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Cars are like horses: people will soon realise EVs are just better, claims VW boss (www.autoexpress.co.uk)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 27 points 3 months ago (22 children)

I have no doubts about electric cars being nice or "the future", but the price of these things is still a problem.

A (reasonably) new one with the range I need (~400km+) costs way more than I care to spend. That is partly because batteries still cost too much, but also very much because they still have a tendancy to gatekeep larger range figures for use in luxury cars.

And getting older second hand is still too much a questionmark in terms of how much of a chance there be you'll end up having to fork over big for a new battery or motor and/or write it off prematurely.

Another problem is that I also have no way to charge it at home and would be fully at the mercy of public charging infrastructure. And generally speaking as a taller man, I feel some of them can also be quite lacking in terms of interior space.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (8 children)

    Why do you need 400km+ range? Is this for a daily/weekly need or a once in a quarter holiday trip style need?

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    This is the right question - people who have never owned an EV vastly overestimate the range they'll need, almost always.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Usually 200-300km is good enough range for most ppl on US. For other countries, I've found 150km to be more than sufficient.

    Overnight charging from a heater outlet is usually sufficient for normal daily use.

    Weekends usually add 100-200 km range easily in case the daily usage is slightly higher than daily overnight charge.

    Charging at office is also an increasingly possible option.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

    For me personally is because I don't have property to charge overnight.

    And I'm in a country where China is flooding their EVs in the market.

    Edit: to clarify, I am convinced with EV. I've been drinking the big oil koolaid for too long and glad I stopped. Better late than never.

    Tbf I haven't really done my research for local charging stations and their prices. Also the fa t that even the market here being flooded with cheap Chinese EVs, it is still more than I can responsibly afford. So for now I keep maintaining my current petrol car.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (3 children)

    Overnight charging is really critical to EV success. I can see why not having that would make it painful

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    What mostly makes this problematic is that there still aren't enough public charging spots out in the wild to counter this handicap, people occupy those that are available for way too long and they charge quite a bit more for the kwh then you'd have to fork over at home. Especially when you can smart charge with variable rates and/or leverage solar panels.

    I live in vertically built op neighbourhood from the 1950's so charging on my own meter, much like having things like solar panels, won't ever be a thing.

    I do not believe this makes owning electric cars impossible persé, but the the public infrastructure is also lacking, and they won't expand this without people buying more electric cars. But people aren't buying electric cars because they can't charge. Nobody here can charge at home, even if we do have plenty of people that have the income bracket to drive electric, so it has to come from public availablity.

    Progress has been extremely slow. Don't let my origional comment take away from the fact i'm 100 percent pro electric, I think it's cool as hell, but there's still plenty of situations where they are more than a little inconvenient. Having long range models here would at least reduce the frequency at which you'd need to charge.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    On a side note, take a look at balcony solar. It's quite popular in a lot of places to offset your electricity usage

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Yeah, thanks for the tip. I'm at least in passing aware of these solutions, but my problems aren't just concentrated around not owning a roof.

    I also have detached garden house in my yard that I could technically quite easily have 4 or 6 solar panels on, but the problem I have at yard level is that I only have sun to where that garden house is till maybe 3pm on ideal days before it disappears behind the apartment building I live in. Any balcony attached panels would stop receiving direct sun after 1pm or so.

    And even the sun we do have is greatly handicapped by copious amounts of surrounding vegetation. To the point I can't even really get my lawn to grow properly.

    It's a lovely yard because it's kind of like having private park in the middle of a big (for my country's standards) city and because we are surrounded by big buildings it's basicly also very quiet, but that does ofcourse come with it's limitations.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    That is what i need to do a return trip on the longest distance I do on a fairly regular basis and what the car would be mostly used for. (I have moved away from most of my family.)

    I can't trust public chargers to be available at the destination. People still have a tendency to not move their car after charging and there's still a general shortage of them.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    With the current charger technology, there are very few people who would actually need that kind of a range: you basically have to live in extremely rural areas (so there are no fast chargers anywhere), you need to drive multiple hours a day, and you don't have any access to charging at home or at work.

    In almost any other situation even on a long trip your bladder, stomach or back will stop you every few hours to take a break, which is enough time for a fast charger to top you back up to the next stop.

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  • [+] -23 points 3 months ago (11 children)

    There’s already so many ev cars in scrap yards due to being mechanically totaled from dead batteries it’s not worth buying one unless you plan to lease or budget for a new battery/motor after the warranty is out. ICE cars at the price of EV cars still last way longer, and can be maintained to continue running without a mandatory motor replacement after a certain number of miles/hours.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (6 children)

    Do you have any source for this? EVs have so much fewer parts which need maintenance or could reasonably have to be replaced. Also batteries these days are gonna last for a long time judging from what I've seen.

    I see some of the pain points from the original commentator, but it's partially an unequal comparison, because many people compare used ICE cars to new EVs. But your comment is stating it like it's snake oil.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    I own a 12 year old volt. One of the community apps tracks crowd sourced battery degradation. My pack's still about 75%-80% of it's new range. I'm in the center of the bell curve, drive mostly on electric, but it can't quite make it all the way to/from work anymore. :(

    Chevy did a decent job at battery cooling. There are plenty of Nissan leafs that didn't fair as well.

    If I did have to replace my pack right now, (and it's only a 10kWh) it would be around 8k, but they're generally not available. None of the used packs on ebay have any assurance that they have any significant life left.

    Bluebook on the car is maybe 5k but that is a hybrid. 8k would essentially total the car. If i did manage to get a remanufactured pack (assuming it lasted another decade) it's still going to need wheelbearings, axels, suspension, steering, HVAC.

    Just because an EV's motor can last longer, doesn't mean it makes a significantly better long term investment.

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  • [–] -1 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I have a 12 year old ICE car @ 172,000 miles and it needs none of those wheel bearings, axels, suspension and HVAC fixes. I would not bundle regular car issues with EV issues since it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer (and even model & year).

    The high cost of a battery replacement compared to the cost of the car after a few years is a concern which is seems very relevant though.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Talking about battery replacement for EV is like talking about engine replacement for ICE.

    "Sure, ICE car are nice but the high cost of engine replacement after a few 100k km is a concern"

    Batteries in today's EV can last way longer than people expect, changing the battery is really not something that will be fine regularly, not more than changing the engine in current ice car.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Your location likely is helping the cause. Any car that has live life in a big city where it might snow will eat shit every day on rough roads.

    Also, I don't know a single soul who thinks they need to replace their shocks or struts. They wear out and the car is mostly fine as long as you're driving peacefully. However, if you ever need to brake quickly or dodge something, those worn suspension components will greet you by not responding well and you could end up having a bad day.

    Remember folks, your shocks and struts are a wear item. They usually wear out around 70k. Lower for hard city life, higher for glassy roads. No matter what, they do wear out, even if you're not aware of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Luckily they test shock/strut function at the annual inspection. If it's below a certain percentage, your car fails.

    If they don't do mandatory inspection in your country, you're sharing the roads with death traps that could crash into you at any moment because who knows if they even have brakes. In that case, who cares about worn struts?

    Anyway, from experience, original struts are usually good for 200-300k km but I've seen more than that and still good. On mostly German cars. Of course if you see an oil leak from a strut you should get that pair replaced immediately. At that kind of mileage, you get a handling improvement if you replace them before outright failure, but they're not actually dangerous at anything resembling sensible driving.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    172k on a car with no suspension issues ever, you're in the red zone for all those kind of failures, that's just luck or very very careful driving/maintenance.

    I would not bundle regular car issues with EV issues

    Except for oil changes and transmission issues EV's suffer from the same problems. And an HVAC failure can destroy a batterypack

    The batteries, there's just no way around it. Batteries are expensive as hell. You could make the pack standard and small enough to diy replace, but then you lose efficiency, safety, and have higher resistance. I was kind of hoping we could do some kind of flow battery where you'd pull up to a gas station and just swap out your electrolyte, but the power density is just awful.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    It takes a really, really long time for EV batteries to "die." They absolutely degrade and lose range over time, but you should still be getting significant usable mileage out of them. This sounds like unfounded propaganda to me.

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