Comment on xkcd #3214: Electric Vehicles
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours agoBatteries only last 5 to 10 years max,
Real world studies are showing they last about an average of 12-15 years on average, and every manufacturer has a warranty for at least 8 years, with many up to 10.
A gasoline car can be fueled in 30 seconds
The typical passenger gas station pump flows at 7.9 gallons per minute. For most passenger cars and trucks, with tanks between 15 and 35 gallons, that’s about 2-5 minutes of pumping.
A typical level 3 charger will take a battery from 10% to 80% in about 25 minutes. And chargers can be in places where gasoline pumps can’t be, like ordinary parking lots and garages. So the dual purpose parking where you can charge the car while you shop at the grocery store or work out at the gym or sleep overnight at home is just a completely different paradigm from what we’re used to.
The average car lasts about 12 years, by the way. EVs last basically as long as ICE vehicles. Which also makes sense, because it doesn’t have to mix the fluids that lubricate and cool with combustion residue and foul up the engine that way.
So your data is out of date, and those fears that were commonly cited in 2015 have pretty much proven to be false for the technology that was around in 2015. Now, in 2026, there’s been even more advances in managing battery/charging health and chemistry, with more of an infrastructure for maintenance, repair, and charging.
sefra1@lemmy.zip 21 hours ago
And that’s a problem for ppl who buy 20 year old cars.
Yes, you are right, I take back my “converting gas pumps into EV chargers”, that situation can be solved by having more charge points in other places, unfortunately, as things are know, I know from an EV drive himself that it’s almost impossible to find a free charger at least where I live.
I guess that greatly depends on where you live, since you said “gallons” before I’m assuming US, at least here few people I know can afford a 12 years old car.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 hours ago
So if you’re in a country where it’s economically feasible to continue maintaining cars beyond 15 years, why wouldn’t you think that the much cheaper electric cars wouldn’t dominate the market even more?
Compared to the U.S.'s low adoption rates, EVs sell at higher rates in certain rich countries like Norway and Denmark, middle income countries like China and Turkiye, and poor countries like Estonia and Nepal. The cheapest EVs, globally, are cheaper than the cheapest ICE vehicles.
The cost of maintaining a car to last 20 years can be applied to EVs and ICE cars alike. I suspect that EVs will be easier to maintain to those ages. In the U.S., that doesn’t really happen in large part because our labor and parts network is expensive enough that buying new is comparably cheaper than repairing, past the 15 year mark, for most vehicles. EVs don’t actually change the equation any.
sefra1@lemmy.zip 18 hours ago
So how are mechanics going to solve the battery problem? Maybe replace dead batteries with used but still somewhat working batteries? But then after 20 years all batteries for that same model will be dead.
Or are you trying to say that poor people will be able to buy newer cars than they do now, because rich people will dump them sooner?
saimen@feddit.org 10 hours ago
The batteries won’t be dead immediately. These studies saying they last so and so long define “lasting” by still having more than 80% of the initial capacity (iirc). So for people who usually don’t drive more than let’s say 100 km at once most EV will still be totally fine.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 hours ago
Why not replace them with new batteries?
Also, you’re not engaging with the fact that the typical ICE car lasts an average of 12 years. If there’s a batch of survivors that lasts much longer than average and are accessible to the people of your country, what makes you think the same won’t be true of EVs when they get old enough?
Venat0r@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
that’s the average, some will last longer than that