I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect 10+ years or more out of a car without shelling out a large sum of money for a battery swap. This is probably my only concern. Repairability and the cost of those repairs.
Comment on Car dealers say they can’t sell EVs, tell Biden to slow their rollout
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 10 months agoMost of those fears aren’t completely valid anymore.
- You can park it outside.
- winter gets you less mileage but not the end of the world, some of the fastest growing EV markets are cold countries.
- You might be surprised, a lot of grocery stores and even workplaces have some basic charging capabilities. Plus you can charge at home.
- If you have an electric dryer you can charge your car overnight, just don’t do both together.
- Batteries will outlast any lease, if you’re looking to get 10-15 years out of a car that would be understandable, but if you’re leasing it won’t be a problem.
JiveTurkey@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
I don’t think I said that’s an unreasonable concern anywhere. If the EV offering doesn’t meet your requirements now, don’t get one.
Current EVs meet a lot of people’s requirement, so they’re getting more popular. They’re also getting better, cheaper, charge faster, last longer, have longer range, and weigh less every year. They’re literally getting better in every way faster than anyone thought possible thanks to how popular they are.
Hopefully soon there will be an EV that does match your requirement. Maybe there never will be, but you’ll probably be in the minority and that’s for the best because we need to get ICE passenger vehicles off the road and into niche applications where nothing else works.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
If the EV offering doesn’t meet your requirements now, don’t get one.
That’s it exactly. 7 years ago EV’s were way out of my price range and, to my mind, did not offer me value for money. This year when we went shopping, they were cheaper, there were way more options, but they were not available without a significant lead time and I wasn’t fully sold on their reliability. I fully expect^hope that in 7 years from now we’ll need to shop around to find a ICE car.
JiveTurkey@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I agree that all of those things are improving but repairability or even the right to repair new electric vehicles is flaky at best and that’s my concern. I don’t want to own a vehicle that I’m unable to repair. Not to mention manufacturers locking features behind paywalls.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I live in a small town in a rural area. There is one charger in my town, but it’s at the county building and is for county employees. There are chargers at grocery stores, but those are 50kms away.
My house still has a fuse box, I don’t have any available holes. The whole system needs changed and I will, but that’s $10k and that’s not a very exciting purchase.
I guess I didn’t mean lease, I meant financing. I definitely hope to have a vehicle at least 7 years. I just upgraded my paid off corolla because we needed all wheel drive vehicle for our winters here. The electric car would have to be comparable to that and I’m not sold that they will be. We bought one of the few cars available to us without a multi month wait.
I’m sure many of my fears are unjustified, but I require further evidence. I’m not an early adopter type.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
You really only have 1 problem (aside from perceptions), but it’s a real one. You need to be able to charge at home, and it sounds like you probably can’t do that. You’d be stuck on trickle charging (3 miles of range per hour on the charger), and even that’s questionable.
The car will keep the battery warm whenever it’s plugged in. If you take care of the battery (rarely let it go all the to 0% or 100%), it will easily last over 100k miles, and probably to 200k. When it does start to wear out, it’s not a hard cutoff- just like your phone, you’ll notice the capacity (range) starts to drop.
FWIW, there are very significant federal rebates/tax credits in the US for EVs. That specifically includes upgrading electrical service to support an EV charger. But given that you said kms, I have to assume you are in a different country. Many have their own incentives, but you’d have to check into those yourself.
InternetUser2012@midwest.social 10 months ago
It saddens me when I read things like this because you’re either a troll, or very misinformed on EVs. I’m a diehard gasoline boosted 500hp+ kind of guy but I’m not an idiot. Electric is the future and there is nothing wrong with it. I’m not going to go out and buy one (mostly because I’m not buying anything new that reports how I drive or where I’m going) but in the future I will for sure being doing electric swaps into my hotrods.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 10 months ago
Well that went from 0-100 fast.
Sparlock@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I had a 87 corolla for the longest time. I sold it to a teenager a over a decade ago and I still see it rolling around town. Great car if you are only worried about going a-b and don’t need fancy things like usb chargers or A/C.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Mine was a '16 and had more features lol. Great car. The only “repairs” it needed in 7 years were the brakes. I was sorry to let it go.
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
I get the old house rural life. I wouldn’t worry about the lasting 7 years right now. That being said driving a relatively efficient car for a couple decades is definitely environmentally friendly by comparison to getting a new truck every 5 years. Probably not too far from buying a new EV every 7 years once you add the embodied energy.
In a few years things will come around so make sure you’ve upgraded your electrical panel by then.
FireTower@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If you have street parking in a urban area there’s a good chance you can’t get a outlet connected to your car without running a extension cord from your window, across a sidewalk, and then to the port.
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
That’s a different situation than OP, so what I said to him isn’t going to work for you.
mortalic@lemmy.world 10 months ago
There are so many public charging options now, just go to your grocery store and charge while getting groceries. My workplace has a few as well.
CCatMan@lemmy.one 10 months ago
You could try the portable battery options, but not sure how you prevent someone from taking it.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Why is everybody so erect for EVs? They save you gas and some maintenance, but that’s about it. They increase tire wear for sure, and weigh a heck of a lot more which wears the roads down quicker (roads wear with the cube of weight). They use less gasoline at the expanse of the poor third-world countries which front the environmental cost of mining and battery production, not to mention their archaic worker’s rights.
In 20 years, we’ll realize that EVs were probably about as bad as gasoline vehicles–what we should be focusing on is public transportation and updated city design to reduce our need to travel in the first place.
Sure, a split of electric and gasoline vehicles is beneficial, but they’re not the environmental panacea they’re being pushed as. So please keep the whole picture in mind when you’re telling people to suffer and sacrifice to give up a cheap, convenient gasoline vehicle.
IHadTwoCows@lemm.ee 10 months ago
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I mean, I’m a nut for EVs, but they are correct. EVs are likely better in the long run, but producing them still produces a ton of greenhouse gasses and other environmental concerns. The best is to encourage people to drive less, build better infrastructure so fewer people have to buy cars, and focus on reduction of reliance on driving as a whole.
Hell, even for me, my whole plan was to drive my EV into the ground, using it as long as possible to offset it’s upfront environmental costs, but my battery failed after 38k miles. I got a lemon :(. Thankfully, it’s covered under warranty and they built me a new battery, but now my car has the battery environmental cost of two EVs so it’ll likely never be as efficient as if I’d just bought a damn Honda Civic.
IHadTwoCows@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Ur right ICE factories make no greenhouse emissions at all and have 250M ICEs on the road makes lots less emissions than EVs. Having existing electrical plants produce power will just make more greenhouse gasses than all the ICE cars they have helped replace.
Sarmyth@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
I live here. I don’t care about the environment costs in another country if their government doesn’t step in to protect them. Whe used to mine super dirty in the US and its way safer now than it used to be. As the market grows, the demand grows, and hopefully, the countries most impacted by their own dirty practices will step up and help their citizens run cleaner operations with the added financial security. I’m not gonna act too concerned about it, though if the people actually impacted don’t care.
DudeDudenson@lemmings.world 10 months ago
How’s mining lithium and moving 6 tons around all day help with it?
IHadTwoCows@lemm.ee 10 months ago
How do you think it doesn’t? Can you explain point by point how your comparison works? Does haing 250M less ICEs in a country somehow increase greenhouse gasses?
Slacking@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Building a carless society will take time but we need to get rid of gas right now. The difference of emission for the use and manufacturing of an EV is absolutely not close to the cost of use and manufacturing of an ice vehicle PLUS literally burning gallons just to move it.
Oil companies, their assets and the assets of the barons who own them should be violently seized and used to offset the cost of what they created. Until that happens, we will have to suffer a bit or we will be stuck suffering so much more probably sooner than we think.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 10 months ago
People already have ICE vehicles, and they’re going to last for decades to come. I have a diesel Mercedes from 1980 that still runs and works just fine. No battery is going to last 40+ years, and the move to battery powered vehicles is unwittingly entering us all into a “subscription” based transportation society, much like literally every other device in the world that takes a battery. Oil and gas emissions aren’t ideal, but neither are the environmental issues that originate from mining. Mining causes massive amounts of environmental damage to wildlife and the surrounding natural ecosystem, watersheds, and has its own brand of air pollution. Read up on the Questa moly mine is Northern New Mexico if you wish. We’re talking rivers that turn blue, depleted salmon populations, -permanent- groundwater contamination, acid ponds, and heavy metal dusts blowing into nearby towns and exposing people to lead, uranium, and cadmium, among whatever else. Why are people so eager to attack oil “barons” nowadays when the health, tech, and banking industries are bleeding us dry at every corner? At least we’ve got remote work options nowadays–can you say the same for your home loan?
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Disposability and lack of proven reliability are massive factors in my late adoptor attitude. When a 10 year old EV sells for $10k, I’m in. I’m not going to pay a $20k premium for a car that needs a $??k battery replacement (or it’s scrap) every 10 years.
Slacking@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Ice vehicles still need mining to produce. The one time cost is practically the same and quickly becomes unimportant when you compare the cost of running them. It’s fine if you want to keep using your old vehicle or if the only vehicle you can afford is the cheapest ICE, but buying an ICE vehicle when there are evs at the same price literally means you are part of the problem. Whatever extra cost there is after that in terms of battery replacement pales in comparison to the constant cost of gas so it isn’t a valid reason.
Do not minimize the effects of constantly burning gas. It is more than not ideal, it is leading to a complete collapse of our ecosystem.
Do you close your eyes every year whenever a new spill happens, or another thousand acres get burned? Call me when the tech industry is causing shit like that. Not that they aren’t doing bad things, but saying “what about them” when the crimes of the oil barons is soon much greater is farcical.
Ignisnex@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Change needs to be made somewhere. Gas isn’t the answer, so sticking with it… Kinda stupid. The “saves on maintenance” part is actually a really big deal that was just glossed over. You don’t need oil changes. You don’t have a transmission. You don’t need radiator fluid. With regenerative braking, you’re not wearing down brake pads anywhere near as much. Not to mention the gas emissions reduction. These are all highly toxic materials that are not being consumed and distributed into the atmosphere. And which mines are being operated in third world countries? If you’re referring to lithium, the largest producers are Australia, the USA, Chile and China. You know, some of the wealthiest countries on the planet… And Chile.
Understandably, hand waving “public transit” as the answer does make sense. Designing urban centres in such a way to make public transit preferable makes sense. The problem is that these changes are slow. In 20 years, you’ll have a few new suburbs built with these practices in mind. The majority of everything else will still be the same, because it’s not feasible to bulldoze existing infrastructure to replace it. It’ll need to be aged out, and climate change isn’t gonna stop for 100 years and wait for us to get our road placement juuuuuust right. Further, adding more public transit is expensive, with a high up front cost, plus a high maintenance cost ongoing. Unless you dump enough money into it such that it completely replaces the need for private vehicles, there will always be private vehicles regardless.
But the greatest benefit to EV is the pollution is centralized. Making vehicles will always suck for the environment, full stop, but EVs allow the production and majority of the pollution to occur at a relatively small number of places, which can be contained much easier.
To be absolutely clear, I don’t disagree with your point, but the answer won’t come overnight, and we’re on a time crunch. We need lots of innovation, and early adoption of incremental gains. One day, public transit and better cities will be part of the solution. But until then, we need solutions, and this is the direction to progress.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’m not against change, and I encourage it. But We also can’t put all of our eggs in one basket. I am glad people are buying EVs, but we can’t let a market for an inherently disposable item dominate over another option (ICE vehicles) that will outlast an EV a substantial proportion of the time. The automotive producers are licking their lips at the thought of getting us all into vehicles that will be be effectively unusable in 10 or 15 years–batteries age with use and also time, unlike steel and aluminum.
I am an environmental engineer and I have worked on remediation projects for oil and gas, as well as other types of natural resource exploitation such as mines. The damage caused by mining metals from the ground is extreme, and it will last decades, if not forever. “Centralizing” pollution isn’t a good thing–we’re best off distributing our pollution so that the Earth can have a fighting chance of repairing it piece by piece, which may never happen in areas that have undergone certain types of mining and other industry. Look at an old oil and gas site, and you would never even know it was there after 10 or 50 years. CO2 is a problem, for sure, and so is methane, but methane degrades in the atmosphere after just over a decade. Mining causes damage to the air, ground water and surface water, and to the nearby wildlife. Look up Tar Creek in Oklahoma, the Questa Moly Mine in New Mexico, and do you remember what happened in Colorado when the EPA accidentally released an entire mine full of acid drainage into the nearby river? Nothing but dead water life for miles and miles. Mines take some of our most beautiful natural areas and destroy them.
If you think modern mines are going to circumvent all of these issues, they aren’t. They’re going to have accidents and cause damage just the same as the fossil fuel industry–some ways, even worse.
Peppycito@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I see it like that too. The enshittification of the automobile. I am not putting my money down to bet against that just yet.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I’ll cop to that. My sole motivation for going EV was to minimize the potential maintenance burden in the long term. In my experience, the internal combustion engine was the single largest maintenance cost, for both money and time, that wasn’t a wear part (e.g. wipers, tires). I’m taking a bet here, but the sheer number of moving parts and subsystems in an ICE vs an EV is staggering. There’s just less to break down on an EV, and until that’s the standard, it’s a convenience I’m willing to pay for.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This sums it up pretty well. Battery powered EVs are still a luxury item both financially AND in terms of lifestyle. Most people don’t have the finances or the ability to accommodate one, and I think the people who own them forget that as they spout tone deaf positivity about the virtues of owning an electric vehicle. But tbh, I am not even sure what maintenance you’re talking about that’s such a big deal. You’ve still got tires, brakes, suspension, and steering components to worry about. All that’s missing over the typical <100k mile life of a vehicle are fluid changes every now and then. My understanding is that if you own a Honda, you can do basically nothing but oil changes and tire/brake maintenance and the car will still last forever lol.
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 10 months ago
This is true. From my perspective, I’m buying time and peace of mind. Not having to bother with oil changes, water pumps, belts, O2 sensors, emissions subsystems, emissions checks, and gas stations with ad-encrusted pumps, amounts to fewer maintenance intervals to track, less mental anguish, and less transactions to fuss about. And I’ve had rock-solid reliable ICE vehicles before, and still have been routinely burned by sketchy people in the auto industry. I get that things are better compared to even 20 years ago, but I think we can still do better.
Ultimately, I want a tool, not a relationship with a mechanic or dealership. Everything I can do to move the needle in that direction is worth it.
I’ll add that I got a corded lawnmower 7 years ago and it’s still going strong. No messy oil changes, no clogged air filters, no pulling muscles trying to start the thing, no smelly gasoline stinking up the garage, no last minute runs to the gas station just to do yard work. I just plug it in and get to work. And even with that, I’m looking into getting rid of the grass entirely… somehow.
Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
What a dumb regressive take. Just because you can point out some problems with the solution doesn’t mean it’s not in the right direction.
Lithium is plentiful on earth. Yes we can’t extract it cleanly now, but you know how we get better at that? Higher demand!
Electric cars and batteries are expensive, you know how we fix that? More production so we can leverage economies of scale. More production so that more research investment becomes profitable.
Electric cars can’t yet cover all the use cases that ICE can do. That’s not actually a problem at all. If we can cover even 75% of all transportation emissions that’s a big step.
People having a “hard on for EVs” and paying a little more for a luxury product is exactly what we need to get to the next phase on EVs and to start phasing out ICE for general public transportation. I don’t know why it makes you upset, but you can’t pretend this isn’t part of the solution. You’d have to be blind not to think electric transportation is part of the green future that’s going to reduce global warming and keep the earth livable. Sure EVs aren’t enough now, but EVs will be and passenger ICE vehicles are NEVER going to be enough EVER.