Comment box Scope: summary, personal reactions Tone: optimistic, excited Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none I have seen some comments on this website recently about how electric vehicles are doomed...
Exemplary
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Scope: summary, personal reactions
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I have seen some comments on this website recently about how electric vehicles are doomed and ICEs will remain dominant for a long time and that sort of thing. I suppose you can feel pessimistic about the technology if you want. But both the market and the tech are advancing with such rapidity that personally I find it hard to feel anything other than excited.
The former GOP president #45, who was recently convicted by a jury of his peers of business fraud with the intent to conceal additional crimes, has stated that if re-elected he would "stop EVs". But I think the market is in a place where automakers wouldn't want that. I agree with the article linked in this paragraph that they would lobby an environment-hostile government to stick with the electric pivot.
Anyway this article talks about how electric vehicles are quickly becoming more and more affordable and appealing to wider and wider demographics of people:
Recently, Mr. Lawrence said, customers have been snapping up used Teslas for a little over $20,000, after applying a $4,000 federal tax credit.
“We’re seeing younger people,” Mr. Lawrence said. “We are seeing more blue-collar and entry-level white-collar people. The purchase price of the car has suddenly become in reach.”
Prices are falling because of increased competition, lower raw-material costs and more efficient manufacturing. Federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for new electric cars, often augmented by thousands of dollars in state incentives, push prices even lower.
At the same time, technology is improving quickly and making electric vehicles more practical. Cars that can travel more than 300 miles on a fully charged battery are becoming common, and charging times are dropping below 30 minutes. The number of fast chargers, which can top up a battery in less than half an hour, grew 36 percent from April 2023 to April 2024.
Carmakers including Tesla, Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the owner of Jeep, have announced plans for electric vehicles that would sell new for as little as $25,000.
Just look at the chart in that link. In two years, the number of charging stations nationwide doubled. It's exceedingly uncommon to be more than 50 miles from a charging station, and indeed fairly uncommon to be more than 25 miles. In densely populated areas, they are becoming omnipresent. The federal government's Alternative Fuels Station Locator map demonstrates this: even just looking at fast NACS chargers, there are a ton of stations near population centers and along all long-distance routes. If you're going a long distance, it's not an issue. At the rate new stations are being added, just think about how accessible charging will be in another year or two, let alone five or ten. Range anxiety is fast becoming a meaningless concern:
Mr. Slowik’s [research] group estimates that cars and sport-utility vehicles capable of traveling 400 miles on a full battery will cost less than cars with internal combustion engines in 2030, even before taking into account government subsidies. (Pickup trucks, which require bigger batteries, will take a little longer, not reaching parity for 400-mile models until 2033.)
There are already EVs on the market with ranges of 500+ miles. Not a lot, but the technology is there now. 2030 sounds far away for that to become truly mass-market, but there are already plenty of EVs with 250+ mile ranges which could suit lots of people. Regardless, that's only six years for 400-mile range EVs to become economically dominant. Not a long time at all. Many or perhaps most people seriously do not need a 400-mile range on a car to begin with; the average car trip in the US is 12 miles and 98% of car trips are under 50 miles. Even if you only charge your car at the office, or only at home, or only every few days, that's more than enough range.
Yes, we all take long road trips now and then... wait, do we? All of us? Probably not. In fact, 99.2% of trips are under 100 miles. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks this stuff. Only 0.1% -- one tenth of one percent -- of trips are above 500 miles. Many people actually do not take long road trips; or when they do, they break it into small segments. Plenty of people, especially if they have debilitating health conditions, drive for 100-150 miles at most.
People complain about long charging times for EVs, but I really can't imagine that you wouldn't be willing to take a few 20 or 30-minute breaks on a 500 mile road trip. Even if you don't have a health concern that forces you to stop, it's probably good for your health to stop every 50-100 miles anyway. Certainly good for your brain, and therefore safer: contrary to popular belief, it isn't safe to drive without breaks. You need time to rest.
Concerns about how range is reduced during winter are fair, but I don't think they should outright stop most people from buying an EV. I was talking to some friends recently who bought an EV SUV and they commented on it being a little lower during their winter trips (upstate NY in the cold). But they still managed to get to and from their destination. It was fine. The only problem they had was that they have a non-standard charging port, which limited where they could reasonably stop. However, this is an irrelevant issue for new car buyers because all new models have standardized NACS chargers now.
With base ranges of 300+ miles becoming typical, a drop of 10-30% is not nothing, but shouldn't stop you from getting where you need to go. If you are in the frigid northern reaches of Alaska, maybe an EV isn't for you, but that isn't where the carbon-emitting population is distributed.
Occasional inconveniences, or perceived inconveniences, may be worth it considering there are many cost savings to be had:
Electricity is almost always cheaper per mile than gasoline, and battery-powered vehicles don’t need oil changes, engine air filters or spark plugs. For people who drive a lot, electric cars may already be a better deal.
Whether or not you personally feel you're ready for an electric car, the market is showing acceleration:
There will be more than 100 fully electric models for sale in the United States by next year, according to Cars.com, an online sales platform, double the number available last year [50].
As a point of comparison, there are approximately 500 new car models on the market in the US in total (according to my search). If 20% of those are full EVs, and some additional portion are PHEVs, I think that's a good sign.
The article mentions that people who live in apartments don't necessarily have a way to charge their vehicles unless landlords install such amenities. But here's a radical idea... right now, it's OK to see more uptake of EVs in suburban areas, where people can charge their cars in a garage, than urban ones.
The reason to encourage EV adoption is to reduce environmental emissions: the fewer emissions the better. People who live in cities drive less to begin with. From a quantitative perspective, a market strategy which targets and retains suburban drivers (which are a larger cohort than urban city-dwellers to begin with) results in the greatest immediate emissions reduction. It also puts the auto market in a much stronger position: people in suburbs are more likely to rely on their vehicles for transportation, as opposed to people in cities, for whom they are often luxuries; therefore having this fairly captive market can ensure that manufacturing chains remain profitable for a consistent period of time, enabling the technology to improve even more quickly and therefore become more suitable for other demographics.
While I don't agree with the sentiment that EVs are doomed and ICE will keep going, I also don't think EVs are a long-term transport solution. Manufacturing EVs takes a huge amount of energy and...
While I don't agree with the sentiment that EVs are doomed and ICE will keep going, I also don't think EVs are a long-term transport solution. Manufacturing EVs takes a huge amount of energy and generates lots of waste products.
EVs also tend to be heavier than ICEs, not to mention the general inflation of vehicle size over time, which increases tyre use and generates microplastics.
A better long-term solution would be to better support alternative transport like ebikes and public transit. It would require cities to redesign their road networks to make room and part of that would make them less car-friendly, but cheaper EVs don't help people in very low income areas who can't even afford a used ICE car right now.
The problem is that too many communities have spent the last 70 years building around car infrastructure. Making my city walkable or even bikable would mean demolishing whole communities and...
A better long-term solution would be to better support alternative transport like ebikes and public transit. It would require cities to redesign their road networks to make room and part of that would make them less car-friendly, but cheaper EVs don't help people in very low income areas who can't even afford a used ICE car right now.
The problem is that too many communities have spent the last 70 years building around car infrastructure. Making my city walkable or even bikable would mean demolishing whole communities and rebuilding from the ground up. That is simply never going to happen. Even if you could find the money for it, voters will never go for it, because they don't want to be kicked out of their homes.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none This is false. Walkability and bikability does not require the demolition of homes or existing...
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Making my city walkable or even bikable would mean demolishing whole communities and rebuilding from the ground up.
This is false. Walkability and bikability does not require the demolition of homes or existing structures. Those are completely separate domains.
Current "bike paradises" like Amsterdam and Paris used to be ridiculously car-dependent. It took a few decades of planning and reinvestment, but they were able to extremely successfully revitalize their communities by designing streets with multi-modal transportation in mind.
The problem is that my house is so far away from groceries and other things that I can't realistically walk to them. And even if I could, how would I get all my groceries home? This is less of a...
The problem is that my house is so far away from groceries and other things that I can't realistically walk to them. And even if I could, how would I get all my groceries home?
This is less of a problem in a truly walkable neighborhood, where you live a block from your grocery store (or better, there's one on the bottom floor of your apartment building) and therefore don't feel the need to buy weeks worth of groceries in one trip. Where would you build a grocery store in my suburb without tearing down houses?
We invested too much in building horizontally instead of vertically, as well as segregating commercial and residential real-estate.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral, trying to be helpful Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: yes here and there I understand the dilemma you've posed, but this still has...
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Where would you build a grocery store in my suburb without tearing down houses?
I understand the dilemma you've posed, but this still has nothing to do with demolition inherently.
If you are a city planner and your goal is to make an area more walkable and bikable, you have many ways to do that:
Acquire easements through various properties in order to create small, non-intrusive walking paths to and from places people want to go. In most American suburbs, you "have" to drive because the extensive use of culs-de-sac to reduce through-traffic accidentally limits pedestrian and bicycle mobility. However, it is very easy to fix this problem by having pedestrian/bike-only paths between streets at appropriate places. That way, there is still no through-traffic, but people can get around on foot and by bike.
Rezone land to allow both residential and light commercial (non-industrial) use in order to encourage some commercial properties like grocery stores near where people live. Grocery stores don't have to be huge. A medium-sized corner store in your neighborhood is all you need for a lot of things. And consider building something that is more than 1 floor! (This is a little-known fact in the suburbs: indeed it is possible to build vertically!)
Find literally any vacant lot, large yard, or dilapidated structure on which to build a grocery store. If there are ZERO vacant lots or other places where you could conceivably build a small building within a couple miles of your home, you are not in a suburb, you are in a city. A grocery store doesn't necessarily need a gigantic parking lot, especially if the goal is to make something walkable. If you are in a suburb, there will be ample street parking anyway. (And FYI, if there are truly ZERO areas to build a new structure, some residential homeowners may voluntarily sell their property to a company which wants to build a grocery store there. People move homes all the time for any number of reasons. They don't have to be "kicked out.")
If your local town has a law requiring a minimum number of parking spaces for a commercial use, ask City Council to remove that law (it was arbitrary from the beginning, never scientific). Most commercial parking lots are oversized; Donald Shoup et al discuss this quite a lot in various publications. See Parking Reform Network. The zoning code can have recommendations, but it really shouldn't be a requirement.
Convert an automobile travel lane to a bike lane (ideally for each direction of travel) so that people can safely cycle on a street of importance.
Convert automobile travel lanes to bike lanes on MANY streets so that you have a network connecting useful destinations, rather than just one random road. (If this seems hard, remember that your local government spends millions of dollars every year building and widening roads.)
Erect physical protection between the automobile lanes and the bike lanes to make it safe to use. This can be concrete jersey barriers, a low-height concrete curb, trees, boxes of flowers, etc
Widen sidewalks and ensure that they meet all ADA requirements (currently, they probably don't).
Narrow intersections so that pedestrians crossing have to go shorter distances. This may be called a "curb bumpout" or similar.
Daylight intersections by making it illegal (ideally physically impossible) to park a car within about 10 feet of any intersection. This makes it safer to cross the street and encourages people to do it.
Decrease driving speed limits along most streets, especially streets where you might want to have a little more commercial activity. 40-50mph is often typical in American suburbs but this is quite dangerous. 25mph is plenty. It won't affect travel times as much as people think. It will also make walking and cycling much safer. In fact it will also make DRIVING much safer. And having slower traffic will make it more pleasant to be outside.
Install "traffic calming" measures such as raised crosswalks, speed humps (you can design them with firetrucks in mind, don't worry), roundabouts, clever road paint to psychologically encourage drivers to slow down, etc.
Additionally, automated speed cameras can be used to enforce the speed limit in places where physical infrastructure isn't feasible. (The technology is already being used in many cities; in Philadelphia it has reduced instances of speeding on a major arterial by 95%, from 200k/mo to like 10k/mo - much safer!)
Plant street trees and build small shade structures in order to make walking more hospitable. Trees also subconsciously encourage people to drive slower because their horizontal view is narrower.
Establish bus routes to and from destinations people actually want to go to, and provide bus shelters to make waiting for the bus a reasonable thing to do.
On arterial roads, designate one lane of travel in each direction as a bus-only lane. This will significantly improve public transportation times. It will also not negatively affect automobile throughput as much as you anticipate.
...more that I'm not going to write.
If you are actually interested in this topic, please read material published by the organization "Strong Towns." Several users here actually volunteer with them. They have some extremely good resources on how to make your small town a wonderful place to live instead of a car-dependent wasteland.
The problem is that my house is so far away from groceries and other things that I can't realistically walk to them. And even if I could, how would I get all my groceries home?
If you are an individual who seeks to acquire groceries without a car, you can:
Purchase an electric bicycle
Purchase a cargo attachment for the bike. This can either be saddlebags/similar and a backpack (this is what I do), or a cargo trailer
Go to the grocery store and put your groceries in whatever cargo configuration you have
While I think these are a lot of valid points, a few things i'd like to comment on: This is in most cases a requirement to stop time wasted fighting about it, because small businesses can get...
While I think these are a lot of valid points, a few things i'd like to comment on:
If your local town has a law requiring a minimum number of parking spaces for a commercial use, ask City Council to remove that law (it was arbitrary from the beginning, never scientific). Most commercial parking lots are oversized; Donald Shoupp et al discuss this quite a lot in various publications. See Parking Reform Network. The zoning code can have recommendations, but it really shouldn't be a requirement.
This is in most cases a requirement to stop time wasted fighting about it, because small businesses can get horribly screwed if some larger business is using up all the parking. It's a very common thing, especially if you're got a rental car company in your inline that's decided that they or their customers can just park all the extra cars in such a way that no one can get to your business.
Obviously if car reliance goes down this solves itself, but it's extremely hard to get everyone on board because they're 100% right to be worried that a country will half ass the attempt and they'll wind up screwed.
various numbers
So one of the big issues in larger countries is just weather. It gets up to 47/48 C here. Yes there's a lot you can do to bike in that, but the simple fact is that people don't want to (and that's of the people who physically can handle that), and they have the option not to. When its dangerously hot out and not bringing enough water can actually kill you, people are much more likely to opt for air conditioned cars. And that's before you get into elderly, children, etc.
To be clear I think a lot more effort needs to be made on making cities in the US more walkable/bikeable, but I don't think it'll every fully replace proper mass transit such as useful bus lines and rail where needed. Vegas already went through its "Well we just need to add more bike lanes" phase, and yeah turns out they aren't used a ton thanks to the weather (and also because many of them feel, or are, unsafe).
Comment box Scope: question, information Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none Can you please elaborate on your objection to the fact that there are several billion parking spots in a...
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Can you please elaborate on your objection to the fact that there are several billion parking spots in a country of about 285 million vehicles, many of which are not used frequently or at all? (And absolutely never all at once!) I do not understand what you're saying about car rental companies or how this pertains to the topic we're discussing.
The Parking Reform Network and Donald Shoup (who has a PhD and has studied this topic a looong time), along with quite a few other very qualified researchers, have done substantial academic analysis of cities which indicates that the complete waste of space which is the majority of parking lots bankrupts towns and cities. Strong Towns has some useful resources on this subject as well. I don't think we can just anecdote our way out of addressing this problem. Sprawl is not economical, and requiring arbitrarily large amounts of parking sprawl does not benefit society.
So one of the big issues in larger countries is just weather. It gets up to 47/48 C here.
This is a completely valid reason that someone may choose not to take a bike somewhere, but just because it gets hot some times of the day doesn't mean people can't bike at all.
The purpose of multi-modal transportation isn't to eliminate 100% of driving, it's to encourage people who are flexible to take other modes. Even a very small number of drivers switching to transit, cycling, or walking substantially improves access in our transportation network.
I would remark that if it's too physically dangerous to be outside in a place in the US, maybe we shouldn't build a city there, and maybe we should be making an effort to incentivize people to relocate over the next few decades. This is a very wealthy country with plenty of suitable places for people to live. Climate change will only make this worse. Instead of doubling down on air conditioning, maybe we should double down on sustainability. Just a thought.
To be clear I think a lot more effort needs to be made on making cities in the US more walkable/bikeable, but I don't think it'll every fully replace proper mass transit such as useful bus lines and rail where needed.
I didn't suggest that bikes can somehow replace all public transit, and pretty much no cycling advocate would ever argue for that. Cycling, local bus, bus rapid transit, light rail, and heavy rail all have unique niches in a city's transportation network. A good multi-modal network supports transfers across different modes, such as taking bikes on trains and buses and then biking the rest of the way somewhere.
Vegas already went through its "Well we just need to add more bike lanes" phase, and yeah turns out they aren't used a ton thanks to the weather (and also because many of them feel, or are, unsafe).
Having recently spent a decent bit of time in the desert, I can say that the latter point -- that most bike lanes cities build are unsafe -- is significantly more important than you seem to imply! To be honest, I would not mind cycling in Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc at all as long as there were protected infrastructure. I'm not even a very adventurous cyclist. Most cycling trips are not above a few miles.
Las Vegas is nowhere close to having a good and safe bike network, so I don't think it's fair to say that cycling has somehow "failed" there.
Also, because bikes are so space-efficient, they rarely get caught in "bike traffic" -- which means bike lanes look empty relative to clogged-up automobile lanes. But bike throughput is typically quite high and they have substantial benefits to the network.
Just because walmart has 4000 more spots than it needs doesn't mean that a local tech/food/supply shop has enough. Small businesses live and die on razor thin margins and excess in another state...
Can you please elaborate on your objection to the fact that there are several billion parking spots in a country of about 285 million vehicles, many of which are not used frequently or at all? (And absolutely never all at once!) I do not understand what you're saying about car rental companies or how this pertains to the topic we're discussing.
Just because walmart has 4000 more spots than it needs doesn't mean that a local tech/food/supply shop has enough. Small businesses live and die on razor thin margins and excess in another state doesn't equal excess where you need it. These laws exist for more than random fun, and while yes they hit some corporate lawyer and you wind up with a shopping center with stadium level parking, they do have a fundamental purpose it trying to not encourage only the largest oligopolies to succeed.
Car rental companies are a simple example of a business that frequently is outright antagonistic to other local businesses. They are almost always one of the few massive corporations (enterprise, budget, hertz) and will gladly setup shop anywhere, even if they don't actually have the space for their inventory and customer use. They will then cannibalize the parking of adjacent businesses, and can drive them out of business if they're at all reliant on consistent sales. Local restaurants being likely the most affected by this behavior, as they're already operating on thin margins and having half your customer base say "meh there's never anywhere to park, lets go down the street" will just put you out of business (not that it doesn't affect all sorts of smaller businesses, and even larger ones, it's just that they can absorb the hit and fight back better).
The Parking Reform Network and Donald Shoup (who has a PhD and has studied this topic a looong time), along with quite a few other very qualified researchers, have done substantial academic analysis of cities which indicates that the complete waste of space which is the majority of parking lots bankrupts towns and cities. Strong Towns has some useful resources on this subject as well. I don't think we can just anecdote our way out of addressing this problem. Sprawl is not economical, and requiring arbitrarily large amounts of parking sprawl does not benefit society.The Parking Reform Network and Donald Shoup (who has a PhD and has studied this topic a looong time), along with quite a few other very qualified researchers, have done substantial academic analysis of cities which indicates that the complete waste of space which is the majority of parking lots bankrupts towns and cities. Strong Towns has some useful resources on this subject as well. I don't think we can just anecdote our way out of addressing this problem. Sprawl is not economical, and requiring arbitrarily large amounts of parking sprawl does not benefit society.
I'm not disagreeing with any of this but you're clearly not familiar with the issue from the perspective of local businesses. People get very touchy over parking spots because businesses shut down if they don't have enough. You can get reasonable change while ignoring their needs, but it'd probably go faster if people could show they understand the issue on a micro level rather than just a macro one (which, again, i'm not disputing). It doesn't help that when these rules change, it's the large corporations that have the lawyers and the clout to not be severely affected(hell I agree there's a shit ton of wasted space for parking lots that just don't need to be), while the smaller local businesses cannot and often get screwed. This leads to a very bad feedback loop where they don't often support these kinds of programs because it often either seems to, or actually, harms them.
I would remark that if it's too physically dangerous to be outside in a place in the US, maybe we shouldn't build a city there, and maybe we should be making an effort to incentivize people to relocate over the next few decades. This is a very wealthy country with plenty of suitable places for people to live. Climate change will only make this worse. Instead of doubling down on air conditioning, maybe we should double down on sustainability. Just a thought.
This is political suicide/totally unrealistic and for good reason. A large majority of people living in the more difficult to live areas don't do it because they want to, but the last thing they're going to trust is being FORCED out of their homes by the government with some vague "don't worry" assurance. The can of worms you'll open with "look we're just going to force you to move somewhere better and government built" is going to be absolutely nasty and that's assuming best intentions/efforts. I do believe the US can build reasonable infrastructure, I have very little faith they could rehome a town reasonably, let alone a city.
I didn't suggest that bikes can somehow replace all public transit, and pretty much no cycling advocate would ever argue for that. Cycling, local bus, bus rapid transit, light rail, and heavy rail all have unique niches in a city's transportation network. A good multi-modal network supports transfers across different modes, such as taking bikes on trains and buses and then biking the rest of the way somewhere.
I've met many who argue otherwise, so was just trying to get a better understanding of the complete picture from your pov. Suffice it to say I basically agree. Was just curious if there was some side of the argument I hadn't heard for extreme climates.
Having recently spent a decent bit of time in the desert, I can say that the latter point -- that most bike lanes cities build are unsafe -- is significantly more important than you seem to imply!
Oh i just hand waved it because it's just a known fact, and leads to a sort of unrelated issue which is incompetence of implementation. Barely anyone will tell you Vegas biking lanes are safe, but they've removed lanes from multiple roads to turn them into dangerous bike lanes. The biker's are of course rarely using them or justifiably upset with how dangerous they are, and the drivers are annoyed that traffic is basically worse so that a lane can exist which you'll see used maybe 20 times throughout the year and by less than 10 people.
One of the huge issues facing all infrastructure projects is accountability to doing it RIGHT rather than pretending to do something that'll help and then just walking away with the clout. Vegas already did the Monorail skit from The Simpsons almost verbatim, and the bike lanes are often another point towards "god we can't do anything but shows right can we?". I will say our bus system seems to have gotten massively better, so here's hoping that can get us some inertia on all this.
That being said...I also know that they were supposedly going to put in light rail down Charleston Blvd which has been met with a TON of skepticism for a variety of reasons. Everything I'm finding about the project seems like it's still being talked about, and even as someone who sees the value in such a project, I have to say I'm skeptical if greenlit the city will do more than pocket the cash, rip up the roads, and put down something useless. I'd love to be wrong.
Comment box Scope: comment response, personal reactions, speculation, ideas Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: there is 1 joke (donuts) I don't own a small business. I think I understand...
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I don't own a small business. I think I understand the issue you're describing, but the solution to this is not to continue overbuilding parking. That ultimately decreases societal wealth more than it adds to it.
If large businesses are "cannibalizing" parking then the municipality needs to consider:
Some kind of public transportation (or even a bike lane) to that apparently large and popular business. If people want to go there, the city can facilitate that.
Some kind of active enforcement to prevent people from parking in places they aren't allowed to park in.
If it's the business itself which is knowingly contributing to "parking congestion", the municipality has an obligation to... not allow them to do business there, or at least not allow them to commit that bad action. It is straightforward for the city council to create an ordinance requiring permit or use-specific parking for vehicles in a certain area; therefore allowing them to issue tickets for vehicles in violation. It would not be expensive and could actually be a small revenue draw for the municipality. This should be paired with multi-modal access to be truly effective.
The minimum parking requirement laws are arbitrary. Historically, they are not rooted in anything in particular; at most, researchers have retroactively taken descriptive samples of locality requirements (which were arbitrary) and presented this as prescriptive recommendations to current municipal governments, which isn't useful science and really doesn't help anyone. The goal of instating these minimums was never to protect small businesses (they didn't care at all), it was to make it very easy for newly car-driving suburban residents to drive absolutely everywhere, and there wasn't much thought about the externalities. (Noone in the 1950s really understood how expensive car-sprawl was; they falsely assumed that cars provided enough access to outweigh any theoretical space-inefficiencies, which turned out to be mostly wrong.) Municipalities mostly just copy+pasted their minimum parking requirements from the next town over with slight tweaks for donut shops because the police chief couldn't find parking that one time. This is why parking ordinances tend to be inconsistent and contradictory, and why they generally do not accurately reflect demand for parking one way or the other, in the majority of cases being much too liberal.
The can of worms you'll open with "look we're just going to force you to move somewhere better and government built"
I will note that this has been done before due to climate change in several Alaskan communities. When people recognize that their environment is harmful and they need to relocate, it's sad, but it's not politically unpopular per se. In such cases the government is helping them get away from a slow-burning natural disaster. I wouldn't be upset at the government for helping me escape Mt Vesuvius...
If I were to propose environmentally based relocations in a semi-realistic way, it would involve long-term incentives making it profitable for residents and businesses to move out of an area that is hazardous to human health; and the government would do fairly little except slowly limit incoming residents and businesses (higher taxation or fees for incoming entities, or eventually outright stopping them), while providing enough of an economic safety net to make the transition reasonable.
This is kind of already happening in some coastal towns in the contiguous 48. When certain areas get flooded, sometimes the government just doesn't let people rebuild there, and provides resources to rebuild in a non-hazardous place. Ultimately, that's not super different than the government paying out an outgoing resident for their property in a hazardous location proactively. The difference is just that they aren't waiting for everyone in the city to die of heatstroke before finding a way to move them out.
I see how this kind of program could be abused, and I also see how it would be unpopular among certain stubborn residents no matter what, but at the point that it's routinely dangerous for people to simply walk outside without risk of rapid heat exhaustion, that just isn't a valid place for government to subsidize habitation. IMO one of the purposes of government is to stop people from collectively making short-sighted decisions that they wouldn't be capable of making as individuals, and this seems like one of them.
The long-term costs of living in places that are harmful to human health are higher than the medium-term costs of phasing out population density in said harmful places.
I also know that they were supposedly going to put in light rail down Charleston Blvd which has been met with a TON of skepticism for a variety of reasons.
Embarrassingly I have not followed this project at all.
I didn't know they had officially settled on light rail. Actually I had assumed it would end up as BRT. Or is it still being decided?
In what ways do you find that you are skeptical about it? What are other people skeptical about?
Cities shouldn't be in the parking business at all. This is supposed to be a capitalist country, isn't it? And from basic market principles if you want a good to be used efficiently, it needs to...
Car rental companies are a simple example of a business that frequently is outright antagonistic to other local businesses. They are almost always one of the few massive corporations (enterprise, budget, hertz) and will gladly setup shop anywhere, even if they don't actually have the space for their inventory and customer use. They will then cannibalize the parking of adjacent businesses, and can drive them out of business if they're at all reliant on consistent sales.
Cities shouldn't be in the parking business at all. This is supposed to be a capitalist country, isn't it? And from basic market principles if you want a good to be used efficiently, it needs to have a price on it. Free public parking is a classic tragedy of the commons. Providing free street parking encourages people from using that space efficiently.
The solution is to get cities out of the parking business all together. Does your business need parking for your customers? Fine. You can pay for their parking spaces. Or, alternately, in an area with high enough demand, the demand for parking will rise sufficiently for private parking garages to be profitable.
Businesses need many things to operate. But we don't expect cities to pay for the buildings businesses reside in, the equipment they use, or any of the other physical infrastructure they need to operate. But when it comes to parking, suddenly we just expect cities to cover that bill.
No. Cities should be out of the parking game entirely. Public space should be used for efficient public use. That means vehicle and bicycle lanes only on streets, no parking spaces. You don't have a right to store your private property on the public land. And even if you did, why should we reserve that right for cars? If we have such an abundance of space on public roads, why not use that land for other purposes? For example, wouldn't that abundance of land be better spent to say, allow a previously unhoused person to set up a temporary residence on? Shouldn't someone's need for housing trump someone's desire for a place to park their private vehicle?
It just makes no sense. Cities should not be in the parking business. On street parking should be eliminated entirely. The parking space should be turned into bike lanes or sidewalks. Or if no productive use is available for them, the streets should be narrowed and the extra easement returned to the surrounding property owners. Let them figure out how to most effectively use the space.
This is an overuse of capitalist. Most people agree you really don't want water distribution to be determined by capitalist principles. Most people also agree that the large spreading of major...
This is an overuse of capitalist. Most people agree you really don't want water distribution to be determined by capitalist principles.
Most people also agree that the large spreading of major conglomerate chains is not as nice as local owned businesses, and likely not as good for the local economy.
You can make parking a free market, you will get nothing but large corporation owned businesses everywhere because they can afford the hit to business/costs to pay for the parking they need. Hell some will pay for vastly more than they need just to take up enough space they can't get competitors comfortably.
All that said, I am mostly talking about minimum parking spaces as enforced by the government in commercial spaces. I am not talking about street parking, which is a whole other problem entirely.
With all due respect, if other countries can manage with a fraction of the parking spaces and actually have thriving small shops then maybe it isn't actually an issue in the way you think it is....
With all due respect, if other countries can manage with a fraction of the parking spaces and actually have thriving small shops then maybe it isn't actually an issue in the way you think it is. Most obviously with your car rental company, it is quite easy to create a law that prohibits semi public parking spaces like that be used for commercial goals like that.
More generally, though, needing to park next to the shop you visit isn't as hard of a requirement as many people think it is.
Amsterdam was mentioned earlier as also having been on the road to being car dependent. The same was true for many dutch cities. In fact, most inner cities these days don't allow cars anymore or have severely limited them.
shopkeepers there were initially very concerned that people could not park in front of their shop anymore.
As it turns out their concerns were unfounded. Simply because when people can safely and enjoyably walk in an area they generally don't mind parking a bit farther away.
The temperatures you mention are the one thing where I'll admit you have a bit of a point. However, those aren't factor the majority of the year and highly depend on your geographic region.
Oh I totally agree you can get there. I disagree with the attitude i've seen from a lot of the proponents that those against the movement are just people being absurd and not understanding the...
Oh I totally agree you can get there.
I disagree with the attitude i've seen from a lot of the proponents that those against the movement are just people being absurd and not understanding the greater good. Just about everyone has watched their local government fuck up and pervert some well meaning initiative, and when you're trying to get people on board for your project it helps a lot better to address their concerns from a place of understanding rather than just saying "well so and so did it, we're doing it too, good luck on the transition" because that attitude often leaves the small people behind.
Yes in the best case scenario it works and society adapts, but even then you'll probably see a lot of businesses fail in the transition, and that's assuming a successful one that isn't screwed up on all levels. There are very legitimate concerns from people who's literal livelihood can depend on the outcome and execution of these kinds of initiatives.
Everyone imagines that the transition has to be dramatic and drastic, when that really isn't the case. If you create incentives towards walking, biking, and public transit, communities will start...
Everyone imagines that the transition has to be dramatic and drastic, when that really isn't the case. If you create incentives towards walking, biking, and public transit, communities will start changing in ways that favor those modes. If you create incentives towards driving, communities will change in ways that favor those. Right now, the vast majority of communities in the US have incentives that favor driving. Artificially low gas prices, taxes that don't fully cover the cost of road construction and maintenance, mandatory setbacks, parking requirements, lot sizes, and so on.
If you change those incentives, development changes, and it isn't like one day a bulldozer comes to destroy your house. Development isn't something you just build once and it stays that way forever. It constantly is being rebuilt and the way it gets rebuilt is based on incentive structures.
In your case, yes, your house may be currently too far from a grocery store. What about your next house though? When your house reaches the end of its useful lifespan (which it will, as all physical things do) what is being put in its place? What are currently being put in place of the other houses in your neighborhood when they're being torn down? If they're being replaced with single family detached homes and nothing else, it's because there are incentives to develop in that way.
There's no universal physical law that says when your neighbor sells their house, a property developer can't buy it and put a community grocery store with apartments on top in its place. It's just zoning, building codes, tax incentives, and so on that ensure it will likely be replaced with another single family detached house.
The reason why people even choose to live in places that are extremely hard to get to is because the costs of living in those places is subsidized by people who live more efficiently.
If remote exurbs were required to pay for the true cost of their sewer hookups, road construction and maintenance, electrical line maintenance, the true cost of personal vehicle ownership (environmental damage, unsubsidized fuel costs, and so on), very few people would even be able to live in places like that, and even if they could, they would likely view it as the waste that it is.
Alternatively, they could live in the middle of nowhere with dirt roads, a septic tank, a well, very little in the way of electrical infrastructure, police or fire coverage, schools, libraries and so on. There's a reason that there are very few people that choose to live a truly rural lifestyle like that.
So by changing the incentives, development patterns gradually change, and we go from the aggregating, unsustainable nightmare we have now, to something that's better for the environment, human mental and physical health, and generally create places that people like living in instead of tolerating living in.
The grocery stores aren’t geological features. They would obviously just build more of them within 15-30 minute walks of where people live. It’s okay for houses to be torn down. In dense cities...
The problem is that my house is so far away from groceries and other things that I can't realistically walk to them. And even if I could, how would I get all my groceries home?
The grocery stores aren’t geological features. They would obviously just build more of them within 15-30 minute walks of where people live.
It’s okay for houses to be torn down. In dense cities they also tore down houses or buildings to build grocery stores. It’s normal for buildings to turn over a lot. People sell their home to a grocer or a developer and then they build a store or a building with a store under it. Simple.
In NYC the build environment is constantly being torn down and rebuilt. The city has a permanent layer of scaffolding on it because of how much construction is always going on.
The city has a permanent layer of scaffolding to prevent people from being hurt by falling objects because they find façade inspections annoying, expensive to fix, and they don't want to have to...
The city has a permanent layer of scaffolding to prevent people from being hurt by falling objects because they find façade inspections annoying, expensive to fix, and they don't want to have to put it up and take it down again. It's not under that much construction.
But also my community has been trying to get a grocery store in our small walkable downtown area, close to a campus and a lot of apartments.
No one will open one. It's too expensive.
I agree with the general idea that planning needs to be different and that change can be gradual but grocery stores don't just pop up on every corner for a reason.
There is no empty space to build one within a 15 minute or even 40 minute walk of my house. We built these seas of suburbs on the idea that people would hop in their cars, get on the freeway, and...
The grocery stores aren’t geological features. They would obviously just build more of them within 15-30 minute walks of where people live.
There is no empty space to build one within a 15 minute or even 40 minute walk of my house. We built these seas of suburbs on the idea that people would hop in their cars, get on the freeway, and drive to a commercial zone to get their groceries or do literally anything else.
I compare this with the time I spent in Manhattan, where you could take the elevator down to the bottom of your building, go next door, and get groceries. If you wanted to go to a restaurant or somewhere else specific, you probably weren't more than a block away from a subway station which could take you to another station only a block away from your destination. I just don't see how you re-create that kind of walkability without tearing things down and re-building vertically like they used to do before car culture took over. That is the kind of place I would live, if those places were actually affordable.
Built environments turn over on the order of every 30 years or so. That’s not at all atypical, part of the reason they don’t turn over as much in suburbs is because of land use restrictions that...
Built environments turn over on the order of every 30 years or so. That’s not at all atypical, part of the reason they don’t turn over as much in suburbs is because of land use restrictions that disallow building anything but single-family housing there. Change the zoning rules and make the infrastructure walkable and the walkability will start to support itself.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none There are lots of places with fairly affordable housing near transit and amenities in the United...
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That is the kind of place I would live, if those places were actually affordable.
There are lots of places with fairly affordable housing near transit and amenities in the United States other than Manhattan. Conveniently, they also tend to be job centers.
Philadelphia, where I currently reside, is one of the more affordable metro areas in the nation. You can rent a 2-bedroom apartment in a safe part of town that is only a couple blocks away from a subway station and grocery store for under $2000/mo and often under $1500/mo. A one-bedroom meeting those criteria could be like $1200.
Several such units exist in the nicest neighborhood in Baltimore as well, for similar prices. There are plenty of other mid-sized cities with comparable markets.
If you must be in New York, consider uptown Manhattan, the Bronx, or many parts of Brooklyn and Queens? If you want a single-family home you might be out of luck, but transit-oriented housing of some sort is fairly accessible. Cheaper cities are cheaper for a reason -- their transit systems aren't quite as good, they don't have quite as much allure, etc -- but I feel like this is not an impossible ask.
Of course we should still build more transit-oriented housing fundamentally.
How do you think huge roadways got built to begin with? People lost their homes. They weren't happy about it then, they wouldn't be happy about it now, but to resist progress is to stagnate and...
How do you think huge roadways got built to begin with? People lost their homes. They weren't happy about it then, they wouldn't be happy about it now, but to resist progress is to stagnate and allow other countries to beat you.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none I agree that public transportation is a valuable investment, but it's not one or the other....
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A better long-term solution would be to better support alternative transport like ebikes and public transit.
I agree that public transportation is a valuable investment, but it's not one or the other. Automobiles will realistically always exist in some form. We can encourage and celebrate the proliferation of automobiles which objectively reduce emissions (EVs) while simultaneously decreasing investment in car-centric or car-exclusive infrastructure; and instead invest in multi-modal infrastructure.
Manufacturing EVs takes a huge amount of energy and generates lots of waste products.
The lifetime emissions, including manufacturing, of an EV have been empirically shown to be significantly lower than even the most greenly produced ICE vehicles. Actually the manufacturing process for an EV itself can sometimes be even greener than for an ICE just because of how simple the engines are.
EVs also tend to be heavier than ICEs, not to mention the general inflation of vehicle size over time, which increases tyre use and generates microplastics.
Yes, tire particulate matter is a significant issue that I have written about here in the past.
EVs don't necessarily have to be heavier than ICEs, consumers just demand vehicles with ranges long than they reasonably use, so manufacturers respond by putting in massive batteries. So EVs are marketed with 300+ mile ranges, but people utilize that range in less than 1% of trips. In theory, manufacturers could easily produce lightweight EVs. These already exist in the form of bicycles, small form-factor municipal/delivery vehicles, and a few niche personal automobiles.
I agree, my problem is this is rarely mentioned in these articles, which can prevent people from considering it. Again, I agree, but you can also build about 100 ebike batteries with the material...
We can encourage and celebrate the proliferation of automobiles which objectively reduce emissions (EVs) while simultaneously decreasing investment in car-centric or car-exclusive infrastructure; and instead invest in multi-modal infrastructure.
I agree, my problem is this is rarely mentioned in these articles, which can prevent people from considering it.
The lifetime emissions, including manufacturing, of an EV have been empirically shown to be significantly lower than even the most greenly produced ICE vehicles.
Again, I agree, but you can also build about 100 ebike batteries with the material required for a single EV (purely in terms of watt-hours)
Thanks for outlining all the benefits and addressing concerns, and including the map. Apparently there are two stations 50km from me, so not entirely out of the question. Three things are still...
Thanks for outlining all the benefits and addressing concerns, and including the map. Apparently there are two stations 50km from me, so not entirely out of the question.
Three things are still stopping me, the first of which is really only a concern because I live in rural Canada:
Availability of mechanics who deal with EVs
More environmentally friendly to drive my current ICE car into the ground first.
The fear of buying something that will stop being supported the moment it's suddenly out of favor with investors
At the rate new stations are being added, just think about how accessible charging will be in another year or two, let alone five or ten.
When I was a younger person I had a lot of optimism for this kind of projection into a fabulous future. And then I guess in recent years I've been burned far far too often by ending up with essentially abandoned hardware that I never actually "owned": being an early adopter has become a really sucky deal. Fool me seven times, shame on you, fool me eight or more times etc etc. :(
So I'll cheer EVs on for now and vote accordingly, but I am not going to be among its early or eve mid adopter, I'm afraid, because I'm afraid.
Comment box Scope: comment response, information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none Canada has a great distribution of chargers in southern Ontario and Quebec, but I do wish there...
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Canada has a great distribution of chargers in southern Ontario and Quebec, but I do wish there were more EV stations in the western provinces, especially rural areas. I don't think the Canadian government has been as aggressive about them as Joe Biden has in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. However, they are still plentiful and becoming more so simply due to market forces.
Availability of mechanics who deal with EVs
Good question. I'm not a mechanic, but EV engines are remarkably simple, so I'm not sure I would be too concerned. Otherwise, EVs share the same systems as ICEs: suspension, air conditioning, etc. ICEs have batteries too, so I think mechanics should be familiar with the concept?
You could certainly call nearby shops and ask.
More environmentally friendly to drive my current ICE car into the ground first.
Most auto emissions are from burning exhaust from ICEs. The manufacturing process of a new vehicle does produce emissions, but not that many relative to the lifetime emissions of burning fossil fuels.
So if you recently bought your ICE, I think that's a reasonable remark. It would also be more economical. But if you've had your ICE for more than a few years, you're going to start "outpacing" the emissions of an equivalent EV quite soon.
I wouldn't blame you for waiting another few years, but I think your next vehicle purchase could reasonably be an EV. It's getting past the "early adoption" phase and into the mass market. I don't anticipate a reason the technology itself would be abandoned; ICEs will never have lower lifetime emissions than EVs, and the fact that we already have a great network to distribute electricity (rather than, say, hydrogen) makes me confident that the technology will be supported in the future.
I have a 2014 CR-V and a 2014 Grand Caravan (wheelchair accessible). I switched from a Civic to the CR-V for my partner's esse at getting in and out of the car when he was not paraplegic but still...
I have a 2014 CR-V and a 2014 Grand Caravan (wheelchair accessible). I switched from a Civic to the CR-V for my partner's esse at getting in and out of the car when he was not paraplegic but still disabled. The van is perhaps obvious. I absolutely plan to replace the CR-V with an electric eventually unless we fail to see the promised infrastructure expansion in my area, which I think is unlikely with Rivian in the central IL. But also, even 20k isn't affordable right now. I paid less for the CR-V in 2017 and have 110k miles on her. I've paid about a third of 30k for the Caravan last year, because wheelchair conversions are expensive AF.
I'd prefer to have one vehicle but that isn't really an option unless my partner is trapped at home all day, and I prefer to keep as many miles as possible off the van to keep it's resale, god forbid I have to sell it.
I'm a perfect use case for our second vehicle being a work commuter electric and it's not on the table for me for probably 5+ years, and even then it'll hurt. My situation is more unique but I don't think the struggle is, especially with driving an older car into the ground before looking at something new.
I hope so, I really do hope most people who are looking to buy a new car would choose and EV, and that the grid keeps expanding. And informative posts like yours, and speaking with friends who...
I hope so, I really do hope most people who are looking to buy a new car would choose and EV, and that the grid keeps expanding. And informative posts like yours, and speaking with friends who went EV, are going a long way in changing minds and encouraging even more people to adopt EV, which means making things even better for everyone.
I'm waiting for cheaper models, better batteries, less privacy invasive nonsense*, and more infrastructure. It's a "patient gamer" type of thing: since I don't have time to play the latest Triple-A anyway, the longer I wait, the cheaper it gets and the more patches and mods released.
But at the same time it's not going to be me. The silver lining is that there might be a lot of fellow "no u" type consumers waiting patiently on the side line, and when a certain tipping point is reached, we'll all rush in suddenly together.
PS: Privacy stuff: I could patiently wait for an older car where the manufacturer has lost interest or lawsuits about spying on customers make them turn off the spying, for instance
Thought on driving the car into the ground point - I looked into the pollutants according to the EPA of certain cars since this came up once in a discussion, though I can't find the source at the...
Thought on driving the car into the ground point - I looked into the pollutants according to the EPA of certain cars since this came up once in a discussion, though I can't find the source at the moment. (I thought they have a per-year by-model readout in CSV or XLSX that you can export, but DDG fails me.) If you take that to the extreme and get a 1999 Civic hatch - my immediate "drive into the ground" idea of a car - vs a 2016 Fit, both of which have the same ish MPG and are functionally similar, the EPA measured the Civic at .691 g/mi of NOx and the Fit at .36 g/mi, assuming I read their test results right. So may not be the most environmental choice to keep it going, though that's one very specific angle. Curious what the break-even is on everything including production...
Comment box Scope: information Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none According to this BloombergNEF article (a research organization), the "break-even" point (in vehicle-miles/km...
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Curious what the break-even is on everything including production...
According to this BloombergNEF article (a research organization), the "break-even" point (in vehicle-miles/km traveled) for an EV to "pay off" its latent manufacturing emissions by having a cleaner propellant than an ICE is country-dependent. This makes sense since different countries have different amounts of renewable energy in the grid.
A driver in the US would reach the breakeven point at 41,000 km – or in around two years of driving, assuming an average annual distance traveled of around 19,000 km. In China, meanwhile, the breakeven distance would fall at 118,000 km, or after roughly 10 years, due to the region’s fossil-fuel-heavy grid.
So it would take about two years of driving an EV in the US to start "saving" emissions compared to a gas car. Of course there are still emissions, this is just relative.
In other words, two years of driving an ICE is equivalent to all the manufacturing emissions of an EV, and after that, the emissions of an ICE are much higher than an EV but the difference depends on where you are. So if you live somewhere with really dirty electricity generation, it would make sense to keep the ICE longer than if you live somewhere with green electricity generation. Even in the US, this is state-by-state.
(Caveat: the number of years here assumes you're using the car with the frequency assumed by this source: if you drive infrequently, it would take you longer to "pay off" your EV's manufacturing emissions.)
You could sit down and do a more structured calculation.
When E_total < I_total, switch from your ICE to your EV?
You would have to do additional calculations to derive all four values on the right side of those equations. I asked ChatGPT to do it for me and it spit out something on the order of 28,000 miles driven. It assumed 12,000 annual miles driven, which would make that about 2.33 years.
This doesn't consider waste emissions from scrapping though. ChatGPT seems to think that brings it up to about 32,000 miles driven, or about 2.67 years.
I am skeptical of the robot but that approximately aligns with what the BloombergNEF article says.
Thanks for doing the math and research -- I was wondering about the scrapping aspect of it as well but yeah, sounds like making a switch sooner will actually make environmental sense in just a few...
Thanks for doing the math and research -- I was wondering about the scrapping aspect of it as well but yeah, sounds like making a switch sooner will actually make environmental sense in just a few years.
What actually does happen to scrap cars and do a lot of the bits get recycled? It feels odd to throw away a functional piece of appliance to buy a "more efficient" one, but then again usually appliances don't generate a ton of pollutants and don't require fossil fuels to run. It's just a mindset switch I have to make.
Maybe it'll be more akin to my dumping the oil furnace and fuel tank and putting the electric heat pump in, than something like my washer dryer set or an old console.
I’m interested in this assertion because I am not willing to take more than one brief break for a 500 mile road trip. Seven to ten minutes is about the minimum to get gas a make a stop for the...
People complain about long charging times for EVs, but I really can't imagine that you wouldn't be willing to take a few 20 or 30-minute breaks on a 500 mile road trip.
I’m interested in this assertion because I am not willing to take more than one brief break for a 500 mile road trip. Seven to ten minutes is about the minimum to get gas a make a stop for the restroom, but 20-30 minutes is really pushing it for a single stop. Turn that into a few stops? That really just doesn’t interest me. At least once a year I do a 1,200 mile trip. It’s a good trek, 18 hours without complications. But unfortunately I still need a vehicle that can do that with just a few 10 minute stops.
I get about 440-460 miles of range on a tank of gas, which is right at my limit for a single run with no stops (~6 hours). So I am inclined to agree that 400+ miles is a lot of range, but if every stop on a road trip was going to be 30 minutes I’d be losing my mind. Maybe I’m an oddity in this and other drivers prefer more frequent and lengthy stops?
I think it’s a non-issue if I had the luxury of being a two-car household. An EV in a car-centric area taking short and medium distance trips is a great option.
I bought a 2016 Nissan Leaf last year. I now use it for pretty much all my driving (excepting some occasional towing for which I have an old beater ICE), it's saved me tons of money. I pretty much...
At least once a year I do a 1,200 mile trip. It’s a good trek, 18 hours without complications. But unfortunately I still need a vehicle that can do that with just a few 10 minute stops.
I bought a 2016 Nissan Leaf last year. I now use it for pretty much all my driving (excepting some occasional towing for which I have an old beater ICE), it's saved me tons of money. I pretty much never buy gas anymore as the 80 miles of range that a Leaf from 2016 has, covers all my day to day driving.
I'll be going on vacation soon and the amount of money I've saved on not buying gas made it pretty easy to just rent an ICE vehicle for the trip so I can go my planned 1400 miles without issue and without extended stops. It's running me about $30 a day to rent a small SUV with roughly 500 miles of range per tank and it'll be a much nicer car than I'd normally consider.
I'll never buy an ICE again. Electric is too nice for oodles of day to day driving reasons and for the few outings where a non-electric might be useful, ICE rentals exist in spades at prices cheap enough that I'd only need a few weeks of non-petrol driving to make back the cost.
I thought much as your post before I realized that rentals are so much more palatable when you're paying ~$2.50 per 80 miles of range year round for your daily driver (and less than that when the charging happens via installed solar panels.) It's cut what it cost for me to get my family around to a quarter or less of what an ICE ran me. Anything less than ~$3000 worth of car rentals and the gas I put into them each year is just pure profit; while I get to 'day to day' a car that is vastly more fun to drive around town and has been vastly less worry or maintenance compared to any ICE I've ever owned. I think that anyone who has the ability to charge at home, who isn't doing more than 100 miles daily, should really not even think twice about getting an EV and leaving the occasional places where an ICE excels to occasional car rentals.
I was thinking about getting a used or new pickup truck to haul stuff, and came to the same conclusion that I would be far cheaper to rent one for couple days a year.
I was thinking about getting a used or new pickup truck to haul stuff, and came to the same conclusion that I would be far cheaper to rent one for couple days a year.
On the face of it, owning a less optimal vehicle that spends most of its lifetime sitting around doing nothing because of a single yearly trip seems insane; for any other use case I'd say, just...
On the face of it, owning a less optimal vehicle that spends most of its lifetime sitting around doing nothing because of a single yearly trip seems insane; for any other use case I'd say, just rent the more capable vehicle when you need it. The problem is that car rental really sucks. I don't know why it sucks so badly. It seems like it shouldn't. If a car rental agency already has my info from a previous rental, I should just be able to show up, swipe my car, maybe sign something, and get the keys within a few minutes. In reality every time I've rented a car it's like an hour of me sitting around waiting for the one person at the counter to get to me, followed by 15-20 minutes of pointless paperwork and checks and inspections. Turning the thing in is almost as painful. If it was easier, I probably wouldn't even need a car for much else than my commute. As it stands though, I have to sit and watch my car, the most expensive thing I own other than my house, depreciate and rot in my driveway for 90% of its lifetime.
I don't know why car rental agencies can't get their shit together. Seems like an industry that would be ripe for innovation and efficiency.
Yeah that point is well taken. I feel we bought the car for the time in our life we were in. During COVID we did the drive 3-4 times each year for several years. Certainly fewer now. But, alas....
Yeah that point is well taken. I feel we bought the car for the time in our life we were in. During COVID we did the drive 3-4 times each year for several years. Certainly fewer now. But, alas. The vehicle is nearly paid off and I’m not in a rush to buy another. Though I would certainly consider something a bit smaller and more efficient if we needed to become a 2-car household.
Renting a similar, but smaller car, for these long drives over the 1-month duration we need a car is something north of $2k based on the Avis website right now. So add that onto the other frustrating points of car rentals and I think I’d be adjusting my trip.
Agreed. I know there are people who take leisurely breaks - I see them - but among my family and friends I don’t actually know any. With a family of four, we’d make a 600mi road trip in ~10-11h...
Agreed. I know there are people who take leisurely breaks - I see them - but among my family and friends I don’t actually know any.
With a family of four, we’d make a 600mi road trip in ~10-11h with the bare minimum number of breaks the tank and kid bladder control would allow. They were closer to F1 pit-stops than family picnics - gas, pee, and stretch only until the first two finish.
An extra 30min, let alone a few, is absolutely not worth extending the total time and may even push it to a 2-day journey.
That's a very different way of life. I'm one of those take forever at a stop people who have heard of F1 pitstop people but never met one in real life. It's partly cultural right? People I grew up...
That's a very different way of life. I'm one of those take forever at a stop people who have heard of F1 pitstop people but never met one in real life.
It's partly cultural right? People I grew up with would think a 600mi road trip in a DAY is absolutely bonkers. ( 1 mi = 1.6km )
Grew up in the metropolis of Hong Kong where two hours on public transit is about the limits of "that's crazy far, it's now an overnight trip". People don't even usually want to go ~19km from Tsim Sha Tsui (sort of like up town) to "the outskirts" of Sai Kung to visit friends/family. Those guys chose to live at the edge of civilization, those guys have to come out, is the mentality.
Moved to Vancouver and expanded my "range" somewhat: two hour road trip to Harrison Lake is still an overnight trip, preferably two nights because that long of a drive means the day is practically wiped. The longest single day trip we ever took was 138km to Whistler and it took forever!! I kept reading the km signs and thinking, my goodness, over 100km! That's practically at the edge of the universe! I remember there was a slight debate on if we should just suck it up and stay the night then try the trip home tomorrow. We didn't, and drove home, and the adults were so exhausted we never ever ever did that again.
As an older adult I've been to on a few longer road trips to visit quarries to pick up shiny rocks ("minerals!"). Those were crazy long drives of nearly 200km just ONE WAY and I'd still have to drive home at the end of the day. How do the other rock hounds drive even further for more rocks?!! I want to get cool rocks from other quarries but I couldn't get the days off I'd required to do it. I remember planning stops along the way for rest: for ice cream, for lunch, etc. Get slightly cramped or tired, pull off the road and walk around and get a snack. I should also mention of course I mean enjoy the snack slowly at the restaurant or snack stall, not purchase and eat in the car. What's the point of a rest stop if one isn't rested?
These days I have to drive 3 hours to the airport because I live in Rural Canada™. When I can spring it I definitely prefer staying overnight before flying out in the morning, or landing and staying the night before driving home. With maybe one or two stops along the way.
So I guess I'm the perfect candidate for road side 30min charging. If they make these stops even a tiny bit amusing ("come see our rabbit! Feed a tortoise! Choose a shiny rock!") I would plan for them about an hour or so apart each, even if the car battery doesn't need it.
Would love to hear how you guys roll. Don't the kids get all antsy? What about the adults driving?
Not the person you’re replying to, but we make similar stops. It’s just my wife and I. When we run our 1,200 mile trips, we leave around 4:30 AM. We break it into five segments, so 4 rest stops....
Not the person you’re replying to, but we make similar stops. It’s just my wife and I. When we run our 1,200 mile trips, we leave around 4:30 AM. We break it into five segments, so 4 rest stops. We stop around every 230-270 miles depending on where we are, typically trying to drive around 3h30mins for each segment. We wait until 1h from stopping and then we both chug a bunch of water. At each rest stop, I’ll fill the car with gas and stretch while my wife goes in to use the restroom and sometimes grab a snack or a fun beverage. Then I’ll go in to use the restroom after fueling and we hit the road right after I’m back to the car. Usually takes about 10-15 minutes, which can be made up by going a bit above the speed limit at 72-74mph. Typically it’s an 18 hour drive total. I love to drive, so sometimes my wife will take one shift but usually I just drive the whole day while she handles navigation, food, etc. we don’t stop for meals since we just keep them with us.
Wow. Where are you guys going? 1200 miles is half a continent's distance isn't it? Google maps says I could drive that distance from Vancouver to PAST Regina in a SINGLE DAY?! Does this also lead...
Wow. Where are you guys going? 1200 miles is half a continent's distance isn't it? Google maps says I could drive that distance from Vancouver to PAST Regina in a SINGLE DAY?!
Does this also lead into regular parts of your life, eg, you'd think it very small hurdle to drive two three hours for a concert or a particular restaurant or an outlet?
With gas being more expensive is it not faster and cheaper to fly? There must be some very positive feelings about the act of driving itself: maybe the hypnotic hum, the gentle bumps and the wonderful conversations?
It is indeed quite a ways. It was Pennsylvania to Louisiana, but now it's Virginia/Maryland to Louisiana. Living in a major city has actually caused the opposite. I try to avoid driving in the...
It is indeed quite a ways. It was Pennsylvania to Louisiana, but now it's Virginia/Maryland to Louisiana.
Living in a major city has actually caused the opposite. I try to avoid driving in the city as much as possible. These days, my limit on a trek for just music/shopping/food would be an hour or so and it's rare. If we're driving a few hours in the area it's usually for work, though occasionally for leisure as well, but almost always for something more substantial.
Since we make the drive in a day, gas is usually about $150 one way (so $300-$350 round trip). Flights, especially around Christmas, would be at least that per person. And a good flight price would typically mean flying into a city 1-2 hours away and needing someone to pick us up. Now, if we have to get a hotel it is suddenly a different story. That can easily bring the time and expense into the realm of flying instead.
I think the positive feelings about driving mostly center around it meaning not getting on a plane. Our car is quite spacious and much more comfortable than a plane. So making the drive is not that bad. I find these long-haul drives really meditative and stimulating. It's something I've discovered I have a knack for. Just sitting there, focused, eyes on the road, locked in for hours on end is surprisingly pleasant. And, my wife and I do get tons of time to talk and reflect. Usually about life, our relationship, reactions to podcasts and news or something else. There are very few people in the world I would willingly bring on an 18 hour road trip, but we have a really nice time together.
This was back when I was one of the kids, in the US, but now I’m seeing it from the other side as a parent myself. I’m now living in Singapore and still can’t believe when people unironically...
This was back when I was one of the kids, in the US, but now I’m seeing it from the other side as a parent myself. I’m now living in Singapore and still can’t believe when people unironically complain about a 30min drive being “so far”; I’d drive upwards of an hour or two just to meet some friends for dinner then drive back in the US.
I also forgot to mention sometimes we’d do the trip with our two similarly aged cousins when we were a little older. In a sedan. Four kids packed across the back, rotating which two shared a seatbelt or got stuck in the middle. For 10 hours. All things considered, legitimately fun times.
My dad would do the whole drive himself. He’d get a good rest the night before, eat a solid breakfast before waking the kids, and aim to complete the journey before it got dark. There may have been once or twice over the years that my mom drove a leg, or once I was old enough he’d let me drive one for practice.
Anyway, my parents would get up around 5:30-6am to do any last minute packing and load the car. They’d wake us up just enough to change clothes and into the car, the hope being we’d sleep for a while longer. Tip #1: make it easy for the kids to sleep - it is the best time killer and it helps keep them from getting cranky. Pillows, blankets, whatever.
My parents brought a bunch of toys, books, and other small things to entertain us. We’re talking Tiger Electronics handhelds, stacks of magic marker activity books (the kind where the marker only works on the book), etch-a-sketch, magnet drawing, time-killer books like Where’s Waldo, actual books to read, car card games like Rubberneckers, regular cards, travel sized board games, a lot of music cassettes/cds and sing-a-longs, etc. Tip #2: Quantity and variety, not quality, are the name of the game with entertaining kids on long trips, and enough duplicates for every kid to have one at the same time if necessary. Short attention spans and tempers demand it. When we got older, it was easier - a new Harry Potter book alone could carry us most of the way. Now phones are an infinite source of variety, which helps, but the old stuff is still more than worthwhile.
Tip #3: Snacks, snacks, and more snacks. Whatever the kids like and makes them happy, as long as they’re not too messy. Goldfish, pringles, m&ms, etc. No rules or restrictions (within reason), whatever you want as often as you want.
Tip #4: Limit drinks to reduce bathroom breaks. Nobody needs a Big Gulp or fifty sodas. Avoid diuretics like iced tea. If you have boys and they have to pee, an empty bottle with a well-sealing lid can avoid a stop…
Tip #5: Plan the major stops - gas, major meals, estimated bathroom needs - ahead of time. Minimize separate stops by overlapping needs at estimated times/maximum distances. This also gives you a reference point to ask if the kids can wait/hold it until the next planned stop. Strongly prefer stops directly on the highway instead of driving off.
Tip #6: save time with concurrency. For example: One parent takes a kid to the bathroom while the other parent and kid get the gas pumping and either stretch or start ordering to-go food if mealtime. Swap places when first bathroom group is done. Whoever finishes first cleans out any trash from the car. Everyone back in. Driver either quickly eats before going, or more often is fed by navigator once back on the road.
Tip #7: Avoid stopped traffic with kids. Abit of slowdown is fine, but something about a full stop without getting out drives kids nuts. Nothing changing out the window to see, no gentle vibration to physically calm, jerky stop and go, etc. Now phones and GPS make it easy to reroute. Back then, it meant tuning into AM radio or waiting for the local FM stations’ periodic traffic report, then the navigator unfolding the big physical map to find a suitable alternate route.
Edit:
Tip #8: Pack your meals if you can. Sandwiches in a small cooler are healthier, compact, don’t need any reheating, and save time over even fast food (which, at major stops or mealtimes, is anything but fast).
Wow that's a whole different way of life. I felt my stomach lurch reading about four kids at the back with two sharing a seatbelt--!! I think if there's pillows, companions, snacks and the...
Wow that's a whole different way of life. I felt my stomach lurch reading about four kids at the back with two sharing a seatbelt--!!
I think if there's pillows, companions, snacks and the flexibility to pee in a bottle, and also kids could move around and disregard safety a little bit, it could be kinda fun. Like being on a cruise.....sort of. It's be like on a very very long flight - but those we get to move and get up and go use the washroom whenever we want.
How on earth did your parents put up with the long drive though, with four boys behind them squabbling or laughing or kicking the seats? But whatever awaits at the end must be very worthwhile I guess, and the passage itself an annual tradition that brings back memories of a simpler time when they themselves were sitting in the back and the parents had everything under control.
We're cars a lot roomier and more comfortable back then? Fascinating
This is an important use case for me as well, and is one of the biggest reasons I haven't bought an EV (plus, it just doesn't make cost sense right now). I'l holding out for a PHEV if they ever...
This is an important use case for me as well, and is one of the biggest reasons I haven't bought an EV (plus, it just doesn't make cost sense right now). I'l holding out for a PHEV if they ever make one that I'd like to buy. But I don't hear of any that are imminent, so my next vehicle will probably have to be ICE.
Everyone seems to be rushing towards EVs with optimism, but the two things that I need to see meaningfully addressed are: Privacy Hands down the biggest thing preventing me from going and...
Everyone seems to be rushing towards EVs with optimism, but the three two things that I need to see meaningfully addressed are:
Privacy
Hands down the biggest thing preventing me from going and purchasing any new car these days. After the Mozilla report posted on Tildes a while back I can't help but mirror all of the concerns on the top comment there, and EVs are WORSE than their ICE counterparts in this regard as far as I can tell. Until I can have a fully offline EV, and have confidence that if I connect my phone for music that nothing else is happening in the background, it's a non-starter.
Battery Recycling This is a bit of lack of research on my part, but as far as I'm aware most batteries are just material for special landfills at the end of their life. Are EV batteries truly recyclable and renewable? Or is it like nuclear waste, in that there's not really a good way of dealing with it after it served its purpose?
Zero Touchscreen
Okay this is super nitpicky and not specific to EVs, a lot of newer vehicles are moving towards touchscreens and I hate it. It feels less safe. Knobs and buttons, please. This is the point I'm going to get blasted for, I'm sure.
I'm seriously considering rebuilding and restoring a 2004-era Toyota ICE over getting an EV because of the privacy concern alone. I am a road tripper, I'll go from Vancouver, BC to Dawson City, YT and back on a whim, and the 30min charging stops don't faze me at all, would happily do that as long as a bunch of corporations aren't getting my personal info along the way.
EDIT: changed my mind about the recycling thing, seems like there are decent ways to recycle them once we get to scale. Thanks for the comment(s) that made me actually do research!
It's kind of funny that none of your complaints about EVs are about EVs (not criticizing, I agree with 1 and 3). The reason companies are trying to pull this stuff with EVs is because EVs are...
It's kind of funny that none of your complaints about EVs are about EVs (not criticizing, I agree with 1 and 3). The reason companies are trying to pull this stuff with EVs is because EVs are unfamiliar, while if anyone made the same claimed requirements for ICE cars then people would point to a 90s Toyota and say "this thing didn't require you to stalk me, what are you talking about?"
Battery recycling is putting the cart before the horse IMO - the recycling industry can't be profitable without scale, and thus expecting Technology X to solve recycling before it enters the mass market (and thus creates a large scale of goods to recycle) is therefore basically impossible.
AIUI, EV batteries are quite recyclable because the raw materials are naturally at fairly low purities, so the e.g. lithium in EV batteries are at higher concentration than lithium ore or lithium salts. Thus, once there's a lot of dead batteries, there's an obvious economic drive to extract that lithium. Note that lithium batteries are mostly not lithium; lithium is just the electrolyte and the battery tends to be plurality nickel and graphite (depending on the battery type - LFP doesn't have nickel IIRC).
Potentially tangential, but one of the things that’s disinclined me from older cars (like the 2004 Toyota you reference) is how they’re missing a number of significant safety improvements compared...
Potentially tangential, but one of the things that’s disinclined me from older cars (like the 2004 Toyota you reference) is how they’re missing a number of significant safety improvements compared to their 5/10/15 year newer counterparts, which have become more important as the number of unnecessarily tall and huge vehicles on the road has increased.
Not a big deal, but this is actually false. I don’t know why this misrepresentation got such huge traction — I’ve seen it repeated just about everywhere. What he said is that he would stop the...
has stated that if re-elected he would "stop EVs"
Not a big deal, but this is actually false. I don’t know why this misrepresentation got such huge traction — I’ve seen it repeated just about everywhere. What he said is that he would stop the sale of Chinese EVs built in Mexico for the U.S. market.
Jalopnik wishes to clarify that, while Trump has made plenty of anti-EV comments in the past this specific comment reported by the NYT can be interpreted as solely directed at the sale of Chinese EVs built in Mexico for the U.S. market.
I know I will catch crap for this, but there are two reasons I don't currently have an electric car. I live in an apartment building - no place to charge it. I will not buy a Tesla ( because Elon...
I know I will catch crap for this, but there are two reasons I don't currently have an electric car.
I live in an apartment building - no place to charge it.
I will not buy a Tesla ( because Elon ) and most EV models are hatch backs. I would like the body of the car to have some flair.
We're still in the very very early era of EV's. I'd classify most EVs on the road today as 1st or 2nd generation products, barely out of the beta testing phase for some manufacturers. They aren't...
We're still in the very very early era of EV's. I'd classify most EVs on the road today as 1st or 2nd generation products, barely out of the beta testing phase for some manufacturers. They aren't going to be for everyone just yet and that's ok. However we are seeing massive investment into more infrastructure year after year. I don't think its going to be too long (relatively) until we see the "killer" EV that becomes the Honda Civic/Toyota Corolla of EVs that everyone gets. EV technology is still moving forward at insane speeds and breakthroughs like solid state batteries (which are reportedly right around the corner) will hopefully make pain points like lack of charging infrastructure much less of an issue for the average user.
Ignoring all the environmental concerns with mass EV adoption, which I will admit are 100% valid but ultimately the lesser of 2 evils when its comes to ICE vehicles vs EVs; we're looking at a very good future for the EV barring catastrophic changes in the market.
We also live in an apartment with no place to charge our car, but we have an electric which is our daily car for any activities we don't need to travel for. The other is a very used car that my...
We also live in an apartment with no place to charge our car, but we have an electric which is our daily car for any activities we don't need to travel for. The other is a very used car that my in-laws gifted to my husband when they bought themselves a new electric car last year. We've taken it on road trips, and when my husband and I both need to take a car somewhere separate, he takes that one, and I take the electric, because I'm not usually going far. There are several charging stations near me, within a 1-mile radius, many of which are usually open and the ones in our downtown area are free to charge at after a certain time of day. We've never had an issue with not having a charge or a place to charge our car. But I do understand that most people don't have that option.
Tesla was an absolute NO on our list as well, even though we have friends that work there that could have gotten us a discount on the cars. I also had the advantage that you don't that I love hatchbacks, and I wanted a car that was higher off the ground than my last one, because I struggle with being able to see around all these giant cars in the area so we got a Chevy Bolt EUV. Not massive, but not a tiny car either. We're really happy with it - though the one thing I really wanted - driver memory, isn't even an option in the car. The next car we get, driver memory is the biggest must since husband is over 6 feet tall, and I'm 5 feet tall. I don't often drive, but when I do, I don't want to readjust everything to suit me lol.
Apartment charging is the biggest hurdle for me, too. I asked my landlord about it, and apparently in our building, it would require a ton of extra electrical rework to install chargers, so it's...
Apartment charging is the biggest hurdle for me, too. I asked my landlord about it, and apparently in our building, it would require a ton of extra electrical rework to install chargers, so it's not even something I could help meet them in the middle on for those costs.
Comment box Scope: comment response, speculation Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: none There will be a point soon when the urban housing market begins to adjust to EV demand. The...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, speculation
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: none
There will be a point soon when the urban housing market begins to adjust to EV demand. The opportunity cost for your landlord of not providing EV charging will outweigh the cost of the electrical rewirings.
I saw some newly built condos recently, and yes at least in Richmond BC new buildings are required to put in a certain number of charging stations. The particular condo also sold special car park...
I saw some newly built condos recently, and yes at least in Richmond BC new buildings are required to put in a certain number of charging stations. The particular condo also sold special car park slots with dedicated ports and they seemed very popular
The thing to hope for IMHO is fast charging batteries - 15 minutes or less. Places like coffee shops can open up near them and let people lounge while their cars charge.
The thing to hope for IMHO is fast charging batteries - 15 minutes or less. Places like coffee shops can open up near them and let people lounge while their cars charge.
The used market for EVs becoming cheap enough to be within reach of the masses is good and an important landmark, but there’s still a ways to go. There are still arguably no entry-level EVs — they...
The used market for EVs becoming cheap enough to be within reach of the masses is good and an important landmark, but there’s still a ways to go. There are still arguably no entry-level EVs — they begin at midrange (upper-midrange, some may argue) and go up from there. We still don’t have an EV equivalent of a Civic (starts at $24k) or Mitsubishi Mirage (starts at $16.6k) for instance.
Cars at these price points are not remotely sexy, but are important both because they serve a market that’s price-conscious but prefers to lease or buy new and because in the used market they’re even cheaper than current used EVs, enabling accessibility for much wider audience.
Aside from that, federal and state subsidies aren’t going to last forever, and so automakers need to be figuring out how to make cheaper models of EV now while they still have the benefit of subsidies on higher-end models.
And cars DO exist at that price point and lower but they are Chinese built and the gov is working hard to make sure they are not allowed into the north American market because they would...
Obligatory mention that they're that crazy cheap because of untold amounts of state subsidies, not because they're technically better or that their plants are that much more efficient. It's better...
Obligatory mention that they're that crazy cheap because of untold amounts of state subsidies, not because they're technically better or that their plants are that much more efficient.
It's better to think of BYD as a CCP owned entity than a free market privately owned company which just so happens to be in China.
This is all true, but they’re also cheap because these companies are making efforts to build cheap EVs. It might be a misreading on my part but I’m not seeing much will or efforts from traditional...
This is all true, but they’re also cheap because these companies are making efforts to build cheap EVs.
It might be a misreading on my part but I’m not seeing much will or efforts from traditional automakers to make models below the midrange threshold. To me it feels like they’re trying to use the move to electric to permanently move “entry level” up to midrange and stop making cheap cars altogether.
I think they are working to make them as cheap as possible. Many auto makers have bet a ton on EVs as they see which way the winds are blowing. It's really unfair to compare an American, European,...
I think they are working to make them as cheap as possible. Many auto makers have bet a ton on EVs as they see which way the winds are blowing.
It's really unfair to compare an American, European, Japanese or Korean manufacturer to China though.
China has not only heavily subsidized their car industry as the previous poster detailed, they also benefit from far cheaper labor costs than any of those other markets, very little in the way of worker protections, they have the world's biggest domestic battery manufacturing industry by a long shot, they also have an extremely good, government subsided medium range rail network, so demand for long ranges out of EVs are not as high there as they are here. Most top selling Chinese EVs have ranges that would not be competitive in the North American market, and as range is directly related to battery size, and as the battery, and its size is by far the biggest variable as to why EVs are more expensive than ICE vehicles.
If Chinese companies had to deal with all of those same factors, their cars wouldn't be nearly as competitive as they are right now on cost. It's not as if China has access to some sort of mythical process improvement technique that the rest of the entire world's auto manufacturers don't know about, they're just operating with a completely different set of parameters that happen to be more favorable to making cheap EVs.
I could be wrong, but I think moderate range vehicles could have a significant market in the US if the price is proportionate to their range. Prior to this current generation of more competent...
I could be wrong, but I think moderate range vehicles could have a significant market in the US if the price is proportionate to their range. Prior to this current generation of more competent EVs, the problem with non-Tesla EVs in the past is that their price made absolutely no sense for their range, not for buyers of a secondary runabout to compliment their gas guzzling SUV nor for potential buyers of city cars.
Take the compliance car version of the Fiat 500e, which was sold in the US from 2013 through 2019. Its range was dismal by modern standards (84 miles) but there’s a surprising number of them in the Pacific coast used market anyway because Fiat had dirt cheap leases for them. The short range doesn’t matter if its price barely moves the needle of ongoing costs.
If someone were to offer an EV that’s cheap even before tax incentives with ~120-150 miles of range I think it’d sell reasonably well in major metros and suburbs, but nobody is making them.
Part of that is the fact that new car sales are competing with used car sales. I've made this point before, but I don't understand why anyone would buy a Nissan Versa (MSRP: "from $16,680") when...
Part of that is the fact that new car sales are competing with used car sales. I've made this point before, but I don't understand why anyone would buy a Nissan Versa (MSRP: "from $16,680") when you could just buy a used Toyota Corolla.
Safety regulations are part of the reason why we don't make super-cheap shitboxes, but another is that used cars are reliable enough that there is just less of a market for bare-bones cars anymore. I see a lot of posts on /r/cars with people acting bewildered that you can't get anything without a radio, air conditioning, and power windows anymore. I don't get that perspective at all.
Though, admittedly, another factor is that the profit margins are lower on cheap cars. All things being equal, yeah, a lot of automakers would prefer to sell higher-margin, more expensive cars.
Write-offs for companies to pay for new company cars or leases, mainly, or fleet vehicles. On the private market it means warranty coverage, newer infotainment features (like AA/AC past 2020)...
don't understand why anyone would buy a Nissan Versa (MSRP: "from $16,680") when you could just buy a used Toyota Corolla.
Write-offs for companies to pay for new company cars or leases, mainly, or fleet vehicles. On the private market it means warranty coverage, newer infotainment features (like AA/AC past 2020) without rigging it yourself, new car smell and getting to fart in the seats first... The real killer I see, though - $17k on a Corolla means 2017 models and in one case a 2015 MY around me, rather than a new car. Toyota tax is ridiculous right now.
Basically any brand associated with reliability (most Japanese automakers, mainly) have their used prices jacked up like crazy in my area, with more “outdoorsy” models (RAV4s, Foresters, etc)...
Basically any brand associated with reliability (most Japanese automakers, mainly) have their used prices jacked up like crazy in my area, with more “outdoorsy” models (RAV4s, Foresters, etc) being particularly bad since this is the Pacific Northwest. Prices don’t start coming down appreciably until you go back at least a decade and/or past 85k miles driven.
Oh, I bought a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid in 2019 because of that "Toyota tax." I just passed 90,000 miles with the car and it's been great. If it had a bigger trunk (or, better yet, a liftback like...
Oh, I bought a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid in 2019 because of that "Toyota tax." I just passed 90,000 miles with the car and it's been great. If it had a bigger trunk (or, better yet, a liftback like the Audi A5 Sportback) and Android Auto, I wouldn't have any complaints. Though I wouldn't mind a plug-in hybrid with adaptive cruise control. Maybe for my next daily driver.
I could see someone exclusively buying/leasing new simply to never have to think about maintenance outside of oil and fluids and to not spend time or energy on vetting the mechanical soundness of...
I could see someone exclusively buying/leasing new simply to never have to think about maintenance outside of oil and fluids and to not spend time or energy on vetting the mechanical soundness of used cars. Depending on the individual, it might even be worth trading off basics like a radio and power windows to do this. This hypothetical person wants the dealings with their car to end at driving it.
New EVs theoretically are very good for this type of person, assuming the car in question has been in production long enough to get the various hiccups and QA process smoothed out.
Yuck yuck yuck I think that you're right. They don't want to make bare bones here's a car, car. They want to upsell us on subscription this and subscription that, and they probably spent all their...
Yuck yuck yuck I think that you're right. They don't want to make bare bones here's a car, car. They want to upsell us on subscription this and subscription that, and they probably spent all their R&D on how to install more infotainment upsell "features" rather than cheapest EV possible
The threat of dumping by Chinese EV makers is why we recently instituted a 100% tariff on their cars. There was recently a post by the mods of /r/cars about how there's a lot of Chinese...
Despite the risks of retaliation from Beijing, Biden said the increased levies were a proportionate response to China’s overcapacity in the EV sector. Sources said China was producing 30m EVs a year but could sell only 22m-23m domestically.
Biden’s car tariffs are largely symbolic because Chinese EVs were virtually locked out of the US by tariffs imposed by Donald Trump during his presidency. However, lobby groups have suggested there is a future threat as Beijing seeks to use exports to compensate for the weakness of its domestic economy.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing has said the introduction of Chinese cars to the US market would be an “extinction-level event” for its carmakers.
There was recently a post by the mods of /r/cars about how there's a lot of Chinese astroturfing going on right now in that subreddit to popularize Chinese EVs and/or oppose that policy. If it's true, and I don't think that it's a completely absurd idea, it's pretty gross.
The US has bailed out Detroit on numerous occasions, and there are massive federal subsidies to support EV deployment. We've literally bailed them out from bankruptcy on multiple occasions.
Obligatory mention that they're that crazy cheap because of untold amounts of state subsidies, not because they're technically better or that their plants are that much more efficient.
The US has bailed out Detroit on numerous occasions, and there are massive federal subsidies to support EV deployment. We've literally bailed them out from bankruptcy on multiple occasions.
But when the US do it, it's possible to find out how much money they got right? And also the cars are mostly "consumed" at regular market rates domestically right?
But when the US do it, it's possible to find out how much money they got right? And also the cars are mostly "consumed" at regular market rates domestically right?
Your overall point I agree with, but as a data point, the 2024 LEAF starts at $28k. That's only one model, of course, and $28k is more than $24k, but it's still in the ballpark. And with subsidies...
Your overall point I agree with, but as a data point, the 2024 LEAF starts at $28k. That's only one model, of course, and $28k is more than $24k, but it's still in the ballpark. And with subsidies (while they will not always exist, they do now, and influence buyer decisions) a LEAF may be cheaper than a Civic for some buyers.
There’s nothing wrong with Nissan, and the Leaf is a really great car. I would say that it’s a better experience than a Prius both in terms of driving experience and longevity.
There’s nothing wrong with Nissan, and the Leaf is a really great car. I would say that it’s a better experience than a Prius both in terms of driving experience and longevity.
I think we may be moving from a demand cycle of Innovators, early adopters and now perhaps to early majority and within the demand cycle a price point needs to be found that will justify...
I think we may be moving from a demand cycle of Innovators, early adopters and now perhaps to early majority and within the demand cycle a price point needs to be found that will justify production cost. Myself, I have my doubts of EVs but I am at least at this point in the solid camp of hybrid cars but that's for another discussion.
Is anyone familiar with the general market for used electric vehicles? I have heard that Tesla makes the new owner buy all the features again, but I don't know if that's true or what other...
Is anyone familiar with the general market for used electric vehicles? I have heard that Tesla makes the new owner buy all the features again, but I don't know if that's true or what other manufacturers do.
Hardware wise, can you replace batteries pretty easily? How much would this cost? Do the old batteries get refilled and reused or dumped in a landfill?
The 'battery replacement' thing is a much hyped issue that barely exists. There were a few early models produced, especially in the older EVs that had some issues but almost all EVs produced in...
The 'battery replacement' thing is a much hyped issue that barely exists. There were a few early models produced, especially in the older EVs that had some issues but almost all EVs produced in the last few years have the kinks worked out and 'battery replacement' happens about as often as 'engine replacement' in a brand new gas car. Which is to say it CAN happen but its pretty darn rare and usually covered under warranty because of a manufacturing defect.
They go for a LONG time and the batteries slowly degrade over time but its not like they go from storing 100% capacity to 0% capacity overnight. They just slowly lose a bit of capacity so in 10 years maybe its storing 90% capacity instead of a 100%. Which means that your EV that used to be able to go 300 miles on a charge can now go 270 miles on a charge. Which really doesnt make much difference to the average owner because they're only travelling 50 miles a day on average.
And it very much depends on how they are charged. If your battery is fully discharged at its maximum range and then charged to 100% every day and FAST charged at a DC charger every day (which pushes in as many kilowatts into the battery as fast as possible) it will degrade faster than if you only use, say 30% of its capacity daily and then recharge much more slowly at night at your home charging station. Not much different than a gas car that is driven hard and fast every day vs the one the little old lady just takes to church once a week.
Personally our little Fiat 500e only gets driven about 50 km out of its 120 km range most days and then its slow charged overnight off a regular 120v home circuit which is very gentle on the battery. In 6 years of ownership we have experienced zero drop in range.
And yes, the batteries CAN be replaced but with batteries lasting 200,000 to 300,000 miles already most people are just going to sell the car when its time to do that. Other thrifty buyers will still use that car and either buy a salvage battery from a wrecker for FAR less than a dealer wants for a new one, or take it to one of the upstart battery dealers who specialize in replacing the failed cells within the battery and repacking and reinstalling the entire pack. Many of the used packs are already being upcycled into home supply battery systems and hooked to solar power systems to give many more years of service.
This worries me greatly and I don't know how reasonable it is. My smart phones are basically tethered nearly 100% of the time. The battery degradation is "totally bogus" and it's probably my least...
batteries slowly degrade over time
This worries me greatly and I don't know how reasonable it is. My smart phones are basically tethered nearly 100% of the time. The battery degradation is "totally bogus" and it's probably my least favorite thing about smart phones. The laptop is the same. I know it's apples to spaceships here, but would they ever consider making easily swappable battery packs? If one could pop into a gas station and exchange a pack in under a minute, that would be fantastic.
Range anxiety is mostly in our heads, but I don't want to get stuck with a car that becomes local-only in ten years.
One big difference between laptops/phones and cars is that the latter has active liquid cooling and many more cells to spread wear and tear across, which slows degradation substantially. I agree...
One big difference between laptops/phones and cars is that the latter has active liquid cooling and many more cells to spread wear and tear across, which slows degradation substantially.
I agree that it’d be smart to make batteries easy to change though.
In addition to what @ButteredToast said, car manufacturers also don't allow EVs to charge to their maximum hypothetical capacity in order to preserve the battery. (Because that's really bad.)
In addition to what @ButteredToast said, car manufacturers also don't allow EVs to charge to their maximum hypothetical capacity in order to preserve the battery. (Because that's really bad.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOsy_EvtHr4&ab_channel=CNET Battery swap stations already exist. But as you can see from the video its a pretty high tech process and undoubtedly would NOT go as...
Battery swap stations already exist. But as you can see from the video its a pretty high tech process and undoubtedly would NOT go as smoothly as shown in a real world situation - cant imagine how this one would work in a place thats has blowing snow and ice freezing the battery trolley/lifting unit.
My estimate of 10 years is for some degradation but going from 400 miles to 360 miles of range is hardly "local only". And most people highly overestimate how much they actually drive in a day. The national average is under 30 miles so 360 miles is 12 days of driving if you want to push it that far before recharging but most people recharge every night.
I didn't know there was any hype around it. I was trying to ask about buying a used vehicle, it seems to me that batteries go downhill faster after a certain point, but it may be that they just...
I didn't know there was any hype around it.
I was trying to ask about buying a used vehicle, it seems to me that batteries go downhill faster after a certain point, but it may be that they just become more annoying.
The simplest way to judge the expected longevity of a battery pack is to see what the manufacturers promise. All automakers currently offer at least an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty on EV battery packs.
Tesla offers an eight-year battery warranty, and depending on the range and type of vehicle, coverage for 100,000 to 150,000 miles. This guarantee isn't just against the complete failure of a battery pack, but against degradation. As they age, charge cycle by charge cycle, a lithium-ion pack loses a fraction of its total capacity. Tesla's fine print says that its vehicles must retain at least 70-percent of their capacity during the warranty period. If they drop below that threshold, they'll be replaced for free.
It seems to be a safe bet. A crowdsourced study by Tesla owners in the Netherlands—using data from around the world—showed that Model S owners were seeing an average degradation of around 5 percent in 50,000 miles of driving. The degradation curve also begins shallowing out, indicating a loss of around 10 percent capacity or less after 150,000 or even 200,000 miles. On our long-term Model 3, the battery degraded roughly 6 percent in the first 20,000 miles, but then held there all the way to our 40,000-mile end point.
[...]
The U.S. Department of Energy, meanwhile, predicts today's EV batteries ought to last a good deal past their warranty period, with these packs' service lives clocking in at between 12 and 15 years if used in moderate climates. Plan on a service life of between eight and 12 years if your EV is regularly used in more extreme conditions.
As of 2023, the average age of all passenger vehicles in the U.S. is currently 12 and a half years old. Your EV's battery health might never even come under consideration.
Can at least speak for a used Chevy bolt purchased from a Chevy dealer. It comes with the first few years of base level on-star (giving you the remote start from app and app charge monitoring...
Can at least speak for a used Chevy bolt purchased from a Chevy dealer. It comes with the first few years of base level on-star (giving you the remote start from app and app charge monitoring features). My understanding is at some point I'll loose that feature without paying for on-star, but I certainly don't get enough utility from that to pay for on-star.
So at least for Chevy, it's not like they have a ton of dealer features anyway (and they recently had a data privacy issue with on-star), but I don't thinks there's anything I lost out on buying a used bolt. I did opt to purchase a form of extended warranty giving me an extra couple years of coverage on the battery which gives me a lot of peace of mind honestly.
That's awesome. I think I had it in the back of my head that these cars just get junked after the first owners, I'm glad to hear that there's a resell market.
That's awesome. I think I had it in the back of my head that these cars just get junked after the first owners, I'm glad to hear that there's a resell market.
Comment box Scope: comment response, personal knowledge Tone: neutral Opinion: none Sarcasm/humor: none Take this with a grain of salt because I'm just remembering conversations. From what I know...
Comment box
Scope: comment response, personal knowledge
Tone: neutral
Opinion: none
Sarcasm/humor: none
Take this with a grain of salt because I'm just remembering conversations.
Hardware wise, can you replace batteries pretty easily? How much would this cost? Do the old batteries get refilled and reused or dumped in a landfill?
From what I know of people who have needed their batteries replaced, it's only slightly cheaper to "fix" a battery than it is to buy an entirely new car. I suspect this is partially dealers ripping people off, but it's unclear to me how much. Apparently there are chemical balance issues if you put new/non-degraded cells in a unit with a bunch of degraded cells, and the solution to that problem ends up increasing cost, but I don't understand the science.
I think the batteries usually get recycled or dumped. I don't think they can really be "refilled" because the issue isn't that they're out of juice, it's that they've structurally degraded. The materials can be reused but I think they'd have to be broken down first?
I don’t have links handy but my understanding is that old EV batteries get recycled a couple ways: Upcycled into home/grid batteries, where capacity is less important and vastly more capable...
I don’t have links handy but my understanding is that old EV batteries get recycled a couple ways:
Upcycled into home/grid batteries, where capacity is less important and vastly more capable cooling and management than a car can be equipped with slow further degradation
Full on recycling, in which between 90-95% of the raw materials can be reused (recently saw an article about a Chinese company doing this at massive scale, apparently there’s one in the US too).
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I have seen some comments on this website recently about how electric vehicles are doomed and ICEs will remain dominant for a long time and that sort of thing. I suppose you can feel pessimistic about the technology if you want. But both the market and the tech are advancing with such rapidity that personally I find it hard to feel anything other than excited.
The former GOP president #45, who was recently convicted by a jury of his peers of business fraud with the intent to conceal additional crimes, has stated that if re-elected he would "stop EVs". But I think the market is in a place where automakers wouldn't want that. I agree with the article linked in this paragraph that they would lobby an environment-hostile government to stick with the electric pivot.
Anyway this article talks about how electric vehicles are quickly becoming more and more affordable and appealing to wider and wider demographics of people:
Just look at the chart in that link. In two years, the number of charging stations nationwide doubled. It's exceedingly uncommon to be more than 50 miles from a charging station, and indeed fairly uncommon to be more than 25 miles. In densely populated areas, they are becoming omnipresent. The federal government's Alternative Fuels Station Locator map demonstrates this: even just looking at fast NACS chargers, there are a ton of stations near population centers and along all long-distance routes. If you're going a long distance, it's not an issue. At the rate new stations are being added, just think about how accessible charging will be in another year or two, let alone five or ten. Range anxiety is fast becoming a meaningless concern:
There are already EVs on the market with ranges of 500+ miles. Not a lot, but the technology is there now. 2030 sounds far away for that to become truly mass-market, but there are already plenty of EVs with 250+ mile ranges which could suit lots of people. Regardless, that's only six years for 400-mile range EVs to become economically dominant. Not a long time at all. Many or perhaps most people seriously do not need a 400-mile range on a car to begin with; the average car trip in the US is 12 miles and 98% of car trips are under 50 miles. Even if you only charge your car at the office, or only at home, or only every few days, that's more than enough range.
Yes, we all take long road trips now and then... wait, do we? All of us? Probably not. In fact, 99.2% of trips are under 100 miles. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics tracks this stuff. Only 0.1% -- one tenth of one percent -- of trips are above 500 miles. Many people actually do not take long road trips; or when they do, they break it into small segments. Plenty of people, especially if they have debilitating health conditions, drive for 100-150 miles at most.
People complain about long charging times for EVs, but I really can't imagine that you wouldn't be willing to take a few 20 or 30-minute breaks on a 500 mile road trip. Even if you don't have a health concern that forces you to stop, it's probably good for your health to stop every 50-100 miles anyway. Certainly good for your brain, and therefore safer: contrary to popular belief, it isn't safe to drive without breaks. You need time to rest.
Concerns about how range is reduced during winter are fair, but I don't think they should outright stop most people from buying an EV. I was talking to some friends recently who bought an EV SUV and they commented on it being a little lower during their winter trips (upstate NY in the cold). But they still managed to get to and from their destination. It was fine. The only problem they had was that they have a non-standard charging port, which limited where they could reasonably stop. However, this is an irrelevant issue for new car buyers because all new models have standardized NACS chargers now.
With base ranges of 300+ miles becoming typical, a drop of 10-30% is not nothing, but shouldn't stop you from getting where you need to go. If you are in the frigid northern reaches of Alaska, maybe an EV isn't for you, but that isn't where the carbon-emitting population is distributed.
Occasional inconveniences, or perceived inconveniences, may be worth it considering there are many cost savings to be had:
Whether or not you personally feel you're ready for an electric car, the market is showing acceleration:
As a point of comparison, there are approximately 500 new car models on the market in the US in total (according to my search). If 20% of those are full EVs, and some additional portion are PHEVs, I think that's a good sign.
The article mentions that people who live in apartments don't necessarily have a way to charge their vehicles unless landlords install such amenities. But here's a radical idea... right now, it's OK to see more uptake of EVs in suburban areas, where people can charge their cars in a garage, than urban ones.
The reason to encourage EV adoption is to reduce environmental emissions: the fewer emissions the better. People who live in cities drive less to begin with. From a quantitative perspective, a market strategy which targets and retains suburban drivers (which are a larger cohort than urban city-dwellers to begin with) results in the greatest immediate emissions reduction. It also puts the auto market in a much stronger position: people in suburbs are more likely to rely on their vehicles for transportation, as opposed to people in cities, for whom they are often luxuries; therefore having this fairly captive market can ensure that manufacturing chains remain profitable for a consistent period of time, enabling the technology to improve even more quickly and therefore become more suitable for other demographics.
While I don't agree with the sentiment that EVs are doomed and ICE will keep going, I also don't think EVs are a long-term transport solution. Manufacturing EVs takes a huge amount of energy and generates lots of waste products.
EVs also tend to be heavier than ICEs, not to mention the general inflation of vehicle size over time, which increases tyre use and generates microplastics.
A better long-term solution would be to better support alternative transport like ebikes and public transit. It would require cities to redesign their road networks to make room and part of that would make them less car-friendly, but cheaper EVs don't help people in very low income areas who can't even afford a used ICE car right now.
The problem is that too many communities have spent the last 70 years building around car infrastructure. Making my city walkable or even bikable would mean demolishing whole communities and rebuilding from the ground up. That is simply never going to happen. Even if you could find the money for it, voters will never go for it, because they don't want to be kicked out of their homes.
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This is false. Walkability and bikability does not require the demolition of homes or existing structures. Those are completely separate domains.
Current "bike paradises" like Amsterdam and Paris used to be ridiculously car-dependent. It took a few decades of planning and reinvestment, but they were able to extremely successfully revitalize their communities by designing streets with multi-modal transportation in mind.
The problem is that my house is so far away from groceries and other things that I can't realistically walk to them. And even if I could, how would I get all my groceries home?
This is less of a problem in a truly walkable neighborhood, where you live a block from your grocery store (or better, there's one on the bottom floor of your apartment building) and therefore don't feel the need to buy weeks worth of groceries in one trip. Where would you build a grocery store in my suburb without tearing down houses?
We invested too much in building horizontally instead of vertically, as well as segregating commercial and residential real-estate.
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I understand the dilemma you've posed, but this still has nothing to do with demolition inherently.
If you are a city planner and your goal is to make an area more walkable and bikable, you have many ways to do that:
If you are actually interested in this topic, please read material published by the organization "Strong Towns." Several users here actually volunteer with them. They have some extremely good resources on how to make your small town a wonderful place to live instead of a car-dependent wasteland.
If you are an individual who seeks to acquire groceries without a car, you can:
Success!
While I think these are a lot of valid points, a few things i'd like to comment on:
This is in most cases a requirement to stop time wasted fighting about it, because small businesses can get horribly screwed if some larger business is using up all the parking. It's a very common thing, especially if you're got a rental car company in your inline that's decided that they or their customers can just park all the extra cars in such a way that no one can get to your business.
Obviously if car reliance goes down this solves itself, but it's extremely hard to get everyone on board because they're 100% right to be worried that a country will half ass the attempt and they'll wind up screwed.
So one of the big issues in larger countries is just weather. It gets up to 47/48 C here. Yes there's a lot you can do to bike in that, but the simple fact is that people don't want to (and that's of the people who physically can handle that), and they have the option not to. When its dangerously hot out and not bringing enough water can actually kill you, people are much more likely to opt for air conditioned cars. And that's before you get into elderly, children, etc.
To be clear I think a lot more effort needs to be made on making cities in the US more walkable/bikeable, but I don't think it'll every fully replace proper mass transit such as useful bus lines and rail where needed. Vegas already went through its "Well we just need to add more bike lanes" phase, and yeah turns out they aren't used a ton thanks to the weather (and also because many of them feel, or are, unsafe).
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Can you please elaborate on your objection to the fact that there are several billion parking spots in a country of about 285 million vehicles, many of which are not used frequently or at all? (And absolutely never all at once!) I do not understand what you're saying about car rental companies or how this pertains to the topic we're discussing.
The Parking Reform Network and Donald Shoup (who has a PhD and has studied this topic a looong time), along with quite a few other very qualified researchers, have done substantial academic analysis of cities which indicates that the complete waste of space which is the majority of parking lots bankrupts towns and cities. Strong Towns has some useful resources on this subject as well. I don't think we can just anecdote our way out of addressing this problem. Sprawl is not economical, and requiring arbitrarily large amounts of parking sprawl does not benefit society.
This is a completely valid reason that someone may choose not to take a bike somewhere, but just because it gets hot some times of the day doesn't mean people can't bike at all.
The purpose of multi-modal transportation isn't to eliminate 100% of driving, it's to encourage people who are flexible to take other modes. Even a very small number of drivers switching to transit, cycling, or walking substantially improves access in our transportation network.
I would remark that if it's too physically dangerous to be outside in a place in the US, maybe we shouldn't build a city there, and maybe we should be making an effort to incentivize people to relocate over the next few decades. This is a very wealthy country with plenty of suitable places for people to live. Climate change will only make this worse. Instead of doubling down on air conditioning, maybe we should double down on sustainability. Just a thought.
I didn't suggest that bikes can somehow replace all public transit, and pretty much no cycling advocate would ever argue for that. Cycling, local bus, bus rapid transit, light rail, and heavy rail all have unique niches in a city's transportation network. A good multi-modal network supports transfers across different modes, such as taking bikes on trains and buses and then biking the rest of the way somewhere.
Having recently spent a decent bit of time in the desert, I can say that the latter point -- that most bike lanes cities build are unsafe -- is significantly more important than you seem to imply! To be honest, I would not mind cycling in Las Vegas, Phoenix, etc at all as long as there were protected infrastructure. I'm not even a very adventurous cyclist. Most cycling trips are not above a few miles.
Las Vegas is nowhere close to having a good and safe bike network, so I don't think it's fair to say that cycling has somehow "failed" there.
Also, because bikes are so space-efficient, they rarely get caught in "bike traffic" -- which means bike lanes look empty relative to clogged-up automobile lanes. But bike throughput is typically quite high and they have substantial benefits to the network.
Just because walmart has 4000 more spots than it needs doesn't mean that a local tech/food/supply shop has enough. Small businesses live and die on razor thin margins and excess in another state doesn't equal excess where you need it. These laws exist for more than random fun, and while yes they hit some corporate lawyer and you wind up with a shopping center with stadium level parking, they do have a fundamental purpose it trying to not encourage only the largest oligopolies to succeed.
Car rental companies are a simple example of a business that frequently is outright antagonistic to other local businesses. They are almost always one of the few massive corporations (enterprise, budget, hertz) and will gladly setup shop anywhere, even if they don't actually have the space for their inventory and customer use. They will then cannibalize the parking of adjacent businesses, and can drive them out of business if they're at all reliant on consistent sales. Local restaurants being likely the most affected by this behavior, as they're already operating on thin margins and having half your customer base say "meh there's never anywhere to park, lets go down the street" will just put you out of business (not that it doesn't affect all sorts of smaller businesses, and even larger ones, it's just that they can absorb the hit and fight back better).
I'm not disagreeing with any of this but you're clearly not familiar with the issue from the perspective of local businesses. People get very touchy over parking spots because businesses shut down if they don't have enough. You can get reasonable change while ignoring their needs, but it'd probably go faster if people could show they understand the issue on a micro level rather than just a macro one (which, again, i'm not disputing). It doesn't help that when these rules change, it's the large corporations that have the lawyers and the clout to not be severely affected(hell I agree there's a shit ton of wasted space for parking lots that just don't need to be), while the smaller local businesses cannot and often get screwed. This leads to a very bad feedback loop where they don't often support these kinds of programs because it often either seems to, or actually, harms them.
This is political suicide/totally unrealistic and for good reason. A large majority of people living in the more difficult to live areas don't do it because they want to, but the last thing they're going to trust is being FORCED out of their homes by the government with some vague "don't worry" assurance. The can of worms you'll open with "look we're just going to force you to move somewhere better and government built" is going to be absolutely nasty and that's assuming best intentions/efforts. I do believe the US can build reasonable infrastructure, I have very little faith they could rehome a town reasonably, let alone a city.
I've met many who argue otherwise, so was just trying to get a better understanding of the complete picture from your pov. Suffice it to say I basically agree. Was just curious if there was some side of the argument I hadn't heard for extreme climates.
Oh i just hand waved it because it's just a known fact, and leads to a sort of unrelated issue which is incompetence of implementation. Barely anyone will tell you Vegas biking lanes are safe, but they've removed lanes from multiple roads to turn them into dangerous bike lanes. The biker's are of course rarely using them or justifiably upset with how dangerous they are, and the drivers are annoyed that traffic is basically worse so that a lane can exist which you'll see used maybe 20 times throughout the year and by less than 10 people.
One of the huge issues facing all infrastructure projects is accountability to doing it RIGHT rather than pretending to do something that'll help and then just walking away with the clout. Vegas already did the Monorail skit from The Simpsons almost verbatim, and the bike lanes are often another point towards "god we can't do anything but shows right can we?". I will say our bus system seems to have gotten massively better, so here's hoping that can get us some inertia on all this.
That being said...I also know that they were supposedly going to put in light rail down Charleston Blvd which has been met with a TON of skepticism for a variety of reasons. Everything I'm finding about the project seems like it's still being talked about, and even as someone who sees the value in such a project, I have to say I'm skeptical if greenlit the city will do more than pocket the cash, rip up the roads, and put down something useless. I'd love to be wrong.
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I don't own a small business. I think I understand the issue you're describing, but the solution to this is not to continue overbuilding parking. That ultimately decreases societal wealth more than it adds to it.
If large businesses are "cannibalizing" parking then the municipality needs to consider:
If it's the business itself which is knowingly contributing to "parking congestion", the municipality has an obligation to... not allow them to do business there, or at least not allow them to commit that bad action. It is straightforward for the city council to create an ordinance requiring permit or use-specific parking for vehicles in a certain area; therefore allowing them to issue tickets for vehicles in violation. It would not be expensive and could actually be a small revenue draw for the municipality. This should be paired with multi-modal access to be truly effective.
The minimum parking requirement laws are arbitrary. Historically, they are not rooted in anything in particular; at most, researchers have retroactively taken descriptive samples of locality requirements (which were arbitrary) and presented this as prescriptive recommendations to current municipal governments, which isn't useful science and really doesn't help anyone. The goal of instating these minimums was never to protect small businesses (they didn't care at all), it was to make it very easy for newly car-driving suburban residents to drive absolutely everywhere, and there wasn't much thought about the externalities. (Noone in the 1950s really understood how expensive car-sprawl was; they falsely assumed that cars provided enough access to outweigh any theoretical space-inefficiencies, which turned out to be mostly wrong.) Municipalities mostly just copy+pasted their minimum parking requirements from the next town over with slight tweaks for donut shops because the police chief couldn't find parking that one time. This is why parking ordinances tend to be inconsistent and contradictory, and why they generally do not accurately reflect demand for parking one way or the other, in the majority of cases being much too liberal.
I will note that this has been done before due to climate change in several Alaskan communities. When people recognize that their environment is harmful and they need to relocate, it's sad, but it's not politically unpopular per se. In such cases the government is helping them get away from a slow-burning natural disaster. I wouldn't be upset at the government for helping me escape Mt Vesuvius...
If I were to propose environmentally based relocations in a semi-realistic way, it would involve long-term incentives making it profitable for residents and businesses to move out of an area that is hazardous to human health; and the government would do fairly little except slowly limit incoming residents and businesses (higher taxation or fees for incoming entities, or eventually outright stopping them), while providing enough of an economic safety net to make the transition reasonable.
This is kind of already happening in some coastal towns in the contiguous 48. When certain areas get flooded, sometimes the government just doesn't let people rebuild there, and provides resources to rebuild in a non-hazardous place. Ultimately, that's not super different than the government paying out an outgoing resident for their property in a hazardous location proactively. The difference is just that they aren't waiting for everyone in the city to die of heatstroke before finding a way to move them out.
I see how this kind of program could be abused, and I also see how it would be unpopular among certain stubborn residents no matter what, but at the point that it's routinely dangerous for people to simply walk outside without risk of rapid heat exhaustion, that just isn't a valid place for government to subsidize habitation. IMO one of the purposes of government is to stop people from collectively making short-sighted decisions that they wouldn't be capable of making as individuals, and this seems like one of them.
The long-term costs of living in places that are harmful to human health are higher than the medium-term costs of phasing out population density in said harmful places.
Embarrassingly I have not followed this project at all.
I didn't know they had officially settled on light rail. Actually I had assumed it would end up as BRT. Or is it still being decided?
In what ways do you find that you are skeptical about it? What are other people skeptical about?
Cities shouldn't be in the parking business at all. This is supposed to be a capitalist country, isn't it? And from basic market principles if you want a good to be used efficiently, it needs to have a price on it. Free public parking is a classic tragedy of the commons. Providing free street parking encourages people from using that space efficiently.
The solution is to get cities out of the parking business all together. Does your business need parking for your customers? Fine. You can pay for their parking spaces. Or, alternately, in an area with high enough demand, the demand for parking will rise sufficiently for private parking garages to be profitable.
Businesses need many things to operate. But we don't expect cities to pay for the buildings businesses reside in, the equipment they use, or any of the other physical infrastructure they need to operate. But when it comes to parking, suddenly we just expect cities to cover that bill.
No. Cities should be out of the parking game entirely. Public space should be used for efficient public use. That means vehicle and bicycle lanes only on streets, no parking spaces. You don't have a right to store your private property on the public land. And even if you did, why should we reserve that right for cars? If we have such an abundance of space on public roads, why not use that land for other purposes? For example, wouldn't that abundance of land be better spent to say, allow a previously unhoused person to set up a temporary residence on? Shouldn't someone's need for housing trump someone's desire for a place to park their private vehicle?
It just makes no sense. Cities should not be in the parking business. On street parking should be eliminated entirely. The parking space should be turned into bike lanes or sidewalks. Or if no productive use is available for them, the streets should be narrowed and the extra easement returned to the surrounding property owners. Let them figure out how to most effectively use the space.
This is an overuse of capitalist. Most people agree you really don't want water distribution to be determined by capitalist principles.
Most people also agree that the large spreading of major conglomerate chains is not as nice as local owned businesses, and likely not as good for the local economy.
You can make parking a free market, you will get nothing but large corporation owned businesses everywhere because they can afford the hit to business/costs to pay for the parking they need. Hell some will pay for vastly more than they need just to take up enough space they can't get competitors comfortably.
All that said, I am mostly talking about minimum parking spaces as enforced by the government in commercial spaces. I am not talking about street parking, which is a whole other problem entirely.
With all due respect, if other countries can manage with a fraction of the parking spaces and actually have thriving small shops then maybe it isn't actually an issue in the way you think it is. Most obviously with your car rental company, it is quite easy to create a law that prohibits semi public parking spaces like that be used for commercial goals like that.
More generally, though, needing to park next to the shop you visit isn't as hard of a requirement as many people think it is.
Amsterdam was mentioned earlier as also having been on the road to being car dependent. The same was true for many dutch cities. In fact, most inner cities these days don't allow cars anymore or have severely limited them.
shopkeepers there were initially very concerned that people could not park in front of their shop anymore.
As it turns out their concerns were unfounded. Simply because when people can safely and enjoyably walk in an area they generally don't mind parking a bit farther away.
The temperatures you mention are the one thing where I'll admit you have a bit of a point. However, those aren't factor the majority of the year and highly depend on your geographic region.
Oh I totally agree you can get there.
I disagree with the attitude i've seen from a lot of the proponents that those against the movement are just people being absurd and not understanding the greater good. Just about everyone has watched their local government fuck up and pervert some well meaning initiative, and when you're trying to get people on board for your project it helps a lot better to address their concerns from a place of understanding rather than just saying "well so and so did it, we're doing it too, good luck on the transition" because that attitude often leaves the small people behind.
Yes in the best case scenario it works and society adapts, but even then you'll probably see a lot of businesses fail in the transition, and that's assuming a successful one that isn't screwed up on all levels. There are very legitimate concerns from people who's literal livelihood can depend on the outcome and execution of these kinds of initiatives.
Everyone imagines that the transition has to be dramatic and drastic, when that really isn't the case. If you create incentives towards walking, biking, and public transit, communities will start changing in ways that favor those modes. If you create incentives towards driving, communities will change in ways that favor those. Right now, the vast majority of communities in the US have incentives that favor driving. Artificially low gas prices, taxes that don't fully cover the cost of road construction and maintenance, mandatory setbacks, parking requirements, lot sizes, and so on.
If you change those incentives, development changes, and it isn't like one day a bulldozer comes to destroy your house. Development isn't something you just build once and it stays that way forever. It constantly is being rebuilt and the way it gets rebuilt is based on incentive structures.
In your case, yes, your house may be currently too far from a grocery store. What about your next house though? When your house reaches the end of its useful lifespan (which it will, as all physical things do) what is being put in its place? What are currently being put in place of the other houses in your neighborhood when they're being torn down? If they're being replaced with single family detached homes and nothing else, it's because there are incentives to develop in that way.
There's no universal physical law that says when your neighbor sells their house, a property developer can't buy it and put a community grocery store with apartments on top in its place. It's just zoning, building codes, tax incentives, and so on that ensure it will likely be replaced with another single family detached house.
The reason why people even choose to live in places that are extremely hard to get to is because the costs of living in those places is subsidized by people who live more efficiently.
If remote exurbs were required to pay for the true cost of their sewer hookups, road construction and maintenance, electrical line maintenance, the true cost of personal vehicle ownership (environmental damage, unsubsidized fuel costs, and so on), very few people would even be able to live in places like that, and even if they could, they would likely view it as the waste that it is.
Alternatively, they could live in the middle of nowhere with dirt roads, a septic tank, a well, very little in the way of electrical infrastructure, police or fire coverage, schools, libraries and so on. There's a reason that there are very few people that choose to live a truly rural lifestyle like that.
So by changing the incentives, development patterns gradually change, and we go from the aggregating, unsustainable nightmare we have now, to something that's better for the environment, human mental and physical health, and generally create places that people like living in instead of tolerating living in.
The grocery stores aren’t geological features. They would obviously just build more of them within 15-30 minute walks of where people live.
It’s okay for houses to be torn down. In dense cities they also tore down houses or buildings to build grocery stores. It’s normal for buildings to turn over a lot. People sell their home to a grocer or a developer and then they build a store or a building with a store under it. Simple.
In NYC the build environment is constantly being torn down and rebuilt. The city has a permanent layer of scaffolding on it because of how much construction is always going on.
The city has a permanent layer of scaffolding to prevent people from being hurt by falling objects because they find façade inspections annoying, expensive to fix, and they don't want to have to put it up and take it down again. It's not under that much construction.
But also my community has been trying to get a grocery store in our small walkable downtown area, close to a campus and a lot of apartments.
No one will open one. It's too expensive.
I agree with the general idea that planning needs to be different and that change can be gradual but grocery stores don't just pop up on every corner for a reason.
There is no empty space to build one within a 15 minute or even 40 minute walk of my house. We built these seas of suburbs on the idea that people would hop in their cars, get on the freeway, and drive to a commercial zone to get their groceries or do literally anything else.
I compare this with the time I spent in Manhattan, where you could take the elevator down to the bottom of your building, go next door, and get groceries. If you wanted to go to a restaurant or somewhere else specific, you probably weren't more than a block away from a subway station which could take you to another station only a block away from your destination. I just don't see how you re-create that kind of walkability without tearing things down and re-building vertically like they used to do before car culture took over. That is the kind of place I would live, if those places were actually affordable.
Built environments turn over on the order of every 30 years or so. That’s not at all atypical, part of the reason they don’t turn over as much in suburbs is because of land use restrictions that disallow building anything but single-family housing there. Change the zoning rules and make the infrastructure walkable and the walkability will start to support itself.
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There are lots of places with fairly affordable housing near transit and amenities in the United States other than Manhattan. Conveniently, they also tend to be job centers.
Philadelphia, where I currently reside, is one of the more affordable metro areas in the nation. You can rent a 2-bedroom apartment in a safe part of town that is only a couple blocks away from a subway station and grocery store for under $2000/mo and often under $1500/mo. A one-bedroom meeting those criteria could be like $1200.
Several such units exist in the nicest neighborhood in Baltimore as well, for similar prices. There are plenty of other mid-sized cities with comparable markets.
If you must be in New York, consider uptown Manhattan, the Bronx, or many parts of Brooklyn and Queens? If you want a single-family home you might be out of luck, but transit-oriented housing of some sort is fairly accessible. Cheaper cities are cheaper for a reason -- their transit systems aren't quite as good, they don't have quite as much allure, etc -- but I feel like this is not an impossible ask.
Of course we should still build more transit-oriented housing fundamentally.
How do you think huge roadways got built to begin with? People lost their homes. They weren't happy about it then, they wouldn't be happy about it now, but to resist progress is to stagnate and allow other countries to beat you.
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I agree that public transportation is a valuable investment, but it's not one or the other. Automobiles will realistically always exist in some form. We can encourage and celebrate the proliferation of automobiles which objectively reduce emissions (EVs) while simultaneously decreasing investment in car-centric or car-exclusive infrastructure; and instead invest in multi-modal infrastructure.
The lifetime emissions, including manufacturing, of an EV have been empirically shown to be significantly lower than even the most greenly produced ICE vehicles. Actually the manufacturing process for an EV itself can sometimes be even greener than for an ICE just because of how simple the engines are.
Yes, tire particulate matter is a significant issue that I have written about here in the past.
EVs don't necessarily have to be heavier than ICEs, consumers just demand vehicles with ranges long than they reasonably use, so manufacturers respond by putting in massive batteries. So EVs are marketed with 300+ mile ranges, but people utilize that range in less than 1% of trips. In theory, manufacturers could easily produce lightweight EVs. These already exist in the form of bicycles, small form-factor municipal/delivery vehicles, and a few niche personal automobiles.
I agree, my problem is this is rarely mentioned in these articles, which can prevent people from considering it.
Again, I agree, but you can also build about 100 ebike batteries with the material required for a single EV (purely in terms of watt-hours)
Thanks for outlining all the benefits and addressing concerns, and including the map. Apparently there are two stations 50km from me, so not entirely out of the question.
Three things are still stopping me, the first of which is really only a concern because I live in rural Canada:
Availability of mechanics who deal with EVs
More environmentally friendly to drive my current ICE car into the ground first.
The fear of buying something that will stop being supported the moment it's suddenly out of favor with investors
When I was a younger person I had a lot of optimism for this kind of projection into a fabulous future. And then I guess in recent years I've been burned far far too often by ending up with essentially abandoned hardware that I never actually "owned": being an early adopter has become a really sucky deal. Fool me seven times, shame on you, fool me eight or more times etc etc. :(
So I'll cheer EVs on for now and vote accordingly, but I am not going to be among its early or eve mid adopter, I'm afraid, because I'm afraid.
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Canada has a great distribution of chargers in southern Ontario and Quebec, but I do wish there were more EV stations in the western provinces, especially rural areas. I don't think the Canadian government has been as aggressive about them as Joe Biden has in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. However, they are still plentiful and becoming more so simply due to market forces.
Good question. I'm not a mechanic, but EV engines are remarkably simple, so I'm not sure I would be too concerned. Otherwise, EVs share the same systems as ICEs: suspension, air conditioning, etc. ICEs have batteries too, so I think mechanics should be familiar with the concept?
You could certainly call nearby shops and ask.
Most auto emissions are from burning exhaust from ICEs. The manufacturing process of a new vehicle does produce emissions, but not that many relative to the lifetime emissions of burning fossil fuels.
So if you recently bought your ICE, I think that's a reasonable remark. It would also be more economical. But if you've had your ICE for more than a few years, you're going to start "outpacing" the emissions of an equivalent EV quite soon.
I wouldn't blame you for waiting another few years, but I think your next vehicle purchase could reasonably be an EV. It's getting past the "early adoption" phase and into the mass market. I don't anticipate a reason the technology itself would be abandoned; ICEs will never have lower lifetime emissions than EVs, and the fact that we already have a great network to distribute electricity (rather than, say, hydrogen) makes me confident that the technology will be supported in the future.
I have a 2014 CR-V and a 2014 Grand Caravan (wheelchair accessible). I switched from a Civic to the CR-V for my partner's esse at getting in and out of the car when he was not paraplegic but still disabled. The van is perhaps obvious. I absolutely plan to replace the CR-V with an electric eventually unless we fail to see the promised infrastructure expansion in my area, which I think is unlikely with Rivian in the central IL. But also, even 20k isn't affordable right now. I paid less for the CR-V in 2017 and have 110k miles on her. I've paid about a third of 30k for the Caravan last year, because wheelchair conversions are expensive AF.
I'd prefer to have one vehicle but that isn't really an option unless my partner is trapped at home all day, and I prefer to keep as many miles as possible off the van to keep it's resale, god forbid I have to sell it.
I'm a perfect use case for our second vehicle being a work commuter electric and it's not on the table for me for probably 5+ years, and even then it'll hurt. My situation is more unique but I don't think the struggle is, especially with driving an older car into the ground before looking at something new.
I hope so, I really do hope most people who are looking to buy a new car would choose and EV, and that the grid keeps expanding. And informative posts like yours, and speaking with friends who went EV, are going a long way in changing minds and encouraging even more people to adopt EV, which means making things even better for everyone.
I'm waiting for cheaper models, better batteries, less privacy invasive nonsense*, and more infrastructure. It's a "patient gamer" type of thing: since I don't have time to play the latest Triple-A anyway, the longer I wait, the cheaper it gets and the more patches and mods released.
But at the same time it's not going to be me. The silver lining is that there might be a lot of fellow "no u" type consumers waiting patiently on the side line, and when a certain tipping point is reached, we'll all rush in suddenly together.
PS: Privacy stuff: I could patiently wait for an older car where the manufacturer has lost interest or lawsuits about spying on customers make them turn off the spying, for instance
Thought on driving the car into the ground point - I looked into the pollutants according to the EPA of certain cars since this came up once in a discussion, though I can't find the source at the moment. (I thought they have a per-year by-model readout in CSV or XLSX that you can export, but DDG fails me.) If you take that to the extreme and get a 1999 Civic hatch - my immediate "drive into the ground" idea of a car - vs a 2016 Fit, both of which have the same ish MPG and are functionally similar, the EPA measured the Civic at .691 g/mi of NOx and the Fit at .36 g/mi, assuming I read their test results right. So may not be the most environmental choice to keep it going, though that's one very specific angle. Curious what the break-even is on everything including production...
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According to this BloombergNEF article (a research organization), the "break-even" point (in vehicle-miles/km traveled) for an EV to "pay off" its latent manufacturing emissions by having a cleaner propellant than an ICE is country-dependent. This makes sense since different countries have different amounts of renewable energy in the grid.
So it would take about two years of driving an EV in the US to start "saving" emissions compared to a gas car. Of course there are still emissions, this is just relative.
In other words, two years of driving an ICE is equivalent to all the manufacturing emissions of an EV, and after that, the emissions of an ICE are much higher than an EV but the difference depends on where you are. So if you live somewhere with really dirty electricity generation, it would make sense to keep the ICE longer than if you live somewhere with green electricity generation. Even in the US, this is state-by-state.
(Caveat: the number of years here assumes you're using the car with the frequency assumed by this source: if you drive infrequently, it would take you longer to "pay off" your EV's manufacturing emissions.)
You could sit down and do a more structured calculation.
I_total = I_manufacturing + (I_driving * distance_driven)E_total = E_manufacturing + (E_driving * distance_driven)E_total < I_total, switch from your ICE to your EV?You would have to do additional calculations to derive all four values on the right side of those equations. I asked ChatGPT to do it for me and it spit out something on the order of 28,000 miles driven. It assumed 12,000 annual miles driven, which would make that about 2.33 years.
This doesn't consider waste emissions from scrapping though. ChatGPT seems to think that brings it up to about 32,000 miles driven, or about 2.67 years.
I am skeptical of the robot but that approximately aligns with what the BloombergNEF article says.
Thanks for doing the math and research -- I was wondering about the scrapping aspect of it as well but yeah, sounds like making a switch sooner will actually make environmental sense in just a few years.
What actually does happen to scrap cars and do a lot of the bits get recycled? It feels odd to throw away a functional piece of appliance to buy a "more efficient" one, but then again usually appliances don't generate a ton of pollutants and don't require fossil fuels to run. It's just a mindset switch I have to make.
Maybe it'll be more akin to my dumping the oil furnace and fuel tank and putting the electric heat pump in, than something like my washer dryer set or an old console.
I’m interested in this assertion because I am not willing to take more than one brief break for a 500 mile road trip. Seven to ten minutes is about the minimum to get gas a make a stop for the restroom, but 20-30 minutes is really pushing it for a single stop. Turn that into a few stops? That really just doesn’t interest me. At least once a year I do a 1,200 mile trip. It’s a good trek, 18 hours without complications. But unfortunately I still need a vehicle that can do that with just a few 10 minute stops.
I get about 440-460 miles of range on a tank of gas, which is right at my limit for a single run with no stops (~6 hours). So I am inclined to agree that 400+ miles is a lot of range, but if every stop on a road trip was going to be 30 minutes I’d be losing my mind. Maybe I’m an oddity in this and other drivers prefer more frequent and lengthy stops?
I think it’s a non-issue if I had the luxury of being a two-car household. An EV in a car-centric area taking short and medium distance trips is a great option.
I bought a 2016 Nissan Leaf last year. I now use it for pretty much all my driving (excepting some occasional towing for which I have an old beater ICE), it's saved me tons of money. I pretty much never buy gas anymore as the 80 miles of range that a Leaf from 2016 has, covers all my day to day driving.
I'll be going on vacation soon and the amount of money I've saved on not buying gas made it pretty easy to just rent an ICE vehicle for the trip so I can go my planned 1400 miles without issue and without extended stops. It's running me about $30 a day to rent a small SUV with roughly 500 miles of range per tank and it'll be a much nicer car than I'd normally consider.
I'll never buy an ICE again. Electric is too nice for oodles of day to day driving reasons and for the few outings where a non-electric might be useful, ICE rentals exist in spades at prices cheap enough that I'd only need a few weeks of non-petrol driving to make back the cost.
I thought much as your post before I realized that rentals are so much more palatable when you're paying ~$2.50 per 80 miles of range year round for your daily driver (and less than that when the charging happens via installed solar panels.) It's cut what it cost for me to get my family around to a quarter or less of what an ICE ran me. Anything less than ~$3000 worth of car rentals and the gas I put into them each year is just pure profit; while I get to 'day to day' a car that is vastly more fun to drive around town and has been vastly less worry or maintenance compared to any ICE I've ever owned. I think that anyone who has the ability to charge at home, who isn't doing more than 100 miles daily, should really not even think twice about getting an EV and leaving the occasional places where an ICE excels to occasional car rentals.
I was thinking about getting a used or new pickup truck to haul stuff, and came to the same conclusion that I would be far cheaper to rent one for couple days a year.
On the face of it, owning a less optimal vehicle that spends most of its lifetime sitting around doing nothing because of a single yearly trip seems insane; for any other use case I'd say, just rent the more capable vehicle when you need it. The problem is that car rental really sucks. I don't know why it sucks so badly. It seems like it shouldn't. If a car rental agency already has my info from a previous rental, I should just be able to show up, swipe my car, maybe sign something, and get the keys within a few minutes. In reality every time I've rented a car it's like an hour of me sitting around waiting for the one person at the counter to get to me, followed by 15-20 minutes of pointless paperwork and checks and inspections. Turning the thing in is almost as painful. If it was easier, I probably wouldn't even need a car for much else than my commute. As it stands though, I have to sit and watch my car, the most expensive thing I own other than my house, depreciate and rot in my driveway for 90% of its lifetime.
I don't know why car rental agencies can't get their shit together. Seems like an industry that would be ripe for innovation and efficiency.
Yeah that point is well taken. I feel we bought the car for the time in our life we were in. During COVID we did the drive 3-4 times each year for several years. Certainly fewer now. But, alas. The vehicle is nearly paid off and I’m not in a rush to buy another. Though I would certainly consider something a bit smaller and more efficient if we needed to become a 2-car household.
Renting a similar, but smaller car, for these long drives over the 1-month duration we need a car is something north of $2k based on the Avis website right now. So add that onto the other frustrating points of car rentals and I think I’d be adjusting my trip.
Agreed. I know there are people who take leisurely breaks - I see them - but among my family and friends I don’t actually know any.
With a family of four, we’d make a 600mi road trip in ~10-11h with the bare minimum number of breaks the tank and kid bladder control would allow. They were closer to F1 pit-stops than family picnics - gas, pee, and stretch only until the first two finish.
An extra 30min, let alone a few, is absolutely not worth extending the total time and may even push it to a 2-day journey.
That's a very different way of life. I'm one of those take forever at a stop people who have heard of F1 pitstop people but never met one in real life.
It's partly cultural right? People I grew up with would think a 600mi road trip in a DAY is absolutely bonkers. ( 1 mi = 1.6km )
Grew up in the metropolis of Hong Kong where two hours on public transit is about the limits of "that's crazy far, it's now an overnight trip". People don't even usually want to go ~19km from Tsim Sha Tsui (sort of like up town) to "the outskirts" of Sai Kung to visit friends/family. Those guys chose to live at the edge of civilization, those guys have to come out, is the mentality.
Moved to Vancouver and expanded my "range" somewhat: two hour road trip to Harrison Lake is still an overnight trip, preferably two nights because that long of a drive means the day is practically wiped. The longest single day trip we ever took was 138km to Whistler and it took forever!! I kept reading the km signs and thinking, my goodness, over 100km! That's practically at the edge of the universe! I remember there was a slight debate on if we should just suck it up and stay the night then try the trip home tomorrow. We didn't, and drove home, and the adults were so exhausted we never ever ever did that again.
As an older adult I've been to on a few longer road trips to visit quarries to pick up shiny rocks ("minerals!"). Those were crazy long drives of nearly 200km just ONE WAY and I'd still have to drive home at the end of the day. How do the other rock hounds drive even further for more rocks?!! I want to get cool rocks from other quarries but I couldn't get the days off I'd required to do it. I remember planning stops along the way for rest: for ice cream, for lunch, etc. Get slightly cramped or tired, pull off the road and walk around and get a snack. I should also mention of course I mean enjoy the snack slowly at the restaurant or snack stall, not purchase and eat in the car. What's the point of a rest stop if one isn't rested?
These days I have to drive 3 hours to the airport because I live in Rural Canada™. When I can spring it I definitely prefer staying overnight before flying out in the morning, or landing and staying the night before driving home. With maybe one or two stops along the way.
So I guess I'm the perfect candidate for road side 30min charging. If they make these stops even a tiny bit amusing ("come see our rabbit! Feed a tortoise! Choose a shiny rock!") I would plan for them about an hour or so apart each, even if the car battery doesn't need it.
Would love to hear how you guys roll. Don't the kids get all antsy? What about the adults driving?
Not the person you’re replying to, but we make similar stops. It’s just my wife and I. When we run our 1,200 mile trips, we leave around 4:30 AM. We break it into five segments, so 4 rest stops. We stop around every 230-270 miles depending on where we are, typically trying to drive around 3h30mins for each segment. We wait until 1h from stopping and then we both chug a bunch of water. At each rest stop, I’ll fill the car with gas and stretch while my wife goes in to use the restroom and sometimes grab a snack or a fun beverage. Then I’ll go in to use the restroom after fueling and we hit the road right after I’m back to the car. Usually takes about 10-15 minutes, which can be made up by going a bit above the speed limit at 72-74mph. Typically it’s an 18 hour drive total. I love to drive, so sometimes my wife will take one shift but usually I just drive the whole day while she handles navigation, food, etc. we don’t stop for meals since we just keep them with us.
Wow. Where are you guys going? 1200 miles is half a continent's distance isn't it? Google maps says I could drive that distance from Vancouver to PAST Regina in a SINGLE DAY?!
Does this also lead into regular parts of your life, eg, you'd think it very small hurdle to drive two three hours for a concert or a particular restaurant or an outlet?
With gas being more expensive is it not faster and cheaper to fly? There must be some very positive feelings about the act of driving itself: maybe the hypnotic hum, the gentle bumps and the wonderful conversations?
It is indeed quite a ways. It was Pennsylvania to Louisiana, but now it's Virginia/Maryland to Louisiana.
Living in a major city has actually caused the opposite. I try to avoid driving in the city as much as possible. These days, my limit on a trek for just music/shopping/food would be an hour or so and it's rare. If we're driving a few hours in the area it's usually for work, though occasionally for leisure as well, but almost always for something more substantial.
Since we make the drive in a day, gas is usually about $150 one way (so $300-$350 round trip). Flights, especially around Christmas, would be at least that per person. And a good flight price would typically mean flying into a city 1-2 hours away and needing someone to pick us up. Now, if we have to get a hotel it is suddenly a different story. That can easily bring the time and expense into the realm of flying instead.
I think the positive feelings about driving mostly center around it meaning not getting on a plane. Our car is quite spacious and much more comfortable than a plane. So making the drive is not that bad. I find these long-haul drives really meditative and stimulating. It's something I've discovered I have a knack for. Just sitting there, focused, eyes on the road, locked in for hours on end is surprisingly pleasant. And, my wife and I do get tons of time to talk and reflect. Usually about life, our relationship, reactions to podcasts and news or something else. There are very few people in the world I would willingly bring on an 18 hour road trip, but we have a really nice time together.
This was back when I was one of the kids, in the US, but now I’m seeing it from the other side as a parent myself. I’m now living in Singapore and still can’t believe when people unironically complain about a 30min drive being “so far”; I’d drive upwards of an hour or two just to meet some friends for dinner then drive back in the US.
I also forgot to mention sometimes we’d do the trip with our two similarly aged cousins when we were a little older. In a sedan. Four kids packed across the back, rotating which two shared a seatbelt or got stuck in the middle. For 10 hours. All things considered, legitimately fun times.
My dad would do the whole drive himself. He’d get a good rest the night before, eat a solid breakfast before waking the kids, and aim to complete the journey before it got dark. There may have been once or twice over the years that my mom drove a leg, or once I was old enough he’d let me drive one for practice.
Anyway, my parents would get up around 5:30-6am to do any last minute packing and load the car. They’d wake us up just enough to change clothes and into the car, the hope being we’d sleep for a while longer. Tip #1: make it easy for the kids to sleep - it is the best time killer and it helps keep them from getting cranky. Pillows, blankets, whatever.
My parents brought a bunch of toys, books, and other small things to entertain us. We’re talking Tiger Electronics handhelds, stacks of magic marker activity books (the kind where the marker only works on the book), etch-a-sketch, magnet drawing, time-killer books like Where’s Waldo, actual books to read, car card games like Rubberneckers, regular cards, travel sized board games, a lot of music cassettes/cds and sing-a-longs, etc. Tip #2: Quantity and variety, not quality, are the name of the game with entertaining kids on long trips, and enough duplicates for every kid to have one at the same time if necessary. Short attention spans and tempers demand it. When we got older, it was easier - a new Harry Potter book alone could carry us most of the way. Now phones are an infinite source of variety, which helps, but the old stuff is still more than worthwhile.
Tip #3: Snacks, snacks, and more snacks. Whatever the kids like and makes them happy, as long as they’re not too messy. Goldfish, pringles, m&ms, etc. No rules or restrictions (within reason), whatever you want as often as you want.
Tip #4: Limit drinks to reduce bathroom breaks. Nobody needs a Big Gulp or fifty sodas. Avoid diuretics like iced tea. If you have boys and they have to pee, an empty bottle with a well-sealing lid can avoid a stop…
Tip #5: Plan the major stops - gas, major meals, estimated bathroom needs - ahead of time. Minimize separate stops by overlapping needs at estimated times/maximum distances. This also gives you a reference point to ask if the kids can wait/hold it until the next planned stop. Strongly prefer stops directly on the highway instead of driving off.
Tip #6: save time with concurrency. For example: One parent takes a kid to the bathroom while the other parent and kid get the gas pumping and either stretch or start ordering to-go food if mealtime. Swap places when first bathroom group is done. Whoever finishes first cleans out any trash from the car. Everyone back in. Driver either quickly eats before going, or more often is fed by navigator once back on the road.
Tip #7: Avoid stopped traffic with kids. Abit of slowdown is fine, but something about a full stop without getting out drives kids nuts. Nothing changing out the window to see, no gentle vibration to physically calm, jerky stop and go, etc. Now phones and GPS make it easy to reroute. Back then, it meant tuning into AM radio or waiting for the local FM stations’ periodic traffic report, then the navigator unfolding the big physical map to find a suitable alternate route.
Edit:
Tip #8: Pack your meals if you can. Sandwiches in a small cooler are healthier, compact, don’t need any reheating, and save time over even fast food (which, at major stops or mealtimes, is anything but fast).
Wow that's a whole different way of life. I felt my stomach lurch reading about four kids at the back with two sharing a seatbelt--!!
I think if there's pillows, companions, snacks and the flexibility to pee in a bottle, and also kids could move around and disregard safety a little bit, it could be kinda fun. Like being on a cruise.....sort of. It's be like on a very very long flight - but those we get to move and get up and go use the washroom whenever we want.
How on earth did your parents put up with the long drive though, with four boys behind them squabbling or laughing or kicking the seats? But whatever awaits at the end must be very worthwhile I guess, and the passage itself an annual tradition that brings back memories of a simpler time when they themselves were sitting in the back and the parents had everything under control.
We're cars a lot roomier and more comfortable back then? Fascinating
This is an important use case for me as well, and is one of the biggest reasons I haven't bought an EV (plus, it just doesn't make cost sense right now). I'l holding out for a PHEV if they ever make one that I'd like to buy. But I don't hear of any that are imminent, so my next vehicle will probably have to be ICE.
Everyone seems to be rushing towards EVs with optimism, but the
threetwo things that I need to see meaningfully addressed are:Privacy
Hands down the biggest thing preventing me from going and purchasing any new car these days. After the Mozilla report posted on Tildes a while back I can't help but mirror all of the concerns on the top comment there, and EVs are WORSE than their ICE counterparts in this regard as far as I can tell. Until I can have a fully offline EV, and have confidence that if I connect my phone for music that nothing else is happening in the background, it's a non-starter.
Battery RecyclingThis is a bit of lack of research on my part, but as far as I'm aware most batteries are just material for special landfills at the end of their life. Are EV batteries truly recyclable and renewable? Or is it like nuclear waste, in that there's not really a good way of dealing with it after it served its purpose?Zero Touchscreen
Okay this is super nitpicky and not specific to EVs, a lot of newer vehicles are moving towards touchscreens and I hate it. It feels less safe. Knobs and buttons, please. This is the point I'm going to get blasted for, I'm sure.
I'm seriously considering rebuilding and restoring a 2004-era Toyota ICE over getting an EV because of the privacy concern alone. I am a road tripper, I'll go from Vancouver, BC to Dawson City, YT and back on a whim, and the 30min charging stops don't faze me at all, would happily do that as long as a bunch of corporations aren't getting my personal info along the way.
EDIT: changed my mind about the recycling thing, seems like there are decent ways to recycle them once we get to scale. Thanks for the comment(s) that made me actually do research!
It's kind of funny that none of your complaints about EVs are about EVs (not criticizing, I agree with 1 and 3). The reason companies are trying to pull this stuff with EVs is because EVs are unfamiliar, while if anyone made the same claimed requirements for ICE cars then people would point to a 90s Toyota and say "this thing didn't require you to stalk me, what are you talking about?"
Battery recycling is putting the cart before the horse IMO - the recycling industry can't be profitable without scale, and thus expecting Technology X to solve recycling before it enters the mass market (and thus creates a large scale of goods to recycle) is therefore basically impossible.
AIUI, EV batteries are quite recyclable because the raw materials are naturally at fairly low purities, so the e.g. lithium in EV batteries are at higher concentration than lithium ore or lithium salts. Thus, once there's a lot of dead batteries, there's an obvious economic drive to extract that lithium. Note that lithium batteries are mostly not lithium; lithium is just the electrolyte and the battery tends to be plurality nickel and graphite (depending on the battery type - LFP doesn't have nickel IIRC).
Potentially tangential, but one of the things that’s disinclined me from older cars (like the 2004 Toyota you reference) is how they’re missing a number of significant safety improvements compared to their 5/10/15 year newer counterparts, which have become more important as the number of unnecessarily tall and huge vehicles on the road has increased.
Not a big deal, but this is actually false. I don’t know why this misrepresentation got such huge traction — I’ve seen it repeated just about everywhere. What he said is that he would stop the sale of Chinese EVs built in Mexico for the U.S. market.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/donald-trump-says-hell-stop-144231560.html
I know I will catch crap for this, but there are two reasons I don't currently have an electric car.
I don’t expect that anyone would give you crap for not having a place to charge it. That is the first step in "Is an EV a practical choice for me?"
We're still in the very very early era of EV's. I'd classify most EVs on the road today as 1st or 2nd generation products, barely out of the beta testing phase for some manufacturers. They aren't going to be for everyone just yet and that's ok. However we are seeing massive investment into more infrastructure year after year. I don't think its going to be too long (relatively) until we see the "killer" EV that becomes the Honda Civic/Toyota Corolla of EVs that everyone gets. EV technology is still moving forward at insane speeds and breakthroughs like solid state batteries (which are reportedly right around the corner) will hopefully make pain points like lack of charging infrastructure much less of an issue for the average user.
Ignoring all the environmental concerns with mass EV adoption, which I will admit are 100% valid but ultimately the lesser of 2 evils when its comes to ICE vehicles vs EVs; we're looking at a very good future for the EV barring catastrophic changes in the market.
We also live in an apartment with no place to charge our car, but we have an electric which is our daily car for any activities we don't need to travel for. The other is a very used car that my in-laws gifted to my husband when they bought themselves a new electric car last year. We've taken it on road trips, and when my husband and I both need to take a car somewhere separate, he takes that one, and I take the electric, because I'm not usually going far. There are several charging stations near me, within a 1-mile radius, many of which are usually open and the ones in our downtown area are free to charge at after a certain time of day. We've never had an issue with not having a charge or a place to charge our car. But I do understand that most people don't have that option.
Tesla was an absolute NO on our list as well, even though we have friends that work there that could have gotten us a discount on the cars. I also had the advantage that you don't that I love hatchbacks, and I wanted a car that was higher off the ground than my last one, because I struggle with being able to see around all these giant cars in the area so we got a Chevy Bolt EUV. Not massive, but not a tiny car either. We're really happy with it - though the one thing I really wanted - driver memory, isn't even an option in the car. The next car we get, driver memory is the biggest must since husband is over 6 feet tall, and I'm 5 feet tall. I don't often drive, but when I do, I don't want to readjust everything to suit me lol.
Apartment charging is the biggest hurdle for me, too. I asked my landlord about it, and apparently in our building, it would require a ton of extra electrical rework to install chargers, so it's not even something I could help meet them in the middle on for those costs.
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There will be a point soon when the urban housing market begins to adjust to EV demand. The opportunity cost for your landlord of not providing EV charging will outweigh the cost of the electrical rewirings.
I saw some newly built condos recently, and yes at least in Richmond BC new buildings are required to put in a certain number of charging stations. The particular condo also sold special car park slots with dedicated ports and they seemed very popular
The thing to hope for IMHO is fast charging batteries - 15 minutes or less. Places like coffee shops can open up near them and let people lounge while their cars charge.
The used market for EVs becoming cheap enough to be within reach of the masses is good and an important landmark, but there’s still a ways to go. There are still arguably no entry-level EVs — they begin at midrange (upper-midrange, some may argue) and go up from there. We still don’t have an EV equivalent of a Civic (starts at $24k) or Mitsubishi Mirage (starts at $16.6k) for instance.
Cars at these price points are not remotely sexy, but are important both because they serve a market that’s price-conscious but prefers to lease or buy new and because in the used market they’re even cheaper than current used EVs, enabling accessibility for much wider audience.
Aside from that, federal and state subsidies aren’t going to last forever, and so automakers need to be figuring out how to make cheaper models of EV now while they still have the benefit of subsidies on higher-end models.
And cars DO exist at that price point and lower but they are Chinese built and the gov is working hard to make sure they are not allowed into the north American market because they would absolutely crush our domestically built EVs. They are cheap and surprisingly good cars, and the one scaring US makers the most is the BYD Seagull which sells for under 10,000 USD: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas-byd-lowers-starting-price-its-lowest-priced-ev-model-seagull-by-54-2024-03-06/
Obligatory mention that they're that crazy cheap because of untold amounts of state subsidies, not because they're technically better or that their plants are that much more efficient.
It's better to think of BYD as a CCP owned entity than a free market privately owned company which just so happens to be in China.
This is all true, but they’re also cheap because these companies are making efforts to build cheap EVs.
It might be a misreading on my part but I’m not seeing much will or efforts from traditional automakers to make models below the midrange threshold. To me it feels like they’re trying to use the move to electric to permanently move “entry level” up to midrange and stop making cheap cars altogether.
I think they are working to make them as cheap as possible. Many auto makers have bet a ton on EVs as they see which way the winds are blowing.
It's really unfair to compare an American, European, Japanese or Korean manufacturer to China though.
China has not only heavily subsidized their car industry as the previous poster detailed, they also benefit from far cheaper labor costs than any of those other markets, very little in the way of worker protections, they have the world's biggest domestic battery manufacturing industry by a long shot, they also have an extremely good, government subsided medium range rail network, so demand for long ranges out of EVs are not as high there as they are here. Most top selling Chinese EVs have ranges that would not be competitive in the North American market, and as range is directly related to battery size, and as the battery, and its size is by far the biggest variable as to why EVs are more expensive than ICE vehicles.
If Chinese companies had to deal with all of those same factors, their cars wouldn't be nearly as competitive as they are right now on cost. It's not as if China has access to some sort of mythical process improvement technique that the rest of the entire world's auto manufacturers don't know about, they're just operating with a completely different set of parameters that happen to be more favorable to making cheap EVs.
I could be wrong, but I think moderate range vehicles could have a significant market in the US if the price is proportionate to their range. Prior to this current generation of more competent EVs, the problem with non-Tesla EVs in the past is that their price made absolutely no sense for their range, not for buyers of a secondary runabout to compliment their gas guzzling SUV nor for potential buyers of city cars.
Take the compliance car version of the Fiat 500e, which was sold in the US from 2013 through 2019. Its range was dismal by modern standards (84 miles) but there’s a surprising number of them in the Pacific coast used market anyway because Fiat had dirt cheap leases for them. The short range doesn’t matter if its price barely moves the needle of ongoing costs.
If someone were to offer an EV that’s cheap even before tax incentives with ~120-150 miles of range I think it’d sell reasonably well in major metros and suburbs, but nobody is making them.
Part of that is the fact that new car sales are competing with used car sales. I've made this point before, but I don't understand why anyone would buy a Nissan Versa (MSRP: "from $16,680") when you could just buy a used Toyota Corolla.
Safety regulations are part of the reason why we don't make super-cheap shitboxes, but another is that used cars are reliable enough that there is just less of a market for bare-bones cars anymore. I see a lot of posts on /r/cars with people acting bewildered that you can't get anything without a radio, air conditioning, and power windows anymore. I don't get that perspective at all.
Though, admittedly, another factor is that the profit margins are lower on cheap cars. All things being equal, yeah, a lot of automakers would prefer to sell higher-margin, more expensive cars.
Write-offs for companies to pay for new company cars or leases, mainly, or fleet vehicles. On the private market it means warranty coverage, newer infotainment features (like AA/AC past 2020) without rigging it yourself, new car smell and getting to fart in the seats first... The real killer I see, though - $17k on a Corolla means 2017 models and in one case a 2015 MY around me, rather than a new car. Toyota tax is ridiculous right now.
Basically any brand associated with reliability (most Japanese automakers, mainly) have their used prices jacked up like crazy in my area, with more “outdoorsy” models (RAV4s, Foresters, etc) being particularly bad since this is the Pacific Northwest. Prices don’t start coming down appreciably until you go back at least a decade and/or past 85k miles driven.
Oh, I bought a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid in 2019 because of that "Toyota tax." I just passed 90,000 miles with the car and it's been great. If it had a bigger trunk (or, better yet, a liftback like the Audi A5 Sportback) and Android Auto, I wouldn't have any complaints. Though I wouldn't mind a plug-in hybrid with adaptive cruise control. Maybe for my next daily driver.
I could see someone exclusively buying/leasing new simply to never have to think about maintenance outside of oil and fluids and to not spend time or energy on vetting the mechanical soundness of used cars. Depending on the individual, it might even be worth trading off basics like a radio and power windows to do this. This hypothetical person wants the dealings with their car to end at driving it.
New EVs theoretically are very good for this type of person, assuming the car in question has been in production long enough to get the various hiccups and QA process smoothed out.
Yuck yuck yuck I think that you're right. They don't want to make bare bones here's a car, car. They want to upsell us on subscription this and subscription that, and they probably spent all their R&D on how to install more infotainment upsell "features" rather than cheapest EV possible
The threat of dumping by Chinese EV makers is why we recently instituted a 100% tariff on their cars.
There was recently a post by the mods of /r/cars about how there's a lot of Chinese astroturfing going on right now in that subreddit to popularize Chinese EVs and/or oppose that policy. If it's true, and I don't think that it's a completely absurd idea, it's pretty gross.
The US has bailed out Detroit on numerous occasions, and there are massive federal subsidies to support EV deployment. We've literally bailed them out from bankruptcy on multiple occasions.
But when the US do it, it's possible to find out how much money they got right? And also the cars are mostly "consumed" at regular market rates domestically right?
Your overall point I agree with, but as a data point, the 2024 LEAF starts at $28k. That's only one model, of course, and $28k is more than $24k, but it's still in the ballpark. And with subsidies (while they will not always exist, they do now, and influence buyer decisions) a LEAF may be cheaper than a Civic for some buyers.
Yeah, but then you're stuck with a Nissan. I'd rather have a used Prius Prime any day.
There’s nothing wrong with Nissan, and the Leaf is a really great car. I would say that it’s a better experience than a Prius both in terms of driving experience and longevity.
Mirror, for those hit by the paywall:
https://archive.is/ZCG9B
I think we may be moving from a demand cycle of Innovators, early adopters and now perhaps to early majority and within the demand cycle a price point needs to be found that will justify production cost. Myself, I have my doubts of EVs but I am at least at this point in the solid camp of hybrid cars but that's for another discussion.
Is anyone familiar with the general market for used electric vehicles? I have heard that Tesla makes the new owner buy all the features again, but I don't know if that's true or what other manufacturers do.
Hardware wise, can you replace batteries pretty easily? How much would this cost? Do the old batteries get refilled and reused or dumped in a landfill?
The 'battery replacement' thing is a much hyped issue that barely exists. There were a few early models produced, especially in the older EVs that had some issues but almost all EVs produced in the last few years have the kinks worked out and 'battery replacement' happens about as often as 'engine replacement' in a brand new gas car. Which is to say it CAN happen but its pretty darn rare and usually covered under warranty because of a manufacturing defect.
They go for a LONG time and the batteries slowly degrade over time but its not like they go from storing 100% capacity to 0% capacity overnight. They just slowly lose a bit of capacity so in 10 years maybe its storing 90% capacity instead of a 100%. Which means that your EV that used to be able to go 300 miles on a charge can now go 270 miles on a charge. Which really doesnt make much difference to the average owner because they're only travelling 50 miles a day on average.
And it very much depends on how they are charged. If your battery is fully discharged at its maximum range and then charged to 100% every day and FAST charged at a DC charger every day (which pushes in as many kilowatts into the battery as fast as possible) it will degrade faster than if you only use, say 30% of its capacity daily and then recharge much more slowly at night at your home charging station. Not much different than a gas car that is driven hard and fast every day vs the one the little old lady just takes to church once a week.
Personally our little Fiat 500e only gets driven about 50 km out of its 120 km range most days and then its slow charged overnight off a regular 120v home circuit which is very gentle on the battery. In 6 years of ownership we have experienced zero drop in range.
And yes, the batteries CAN be replaced but with batteries lasting 200,000 to 300,000 miles already most people are just going to sell the car when its time to do that. Other thrifty buyers will still use that car and either buy a salvage battery from a wrecker for FAR less than a dealer wants for a new one, or take it to one of the upstart battery dealers who specialize in replacing the failed cells within the battery and repacking and reinstalling the entire pack. Many of the used packs are already being upcycled into home supply battery systems and hooked to solar power systems to give many more years of service.
This worries me greatly and I don't know how reasonable it is. My smart phones are basically tethered nearly 100% of the time. The battery degradation is "totally bogus" and it's probably my least favorite thing about smart phones. The laptop is the same. I know it's apples to spaceships here, but would they ever consider making easily swappable battery packs? If one could pop into a gas station and exchange a pack in under a minute, that would be fantastic.
Range anxiety is mostly in our heads, but I don't want to get stuck with a car that becomes local-only in ten years.
One big difference between laptops/phones and cars is that the latter has active liquid cooling and many more cells to spread wear and tear across, which slows degradation substantially.
I agree that it’d be smart to make batteries easy to change though.
In addition to what @ButteredToast said, car manufacturers also don't allow EVs to charge to their maximum hypothetical capacity in order to preserve the battery. (Because that's really bad.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOsy_EvtHr4&ab_channel=CNET
Battery swap stations already exist. But as you can see from the video its a pretty high tech process and undoubtedly would NOT go as smoothly as shown in a real world situation - cant imagine how this one would work in a place thats has blowing snow and ice freezing the battery trolley/lifting unit.
My estimate of 10 years is for some degradation but going from 400 miles to 360 miles of range is hardly "local only". And most people highly overestimate how much they actually drive in a day. The national average is under 30 miles so 360 miles is 12 days of driving if you want to push it that far before recharging but most people recharge every night.
I didn't know there was any hype around it.
I was trying to ask about buying a used vehicle, it seems to me that batteries go downhill faster after a certain point, but it may be that they just become more annoying.
Car and Driver did an article about this. This part in particular is relevant:
Can at least speak for a used Chevy bolt purchased from a Chevy dealer. It comes with the first few years of base level on-star (giving you the remote start from app and app charge monitoring features). My understanding is at some point I'll loose that feature without paying for on-star, but I certainly don't get enough utility from that to pay for on-star.
So at least for Chevy, it's not like they have a ton of dealer features anyway (and they recently had a data privacy issue with on-star), but I don't thinks there's anything I lost out on buying a used bolt. I did opt to purchase a form of extended warranty giving me an extra couple years of coverage on the battery which gives me a lot of peace of mind honestly.
That's awesome. I think I had it in the back of my head that these cars just get junked after the first owners, I'm glad to hear that there's a resell market.
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Take this with a grain of salt because I'm just remembering conversations.
From what I know of people who have needed their batteries replaced, it's only slightly cheaper to "fix" a battery than it is to buy an entirely new car. I suspect this is partially dealers ripping people off, but it's unclear to me how much. Apparently there are chemical balance issues if you put new/non-degraded cells in a unit with a bunch of degraded cells, and the solution to that problem ends up increasing cost, but I don't understand the science.
I think the batteries usually get recycled or dumped. I don't think they can really be "refilled" because the issue isn't that they're out of juice, it's that they've structurally degraded. The materials can be reused but I think they'd have to be broken down first?
I don’t have links handy but my understanding is that old EV batteries get recycled a couple ways:
That's helpful, thank you.