this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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The infrastructure just isn't there yet. If you live in apartments, where will you charge it? Can the overall electrical grid handle the load if let's say 50% of people that own an electrical car? How do these cars do in extreme weather conditions? How much does it cost to repair them? How long will they last for? EVs are super expensive.
We can't even decide on a standard charging port.
While I will eventually get an EV, there are problems that need to be addressed still.
Tesla has ton of quality issues and riven is brand new. Why would I trust them?
I think the charging port thing is slowly resolving Type2/CCS seem to be winning. Most chargers I find that are relatively new support both type 2 and chademo. In a few years I don't think you will need to consider this and if buying today I'd stick with type 2.
I also heard that since the electric grid is designed to handle peak loads, it is over specced for today's needs and there is a lot of time during which it could be updated before we get closer to its limits. I also had these thoughts but in practice most people charge overnight when a bunch of daytime devices are off. We might not use 7kW at home during the day, but businesses use a ton of electricity during the day. AC when is hot heating when it's cold, PCs and monitors during the day, lights even though its daytime and that is before you get to a lot of power intensive specialist equipment that isn't used at night typically, like hospital diagnostic instruments etc etc etc.
I also wouldn't judge everyone on Teslas track record. It is clear other car companies are going now slowly and taking more care. Rivian may be a bit different being a new comer but that is certainly true of the established manufacturers.
The UK was replacing their old streetlights with LED, which frees up a lot of electricity.
And at the same time put chargers in every street pole they replaced.
Those apartments can charge there.
-- a friend of mine just got a Tesla, despite living in a townhouse where he can’t charge. He goes out to charge on weekends, similarly to how he fills the tank in his gasoline car. It’s not as convenient or cheap as being able to just plug in, but it is a reasonable thing to do
— how do you think apartments and condo complexes will get charging infrastructure? It won’t just appear and landlords/associations have no incentive to spend the money. The only way this happens is when EV adoption gets wide enough for them to see they’re losing money without it
— who cares about a charging port? Adapters are cheap
— Tesla’s quality issues are old news, that I don’t think is true anymore. Yes, they had issues scaling up, and discovering what other car companies already knew about mass manufacturing, but I believe they worked it out and are more similar to other manufacturers
— Tesla may dominate th EV market in the US, but every car company has an EV, with dozens more models coming ou in the next year or two. If you don’t like Tesla’s try something else. Personally I’m not sure I can afford a Tesla but an interested in seeing whether GM can deliver on their announced pricing for Equinox and Blazer
It only seems reasonable until you take a step back to consider the bigger picture, which is that areas zoned for townhouses ought to be walkable. The fact that he even wants a car -- electric or otherwise -- to begin with shows that something went very, very wrong in the design of the entire neighborhood.
Several things went very very wrong ….
The context is the Boston metro area. We do have pretty good transit, for the US. Most towns are old for the US and built up long before cars, so do have walkable centers with higher density housing ….
So they built this complex in a swamp, oriented around cars, not walkable to anywhere. Exits on a main road that doesn’t even have sidewalks. And somehow for a car oriented development, it’s in an area without decent roads, so it’s not even easy to drive anywhere … and the complex is a black hole in the map of high speed internet: the only part of town not served by fiber
It's almost never easy to drive anywhere car-oriented (except rural areas): too many cars get in the way! What's more, this is true no matter how "decent" the roads are, due to induced demand. The way to make it easy to drive is to provide alternatives so that the other folks use them and thus get out of the way.
You're right, but not in the way you think.
The real issue is that if you live in an apartment, you shouldn't need or want a car to begin with. The fact that so many people seem to think they do is a gigantic flashing neon clue that we've fucked up the zoning code and managed to build the apartments wrong in such a way that they're not in a walkable area despite being dense.
The infrastructure change we need is to be ripping out the parking lots, not installing EV chargers in them!
There are places where this is just not possible. I live in very hot climate and people would be dying all the time due to heat exhaustion and dehydration if this was the case. I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you can't simply say, fuck cars. It doesn't work this way everywhere. I would say that public transportation needs to be greatly improved upon and invested in though.
I've lived in places where I don't need a car and it's great and shitty. I've lived in places where you do need a car and it's great and shitty. I've lived in places that have great transportation and it's hot, but again, it's great and shitty. There are trade-offs with whatever you go with. I do agree that we should focus more on better zoning and better public transportation.
You say that as if cities in hot climates didn't exist before cars.
You're totally right. The world hasn't been getting hotter due to climate change and people didn't use horses. How could I forget.
Oh, and you get to change your battery in 3 years for $20k because it's worn out.
There are some big problems that get glossed over that you learn about when you own one, unless you've done enough research to know when people are blowing sunshine up your ass.
Current battery technology easily lasts 10 year. The good ones even outlast the car they are installed in.
Our Prius lasted 12 years before we sold it, and it was still going strong. Newer batteries have improved their life expectancy. My experience makes me doubt your claim both on life expectancy and cost. A quick search estimates the (battery) cost between $2000-$4500, depending upon installation cost. We replaced the Prius with another hybrid that gives us 65 mpg/28 kpl. When infrastructure gets better, We will fully switch to electric. ICE engines really are that much more inefficient. Equivalent electrical costs are pennies per gallon. edit added: (battery)
I don't know about that price, even used EV batteries aren't that cheap. I just bought 43 kWh of LFP batteries for my home and they were almost $10K, and that's less capacity than most EV batteries.
I did a search to buy Prius batteries. I remember searching for how to replace batteries years ago and downloading the instructions. There were quite a few steps because of the potential of fire, if shorted out, but otherwise was pretty straight forward.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/155688032892?chn=ps&amdata=enc%3A1a2PXQDe8Q9uosuxnz69ArA87&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=155688032892&targetid=1644837436283&device=c&mktype=pla&googleloc=9018572&poi=&campaignid=20125739985&mkgroupid=149128855676&rlsatarget=pla-1644837436283&abcId=9312975&merchantid=6296724
NiMH is pretty ancient tech for batteries. These would only be relevant to that specific model, and they're reconditioned. Search up EV CATL LFP batteries and see how much those run.
I don't know where you got that info from but that is certainly not the norm... There are Tesla cabs in Vegas with over a million miles, and most of these battery packs retain close to 90% of their capacity even after 10 years. I'm sure there are exceptions, but 3 years is silly.
Yes there are problems and hurdles to overcome but I'd rank that pretty low.
I worried about the battery until I had this thought (and looked at the 8 year warranty ):
Phone battery, charged every night, approx 1000 charge cycles thus lasts 3 years ish.
Car battery, charged as needed maybe every 4-7 days. Approx 1000 charge cycles thus lasts 12 to 21 years. Total battery failure is something else entirely but you said "worn out".
If you needed to charge every night it might mean short range which means cheaper battery to replace or you are doing lots of miles. My car could do 200 miles easily before recharging or up to 300 with more care. If doing 200 miles a day you are doing 73,000 miles per year so in 3 years 220,000 approx. Any car probably needs some serious work done to it after that much.
Anyway we are still bringing this tech along so I reckon either prices will drop and/or car manufacturers will make them more serviceable so you don't need to replace the whole thing but maybe sub modules at a time.