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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
Alt text:
An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.
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.
Range anxiety is not just about a single trip. You are assuming that not only will we all be able to just charge whenever and wherever we park our cars, but that we’ll never fail to do so. You also assume that only one person will be driving the car. If I forget to plug in my phone it’s not a big deal. I can just plug it in on the way to work or bring a battery pack. And it is not uncommon for my kid to bring our car home on empty. And then of course there are broken charges and unreliable utilities. I can’t even count on a reliable internet connection wherever I go and that can be supplied wirelessly. I have lived far enough out in the country before that I’ve had to deal with range anxiety in ICE vehicles. The threat of running out of gas before you can make it to a gas station is a very real and stressful issue. I can only imagine how much worse it is going to be when it takes more than just a gas can and a few minutes to get you going when you screw up.
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’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
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.
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 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 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.