Oh no, ONLY half the entire population of the United States would benefit from EVs* so let’s throw those cars in the trash.
- Allowing for this fact being true, which it probably isn’t and also I don’t care because: see above.
Comment on White House threatens to veto anti-EV bill just passed by US House
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Current battery tech for EV’s is only good for short range commuters who have a means to charge from their homes. That leaves out half the population.
Hybrid EVs are pretty good for everything. Their batts are small enough to be easily replaced when they go bad (all EV’s of every type will have their batteries need replaced in 10 to 20 years time) and you don’t need to plug them in so no range issues or priving unregulated EV charging station to worry about finding.
That’s really the only type of EV the US should be concentrating on until there’s better battery options available. A 1500 Lb Battery that costs over $10,000 to have replaced so you can go 300 miles when the car is new (and temps are warm) and have it slowly dwindle down lower and lower with every charge is a waste that will prematurely add vehicles to landfills.
wagoner@infosec.pub 11 months ago
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
the average daily commute for the vast majority of Americans is well within what can be maintained with a at home level one charger.
but you make that argument and people start wringing their hands and try to come up with other excuses, like the unimaginable horrors of extension cords or something else to continue to argue against EV.
Its a classic american tactic. “IF ITS NOT 100000% PERFECT, IMMEDIATELY AND AT THE START, THEN WE CANT DO IT!”
Cethin@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
Spoken like someone who hasn’t used an EV and hasn’t actually looked into it themselves. Modern EVs work for the huge vast majority of commuters even on level 1 charging (a regular 120v home outlet). It’s also much more convenient for them, as they never need to go to a gas station again.
The biggest issue is apartment dwellers. Apartment owners should be required to maintain a certain number and level of access to charging equipment per apartment. Just access to level 1 charging would likely be fine, they just have to be forced to make it available.
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
you don’t need to plug them in so no range issues or priving unregulated EV charging station to worry about finding.
But if these cars charge their batteries by burning more gas then whats the point of having EV at all?
nickhammes@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Power plants are more efficient at getting usable energy than your car’s engine in general. There are some transmission losses, etc that favor the car, but on the balance, for the fossil fuels you burn, you’ll get more car-miles if you burn them in a power plant, than in the car itself. And some of your electricity comes from wind, water, nuclear, and other clean sources, which makes electric cars even bigger winners in terms of using less fossil fuels.
Sure, I’d rather have electrified non-battery public transit than any kind of cars, but EVs are still an improvement over ICEs.
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
I think I didn’t make my point clear. I am of course pro EV cars because of all the benefit you mentioned.
I am questioning the idea of a hybrid car that can only be charged by pumping more petrol. might as well by a normal car and leave the batteries to the true EV car that truly need them
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Don’t forget that you’re toting essentially two cars in a single platform, both gas and ev. The big advantage EVs and hybrids have is regeneration, a good chunk of the energy normally lost as ambient heat in brake pads gets pumped back into the batteries.
But there’s all the added weight and complexity accompanying that. The Prius appears quite reliable, so far. But I’d rather just use my bicycle or motorcycle.
inverted_deflector@startrek.website 11 months ago
Hybrids are still generally more fuel efficient than equivalent non hybrids especially in non highway conditions.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
They don’t just charge by burning gas. The main time you burn up a lot of fuel is when accelerating from a stop and climbing a hill. That’s when something like a prius will use the electric motor and battery, then just use its gas motor to cruise at a steady speed on a flat roadway. The battery will charge itself when hitting the brake or taking your foot off the accelerator and slowing down or going down a hill.
It’s why the prius is popular. It’s a 75 pound battery but helps provide adequate acceleration and gets 50mpg by having a small and fuel efficient gas engine.
sun_is_ra@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Ya that make sense. But then their positive effect on climate is minimal. Hopefully no one would think they are half helping the planet by buying a hybrid
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Full evs will fill a landfill in 15 years time and need an entire new car to be built to replace it. New 1500 lbs of lithium and Cobalt and nickel battery as well to be mined.
You want to help the environment you’d be doing far more by installing solar on your roof and buying an ice vehicle than you would be by buying an EV with today’s battery tech in it. How “green” they are is only skin deep right now. That will change later when more electricity is from renewable sources and batteries in EV’s improve beyond what they’re at using heavy li po chemistry. But that’s later. Not now.
Jaded@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Congrats, you are a mouth piece for the oil industry and part of the problem.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Lol. No. I just know more and have more experience about both vehicles and batteries than almost anyone else that would be on here.
So why don’t you go ahead and explain in your own words why an all electric vehicle built today is going to save the environment. Explain how a vehicle that will only last 15 years before needing to be scrapped or has to have $10,000 thrown at it is better. Explain how all the extra rubber and tire pollution from wearing out 15 to 20 percent faster due to all the extra weight, is going to save the environment. Explain how one country putting up 5% less cO2 is going to slow global warming.
EV will be great after batteries move beyond the li-pos and more of the US is on wind and solar. Right now though, straight EVs are shit.
frezik@midwest.social 11 months ago
Count all the maintenance you would be spending on an ICE over that same time period. Oil changes, spark plugs, coolant. Brakes also have less wear on EVs due to regen braking. It’s too the point where they may last the life of the vehicle.
Ever look at the suggested maintenance schedule for an EV? Dealerships do, and it’s part of why they’re aggressively lobbying the government to keep ICEs on the road longer.
Largely overblown, and also solvable in time. Based on how long humans can go without a food and piss break, plus some padding for 80% charge time and cold weather, there isn’t much point to an EV with more than about 400 miles of range. Past that, any further improvements in battery tech can be used to reduce weight.
I don’t know where you’re getting that. Transportation is 28% of US CO2 emissions.
So in your mind, we can’t do more than one thing at a time? We can’t have EVs until we have renewable power, and presumably an extensive charging network?
A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Its a classic argument a lot of Americans love to make about anything they hate “If it cant be absolutely, positively, flawlessly perfect immediately upon launch, then we should never use it”
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I love this.
Plugs are once every 100,000 miles well call it three times in 15 years.
EVs have coolant and it also needs replaced (lol)
Brakes do need changed less. Maybe 2 times over 15 years as opposed to 4 times. Like spark plugs, brakes are cheap. You know what isn’t cheap? The $2,500 inverter that makes the regen work on your ev. Better hope that doesn’t go out. Oops, that $2,500 isn’t including labor. Maybe you can do it yourself.
You got me on oil. Over 15 years there’d be 30 or 40 oil changes. Somewhere around $1,200 total.
Now be sure to add the things in that go out more often on evs. Shocks, struts, tires, tie rods, ball joints…oh, and that insurance on EVs is more expensive. The insurance alone more than offsets the $1,200 for oil changes. Then with tires costing about $700 a set to have mounted I’d sure hate having to do that 15% more often. And that rubber pollution is bad stuff. I just read an article last year about how badly it was harming fish. Ah well. Fuck em, right?
Kbobabob@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Where the Orange have i heard talk like that before?
What’s the maintenance costs for 15 years in an ICE vehicle vs electric? Now add in the savings from not having to pay $5.00+ a gallon(it will go up)? I’d also argue that more than half of drivers do not need to drive over 300 miles a day.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
My maintenance costs per year would be about $200 not counting tires. But I do all my own work and vet my vehicles well before purchasing them. Most people’s would be higher, though, since most don’t do their own work.
But in comparison to all electrics, the savings aren’t as much as you’re thinking. There’s still a huge load of things that can/will break down on an electric. Shocks, struts, wheel bearings moreso than an ice vehicle.
To give an example, I’ll use the 3rd most sold all electric of last year; the mustang mach-e. I’m skipping the first two because they’re teslas and absolutely ridiculous in high prices to get parts for.
I’ll start things off with the worst one.
So the battery itself (I’m looking these up as I go) is a holy shit $23,000 just for the part itself and only has a 100,000 mile warranty that it will have at least 70% capacity from when you buy the vehicle new. Wow, would that absolutely suck. You can buy new ice engines and have them installed for you for under $10,000. Way under in many cases.
Looks like the electric motor itself is around $4,000 if you got the all wheel drive version you have two of these to worry about. Then theres the inverters for the motors. Those are $1,700 a piece. I’m not traking down prices for the rest of this stuff. You get the idea.
You still have a single gear transmission to worry about that needs fluid changes.
Also antifreeze and a pump.
Brakes and brake fluid
Calipers
Several different control modules
Sensors
Etc etc.
Basically your maintenance free stuff that you don’t have to do to an electric you do have to mess with on an ice consists of plugs, ignition coils, serpentine belt, oil, injectors, fuel pump, and a timing belt if you got a vehicle with a belt and not a chain, throttle body, air filter and a few sensors. Aside from the oil and air filter, most of that stuff are things that need addressed every 80,000 miles or if they break.
That’s close to about it on what you no longer need to mess with. An electrics transmission should almost never break down so long as it’s fluid gets changed, at least. They’re quite simple bits.
So most “maintenance” and upkeep still exists for electrics. You just don’t have to spend 30 minutes changing oil every 4 to 8 thousand miles. There’s also a lot of extra that can break and cost a lot to fix on an electric. Then other things that break faster.
While most of your big ticket items like the electric motors and the inverters are left to a chance at going out, just like a chance of an ice blowing a rod out. It’s an absolute fact that your evs battery will die and that every single month that goes along you’ll get less and less capacity.
You want to save the environment? Instead of being forced to spend thousands more on an electric vehicle, buying a small ice vehicle and taking the $10k you saved and installing solar panels to your houses roof will do more.
acutfjg@feddit.nl 11 months ago
Explain how oil is going to save the environment
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
Never said it would.
ArgentRaven@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I’d be interested in knowing how you’ve got more experience and knowledge about EVs, if you could share. There’s a lot of misinformation out there but I’m open to hearing about your credentials. We always hear about “gasoline powered cars putting X tons of pollution into the air” but no one I’ve heard mentions replacing the batteries on an EV. I don’t think the general public really even thinks about it. I’d love to know more.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 11 months ago
I’ve rebuilt ev batteries before, I do all my own automotive work and repairs, I’ve kept close eyes on the emerging battery tech for vehicles and know the battery chemistry used in current and older EV’s and own stocks in two different battery companies (any idiot can own stock, but I just mention it to say I have money on the line in paying attention to batteries. I keep a fairly tight portfolio). I’ve been working on electronics for 30 years and vehicles for over 20 years.
I’m not outstanding or anything, but that still puts me in a pretty narrow demographic on Lemmy, and evs are a subject of interest to me, while my job grants me a lot of free time to do what I want, which is often reading about things.
So the deal with the batteries: there’s been a handful of different types of ev batteries used over the past 15 years. Some lithium iron phosphate, some nickel metal hydride, some lithium, or nickel Cobalt aluminum.
Each has some positives and negatives but the overreaching delima with any of these is that they all need a lot of small individual cells to make up the entire battery pack (teslas can have 2,800 batteries all tied together to make their battery pack, for instance) and they all suffer from being charged/discharged. At current, lithium based batteries (most all of the newer EV’s) can last about 1500 full charge/discharge cycles before failure. But every single charge/discharge cycle does a small amount of damage in the formation of what is called dendrites. Dendrites rob a battery of capacity and eventually will short out the battery cell, making it go completely bad.
The damage to the batteries is worse at times of full charge and full discharge. And is lessened if kept in between. EVs use this to their advantage and will cut your vehicles power off showing 0%, even though there’s capacity left in the batteries to go several more miles, and “100% fully charged” when plugged in, will actually be only around 90% of the batteries max capacity. If you owned an EV and kept it between about 30% and 80% the entire time, and avoided fast charging, which also makes batteries go bad faster, your battery should last longer than most anyone else’s.
But anyhow, every battery used in an electric only vehicle today is 100% fact going to lose a bit of max range with every single charge, because every single charge causes a slight amount of build-up/damage to the batteries inside. Aside from that, no manufacturing process for those batteries is perfect, so not all of those hundreds or thousands of battery cells that make up the ev battery are perfectly the same, so they won’t all start to go bad a once. Once enough of those cells go completely bad (today’s evs track the cells and can compensate for the bad ones for a while) your battery, all 1,200 to 2,000 pounds of it will need to be replaced, and replacing them with a used/refurbished battery pack is a temporary bandaid after paying a large labor cost, or a new battery pack which will cost you more than what you would expect to pay for an entire 10 year old used car.
Manufacturers (and real world info as all electric evs are starting to get pretty old) expect the batteries to last 10 to 20 years. It’s looking like that’s a pretty good estimate. 20 years being a stretch, but doable for someone who slow charges at home , only charges to 80%, and doesn’t take trips that take them down too low on charge.
To give you an idea of how well auto manufacturers are aware of this, just look at a Ford mustang mach e. The most popular ev after tesla. They have a 8 year or 100,000 mile warranty on the battery. The mach e has a claimed range of 290 miles. Their warranty doesn’t take effect unless the battery capacity is less than 70% of what it was when new. Imagine having a car you paid $50,000 for, expected to get 290 miles with, and then 4 years later with 95,000 miles on it you can only go 210 miles and ford tells you to go kick rocks. Currently, that battery pack is about $23,000 dollars(most batteries arent this stupid high). Plus install. I just got rid of a mini van that was supposed to get 22 mpg. It was 16 years old, had 245,000 miles on it, and it still got 22 mpg. It was also still worth something. How much will a 16 year old EV that needs a $12,000 battery to work again be worth? Pretty much nothing after people learn how expensive and how guaranteed it is that they’ll need to have a new battery. I wouldn’t spend $12,000 on most 15 year old vehicles that are in great condition. The thought of paying to get a 15 year old vehicles that would still need a battery put in it is asinine.
essteeyou@lemmy.world 11 months ago
One country?