’t have any new Fits because “the factory washed out in a flood” but they had 100 HR-Vs in a row made in the same factory that nobody wanted to buy,
Unfortunately he who pays the piper calls the tune so the automobile press incessantly repeats that American consumers insist on XXXL trucks or we hate hatchbacks (funny every S.U.V. is a hatchback… if anything consumers have no interest in sedans). There is some truth in that but he fact is that the dealer always wants you to get a size a few sizes larger than you want because from their viewpoint it is a disaster that you buy a $20k car and drive it for ten years when you could have bought a $40k car.)
This kills me. The HRV is just a shitty SUV thats smaller than a CRV and I'm guessing smaller inside than the Fit. Also the hate for minivans! It has been a popular thing among a certain class of moms to refuse to own/drive a minivan and instead insist on buying (more expensive, inefficient, larger yet smaller inside) XL SUVs. I'll grant that a mid sized SUV (like a CRV) is worth the trade off but I don't believe there is a legitimate argument to own one instead of a minivan or other vehicle.
As a Gen Xer I think anybody who got driven around in a minivan in the 1980s has memories of being packed around like a suitcase and those feelings of a lack of agency means you'd never drive one no matter what. My understanding is that younger people who didn't have that experience are more likely to perceive the practicality.
(My favorite conspiracy theory, which nobody else seems to accept, is that General Motors invented the schoolbus to make you hate the idea of riding the bus.)
I'm a millennial and I'm seeing this attitude from other millennials that both did or didn't have a minivan growing up. We had a minivan growing up as well; I don't have an issue with them but my sister is one of these "never minivan" people.
That's not specific to a minivan though. If you felt this way about a minivan then people would of course have similar feelings towards any vehicle type their parents owned. I don't see people how grew up in a Honda Accord saying "I REFUSE to own a mid sized sedan!" as adults.
I will say, this is one of the key reasons I think Hydrogen is the future. Here's an older study, which is a fairly accessible look at how compressed hydrogen (fuel cells included) will allow for far lighter vehicles than almost any traditional battery.
It's not there, yet. My money is that the time will come when there's a resource crisis ala the 70's gas crisis that results in making it economical to make a massive pivot.
There's a decent chance that in 20 years, a lot of our solid-state batteries will be hydrogen, especially if this pans out.
Hydrogen just has so many more issues than EVs, I really don't see them going anywhere other than maybe applications where energy density is crucial over every other variable (things like planes). I certainly don't think they'll ever be a good solution for a ICE car replacement as the logistics of transporting and storing large amounts of hydrogen on the scale that you'd need for American car usage is quite literally insane. Not to mention the massive inefficiencies of generating electricity, to then use that to create hydrogen, to then once again use that hydrogen to generate electricity via fuel cells.
Trucking around compressed hydrogen isn't really any significantly different than trucking around the gas we do now. If anything, it'll be less burdensome because we'll be able to build more decentralized processing facilities.
Build a wind farm at every water treatment and garbage facility in the country. There are thousands of these facilities dotting every populated area in the USA. Use to help process stormwater and wastewater, sanitizing and electrolizing it.
Capture the methane generated during water treatment and garbage processing. Strip and collect the carbon in the processing plant. Heck, doing this now to the fossil fuel natural gas is still preferrable to burning it directly. I'd even place a long bet that stripping the oil we use now down to hydrogen would be a better alternative if it means shipping ligher cars sooner.
Along the coast, there will be a need for desalination facilities as it is. Baking in a bit of electrolysis as apart of that cycle is naturally complementary.
One of the biggest unsolved problems with green energy is reconciling its inconsistency with needing to provide base and peak loads. Right now, it's mostly natural gas doing that heavy lifting.
We're talking about trying to eliminate emissions, not just improve efficiency. It's nice when we can do both. But being able to half the weight of cars on the road will almost certainly make up for energy losses from conversion.
Gasoline doesn't need to be stored at incredibly high pressure and low temperatures. It would cost trillions of dollars to refit every gas station with the proper infrastructure to service hydrogen cars. Generating hydrogen isn't the difficult part; its the cost of generating, storing, and distributing that really adds up. By the time you get to the end of the line, you've lost the vast majority of the initial energy you put in to efficiency and transmission losses. Something like 80% total loss of energy over the lifecycle of the process.
It's high pressure or low temps...doesn't need to be both.
It's going to cost trillions of dollars to get a needed number of charging stations at every gas station anyhow. Gonna need a lot more than 1-2 per station if every car on the road is an EV. Cost of retrofit is a wash.
You also probably wouldn't need to retrofit every gas station in the country. The specific density of compressed hydrogen is so much higher than gasoline you could drop car weights and increase ranges to 1k miles or more.
You are either storing it at -253 C, 5000 PSI or 10000 PSI. Those are highly danger temperatures and pressures. I would not want to be in car crash where a cryogenic container gets breached, even less so for a high pressure vessel. People still to die in boiler accidents where the water boilers operate around 200 PSI, H is stored at orders of magnitudes higher PSI.
I'll take a Lithium Ion fire over a pressure vessel failure or cryogenic failure.
You may be interested to know the safety standards. 10k tanks have been safe for quite some time now. Bullet test video. Highly pressurized hydrogen will burn more like a torch or a quick fireball than a bomb going off or perpetual burn of a lithium fire....presuming enough oxygen can get in the escaping fuel to ignite it. Studies show that pressurized hydrogen is no more dangerous than other fuels.
Cryogenic storage outside of industrial facilities is just....not a thing.
That was a hole versus a crack, show me the same test when its an impact from a blunt object causing a fracture rather than large high caliber relatively large route traveling at super sonic speeds. Not to mention, venting hydrogen after an accident with a plethora of ignition sources doesn't strike me as good idea.
That hydrogen tank vented it's entire contents in seconds so all it takes is it to find an ignition source, and there are plenty to be found around cars. Load of relays, which can arc, a dangling brake light with a shredded power wire lightly touching the frame, some idiot with a cigarette, etc. Show me that same test with an ignition source about 10 ft away.
Check the other link, about the studies showing no more dangerous. They get into that. No video for that one though. They used a 12.5mm rod to make the hole, which is just slightly smaller than a 50cal round.
If you'd like to know more, here's another crush test.
It's somewhat counterintuitive: Highly pressurized hydrogen is more safe than no-pressure hydrogen. Because the gas is above the upper explosion limit, there's no way for enough oxygen to reach the gas to ignite it before it disperses. If the hydrogen was low or no pressure, a rupture could cause an explosion if the hydrogen was above the lower explosion limit.
You're not going to need nearly as many public EV charging stations as you have gas pumps.
Something like 2/3 of homes are single-family. Most of them can charge at home. The need for public charging is going to be for road trips and people who can't charge at home for any of several reasons.
EVs are a different beast. In the most common scenarios you're not driving 75%+ of your range before you refill like you do with a gas car or you would with hydrogen.
I think it's worthwhile to continue hydrogen development. Maybe it could have a place as a gasoline successor in the future. But you're going to have a hard sell if you want me to give up my EV for a hydrogen car. Never having to stop at a pump is incredibly convenient.
Until we reach 100% saturation of 0 carbon energy (which will likely take decades if not hundreds of years) improving efficiency is the most important way to reduce emissions. Every watt of energy we waste is another watt that is going to need to be generated by another method, often natural gas or worst case coal. Remember that while we're up to a respectable 30%~ renewables for the world's electrical generation, electrical usage is only a small fraction of the world's total energy usage for things like industrial heating and logistical transportation. The best path we have towards global decarbonization is to reduce energy waste as much as we possibly can, while also increasing our renewables production.
I encourage you to check out this video about the mathematics behind Hydrogen cars. The subject of this video is actually a combustion hydrogen engine instead of a fuel cell car, but he does go over a lot of the same issues that both cars face.
It’s that same issue over and over of we live too far from the things we need and have to drive everywhere to get it. Could call this version the plywood problem.
Range anxiety isn't related to real-world housing and development patterns. Given the current (usable, workable, functional, and adequate) state of US EV charging infrastructure along highways and arterials, it is a purely psychological and frivolous hypothetical concern for an overwhelming portion of the population.
As far as "distances we need and have to [travel]" on a regular basis go, 99.2% of trips are under 100 miles and 97.7% of trips are under 50 miles. A typical EV range is 250 miles and models exist with ranges of 500 miles or more. There are very few places in the country where an EV charging station is not available within 50 miles; and those locations are geographically overrepresented relative to the country's population distribution, which is relatively clustered (even low-density suburbs are more concentrated along corridors than we might think). Range anxiety is not a concern for quotidian trips.
When people express concern over EV range, they are usually contriving an unrealistic scenario in which they drive several hundred miles (statistically rare) along non-interestate and non-state routes (very improbable). i.e. they come up with situations in which they are absolutely nowhere near EV infrastructure, which is actually rather plentiful along highways. While there are ultra-rural consumers for which this is a relevant possibility, "we all" do not live in places where it is.
With respect to range, the problem with EV adoption is not actually the density of charging infrastructure, it is the public's subjective and unreasonable impression of that infrastructure. Because of that perception, we have to over-build infrastructure to support voluntary shifts to electric. I'm OK with that because psychology will always be a relevant part of infrastructure, but careful readers ought to recognize that it is not strictly logical or accurate. This imagined need for 300+ mile EV ranges leads manufacturers to produce cars with much larger batteries, which significantly increases costs. This is one reason why there are very few affordable EVs in American markets.
Rather than long-distance range, real and significant issues with EV charging are much more to do with charging standards (now resolved), charger reliability (a concern), and hyper-local charging availability in urban areas (limited to nonexistent in multi-dwelling apartment units). There are many specific problems with EVs, but range anxiety is generally not a real one.
As a sidenote: in addition to not needing to drive as far as people anxious about range believe, it is not true either that most Americans (83% of whom live within a broadly urbanized area) technically need to drive absolutely everywhere. This is a voluntary lifestyle decision which in many cases is reasonable in practice. All the same, in most areas the census would classify as urbanized, various alternative methods of transportation do exist and are effectively used by residents. Thus for many people who live in broadly urbanized areas and own ICEs (and could own EVs without significant trouble), it is voluntary to use such a vehicle and its perceived unquestionable utility is not an immutable fact of life.
Well spoken, but I have a hard time siding with you because I’m in the group of people that does drive 300+ miles every month, and sometimes more often than that
Additionally the places I drive to are remote, rocky, or muddy. For me range anxiety isn’t just an unreasonable fear, it’s a definite limitation that prevents me from having an electric vehicle as my daily driver
I would love to have an electric setup one day, but until range improvements are made I don’t see my next vehicle being electric. Which honestly really sucks because while I LOVE those new Rivians I just can’t sacrifice the ability to make regular long-distance trips
I do also live in Texas though, where you do drive substantially more than most other states where things tend to be closer together. The bulk of my long-distance driving is from the Houston area, to West Texas (which is about a 6-7 hour drive that’s 400 miles one way)
Your use-case might be one to which my remarks don't apply. Looking at the Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center map for NACS chargers (the new standard), the area of the United States where there are fewer chargers to begin with is east of California and west of the Mississippi River. This distribution mostly follows population density. i.e. places where there no chargers contain almost no people (drivers).
Texas has a lot of EV charging stations, but almost all of them are in the Texas Triangle (Austin/San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston). If you zoom in on the maps you can see just how many there are (and a population density map will show you how many people there are in those cities too, and how few in rural counties). There are clusters in some other Texan cities, including El Paso, but the majority of the Texas desert is completely devoid of NACS chargers (and, again, people). All of the western chargers in the state that aren't in cities are along highway routes. But if you're consistently spending a long period of time driving in non-populated places that aren't near highways, especially off-road, that infrastructure isn't accessible to you.
I just think it's very very important to recognize how much of an outlier your travel patterns are relative to both the statistically median person as well as most people on the distribution. Your use-case is very real and in your case, a BEV just isn't a good choice for you (in January 2024). I imagine you could do fine with a PHEV with a gas engine. Even if you're driving 400+ miles once or twice a month, ~95% of your trips are still probably under 50 miles and a hybrid engine would cover the majority of those.
The reason I phrased my comment a bit sternly (?) or absolutely was because the discourse around EVs directly affects market behavior and policy around the vehicles, for better or for worse. I see lots of ostensibly well-intentioned people make uninformed remarks about how they want an EV but omg the infrastructure is just sooo lacking and the range isn't enough. When it's people with your use-case saying this, OK. But usually (anecdotally and statistically), it is someone who lives in a house with a garage, in an eastern, coastal, or metropolitan suburb near lots of charging stations, and doesn't take 300+ mile off-road trips in West Texas.
Americans understand how big the United States is, but they don't understand that the typical person (including, for the most part, them) don't live in and will never ever go to the majority of that geographic area for any reason, nor will they have any desire to. Most of it is physically inaccessible by car anyway. To be honest the nation is better thought of as a network of nodes and edges and not a Cartesian plane; as long as these nodes have charging stations, our energy needs are met; so few drivers attempt to move oblong through two-and-a-half-dimensional space into rocky and unpaved West Texas that, for the purposes of public policy, their use-case must not be overstated to the detriment of environmental and other concerns.
In other words, yes. I hear everything you are saying. I am just wary of highlighting the incredibly niche edge cases of the 0.01% of people who routinely take extraordinarily long car journeys through truly desolate and remote wilderness areas. Though valid, when these domain-specific concerns are highlighted to a non-rigorous audience (the public), it reinforces a perception among that uninformed audience that EVs are a failure (for them), cannot work (for them), and should be discouraged (for everyone), etc., even though those statements are true only for a specific domain or use-case, not universally. These are people for whom EVs are a perfectly valid vehicle and whose opinion is important in shaping public policy, because we live in a democratic country with freedom of expression. So whenever I talk about edge cases, I always try to be explicit with a preface emphasizing what the majority of the population, including the majority of readers/listeners, actually needs.
P.S. if you have thoughts on what kind of non-fossil fuels would be useful for your use-case, I would be interested in hearing more about that. I still wonder if your use-case cannot be solved with a slightly higher density of chargers, with or without slightly more range. I'm guessing you aren't driving a Lucid Air (516 miles) offroad, but a GMC Hummer (329 miles)... potentially? Even in West Texas, unless you are spending days at a time driving in areas that don't have any proper road access (like off-roading in circles?), I think infrastructure could still be accessible with a little bit more government investment. Anywhere there is a gas station, there could be an EV charging station, in theory. Anywhere there is electricity, there could be a charger. In a "charging desert" with a radius of 195 miles (the most anywhere in the country: near Hays, Montana), a single new charger in the center of that "desert" reduces the radius in half... just one charger! In Texas, I don't think any charging desert exists with a radius above ~75 miles (e.g. Knox City to Abilene). Were a charger installed in Knox City, the worst radii in that part of the state would be under 40 miles. Still not ideal, but also not unworkable by any means. Just making a visual guess from the map, I think it would only take around 25 well-positioned EV charging stations in Texas to completely eliminate charging desert radii above 50 miles. I think that once you get near a 50-mile radius, even edge cases start to be solved, including, potentially, yours.
I want to amplify that the people with range anxiety are often doing a lot more than 3/1000 trips over 100 miles. I am doing 4 (wad planning 5) within 7 weeks, including one trip (plus the cancelled trip) being about a thousand miles each way. I grew up and have parents + sister's family a bit over 250 miles away so I drive there for most birthdays and holidays plus several other events throughout the year because of all my connections to the area. I also drive 250 miles each way in a day a handful of times a year because my family has season tickets for a college football team. So that's maybe a dozen trips throughout the year. So not a ton, but an average of once a month is still relatively common.
But I do drive an EV, a Tesla. I really hate Elon Musk (much more than when I bought my car), but it was the only reasonable option for me and my needs if I wanted an EV. There are four different areas with superchargers along the route to my hometown, excluding the numerous superchargers once you get into the suburbs. On the way to the football games, I believe there are four places I can stop, depending on my route, but I've still had a fairly harrowing trip because my car was lying about its remaining charge after one supercharger stop. That was frustrating.
But otherwise, not only did Tesla have the only geographically reliable charger network, but they also had the only reliable chargers. I have heard horror stories from people having to drive to multiple third party chargers before they could find one that actually worked. The only times I've had trouble with chargers were the one time that I tried to use a generic charger and the freakish -20° F storm around Christmas 2022 when there was just ice inside the plug. Otherwise, Tesla has served me well, even if I kind of hate the car sometimes because it's too smart for its own good. But we still use the ICE car when we need guaranteed reliability on trips or when we need room for our 125 lb dog who absolutely ruins car interiors. God, that car is disgusting now.
Out of curiosity, what model/year is your vehicle? I'm not a Tesla owner, I'm just curious because this is a pretty shocking and unacceptable thing to experience from your car, especially one with a lot of tech in it.
From what you might have ascertained, is it your experience that this happens regularly? All the time? Only in certain usage patterns, like longer journeys? Certain temperatures?
This is a kind of baffling and ridiculous problem to me. I'm not an engineer and I understand that the technicalities of the software might be difficult to get right, but I don't know how a company like Tesla can feel good about releasing a luxury vehicle with shoddy range calculation software considering they're still underdogs in the auto industry at large. They don't have that much leverage in the market.
I mean, I guess I shouldn't really be surprised by that sort of behavior from Elon Musk given the recent lawsuits in California over lost range in cold weather, but it is kind of absurd and I wonder if your issue is partially just a technical problem with the software more than an engineering problem with the machine.
This seems to be what I hear as well. I know that the federal government has allocated $100 million toward improving reliability figures (apparently 4% of individual chargers are unreliable?). I wonder if the switch to NACS and improved maintenance regulations (or just funding) might not address this.
22 Y
It has only happened the one time AFAIK. I guess it may not have been lying about the charge, just the remaining range, but it got the range remaining wrong by 30+ miles (I stopped to charge at a hotel 27 miles from the supercharger and I would have started with some cushion) after I had been driving on the interstate all day--like I said, it was 250 miles out and then I charged 35 miles into the return journey and only made it 99 miles to the hotel.
I definitely remember the estimated charge at destination dropping below 10% (it eventually got below 0%) and I eventually turned off all my heat and music and slowed to 55 mph and the estimates kept dropping, which seems like it should be nearly impossible given the circumstances.
Other than this, Tesla's estimates are pretty spot-on, with allowances made for changing speeds, etc. I believe I have driven for 2+ hours and gotten to a supercharger with the exact original charge estimate many times. I have no idea what went wrong that one time. I even elected to stay on the highway and pass a few other superchargers while driving through one town because it seemed reasonable that I would arrive with plenty of charge remaining.
Oh.
I know I come down like a load of bricks sometimes. I hold an axiom that common apathetic or nihilistic refrains about transportation infrastructure, which are usually not technical or scientific, aren't useful. Virtually all of our problems can be solved with policy and engineering, but we have to understand them first.
There’s like a wave of knowledge that the way America’s is designed geographically that just really speaks to me, combined with how little of us actually have ownership at the place we work (most of us work for somebody else).
Stuff like https://m.youtube.com/@ClimateTown covers. There’s some stuff about mixed zoning as well and how that shapes places like Japan.
I said “plywood problem” because just think about the logistics of getting a piece of plywood to your home. How do you do it, why is it difficult, and what are the repercussions of some the decisions you might make to get that plywood home. I run into things like, I might by a larger SUV just to fit the plywood, but realistically how often do I buy plywood? Why can’t I just get it delivered, why is the cost associated with that such an issue?
Earlier I was thinking about how we can incentivize the buying (and therefore production) of smaller, lighter vehicles:
I've been thinking about buying a used Smart Car or at most a BMW i3 to scoot around San Francisco in.
I was thinking about how it's unfair that I'd pay the same parking costs as a big SUV even if I would take half its parking space or less. I really should be paying half the meter price, because another whole Smart Car could also fit in and utilize the same space.
I really do like ideas along these lines. I do wonder what the limits should be or if there should be any or what implications there are for it though. For example, should there be a lot of moped sized parking spots? As much as I like the idea of staying in a smaller car, I also don't think I would ever want to be riding around in a moped with all the horror stories I've heard of larger vehicles not seeing motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles etc. and to an extent there's obviously an element of this with smaller vehicles too, but I suppose there's some kind of balance there. I haven't done extensive research but presumably smaller cars are significantly safer than motorcycles and such just because you're fully surrounded and they can essentially build a steel cage around you and incorporate a few other safety elements that those 2 wheeled vehicles don't have.
I've seen trucks parked across "economy car" parking spaces. I almost feel like things like that are asking assholes to be assholes unless you can get an unbiased enforcement of it.
Additionally, California (and other states) have a "commercial" vehicle registeration for pickups, which I believe originated with being a heavier load on roads. (You can [still?] spot them by their plates; typical passenger/"non commercial" plates are in the format 1AAA1111, but the commercial trucks are 1A111111.) As CA shifts towards less vehicle gas usage, with it goes the large revenue from gas taxes... so why not charge the registration fee based on the weight? As scroll_lock mentioned, the roads are taking a severe hit based on vehicle weight, so why not have them compensate for the usage they're imposing?
Of course, this would pop EV owners right in the daddy bags, while scooping up the SUVs and likely a lot of others as well. I would love to own a smaller option (I have been eyeing options like Fiat) for my next car, simply because I do not feel that an EV is actually good overall for the environment yet (not due to reduction of carbon emissions, but to most of the other reasons pointed out here -- and that mining for the materials for the batteries isn't doing service to the world either), but in my current life situation, it's unfortunately not feasible.
Increased registration costs with weight, but with some kind of downward adjustment/discount for EVs could be a thing.
Yeah, I'd have no problems with some sort of discount unrelated to the weight for that.
I agree that parking spaces should be charged according to size. I don't know how one would technically accomplish that. It's unclear to me how a parking space would autonomously differentiate between a small and large vehicle. Lacking such technology and relying on variable rates according to the space occupied, it would seem unfair to charge small vehicle owners for occupying a space that could theoretically also take a larger vehicle. And neither a public streets department nor a private parking garage owner would want to make variable-length parking spaces along streets when they could just make all of them the same size.
Registration and tolls should certainly be scaled far more than they presently are with vehicle height, length, width, and weight (mass). I think weight is the most important metric here, but having so many large vehicles is a safety hazard and a public nuisance, as well as contributing to uneconomic sprawl.
I'm just spitballing here, but right now I'm imagining a system where parking spots consist of 5' sub-blocks marked out on the road (instead of one monolithic block like we have now), and then at the electronic parking meter you would input how many sub-blocks your car occupies. This information is then somehow made available to parking enforcers to verify.
So:
Petrol cars also benefit from being lighter, so why didn't this start sooner? I don't think this is entirely EV inspired and that this is partially because some parts can now be reduced in size and weight where they couldn't before.
Racecars have seen continuous improvement in weight management and I guarantee some of these techniques have been implemented into regular cars too. Before EV range was even a thought in someone's mind, you could sell a car on mileage.
I'm not sure if EVs are fully the reason why, though I see substantial benefits because these batteries are so damned heavy. My own hybrid is a couple hundred KGs heavier than the non-hybrid version and it would do well to be slimmed down.
Consumer demand for larger vehicles (SUVs, light trucks) has outweighed consumer preference for energy-efficient vehicles for at least a decade. Average MPG ratings have been dropping steadily as a result.
While many consumers would rather have a large, heavy ICE than a small ICE, some of them would also rather have a big EV than a big ICE. Their preferences have fundamentally changed to "I want big car" (baseline), but they still have other (secondary) preferences. These are manifold: environmental concerns, fuel savings, noise, feelings, vibes, in-vehicle storage space, hype, cults of personality, etc. (It is ironic to include fuel savings on that list; the takeaway that it has always been a concern, but luxury and comfort [size] is paramount.)
It is expensive for automakers to invest into weight-saving manufacturing techniques. Since consumers have been completely uninterested in fuel efficiency since SUVs began taking over markets, there has just been little impetus to make progress here. Automakers have (very incrementally) improved efficiency for many engines, typically because they were forced to by the EPA, but the weight of the chassis or electronic equipment was not something the EPA has necessarily cared much about. Since EVs have come onto the scene, and weight is a uniquely pertinent issue for them, consumers have begun paying attention to this metric more.
Petrol cars also benefit from being heavier. "Large cars are safer", is the common refrain, and it's due to basic F=MA. If you're bigger than the other guy, then you take less damage.
What's more, fuel-efficiency regulations in the US (and most car companies worldwide prioritize being able to sell in the US market) actually discourage small vehicles, as smaller cars are required to have higher fuel-efficiency. In other words, if it's too expensive to meet the fuel-efficiency requirements of your car, then the fuel-efficiency regulations incentivize making the car bigger.
I don't think it applies to European automakers, but I'll admit I don't know enough to make a definitive statement so I'll leave it at a reluctance to assume this is the case everywhere.
Afaik it does apply to European automakers as well, but indirectly through a different mechanism - emission tax. Bigger cars are usually more expensive so they subsidize it more. This is also one of the reasons why EVs tend to be big more often. Part of the profits is directly used to subsidize emission tax from cheaper, lower added value cars.
Subsidies do not target bigger cars specifically, in fact I'd pay more tax for a heavier car (wegenbelasting in my case). But, Europe and the EU not being monolithic, you may be right about certain tax and subsidy rulings depending on the country.
Yes, I didn't mean that, I meant that bigger cars usually have more added value for the manufacturer because they tend to be more expensive and more "premium", so it's easier for the final price to cover the tax for each car and then some. And then the manufacturers can use the profits to cover the losses from emission tax of cheaper ICE vehicles, because their profits are slimmer. As in use higher profits from one class of cars to pay for emission tax of another another class of cars, that bring less money but the manufacturers still want to keep selling them in order to keep their place in the market.