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xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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Range anxiety is largely a perception thing. The vast majority of car journeys are well within the range of an EV, you just need to get in the habit of plugging in like you would your phone. For journey's long enough for it to be more than a single charge you really should be stopping for more than a few seconds anyway as you need recharging.
Yeah but not everyone lives in suburbia with ample plug-in options available to them. Where I live the street-side charging spots are usually occupied, and the parking spot that I rent has no charging.
True to some extent, I have to check my travel logs but I do feel like stopping for an hour every 300km or so is longer and much more often than I would normally stop on long road trips. My (diesel) car has a range of well over 1000km so often I stop for only 15 minutes for a coffee and to stretch my legs, or just for a restroom stop and a driver swap. We usually plan just one big stop (1h) for dinner. Most destinations I've been to I could reach without refueling at all.
There's also the issue of contention for charging spots. On gas stations near the big highways towards popular destinations you often already have to queue to get gas. This will become worse when EVs become common place and people occupy a charging spot for an hour instead of a fuel pump for 30 seconds to top up.
Little anecdote: every year around the holiday season, there are several company wide e-mails from EV driving co-workers requesting to swap cars (with a co-worker who has a CE car) to go on holiday. So I think the practical experience may not be as rosy as you paint it.
Okay, but it is still jumping through hoops which doesn't exist with gas cars. What if I have 3 people driving, like in a road trip? You can't continuously drive after refueling anymore. It isn't just a perception thing, it absolutely requires planning and stops you wouldn't take otherwise.
You jump through all sorts of hoops with gas cars. We've all made it part of the habits of our lives and don't think about them, but they're absolutely there.
I'd honestly love to just plug in every night instead of having to spend time getting gas every week. Sure it's only a few minutes, but that's probably a few hours of my life every year. Getting an electric vehicle and renting cars for road trips would honestly make much more sense for me.
Unfortunately, it looks like it'd be financially irresponsible for me to buy an electric car right now while I still have a perfectly functional ICE car.
You're arguing in favor of quickly swappable batteries.
China's got your back.
https://hbr.org/2024/05/how-one-chinese-ev-company-made-battery-swapping-work
Wow, that would actually make electric cars viable for more, than just an expensive city car.
It's not going to work out. Battery connections need to be standardized across manufacturers, which is a lot more complicated than standardizing a plug. The garages to do swaps are a lot more complicated than chargers. It forces certain decisions on battery placement, which cuts out things like integrating the battery into the frame to save weight.
Charger deployment has raced ahead. We need a lot more of them to support the EVs we already have, and need even more for the EVs that are going to be purchased over the next decade. Switching over to swapping would send the EV market into whiplash that just isn't necessary.
I'm not understanding your "it can't be standardized if it's too complicated" argument. That hasn't seemed to have been a big issue for, for example, computer motherboards.
A counterpoint to that is things like batteries, ram, motherboards, etc. in laptops (and pretty much every other device that uses rechargeable batteries). The fact is that for better designs the batteries are probably not going to be easily standardized in electric cars (also kills innovation).
PC motherboards aren't trying to use the least amount of space possible, because desktops can be large. The same isn't true with cars, the space matters.
Notebooks can be small. Those motherboards are also using standardized elements.
This is just silly defeatism.
Motherboard standardization is not even close to comparable.
You have to standardize the dimensions and unlatching mechanism of a huge battery out from under the car and latching a new one in. It has to support a battery that weighs around 2 tons. This isn't just a matter of scaling up a AA battery connector. And then you have to convince all, or at least most, of the manufacturers to do that in order for network effects to help the process. Since we've had to do a lot before manufactures settled on a plug design, we're not likely to do the same for batteries.
Yes, that is how standardization works.
Unless it's regulated for them to do so. Time for the EU to step up.
You have to physically drive to a different location to get petrol. That's a hoop. Just because you're used to it doesn't mean it's not there.
It is a perception. The vast majority of trips this won't be an issue. In the once in a bluemoon that you'll be driving more than the range of the car, yes, it could be. This is where it's perception. People seem to think that they'll run commuting to work or half the journeys they take will be affected. Whereas it's really really rare.
So what you are saying is "I don't care about the points you raised" essentially. I said specifically "hoops that don't exist with gas cars" not "gas cars don't have hoops to jump through". Electric cars have issues with trips longer than their range, which you then need to charge for a very long time compared to just refueling the gas car.
Sorry about the hoops issues, I clearly slightly misread
However, two can play at being pedantic. I addressed your point about range anxiety before you even made it. As I said originally it is largely perception. I even went as far as to agree with you that in the 0.000001% of journeys you identified it would be an issue.
the vast majority of the cost of an electric car is in the battery, every phone I've had really degrades in battery after a couple years, and my dad still drives an ICE car about the same age as me
After all, it's recommended to stop before reaching 400 km or 3 hours. And now EVs have that range or close to it.
If you live in the Balkans, you can hardly charge your electric car anywhere and if you go on holidays, It takes way longer, since you have to recharge multiple times and it takes a couple of hours.
Ok, what's your point? Did I say it's always and in every single niche scenario people are going to come up with a perception issue? Or did I in fact say it's largely (as in most of the time and in most cases) a perception issue?
Sorry. I was just mentioning, why electric cars also aren't perfect and I would still rather buy a diesel.
Sorry for coming on a bit strong.
It had just started to feel like people were trying to say that I thought range anxiety was absolutely never legitimate.
In reality most people will do maybe one journey a year where it could possibly be. For them they'll have saved so much from reduced maintenance and running costs of an EV that they could hire an ICE vehicle for that one trip and still have saved themselves money.
Of course if you're way off the top end of the bell curve with your usage an EV may not yet be the best option for you.
Yes, I was also a little extreme about range anxiety. There still are EVs, that have decently long range. The reliability is what we need with all technology. I'm actually interested what could actually break in them other than battery or storage chips.