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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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Are those two things actually important?
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I'm sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn't matter.
Plus the technology to battery swap is well in use for electric vehicles (see Nio, who have thousands of battery swap stations in China and some in Europe too). 3 mins and you have a full battery.
It matters to people who drive more during the day than their range allows. They don't want to wait 20 minutes for the car to charge every time they venture 300km out and back /s
Why do people still pretend it takes longer than 20 minutes to get a 50% charge increase?
Because it's currently easier to find a gas station than a charger that will do that performance. Now I'm willing to wait 8 hrs for 10%, but others certainly aren't.
You must live in a red state or the middle of nowhere. It's easy to find chargers everywhere I've been.
Yes, my point. I have to charge my car at home because of charging stations are either far, or Tesla owners park in them to do shopping.
Saying I live somewhere shit doesn't disprove my point that gas is more readily available.
Yeah because the conservative government of those areas is actively suppressing them from being built.
My parents live in the sticks, in a red state, and I have no problem finding charging stations within twenty miles from them.
Wait, I'm confused (out of date??) I thought it took hours to charge. Has that changed?
I don't have enough charge for my trip. I'm also thirsty.
I go to a grocery store with a fast charger.
I buy a drink.
I have enough charge.
If it's a long trip where I need more charge, I choose a car snack, and I'll have enough.
If I'm on an actual long car trip and I want to charge all the way from the warning light to 100%, I will need to eat a meal anyway. I just find a McDonald's/cafe,/restaurant/whatever with a fast charger, and it'll be full before I'm done.
But finding a store/eating place with a fast charger is still waaaay less convenient than just finding a place where I can get diesel in seconds, and find a different place to get drinks/food/snacks.
Fast chargers can fully charge my car (range ~400mi) in about an hour
Most cars will charge to 80% pretty fast. 20%-70% is really fast on most.
fast charging on modern HV battery packs will get you to 80% from 0 in like 15-20 minutes. I've seen lower, but it's really fucking usable now.
Why /s? Road trips are a thing, and you'd be hard pressed to find a combo restaurant/charging station that's along your path.
The people providing the charging infrastructure here haven't figured out this important point yet. Gas stations are a terrible place to put chargers, no one wants to stop at a gas station for fifteen minutes to an hour at a time. Charging stations need to be in places people will be stopping anyway, or at the very least places that provide something to do while waiting. Restaurants, shopping centres, tourist traps, whatever.
Here it's exacerbated by the fact that the fastest chargers we have only deliver about 60kW. Not even close to the 200+ some EVs need to get the fast charging times they advertise. But that 60kW would be perfectly fine if I could spend the time in a restaurant instead of standing around at a gas bar in the middle of nowhere.
Hell, even cheap (or free) "level 2" chargers outside restaurants and shopping malls would be a huge help.
I live in Denmark, here the chargers are placed where people park anyway. Grocery stores, parking lots, rest stops...
It's getting so easy to find a fast charger/resto combo, that we don't even plan it from home.
I've seen few 200+ watts chargers without looking for them, but the car is ready faster than I am anyway.
As it should be, and I agree that those crazy fast 200+ kW chargers are rarely necessary.
It's kind of a weird reaction to consumer hesitation and people complaining that they don't want to wait for charge times as compared to the time it takes to fill a tank. Making charging as fast as possible to address the complaint (while still being one or two orders of magnitude slower at best), because that's easier than getting people to change their driving habits, or making them realise that they're always going to start the day with a full charge at home.
Even if all you have is relatively paltry north american 110V at home you need to drive way more than average per day for that not to keep up.
Road trips are a tiny fraction of all vehicle use, it's fine to relegate them to specialty vehicles.
Quick Google says a great majority of Americans take road trips. Even though it's a tiny fraction of their driving, it's still a deciding factor for many when choosing a car. Not all people have the luxury of affording a second car just for road trips.
Public transportation would be good, but there's less flexibility to it. For example, just yesterday, on a return from a roadtrip, I got stomach sick and had to request frequent stops. That wouldn't fly on a train.
I'd love it if we had affordable and flexible public transport for getting all across the country, though.
I take road trips in my EV. It’s fine. You get to pee and walk the dog. The extra time isn’t much and it’s actually way more relaxing
It’s weird how defensive people get over their cannonball road trips. It’s great to take a few minutes on a break while taking a long trip.
Hell, my ICE car warns me when I’ve been driving for too long. Taking a break mid-trip isn’t isolated to EVs
That sounds good.
Unless you're taking road trips literally every other week you could just rent a gas vehicle when it's time for a road trip. Rather than make the decision of the car you're going to drive every single day based on something you only do maybe once a year.
It's why I don't own a pickup truck, I actually do haul cars, help people move and all that shit that people say is why they need a pickup truck but I just go to fucking U-Haul and rent either the Sprinter van or the pickup truck for 30 bucks plus mileage when I need one. And I do actually keep track of my financial records with a double Ledger Finance app I just went and looked and I'm still nowhere near the cost of a used pickup truck from all of that renting
Good idea. I hadn't thought of that.
Take road trips how often? Once a year? Maybe twice?
Yeah, but road trips can be expensive. Suppose you want to go from Harrisburg PA to Rockford IL with 2 adults and 1 teenager from November 15 to 22.
That's not accounting for food prices along the way. That could bring the car ride up to the same price as the plane if you don't pack food, but if you're spending extra on convenience there, you're probably willing to spend extra for convenience on the plane too.
So it's probably safe to say that, for this group, the car saves about $100 per year, but helping to protect the environment is worth that price. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the flexibility and ease of planning on a car. For a bigger family, cars would be a way better option, and for a family without kids or a lone traveler, planes are the way better option. Trains are right out.
I'd also add time to the comparison. Time isn't free, and if you spend 2 solid days driving, you might reconsider flying and renting a car at the destination even if it's more expensive. If you use an ev and have to take a few stops extra that might tip the scale.
I’m so glad here in Germany they do that more often now. We have a quite a few large charging parks next to restaurants and bakeries. I just made a 9 hour trip to Denmark and it was a pretty nice experience overall. Only downside is you have to plan ahead if you want this convenience because the majority is still spots with 1-2 occupied chargers at some ugly, smelly Autobahn rest area.
Although own an electric car, I believe range is still an issue. I was specifically addressing fuel density and charging time. EVs have their issues, but I believe they will be solved over time even though they are unlikely to beat an ICE in fuel density or charge rate for a long time. But I don't think those things are actually important, because the problem is solved in a different way.
Yes, for people who can't charge at home. I'd love to swap to electric, but 1 hour trip to go charge the car at the nearest charging station is not realistic - especially since I'd need to do it twice as often as 10min trip to refuel.
Also there's the EV prices, starting at 2-3 times more than my current whip lol
My point is that we should be focused on the outcomes we want. It isn't really important that fossil fuels are a lot more energy dense if the electric cars can travel twice as far. They can't, but I'd be willing to bet we will get to that point with fossil fuels still being more energy dense.
But also as I mentioned in the comment you relied to, Nio have a vast network of battery swap stations where you can get a full charge in a couple of minutes, the same as filling up at a gas station.
The price of EVs are a problem, and not the only problem, but my point was that the specific things mentioned don't stop us having better EVs than ICEs, because we will get the same outcome in a different way.
I absolutely agree that we should work on improving EVs, charging network and whatever technologies makes it better and more suitable for more people. But every person in need of a car has unique hard requirements for the car that can't be ignored as "inconvenience" - and many of those people have to drive with fossil fuels still.
Also, battery swap stations being available in X location doesn't matter to people living in Y location, nor should people in Y location buy EV in hopes that it will be better in Z years
I agree completely. I am not trying to argue that everyone can or should go out and buy an EV.
I was specifically addressing the points that seemed to be claiming EVs are not the right direction for cars or engines to be advancing towarda, by pointing out that the barriers aren't blocking all paths.
I honestly believe the person starting the thread was on the same wavelength, just pointing out the reason so many still choose ice
This is exacerbated by that battery technology is at its limit, and the battery companies are unwilling to drop the battery price.
Yes, somewhat.
Not as much, to most people, as most people think though.
For some people? Absolutely.
yes, they are. they make difference between actually usable technology and engineer's dream.
i doubt we even have enough rare metals for 8 or 16 billion batteries. most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.
efficiency matters, it is not a question of how good single battery is.
oh good. YOU have it solved, so the rest of the world does not matter, i assume...? fuck all these people, right?
https://i.imgur.com/krFICor.png
Hey mate I'm just here for some friendly discussion, I'm not here to argue until I'm blue in the face.
There is a difference between your above points and the original claim.
Fuel density doesn't matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.
Charge time doesn't matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.
For your new point of rare earth materials, this isn't related to the original energy density or charge time points, but high density batteries that don't use rare earth metals already exist, the problem is cost. That will change over time.
Also you're ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground.
i am not, i am not defending fossil fuel, i am just pointing out that the ev concept has problems that are not widely talked about.
just because some other strategy has problems doesn't mean your strategy is problem free.
Has that ever stopped everyone, though?