until there are chargers for the masses or some kind of new tech comes along that can charge as fast as filling up the tank or the batteries can hold way more range than they do it is not going to work for the majority of people with cars. too many people can't plug in overnight to charge. electrics are superior for the people that they are superior for.
We owned two Teslas for two years with no place to plug in at home. But we did have local charging options. You would be surprised how easy it can be, if you live in the right
place. However, I’ll be the first to admit that this is a big if.
Now we manage to keep two Teslas charged with one single 110 outlet. It’s plenty for around town. We even have nights where we go to bed without plugging in either car, because they are both already 80% full, which is a good place to stop for battery health.
Is this just your opinion, or do you actually have data to back up your claims here?
I ask because there was a 5 year old study that illustrated that in 2016 87% of trips were within range for an electric vehicle with overnight charging. https://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112
Range anxiety is a real thing, but we settled on a PHEV SUV with a 40km range last year due to not finding the right mix of towing capacity and range in an electric vehicle (we need to routinely use a trailer that can haul >1500 lbs for business reasons). That 40km range covers approximately 3/4 quarters (74.38) of our routine driving (I actually have this data, we were surprised that it came out to such a round number!)
We expect to sell our current vehicle and switch to a full electric SUV with similar capabilities once they are available in 2021/2022.
> 87% of trips were within range for an electric vehicle with overnight charging
That is the wrong number. The real number in question is what % of cars never do any other trip. 90% of my trips might be within range of an overnight charge, but my parent's house isn't on that list, so there will be several times per year that I will make a trip that isn't within range of an overnight charge. (My parent's are too close to making flying a reasonable choice)
I suspect the point was more centered around access to charging facilities. Range is less of a problem if you have access to a charging point overnight. For those that park on-street or in public garages without charging available, range is far more of a problem unless you plan to take a few hours out of your day to hang out at a charging facility. That group of people would include a pretty substantial portion of those living in dense urban environments.
Range isn't the problem, lack of charging stations is. Drive around any city at night and look how many cars are parked overnight on streets and in parking lots with no chargers anywhere near. That infrastructure can be built but it will take decades.
Not true. You don't need to charge everywhere you park. One can park at home, at the office or at the mall. One is enough, and once a week, too. So that's already less than 7%. And since the vast majority of households have a plug at home, you can probably divide that by 3.
I disagree. You're overlooking the psychological aspects. Range anxiety is real. You might not need to charge up more than once a week but if you're down to 1 day or less of range do you really want to count on the fact that there is a free charger available when you get to your destination? I live in a condo so charging at home isn't an option. If I had an EV I'd probably start to get anxious when it gets down to somewhere around 1/3 of the charge left.
> I live in a condo so charging at home isn't an option.
Why not?
Why not join your strata or hmo board and change that?
Why not lobby your local jurisdiction to add these kind of requirements to new construction, or pass by-laws or laws at the right level to require condo buildings to allow individuals to install chargers?
All of these complaints are passive and indicate that you don't have agency in this situation. These types of changes don't happen unless people push back against the status quo.
I am always shocked when I see so many people participating on a message board that is designed for people who want to move fast and break things just... accept... the way the world around them is.
Lobbying for it in new construction doesn't help my situation. I could convince the HOA to install chargers in all the parking spots but that would lead to a big special assessment and raise the HOA fees to cover the increased electricity use. That seems like a big hassle for the option to charge at home if I still live in the building several years from now when I replace my current car.
The vast majority of detached houses can charge an EV at home, assuming you either own it or have a landlord willing to let you install the charging equipment.
That's okay if it takes decades because the average age of vehicles on the road today is 12 years. It's going to take a LONG time to convert everyone over.
A charging station costs an order of magnitude less than a petrol station
Why would cities need to pay a dime for charging infrastructure? There are commercial vendors doing just fine.
Which do you think is the hardest to get a permit for? 1) underground tank for thousands of gallons of explosive liquid that's bad for the environment if it leaks 2) overground tank of pressurised explosive gas known for its ability to leak out of every container 3) a big-ass electric socket
As for labor, you need an electrician with a high voltage certificate. Not a exactly rare, hard to train, commodity. Maybe a dude with a backhoe to dig the wires.
Local transformer capacity is highly variable, some areas might have issues, others might not. A charging station can bring stability to unstable networks if paired with a battery bank to offset the load. (And maybe even make $$ by charging it during low load and feed back during peak hours).
The issues I see are that EVs can't charge quickly, charging stations can't cycle cars quickly, EV range varies on additional conditions like temperature, and you can't self-sufficiently extend an EV's range. To clarify that last issue, you could fill a gas can with additional gallons of fuel to extend your range, cover yourself for an emergency situation, etc. But you cannot do this with EVs. You can't just carry a jug of extra charge or operate without the grid being nearby, online, and available. I understand that there is always some level of dependency we have on large infrastructure, but gas vehicles let you have a longer period of reliable self-sufficiency compared to EVs.
I am confident the vast majority of daily trips can be covered by an EV. But I still need a gas car to do things on the weekend, to go places on holidays, to feel secure in my ability to transport myself or loved ones at will, etc. When hauling people and gear, can I really rely on the stated range of an electric SUV to go offroad to a campsite and come back? I'd feel better if they let me carry an additional battery pack in the trunk/bed to extend range but that seems to not be a focus right now. So EVs basically seem like they preclude certain use cases entirely. In a multi-car household, I still see the need for at least one gas vehicle, and don't agree with bans that try to phase them out entirely as a result.
Your concerns are basically straight up range anxiety. Anecdotally speaking, my previous vehicle was the only one out of 4 vehicles on camping trips for several years that had mechanical issues.
The simple reality is that in most of North America you are less than 2 hours away from help in case of mechanical defect. Inside the United States, with few exceptions, it's must closer. You are just as vulnerable to mechanical failure with a gas vehicle as you are with an electric vehicle.
That said, it's currently a consumer choice, but as a tax payer and a consumer I desperately want my (Canadian) government to end all subsidies for fossil fuel industries, and introduce additional taxes with a direct path to those taxes being used to subsidize and invest in electric alternatives.
It's 100% hydro and wind in most of Québec (second-most populous province). The number for _all_ of Québec is something like 98%, but that 2% is remote communities that can't reasonably be connected to the provincial grid (like the Magdalen Islands). The main grid is 100% renewables.
I drive a mazda 3. Sometimes I need to move things that don't fit in it. When that happens I rent or borrow a bigger vehicle. What's wrong with using an EV for daily driving and renting a gas vehicle for the rare trips that really need the extra range?
I'm also going to point out that the mileage I saw on my car at the dealer does not match the gas mileage I get in practice. That isn't something that is unique to EVs. After driving their car for a while most people will have a good idea of what their gas mileage is for their usual routes and won't be accidentally running out of gas or charge.
> What's wrong with using an EV for daily driving and renting a gas vehicle for the rare trips that really need the extra range?
I don't know. How about the vast majority of people don't have the economic means to do that? Most people live paycheck to paycheck. Their one and only vehicle is likely their single largest purchase. The idea of dropping hundreds of dollars to rent a vehicle simply isn't in the cards. I know people who are in this position.
If the answer to the objections people have to electrics is "just rent an longer range gasoline powered car", why would anyone buy an electric car in the first place? True believers, maybe, but that is not how the average person makes a purchasing decision. I learned this reality of business the hard way many years ago. People rarely make altruistic decisions when buying anything. They want the most for their money and, for the most part, could not care less where it comes from or how it works.
> What's wrong with using an EV for daily driving and renting a gas vehicle for the rare trips that really need the extra range?
Well right now, legislation is being discussed that bans gas vehicles outright, rather than leaving them as an option, so even your rental suggestion is precluded. I'm not a fan of bans on consumer products in general - I would rather price in externalities. Additionally, this rental model doesn't work when everyone has the same holiday weekends when they want to go out with the family, or the same great weather conditions they want to take advantage of (for example to go skiing). The surge in demand won't match up to a limited supply of rental vehicles.
> I'm also going to point out that the mileage I saw on my car at the dealer does not match the gas mileage I get in practice. That isn't something that is unique to EVs.
Sure, but with EVs there are more variables at play like temperature. The max range on gas vehicles is also still a lot higher than EVs - for example I can easily get over 500 miles in my SUV on a single tank even driving aggressively. Plus the range is less of an issue when I can just carry an extra can of gas or fill up in an unplanned manner virtually anywhere in the country. If we don't have portable battery packs, or battery packs that can be swapped, it's simply not an equivalent substitute.
>a Model 3 Long Range operating at peak efficiency can recover up to 75 miles of charge in 5 minutes and charge at rates of up to 1,000 miles per hour.[1]
I agree we need more public chargers, but I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore.
Chargers are still too slow to appease a LOT of people. A 15-30 minute charge every 2-3 hours is unacceptable to people who expect a 5 minute gas-up every 3-4 hours. And while the supercharger network is expanding, the fact is, for a road trip, you'll still likely want to plan your charging stops ahead of time, and many people don't want to do this. With a gas car, you can easily just wing it with zero planning since no matter where you are, there's a gas station within 15 miles.
The "charge rates up to 1,000 miles per hour" is only accurate when your battery is under what, 30%? IIRC, charging speed falls off almost linearly with state of charge.
> I don't think "chargers are too slow" is really a valid forward looking argument anymore.
The problem is how many cars can be serviced by a single charging center in a given amount of time. Think about a weekend with good weather, or holiday weekends, when many people are taking trips on the same days. Normally, because filling a gas tank takes 5-10 minutes, cars can cycle in and out of ubiquitous gas stations very quickly. The same isn't true for charging, at least with the current footprint of chargers out there, especially with differences in charging architectures.
The majority of people I know who have cars would not be ok with EVs because they just don't have the range. The people I do know who are fine with EVs almost don't even need vehicles at all to be honest -- they could be using public transportation or biking or walking instead (I don't mean to suggest they shouldn't be using an EV, only that their alternatives often aren't combustion vehicles). I do think there are a lot of people who could be happily using EVs, but I don't think it's a majority.
As for charging stations, I think many people who are still using combustion engines want to see a charging station at every gas station, or of equivalent geographic density. Distribution could be there but it's far from that now.
FWIW, I think eventually EVs will dominate the market. It's a matter of when, not if (unless hydrogen makes a splash somehow).
The issue with trips is yes, many people don't drive anywhere near that range on a daily per-trip basis. However, people don't buy cars on a trip-by-trip basis, they buy a car to handle the range of regularly encountered transportation scenarios they encounter. So even if people only make, say, 7% of their trips outside the range of an EV, they don't want to go and rent a car to do that if they already own a car. They want to have a car that will do that, plus the one or two trips per week that go well outside that range. They don't want to rent another car every week or two to do that. Add to that a conservative 50% reduction in range in the winter (per Consumer Reports), range is currently a concern.
I guess I just think the range-per-trip metric can be misleading, because that can equate to a relatively large number of trips per time, especially given the expense of a car, regardless of technology.
I pretty often make the drive from SF to Tahoe which requires a supercharger stop for ~40min.
For this distance it's really not an issue. People typically stop once for bathroom or food anyway. The tradeoff of low cost fuel is also a factor.
All the other times an EV is a strictly better experience (not having to go to gas stations, pay gas costs, cleaner, better performance, etc.)
Longer trips outside of that kind of thing are exceedingly rare for the vast majority of drivers (iirc the data correctly).
I don't think it's about renting a car, I just think the supercharger network is at a point where things are good enough today for that kind of use case.
All over the world countries are banning ICE. The US won't because of "muh freedom" but economically it's impossible to keep making them. When China and the EU switch to EV the world will follow.
The US is large enough on its own to keep petro cars running. There won't be as many advances without other markets to subsidize development, but there are enough people to keep things going. What will kill gas in the US is when there is enough charging infrastructure that people believe those 7% trips where you don't charge at home are reasonable, and so they switch their next car.
Once that happens petro will be left to things where nothing else will do. Things like farming, or heavy construction where you are using a lot more energy than batteries can supply: these are already diesel. And a few collectors, but the 1957 Chevrolet is something you only drive in parades anyway.
I covered 6000km last month. If I didn't have a petrol car, I'd not have a car at all, possibly renting one whenever I needed one. I only use my car for leisure, and if I can't reach remote locations with ease, then I don't need it.
How many chargers do you need to equal the bandwidth of a petrol station with 6 pumps?
Most people can charge at home overnight. According the US census 65% of adults own their own home. Sure infrastructure needs built out for the remaining 35% of renters. However the demand won't be there for a while since most renters are likely younger and/or lower income and not the current target market for EVs.
Some of those 65% (condo and rowhouse owners and places where on-street parking is prevalent) will also need some amount of shared/public charging infrastructure.
It's easy to do. There are electric cables everywhere (every street lamp, for example).
Also, I'm old enough to remember when one had to pay for wifi at hotels and restaurants. I bet we won't pay for charging a car at some point and/or at some time of the day (plugging your car will help the grid due to the share of renewables, you may even be paid for the service). See https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/own/californi...
My wife and I recently purchased a new car. We have strongly been considering an EV, but went with a hybrid because even though EVs were well within our price range, we couldn't depend on one. The infrastructure just isn't there, nor is the range. Maybe when we replace our other car it will make sense as that one is driven much shorter distances and we'd have the other one for longer distances (both are hybrids). This isn't even getting into issues with having to upgrade our electrical box and wiring to handle car charging in our garage.
I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space, but I do give them a lot of credit and thanks for introducing competition in the area and turning EVs into a product to covet. To me that's always been the best way to handle these sorts of things, to introduce competition and win people over. Lightbulbs were the same way -- the arguments died when quality affordable LEDs came on the market and took away any argument for anything else. When there's big range, reliable and affordable EVs with quick ubiquitous charging, people will flock to EVs.
Sometimes I feel like these discussions are in a bubble, to be honest. When I think of the people I know, and what's in the parking lot, getting them to migrate to a hybrid is really where there would be any movement. Maybe someday they'll just jump to an EV and skip hybrids but at the moment there's lots of people who won't even consider anything but a full combustion system.
I also don't really fault Toyota for pursuing hydrogen and would really like to see that continue at least as a research focus. It is much more energy dense and solves a lot of problems. I realize it's not as fully there yet as EVs, but EVs aren't either if anyone is being completely honest. The article casts Toyota in a nefarious light, but in some ways I feel like if the government is going to get involved and start playing favorites, they should do so in a competitive and diversified way. Otherwise maybe they should get out of the way and just incentivize competition per se. In fact, if the EV market is so healthy, maybe the government should be subsidizing alternatives like hydrogen?
If you're in the US, this comment really makes no sense to me, unless you live in or visit rural areas very frequently. Teslas are practical EVs right now for those who can afford them. Most charging happens at home, and there are plenty of superchargers along major highways. Additionally, many cities have level 2 charging, so if you're going to be in a city for even an afternoon you can charge up quite a bit even if there's no supercharging.
If it's only an occasional trip where charging is not available, you could rent a car.
> I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space
Tesla has by far the best charging network, so if you ruled them out right away, then I could understand your comment. Electrify America is growing rapidly, and I'm pretty bullish on their network over the next couple of years.
> When I think of the people I know, and what's in the parking lot, getting them to migrate to a hybrid is really where there would be any movement. Maybe someday they'll just jump to an EV and skip hybrids but at the moment there's lots of people who won't even consider anything but a full combustion system.
I don't really see why. EVs are a bit of a mindset shift (charging at home…), but I don't see the major practical hurdles you do.
> I would never buy a Tesla because I see better options in the EV space
Tesla might not be your taste, but every test and comparison shows that Tesla is at the top or at least incredible competitive.
> To me that's always been the best way to handle these sorts of things, to introduce competition and win people over.
That's exactly what has happened already.
> I also don't really fault Toyota for pursuing hydrogen
You mean talking about hydrogen while trying to prevent cleaner fuel laws and zero emission vehicles. Yeah you really can't blame gigantic cooperation from lobbying against the environment. Where would we be if cooperation could be criticized like that.
> I realize it's not as fully there yet as EVs, but EVs aren't either
EV are going totally gang busters and are on a massive growth curve. They are on an incredibly fast adoption curve, as faster then many expected and its going faster. They are there, but it still needs time.
> In fact, if the EV market is so healthy, maybe the government should be subsidizing alternatives like hydrogen?
Why? Why would you dumb money in a technology stack that has gotten government money for 50 years and has shown absolutely no success what so ever and is worse for the environment by far. What is the logic in that.
Seems much more important to replace ICE vehicles then to fight EV with FCV. Wouldn't you say?
I don't see how this could be true, Tesla is way ahead of everyone in terms of charging infrastructure. The Mach-E and Id.4 both look like good cars, but Electrify America is still smaller, and having some growing pains. I think Tesla may have real competitors in the very short term, but not quite yet. The only thing is that some people may not care about fast charging, because you really don't need it most of the time, especially if you have another ICE car for road trips.
85 percent of Model 3 owners are "very satisfied" with the ownership experience, the most of all EV owners, in Norway. It's a good stat to go by since that market has the most EVs per capita in the world.
It always amazes me people use the infrastructure argument against EV adoption. Electricity infrastructure is nearly universal worldwide and clearly more available than gasoline. Also recharge times on new Teslas is very impressive of not irrelevant to most of the population that can recharge at home
And even if they admit that the infrastructure exist, they vastly overestimate the amount of power needed to charge an EV at home.
People actually believe you need a 150kW+ charger at home, when reality is that if you have a socket that can handle an electric kettle, you can charge an EV from it.
The overwhelming majority of households use their cars such that one essentially is used only for commuting and running errands on the weekend. The second car, can quite easily be electric given the state of today's technology, and that's the sweet spot for it right now. Once prices come down I would be surprised to see people not have at least one electric car in their garage.
Gas hybrids are vastly superior though for long distance traveling. The infrastructure just isnt there yet, and charging for an hour sucks.
That's exactly the model my household follows (or will follow once I return to my office commute) - one small EV (with a short, 110 mile range) for the daily commute, and one Hybrid for longer trips or hauling more stuff/people. We'd probably just have the EV and rent a car for longer trips, but we needed a second car for my spouse anyway who works from home full time.
Until the demand for chargers hits a tipping point and starts replacing corner gas stations...
Yes, you do still have the charge time issue, but that's why chargers get paired up with places. Right now there's two (slow) charging stalls at my mid-tier local grocery-store-etc mall (Albertsons), and (ofc) none at the low-tier (Big Saver). There's plenty of room for more, and while my local grocery mall doesn't have a gas station in it, most do. Replace those with charging infrastructure, and we'll get past that tipping point.
In Finland the largest charger networks are owned by the two largest ... grocery chains.
Their locations are already next to traffic hubs, stores already have a beefy electrical hook up and a car full of people stopping for 15-45 minutes to charge is excellent for business.
Yup! Because Tesla charges waaay more for time at a charger not charging, I'm starting to like the slower chargers since it gives more time for whatever I'm up to at the location. 30m is enough to pop into Trader Joe's, but not enough for a restaurant (as an example)
> Superchargers are all over the place and charge nearly as fast as filling up a tank.
This is not at all true. Filling up even a larger 25 gallon gas tank can be done within 10 minutes. Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95% (https://insideevs.com/news/515641/tesla-models-plaid-chargin...).
> Range is not really an issue either. Unless you're regularly road tripping 400+ miles, an EV will handle the trip just fine.
Range can be an issue for numerous reasons. Your range changes based on load, temperature, and the road. If you're driving in cold conditions, uphill, with passengers and cargo, your range isn't 400 miles - it might be half that. Plus even the longest range Tesla currently gets only 396 miles under the ideal conditions of the EPA cycle. Unlike with gas cars, you can't just carry an extra can of electric charge to cover yourself for a rare longer journey.
> Even the newest Tesla Model S Plaid on the fastest supercharger takes 52 minutes to go from 5% to 95%
The thing is, you don't actually do that in practice. Go and actually listen to the insideev podcast. The Tesla will tell you where to stop for how long. Typically on a road-trip you actually make a few more stops and only charge from 5% to 60%.
Unless you are a really extreme road tripper, peeing and getting a quick snake is more then enough. The guys on insideev actually do a huge amount of road tripping (with all kinds of cars) and they prefer EV to ICE for almost all trips. And in most cases the charging doesn't hold you up much at all.
Also guess what, if you drive uphill with cargo in extreme temperatures you also use more gas and your car doesn't get its normal mileage.
With an EV you actually get much of that energy back when going down the mountain on the other side.
Also, this is probably less then 0.1% of all miles driven. So it really doesn't work as an argument and doesn't apply to 95% of the people. And for another 3% it likely doesn't apply for more then 1-2 a year.
Nobody is saying that EV are literally perfect for every single case ever. But as a practical matter, they are simply better for the majority of people already.
> Also guess what, if you drive uphill with cargo in extreme temperatures you also use more gas and your car doesn't get its normal mileage.
Yes, but gas vehicles still have higher max range and they have easily extensible range. An SUV can literally carry the equivalent of a second tank of fuel in gas cans and still have tons of space for people and cargo.
> Also, this is probably less then 0.1% of all miles driven. So it really doesn't work as an argument and doesn't apply to 95% of the people. And for another 3% it likely doesn't apply for more then 1-2 a year.
I disagree. Those trips may be a small percentage of all miles driven but an overwhelming majority of car owners still take those trips and want their vehicle to be capable of supporting those trips. Most people who own a car take trips with increased load or increased mileage frequently enough that it is an important use case for their vehicle. The percentage of total miles driven is not really an important metric in considering a vehicle. It is critical for me to be able to take extended day trips with my family and friends even if I do it only once a month. EVs are better for the majority of road miles driven, but not for the majority of people.
A woman was saying (on Reddit, I think) that she is not comfortable sitting for an hour at the charging station. If I hadn't read that, I would've never thought of the safety angle for female EV owners.
I hope EVs surpass gas guzzlers, but there are some issues to fix before that can happen.
Leaving aside "sitting for an hour" (?), isn't it much safer to charge 99% of the time in your own garage and never have to regularly step out of your car alone at a dark gas station on the corner?
Even on a long drive you leave home with a "full tank" without having that first stop to gas up.
To put it another way, people charging EVs tend to look out for each other and help each other. At Tesla chargers, since they have multiple plugs in one spot, there are often other friendly people there charging so you feel safer and more secure. So even without security guards it is a good setup for leaving your car or for being there in a strange parking lot.
People draw a lot of scary conclusions based on what they know about bad EV choices.
It all depends on what car you choose.
With Teslas at least, you don’t sit for an hour, since they have fast chargers all over the place. In other cars, yes.
Some of our charges are 5-10 minutes. On a road trip most are 20-30 minutes. The longest charge is if you need to get to a place that is near the edge of your range, which is
exceedingly rare, even on long road trips. In those highly unusual cases you might have to charge for 45-50 minutes for that one leg of the trip, if you didn’t arrive with half a charge already. Again this is with a supercharger. Other cars… yes, scary charge times. (You will hear about how some cars… Porsche… can charge at a faster rate, but the chargers to support this are rare, so their fast rate is often not possible and they are stuck at a slow charger for hours.)
Also with other cars you are sitting there alone often at a single plug station. With Tesla chargers you are generally not alone, you are with other Tesla owners who have your back if anything suspicious starts happening around the area.
I kind of like what Nio is doing with batteries in their cars - quickly swap them out and be on your way instead of sitting there for an hour+ charging. It obviously wouldn't work everywhere as it requires a substantial infrastructure compared to a charging station (so economical in dense populated areas). But it's essentially as fast as filling up with regular gasoline. Pull in, battery gets swapped in minutes, pull out. BaaS (Batteries as a Service). It also lowers the price of the car up front since you don't pay for the massive battery, which is the largest cost portion of an electric vehicle.
Even things that used to do battery swapping, such as forklifts, are moving away from that. Now that battery forklifts can get through a workday on one charge, it's easier to just recharge during off hours.
There are a number of problems with EVs that ICEs handle much better.
Trucking and logistics is very time dependent, so stopping to recharge imposes severe logistical constraints. You can't have every truck stay at the same pit stop. There isn't enough space or time.
Large apartment complexes are plentiful. A 1,000-resident building complex full of EVs will draw a lot of power. Can the grid handle it? What happens when the power goes out?
How will residents of states that snow over in the winter will fare? Do they have to stop using their vehicles?
Long trips by car suddenly become more painful, which will likely shift more traffic to air travel.
------ Edit -----
I have a "bad contributor" flag on my account [1]. I had a response to this comment [2] that I wanted to make but can't. I'll include it here for lack of an ability to post on HN:
I just looked at my coke zero can (bad habit), and it's using potassium citrate as an acid buffer.
Inflammation is a tax on the immune system and puts it in a state that is mainly intended for dealing with pathogen and cancer clearance. Over time, endothelial and genetic damage can accrue, resulting in hastened aging and system dysfunction. Increased cell population recruitment from the thymus also diminishes the organ's size in age, reducing immune system capacity to deal with these threats.
Not news I wanted today, but something I needed to hear.
Trucking has tradeoffs in both directions - EVs are cheaper, and easier to maintain, trucks are huge and can have a lot of battery capacity. I think what's better depends on specific circumstance.
For large apartment complexes there will probably need to be some load balancing, but seems manageable. Power going out doesn't seem like that big of a deal, more likely to have some charge in the car and it's more likely to find power than gas in a crisis (long lines at gas stations etc.)
Long trips by car via super charger are pretty easy for everything except 700+mi trips which are very rare for vast majority. Unlikely to shift anything to air travel, if anything lower EV fuel costs could shift other direction.
For snow my parents have had only EVs in Buffalo and have been fine. They also drive down the east coast to Florida.
While electric sports cars and the electric Ford F-150 gets most of the attention, the boring Ford Transit, America's work van, is about to come out in electric.[1]
In a few years, most businesses where all the vans spend the night in the fenced company parking lot will probably be going electric, just to save on fuel cost.
The electric version is still US$7K more than the gasoline version. When that price differential disappears, it's all over for the IC engine.
No one is arguing any of these points. The problem is that currently the increased efficiency of ICEs are externalized from the people who are profiting from it.
Pollution, noise, power distribution (fuel vs electric) and the toll on public infrastructure are all externalized costs for these businesses.
The detail that is really exciting is that as EV technology is improving and people are becoming more aware of the realities of climate change and our complete inability to practically affect change as individuals, more and more people are starting to look to sustainable choices, and ICEs based on fossil fuels simply aren't one of them. AFAIK hydrogen fuel cells still aren't simply because the cheapest source of hydrogen is still fossil fuels, by a long shot (unless there is a more recent study that shows otherwise).
