The Next Car You Buy Should Be Electric
lehtimaeki.medium.comI don't like to discuss EVs in public because things quickly devolve into an inquisition if one doesn't fully embrace the messaging, but I'll bite.
From an enthusiast perspective, I have no issues with an electric powertrain. The concept has a lot of promise once the implementation matures. The current issues I have with electric _powertrains_ (not vehicles) are: Relatively short battery lifespan, high replacement cost. Unrealistic range estimates. I live in Germany and the range is pathetic when traveling at actual Autobahn speeds, which is further worsened during the times of year when heating or cooling is required. Poor high speed performance, except in higher price brackets.
The thing that these enthusiast-directed EV articles always seem to miss is this point.
> Most car companies are adopting use of modern operating systems in their new cars. Most companies seem to couple this generational leap in in-car systems to their EV launches. If you, like me, want the best UX of the in-car system the quickest, it’s an EV you need to get.
I'm not interested in an iPad on wheels. The ideal UX in a car should be as unobtrusive as possible. I should set my destination, select my playlist, and never have to interact with a touchscreen until I arrive at my destination. I have yet to see an EV that sticks to this philosophy. The new Porsche Taycan climate control vents are controlled via touchscreen, for example. This is insane.
As for the environmental aspect, well, I'm probably going to regret saying this openly. We live in a fully industrialized world. Unless we're all willing to go back to using wind power to transport cargo and carriages to transport people, while simultaneously getting the world population back to pre-industrial levels, it's a bit too late. I don't think you're going to be saving anything with your EV. The messaging around this topic is akin to a man who burned his house down and is now discussing smoke alarms. It's too late, my friend.
>As for the environmental aspect, well, I'm probably going to regret saying this openly. We live in a fully industrialized world. Unless we're all willing to go back to using wind power to transport cargo and carriages to transport people, while simultaneously getting the world population back to pre-industrial levels, it's a bit too late. I don't think you're going to be saving anything with your EV. The messaging around this topic is akin to a man who burned his house down and is now discussing smoke alarms. It's too late, my friend.
It's definitely not too late, this sort of defeatist attitude is not only wrong but dismissive of the dangers.
> I don't think you're going to be saving anything with your EV.
This is also dead wrong, a quick switch to EV will substantially reduce the amount of carbon pollution, no need for mass killings.
We simply need the government too provide right incentives to switch to cleaner and less energy usage
> It's definitely not too late, this sort of defeatist attitude is not only wrong but dismissive of the dangers.
I'm not suggesting _nothing_ be done and we carry on as usual. But there are 7.6 billion people on this planet and nearly every single one of them either has, or is working towards a modern standard of living. You can't go from 600 million people in 1700 to 7.6 billion people in 2021 without severely harming your ecosystem.
11,000% more people, and each one of them uses _far_ more resources than their 1700 equivalent. They didn't travel except by muscle or by sail, they consumed locally produced food or food imported by sail and muscle power, and the most technologically advanced good available to the average person was an oil lamp.
There isn't an electric car, reusable bag, ethically produced wool sweater, or synthetic burger that can get you back to anywhere near that kind of resource usage.
As for the dangers, I'm aware of the worst case scenarios and the best case scenarios. They're all terrible. At worst, we die out, at best we end up struggling to maintain a comfortable existence due to shortages and a fragile ecosystem while reminiscing about the good old days. But we need to look at the problem clearly and realistically and work towards feasible, realistic _mitigations_ (solutions are impossible) rather than passing nonsense populist laws like banning plastic straws or electric car subsidies and hoping the next generation figures it out.
> This is also dead wrong, a quick switch to EV will substantially reduce the amount of carbon pollution, no need for mass killings. We simply need the government too provide right incentives to switch to cleaner and less energy usage
I'm not opposed to this, and I certainly don't advocate mass killings (see above re: realistic mitigations). I do realize that the lifetime emissions of an electric car are lower than most ICE vehicles. But again, this isn't a solution. You still need a lot of infrastructure and a lot of emissions to manufacture, install, maintain, and eventually replace that infrastructure. Sticking a solar panel on every roof and a wind turbine in every neighborhood isn't going to solve the fundamental problem of "organism is using resources in an unsustainable way".
A quick, forced switch to EVs is going to win the "carbon emissions" line-graph competition so we can all virtue-signal to each other about how well our countries are doing, but it's not going to get us out of the hole we dug, even when combined with _all_ the current popular emissions reductions proposals.
Oh man, I will vote for you...
Thank you for this. I don’t see how we make any significant changes to our trajectory without accepting a “lower” quality of life than what we have now. We need to localize, we need to rid ourselves of continuous consumption of useless junk, and we need to reconnect our resource use to the planet that sustains us.
None of that is accomplished by the virtue signaling you mention of replacing one luxury item with another different one.
>a quick switch to EV will substantially reduce the amount of carbon pollution
An even quicker switch to "drive less" will do as much good, and save you a load of money too! (As well as consuming significantly less of the world's resources)
That's been my approach so far, I bought my Ford Ranger used with low mileage and its a 2003 with less than 90k on it. I don't use it for commuting since I've WFH for years.
I'm interested in the EV trucks they're starting to produce, although I'd like the truck to be smaller and for vehicles to be less phabletey and certainly not to come with subscription O/S upgrades.
Well written!
I still can't get over the fact that every (haptic!) button is replaced by some touch screen interface. I think it is pretty normal to change the air conditioning while on the road. Now it is kind of dangerous to change it because I need to look for the touch button.
Yeah it looks nice, but until I get haptic feedback from a touchscreen, please don't remove buttons/knobs which are often used while driving.
> It’s like the old-school nerds refusing to adopt graphical user interfaces in the 80s. It’s a mindset that once gotten rid of, looking back you can’t understand why you ever thought that way.
… which is exactly what most power users are still doing with terminals and tooling that is as old as modern computing. Did he just inadvertently argue against his own point?
There are many great arguments for EVs, but this text missed the mark completely.
Very few power users forego GUIs. Your IDE is (probably) a GUI, your browser is (probably) a GUI, so are many other things.
A more nerdy argument would be virtual memory addresses, automated testing, better compiler warnings, etc.
I've made a pretty successful career out of just a terminal and vim, which drives 95% of what I do work wise. I only need the browser for slack, zoom and jira.
And jira I could interact with through vim/emacs if I really hated myself. Slack and zoom I mostly view as distractions from work.
It honestly would make sense for me to use my laptop for browser-based work and be entirely terminal-only with my workstation. Lots of people like us still exist in the workplace. I'm not even 40 yet.
Same here! Under 40, and have been using debian, bash and vim for over 25 years in both my private and professional life (as a python dev). Oh and weechat for libera IRC of course ;)
Agreed.
However... I'd still argue if you have a car today that you own... Stretch ownership to another 5 years.
I'm currently on vacation in the lake District in the UK and the car I have is Volvo T8 twin engine. I can't charge this thing anywhere. Charging spots in hotels aren't available to non residents, the solitary charging spots in car parks are taken, and the cottage I'm in has a very strange weak circuit that I can't charge the car from. Anecdotally I've seen no Tesla's or Porsche Taycan, or even Leaf's... Those were left behind at the M6.
It feels like infrastructure has yet to really catch up to need. It will. But today, if you still own a hybrid, ICE, twin engine... Keep it a while longer.
By that time Polestar and the like will have incredible cars available for less than the current price. The wait will be worth it.
> It feels like infrastructure has yet to really catch up to need. It will. But today, if you still own a hybrid, ICE, twin engine... Keep it a while longer.
It will, but it isn't something that will likely happen in a short period of time. Civil engineering projects take several years to plan and execute. There's also the question of who will pay for it.
Absolutely - I had to get a new car in 2019 (because I, er, kinda wrecked the old one - no one got hurt fortunately, but the car was 10 years old already, so an economic total loss :( ), and I hope this one lasts 10 years too. By that time, EV technology should definitely be at a point where you won't have to think twice about buying an EV.
Still doesn't work for my use case. I commute on public transport, live in an apartment with only on-street parking, there is limited on-street charging but it's massively oversubscribed. Mostly I drive longer distances for hiking trips, weekends away music festivals, visiting family etc. Very few of these destinations have charging options. I've seen how this can work, I drove an electric Hyundai Ionic as a hire car in South Korea a couple of years ago. The car was great and there are chargers everywhere, but we're nowhere near that point in the UK as yet.
It almost almost starts to work with latest models. I just got Kona 64KWh version last week and my math was among the lines of: it can do 400km/250miles of realistic driving, I do need a 20-40 min break after 400-500km anyway, that is enough to charge it up on fast charger to continue my trip. Kona is not ideal because it needs 40-50 min to charge, but Tesla Model 3, VW id.3/id.4 and others can do 125kwh+ charge rates so can charge in <30min. I think I'll stay with Kona for 2-3 years and then jump to something that can charge faster.
So math of getting to destination starts to work, then you get to destination charging and that is more tricky. The car wants 16KWh per 100km, and charging from power socket you can realistically pull 1.6-2KWh, so overnight you can expect to be able to charge 100km of range without much of infrastructure (without level 2 chargers I mean).
So my conclusion is that it's not plug-and-play just yet, but it nearly works, and benefits of electrics starts to outweigh the disadvantage of looking for a power socket.
Same experience. The infrastructure simply isn't there yet in most towns or cities.
Those who think otherwise forget that a large number of people in OECD countries don't own their own parking spots or have the legal right to run electricity or install their own chargers.
They also seem to greatly underestimate what it would cost to saturate street-side parking spots with car chargers.
Charging will eventually become convenient for people who don´t live in detached housing or happen to be in a small handful of forward-thinking towns or cities, but it's going to take a fair amount of time.
A big problem in my city is that street charging stations have to compete with regular parking spots, so a spot is either just a normal parking spot, or blessed for EVs only. Bit of a thorn in the eye of less rich people who can’t afford an EV.
Second, they’re competing with bicycle parking and bicycle lanes. Spots are getting fewer because of this.
Third, cars are getting larger, leading to larger parking spots required, and therefore a lower spot density.
Hmm, interesting. In London at least it doesn't look like the on-street charging is particularly over subscribed, although it obviously would become so if everyone followed this without drastic improvements. I think it really depends on the area but parking by my old flat had chargers in the lamp posts, by my friends there are proper electric only bays with faster chargers, etc.
If your main use case is long trips though I agree, although service stations in the UK do have pretty good electric charging infrastructure.
My parents have just switched to electric and while its a slight change in how you operate (maybe stop for a coffee and let the dog stretch his legs while they are plugged into a fast charger for 20 mins) they seem pretty happy with it.
Another anecdata point - an acquaintance got Tesla. And now instead of just rocking up to a nearest petrol station he's in constant mode of planning trips, checking for available charging stations, leaving the car few blocks away for charging, etc, etc. He's still happy apparently, because it's very pleasant ride and so on. But from my point of view it's a massive downgrade in comfort.
The next stage is hydrogen powered cars. All of the upsides of electric cars but none of the downsides.
Petrol cars have significantly longer driving range, which is important for transport efficiency.
Petrol cars are significantly cheaper to buy.
Petrol cars refuel significantly faster than electronic cars recharge.
Petrol cars don't have a costly battery which degrades over time and pollutes.
- Very few trips are long enough to deplete an EVs battery
- EVs have significantly lower Total Costs of Ownership
- To refuel your petrol car, you have to make an extra trip to the petrol station. While your EV is simply charged where it is parked overnight
- The extraction, refinement and transportation of petrol pollutes way more than that EV battery will
> - Very few trips are long enough to deplete an EVs battery
Ever drive to vacation by car? Or visit relatives a few hours away? Not all of our trips are inner-city or in a similarly small radius. So if you don't want 2 cars, electric is not an option.
> - EVs have significantly lower Total Costs of Ownership
Doesn't help with them being way more expensive in acquisition. There is also no used car market for them AFAIK. This will all change in the future but currently they are no option for many people just because of the price.
> - To refuel your petrol car, you have to make an extra trip to the petrol station. While your EV is simply charged where it is parked overnight
At least in theory.. in practice you maybe use a big garage shared with others and it does not have any sockets.
> - The extraction, refinement and transportation of petrol pollutes way more than that EV battery will
Nice claim but I doubt that. It's always hard to do these comparisons fairly but battery manufacturing and disposal is very dirty business.
-- you could rent a petrol car for your vacation trip once a year, or make a charging and sleeping stop, or use fast chargers along the route (also not yet available everywhere)
-- you could private lease an electric car
-- I agree that it is not an option for everybody, everywhere. But with a little effort it will be for a lot of people in a lot of places
-- See this video for a comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oVrIHcdxjA&t=2s
p.s. nice nickname
Renting is absurdly expensive for any vacation distances. Around a hundred dollars a day, plus mileage (enterprise is, for example, 100 miles per day, and 10¢ for each mile after).
Might as well buy a used car for those prices.
> Ever drive to vacation by car?
Go look up people who road trip with EV, the experience is rather good. Your blanket assertion that this is simply impossible is just not the case in many regions.
Certainty in most people where people actually want to go.
Sure if you drive into bumbfuck nowhere in West Texas you might have an issue, but that is the waste minority of people.
Europe is better then the US. In the US if you are doing serious trips Tesla is clearly the best but others are growing fast as well.
> Or visit relatives a few hours away?
Tons of people do that with EV. A modern EV has multiple 100 miles of range. And stopping once at fast charger is really not that big of a deal. How often do you seriously do 300+ mile trips in a day?
Maybe you have a steel bladder and never pie or stop to stretch your legs or eat something. Stopping for 10min is really a deal breaker.
If you ask me I much rather be in a car that is much more quite for hours that drives with much more pop.
> Doesn't help with them being way more expensive in acquisition.
Most people use a loan anyway
> There is also no used car market for them AFAIK. This will all change in the future but currently they are no option for many people just because of the price.
Depending on your use-case there are some absurdly cheap EV. Bolt for example Those don't have some of the fast charge features and range mentioned above, but for people that don't need that it absolutely make sense to get a EV.
> Nice claim but I doubt that. It's always hard to do these comparisons fairly but battery manufacturing and disposal is very dirty business.
No it isn't a dirty business. This is just flat out false.
Battery manufacturing is really not that dirty. Telsa is building batteries in the middle of a city in California. You have some waste water that needs to be treated (and newer process manage to cut that out already). Currently to much intermediate products are transported but this is true for oil as well.
Can you explain what you specifically are referring to that is so horrible?
Li-Ion batteries get used and re-used and even after 10 plus years they still fetch a good price as people use them for custom builds and other hobby projects. Even if they totally break people will rip them open and reuse some of the cells.
Even after that pretty much every economic forecast shows that recycling for batteries will make a huge amount sense as it basically represents really high quality ore. So if you buy a car now, when in 15-20 years your battery is totally broken it will absolutely be recycled.
Data actually shows that very, very few Li-Ion batteries are getting disposed at all.
> - To refuel your petrol car, you have to make an extra trip to the petrol station. While your EV is simply charged where it is parked overnight
I have yet to see an apartment building with more than a couple of charging stations, if they have any.
On the street where I currently live, half the houses don't have driveways. Assuming you can park in the same spot on the street every night, are you going to run an extension cord from the house to the street?
(It's not an "extra trip," it's a stop when I am going somewhere.)
I really really wanted to disagree with you and bash on ICE's. But then I thought about it and this article's guilt trip is the type of hostility against 'carbon emitting' consumers that is also part of the problem in our fight for survival (and for the survival of whoever is left behind after we are gone).
It is the same lazy strategy as Coca-Cola making you feel guilty about not recycling the plastic they created or BP going on twitter asking people what is their 'climate pledge'.
If we are serious about this fight for survival then governments and Energy industry need to replace Coal and Natural Gas for something else non-hydrocarbon based ASAP and stop Oil & Gas Energy subsidies. Then there is moral ground to ask consumers to feel guilty about their ICE emissions.
I think this is the key. The solutions should not be pushed onto individuals when the problems were created by companies and governments that systematically eliminated public transit in favour of parking lots and highways and sprawl.
Petrol cars actually work in extreme climates.
My diesel and petrol cars really didn't like longer -30C weathers. The oil turns into mush and the poor 12V battery can't hold a charge.
It was a roll of the dice every morning whether I could go to work each day.
With an electric car, I sit in the car, press a button and it works. The cabin is hot within 5-10 minutes.
Compared to my diesel, which started blowing hot air to the cabin around the time I was already at the office :D
You had -30C winters and no engine block heater and battery tenders/jump kits?
Electric cars only really work at sedan weight/form-factor right now. Most people who need to drive in extreme climates aren't really city drivers and typically need more capable types of vehicles to go with the terrain...if not all out industrial vehicles entirely.
Heavy equipment like that isn't even viable with electric vehicles yet.
> Electric cars only really work at sedan weight/form-factor right now.
Complete nonsense. SUV/CUV are by far most new models.
All major manufactures have pick-up programs for next year.
> Most people who need to drive in extreme climates aren't really city drivers and typically need more capable types of vehicles to go with the terrain...if not all out industrial vehicles entirely.
They guy who has bought the most Teslas lives on the arctic circles. EV are incredibly popular in Norway and also the other nordic places. EV are very popular in Switzerland where we have high mountains, and go skiing there all the time.
Apparently it works for all of those people. But I guess people the state go on 500 mile expeditions to Alaska multiple times a month.
> Heavy equipment like that isn't even viable with electric vehicles yet.
Seems like your are moving the goal post pretty fast. By far most people that don't live in cities drive normal CUV/sedan/hatchbacks.
> SUV/CUV are by far most new models.
And are not work trucks. They also don't weigh much different from your average luxury 4-door sedan these days.
Well-civilized places like you are talking about are not really extreme environments.
”Work Trucks” or pickups are a 100% American thing.
Aussies have their utes, which are like sedans with beds.
Europeans use either vans or trailers pulled by said vans (or sedans) for the same thing.
Of course I had a block heater. It did fuck-all for a 2-liter Turbodiesel engine when it was -30C outside for a few days.
Maybe if I kept it running all night, but most apartments only allow 2 hours of electricity on a mechanical clock.
Yes, electric vehicles aren’t valid for every single category yet, sedans and SUVs are the current leaders, maybe smaller hatchbacks too.
Petrol cars can be easily fixed in a driveway.
Not a modern one. An outdated, inefficient one, sure. But not one that is actually built to be efficient.
The Fiat 500 from 1957 got 43mpg. Imagine what could be done, if car manufacturers were not focussed on the lease market, meeting the newest emissions regulations (more relevant in Europe), and filling cars with electronic toys.
Renault Twingo III gets 66 mpg, while having much more space and being generally more useful.
Yep, there are modern engines that will do that. I was using the example of an older engine, because they are generally much more fixable (which was OP's original point).
But my point is, the equivalent today gets a lot better milage, and the reason why has lots to do with why it is not fixable.
Yes, modern engines are optimised for fuel and emissions efficiency to within an inch of their lives. This was my entire point - we could move a couple of people in a Fiat 500 and get 43mpg, in 1957. Without the incentives I mentioned in my first post, we could easily make an engine much more efficient than that, and fixable.
As you ignored my comment on our other discussion, and continue the conversation here - I also assume you have electric heating and hot water at your house. After all, everyone needs to do everything possible to reduce fossil fuel usage, right?
But it's so much more complex than the 50+ year old Fiat 500 that the home mechanic can no longer work on it.
This comment does not deserve downvotes. Tesla is every bit as anti-hobbyist as Apple or John Deere.
Did you know that Tesla is not the only EV company?
Tesla is 80% of the US BEV market. Which manufacturers make their electric vehicles easy to work on?
No current company makes any of their modern cars deliberately easy to work on. No matter the %, the fact is you can get a car from VW, BMW, Daimler, Hyundai, Nissan and so on.
> Petrol cars have significantly longer driving range, which is important for transport efficiency.
95%+ you charge at home or at work and a single fully charged battery is by far enough for daily use.
> Petrol cars are significantly cheaper to buy.
Life-time analysis of anything but very cheap cars this doesn't really hold up.
> Petrol cars refuel significantly faster than electronic cars recharge.
Not relevant most of the time. If you actually road trip long distances most experience reports suggest that even just going to the bathroom and eating is enough to recharge enough to get to the next stop.
Very few people use their petrol cars to do road-trips in a way where the natural stops are not enough.
> Petrol cars don't have a costly battery which degrades over time
Petrol cars have much higher maintenance cost and an engine that degrades over time. If you take minimal care of your battery it will hold up for multiple 100k miles and even after that it will have significant resale value.
> and pollutes.
Far less then petrol.
> 95%+ you charge at home or at work and a single fully charged battery is by far enough for daily use.
Less than 35% of people in the EU live in detached houses. A sizable percentage of these either rent or don't have enclosed parking.
My guess is that only about half of the population, once you factor in people who live in apartments but have separate enclosed parking spots, have the opportunity to charge an electric vehicle at home. This is probably optimistic.
However, once you consider that the ratio of apartments and alternative housing <-> detached houses increases in highly populated areas, I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage of people who live in an urban area, are able to spend 20-30K+ on an electric car, and have access to convenient overnight charging is significantly less than 50%.
Not the whole population has cars either, specially in cities.
Adding Level 1 charger to outside parking spots is not very difficult and is already happening in many new developments.
Lots of people in cities park in parking garages where adding charging is easy to add any often still exists.
Charging at work places is also very possible and industrial area parking are adding these.
For people who drive long distance often in cities, going to a supercharger once in a while is also quite possible. Specially as Tesla and other increasingly add DC chargers in cities.
Its overall one of the bigger problems and that does limit EV however we are at 2%, nowhere even remotely close to be limited by that. However overall I agree, this is actually the area where states, cities and so on can actually make an impact.
This will solve itself when people start to want EV and try to figure out what the solution for their situation is.
Lots of us petrolheads like electric cars.
What we don't like are cars plagued by build quality issues and that we're not even _allowed_ by the manufacturer to wrench on it ourselves (a quality we also strongly dislike about modern ICE cars as well). The black box nature is what makes it antithetical.
The rates that Teslas are getting totaled out for what should be repairable issues are also a hot issue for us.
Wait, does that mean that you can pick up salvage title Teslas…?
Yes, but you won't be able to supercharge them (if not now, then at some point soon).
Rich Rebuilds has gone over the headaches of this extensively and you'll notice the last year or so of his content has nothing to do with Teslas.
I’m actually fine with that. Other than me scrounging around in the usual places, any links to where I should start looking for salvage titles?
Same places as for any other car really. :)
Wholesaler auctions are your best bet.
If you can it sounds like a wild ride getting various parts to coexist. I'm expecting components to be "smart" enough to self-report and disable each other in obscure ways.
I recall a few people doing mod work on recovered teslas and building a working one from two broken vehicles, but then having various usage issues.
Alternative: Why your next city should be walkable
Your gut (more burnt calories), wallet (no vehicle expenses) and family (less commuting and more family time) will thank you.
> The first car I bought (after driving a self-repaired / built junk) was a Honda Civic type-R
Yeah, no, not all of us have enough money to have had as our first car a "Honda Civic type-R". Probably the title should read be more like: "If You're At Least Comfortably Middle-Class The Next Car You Buy Should Be Electric".
But of course all this push to EVs is a huge regressive tax applied to the less-off people which is constantly ignored from the public discourse, so this type of attitude does not surprise me at all.
I am an adherent of bangernomics[1]. I don't care at all about cars. But right now I just don't have the knowledge to buy a second hand EV. It's too risky and things are changing too fast.
I'm afraid until there's a healthy and predictable second hand EV market, you are quite right.
[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/motors/bangernomic...
I wonder if it is yet possible to lease secondhand EVs? I’ve leased two Toyota hybrids (both new) and for me it’s the way to go.
(But don’t get me started on Toyota’s “self-charging hybrid nonsense”)
Granted, EVs are still considerably more expensive than conventional cars, but that's not set in stone. Except for the battery, the rest of the car is much simpler than an ICE-based one, so once they are produced in greater numbers, prices should come down.
>"Much simpler"
I don't think so. I bet you could make a reasonably performant ICE from scratch, yourself. By "scratch", let's say - from chunks of any homogenous material you want. You would have absolutely no chance of doing the same for an electric car (unless you made a lead-acid system with crude, mechanical switching for motor control, which was not considered performant in 1900).
The only way that such a statement can be made, is because the marvels of the modern, global component supply chain have completely obscured the amount of design and material complexity present in items we take for granted every day.
Tesla alone sold over half a million cars in 2020. Where are these price drops? $35k for their cheapest model (whose design is now 4 years old) is not something easily afforded.
For a point of comparison, you can buy a high end Subaru Outback for that same price, and it’s a really, really nice car.
> But of course all this push to EVs is a huge regressive tax applied to the less-off people which is constantly ignored from the public discourse, so this type of attitude does not surprise me at all.
Easy just tax the rich more, tax carbon, subsidize EVs
Tax the rich more, tax carbon, and build trains and buy buses. Stop subsidizing single occupancy vehicles which are a huge resource waste even if electric. Why as a society do we want to subsidize a vehicle that is going to spend 95% of its life parked when we can build common transportation that everyone can use?
Always amused when people call themselves "petrol head", really what they mean is just "car nerd".
"I'm not someone dorkily obsessed with an ordinary, everyday item. I'm a glamorous petrol head! Just like Jeremy and the boys."
Car. Nerd. :P
Of course, the rational arguments are almost all in favor of electric. But he's not going to win many friends here with that quote!
>old-school petrolheads screaming … that part of the fun is to be pat of the machine … It’s like the old-school nerds refusing to adopt graphical user interfaces in the 80s.
Give me bazaar-style composable UIs and I'll stop being an old-school nerd. Don't have any? Thought so!
> It’s like the old-school nerds refusing to adopt graphical user interfaces in the 80s.
This is ironic.
Emacs is a GUI.
There are good reasons for buying an EV but this article is not convincing. The author thinks an M3 is a “real sports car” (it’s definitely not), so no surprise that the article doesn’t talk about a big downside that makes EVs less fun to drive - their higher weight.
Heh...speaking of weight...Hoovie's Garage has me wanting an Austin-Healey Sprite Mark I. That'd be a real hoot to drive.
I'm gonna write what I'm writing every time this comes up.
I live in Munich, a big city in Germany. I know zero people who live in an apartment (like I do) who can reasonably use an EV. All the friends and acquaintances who own an EV have a house with a garage, and thus they have no problems charging (incidentally none of them reside IN the city with their houses, because they're not millionaires). I'd have to go the supermarket parking lot, which is the only charging spot in a 1km radius that I know of. I don't think (although I haven't asked) if the building owner would be up for putting up charging in our parking lot. I somehow doubt it.
I've yet to hear any even remotely sensible solution.
>"Why bother doing anything here as China is polluting so much? The reality is that we have to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. All. That includes every tonne we release here, in our home country. No matter what <insert another country> does, we have to stop our pollution here Now."
Exporting your CO2 emissions to other countries (in the form of battery manufacture) does not achieve this goal. If anything, it's worse, because other countries like China will happily burn brown coal to power their factories.
And if it really is so important to stop CO2 emissions, then I'm surprised the author of this article raved about the touchscreens and other electronic gadgets present in all EVs, as they are incredibly resource- and energy- intensive to manufacture (equivalent to the energy needed to drive 1000s of miles), and are not necessary. In fact, I'm surprised the author can tell us that we should enjoy the driving pleasure of EVs, which seems a completely luxurious thing in an article telling us we need to make significant changes to our lifestyle to save the environment.
Also - the author only managed 1000km in one year on an ebike? That's embarassing, and makes it hard to justify the manufacturing expense in energy and materials of the battery and motor. I've had to start driving to work on more days, as I don't have the energy now I have two kids, but I still manage 2,500km of commuting per year on a regular bike (which is older than me), and on a very hilly route.
> Exporting your CO2 emissions to other countries (in the form of battery manufacture)
This does not make sense. Battery manufacture is no way equivalent to ICE emissions.
>Battery manufacture is no way equivalent to ICE emissions.
How is it not? It takes a huge amount of energy to manufacture a battery pack (you spend about the first 1/3rd to 1/2 of an EV's life paying off the "CO2 debt"), and it generates all sorts of pollution in the process.
Because they are two completely different things. One is the environmental cost of manufacture, and one is the environmental cost of usage.
Electric and ICE vehicles both have both of these costs. They are all different. If you want to compare things, you need to actually look at all four numbers, not take two unrelated numbers and comparing them for dishonest reasons.
I'm aware of those numbers, and they are still both an environmental cost, regardless of how they happen. EVs swap high environmental running costs for high environmental manufacturing costs, and then we in developed countries externalise those costs by sourcing most of the component parts from other countries, and tell ourselves that we have done something great for the world.
Edit: It takes 25MWh to manufacture just the battery pack for a Tesla, or about 18,000Kg CO2 (assuming a 0.6Kg/kWh CO2 ratio for the Chinese power grid, which is a very optimistic number).
Assuming the power grid where the EV will be used is 100% sustainable (which is very very far from the truth), given that the CO2 output for gas/petrol is 0.3kg / kWh or 2.3kg / liter, and assuming an average of 35 mpg or 7.7 miles per liter, as well as adding a factor of 1.5 to account for refining, storage, and transport losses (which I think is very generous) you would have to drive your new Tesla for around 40,000 miles on 100% renewable power before you've paid off the increased CO2 debt of its manufacture over an ICE. That mileage, by the way, is the number of miles the petrol-engined car would have to drive to produce the 18,000kg CO2 that it took to manufacture the EV battery pack. I am also assuming that the manufacturing cost of the rest of the EV is comparable to an entire ICE car, which I think is fair, as EVs generally contain a lot more electronics (which are very energy-intensive to manufacture), as well as at least one electric motor. An ICE is basically a lump of metal, which has a surprisingly low relative cost of manufacture.
The UK has a relatively "green" power grid, for a developed country, and even here, the difference in CO2 output between the grid and an ICE is so small, you would basically never break even in overall CO2 emissions between an ICE and an EV. For reference, the calculated CO2 output of the UK grid is 0.23kg/kWh.
Also, just for fun, the embodied energy of a 1960's Fiat 500 (assuming its entire 500kg weight is made of steel, which is probably a good enough approximation) is 3MWh, or three laptops.
So what is more sustainable? Claiming that I am making an "dishonest comparison" just ignores the issues with the "green maths" of EVs.
IDK, if your best argument is that an EV breaks even with an ICE at 40,000 miles on the odometer under current conditions that is a very good argument for buying an EV to help the environment! They last a lot longer than 40,000 miles!
Greening up the energy sources for vehicle production should just be next on the agenda!
My "best argument" is that driving less, maybe combined with switching to a more efficient / smaller ICE car, could do as much good as buying an EV. It also avoids all of the new environmental issues caused by the materials required to manufacture an EV, as well as the financial cost.
>Greening up the energy sources for vehicle production should just be next on the agenda!
That would be great, but the article we are discussing has already strongly stated that we need to focus on what we are doing, not on other countries. This is despite the fact that we are effectively mandating the offloading of CO2 emissions to whichever country is manufacturing the major components of our EVs. The battery pack dominates those, in terms of manufacturing energy and resources, however all the fancy electronic toys and touchscreens that all EVs have also have a non-trivial manufacturing cost. My go-to example is that a laptop, comprised of an LCD, a few PCBs and modern microchips, and battery, takes about 1,700 kWh to manufacture. That's enough to drive an EV over 5000 miles. Start adding up all of those screens, CPUs, memory, and other semiconductors present in an EV, and that manufacturing cost starts to look pretty big, too.
Personally, it's clear to me that one of our biggest issues is the embodied energy, and attendant CO2 emissions, of all the consumer electronic goods we are importing at an incredible rate. It's a ludicrous situation when manufacture in Western countries has been tied down by emissions regulations, but there is no control at all on the products we then import.
Those numbers (18,000Kg CO2) do not seem to line up with what is researchers have reported.
I've seen plenty of numbers reported, but I think I made a reasonable estimate. I'd be curious to see what you have found. This paper does seem to indicate that the estimates have come down recently:
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/23/6345/pdf
Let's re-do my maths, assuming I over-estimated the CO2 output of manufacturing the EV battery by 100%, and this time we'll assume a charging grid (that is, where the EV will be charged) CO2 output of 0.3kg CO2 / kWh, which is worse than where I live, but better than the US.
I'll also assume an electrical power transmission loss of 10%, and an EV wall-to-wheel efficency of 80%, as well as keeping my well-to-tank CO2 production factor of 1.5 for petrol.
The answer comes out at around 25,000 miles. Better, but not great. At this point, your EV now continues producing CO2 at a rate of 0.12kg/mi, and the ICE car at 0.47kg/mi. By 100,000 miles, your EV has comparatively emitted 21,000kg CO2 (charging emissions of 12,000kg CO2 + battery pack of 9,000kg CO2), to the ICE car's 47,000kg CO2.
I have not taken into account the manufacture and maintentance of all of the EV charging points, which I expect to be substantial.
Looking at the overall - you have about halved your CO2 output for transport, as well as being able to offload about half of that again to whichever country manufactured the battery pack. You have also offloaded all of the point-of-use emissions, again effectively to whichever country manufactured the battery pack. To achieve this great success, an enormous amount of metals and semiconductors had to be used to manufacture all the charging points, as well as the attendant environmental damage and pollution from mineral mining, and disposal.
The fact that the overall benefits of EVs are even debatable, should tell you that this is not the radical change we apparently need to avert a climate catastrophe. To me, it seems like it would provide at best a modest improvement, all while seriously enriching a select few companies and economies.
If it really were about making radical changes to avert a climate catastrophe, it sounds like we should all be cycling, or at worst, using Honda C50 mopeds.
If you say "well, a 50% reduction is worth it", you could achieve that by driving half as much. Or by driving 75% as much, and changing to a car that is 25% more efficient. Or by car-sharing. None of those require enormous amounts of extra mineral extraction and pollution, but none of those make anyone any money, so there we go.
The unsustainable part of personal transport is the huge metal box we all expect to sit in, not the fuel used to power it.
None of the things you mention are mutually exclusive. They all combine very nicely.
Excellent. Then I will continue running my cheap ICE, avoiding the cost and environmental damage associated with an EV, all while cycling to work and other destinations as much as possible.
That's just not an argument that works. You could cut your emissions down even more by using an electric vehicle.
Why would I do that? I've already made significant choices about the way I have arranged my life, so that I am not reliant on a car. I have already more than exceeded any CO2 reduction that an EV would provide over it's life, and have done so without lining the pockets of automobile manufacturers and mining companies, as well as avoided extra environmental pollution. I have also done all this without needing to deal with all the downsides of an EV.
I take it you have electric heating and hot water at your house?
At least you managed to hide your personal dislike to the authors response in your message...
I dislike being told what to do, when their assertions make no sense to my life choices. Especially when most of the arguments boil down to "most of the environmental benefits are not going to happen yet, but soon!".
My personal choices (mostly, keep my house a bit colder, don't buy new electronics, and cycle to work as much as possible) probably do more good, and right now, than buying an EV ever will.
I also don't need to get my thrills out of driving a nice car. If we need to save the planet from CO2-induced death, then that is an absurd luxury that has no place.
Although I like a lot big heavy SUVs (I own a Toyota LC200 diesel), I recently bought myself an EV scooter. It appeared it is pretty much more convenient to navigate through downtown using this small EV - it is ubiquitous, faster, brings joy while riding and you don't care about parking lots as much. The only negative part is you have to care about battery charge which takes huge amount of time compared to diesel/petrol.
My next car will be a PHEV.
Most my city driving is within the electric only range, so I basically never need to fill it up, but with a full charge and tank of gas it’s over 1,000km of range.
While I’ll be able to charge it at grocery store or wherever if a charging spot is available to basically get free range, and charge it at home whenever I want, I won’t be reliant on charging and can get the best of both worlds when I choose.
I intend to drive it over the next few years which gets close to the 2035 goalpost many countries have of deprecating ICE cars, and as electric and charging becomes cheaper and fewer people use gas at all I can pick what type of fuel to use (petrol or electric) based on what’s cheapest that week/month.
PHEV are also up to half the cost of comparable full electric.
I think if I never had to consider longer trips (2-4 hours of driving into the country) and I had access to a reliable at home charging I’d go electric tomorrow.
I feel like for the next 1-5 years PHEV makes more sense for my situation.
I don't actually like cars or driving enough to deal with being an early adopter. That's basically for enthusiasts to deal with. Though lately the idea of a hybrid pick up has been enticing. Seems like they are just starting to exist. The new ford one looks almost perfect except its not 4wd.
The section about noise though is right, idk why we torture our selves with noise pollution. And how did people ever start to think they're cool by making more noise. Theres very few engines that sound good, and even then like the article said theres only very few times they should be heard.
In general Im frustrated by this whole idea of fixing the climate by having individual consumers change their habits. We all know its pointless, we know what the big problems are and yet we still want all of us little people to pitch in. We really need to start going after the big polluters. Us little people will be doing plenty of "pitching in" after corporations punish us by passing their new costs on down to consumers.
> In general Im frustrated by this whole idea of fixing the climate by having individual consumers change their habits.
I'm not really down with that either. Especially since the preferred policies center around 'nudges' which in practice are giveaways to wealthy and rubber hoses for the poor. Along with a Pollyanna hope that the magic of the market will deliver us a Unicorn without policy makers having to think hard and stick their necks out.
I'm probably like you, I'm not enthused about getting in my car and driving with all the other schmucks while watching for bicyclists and errant pedestrians.
I feel there is a need to reduce the need for cars. But that's a 50-100 year plan at this point. So we're stuck with cars and going electric is best worst option at this point.
I'd buy a EV tomorrow if it was cheap enough to do so for a practical commute vehicle, eg a small four door hatchback like a hyundai i30.
For charging, EVs aren't an issue for me since I'd use mine for commute and the range of most of them is plenty sufficient enough I'd only need to recharge every week. For country driving I'd still be relatively ok if I had a trailer.
That trailer requirement is not for fun. Its not optional or a "nice thing to have". I'd expect a EV to be a real vehicle and not some entertainment or otherwise toy. I frankly don't care about EVs for status purposes such as a sports car used to impress. It would be replacing my current workhorse commute vehicle and frankly none of the current EVs are actual competitors yet in realistic ways.
When charging is as fast and simple and universal as filling your tank with gas, it will start to make sense. I can go on a long trip, with brief interruptions for refueling/refreshments/etc. and expect to reach my destination in a reasonable amount of time. With an EV, I’m inevitably going to be stuck somewhere, having completed the other tasks, but waiting for the vehicle to refuel enough to continue onward. Worse, if I reach the destination and there’s no easy way to immediately recharge for the trip back, then the vehicle is effectively useless, except as shelter.
Until the EV infrastructure is as universal and simple as gas-power, it’s not an option.
It's all well and good but (a) they're expensive to buy and maintain, and (b) whilst UK charging infra might be good enough to get you there on a long journey, it's nowhere near good enough to do so in predictable time (which is important to a lot of us).
Also, basic practicalities: when I visit my parents there's no charging facility where they live so on at least some trips where the driving is more than just there and back I'd have to spend an hour driving somewhere, charging the car, and then driving back - time I'd rather spend with them given I'm often only with them for a day or two.
I would buy an electric car but the problem I have living in a terraced house is charging it. I don’t have off road parking and the street I’m on can’t easily accommodate chargers on the pavement.
On my old street (...not Old Street) in central London they installed standard ish plug in the lampposts with this RFID reader that let them know who to charge for the electricity. Seemed to work pretty well. Not sure how easy it is to get them installed though.
I had made this vow.
The charging network in India is next to non-existent but I was OK to risk it and figure out a way to get it installed in my apartment.
To compensate for the lack of charging network I need the range to be 700-800 KM so that I can use it for highway runs. But the ones that are available advertise somewhere between 300-400 KM which translates to 200-300 KM real world.
So I bit the bullet and bought an ICE car. I really hope the range improves in next 5 years. Otherwise electric cars are only viable to those who can afford a 2nd car in India.
If I were in the market for a $25K-$40K car then I would definitely look at an electric. But I'm not. The next car I'm going to buy is for my daughter who has to move out of her college dorm for her last two years of undergrad (her school only has dorms for the first two years). I'm looking for something used, small, and not super expensive. I'm leaning heavily towards a Honda Fit.
Bottom line? The next car I buy is almost certain to have an internal combustion engine.
Whether your next car should be an electric really depends on when you think you'll need a new car.
If you need a new car right now, it's still cheaper and probably more practical to buy a petrol car.
If you do not need a new car right now, I think trying to keep your current car for another 5+ years then buying an EV may make sense (probably including for the environment).
EV are taking off but it seems to me that they are still mostly bought by people with higher-than-average income and/or who are engaged on this issue.
I can't charge it in front of my house, so no.
I have to travel long distances for my job occasionally, and I don't get paid to wait at a charging station.
I don't understand why PHEVs never caught on. The range and fueling speed of ICE and the convenience of BEVs.
we compromised with hybrid - because theres no electric charging in our building then we considered ones where you can take the battery inside and charge it but the range is ~60miles. Our commute is 80miles one way with no ability to charge at the other end. Next one will be electric though.
I need it to cost 50K AUD or less, be able to tow, be able to go at least 500k on one "tank"/Charge and fit at least 5 adults comfortably.
After that I don't really care too much and would love to buy electric.
But I don't see much in that space that fits that bill. (in my state/country anyhow)
The available options in the market filtered to your needs should tell you what your next car should be, not some article.
Where do I charge it?
first world opinion.
I'll buy one when the prices are in my range (around $1000).