No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power.
I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
The number of ICE cars I get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing. I’m in a decently well off area too.
Some putting off soot clouds, white smoke, nothing visible but clearly not doing complete combustion. Sometimes I wonder if half the cylinders are even working.
I’ve heard one car like that is the equivalent of a surprisingly large number of modern ICE cars is in good shape.
I love EVs. I’ve had one for 5 years now, and I’m glad they help. But I think the “are new EVs worse than new ICE” discussions so often miss a fact.
The pollution from ICE isn’t just from very modern well tuned vehicles, things vary wildly. But all EVs use the same power supply (assuming local grid only), so no individual vehicles put off 10x the pollution per kWh.
My city is covered by a low emissions zone so the odd van polluting sticks out. I was in Athens recently and the pollution from so many old rough cars was so noticeable (and quite unpleasant).
Reminds me of how I didn't really notice cigarettes until they were banned from public spaces and the base level of normal was recalibrated.
I could see a single "bad" ICE car being the equivalent of 100 "good" ICE cars. Even the VW emissions scandal (where the cars were still functioning as designed, just not as well as they should) had instances where pollutants were 35x higher than they should be. So I could see an emissions deleted diesel (of which there are many, i.e. catalytic converter and DPF removed) could easily have more than 100x the usual emissions of noxious substances. Maybe even more! Especially if (as is often the case) the DPF was removed because something is faulty on the engine and was overwhelming the capacity of the DPF in the first place.
You can smell these cars from halfway up the road sometimes, when they're 100 metres ahead.
I don’t have hard numbers on this, but I once read a claims that the lawnmowers and weed-whackers in California with their two-stroke engines are responsible for more nitrate and particulate emissions than all the cars and trucks in the state put together, even though by fuel burned the latter outnumbers the former by orders of magnitude. I could totally see a malfunctioning four-stroke ICE with dirty burns being worse than 100 maintained ones.
That probably explains why California banned the sale of gas powered leaf blowers, law mowers, and weed whackers in 2024. You can still use them if you have an old one or by one out of state.
And at the right time too. At almost every point before that, a gas powered engine was justified for duration and power, but the significant advances in both batteries and electric motors in the past 10-20 years have finally made them good enough that ICE tools are totally unjustified.
Even modern cars pollute a lot (especially in winter) because you need a certain temperature for the cats to start working. On short city trips it happens frequently that you never reach proper operating temperatures.
I used to work for the Air Resources Board of California, and while there is a warm-up period, modern ice cars are so profoundly cleaner than cars even from the early 2000s. It’s pretty stunning.
Regardless, there’s nothing cleaner than no combustion, and I can’t wait until EV‘s have replaced them all
Yes, any cyclist daring to drive in winter can easily confirm this. It is so disgusting (and unhealthy) having to stand behind a ICE car on a traffic light and being behind a electric car is such a relief, that thoughts of wishing to ban all ICE cars as soon as possible (at least in cities) come automatically.
You could run them on propane, which doesn't need the catastrophic converters - they make no difference at all if there's no CO or HC in the exhaust stream.
You've got the added bonus that you don't need to strip-mine huge chunks of Africa for precious metals, too.
As an aside, I'd like to mention that like 9 times out of 10 if you are driving down the road in an ICE vehicle and smell weird oil or hot coolant smells you are smelling someone else's car. The wind blows away a lot of your own stink before it gets to you. I learned to ignore anything that didn't smell 1) when I was stopped, and 2) more than once in totally different locations. After trying to track down smells that I thought were mine and were invariably from someone else nearby.
If your high voltage line is conducting enough to the ground that it's sparking, your vehicle isn't going to work. Electricity follows the path of least resistance and a path to ground is a lot lower resistance than a motor coil.
EVs eliminate a lot of polluting failure states of ICE vehicles. There just simply aren't that many things to burn or leak and still have a functioning vehicle.
You're not allowed to drive cars like that in a functional society. When you go for your compulsory car checkup it wouldn't pass the required safety standards.
I think the point they're making is that the ICE cars that OP is complaining about also aren't supposed to be driven in a functional society. The difference is that mostly wealthy people can afford EVs: https://ampo.org/electric-vehicles-are-out-of-reach-for-most... thus they stay maintained and have a polished image.
I think they are more accessible now than when that article was written. My wife and I bought a mid-trim Hyundai Kona Electric for under $35,000. Besides, lots of people buy used cars, and there are crazy deals on used EVs. I've seen Bolts go for under $15,000. 2 year old ID.4s are selling for under $20,000 in my area. You may not find a $5,000 beater, but EVs are penetrating further into the middle of the market now.
There are also lower ongoing costs for maintenance and fuel.
There is still the secondary wealth filter of having a place to park and charge, of course.
What I think is missing today is a way to challenge someone else's car. A few independent reports should force an early checkup, and if passed soon after the accusation, the accusers should get their own just to have something at stake.
It's missing because letting the minority of Karens harass everyone like that would cause the political will for the inspection programs to evaporate instantly.
Second, places with high touch governments already lose out on business due to registration arbitrage. Your proposal would dump gas on that fire.
while I agree, there's many places where the compulsory car checkup is tied to your relationship with the mechanic. I don't think my parents ever had a "valid" car but the certificate always was. It never felt wrong (although I think it is) but more like mutual aid or service.
There’s also the fact that nearly 1/4 US states require no emissions or safety checks whatsoever [1]. So everything is valid by default and realistically the only thing stopping you from driving a literal rust bucket, with tailpipe dragging, poor combustion, or modified emissions filtering (like modifying your truck so you can roll coal down Main Street) is it a cop feels like pulling you over for it
What is allowed and what actually happens are two very different things, my friend.
In the neighbourhood I live, there's a guy who visits someone here several times per week. His headlights are broken, the tires are worn smooth, the exhaust is loud beyond all reason. Given the general state of the vehicle, I don't have high hopes for the brakes.
I reported it to the police. I'm really not the type of person to do that, but this is worse than anything I've seen. Of course nothing happened. I didn't even get a reply. They don't give a shit. Some day that guy is going to rear-end my car and break my neck because his brake lines finally gave out.
Also, the compulsory car inspections only work for honest people. People with illegal mods will put back the stock parts for the inspection, and switch them back after. I'm not gonna say the inspections are worthless, but it does make a lot of money for the state and the private actors who run the inspection centres.
EDIT to add: They made a law recently that the inspector has to take a photo of the car inside the inspection centre, because there was so much fraud happening with vehicles just being "inspected" on paper.
It isn't until it is.
Manuals will appear, guides will show up online, shadetree mechanics will get better at electronics(they used to be experts in carburetors after all), software will be cracked if necessary.
Unlikely. Many of these sensors are mostly CAN-based, rather than hardwired. It would be a time consuming enterprise to custom bake a solution for each vehicle model to fake out protection systems. For better or worse EVs are substantially more difficult to modify than typical ICE.
Only takes 1 person to make a "safety system faker: Makes car run even with faults" which is a $20 thing you can buy from aliexpress and can be clipped anywhere onto the canbus - just two wires to hook into.
It then runs code which auto detects the car model (fairly easy from the messages on the bus), and has a database of the messages to send/inhibit to change the behaviour in the desired way.
Because so many cars use electronics that are common across a whole manufacturer of cars - ie. all GM cars, or all cars with a Bosche ECU - there won't be awful lot of work making it compatible with hundreds of models of car.
Such devices already exist for faking data for engine tuning, and for faking 'zero faults, all monitors pass' to pass government tests.
You basically get internal faults and cable faults with HV stuff. A box reporting that the AC compressor motor winding isn't shorted isn't going to make the compressor work with a shorted winding. ECU probably wouldn't disengage the powertrain for that though.
And then things like battery temperature warnings will quickly turn into real failures.
And then the next generation or 2 of stuff is going to at least attempt to implement cybersecurity features that greatly complicate tampering at the message level.
Many car enthusiasts remove the catalytic converter for a combination of additional power and/or better sound. It has a massive impact on emissions and what you might be smelling is hydrogen sulfide which is normally converted to sulfur dioxide which is orderless.
I should note the power increase may not have a major impact on newer cars where the cat has been optimized to reduce it's negative power impact.
Infact a popular tuner company, APR, that provides flashes tested the recent Volkswagen GTI and R generation with their most common tune and determined that with their tune removing the cat had a nominal impact.
*Basically they can bring the cars power as high as the OEM internals can handle reliably while keeping the cat. There are cars where it still has some impact and of course, different from power ,"straight piping" a car can offer a subjective sound change.
For every car enthusiast there are probably a hundred poorly maintained vehicles on the road. Black smoke is likely soot, and white smoke is almost certainly an oil leak.
Oil in the exhaust in quantities high enough to produce acrid white smoke is extremely common on a number of ICE engines, like blown head gaskets on E25s (found in most Subarus before their Toyota involvement in 2010) for example
Subarus with bad head gaskets leak combustion gas into the cooling system displacing the coolant. If you run a flat engine low on coolant it will score the upper cylinder walls and the you will have oil consumption. This is fundamental to all flat engines. Oil in the exhaust is blue smoke. Coolant is white.
I never got the "blue" and "white" thing. Both look "white" to me, but you're right about subarus also leaking coolant in the exhaust which is easily identified by a "sweet" smell. Blown gaskets on ICE engines like E25s leak both oil AND coolant, no? I might be mixing up blown heads with cracked manifolds which often go hand in hand since temp extremes in engines fissure cast parts like the manifold. Either way the end result is the same: noxious fumes in the exhaust.
You've never see an old vehicle blow a substantially "bluer than normal" cloud. That's what I'm talking about.
> Blown gaskets on ICE engines like E25s leak both oil AND coolant, no?
This is way, way too broad of a statement. The Subaru EJ25 tends to leak oil externally from the valve covers. When they have head gasket problems it tends to be combustion gas into coolant which blows the coolant out the expansion tank until equilibrium is reached. Typical head gasket failures cause some degree of that but coolant mixing with oil is more typical. Many V engines have intake gaskets that can leak coolant into the intake or oil or both.
Regardless, if you can taste coolant in the exhaust the car is basically at the point of "fix it now"
> I might be mixing up blown heads with cracked manifolds which often go hand in hand since temp extremes in engines fissure cast parts like the manifold.
A sizable minority of cars don't even use cast manifolds anymore. While it's possible for cast manifolds to crack in a way that makes them leak that's rare and it's more common for them to crack their mounting tabs off. Steel exhaust tubing can and does sometimes break after many years of vibration, say nothing of rust.
While cylinder heads can crack it usually takes the kind of overheating that requires major work to fix in order to make it happen so just about nobody is driving around with a cracked head.
My experience is limited to cars manufactured before 2008 (back to 1928). Maybe the new ones are all welded cold rolled steel tubes but I've only seen cast parts for intake and exhaust manifolds, nearly universally. Shit cracked all the time.
This isn't a new thing. Jeep used "factory headers" on the last years of the 4.0. Ford did welded manifolds on the 5.0 Explorers. Subaru went to welded steel for the EJ series engine in the 90s. GM had them on the LT5 in the early 90s. Just about every application that has the catalytic converter right up at the manifold used a welded one.
So I was going to reply to mention that all VWs sold in the US at least for the last 10 years use an iron block. I wanted to know if the EA888 (VWs go to 4 cylinder engine) was cast so I asked chatgpt.
"No — the VW EA888 Gen 3 engine block is not cast iron in the latest versions. engines.... use an aluminum alloy block, not traditional cast iron."
So I know for sure it's iron so I said "Are you sure it's an aluminum block on the gen 3"
"No — the VW/Audi EA888 Gen 3 engine does not have an aluminum block"
> Infact a popular tuner company, APR, that provides flashes tested the recent Volkswagen GTI and R generation with their most common tune and determined that with their tune removing the cat had a nominal impact.
I'd say that putting off sooth clouds is a way to sequester carbon (which obviously failed to burn). Such over-enriched fuel mixes must generate much more CO though, and I wonder if those who "tune" their cars like so take care about the catalytic converter :(
The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately.
All in all, a well tuned ICE is better for everyone than a poorly tuned one, if you had to pick between the two.
> The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately
Short term for the individual definitely, but long term for all individuals affected?
At least soot from ships is an issue in high latitudes, as it turns out that the soot reduces the albedo of the ice and it thus has an outsized global warming impact.
I know in some car tuning circles, or even just blue collar Joes in some places, will recommend removing the catalytic converter. Supposedly it makes the car use less fuel at the cost of worse emissions, and can make it sound better for those who care about that.
White smoke is water vapor. It's a normal byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion and tends to condense in the exhaust at low loads or immediately after exiting the exhaust, especially in colder temperatures, so you'll see a lot of it in stop and go traffic.
If it "reeks" though it's not just water vapor. I see a lot of these cars too, and you can tell it's been going on for a long time when the back of the car is covered in a layer of black grime. I think that's what kind of car problem the post is referring to.
HEPA filters stop dust particles and not those tiny organic molecules that cause the smells. Filters for these exist as well, usually used in respirators, but those need to be exchanged pretty frequently and are not cheap.
Activated charcoal filters are a common option even out of the factory, and I’d be surprised if there were a car you can’t get them aftermarket. They don’t last that long but honestly I’d recommend swapping the cabin filter yearly anyway.
Someone recommended them to me years ago and I’m never going back.
One of the reasons I wrote the comment above is because my filter has worn out and needs replacing, so all of a sudden I can smell all this nonsense again.
We love privatising the benefits and socialising the harms of everything.
If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket.
But as long as it’s other peoples health affected, meh.
> If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket.
This is why forklift trucks and Zambonis run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. If you burn gas, you get no carbon monoxide or unburnt fuel because it runs ever so slightly lean and all the fuel is burnt.
This means keeping the air clear is just a case of getting rid of carbon dioxide and water, so you can open some vents (warehouses have great big vents, big enough for trucks to drive in and out...) and let the place air out. You won't die if you breathe it, unlike the CO and unburnt fuel from petrol and diesel engines.
That's very interesting. I guess it could be a great option for when the % of ICE vehicles is low enough, it might be practical to ban more polluting fuels.
(Edited to add) Hmm actually people are already doing LPG conversions today as it's cheaper. Not sure if all LPGs are as pollution free, though.
It depends how you do it. The conversion on my elderly Range Rover is not as efficient, being an old-fashioned "single point" system - this has a thing a bit like a cooker ring attached to the throttle, a stepper motor controlled valve driven by a third lambda sensor, and a thing to disconnect the petrol injectors when it switches to gas.
You can get ones with a complete set of LPG injectors and an ECU that takes its timing from the petrol injectors, and these are incredibly efficient. They're a bit harder to install (you need to drill holes in the intake manifold, it's a faff) but the engine can be mapped for even more power than on petrol and a tiny amount of pollution.
There's still a lot of CO2 and water vapour, but as previously discussed you're burning all this shit anyway so you might as well extract useful work from it.
The time to have done this was 25 or 30 years ago, when it was ridiculously cheap to buy gas and there were a lot of old-fashioned carburettor-fed cars that were incredibly badly polluting.
Yep. My newest car is over 20 years old. May be a bit more polluting (though it doesn't smell or smoke) but I've in theory saved the environmental impact of the manufacture of one or two new cars by keeping the old one.
I'm not spending $30-40k or more on a car. That just isn't going to happen.
Cost to replace the catalytic converter, cost for new exhaust pipes, cost to diagnose ignition timing problems. Whatever.
If the car drives and you don’t have the money I can completely understand why someone wouldn’t get the problem fixed. Even if it means they’re burning a 1/3 of their fuel, that’s still less in the short term than the $1500 it may cost to fix it.
It’s insanely rare I get the sense that the person is running really dirty on purpose.
I don’t know what a realistic fairway to fix it is. They’re probably isn’t one. I don’t think fines would work, it would probably just make things worse. Seems like the kind of thing where a little government group to find the worst 0.1% of cars on the road and just get them back to reasonable levels would be a huge help.
Some states handle this by requiring cars over a certain age to be emission checked before you can renew its registration. Failing cars have to be fixed and rechecked before you can get your tags.
I think they stop checking cars after a certain year. Like, if you are driving a 1980 Buick, they won’t make you scrap it because it’s emission tech is way out of date.
I can only speak about Germany. Here the technical safety and exhaust check are mandatory every two years. The exhaust check is relative to what the manufacturer specified when they first started selling the car. No one is getting their car taken away because technology improved but you can‘t let your car degrade (or modify it) so it becomes more dirty.
A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises.
Additionally, a lot of conservatives love to "Roll coal", and literally will shit up the environment on purpose just because they feel schadenfreude from pissing of an environmentalist.
> A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises.
Some people remove catalytic converters when they install a performance exhaust. Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound.
Also I wouldn’t say it’s “a lot of Americans”. We have emissions inspections in most major cities and your car won’t pass if you remove the catalytic converter. They can now detect modified ECUs, too. Someone would have to be so determined to do this that they’d swap the exhaust in and out every time they had to do emissions inspections.
They muffle slightly, but removing the cat alone isn’t going to make a big difference with modern high efficiency single cat exhausts.
I’ve seen (heard) the effects first hand. Trust me, people aren’t removing the cat just to make their car annoyingly loud. If they are, they’re going to be disappointed.
If I had to guess, the downvotes were from the “A lot of Americans” claim
> HNs lack of knowledge around cars is sort of frightening.
I actually have a lot of knowledge and experience in the automotive space, including with exhaust systems!
Catalytic converter removal alone doesn’t have a big change exhaust tone. I have seen it first hand, and also with 100-cell and 200-cell race cats as an intermediary step.
Your posts are full of condescending assumptions about Americans and HN’s comments about cars, but you’re ignoring the actual facts others are trying to share.
Yeah, it's definitely a small percent of people. But i do wonder how many there really has to be to have an outsized effect. One of those lifted kid killers blowing black smoke for the entire duration of the bicycle pack is definitely more than 3 of my tiny honda civics, i wonder how many it really is, and how much those modifications increase the "resting emissions rate"even when not blowing shit. Should be illegal, likely is.
I'd wager it's largely disruptive and dangerous in a highly localized way due to the small percentage of folks doing it. Doesn't make it an acceptable practice though. One person "rolling coal" can temporarily blind 3 or 4 cars back and several across depending on wind conditions, etc.
In terms of NOX it can be a factor of 100. If 1% drive without cats they produce half the NOX emissions. In reality it is probably less since there are other old cars as well that have higher emissions
I live in a progressive state and unfortunately encounter "coal rolling" regularly. I also assume that's the point. Someone has to "own all the libs" as it were
However, I do agree that there aren't enough folks "rolling coal" in aggregate to really move any needles on planet-scale environmental impacts though. Just VERY unpleasant to be caught behind.
I’ve run into a few of those. They’re generally pretty obvious. Usually a big truck, lots of MAGA & adjacent bumper stickers.
I haven’t noticed people removing the catalytic converters just for noise. The rare time I see a car that wants to be loud it usually just seems to be the exhaust end they changed, or maybe removed the muffler.
The kind of stuff I’m complaining about mostly seems to be older cars, or those in poor mechanical shape. Cases where the people probably just don’t have the money to fix it.
The exhaust from a well functioning modern ICE is likely enough to have less pollutants than the air. Of course it still has carbon dioxide, but less other pollutants.
>> EV have far more tire wear because they are heavier
Is this true?
If an EV were 30% heavier than an ICE, would it produce 30% more tyre wear emissions? Or would it produce more or less than 30%? Is the primary factor in tyre wear weight and is the relationship linear?
The types of tyres appear to be quite different, the EVs seem to have smaller contact patches (narrower wheels) and they're made of different "less grippy" compounds that drag less. Does this change the equation at all?
Even if we still make a mess I think centralization of the mess is better than distributing it - what I mean is that polluting cities where millions sleep, eat, drink and breathe will probably be worse, net effect, than containing energy pollution to select places.
Running EVs in densely populated regions is probably a lot better for the population on the whole even if the net pollution would stay the same, IMO.
Still no EV is even better, but we’ve created a world where transport is often required so, one step at a time I guess.
Even if the electricity source would burn similar fuel, just the fact that you don't pullote right in the middle of population centers makes a huge difference. In reality, it's not only that, but _also_ that they use cleaner methods of energy production.
Huh, no. Pollution close to humans is bad for both city and rural people.
> The pollution always goes somewhere,
"The solution to pollution is dilution". We want the concentration of pollution low, so the health effects are low too, and we can give natural processes the time to decay/oxidize/etc the pollutants.
> not like we have large swaths of useless places
We do... we mostly care about the lower ~100 meters of atmosphere because that's where people live. That's less than 1% of the total atmosphere. This means we can distribute pollution over a volume a 100x larger than that that is important for us. And then I'm not even counting the vast amount of the planet that's uninhabited / non-land.
Also, smokestacks are designed to not directly pollute the air close to people, see:
Even if the source of electricity used to charge an EV is mostly generated by fossil fuels, EVs are still probably more energy efficient because gas powered cars are not particularly efficient at turning gasoline into useful energy compared to the efficiency of larger scale power plants.
Also as you point out, non-fossil fuel energy is becoming a larger part of the grid over time, so an EV you buy today will become cleaner over time, while the fossil fuel reliance of a gas car purchased today will never improve.
Honestly the biggest blocker for EVs from my perspective is charging infrastructure. Public fast charging sites are too uncommon compared to gas stations and a less than ideal solution to use for all of your charging needs and lots of people live in housing where installing a charger at home is difficult or impossible. Eventually both of those will change, but it will lag significantly behind the quality of the vehicles themselves.
The interesting thing to me is that even for people who can't charge at home, EVs and charging infrastructure have reached the tipping point where they're at least viable. They're less convenient in such situations than a gas powered car and so will be limited to people who are extra motivated for one reason or another. But the EV world is over the "possible" hurdle so the "practical" threshold seems inevitable.
The surprising part to me is that there are now enough EVs to make a measurable difference, since I kept thinking they are still relatively rare. The linked study has this piece of data:
From 2019 to 2023, ZEVs increased from 2.0% (559943 of 28237734) to 5.1% (1460818 of 28498496).
You forget the most important aspect of policy: it can't cost a single dime, and everyone must lie about that. Read the first sentence of the article:
"When California neighborhoods increased their number of zero-emissions vehicles"
Obviously neighborhoods/cities/states didn't increase anything. It was just rich people living there buying fancy cars. Of course, this needs to be described as a great accomplishment of local government.
And nowhere in the article is the obvious solution even suggested: advancing electric car technology so they're cheaper than ICE cars. And I don't mean charging extra tax while cutting public transport to make sure poor people don't go anywhere anymore, I mean fixing the technology so everyone has transport, for less money.
Shouldn't the obvious solution be based on observable reality? Which is that there is no technology in sight that will make EVs cheaper to build than ICEs. Otherwise you are praying for a miracle, and that's not a sound policy.
Technological advance can be modeled like anything else. Everything about plug-in EVs is cheaper than ICE cars, except the battery. So you can model exactly what you need to get the same as you're currently seeing with solar panels. You can calculate at exactly what point they'll take over aviation and so on.
I mean, this isn't even a very hard thing to model.
> I mean, this isn't even a very hard thing to model.
Could you please explain in more detail what exactly do you want to model here? Above, you mentioned "advancing electric car technology so they're cheaper than ICE cars". Now as we both know the issue is with the battery, do you just want cars with battery so small that the car is cheaper than an ICE but nobody wants it? Because there is no need to model that, it has been tried and failed.
If you mean modeling battery technology that's not yet available in EVs, good luck with that. There are better batteries available than in mass-market vehicles, but they are not cheaper; cheaper technologies are not as good. Sure, in 10 years the batteries will be much better overall, but we don't really have the luxury of waiting until the technology gets perfect and then scaling that, do we.
Decent public transport makes all the difference.
Luckily we have good transport here in the Netherlands and I haven't needed a car in 10 years.
Also, the trains here have been running 100% on renewable energy since 2017.
Don't EVs use resistive breaking to recharge their batteries? I would hope that reduces particle emissions.
Though I suppose that EVs and hybrids are heavier than similar gas powered counterparts, so tire wear is worse. At least until EVs can be made lighter.
scam is a bit of hyperbole. also, ZEV has always explicitly referenced tailpipe emissions, which is also why there's been the odd sounding "partial zero emissions vehicle" category. It's certainly valid to be concerned about additional sources of fine particles, but eliminating engine emissions is not something to be dismissed as a scam.
Further, particle emission from brake dust is mitigated in EV's that use regen braking. One of my ev's can go days without phycical brake usage, and another uses the brake pads so infrequently it has an automatic mode to touch the discs occasionally just to keep them from building up rust.
tire particles --- different compounds can effect that, but will always be a side effect of tires on vehicles.
> tire particles --- different compounds can effect that, but will always be a side effect of tires on vehicles.
There's vehicles like trains, subways and bycicles, responsible for transporting hundreds of at least a billion people per day, which don't use tires whose particles are the biggest source of microplastics.
>You mean we can do something today that will reduce PM10 pollution by half?!
We could. We could massively fund public transit and massively reduce private car ownership. But we won't, because then capitalists will make less money.
Even if you power a typical EV from 100% coal, it pencils out as about equivalent to a late model Prius. And any improvements in the energy mix take it further.
I don't think many people really understand how awful automobile-scale internal combustion engines are at efficiency. The only reason they work at all is thanks to the absurd energy density of the fuels they burn.
Even if the fossil fuel argument at the source was/is valid, it's infinitely more efficient to do it at the source than in a car. You can extract far more energy and do better to mitigate byproducts.
Also, an EV is as green as the grid. Hamburgs public transportation is heavily investing into electrical busses, because a bus is expected to function for 10 - 15 years. Meaning, a diesel bus built today will be as polluting in 2035 as it is today, though they are also looking at alternatives there. But an electrical bus will become cleaner and cleaner over time.
We're still burning massive amounts of fossil fuels as waste products from refining oil to make plastics and chemical feedstocks. A huge amount of that is propane that just gets flared off.
We could have been running cars on that for decades, but getting people to make their dirty polluting inefficient old petrol cars run on fuel that emits carbon dioxide and water with no HC, CO, SOx, NOx, or particulates was nowhere near as profitable as selling them lots of debt to buy cleaner greener diesels.
Actually it's considerably less explosive than petrol and far safer in a crash.
If a petrol-fuelled car goes on fire, the fuel tank will explode. The tanks are usually thin plastic and will split open in an accident, spilling fuel everywhere.
By contrast, the LPG tanks are pretty much indestructible and if you remove a tank from a car that's been on fire (a lot of taxis are LPG-powered and seem to go on fire late at night for some reason, especially if they're parked in the wrong part of town) you'll find the tank is still about as full as it was before the car got burnt.
Is that really true? Liquid gasoline does evaporate pretty quickly, yet doesn't need special metal tanks. Isn't propane sold and kept in pressurized tanks?
As I understand it, gasoline tanks on cars are unlikely to explode unless they are nearly empty.
The petrol in the tank will boil quickly and blow the tank apart, especially if it's already a bit melty. You won't get enough pressure for a proper "BLEVE" because the leaky plastic bucket won't hold enough pressure to stop it beginning to boil, but it'll throw burning fuel all over.
An automotive LPG tank is a bit different to the kind of thing you'd run your barbecue off with a "multivalve" that's got a float to shut off the filling port when it's full and act as a level gauge (similar to a petrol tank) and a pipe to pick liquid up from the bottom. You get "four hole" tanks with a vapour tap that you can use a normal regulator in, which is handy for things like motorhomes - same tank runs the engine and the cooker :-)
They're only pressurised to about 8 bar, low enough that you can use plastic pipe to connect them to the vapouriser at the engine. It's kind of nylon tubing with braid over and a PVC outer jacket, and it handles liquid propane at tank pressure.
If there's an overpressure because it gets really hot (like, car is on fire hot) it'll burp out a bit of gas which will cause a puff of flame but you're talking about something like a deodorant can on a bonfire (and don't tell me you've never done that).
Quite honestly, I'm more wary around the 15 bar air suspension tank and lines. That's where pressurised gases start to get a bit spicy.
That ... still sounds more dangerous than liquid gasoline to me. Though I suppose if it were cheaper and as plentiful then the world would switch. Gasoline was after all a byproduct of kerosine processing.
It's just not dangerous, period. There are multiple countries where every single taxi in the country pre-EVs ran on LPG, and now most of them still do though some get replaced by EVs. Ask anyone from there if they've ever heard of them blowing up. You'll get nothing but a "huh, what are you talking about?".
You think something that goes "puff" and emits a wee puff of flame every so often is more dangerous than something that just sprays liquid dynamite all over the incident?
I know someone who took a drill to a small propane tank and ended up life flighted to the hospital. Perhaps the equivalent with a gas can would be worse? I just don't see it.
Post crash connectivity (as well as complex video classification) are part of the ncap standards now.
And with the way we are moving to centralized one system architectures, the device that does video processing can be the same soc that does smart infotainment.
Smart connectivity essentially comes "for free" if the manufacturer wants to hit 5 safety stars, so its not going away, and will come to ICE cars as they modernize the vehicle architectures.
You must have missed the news about cars being hacked, while in movement no less. That some have tried to save money while risking lives is not an endorsement or evidence of a solved problem.
I hate that. If I live in the country, my car spies on me. If I live in the city everyone spies on me. One value I agree with the libertarians on is, I just want to be left alone.
Amusingly my Cupra Born in Australia is a “dumb” EV, because Cupra/VW didn’t put a SIM in the car in this country. It’s quite lovely really, though it means I have to go to Cupra for a firmware update.
I have hopes that the Slate vehicle will turn out to be a dumb EV, but I'm cynical enough that I want to wait til it hits the market and someone does a tear-down. https://www.slate.auto/
Why? Are you worried from a liberty/privacy standpoint? "Smart" EV's are demonstrated to be significantly safer than "dumb" EVs. Waymo’s 2025/2026 data shows an 80–90% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities. [1, 2, 3, 4]
> "Smart" EV's are demonstrated to be significantly safer than "dumb" EVs. Waymo’s 2025/2026 data shows an 80–90% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities.
It's important to realize the reason for that.
Crashes by human drivers are hugely disproportionately by people who are driving drunk or with insufficient sleep or significant distractions etc. In other words, it's not a difference in the cars, it's a difference in the drivers. Waymo can beat a drunk driver, and therefore can beat the human driver arithmetic mean which has the drunk drivers averaged in.
That doesn't mean it's any safer than driving an ordinary car when you're not drunk.
So liberty then. I don't disagree with you, but this modern flashpoint in the classic debate between individual liberty and collective safety does bring up the question what is saving 50,000+ lives annually actually worth in terms of loss of personal freedoms? I am personally struggling with this debate having lost loved ones in this manner.
That is not the argument being made. We are discussing how "dumb" vehicles (e.g. vehicles that contribute to 50,000+ fatalities annually) provide independence, privacy and freedom that "smart" vehicles (e.g. vehicles with self-driving that can be bricked at will) do not ensure.
Also you are conflating thing the poster may not have intended. I’ve not heard anyone complain about collision avoidance systems, antilock brakes etc. But spying packages, and touchscreen dash, hell no.
The assertion that 'I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon' led me to a different assumption. The ultimate aspiration of a "smart" EV is self-driving, which incorporates Internet connectivity features (e.g. digital mapping, over the air updates, etc).
"Smart" in all other classes of purchases typically means IoT / Internet connected.
The computerization of formerly mechanical features making it harder to DIY repair is a separate but also valid concern, though I'm not sure how it applies to EVs.
Just get a used one that’s a decade old. The cell providers will all move on past 3g/4g etc and the cars won’t be able to connect. Plus I’m sure no one is paying to keep a cell connection going for a decade old EV.
Depends. They get a virtually continual supply of standby power that can last for months if left untouched. So from a technology standpoint that enables them to do many things - from being connected to the network, aware of their location on the map, recording camera footage and other remote capabilities. ICE cars do have some of these but the huge battery packs on EVs make these very feasible.
EVs use 12V for standby just like ICEs. I guess it could occasionally recharge it from the main battery, but needing a jump is a thing for EVs also in theory. I’ve also had issues with the 12V disabling remote systems because of abnormal discharge (well, BMW has an issue with their lock on weak away in that it keeps drawing power if the fob gets near even if the car is locked).
I was under the impression most EVs cut off the connection to the high voltage battery almost all the time they’re not in use.
They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
The only thing I’m aware of that special is that if that low voltage battery gets low enough the car will detect it and recharge it from the high voltage battery, temporarily connecting it for that purpose.
> They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
Which leads to "fun" situations when that battery runs out, like not being able to get into your car or start it. However not much power is needed, so a tiny portable jump pack is enough to get things going.
Both me and my sister has experienced this, me a Nissan Leaf and her a VW ID.4, good times.
Fair enough, at least my Leaf had that too, and I guess the ID.4 as well. However for the Leaf and my current car it's just the driver side, and you still can't get the car started, or turn on the heat say.
The latter can be an issue as my sister got stranded in the mountains during winter. Battery ran flat while they were on a long ski trip, and they couldn't get it fired up when they got back. Took a few hours before rescue vehicle arrived and gave them a boost.
Well that was what I meant - the battery pack meaning the entire system of batteries, be it 1 or 2 or 3.
That really enables them to have a continuous state of power supply for a long long time.
This cannot be achieved by ICE cars and not even hybrids for that matter.
In theory. In practice, a lot of EVs (and hybrids, which could do the same thing to a more limited extent) ship with the same cheap flooded lead acid 12v batteries that ship with ICE cars and don't handle constant charging/discharging well.
This puts a cap on how much the "smart" systems can do because it dramatically increases cycle count and thus the risk of the 12v battery losing the ability to produce enough voltage to start the car, leaving the driver marooned somewhere.
It could also result in a noticeable "vampire" drain on the high voltage battery which looks bad and could put you at a disadvantage vs. competitors.
It depends on your definition. Tesla Model 3 has a dedicated low-current connection to the high-voltage battery that bypasses the main contactors, specifically to power the 12V system.
Typically, yes. Although I chalk much of that up to traditional ICE companies being extremely slow to adopt new technology and implementating it poorly or only superficially.
Ah yes, the previously-marketed $20,000 Slate which is actually $30,000 now, still comes with nothing, and hasn't hit production yet. If only BYD could come in and destroy the non-smart/budget EV market.
My previous car had its infotainment system reboot several times while I was on the expressway. The idea of my instrument panel, or other more critical systems, crashing and rebooting while driving terrifies me.
The infotainment is not connected to the ECU and other car control electronics. At least not on my Tesla nor my F150 Lightning. You can reboot them to your hearts content while driving down the road.
Yes, but it is still rather unnerving when part of the car goes dark. It also makes me question the QA on this stuff. If that is crashing, will the other systems be crashing at some point as well? Is there redundancy? These are the questions that went through my mind while hoping the screen would come back on before I missed my exit. Even knowing the systems are completely separate, it spoke to overall quality.
I agree that it is unnerving, but I expect it to be normal in the future. They save a bunch of time by being able to push out a 90% product with low risk of catastrophe and just push updates later to fix it up. As a bonus, they can market the frequent updates as a benefit rather than cleaning up technical debt they would have had to iron out before shipping the first car.
I've had multiple vehicles have instrument cluster failures while operating them. None of those have been screens. "Analog" gauges have not actually been analog for a while. They're all digital controls being read by a computer.
Even a carbureted motorcycle I owned from the early 2000s had "analog" gauges with values given to it from a computer!
There are large implementation differences in touch screens. My wife's care needs several second: turn the radio on, wait for the splash screen, press the drives heat control, wait for it to appear (100s of ms - long enough to notice) then find the button in the miedle of the screen - finally I can change the heated seats. My car that button is always has the button at the bottom of the screen in the same place so is is ms to look and see.
Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement.
You know that a backup camera can be added to practically any car right? My ~2002 Toyota has a Pioneer deck from around 2007 (I guess?) that supports reversing camera input. My wifes 2012 Toyota hybrid has a reversing camera using some POS cheap Chinese deck that's so shit it doesn't even support Bluetooth audio.
No part of reversing cameras are dependent on any of the "modern" trends in cars that are being discussed here.
I feel like you're deliberately missing the point.
You don't need them to have a reversing camera. Literally millions of cars over the past 2 decades have perfectly fine reversing cameras using the screen of a regular double-DIN deck (or fold out single-DIN deck).
I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)
There's often been a few cases of "disappeared" people who went missing and it turns out they actually crashed off the road somewhere and weren't found for a week or two.
That's extreme of course but there are probably a lot of accidents that happen in low-density rural country areas or late at night when there aren't many people around. The automatic e-call from the car gives exact GPS coordinates and severity of the accident, even if you are unconscious or if your phone that was neatly in the cup holder before the crash was flung somewhere else (potentially even flew out of the car etc) and you're trying to find it while someone might be dying in the seat next to you etc.
People didn't survive before all this. It's a mandatory feature now because it's so effective at saving lives. 2 to 10% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries apparently. Would you also question why we have mandatory airbags and traction control?!
right, but airbags, seatbelts, etc. are not internet connected. That's the critical distinction. I do not want the risks that come with my car connecting to the internet.
A much more reasonable ask would be for your car's systems to use your phone to place a call to emergency services. I absolutely do not want yet another internet connected device in my life, especially one like a car, where examples exist of hackers being able to disable the electronics remotely.
Funnily enough, I mostly hear about it from hyper-individualistic types. It's probably a facet of some American conservative-traditionalist belief cluster invented in the last 40 years, but it's hard to say for sure, because the people who say this tend to be bad at introspection, so can't answer my questions about it (even when they're curiously cooperating with my investigation).
I don't love smart TVs either, but why not just buy a smart TV and not use the smart features? I have a few "smart TVs", but I haven't even connected them to Wi-Fi, and I instead opt for an Nvidia Shield TV or just a laptop computer plugged in instead.
A few years ago it came out that one of the manufacturers (my hunch is Samsung but I don't remember the specifics) had their "smart" tvs aggressively try connecting to any and all networks it can find in range, if you didn't connect it to one.
I reluctantly bought an LG with webOS (least bad option available) a couple of years ago. For some reason they weren't content to let the TV menu/remote work with up/down/left/right buttons.
That's too fucking predictable, and anyone who's used a tv in the last 2 decades could use it....
Let's give it a fucking nipple, just like those horrific fucking IBM/Lenovo laptops.
Then of course it also tries to "help" by detecting HDR content and change view mode... while something is playing.... which makes the screen go black for several seconds.
By using touchscreens and software for most functionality, you dramatically reduce your supply chain overhead and better enhance margins (instead of managing the supply chain for dozens of extruded buttons, now you manage the supply chain of a single LCD touchscreen).
This was a major optimization that Chinese automotive manufacturers (ICE and EV) found and took advantage of all the way back in 2019 [0] - treat cars as consumer electronics instead of as "cars".
Edit: Any answer that does not take COGS or Magins into account is moot.
Not sure what your point is when we're talking about cars, where fixed physical controls are demonstrably more usable and safer for drivers that need to keep their eyes on the road. Multiple manufacturers have pulled back from excessive touch controls (not just touchscreens, but capacitive buttons and sliders) and reinstated more traditional buttons and dials.
Physical controls and smart cars are not mutually exclusive. That’s why they’ve been fixing that.
I agree that was an idiotic trend.
But if someone wants a car without connectivity, it’s too late. The market is not strong enough to get rid of that. Most people either like it or don’t care enough to avoid it.
Just like most people liked or didn’t care enough to avoid smart TVs.
I declined the master data agreement when Toyota updated it, and my car hasn’t connected to the Internet since. They also wanted to charge me like $20 a month for stuff like bothering me with notifications that my wife has failed to lock the car when I’m halfway across the city after the first year of ownership.
I suppose they could still remote kill the car though, and have no idea what would happen if I hit the emergency button.
The business case is the same as every “dumb” device since the dawn of time, up until maybe 10 years ago.
Sell and product with enough margin to make money. Don’t sell it at or below cost, then spy on your users and sell them to the real customers, the advertisers.
“Dumb” stuff has a very simple and honest business model. Market the cars by exposing what every other car brand is actually doing.
>Edit: Any answer that does not take COGS or Magins into account is moot.
Auto quality touch screes are not cheap. A high quality switch/button assembly is still cheaper for a give lifetime (100k, 200k, whatever), which is why it's what the 3rd world compact cars all use. The switches start losing when you start having a ton of different sets of features the car needs to support.
Other car companies fucked it up is funny way to put it. Tesla hasn’t made a new car in a decade and the whole lineup is for my 80-year old Dad. I have 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour 2025, same car. Tesla X is from a decade ago, Tesla 3 is basically Toyota Corolla and Y is basically Model 3 that was pumped up a bit to look like a “crossover”
when I bought my Tesla S there was a lot of head injuries from people turning around to see this new amazing cars. now, not only are sales tanking but the cars look so old and dated that my first assumption when I see say Model Y is “gotta be someone’s grandma”
when was the last time you saw a Tesla and went “oh cool car!”? been awhile, right? Now ask the same question for BMW, Benz…
And it is a fallacy for obvious reasons, including
a) electricity generation is more flexible, and rapidly shifting to solar and other non-polluting sources.
b) Moving pollution away from people is better. Cars are inherently around people, streets, residences etc.
c) One centralised plant with no weight restrictions is easier to control for emissions and efficiency than many thousands of mobile, weight-constrained power plants.
d) Wikipedia: "The extraction and refining of carbon based fuels and its distribution is in itself an energy intensive industry contributing to CO2 emissions."
The current generation of Lucid, BMW, etc. are 400+ mile vehicles.
You think we need 800-1200 mile batteries?
As for charge speed, the twice a year someone needs more than 400 miles isn't as significant in real world EV usage...
I plug in on a dopey 1.3kW (~115V, ~12A) outlet and my car is at 80% charge in the morning. For commuting, a 5pm to 7am charge is ample for most people living ordinary lives.
Once a week you plug it in for ~30 minutes somewhere.
EVs charge unattended, so they can be left charging while you do something else. Shopping malls often have chargers.
At city distances and city speeds BEVs often have enough battery to last a week or two, and the battery doesn't drop when the car isn't used.
You don't have to charge to full if you don't have time. Even if you plug it in for 10 minutes, you'll probably return home with more charge that when you left.
I can't think of the last time I've willingly gone to a store to shop. I do all my shopping online and everything is delivery including groceries. Going to a physical store feels like a huge waste of time to me.
I drive quite a bit for work as I drive around and calibrate and repair lab equipment so it just seems like a major inconvenience to my schedule to have to go places to charge for awhile so often and hope they are working and hope they are not being used.
Based on my firsthand experience, cold weather (big one) or hauling/towing significantly reduces that 400 mile range (sometimes by 50%+). Yes to comfortably get 400-500 miles per charge in the worst case scenario it needs to be atleast 2x.
If you're saying 100% only EVs with no use cases whatsoever for gasoline, then I suppose so. I don't think that's a smart goal, though.
More like, more people should understand how EVs can easily work for them, and then try to shoehorn gas-powered vehicles into the few niche they need to be in.
How often does someone need a 400 mile range again? Towing? When is the last time you towed something 400 miles? The most I ever towed was... using a rental truck and a rental trailer when I moved. (Anecdotes are not data!) But why in a rational purchasing decision would I need an 800 mile EV battery for a car just because sometimes it's cold out?
It depends on your lifestyle. I haul my RV around sometimes two weekends a month. In my F-150 lightning I get around 100 miles between charges which is pretty dismal. I’m assuming you live in a city or in Europe. Where I live people regularly haul RVs, boats etc. I also frequently drive long distances and even in the best case scenario 2.5 hours of driving followed by 40 minutes of charging is a pain. These aren’t unusual driving patterns where I live.
RVs need to have a dual purpose battery pack on board.
I feel like long distance boat hauling is rare. Either they're driving across town to a launch, or it's moored/docked for the season.
No need to double twice. 250 miles (~4 hours of driving) is about what you want. Pretty much everybody needs to bathroom at least that often. And nowhere on a road in the continental US is more than 150 miles from a charger.
So yes, you want 400-500 miles of range, but that's because you've doubled the 250 for weather, safety margin, etc.
I believe we need 700-800 miles of stated range which will result in 400-500 miles of actual range in the worst possible conditions. That’s about what you get from a tank of gas and what it would take to reduce range anxiety. Stopping every 2 hours for 40 minutes doesn’t make sense, stopping every 4 hours for 40 minutes is much, much better.
I recently did a day trip of 800km while it was freezing and snowing. Yes the range is impacted, so i never did more than 200km in one go. Then a quick 15 minutes break to recharge and continue. It takes a bit longer, but not bad enough to go back to ICE cars. EV drives so much nicer.
> I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
for this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE. I don't see this. On top of this EVs tend to push ideas from Software/Tech companies, such as recurring revenues (because the underlying technology lends itself to it better).
Personally I'm unsure that this will be accepted by all consumers as much as is needed. After all the automotive marketing has since Ford insisted that driving was about "freedom". So some pivot needs to happen in the messaging. Suppose decades is a lot of time to change it. Personally I think EVs are nonsense, and a better utopia would be making sure public transport is abundant, high-quality and free.
> For this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE.
Define "improve" ?
One way for "ICE cars completely become a thing of the past" is for there to be lots of cheap, reliable, second-hand EVs. If you can buy a good used EV for less then yes, a barrier to quitting ICE cars has been removed.
That's an improvement. The car doesn't have to be an asset, it could be more like a utility.
EV depreciation seems to be driven by
1) rapidly advancing state of the art, which should eventually stabilise and
2) Fears of battery lifespan, which in current vehicles is largely unfounded
I’m not going to try to convince you that you can’t control your immediate environment better in a car, but not having to deal with parking or insurance or traffic is quite freeing.
Rarely in everyday life situations do I feel as claustrophobic as being in a car in traffic in a typical road.
Can’t change direction (one lane no junctions), can’t change speed (vehicles in front and behind), can’t stop (flow of traffic), can’t break concentration (driving), can’t change body position (car cabin is tiny, seats and hand/feet controls are fixed, no space to stand), can’t look away for more than a moment (responsibility of driving).
And the only places to go are on the predetermined road, from a car park, to a car park, following a lot of strict prescribed rules about how.
This meme of “freedom” is brainwashing and marketing (which has been picked up as an identity thing by the right wing recently).
There’s nothing free about having to use a $20,000 vehicle to buy bread because no other options are available.
I do not own a vehicle, and most of my life I've depended on public transit. Lately, I take Waymos or I ride scooters, or use public transit as usual.
Sometimes, for special errands, I rent a car. For example, I intended to move across town last year, so I rented a car for 3-4 days.
It was the most excruciating pain I could have. I chose a little Mitsubishi Mirage, and firstly, it was the middle of July in the Sonoran Desert, and the A/C hardly worked, so I was sweating, and the car would heat up real good in parking lots. No sun shades, dark upholstery. Also, the USB connection was flaky, so sometimes my phone didn't charge, and whether or not, it was directly exposed to the Sun and overheating.
By the second day, my legs hurt a lot. I had spent an unexpected amount of time on my feet and walking around, despite the vehicle. Do you know how big parking lots are these days?!
I tried sitting down at every opportunity. I have a running gag/dispute at my bank to see whether they will allow me to "sit down" at the "ADA/Disabled" teller window.
Driving home at night on the last night, my leg cramped up really bad. I was in such pain, I nearly pulled over because it was my accelerator/brake leg and I was going to lose control of the car.
Thankfully I was able to hold it together, and returned the car the next day, but boy I did not want such a vehicle ever again. And it was not a stick-shift; it was an automatic transmission.
Next time I'm going to be really sure that the USB and A/C work. And that my legs are super-comfortable and has cruise control.
For most of the country you can't really get groceries or have reasonable employment without operating a car. We've designed our cities to make it effectively a requirement.
That’s not true, that’s your mental gymnastics to try to defend the ideology you have taken on.
While there are no alternatives with similar funding and societal support to driving, car dependency forces many people to drive even for trivial things. Most car journeys are less than three miles. That’s a bonkers state of affairs for the planet and for human history.
All 110 billion humans who ever lived couldn’t possibly be considered “not free” because they didn’t have cars to get to the nearest stream or nut tree. Wild animals aren’t considered to have “no freedom” because they don’t own cars.
It entirely depends on where you live. You could live in a dense urban area with abundant transport options, where owning a car is more trouble than it's worth, or in a more spread-out community where it's nigh-essential.
You know what would make me more free? Being able to just walk and bike to all the places I want to go, and not have to pay car insurance and the energy cost and the high upfront cost or a loan to buy a giant chunk of metal every time I need a loaf of bread.
You know what would make my kids more free? If they could just play outside without the giant death machines flying by with their operators looking at their phones well over the speed limit.
I'm trapped in a world where I need to spend a good chunk of my life in a cage just to work and eat, and you call that "freedom".
You’re free to live in some dense urban environment where amenities are a five min walk away, and everyone relies on underground trains, busses and taxis.
If you think “freedom” means not having a car, then there are options for you.
I moved out of a dense urban public-transport-and-cycling environment into a countryside town with heaps of space, and where everyone happily owns cars to give them the freedom to go wherever they like, whenever they like, taking family and cargo with them, without issue.
I would never go back to the urban environment, waiting around for public transport, being limited to the routes served by public transport, useless cycle lanes everywhere (what good is a bike when I need to transport my 3 year old, 6 year old, and all our shopping?). And the stifling density of housing and amenities was oppressive and unpleasant.
There is a better way. Move to countryside town, buy an EV that cost negligible amounts to run, cases negligible local pollution, and is a joy to own.
> You’re free to live in some dense urban environment where amenities are a five min walk away, and everyone relies on underground trains, busses and taxis.
Not really. People are often tied to lots of areas for a number of reasons, and we don't build this much of this kind of urban environment in the US. We've made it largely illegal to build this in most of the country. I'm not free to really live that kind of life.
For most Americans, it's not an option.
> what good is a bike when I need to transport my 3 year old, 6 year old, and all our shopping?
If it was designed well enough your six year old should be able to ride on their own bike with you. You can take a lot of stuff with you with an even mildly powerful electric bicycle. And I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to have the option for a car, but we've designed our urban spaces to be actively hostile to everything but a car when we really didn't have to. Freedom is being able to choose, not be forced into only one option.
They've made almost 9 million cars overall, with a lot of those made in the last several years. Spreading it over the cars they've made so far, 40,000 / 9 = 4,444.44.
Doesn't seem that crazy. I'm not seeing your point.
That's 9 million (and probably many more unless Tesla disappears tomorrow) far cleaner cars on the road, offsetting what would have probably been ICE sales.
I'm no Tesla-stan but spending $40B over a decade to inject massive amounts of change in an entrenched industry to move forward in efficiency and emissions sounds like a pretty good investment to me.
Yes do the same for ICE - very constructive suggestion. Completely unnecessary to call the argument silly though..
There are marked differences in what's needed in an EV vs an ICE, most obvious of which is the giant battery with a very different supply chain.
It’s probably still more net efficient in the long run. Besides, the main advantage EVs bring isn’t being more environmentally friendly. The main advantage is that it allows a nation to have more flexibility with its energy sources. i.e. an EV can run on anything that can generate electricity like coal or natural gas, while ICE cars mostly only run on gasoline.
Is that true? EV have much higher emissions of micro plastics and pfas (or variations thereof) due to increased tier degradation. EVs are typically way heavier than similar ICE due to the batteries and combined with the higher torques, tires wear faster.
> EV have much higher emissions of micro plastics and pfas (or variations thereof) due to increased tier degradation
I find those claims highly suspect: I own an EV and haven't had to change the tires more often than I did on a gasoline-powered car. My EV bought in 2021 still runs on original tires and they're fine (although I do change from winter to summer tires, so that's 2 sets technically).
I suspect black PR, and there is always a grain of truth in black PR: emissions are indeed likely to be higher. Probably not "much higher" and probably not in a way that really matters.
Just because a tire lasts as long doesn't mean it isn't wearing in different ways. EV specific tires are a lot different than their ICE counterparts.
This isn't "black PR". It's comparing apples and oranges. But throw non-EV tires on one and you'll definitely chew those tires up much more quickly [0][1][2][3].
While it is true that EVs are heavier than the equivalent ICE vehicle, and that this causes more tyre and road wear.
1) this is not the only or even the overriding factor when comparing the two. There are engine emissions (none for EVs) and braking (EVs have regen braking)
2) There is a trend for larger, heavier ICE vehicles in the USA as well. Big trucks and SUVs. It is very selective to argue against EVs in this way without also arguing against these.
I have a heavy and high performance EV (Tesla Model S) and I have replaced my tires twice in the last six years. So it’s about the same as an ICE vehicle in that regard.
One thing that differs is brake wear. My car is ten years old and still on its original brake pads and discs. The regen braking is amazing for avoiding mechanical braking. So that means less particle emission from brakes, compared to ICE.
>"I have a heavy and high performance EV (Tesla Model S) and I have replaced my tires twice in the last six years. So it’s about the same as an ICE vehicle in that regard."
Well no, it's not "the same". We have things like physics to tell us that more torque and more weight means more tire wear, despite your anecdote. There are even studies on this. They also have a greater impact on road wear.
EVs have many advantages over ICEs. I don't understand why people have to lie and say they are worse nowhere.
They were saying "the same" in context of how often you have to replace the tires. Now, EV tires are often a slightly different compound (and more expensive) to deal with the higher weight and torque. I don't know how that plays into the particle emissions from those tires though.
Micro plastics pollution is a relatively new problem and thus many direct and indirect effects are not yet fully understood. Moving emissions from CO2 (gas) to micro particles (solid), means emissions will be deposited more local to roads. Moving emissions from 'big oil' installations to the road, means more local emissions/deposits nearer to your home and backyard.
Additionally, due to the fourth power law [0], you only need 20% weight increase to obtain a 2x road wear. Asphalt/concrete production is also accompanied with substantial emission, although progress is made to reduce it [1].
Is there a break-even for weight vs emission reduction? And if so, is it somewhere between personal and cargo vehicles or is it 'EV always better'?
Are we trading 'well-known and bad for global environment'-emission for 'poorly-understood and possibly very bad for local environment on a global scale'-emission?
Of course, with the available information EVs seem to be the better solution, but it should not prevent us from researching/solving unknown effects or being careful choosing a single solution on such a large scale.
> A 1988 report by the Australian Road Research Board stated that the rule is a good approximation for rutting damage, but an exponent of 2 (rather than 4) is more appropriate to estimate fatigue cracking.
> The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts, since the test results depend on many other factors, such as climatic conditions, in addition to the factors mentioned above.
It's incredible one agency in the '50s did some small limited tests and everyone will parrot it as if it's tablets handed down from God.
"The oil companies! The oil companies!". Yeah, they only lie, nobody needs their products! We all hate it! Buy a car from a good company with honest leadership, like Tesla (made of oil products)!
The real scandal isn’t just battery degradation… it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground.
Battery swapping changes the game entirely. Imagine a national network of exchange stations (co-located with existing petrol infrastructure, you can use the overhead canopy for solar). Standard pack sizes scaled by vehicle class: compact cars get 2 cells, vans get 4, lorries get 8.
Whoever owns these battery packs now has skin in the game for longevity. Their profit depends on keeping packs in service for 20+ years, not selling you a new car.
Suddenly the R&D money flows towards batteries that last, obsolescence now costs them money, and isn’t a happy accident that keeps you hooked on buying more cars.
You’d still have the option to buy your own packs outright if you only ever charge at home, but the network creates the economic pressure for genuine improvement of longevity in battery tech that’s completely missing today.
I’m aware that a company called “Better Place” failed. But they were a startup trying to strong-arm the automotive industry. A nationally coordinated infrastructure concern is different, and the air quality data from this study suggests we can’t afford to keep muddling through - and I really think that peoples concerns about batteries are not misplaced.
Perfect is the enemy of good, but damned if we can’t at least align incentives for better.
Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector!
Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.
Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].
Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).
There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.
The Tesla Model S has been out for almost 13 years, so you can already see it.
Your phone doesn't have liquid cooling temp management and is probably recharged daily. With a car that has 300 miles range, a lot of people probably only do a full cycle every week.
So 7000 to 8000 euros to replace a battery of a 80 to 100k car?
It depends on how many miles it has driven and how much other maintenance the car has had. It's a big expense but a battery dying is probably comparable to a timing belt breaking, those aren't cheap either and thats not even for luxury cars...
13 years old dead luxury cars are worthless, yes, especially when the tech is quickly evolving. That doesn't say anything about how long it takes for them to die or how reliable the tech is.
We had a 2010 Ford Transit van (diesel) and after 189000km, we sold it because the parts were becoming too hard to source (disclaimer: in New Zealand).
You’d be proving me wrong with this fact if the data showed that they’re moving more units because of this marketing.
As it stands the Nissan Leaf is an outlier only in Norway, where it was practically a free car due to subsidies, otherwise their growth is pretty much in line with other EVs.
I was giving the Leaf as an example of a worse warranty offering from 15 years ago sorry. Toyota now have the longer warranty compared to all the others, and even as a fairly poor EV they’re hugely popular with taxi drivers etc.
I’m a bit EV obsessed so spend a lot of time answering questions about them online, the longer warranty is 100% impacting buying choices.
“I’ll sell my car before it becomes an issue” - common statement I’ve heard.
It needs to be fixed, because aside from someone being left with the economic bag of disposing of the vehicle, it is actually an environmental issue to build these batteries.
Just not as bad of an issue as running ICE cars for the same period of time.
People tend not to think more than a certain amount of time away for some reason.
It is a horrible setup that the manufacturers would much rather sell you a new car than a new battery.
We saw this play out with phones. We used to have easily swappable batteries. And since battery chemistry was (and hopefully still is and will continue) improving, by the time you actually swapped the battery there were ones around with a higher capacity than the battery the phone shipped with. And typically for little money.
Now everything is glued and messy to swap so the manufacturer can sell you a battery swap for much much more money than it used to cost.
I believe cars should have swappable somewhat standardized batteries. Even if not swappable by the user, it should not be a more than 1h job at the mechanic (ANY mechanic, not just the manufacturer).
Imagine picking a car and not caring about battery at all. You want a Tesla but BYD batteries are better - so get a Tesla without a Battery and put a BYD one it it. Or maybe Tesla has the best batteries right now, so you get that. And once you have to swap the battery, you again just pick the best manufacturer at the time - who might not even be a car manufacturer at all but rather someone specialized in batteries exclusively.
And since hopefully 10 years have passed since you bought the last battery, chemistry has improved so you pick from options that are all (hopefully a lot) better than the battery you had initially.
We could have some proper competition where manufacturers would have to compete on pricing and performance.
But car manufacturers don't care. They want as much of your money as they can get. And opening their cars to third party batteries and not keeping up as many walls as they can is the opposite of that.
So until forced by regulation every manufacturer will continue to put batteries in their cars that only they themselves will sell and put a slightly different one in every car. So guess what, even if you swap your battery in 10 years, they will sell you the same battery you can buy right now. Because the newer stuff is for new cars only and compatible with your car.
Battery degradation is largely overhyped and there is growing real world data to illustrate that in practice it's not a dealbreaker. Million mile batteries now exist.
Show me a million mile gas/diesel engine.
Also let's not forget that Toyota has a well funded corporate program rewarding employees to spread anti-EV propaganda.
Anecdata, my i3 range was not perceptibly reduced after ~8 years, 82k miles. But the pack was thermally managed, and from what I understand, also didn’t allow you to go to true 0 or true 100 SOC.
Tesla lets you use it all, which gets bigger range numbers (for a time) but at the cost of degradation, if you use it.
So you don't think the free market will force manufactures to compete on better batteries? I always thought the benefit of the free market was that it forced companies to compete on product quality... /s
To be honest with you, the free market does work when incentives are aligned.
If you get maximum profit from the maximum social good, people will do that (or find a way to cheat); but as it stands, theres money to be made in not doing this and the consumer won’t care too much if its 9 years or 10 years that their car lasts, so its not hurting sales to not fix this (even if fixed perfectly, it would take 10 years to prove after all!).
I think I’m dreaming, the investment would have to be enormous, who wants to hold stock of so many batteries? Who will convince manufacturers to integrate standardised batter packs instead of the more profitable “built-in phone style” that is used today, and the automotive marketing machine is really strong and will (correctly) lean on the idea that by having the battery replaceable would require less rigid car bodies, so their current incentive would be to fight this initiative and they would probably lead with the safety angle.
The anti-EV propaganda already works pretty well with the very little it has to work with (farming batteries is harmful), so, imagine what they could do with something of actual substance.
i moved to beijing in 2015.. and i have to buy a air purifier, prepare masks for winter. pepople talks about air polutions so much, it feels like we are struggle, not living a life. i remember one day, it was so bad, i have to wear gas mask to go outisde, i know it's rare, and people are staring, but yes, its that hard.
it's 2026 now, you barely see bad days in Beijing, most people wear mask only for the flu, not for the air pollutions. basically its only a few days in winter. and just wait for the wind, it all goes away.
shutdown factory and move them to other places sure helps, but nobody will deny that adopt ev contributes a lot. i remeber the sales data for 2024 is nearly 45%+ of new cars are EV, and 2025 is 51.8%. i'm sure the number will go up and reach nearly 100%.
Both ICE and EV cars require a support infrastructure. As sales trends change, so the emphasis on support infrastructure changes, and that accelerates the trend.
For example EVs depend on charging, so we're seeing more public charge points, as well as more home chargers, work chargers and so on.
ICE depends on gas stations (which is the tip of the gasoline distribution industry.) It also depends on ICE mechanics. As demand for those services drop off, so they'll become harder to find. (To be clear, that's not happening soon, there are a LOT of ICE cars out there...)
But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
> But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
I'm guessing it will be already in 20-30 years from now. In 5-10 years from now, no-one will buy an ICE vehicle. Add to those 10 years a lifetime of 10-20 years for the last sold ICE vehicle and you get 20-30 years. So 20-30 years from today there will not be many ICE cars rolling on the streets and most gas stations and other needed infrastructure will be gone as it is not economical to stay in business.
The average car is 12 years old (us, but other countries are similar). so gas stations are likely still common in 20 years. in 10 years new gas stations will be built a lot less often, but nobody will close an existing one that they wouldn't close anyway.
If GP's prediction that no one is buying ICE cars 5-10 years from now, and the average car is 12 years old, by 20 years from now we're down to less than half the current ICE fleet by natural replacement.
But the replacement isn't random. Rather people who drive the most all already replaced their vehicles to minimize costs. Gas stations would, under just natural replacement, be down well below 50% of their former sales.
And that makes it worse. Gas is less conveniently available, and more expensive. Replacement isn't just targeted towards people who drive a lot, but it's well above replacement.
I'd be surprised if there was 10 years between the last mass marketed gas cars being sold and the entire mass market fleet of cars no longer using gas. The infrastructure becomes unprofitable and ceases to exist in a negative feedback loop.
Excetpt there will be a long tail of stations that wouldn't instal pumps today - but since they already have them they will keep selling gas so long as everything passes inspections.
I mentionedf a lifetime of 10-20 years for a car. So 20 lifetime and 10 years from now is when the last ICE car is sold that makes 30 years from now there will be basically no ICE cars circulating.
I think a lot of the smaller gas stations will slowly die off and we'll see continued growth of those kinds of fuel stations known for their food adopt EV charging as well and grow to offer food + energy whether that be gas or electric.
Buc-ees these days has tons of rows of EV charging, often both Tesla and Mercedes brands. I imagine we'll see a similar thing with other brands.
It varies. As one station dies that temborarly strengthens the others on the same corner. Ev charging on highways will remain big business, but small rural town that support a few gas stations will support no ev charger because everyone charges at home.
I do largely agree with this. Those small and more remote rural towns are also likely some of the last places to highly electrify due to the particular needs of those kinds of lifestyles. You're far more likely to be towing a horse trailer if you live in such a place, which is something EVs will probably struggle with for a long while.
farmers already own their own gas station on the farm. They have on road diesel forethe trucks, off road diesel for the tractors (no road tax, otherwise the same - DOTs check this so nobody cheat), and gasoline for cars that never go to town (also for lawn mowers). Of course distance from town matters, if you live near town you won't have your own, but the farther town is the more useful your own personal supply is.
In the US, money talks. I believe EV cars will be much cheaper to produce than ICE cars in 10 years from now. They will also have lower maintenance costs, better performance and lower energy costs. So there will be no reason to buy an ICE car over an EV in 10 years from now.
And the air conditions in Chengdu and Chongqing are getting worse with the recent smog making the headlines, despite also one of the highest EV adoption rates in western China.
Being able to mandate factory shutdown surely helps for Beijing, but is unfortunately not the case in other chinese cities
Factories were one source, but in-home coal furnaces were a gigantic pollutant source in aggregate. I read articles about villagers banned from this who couldn't afford cleaner heat sources. Is that still the case?
Yes. This issue was exposed by netizens on social media and has been widely reported by numerous media. The local government has now lowered natural gas prices and increased subsidies. but i think the cost is still likely higher than burning coal. Hopefully they will continue to improve this situation.
That’s true. I remember during start of Covid lockdown we had a curfew for a few weeks yet the pollution was at 250-300. Mostly because of home heating.
It’s well known at this point, it’s always polluted in the winter yet summers are “fine”.
I want the future to focus more on the brakes and tire dust, and the increase in cancers and other problems by people who live near busy roads or highways experience. Nobody studies this, and combustion or battery, everyone is affected by it. Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.
It gets studied. EVs are often heavier, which is worse for tire wear, but use regenerative braking, which is better for brake dust.
Overall, EVs are likely a net win on the combination of these two things, and a big win on exhaust emissions, but it would be nice if we could shift to lighter and smaller vehicles and increase the mix of non-cars such as e-bikes and mass transit.
This will be met with consternation, not appreciation. The people who comment about brake dust in EV topics are the people who complain about birds when talking about windmills.
We know it is disingenuous because no one cares about this when discussing overweight trucks and SUVs. Good news about a reduction in pollution from EVs? Can't have that. It's like the "At what price" meme around headlines about China.
Going forward, I will downvote any comment about "brake pollution" and "tire pollution" that does not begin with - specifically - "This is a bigger issue for large, gas-powered trucks and SUVs", and invite you all to do so to. The association of these shitty comments with EV topics is as organic as lighter fluid.
The theory is that they're heavier so more brake dust ... but that is offset to a degree by regen braking (which hybrids have too). It's a silly argument though. Brake dust is definitely bad but the idea of keeping ICE cars to minimize brake dust doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Please don't downvote comments because you don't agree with the argument. Downvotes should be for comments that add little to the discussion.
I agree that discussing weight with regard to EVs, without acknowledging that (in the US) the fashion is for big heavy ICE cars is just as polluting is disingenuous.
That said, outside the US the trend is for smaller cars, and equally the weight of a small EV is not hugely dissimilar to a common ICE car.
Frankly I'm not sure there's a whole lot to say about tire dust- cars need tires. EVs generate less brake dust. If there's a tire dust discussion to be had, then that discussion is independent of the vehicle fuel source.
And wouldn't you say that when a comment is made in bad faith, or misrepresents (deliberately or not) a major component of its argument, that it adds little to the discussion?
It's all well and good to have high-minded ideals of pure intellectual discussion, but in the real world, there are many people who are coming into the comments with a strong political agenda in mind, and are both willing and able to make disingenuous and bad-faith comments to support that agenda.
Presenting the increased tire dust of heavier vehicles as being an exclusive property of EVs—a bright-line differentiator between them and ICE cars—is disingenuous and misrepresents the facts. I think it's reasonable to say that makes it "add little to the discussion".
I understand that it can feel like you're having to make the same point over and over (I certainly feel like that sometimes) but personally I'm more inclined to give the person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to good faith.
Out in the world there are common misconceptions which are propagated by vested interests and believed by many at first glance.
Having the opportunity to see those arguments, and rebuff them , (over and over again) is key to balancing the public discourse.
I agree, some argue in bad faith, that's going to be true in some cases. But I think most times it's honest misconceptions.
As a personal policy, that can work: you can always choose which conversations to engage in and which to ignore.
As a site policy, it cannot. If you demand that everyone coming there in good faith treat everyone else as also operating in good faith, even when they open with arguments that are very common when sealioning people, you are telling every troll, every bad actor, everyone paid by a massive corporation or a foreign government to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about particular political or economic positions that this site is ripe for their use.
I've seen far too many people even on here "just asking questions", or using the Gish Gallop, or other techniques of bad faith debate, to believe that it can possibly be a good idea to treat everyone as if they are good-faith rational actors seeking open debate for the sake of finding the truth.
If you're still not convinced, do some research on Brandolini's Law [0], also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It really does take massively more effort to refute bullshit with truth than it does to spin bullshit everywhere.
Plug-in hybrids are a wonderful middle point on the Pareto frontier.
Wikipedia lists the 3rd-gen Prius Prime at roughly 3,500 pounds curb weight, and the Tesla Model Y at 4,100-4,600 pounds, I assume depending on the battery it's equipped with.
The Prius Prime has 40+ miles of all-electric range, and it can reach highway speeds with the gas engine off. So your day-to-day driving is all electric, then you still have an engine for harsh winter days, power outages, and you have 600 miles EPA range on gas for sudden road trips.
People are really sleeping on hybrids. Even a used non-plug-in Prius will get 50 city and 50 highway MPG. No gas sedan can do that.
PHEVs are a very interim solution. There are some advantages while range anxiety is an issue.
Yes, EVs have a weight penalty of ~250-500kg of battery currently.
Battery technology is rapidly advancing, when Na-ion batteries are introduced more widely, the whole range anxiety issue will become moot, because a recharge will take as long as refueling an ICE vehicle.
The weight difference will also start to reduce, both due to newer batteries, but also moving to lighter weight construction and increased use of alternatives to steel.
Arguing for ICE technology in 2025 is like Blackberry/Nokia users complaining about the loss of keyboards & T9 texting.
I looked into PHEVs on my last vehicle shopping go-round, since few pure EVs met my cargo size requirements (stroller/baby life is a whole thing).
Ultimately, it was way more worth it to go all the way up to an F150 Lightning than to go with a good PHEV, partly due to up-front cost, but mostly due to ongoing cost: I will need to change the oil on the electric motors maybe every 150,000miles, and I never need an emissions test again. PHEVs require keeping the gas engine up, and getting it emissions-tested.
A whole category of cost just straight-up disappeared, for cheaper than I could get a RAV4 Prime too.
That literally makes no sense. There’s a point on the accelerator pedal curve where you are coasting (between it applying power or applying regen), you get used to staying around that position pretty quickly because you stop short of where you are aiming to stop otherwise. You basically only back off past that point and into regen when you would be braking in an ICE car, so there is really no difference.
You don't stay at the zero point. It's an impossibly small target. This is not news to anyone who drives an EV and keeps an eye on the readout showing current power usage/regen.
I don't think it's impossibly small. Maybe it depends on your software - you don't need to have a completely linear response across the full range of the pedal.
Braking from regen or braking from a brake pad has the same net impact on tire wear. EVs can coast too and don’t apply full regen the moment you apply brakes. Some even have brake coach alerts to get you to gradually apply the brakes to maximize energy return.
EVs could coast if a manufacturer chose to make one that allowed that without shifting into neutral. In practice, when letting off the accelerator, existing EVs will instead regen brake.
The default setting just moves the coast point to a slightly depressed accelerator. This is because EVs typically have lower drag, so this behavior mimics a higher drag vehicle. If you use the accelerator to achieve the desired speed, you will coast when possible. You can also monitor the display to see the coast point. My 2013 plug in hybrid only supports this style of operation.
Modern EVs have easy adjustment for this. The Hyundai/Kia EVs for example have shift style paddles for adjusting this on the fly which includes a mode for regen only when depressing the break pedal.
The Hyundai/Kia EVs do not have a mode that only regens when pressing the brake. The best you can do is limit the car to 2kW of regen braking when not touching the accelerator. You can't disable it entirely.
It's true though that using this mode will extend the life of your tires.
It hovers depending on how my foot modulates the speed. I don't want or need "exactly zero power readout", I only need to reach my target speed at my target spot on the highway, without having to action the physical brakes at any time.
Whether that is more or less efficient than a zero-power coast followed by some kind of braking exactly at the end... I assume the difference is so tiny that it makes no difference.
The difference is tiny from an energy efficiency perspective. But we're discussing tire wear, and the periodic regen followed by power that a human foot gives because it can't perfectly match the car's PID loop, wears the tires a bit each time. Which adds up over ten thousand miles.
Indeed it adds up, over ten thousand kilometers, to a lot less wear than the equivalent coast-then-hit-the-brakes in an ICE. If I follow your reasoning correctly.
The tires and their dust don't care whether you're braking by regen or friction. The reason there's more dust is from the increased weight of the EV not because of regen braking. You can coast in EV as well, that is not exclusive to ICE.
> The tires and their dust don't care whether you're braking by regen or friction.
I'm aware. The point I'm making is that EVs apply more braking than ICE vehicles do, due to the specifics of the implementation of regen braking that all manufacturers have chosen.
> You can coast in EV as well
Not without literally putting it in neutral. If you just take your foot off the accelerator, any modern EV will apply some amount of regenerative braking. It's not really possible to hold the accelerator pedal at the exact position where you are not applying motor power but also have 0kW of regen braking, certainly for any extended period of time.
If your point is that someone could make an EV to which regen braking contributes no more to tire wear than an ICE vehicle, you're correct. Unfortunately, no such EVs are currently manufactured. Even the ones that allow you to "turn off" regen braking will generally apply 1-2kW of regen if your foot is off the accelerator.
> I'm aware. The point I'm making is that EVs apply more braking than ICE vehicles do, due to the specifics of the implementation of regen braking that all manufacturers have chosen
Hyundai and Kia EVs have a 5 level setting for what happens when you lift up on the accelerator, either partially or fully.
At level 0 the regeneration is so low that I don't notice a difference between that and being in neutral. It slows down way less than an ICE does when not in neutral.
> If you just take your foot off the accelerator, any modern EV will apply some amount of regenerative braking. It's not really possible to hold the accelerator pedal at the exact position where you are not applying motor power but also have 0kW of regen braking, certainly for any extended period of time.
Tire wear is not a linear function of acceleration. Is there any reason to believe that variations from not being able to hold your foot perfectly steady, assuming you aren't have spasms, will be big enough and/or last long enough to make a non-trivial difference?
The amount of braking force needed to take a car of X weight from Y miles per hour to zero in a given amount of time is the same whether by friction brakes or regen brakes.
You can reduce the total braking force needed by extending the time, in which case aerodynamic forces and rolling resistance will contribute some more to the reduction in speed.
In an EV with one-pedal driving you can still stop quickly or slowly. In an ICE car you can stop slowly with more coasting or quickly with more braking force.
I don't see how the drivetrain is going to make a difference to the amount of braking needed to stop and thus force exerted on the tire. The added weight of most EVs would be the larger factor.
But ICE vehicles can be in engine breaking mode. You pretty much never "coast" (e.g. put the vehicle in neutral or hold the clutch in). I get what you're saying but it feels like it's way in the margin if an effect at all. Do you have some reference? People keep talking about tire wear but my model 3 tires (which are relatively high performance soft tires) aren't wearing any faster than the wear I used to get on my Subaru before. I just don't drive aggressively. Flooring the accelerator must be the big difference. I don't think the weight difference is that large, certainly compared to trucks.
The amount of engine braking applied by an automatic transmission ICE vehicle when you take your foot off the gas is an order of magnitude less than the regen braking applied when you take your foot off the accelerator on your Model 3.
First off, my Renault Megane e-Tech has paddles that allow me to change the regen strength on the fly. I use it actively when driving.
But anyway, I find I drive differently with an EV. I don't let off the throttle unless I want to slow down. If I want to coast, I just reduce my throttle input to where its coasting.
I'll have to double-check, but as I recall it the lowest setting in Sports mode was off. But maybe just very, very low.
In any case, what's the problem with having it very, very low vs off? Like, what do you really need coasting for? Not something I've felt I've been missing.
Adaptive cruise control lets you set a speed, usually the speed limit, and then you just have to steer.
In a gas car that means the car is using the brakes and gas engine (obviously) but it’s a jarring experience compared to a BEV or hybrid. The regenerative braking and smooth acceleration are much more pleasant.
I tend to agree with your overall point, but if we're talking about a 1-2 kW of "standby" regen, surely the rolling resistance of any kind of vehicle is in the same ballpark anyway (source: it takes multiple people to push a broken down car).
The bearings and whatnot that cause rolling resistance on an ordinary car also exist in EVs; this is 1-2kW on top of that, when the car is in Drive. Furthermore, it's common to use one pedal driving- it's generally much more than 1-2kW.
The responses tend to be either "actually regen braking wears tires just as much as using brake rotors" by people who didn't actually read, or "surely manufacturers wouldn't do that, it doesn't match the mental model in my head" by people who've never paid close attention to the power readouts while driving an EV.
Your own response was "actually one manufacturer does have a setting that will avoid the effect if someone sets it, therefore the whole concept must be wrong".
Yes current EVs are heavy. It's not at all clear that this will prevail as solid state batteries evolve to become standard. It is highly possible that EVs will soon be lighter than comparable ICE vehicles [1]
No no no. Sure, there might be a future where solid state batteries become the standard for electric vehicles, but you cannot link to Donut Lab's announcement from this month. There is no credible evidence they've achieved the holy grail of batteries so far until they actually deliver these motorcycles in hand and people independently verify them.
Time will tell on their battery, especially if the bike they're putting it on delivers. I think the overall point could be that there's active R&D in trying to find geopolitically sustainable materials, and lowering the weight of materials used.
We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for. The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that even small increases in axle load can cause exponentially greater damage to the road.
A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.
The solution is to tax trucks 31,000 times more than cars. Improve walking/biking/trains/public transportation. Private cars should be a luxury which is made a necessity with zoning laws.
That 4th power law works both ways. A 40 ft bus 2 axle bus with 80 passengers will weigh about 40 000 pounds. The axle weight is 20 000, so by the 4th power law the damage is proportional to 2 x 20 000^4 = 3.2 x 10^17.
If instead those 80 passengers each drove alone in a Kia Niro EV it would be about 4 000 pounds each, so an axle weight of 2000, so the damage would be proportional to 160 x 2000^4 = 2.56 x 10^15.
That's 125 times less road damage than the bus!
Another interesting 4th power calculation is EV vs ICE. My car is available as an ICE, a hybrid, or an EV. I've got the EV which weighs more than the ICE.
Based on the 4th power law I should be doing about 40% more damage than I would if I had bought the lighter ICE model.
But wait! With the ICE model I'd need to regularly by gasoline, and that gasoline is delivered by a tanker truck. Tanker trucks, especially when they are traveling between wherever they load and wherever they unload, are very heavy.
I calculated what would happen in a hypothetical city where everyone drove the ICE version and then all switched to the EV version, and how many tanker truck gas deliveries that would eliminate. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was something like if mid sized tankers were used for gas delivery then if they had to drive more than a few miles from wherever they loaded up to wherever they unloaded the elimination of those trips by everyone switching to EV would reduce road damage by more than the damage caused by the EVs being heavier than the ICE cars.
Thank you for doing the calculations. This is interesting and useful. Yes, people should switch to EVs, but mostly because it helps build resilient independent grids (eventually), EVs add a layer of energy storage, we can dump excess energy when its negatively priced (or free) and supply power back to the grid when its costly, replacing peaker plants.
I wasn't talking about passenger buses, because thats unlikely going to happen in US. Almost all of damage is done by 18-wheelers. A fully loaded 18-wheeler: 80,000 lb. Everytime a discussion comes on ICE vs EV, the fossil fuel proponents immediately jump to but EVs weigh more (debatable) and cause more damage. The damage they cause is insignificant compared to 18-wheelers. I'm not entirely sure if EVs weigh more either, maybe the earlier models did, but energy density keeps increasing. Also, there is no compelling reason to have 300+ mile range batteries when most of the trips are under 3 - 5 miles.
> A 40 ft bus 2 axle bus with 80 passengers [...] If instead those 80 passengers each drove alone in a Kia Niro EV
Bzzzt. Wrong, unless you literally have a bus that goes from A to B without stopping. City buses do not carry "x passengers", they serve trips. An 80-passenger bus serves way more trips than 80 (though not on average of course), as people can freely get on and off at any time.
And of course, there are way more aspects of this problem than just road wear, parking space for one.
But sure, we absolutely should put buses on rail tracks!
I want the future to focus on things that actually solve the massive problems that come from mass use of automobiles: I want bike paths and trains. Yes, so boring compared to EVs I know! And so cheap! And no catchy names like "gigafactory" for making cities bikable, or turning parking lots into children's playgrounds.
Very true, to the point that I am considering asking the city council to forbid ICE in a 1-km radius around places where children regularly use the sidewalks.
Even if the idea doesn't outright gain traction, enough insistence will shift the overton window.
I’m reading your comment more sardonically about the state of US manufacturers, but globally I don’t think this holds up. Some of the most expensive vehicles—trucks and SUVs—have the worst mileage. Often the cheaper a new car is, the better gas mileage it gets.
This dynamic might not hold as consistently with used cars but it’s not entirely eliminated, either.
I know I will be damned for this comment but nevertheless even EVs produce pollution with regard to tire abrasion. Tire abrasion itself is the main contributor to microplastics
This study is about air quality in neighborhoods. So it would show the same thing even if EVs just moved pollution from where people use their cars to where power plants get placed, because that's not the question it's addressing.
Even if the pollution is identical, moving it from where everyone lives and works over to more isolated areas where power plants are would still be a big benefit.
We know EVs are cleaner than that. And when the pollution is centralized in one power plant it’s also more economically feasible to apply filtration or particle capture isn’t it?
Even if all the electricity for EVs came from a centralized coal plant (it doesn't) it would be better than using combustion in individual vehicles. Centralized pollution in one area is better than attempting to mitigate diffuse pollution everywhere.
One other decent argument I heard in favor of EVs is that they’re agnostic to where that power is generated. So once that coal plant is replaced with natural gas, solar, wind, or whatever, all the EVs in that area will instantly become cleaner without everyone having to buy a new car after the changes is made.
This is highly dependent on your country's approach to power generation.
Nitrogen pollution is usually reasonably local to the plant but also can be srubbed. Its not practical to scrub moving objects, but it is for stationary generators.
Same with particulates, you can capture quite a lot with electrostatic scrubbers.
AIUI there are still disagreements about how to calculate that exactly. This study doesn't (and doesn't try to) provide any input towards settling that.
There are no reputable studies that show EVs having anything like the harms of legacy cars. The worst you can get is that if you're on a carbon-intensive grid, a Hummer EV might be as bad as a compact gas car.
I've developed a habit of holding my breath for a few seconds whenever a particularly smelly/polluting car drives by me while I'm walking on the street, so when I hear/see an EV approaching I often feel relieved. I'm lucky to live in a city with comparatively clean air, but I hope a time comes when we treat car exhaust gases the same way as we treat second hand tobacco smoke because in both cases pollutants are literally being absorbed into our bodies.
You can already tell how much of a difference it makes in a city. Visiting Boracay after visiting other philipin island is heaven. I heard some Chinese cities are basically just EV, I can’t imagine how much nicer it could be to walk through New York without all that noise pollution
Does the study account for things like coal-fired power plants in Delta, Utah being operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? This makes for less pollution at the site of the vehicle, and more pollution two giant western states away.
No, it's based on measurements in California where in-state coal is negligible (something like .1% of our total electricity). A power plan in Utah would only show up if the pollutants wafted their way across state lines
Yes, studies account for worst case coal power production. The pollution controls at a power plant are significantly more effective than the on-vehicle pollution controls for a gasoline engine.
Having spent a significant amount of time in Bangkok - the city center (and many urban hubs) is an amazing walkable place with pedestrian walkways suspended above major roads, lots of frequent public transit (metro, skytrain) that honestly makes my home city of Sydney feel like a developing country.
The only downside is that traffic creates a lot of pollution, and the engine noise (not honking, there's very little of that) is so bad that you need to yell to a person standing next to you to have a conversation.
As a visitor, I can't claim to know how to fix the problems facing locals, however I can't help but feel that urban centers would be 1000x better with mass adoption of EVs (bikes, cars). I have seen a spike in the number of Chinese EVs across the city - however I'm aware that economic pressures prevent mass adoption by the majority of the road-users
To me, Bangkok feels very much like a developing country.
If you go to Chinese cities, the EV adoption has incredible positive effects to the vibe, though. Shanghai’s French concession is so quiet and peaceful now that most cars are EVs.
Try walking around Newtown in Sydney haha. "Charming" multi-million dollar "victorian-style" shanties with public transit that are a 30 minute walk away and break down every few days.
I think tier 1 Chinese cities are in a league of their own though. It's a shame it's so difficult to stay there for a prolonged period of time as a foreigner.
Thailand strikes a good balance of accessibility and development - that said I certainly agree that there are noticeable signs of it being a developing country. Still better than Sydney on balance though.
Western countries will never match the new East Asian cities. All cities decay as the residents begin to oppose change. All residents begin to oppose change as they age and become wealthier. So whatever you become before the population gets rich is what you will remain.
There will be no new fast subway in San Francisco and there will be no maglev in NYC. There will be no autonomous buses in Sydney and London will be entirely devoid of skyways.
This is the nature of growth. One grows then dies as one fossilizes. The next one grows past but no one will ever reinvent themselves.
That doesn't make much sense to me. HK added transit long after it was a big city. Tokyo added transit. Heck, all the cities of Europe started long before transit became a thing and then added it later.
I agree it seems hard in NYC, SF, etc but other cities have added transit
Developing in Hong Kong has been much harder and expensive than before. The high speed rail that connected Hong Kong to the mainland system was (IIRC) the most expensive rail project per kilometer. (They did it anyway since it was a national objective from the central authorities.) And, given the recent tragic fire in Tai Po, there has been a lot more worry about people not being able to afford to renew aging infrastructure (as in residential buildings).
Not advocating for autocracies, there's something to be said about the relationship between building essential infrastructure and the ability to ignore NIMBYs.
Bangkok just built a new metro line and are currently developing a high speed train from Malaysia to Vietnam, which would eventually lead to a train from Singapore to China.
Australia can't even build a functioning train to the outer city suburbs, let alone between major cities
Something that needs to be pointed out, especially for those who want to push back against findings like this and essentially defend ICE vehicles:
Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
The downsides of gasoline cars are actually pretty crazy: complicated engines and transmissions with heavy maintenance schedules, emissions, more NVH, worse interior space and packaging, need to wait for HVAC rather than it being ready ahead of time, need to go to a special gas station to add fuel, worse/slower performance.
You would have this laundry list of downsides and your only potential plus sides are faster fueling on road trips over 4 hours long, lower curb weight, and lower cost.
And those three minor down sides are very likely to be resolved sometime within the next 10-20 years.
[1] Not talking about Baker Electric type of stuff that was quickly surpassed by internal combustion of its day
Kind of funny anecdote, as a bit of a car enthusiast.
I drive a Polestar 2, and someone asked if it was my favorite car I've owned. And I said, no that's a Mazda 3 hatchback... 6-speed manual. Lovely vehicle to drive. Economical, but luxurious for the price. Very practical, too.
But... if you asked me if I'd go from the Polestar 2 back to the Mazda 3? I'd say no. I'll keep the electric. Of course it's not a fair comparison... one had an MSRP of $27k and the other $67k. One has 186HP and the other 476HP (and all-wheel drive).
One had a lot of routine maintenance of the engine, while the other has needed wiper blades and tires. And one requires standing outside in 10° F days like today pumping gas, while the other one is charging in my garage (and warms up the cabin from the press of a button on my phone.)
The Mazda 3 was more of a driver's car, and if I had bought either new, it would be a very different equation. (I bought the 3 w/ 8K miles on it for $20k; I bought the Polestar w/ 20K miles on it for $29K.) The Mazda 3 has a vastly better interface - better auto-dimming headlights, tons of buttons for climate, stereo, etc.
But the Polestar 2 is the one I would rather be driving... for now. (I just hope more "driver's car" electric options come to our shores.)
In the 1920s, a lot of auto startups had a unique idea. Then they got crushed by Henry Ford's and GM's production lines. And then the depression.
The Model T was a farm car. 50% of the population lived in rural areas, and they didn't have electricity. There was a market for an urban electric short-range car, it just didn't hit the economy of scale at the right time. But not because it was a bad idea.
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
I travel monthly through rural parts of the US where EVs really don't make sense. I get the most people on HN live in suburbs/cities, but there's a lot of stuff that happens in the rural parts of the country that absolutely demands ICE vehicles. Yes the population of people out there is much smaller, but if you've ever spent serious times in these parts of the country you'd realize petroleum runs everything.
Even in a world where electric vehicles came first this would still be the case.
80% of Americans live in urban areas and that number is rising, so I think in this scenario where EVs came first we’d see maybe 20% of vehicle sales being ICE vehicles.
But today we’ve got basically the opposite.
I would disagree with the idea that petroleum would run everything out there if EVs came first but I won’t argue that point super hard with you. I can see and understand how petroleum is a lifeline for things like oil heat, generators, etc.
Still, batteries are very well-suited to off-grid usage, and EV batteries can even power your house for a week or more in the event of a power outage. Let’s not forget that solar panels exist.
There are entire islands that have switched from imported diesel fuel power generation to grid scale solar+battery and they have had a great deal of cost savings and reliability benefits.
I'd call the that country that adopted EV's first and gasoline second... extinct after WW2. If nothing because the country wouldn't be able to launch an airforce to counter the bombers hitting your power plants. If not that then there's the constant contention of having to pull power lines forward and leaving them vulnerable to artillery fire while the petrol tank hit and run with impunity.
Plus now you have problems moving tonnes of food, water, ammunition on BEV vehicles that no longer have reliable charging access. Being unable to supply your military is more or less a death knell for any fighting force.
Even setting aviation aside, a lot of the reason why gas engines were adopted was because agriculture was among the first to do so, they were less finicky then ox and horses. Rural areas didn't have access to electricity like cities did at the time though; It was a lot easier to have a tin of whatever liquid fuel (gasoline was a byproduct of kerosone production at the time).
I didn’t say EVs would be used for military vehicles. It’s more like a scenario where 80% are buying EVs and 20% are buying ICE.
Again the hypothetical was modern EVs with modern infrastructure.
And this hypothetical isn’t that crazy. Many Chinese car buyers’ first vehicles are electric, and many of those people buying cars are quite used to electric scooters as their transportation method.
Speaking of wars, how many wars for oil would be avoided if there wasn’t a widespread dependency on cheap oil? If the gas price ever goes above $5-7/gallon in America it basically triggers a recession.
>Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
.... you worded that extremely poorly. Being first to market is completely different then someone's personal first experience. Between that first sentence and the follow post, it's like reading the question what if the smartphone came out before the electric telegraph.
If you're trying to say like a future time when we've got fast chargers everwhere with no need for an app, and at home charging is common which makes BEV's 80% of the market? Sure that makes sense. Probably it's going reality by 2040 or so.
But for me right now, as is, I'd probably still sticking to ICE, or MHEV engines for a while. No easy access to home charging, and I don't have data on my phone which makes fast charging way more complicated. And I don't drive enough KM in a year to make break even point in costs reasonable.
And I've test driven BEVs and I could afford to buy a BEV. The advantages don't outweigh the drawbacks in my situation at least, and there wasn't enough there for me to want to just put objectivity aside.
Per your third paragraph, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If BEVs of modern capability were either first to market and/or the first car-buying experience, those network effects and preconceptions/biases wouldn’t be a big buying hurdle like they are today.
I did mention the three major drawbacks: fueling time on long trips, extra curb weight, and cost. But I also mentioned that even in the non-hypothetical status quo, these issues are almost certainly going to be solved soon (let’s say by 2040 like you picked out). In a world where BEVs came first, these issues would likely already be solved. Automakers weren’t really investing any development money before the 1990s, so our current BEVs are like owning a gasoline car from the 1950s in terms of time spent in the development oven. Now you have every battery technology company on the planet in an arms race to deliver the next big thing for automotive applications.
Remember that gas stations weren’t on very corner when the gasoline car was invented, either.
Don’t read what I said as some kind of exact computer science logical language-qualified statement where I must say the exact correct parameters, you understand my general point.
I also think your use of your personal anecdote isn’t a very convincing argument by itself. BEVs aren’t right for you as of today, in a world which isn’t a part of this hypothetical. You also pointed out that you are a minority outlier by having odd requirements like “I don’t have data on my smartphone.” Do you think that’s common? I think most people even un in developing countries have smartphone data access. Isn’t this argument kind of like saying gasoline pumps need to take cash to become popular? Of course they took cash in 1990 since most of their users still primarily used cash. In today’s status quo, most EV owers are the kind of person to own a smartphone. (And of course, this is already a non-issue for Tesla owners, and increasingly a non-issue for other manufacturers who are adding the ability to “just plug in” to major charging networks, something that would obviously not be an issue if BEVs came first)
The USA should be an ideal EV market but there are consumer perceptions that are barriers.
Over half of homes in US housing stock are single family houses with implicit access to charging. Daily commutes are around 40 miles. I argue that we should logically see ~50% of new vehicles being EVs but we are way below that number and I put that on customer familiarities and preconceptions.
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
Anyone who likes the sensations of driving and not just going fast in a straight line. When you show me the equivalent of an EV Lotus Elise, I'll be properly swayed.
What percentage of the car buying market buys enthusiast vehicles? The top of the charts is made up of cars like the RAV4, Model Y, and CR-V. These all represent versatile practical family transportation.
Enthusiast vehicles are disappearing in the middle class segment of the market. Where are the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Toyota Celica, Toyota MR2, Chevrolet Camaro, Z4/Supra getting discontinued, Focus RS, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, the list goes on? The Nissan Z was just updated but sales have been abysmal. The only survivors seem to be the Mustang and the MX-5, and Dodge is busy screwing up the Challenger’s replacement Charger model.
Super expensive cars like the Lotus Elise are irrelevant to the broader market.
Look at the (p)reviews of the upcoming Porsche Cayenne EV. It’s the best Cayenne ever made. I think the Porsche Taycan and the Lucid Air Sapphire are fun to drive, competent performance vehicles. Even the Ioniq 5 N is a great time.
I love EVs, ever since I test drove an BMW i3 in 2012. Quiet with high drag - of course this is the future.
BUT I don't think switching to EVs will help reduce CO2 in any way - not even if all the EVs are charged using 100% solar/wind. The narrative usually is "I get an EV instead of an ICE, charge it with regenerative energy and have 0 emissions, thus not burning oil and saving on CO2".
But that is not how a globalized world with free markets works. In order to save on CO2, we would need to keep that oil not burned by the EV underground, but that does not take place. The market reality is that oil price will just drop with less demand from ICE vehicles. But with falling prices, other business models that require refined oil will become viable and the oil is still burned - just somewhere else. No one so far has made a good argument why the Saudis or Russians would leave their ressources underground, just because demand from ICE vehicles drop.
What you're missing here is that oil production and processing has huge fixed costs. Producers can't just pump out infinite oil at zero cost. The economies of scale break down and fuels become more expensive as demand drops.
Cars do zero Carbon capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS). The potential is there to emit negligible CO2 when it's only energy-intensive large industry doing the fuel burning.
Having said that, the path being taken in some countries to remove ICE is simply pushing large swathes of the population out of the car market. I don't support that, although I'm sure there are many people who do.
> Reduced demand for oil reduces the quantity of oil extracted
That is not true. Reduced price leads to higher demand. This is economics 101.
> The price drops and hardware to extract oil stops being produced
Oil extraction costs differ vastly amongst countries, and there is a lot of potential for increased productivity and efficencies when the margins become lower - price pressure is a driver for innovation. And countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have a very high incentive to keep extracting oil and sell it, because their economy relies on it.
Because there, you might have learned that the basic economic principles you describe as "economics 101" are the equivalent of the "spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum"-type examples you get in introductory physics classes.
In the real world, demand is affected by all kinds of things, and sometimes, a product or service is just no longer desired by the population. Do you think that if you were selling buggy whips for $0.05 each, you'd be able to make a profit on them today? Of course not, because people don't need them. You'd barely sell any, and those purely as a novelty.
While there's still a lot of work to do to make it fully possible, and certain political groups are actively working against it, the world at large recognizes that getting off of fossil fuels is an important goal. Demand for oil is going to continue to drop—maybe not monotonically, but overall—regardless of what the price of oil does.
Your entire point hinges on EVs idrying up the oil market that there is no more demand. But ICEs don't run on oil, they run on gas or diesel. Oil is used in far more industries (aviation, ships). Plus, you cannot account for business models that become viable, that haven't been viable before. People come up with new ideas all the time.
My point is not that if there are no more ICE cars, there will be no market for oil. It's that the portion of the market for oil that has, heretofore, serviced ICE cars is starting to disappear, and it won't be coming back, nor will it be repurposed to service anything else, to any significant degree.
The broader point is that, because of the environmental consequences, people all over the world are diligently working on ways to eliminate the other markets for oil. And they will also not be coming back.
Oil is on its way out, period. Not this year, not this decade, possibly not this century...but it's going. And the world will be much, much better off for it.
(It's just possible that there will be some tiny fraction of the current uses for oil that we can't find any meaningful replacement for, but it's not going to be much.)
Aviation industry comes to mind. The price of an airline ticket is mostly the fuel. With cheaper airline tickets, more people can afford to fly (especially in developing countries). And also, poor countries suddenly are able to get oil cheaper and built their industries just as we did 50 years ago.
Yeah, this kind or Validate my own Beliefs that EV won't solve the fossil fuel burning. But they can at least make energy used by vehicle independent of the source used to generate the energy.
Basically, the government and private sector can switch to renewable energy at some point even if they are using Fossil fuels today.
imo The final hurdle for mass adoption is solving the refueling planning problem.
I was in the market for a new car in 2024. Thought seriously about a few electric options but opted for another ICE vehicle because 2025/2026 are years of many road trips, and the issue that kept coming up for me was "can I just pull off any random highway and refill my car in a few minutes?"
Unfortunately for the environment I guess, I prefer not being forced to strictly plan my trips around distance and availability and speed of chargers. I can go pretty much anywhere in North America and be reasonably certain there's a gas station just off any highway, let alone an interstate.
"Oh, do the kids need to use the bathroom ASAP? Might as well fill up a quarter tank while we're there" opportunities would also vanish.
And even if charging stations were magically placed across the country to match gas stations, there'd still be the "time to charge" problem.
Not sure what age your kids are, but if they're below 10 I can guarantee you that your kids will be slowing you down, bit the car. Kids need to use the bathroom would be filling up the battery well over 25% if it wasn't almost full.
The one thing people that have never owned an EV seem to miss is the benefits that you get to experience every day.
No gearbox, so seamless acceleration.
No maintenance on, spark plugs, timing belts, gearbox. No oil changes.
A quieter ride, especially nice on a road trip.
The thing with young kids is they tend not to be good at timing restroom breaks with the availability of charging. By the time they tell you, you need to stop at the nearest gas station - they can't wait for you to drive 20 miles to the next charging station.
> No maintenance on, spark plugs, timing belts, gearbox. No oil changes. A quieter ride, especially nice on a road trip.
I'm thinking of getting an EV, so I'll see how much I like this. I can say that this is pretty much not a hassle for me with my ICE car - over the last 20+ years. But then I tend to buy reliable cars and didn't fall for the manufactured "3 months or 3000 miles" rule.
I keep track of all my costs. I average about $500 a year in maintenance (includes tires, oil changes, brakes, etc). I just checked with the insurance company - the increase in my annual premiums for the EV car I'm looking at is $400 more than if I got an equivalent ICE car. And one still needs to change tires, etc on an EV. So the repair/maintenance savings aren't there.
> The insurance part will settle out over time as they get more data I would imagine.
I'm not so sure. The issue is two-fold: First, If you get into an accident and you're at fault, the average damage is a lot more than with an ICE, due to the much heavier weight. Second, compared to an ICE, just about any repair is a lot more expensive. If some of the battery gets damaged, that's crazy expensive. There's also not a good ecosystem for parts - they are more expensive and less modular than with an ICE (or so I'm told).
It apparently is a lot more common for EVs to be declared a total loss compared to an ICE just because of the expense to repair.
> 500$ a year is very little for any car
This is over 3 different cars. And all of them very old (I bought two of them when they were 8 years old, and another when it was 15 years old - still driving that last one).
About $80/year for oil changes. That's it. Then every once in a while there is an expensive repair (brakes, tires, some engine problem, etc). Doesn't happen every year - so the average comes out to $500.
I also don't go to the official dealers. Everything is more expensive with them.
And yeah, the cars are old, so few electronic parts to repair. I imagine if I get another 8 year old ICE, the annual cost to repair will be more just due to the extra safety systems that can go wrong.
> but I opened a Nissan leaf for 8 years and spent less that 2K, of which 1K was for the AC
Leafs are the best case scenario. They're small, not heavy, and thus don't have much tire wear.
This is becoming less of an issue, but there’s no question it’s a barrier.
To be honest, the bigger barrier I see is around political will to charge the true social cost of gasoline.
Some nonprofits think the true cost of burning gas is $10-15/gallon. If filling up with gas cost $250 and charging an EV was 85% cheaper, I’d be willing to wait 30 minutes for an occasional charge.
Personally, I hope EV adoption (in Indonesia) improves, as they mostly come from China and challenge the status quo of Japanese cars.
Chinese cars are a "better deal" because they give more bang for the buck. Japanese cars, on the other hand, are very "stingy" due to decades of near monopoly.
I was out skating today. Everyone was having a fun time until a diesel truck simply drove down the nearby road. It stunk up and polluted the frozen lake air for a solid few minutes. I hate diesel trucks with a passion and if I live long enough to see it happen, I will celebrate the day they become defunct. Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars.
Here in Japan as well delivery companies are all moving to EVs, which is great in the neighborhoods where they idle their trucks in the summer when hopping out to make a delivery. Yamato using Mitsubishi Fuso eCanter trucks[0] and Japan Post adopting Mitsubishi Minicab EVs[1] and Honda EV bikes.
Just when I was thinking about Tesla’s main failure being their pickup truck you remind me how they completely missed the obvious delivery van market for which EVs are ideal.
And the semi is such vaporware that I forgot it was even a thing.
Not only is diesel exhaust more polluting than gasoline exhaust, but because it burns cooler than gasoline, the fumes remain near the ground longer, affecting people.
yeah, its an interesting analogy with smokers and the smell and pollution they spread. they dont seem to notice it themselves, but the non smokers around them and up to 100 meters away all notice them.
I’m not sure that’s really the case here. There’s simply no way you can’t notice bad pollution from vehicles.
Standing near the average car isn’t that bad at all. EVs are way better, but it’s not that bad.
But stand near a car that has some sort of exhaust problem or isn’t burning fuel correctly and it’s bad. Just horrible to breathe.
I’ve found cabin air filters either activated carbon help immensely. I started buying them on someone’s recommendation but I had no idea how much they affected things.
I’ve driven on brand new asphalt and not noticed the smell. I’ve been behind horrible cars and I don’t notice a thing, unless I put my window down and then it suddenly hits me.
All of a sudden lately I’m smelling the terrible cars again. Time to change the filter.
> Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars
That won't happen until they design a normal truck. The Lightning sold more than the CT and it still ended up getting canceled(ish). It isn't going to be Tesla that does it, it will probably be someone else, and the driving factor is battery capacity. We've got a ways to go yet. It would help to have 400+ kWh batteries and megawatt chargers.
That's why I said (ish). I agree, it's predominantly an EV. I hope they backpedal on the decision a bit and offer both an EREV and a regular EV at the same time. I'm quite happy with my Lightning and will buy another, but I'm not super interested in the EREV as it just adds expense, complexity, and maintenance requirements without offering me much additional functionality for my use case.
The whole point is to sell more cars, the EREV Lightning will not be cheaper to produce or sell.
At current prices, the standard range battery in a Lightning (which is nominally about 107kWh or so) should cost under $10K. They will not be able to shrink the battery enough to offset the cost of putting in an engine and generator. For one, they have to stay competitive with the Dodge EREV pickup, which will have a ~90kWh battery.
My guess is they leave out one or two modules from the standard range pack and price the truck starting at $70K. They won't make a ton of money, but they might be able to get a nice boost in volume to make up for it.
Anyone know how far off economical EV motorcycles are? They'll be game-changers for many south east asian cities where traffic is 90% motorcycles, which seem to pollute as much (/more ?) than cars.
? They're already here. Seeing more and more delivery drivers zooming around on them, especially since a year or so ago. And they're not choosing them for ethical reasons, I can tell you that much.
That used to be true; it no longer is. In the EU, some of the cheapest cars on the marker in 2026 are now electric. There are a few nice options in the 15K-20K Euro segment. These are the opposite of luxury cars. There are a quite a few new more joining the half dozen or so that were for sale last year. The trend here is that EVs are becoming the cheapest option.
A few cars from Stellantis that are available in ICE and EV variants are now actually cheaper in the EV variant. This reflects the reality that batteries are now cheap and EVs don't have a lot of moving parts. So, they should be easier and cheaper to assemble. That's a trend that is spreading across all price segments in the next few years. Driven by component and cheap battery availability.
Used EVs are widely available now as well. You can get some amazing deals on cars that mostly still have their drive trains + batteries under warranty. Lots of cars coming out of lease programs are sold on second hand. EVs have been very popular for car leasing for the last 6-7 years now. These are mostly still the relatively expensive models from a few years ago.
The cheap EVs that are now on the market will inevitably start penetrating the second hand market in larger and larger numbers. Cheap ICE cars are disappearing rapidly from the market as models are being discontinued by manufacturers and as the market shares for ICE vehicles keep on shrinking. That means they'll also start getting more scarce in the second hand market in a few years. You'll still be able to get your Ford Fiesta. But it will be a model from before it was discontinued a few years ago. Or the new electric model that they are rumored to launch soonish.
Way too expensive for most europeans countries and it’s after heavy subsidies from governments. Most people buy second-hand ICE cars and they will do it as long as they can be driven on roads. Stellantis cars are trash and in general the low-cost EV are trash for long travels.
Depends on the country. People living in richer European countries buy more new cars on average, while people in poorer European countries give second life to those same cars once those "rich people" decide to sell them and fail to buy any buyer domestically.
This is still a net positive even in poorer countries. If you can't afford a new car, you buy as close to a new car as you can afford. The newer the car is, the higher the EURO standard is that it had to abide by when it was sold brand-new, achieving the same result of reducing pollution.
I live in one of those poorer ones where most people can't afford new cars, but even if you can, the percentage of brand-new ICE cars that are even available for purchasing is going down pretty fast in recent years. So those better off are slowly being pushed towards EVs (or at least hybrids), and the vast majority of others still relies on importing like 15 years old second-hand cars (EURO 5 standard) to replace their 25yo cars (EURO 3 standard). In the capital, cars below EURO 4 are even banned when air pollution gets really bad, but the vast majority doesn't even realise this rule exists because their cars are now EURO 4 or above.
Aircraft burn more fuel, but they do so far from where people are, and Jet A burns more cleanly than gasoline from a particulate perspective.
From an air pollution perspective you are much better off a half mile from 10 jets taking off, than you are surrounded by a hundred idling gasoline cars.
If you park in the street, and there are public chargers in a 1-km radius around your apartment, you can probably make it by "topping-up" every two or three days on a public charger.
Unless you spend upwards of 40% of your battery daily, you'll be good.
If you own a parking spot in your apartment complex, and depending on your jurisdiction, you can install your own charger.
You can even charge once a week or even less, depends on the usage.
You also don't have a gas station inside your apartment. Depending on which car you get, you could go charge it to charging station. I'm not saying this is instant process.
That's a poor excuse today. I'm not trying to be pushy but have you dismissed the LFP battery EVs? Those you charge fully once every other week, just like your average ICE vehicle. The time spent recharging can be spent grocery shopping or something else productive.
Talking generally and depending on many factors the fossil fuel yearly energy consumption for private transportation is similar with that of home heating. ICE cars are replaced with electric and boilers with heat pumps. Both help, may be the same, but in the latter case the increase in average temperature of the last three years adds to the mix.
They’ve just moved the pollution out of the gentrified areas that can afford to purchase EVs at scale. Which was part of the initial goal when pushing for this insanity, as the plebs were polluting with the air of the much better off by using their 20-years old clunkers (or at least that was the discourse here in Europe). Mission about to be accomplished, those plebs now can take the bus if they still want mobility.
For the environmental impact within a specific region, electric vehicles are indeed much better than cars. However, when it comes to things like greenhouse gases and global warming, that's likely just Elon Musk's lie.
The lithium mining is surely not causing anywhere near as much pollution as fossil fuel burning. If you think it's actually significant, please show relevant studies and/or analysis.
BMWs are all pigfat today. Compare it to a proper sports car like a Miata.
Most cars are far too heavy and should be made lighter. Only Mazda seems to understand this and that's why the Mazda SUVs/sedans are by far the best driving vehicles in their class.
> For the analysis, the researchers divided California into 1,692 neighborhoods, using a geographic unit similar to zip codes. They obtained publicly available data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles on the number of ZEVs registered in each neighborhood. ZEVs include full-battery electric cars, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars, but not heavier duty vehicles like delivery trucks and semi trucks.
> Next, the research team obtained data from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), a high-resolution satellite sensor that provides daily, global measurements of NO₂ and other pollutants. They used this data to calculate annual average NO₂ levels in each California neighborhood from 2019 to 2023.
> Over the study period, a typical neighborhood gained 272 ZEVs, with most neighborhoods adding between 18 and 839. For every 200 new ZEVs registered, NO₂ levels dropped 1.1%, a measurable improvement in air quality.
Seems pretty clear to me that that's controlled for.
Maybe if they used their brakes all the time, but they don't. (Regen braking uses no brakes). That's why EVs, while heaver, require fewer brake pad replacements than ICE cars.
1 pedal braking means evs often dont need new brake pads for 150K miles
One problem they are experiencing is rust and glazing on the pads from disuse.
They are heavier than the equivalent sized ICE so have more tire wear, but dont have to be that large in an absolute sense. Most are large luxury cars.
Sorry but where in the US does electricity cost under 10c/kWh (assuming something like 80kWh for 500km)? And 100$ for 30-40l of petrol? That'd be over 10$ per gallon
Ah, yes. Buy two $40k cars, one of which funds one of the people actively trying to destroy democracy.
There's. A lot to unpack there.
But I've still got 3 suitcases of my own stuff sitting waiting for me to get a real flat, so I think I'll pass on that and just let you assume that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and can't do their own research. And, I guess, has $80k just lying around to spend on whatever.
Tires and brakes still contribute to a lot of particulate matter pollution even from EV's, but they're at least a step up. The best EV's are still eBikes though.
I mean, it kind of is. But I'd say the framing is about general air pollution, and they happen to use NOx levels as proxy indicator. So from that perspective, I think it is important to note that there are other types of pollution that go up with electric cars.
It's great to see a reduction in local pollution but it is worth remembering the electric vehicles ultimately have zero impact on climate change and petroleum consumption (which as continue to rise year-over-year).
Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
Electric cars are great for the city/suburbs but don't really make a dent in the larger resource usage issues facing us.
> Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
That's simply not true. Oil used someplace else would have been used someplace else either way.
There is a supply/demand effect where reduced oil demand would lower its price and therefore arrest the loss of oil demand from cars by other consumers of oil, but the net effect would still be that less oil is burned and used.
> When the price declines those people can (and do) buy the oil westerners aren't using.
You're missing that the supply drops as well since it is not economical to produce the same amount of oil as before at a lower price.
As long as the supply curve does not change (and nothing about EV usage changes the supply side here), a reduction in demand leads to lower consumption.
Edit: And in addition, your chart doesn't show anything like you purport it to show. By your claim, oil consumption by non-Western countries should have been drastically higher in 2000-2007 when oil prices were lower than they are today. Yet the opposite is true.
Oil consumption is up over time, including in non-Western countries, but that was driven by organic changes in demand, not changes in supply. Switching to EVs would act as a reduction in demand and therefore reduce overall oil usage, at least as compared to a world where vehicle transport required ICE vehicles.
Because this is HN, (in Allo Allo's Michelle Dubois voice...) "I shall say this only wonce": If you're curious, have a look at Earth's historical temperature and co2 data going back millions of years. What you'll notice is that there's always been oscillations, like a more or less predictable wave. Human activity is polluting the Earth, yes, but this fixation on co2 and other gases (cow farts, really?) is unhealthy to put it mildly.
I'd like to see the same attention being given to plastics (so much single-use crap and how much of it can be recycled?), synthetic clothing, and all kinds of other chemicals including the ones we put in ourselves (pharma, food) and the environment, like fertilizers or the byproducts of mining today's fashionable minerals like lithium. Not to mention the explosion in electromagnetic frequencies activity, which somehow is taken as normal and ok by the same scientific establishment which accepts thousands(?) of fake papers every year for publication. You just have to love the irony when something like Science is deemed 'settled'-- in that regard, it's almost as if we went back a few centuries.
There's certainly a lot to be said for humans needing to take better care of the planet. Co2 just gets a little too much attention for my taste. And don't take from this that I love oil. I find fracking to be abominable and another big factor in polluting the land and the water tables.
That's what I hear from mainstream media all the time. Do you have some information or argument that will help me see things differently?
>Of course you live in a 1st world country and it likely won't kill you, just cost you tons of money
A little presumptuous to assume my living conditions
>It's not about "take better care of the planet", whatever you think that means
Now that's just snarky and done in bad faith. If I didn't care would I have posted it, already antecipating the downvotes?
We humans got where we are much due to technology, but we have to start thinking seriously where we go from here or there won't be land or water (or air?) that isn't polluted by something the planet is not well equiped to process. Have you read on the kind of places that microplastics have been found already? In the human body?
People are gonna lose their homes and starve to death, this will create massive refugee crises. They won't care if you have micro plastics in your testicles
Happy to be shown where I can learn more about this different rate of change and trend which sets our current climate change apart from the rest of Earth's history.
It seems like you won't have any trouble finding that yourself if you really wanted to. This "I'm just asking questions" mode you're in can be considered a type of trolling called "sealioning".
On that graphic -- under the heading 'Ice cores (from 800,000 years before present)' in case the link gets truncated -- one can observe regular peaks in temperature that took place before the current one. I'm happy to be explained what caused them, as it could not have been human industrial activity.
That's it. I'm open to dialogue but won't entertain any more lazy dismissals and unfair characterization.
No surprises.
No matter how we look at it, EVs are much friendlier and safer to the environment. Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again, but in today's world we are rapidly moving away from it and towards nuclear/hydel/wind methods for generating power.
I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
The number of ICE cars I get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing. I’m in a decently well off area too.
Some putting off soot clouds, white smoke, nothing visible but clearly not doing complete combustion. Sometimes I wonder if half the cylinders are even working.
I’ve heard one car like that is the equivalent of a surprisingly large number of modern ICE cars is in good shape.
I love EVs. I’ve had one for 5 years now, and I’m glad they help. But I think the “are new EVs worse than new ICE” discussions so often miss a fact.
The pollution from ICE isn’t just from very modern well tuned vehicles, things vary wildly. But all EVs use the same power supply (assuming local grid only), so no individual vehicles put off 10x the pollution per kWh.
My city is covered by a low emissions zone so the odd van polluting sticks out. I was in Athens recently and the pollution from so many old rough cars was so noticeable (and quite unpleasant).
Reminds me of how I didn't really notice cigarettes until they were banned from public spaces and the base level of normal was recalibrated.
I could see a single "bad" ICE car being the equivalent of 100 "good" ICE cars. Even the VW emissions scandal (where the cars were still functioning as designed, just not as well as they should) had instances where pollutants were 35x higher than they should be. So I could see an emissions deleted diesel (of which there are many, i.e. catalytic converter and DPF removed) could easily have more than 100x the usual emissions of noxious substances. Maybe even more! Especially if (as is often the case) the DPF was removed because something is faulty on the engine and was overwhelming the capacity of the DPF in the first place.
You can smell these cars from halfway up the road sometimes, when they're 100 metres ahead.
I don’t have hard numbers on this, but I once read a claims that the lawnmowers and weed-whackers in California with their two-stroke engines are responsible for more nitrate and particulate emissions than all the cars and trucks in the state put together, even though by fuel burned the latter outnumbers the former by orders of magnitude. I could totally see a malfunctioning four-stroke ICE with dirty burns being worse than 100 maintained ones.
That probably explains why California banned the sale of gas powered leaf blowers, law mowers, and weed whackers in 2024. You can still use them if you have an old one or by one out of state.
And at the right time too. At almost every point before that, a gas powered engine was justified for duration and power, but the significant advances in both batteries and electric motors in the past 10-20 years have finally made them good enough that ICE tools are totally unjustified.
> the lawnmowers and weed-whackers in California with their two-stroke engines
What's the intended precedence in that sentence?
I ask because I've never seen a lawnmower (in the US) with a two-stroke engine. There are probably some, but they're not common.
Even modern cars pollute a lot (especially in winter) because you need a certain temperature for the cats to start working. On short city trips it happens frequently that you never reach proper operating temperatures.
I used to work for the Air Resources Board of California, and while there is a warm-up period, modern ice cars are so profoundly cleaner than cars even from the early 2000s. It’s pretty stunning.
Regardless, there’s nothing cleaner than no combustion, and I can’t wait until EV‘s have replaced them all
Yes, any cyclist daring to drive in winter can easily confirm this. It is so disgusting (and unhealthy) having to stand behind a ICE car on a traffic light and being behind a electric car is such a relief, that thoughts of wishing to ban all ICE cars as soon as possible (at least in cities) come automatically.
The tire dust crossing the bridge that's next to four lines of heavy traffic isn't much better than the exhaust fumes IME.
Modern ICE cars have auto start/stop systems, so on a traffic light it has as much exhaust as an EV.
> auto start/stop systems
Most start stop systems will disable themselves when the heater of the car is turned ON and the car engine not hot enough yet.
As a cyclist (or motorbike owner), it is pretty usual in city to have >50% cars with engines ON at traffic light in cities when temperature are low.
Also when the temperature is really low? Does not seem like it.
Also at some point they will start their engines again. Guess who will inhale that?
Ironically though, cyclists inhale less pollution than drivers (who inhale the most)!
Sources: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/10/08/report-drivers-arent-... which references the BBC
But not every car on the road is modern, and it smells like crap as a result
You could run them on propane, which doesn't need the catastrophic converters - they make no difference at all if there's no CO or HC in the exhaust stream.
You've got the added bonus that you don't need to strip-mine huge chunks of Africa for precious metals, too.
I try to keep my cat indoors, but he won't work anyway. Maybe I should get one of those newer electric cats.
Speaking of smells....
One good thing about driving an EV is that weird oil or hot coolant smells are from someone else's car (and not a problem with your car)
(although yes technically many EVs have coolant loops)
As an aside, I'd like to mention that like 9 times out of 10 if you are driving down the road in an ICE vehicle and smell weird oil or hot coolant smells you are smelling someone else's car. The wind blows away a lot of your own stink before it gets to you. I learned to ignore anything that didn't smell 1) when I was stopped, and 2) more than once in totally different locations. After trying to track down smells that I thought were mine and were invariably from someone else nearby.
I’ve driven an EV for 5 years now, and I still occasionally think it’s something wrong with my car, instinctively lol
As the fleet of EV's age, I'm sure we'll see equivalents...
"The high voltage wires were just dragging on the street sparking, presumably with all the safety features disabled"
"They were driving with a 10 gallon coolant tank on the roof, presumably because the coolant loop had a big leak and needed continuous topping up".
If your high voltage line is conducting enough to the ground that it's sparking, your vehicle isn't going to work. Electricity follows the path of least resistance and a path to ground is a lot lower resistance than a motor coil.
EVs eliminate a lot of polluting failure states of ICE vehicles. There just simply aren't that many things to burn or leak and still have a functioning vehicle.
You're not allowed to drive cars like that in a functional society. When you go for your compulsory car checkup it wouldn't pass the required safety standards.
I think the point they're making is that the ICE cars that OP is complaining about also aren't supposed to be driven in a functional society. The difference is that mostly wealthy people can afford EVs: https://ampo.org/electric-vehicles-are-out-of-reach-for-most... thus they stay maintained and have a polished image.
I think they are more accessible now than when that article was written. My wife and I bought a mid-trim Hyundai Kona Electric for under $35,000. Besides, lots of people buy used cars, and there are crazy deals on used EVs. I've seen Bolts go for under $15,000. 2 year old ID.4s are selling for under $20,000 in my area. You may not find a $5,000 beater, but EVs are penetrating further into the middle of the market now.
There are also lower ongoing costs for maintenance and fuel.
There is still the secondary wealth filter of having a place to park and charge, of course.
What I think is missing today is a way to challenge someone else's car. A few independent reports should force an early checkup, and if passed soon after the accusation, the accusers should get their own just to have something at stake.
It's missing because letting the minority of Karens harass everyone like that would cause the political will for the inspection programs to evaporate instantly.
Second, places with high touch governments already lose out on business due to registration arbitrage. Your proposal would dump gas on that fire.
A functioning bureaucracy can handle false reports. If someone has a habit of making false reports, they'd be ignored or even punished themselves.
while I agree, there's many places where the compulsory car checkup is tied to your relationship with the mechanic. I don't think my parents ever had a "valid" car but the certificate always was. It never felt wrong (although I think it is) but more like mutual aid or service.
There’s also the fact that nearly 1/4 US states require no emissions or safety checks whatsoever [1]. So everything is valid by default and realistically the only thing stopping you from driving a literal rust bucket, with tailpipe dragging, poor combustion, or modified emissions filtering (like modifying your truck so you can roll coal down Main Street) is it a cop feels like pulling you over for it
[1]: https://goodcar.com/car-ownership/vehicle-inspections-by-sta...
What is allowed and what actually happens are two very different things, my friend.
In the neighbourhood I live, there's a guy who visits someone here several times per week. His headlights are broken, the tires are worn smooth, the exhaust is loud beyond all reason. Given the general state of the vehicle, I don't have high hopes for the brakes.
I reported it to the police. I'm really not the type of person to do that, but this is worse than anything I've seen. Of course nothing happened. I didn't even get a reply. They don't give a shit. Some day that guy is going to rear-end my car and break my neck because his brake lines finally gave out.
Also, the compulsory car inspections only work for honest people. People with illegal mods will put back the stock parts for the inspection, and switch them back after. I'm not gonna say the inspections are worthless, but it does make a lot of money for the state and the private actors who run the inspection centres.
EDIT to add: They made a law recently that the inspector has to take a photo of the car inside the inspection centre, because there was so much fraud happening with vehicles just being "inspected" on paper.
Where I live there are yearly check ups that you need to do, or you simply cant legally drive your car
Are those even user serviceable? So, it won't stop everyone but it will stop most of them.
It isn't until it is. Manuals will appear, guides will show up online, shadetree mechanics will get better at electronics(they used to be experts in carburetors after all), software will be cracked if necessary.
Unlikely. Many of these sensors are mostly CAN-based, rather than hardwired. It would be a time consuming enterprise to custom bake a solution for each vehicle model to fake out protection systems. For better or worse EVs are substantially more difficult to modify than typical ICE.
Only takes 1 person to make a "safety system faker: Makes car run even with faults" which is a $20 thing you can buy from aliexpress and can be clipped anywhere onto the canbus - just two wires to hook into.
It then runs code which auto detects the car model (fairly easy from the messages on the bus), and has a database of the messages to send/inhibit to change the behaviour in the desired way.
Because so many cars use electronics that are common across a whole manufacturer of cars - ie. all GM cars, or all cars with a Bosche ECU - there won't be awful lot of work making it compatible with hundreds of models of car.
Such devices already exist for faking data for engine tuning, and for faking 'zero faults, all monitors pass' to pass government tests.
You basically get internal faults and cable faults with HV stuff. A box reporting that the AC compressor motor winding isn't shorted isn't going to make the compressor work with a shorted winding. ECU probably wouldn't disengage the powertrain for that though.
And then things like battery temperature warnings will quickly turn into real failures.
And then the next generation or 2 of stuff is going to at least attempt to implement cybersecurity features that greatly complicate tampering at the message level.
Most EVs have lockouts that will be very hard to bypass for things like this.
It’s more ‘I could have replaced a few cells in my battery pack, but the car bricked itself when I opened the pack! Assholes!’.
Notably many recent ICE cars aren’t much better.
Many car enthusiasts remove the catalytic converter for a combination of additional power and/or better sound. It has a massive impact on emissions and what you might be smelling is hydrogen sulfide which is normally converted to sulfur dioxide which is orderless.
I should note the power increase may not have a major impact on newer cars where the cat has been optimized to reduce it's negative power impact.
Infact a popular tuner company, APR, that provides flashes tested the recent Volkswagen GTI and R generation with their most common tune and determined that with their tune removing the cat had a nominal impact.
*Basically they can bring the cars power as high as the OEM internals can handle reliably while keeping the cat. There are cars where it still has some impact and of course, different from power ,"straight piping" a car can offer a subjective sound change.
For every car enthusiast there are probably a hundred poorly maintained vehicles on the road. Black smoke is likely soot, and white smoke is almost certainly an oil leak.
Oil in the exhaust in quantities high enough to produce acrid white smoke is extremely common on a number of ICE engines, like blown head gaskets on E25s (found in most Subarus before their Toyota involvement in 2010) for example
Subarus with bad head gaskets leak combustion gas into the cooling system displacing the coolant. If you run a flat engine low on coolant it will score the upper cylinder walls and the you will have oil consumption. This is fundamental to all flat engines. Oil in the exhaust is blue smoke. Coolant is white.
I never got the "blue" and "white" thing. Both look "white" to me, but you're right about subarus also leaking coolant in the exhaust which is easily identified by a "sweet" smell. Blown gaskets on ICE engines like E25s leak both oil AND coolant, no? I might be mixing up blown heads with cracked manifolds which often go hand in hand since temp extremes in engines fissure cast parts like the manifold. Either way the end result is the same: noxious fumes in the exhaust.
You've never see an old vehicle blow a substantially "bluer than normal" cloud. That's what I'm talking about.
> Blown gaskets on ICE engines like E25s leak both oil AND coolant, no?
This is way, way too broad of a statement. The Subaru EJ25 tends to leak oil externally from the valve covers. When they have head gasket problems it tends to be combustion gas into coolant which blows the coolant out the expansion tank until equilibrium is reached. Typical head gasket failures cause some degree of that but coolant mixing with oil is more typical. Many V engines have intake gaskets that can leak coolant into the intake or oil or both.
Regardless, if you can taste coolant in the exhaust the car is basically at the point of "fix it now"
> I might be mixing up blown heads with cracked manifolds which often go hand in hand since temp extremes in engines fissure cast parts like the manifold.
A sizable minority of cars don't even use cast manifolds anymore. While it's possible for cast manifolds to crack in a way that makes them leak that's rare and it's more common for them to crack their mounting tabs off. Steel exhaust tubing can and does sometimes break after many years of vibration, say nothing of rust.
While cylinder heads can crack it usually takes the kind of overheating that requires major work to fix in order to make it happen so just about nobody is driving around with a cracked head.
My experience is limited to cars manufactured before 2008 (back to 1928). Maybe the new ones are all welded cold rolled steel tubes but I've only seen cast parts for intake and exhaust manifolds, nearly universally. Shit cracked all the time.
This isn't a new thing. Jeep used "factory headers" on the last years of the 4.0. Ford did welded manifolds on the 5.0 Explorers. Subaru went to welded steel for the EJ series engine in the 90s. GM had them on the LT5 in the early 90s. Just about every application that has the catalytic converter right up at the manifold used a welded one.
So I was going to reply to mention that all VWs sold in the US at least for the last 10 years use an iron block. I wanted to know if the EA888 (VWs go to 4 cylinder engine) was cast so I asked chatgpt.
"No — the VW EA888 Gen 3 engine block is not cast iron in the latest versions. engines.... use an aluminum alloy block, not traditional cast iron."
So I know for sure it's iron so I said "Are you sure it's an aluminum block on the gen 3"
"No — the VW/Audi EA888 Gen 3 engine does not have an aluminum block"
As someone into performance cars and motorcycles, removing a cat is pretty uncommon, and you're generally seen as a dick if you do it.
> Infact a popular tuner company, APR, that provides flashes tested the recent Volkswagen GTI and R generation with their most common tune and determined that with their tune removing the cat had a nominal impact.
Do you mean minimal impact?
Probably. I read it as “had an impact but kept the performance stayed nominal.”
Yes. I made a mistake in how I worded that. They are able to tune to other bottlenecks in the car while keeping the cat.
I'd say that putting off sooth clouds is a way to sequester carbon (which obviously failed to burn). Such over-enriched fuel mixes must generate much more CO though, and I wonder if those who "tune" their cars like so take care about the catalytic converter :(
The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately.
All in all, a well tuned ICE is better for everyone than a poorly tuned one, if you had to pick between the two.
> The health consequences of inhaling exhaust particulates are far more harmful than the equivalent CO2 contribution to greenhouse effect warming unfortunately
Short term for the individual definitely, but long term for all individuals affected?
At least soot from ships is an issue in high latitudes, as it turns out that the soot reduces the albedo of the ice and it thus has an outsized global warming impact.
I know in some car tuning circles, or even just blue collar Joes in some places, will recommend removing the catalytic converter. Supposedly it makes the car use less fuel at the cost of worse emissions, and can make it sound better for those who care about that.
Depending on the type of catalytic converter, both of those things can be true.
White smoke is water vapor. It's a normal byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion and tends to condense in the exhaust at low loads or immediately after exiting the exhaust, especially in colder temperatures, so you'll see a lot of it in stop and go traffic.
If it "reeks" though it's not just water vapor. I see a lot of these cars too, and you can tell it's been going on for a long time when the back of the car is covered in a layer of black grime. I think that's what kind of car problem the post is referring to.
> White smoke is water vapor.
Could also be coolant or oil
Even the faintest bit of oil will turn the smoke blue.
Could be coolant, but "coolant into engine" failure modes are generally rare and are usually the kind of thing that needs to get fixed promptly.
Coolant will have the dead giveaway sweet smell.
We have mandatory inspection of road vehicles almost every year and we measure exhaust as part of it.
> get stuck behind from time to time that just REEK is amazing
It’s crazy. How do we even allow selling cars without HEPA filters.
HEPA filters stop dust particles and not those tiny organic molecules that cause the smells. Filters for these exist as well, usually used in respirators, but those need to be exchanged pretty frequently and are not cheap.
Activated charcoal filters are a common option even out of the factory, and I’d be surprised if there were a car you can’t get them aftermarket. They don’t last that long but honestly I’d recommend swapping the cabin filter yearly anyway.
Someone recommended them to me years ago and I’m never going back.
One of the reasons I wrote the comment above is because my filter has worn out and needs replacing, so all of a sudden I can smell all this nonsense again.
1000% with the money.
I never smell anything in my Tesla. Only my own farts.
We love privatising the benefits and socialising the harms of everything.
If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket.
But as long as it’s other peoples health affected, meh.
> If the exhaust had to go through the cabin so the driver got the worst of it, car exhaust would be the cleanest air on the planet within months and/or alternatives to cars would rocket.
This is why forklift trucks and Zambonis run on propane instead of petrol or diesel. If you burn gas, you get no carbon monoxide or unburnt fuel because it runs ever so slightly lean and all the fuel is burnt.
This means keeping the air clear is just a case of getting rid of carbon dioxide and water, so you can open some vents (warehouses have great big vents, big enough for trucks to drive in and out...) and let the place air out. You won't die if you breathe it, unlike the CO and unburnt fuel from petrol and diesel engines.
It's a simple and inexpensive conversion, too.
That's very interesting. I guess it could be a great option for when the % of ICE vehicles is low enough, it might be practical to ban more polluting fuels.
(Edited to add) Hmm actually people are already doing LPG conversions today as it's cheaper. Not sure if all LPGs are as pollution free, though.
It depends how you do it. The conversion on my elderly Range Rover is not as efficient, being an old-fashioned "single point" system - this has a thing a bit like a cooker ring attached to the throttle, a stepper motor controlled valve driven by a third lambda sensor, and a thing to disconnect the petrol injectors when it switches to gas.
You can get ones with a complete set of LPG injectors and an ECU that takes its timing from the petrol injectors, and these are incredibly efficient. They're a bit harder to install (you need to drill holes in the intake manifold, it's a faff) but the engine can be mapped for even more power than on petrol and a tiny amount of pollution.
There's still a lot of CO2 and water vapour, but as previously discussed you're burning all this shit anyway so you might as well extract useful work from it.
The time to have done this was 25 or 30 years ago, when it was ridiculously cheap to buy gas and there were a lot of old-fashioned carburettor-fed cars that were incredibly badly polluting.
I feel like ICE cars put out such a quantity of exhaust that any HEPA filter you put on it would reach its end of life within a few hours of driving.
tragically, because of efficiency standards, modern engines are known to burn oil .
Otherwise you may be smelling cars who have had the cats stolen.
Stolen cars, exhaust leaks before the cat, incomplete combustion so bad the cat can’t cover it up. I assume it’s stuff like that.
It’s not whatever tiny bit of oil gets burned in a healthy engine.
Incomplete combustion will ruin a cat. That's not its purpose, it's there to reduce NOx emissions.
A lot of old cars also since new cars are so expensive.
Yep. My newest car is over 20 years old. May be a bit more polluting (though it doesn't smell or smoke) but I've in theory saved the environmental impact of the manufacture of one or two new cars by keeping the old one.
I'm not spending $30-40k or more on a car. That just isn't going to happen.
I think expense is basically the problem.
Cost to replace the catalytic converter, cost for new exhaust pipes, cost to diagnose ignition timing problems. Whatever.
If the car drives and you don’t have the money I can completely understand why someone wouldn’t get the problem fixed. Even if it means they’re burning a 1/3 of their fuel, that’s still less in the short term than the $1500 it may cost to fix it.
It’s insanely rare I get the sense that the person is running really dirty on purpose.
I don’t know what a realistic fairway to fix it is. They’re probably isn’t one. I don’t think fines would work, it would probably just make things worse. Seems like the kind of thing where a little government group to find the worst 0.1% of cars on the road and just get them back to reasonable levels would be a huge help.
But that’s not how we do things.
Some states handle this by requiring cars over a certain age to be emission checked before you can renew its registration. Failing cars have to be fixed and rechecked before you can get your tags.
I live in one of the US states with no emissions checks at all.
Well that’s not strictly true. If you move into the state you have to get one emissions check to get your car licensed.
After that, or if you buy the car in the state, no checks for you.
I think they stop checking cars after a certain year. Like, if you are driving a 1980 Buick, they won’t make you scrap it because it’s emission tech is way out of date.
I can only speak about Germany. Here the technical safety and exhaust check are mandatory every two years. The exhaust check is relative to what the manufacturer specified when they first started selling the car. No one is getting their car taken away because technology improved but you can‘t let your car degrade (or modify it) so it becomes more dirty.
Oldtimers are still excluded from all emissions checks.
A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises.
Additionally, a lot of conservatives love to "Roll coal", and literally will shit up the environment on purpose just because they feel schadenfreude from pissing of an environmentalist.
> A lot of Americans take their cat off on purpose for louder noises.
Some people remove catalytic converters when they install a performance exhaust. Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound.
Also I wouldn’t say it’s “a lot of Americans”. We have emissions inspections in most major cities and your car won’t pass if you remove the catalytic converter. They can now detect modified ECUs, too. Someone would have to be so determined to do this that they’d swap the exhaust in and out every time they had to do emissions inspections.
> Nobody is doing it for louder noises because the muffler portion is what dampens the sound.
Cats also act as mufflers, they significantly reduce the sound coming out the exhaust.
They muffle slightly, but removing the cat alone isn’t going to make a big difference with modern high efficiency single cat exhausts.
I’ve seen (heard) the effects first hand. Trust me, people aren’t removing the cat just to make their car annoyingly loud. If they are, they’re going to be disappointed.
I had downvotes on this post until you (and the other car enthusiasts) pointed this out / saw this.
HNs lack of knowledge around cars is sort of frightening.
If I had to guess, the downvotes were from the “A lot of Americans” claim
> HNs lack of knowledge around cars is sort of frightening.
I actually have a lot of knowledge and experience in the automotive space, including with exhaust systems!
Catalytic converter removal alone doesn’t have a big change exhaust tone. I have seen it first hand, and also with 100-cell and 200-cell race cats as an intermediary step.
Your posts are full of condescending assumptions about Americans and HN’s comments about cars, but you’re ignoring the actual facts others are trying to share.
Don't worry, it's just cars. You can trust the rest.
I know a LOT of people personally who swap their exhaust in and out just for emissions inspections. That's the meta.
The internet classic “I know a lot of people” does not substitute for your original “A lot of Americans” claim
You’re describing your small friend group, not Americans in general.
You got ratioed. I’m way up in upvotes from Americans who know that I’m right and you’re wrong! Na na na na na na!
Sometimes the plural of anecdote really is data.
a lot of people have custom exhausts, particularly catback systems that don't affect emissions. A lot of people are definitely not rolling coal.
Yeah, it's definitely a small percent of people. But i do wonder how many there really has to be to have an outsized effect. One of those lifted kid killers blowing black smoke for the entire duration of the bicycle pack is definitely more than 3 of my tiny honda civics, i wonder how many it really is, and how much those modifications increase the "resting emissions rate"even when not blowing shit. Should be illegal, likely is.
I'd wager it's largely disruptive and dangerous in a highly localized way due to the small percentage of folks doing it. Doesn't make it an acceptable practice though. One person "rolling coal" can temporarily blind 3 or 4 cars back and several across depending on wind conditions, etc.
In terms of NOX it can be a factor of 100. If 1% drive without cats they produce half the NOX emissions. In reality it is probably less since there are other old cars as well that have higher emissions
I live in a progressive state and unfortunately encounter "coal rolling" regularly. I also assume that's the point. Someone has to "own all the libs" as it were
However, I do agree that there aren't enough folks "rolling coal" in aggregate to really move any needles on planet-scale environmental impacts though. Just VERY unpleasant to be caught behind.
Conservatives seem to be largely unaware that most libs already have an owner and don't need any further owning.
I’ve run into a few of those. They’re generally pretty obvious. Usually a big truck, lots of MAGA & adjacent bumper stickers.
I haven’t noticed people removing the catalytic converters just for noise. The rare time I see a car that wants to be loud it usually just seems to be the exhaust end they changed, or maybe removed the muffler.
The kind of stuff I’m complaining about mostly seems to be older cars, or those in poor mechanical shape. Cases where the people probably just don’t have the money to fix it.
Besides the crap they pump into the air, they also excrete gunk onto the road. It’s so primitive.
The exhaust from a well functioning modern ICE is likely enough to have less pollutants than the air. Of course it still has carbon dioxide, but less other pollutants.
you still have tyre rubber, which is a major source of microplastics
And not a distinguishing factor of ICE vehicles
yeah I just wanted to contest the very idea that a car could be clean.
EV have far more tire wear because they are heavier and also probably from regenerative braking
Why would regenerative braking emit more particulates? It’s no harder on tires than braking mechanically but doesn’t abrade the pads or rotors.
>> EV have far more tire wear because they are heavier
Is this true?
If an EV were 30% heavier than an ICE, would it produce 30% more tyre wear emissions? Or would it produce more or less than 30%? Is the primary factor in tyre wear weight and is the relationship linear?
The types of tyres appear to be quite different, the EVs seem to have smaller contact patches (narrower wheels) and they're made of different "less grippy" compounds that drag less. Does this change the equation at all?
Even if we still make a mess I think centralization of the mess is better than distributing it - what I mean is that polluting cities where millions sleep, eat, drink and breathe will probably be worse, net effect, than containing energy pollution to select places.
Running EVs in densely populated regions is probably a lot better for the population on the whole even if the net pollution would stay the same, IMO.
Still no EV is even better, but we’ve created a world where transport is often required so, one step at a time I guess.
Even if the electricity source would burn similar fuel, just the fact that you don't pullote right in the middle of population centers makes a huge difference. In reality, it's not only that, but _also_ that they use cleaner methods of energy production.
This is only the issue if you are a city dweller and want to spend your whole life there. For rural folks this is actually best possible situation.
The pollution always goes somewhere, and its not like we have large swaths of useless places that we can pollute without consequences.
Huh, no. Pollution close to humans is bad for both city and rural people.
> The pollution always goes somewhere,
"The solution to pollution is dilution". We want the concentration of pollution low, so the health effects are low too, and we can give natural processes the time to decay/oxidize/etc the pollutants.
> not like we have large swaths of useless places
We do... we mostly care about the lower ~100 meters of atmosphere because that's where people live. That's less than 1% of the total atmosphere. This means we can distribute pollution over a volume a 100x larger than that that is important for us. And then I'm not even counting the vast amount of the planet that's uninhabited / non-land.
Also, smokestacks are designed to not directly pollute the air close to people, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnYdt4T76mk
Even if the source of electricity used to charge an EV is mostly generated by fossil fuels, EVs are still probably more energy efficient because gas powered cars are not particularly efficient at turning gasoline into useful energy compared to the efficiency of larger scale power plants.
Also as you point out, non-fossil fuel energy is becoming a larger part of the grid over time, so an EV you buy today will become cleaner over time, while the fossil fuel reliance of a gas car purchased today will never improve.
Honestly the biggest blocker for EVs from my perspective is charging infrastructure. Public fast charging sites are too uncommon compared to gas stations and a less than ideal solution to use for all of your charging needs and lots of people live in housing where installing a charger at home is difficult or impossible. Eventually both of those will change, but it will lag significantly behind the quality of the vehicles themselves.
The interesting thing to me is that even for people who can't charge at home, EVs and charging infrastructure have reached the tipping point where they're at least viable. They're less convenient in such situations than a gas powered car and so will be limited to people who are extra motivated for one reason or another. But the EV world is over the "possible" hurdle so the "practical" threshold seems inevitable.
The surprising part to me is that there are now enough EVs to make a measurable difference, since I kept thinking they are still relatively rare. The linked study has this piece of data:
So 1 out of 20 cars in California is an EV.It really feels like more than 1 in 20 driving around the 101/280
Probably because Santa Clara County has more EV sales compared to its neighbors, according to this map:
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/zero-e...
And newer cars get driven more than old cars on average so 1/20 cars being EVs will do more than 1/20th of the miles.
Between 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 in Norway.
Germany maybe 1 in 5 to 1 in 7 ( at least in the south ). I drive mostly the commuter schedule and I am amazed how many are driving the EVs.
Truth is: for commuting up to 100kms, the EVs are wastly cheaper long run ( you have to factor everything ! )
That's framing the topic completely out of the issue with global impacts of humanity on ecosystemic sustainability, including biodiversity.
Less commut and more collective transportation is going to be far more significant in term of global impact, whatever the engine type.
You can do both! Better trains and more EVs replacing gas cars can be done simultaneously!
You forget the most important aspect of policy: it can't cost a single dime, and everyone must lie about that. Read the first sentence of the article:
"When California neighborhoods increased their number of zero-emissions vehicles"
Obviously neighborhoods/cities/states didn't increase anything. It was just rich people living there buying fancy cars. Of course, this needs to be described as a great accomplishment of local government.
And nowhere in the article is the obvious solution even suggested: advancing electric car technology so they're cheaper than ICE cars. And I don't mean charging extra tax while cutting public transport to make sure poor people don't go anywhere anymore, I mean fixing the technology so everyone has transport, for less money.
California government has a great claim to advancing the state of the art in EVs (and hybrids and just ICE before that).
Some people credit Tesla with kick starting the EV revolution. Californian governance kick started Tesla.
Their EV efforts go back to the ZEV mandate in 1990.
> obvious solution
Shouldn't the obvious solution be based on observable reality? Which is that there is no technology in sight that will make EVs cheaper to build than ICEs. Otherwise you are praying for a miracle, and that's not a sound policy.
Technological advance can be modeled like anything else. Everything about plug-in EVs is cheaper than ICE cars, except the battery. So you can model exactly what you need to get the same as you're currently seeing with solar panels. You can calculate at exactly what point they'll take over aviation and so on.
I mean, this isn't even a very hard thing to model.
> I mean, this isn't even a very hard thing to model.
Could you please explain in more detail what exactly do you want to model here? Above, you mentioned "advancing electric car technology so they're cheaper than ICE cars". Now as we both know the issue is with the battery, do you just want cars with battery so small that the car is cheaper than an ICE but nobody wants it? Because there is no need to model that, it has been tried and failed.
If you mean modeling battery technology that's not yet available in EVs, good luck with that. There are better batteries available than in mass-market vehicles, but they are not cheaper; cheaper technologies are not as good. Sure, in 10 years the batteries will be much better overall, but we don't really have the luxury of waiting until the technology gets perfect and then scaling that, do we.
Decent public transport makes all the difference. Luckily we have good transport here in the Netherlands and I haven't needed a car in 10 years. Also, the trains here have been running 100% on renewable energy since 2017.
I'm all for EVs, but half of PM10 pollution is independent of engine type as it comes from brake and tire wear: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JR...
So direct environment impact is still huge for EVs and calling them ZEV is literally a scam.
Don't EVs use resistive breaking to recharge their batteries? I would hope that reduces particle emissions.
Though I suppose that EVs and hybrids are heavier than similar gas powered counterparts, so tire wear is worse. At least until EVs can be made lighter.
scam is a bit of hyperbole. also, ZEV has always explicitly referenced tailpipe emissions, which is also why there's been the odd sounding "partial zero emissions vehicle" category. It's certainly valid to be concerned about additional sources of fine particles, but eliminating engine emissions is not something to be dismissed as a scam.
Further, particle emission from brake dust is mitigated in EV's that use regen braking. One of my ev's can go days without phycical brake usage, and another uses the brake pads so infrequently it has an automatic mode to touch the discs occasionally just to keep them from building up rust.
tire particles --- different compounds can effect that, but will always be a side effect of tires on vehicles.
> tire particles --- different compounds can effect that, but will always be a side effect of tires on vehicles.
There's vehicles like trains, subways and bycicles, responsible for transporting hundreds of at least a billion people per day, which don't use tires whose particles are the biggest source of microplastics.
You mean we can do something today that will reduce PM10 pollution by half?!
That’s fantastic news!
>You mean we can do something today that will reduce PM10 pollution by half?!
We could. We could massively fund public transit and massively reduce private car ownership. But we won't, because then capitalists will make less money.
What do you mean? Plenty of countries are doing all of that and more.
Yes, that's why regenerative braking, which only EVs have, is so useful.
Aren't fossil fuel plants much more efficient than ICEs for emissions per unit energy extracted?
Yes, a coal powered EV will be cleaner than the same vehicle burning gasoline under the hood.
Even if you power a typical EV from 100% coal, it pencils out as about equivalent to a late model Prius. And any improvements in the energy mix take it further.
I don't think many people really understand how awful automobile-scale internal combustion engines are at efficiency. The only reason they work at all is thanks to the absurd energy density of the fuels they burn.
8.9 kWh / litre of petrol [1]
But more than 60% of that is lost as heat. The inefficiency increases in colder temperatures.
[1] _ https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/transp...
Even if the fossil fuel argument at the source was/is valid, it's infinitely more efficient to do it at the source than in a car. You can extract far more energy and do better to mitigate byproducts.
Also, an EV is as green as the grid. Hamburgs public transportation is heavily investing into electrical busses, because a bus is expected to function for 10 - 15 years. Meaning, a diesel bus built today will be as polluting in 2035 as it is today, though they are also looking at alternatives there. But an electrical bus will become cleaner and cleaner over time.
We're still burning massive amounts of fossil fuels as waste products from refining oil to make plastics and chemical feedstocks. A huge amount of that is propane that just gets flared off.
We could have been running cars on that for decades, but getting people to make their dirty polluting inefficient old petrol cars run on fuel that emits carbon dioxide and water with no HC, CO, SOx, NOx, or particulates was nowhere near as profitable as selling them lots of debt to buy cleaner greener diesels.
And we're burning the fuel they'd run on anyway.
Compressed propane is explosive, more so than liquid gasoline or batteries. Though batteries do burn hot and are hard to extinguish.
Actually it's considerably less explosive than petrol and far safer in a crash.
If a petrol-fuelled car goes on fire, the fuel tank will explode. The tanks are usually thin plastic and will split open in an accident, spilling fuel everywhere.
By contrast, the LPG tanks are pretty much indestructible and if you remove a tank from a car that's been on fire (a lot of taxis are LPG-powered and seem to go on fire late at night for some reason, especially if they're parked in the wrong part of town) you'll find the tank is still about as full as it was before the car got burnt.
Is that really true? Liquid gasoline does evaporate pretty quickly, yet doesn't need special metal tanks. Isn't propane sold and kept in pressurized tanks?
As I understand it, gasoline tanks on cars are unlikely to explode unless they are nearly empty.
The petrol in the tank will boil quickly and blow the tank apart, especially if it's already a bit melty. You won't get enough pressure for a proper "BLEVE" because the leaky plastic bucket won't hold enough pressure to stop it beginning to boil, but it'll throw burning fuel all over.
An automotive LPG tank is a bit different to the kind of thing you'd run your barbecue off with a "multivalve" that's got a float to shut off the filling port when it's full and act as a level gauge (similar to a petrol tank) and a pipe to pick liquid up from the bottom. You get "four hole" tanks with a vapour tap that you can use a normal regulator in, which is handy for things like motorhomes - same tank runs the engine and the cooker :-)
They're only pressurised to about 8 bar, low enough that you can use plastic pipe to connect them to the vapouriser at the engine. It's kind of nylon tubing with braid over and a PVC outer jacket, and it handles liquid propane at tank pressure.
If there's an overpressure because it gets really hot (like, car is on fire hot) it'll burp out a bit of gas which will cause a puff of flame but you're talking about something like a deodorant can on a bonfire (and don't tell me you've never done that).
Quite honestly, I'm more wary around the 15 bar air suspension tank and lines. That's where pressurised gases start to get a bit spicy.
That ... still sounds more dangerous than liquid gasoline to me. Though I suppose if it were cheaper and as plentiful then the world would switch. Gasoline was after all a byproduct of kerosine processing.
It's just not dangerous, period. There are multiple countries where every single taxi in the country pre-EVs ran on LPG, and now most of them still do though some get replaced by EVs. Ask anyone from there if they've ever heard of them blowing up. You'll get nothing but a "huh, what are you talking about?".
You think something that goes "puff" and emits a wee puff of flame every so often is more dangerous than something that just sprays liquid dynamite all over the incident?
I know someone who took a drill to a small propane tank and ended up life flighted to the hospital. Perhaps the equivalent with a gas can would be worse? I just don't see it.
I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon. I cannot and will not own a smart car any more I want to own a smart TV or smart fridge or smart toaster.
Post crash connectivity (as well as complex video classification) are part of the ncap standards now.
And with the way we are moving to centralized one system architectures, the device that does video processing can be the same soc that does smart infotainment.
Smart connectivity essentially comes "for free" if the manufacturer wants to hit 5 safety stars, so its not going away, and will come to ICE cars as they modernize the vehicle architectures.
Connect and infotainment must be firewalled from the engine computer for security reasons. It’s not like two raspberry pis are that expensive.
Not remotely true; Look up "one chip" designs.
Yes, there are some security threats, but solving them is more valuable than trying to design a car around true firewalls.
You must have missed the news about cars being hacked, while in movement no less. That some have tried to save money while risking lives is not an endorsement or evidence of a solved problem.
I hate that. If I live in the country, my car spies on me. If I live in the city everyone spies on me. One value I agree with the libertarians on is, I just want to be left alone.
Amusingly my Cupra Born in Australia is a “dumb” EV, because Cupra/VW didn’t put a SIM in the car in this country. It’s quite lovely really, though it means I have to go to Cupra for a firmware update.
We'll probably see the death of the dumb ICE car first.
I have hopes that the Slate vehicle will turn out to be a dumb EV, but I'm cynical enough that I want to wait til it hits the market and someone does a tear-down. https://www.slate.auto/
The differentiating factor is not EV vs ICE. All cars have or will soon have telematics and such.
Why? Are you worried from a liberty/privacy standpoint? "Smart" EV's are demonstrated to be significantly safer than "dumb" EVs. Waymo’s 2025/2026 data shows an 80–90% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities. [1, 2, 3, 4]
[1] https://www.reinsurancene.ws/waymo-shows-90-fewer-claims-tha...
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11305169/
[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39485678/
[4] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-Swiss-Re-h...
> "Smart" EV's are demonstrated to be significantly safer than "dumb" EVs. Waymo’s 2025/2026 data shows an 80–90% reduction in injury-causing crashes compared to human drivers in the same cities.
It's important to realize the reason for that.
Crashes by human drivers are hugely disproportionately by people who are driving drunk or with insufficient sleep or significant distractions etc. In other words, it's not a difference in the cars, it's a difference in the drivers. Waymo can beat a drunk driver, and therefore can beat the human driver arithmetic mean which has the drunk drivers averaged in.
That doesn't mean it's any safer than driving an ordinary car when you're not drunk.
Personally I’m not very keen on owning a vehicle the manufacturer can completely brick at will
So liberty then. I don't disagree with you, but this modern flashpoint in the classic debate between individual liberty and collective safety does bring up the question what is saving 50,000+ lives annually actually worth in terms of loss of personal freedoms? I am personally struggling with this debate having lost loved ones in this manner.
Remote bricking of cars does not save 50,000 lives.
That is not the argument being made. We are discussing how "dumb" vehicles (e.g. vehicles that contribute to 50,000+ fatalities annually) provide independence, privacy and freedom that "smart" vehicles (e.g. vehicles with self-driving that can be bricked at will) do not ensure.
Also you are conflating thing the poster may not have intended. I’ve not heard anyone complain about collision avoidance systems, antilock brakes etc. But spying packages, and touchscreen dash, hell no.
> I’ve not heard anyone complain about collision avoidance systems, antilock brakes etc
I hear people on this site complain about these things all the time.
I’m sure it’s happened in the history of the world, but otherwise approaching zero.
That actually is exactly the argument. GP posted about liberty concerns, he was met with claims of saving 50,000 lives.
I assume GP meant cars with internet connectivity features, not (real) self driving tech.
The assertion that 'I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon' led me to a different assumption. The ultimate aspiration of a "smart" EV is self-driving, which incorporates Internet connectivity features (e.g. digital mapping, over the air updates, etc).
"Smart" in all other classes of purchases typically means IoT / Internet connected.
The computerization of formerly mechanical features making it harder to DIY repair is a separate but also valid concern, though I'm not sure how it applies to EVs.
Added: see https://x.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2011758140510142890 for exactly the kind of thing that nobody wants.
Waymos are driverless vehicles. We're talking about always-connected human-driver vehicles. The comparison is not apt.
You're missing "reliability" in your rhetorical dilemma.
Slate, or pull the cellular connection: http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/offnet.html
Just get a used one that’s a decade old. The cell providers will all move on past 3g/4g etc and the cars won’t be able to connect. Plus I’m sure no one is paying to keep a cell connection going for a decade old EV.
Are EVs more “smart” than comparably priced ICE vehicles?
Not really, they are just newer than the average ICE car. Parent wants an EV from the early 2000s or the 1990s.
Depends. They get a virtually continual supply of standby power that can last for months if left untouched. So from a technology standpoint that enables them to do many things - from being connected to the network, aware of their location on the map, recording camera footage and other remote capabilities. ICE cars do have some of these but the huge battery packs on EVs make these very feasible.
EVs use 12V for standby just like ICEs. I guess it could occasionally recharge it from the main battery, but needing a jump is a thing for EVs also in theory. I’ve also had issues with the 12V disabling remote systems because of abnormal discharge (well, BMW has an issue with their lock on weak away in that it keeps drawing power if the fob gets near even if the car is locked).
Do they?
I was under the impression most EVs cut off the connection to the high voltage battery almost all the time they’re not in use.
They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
The only thing I’m aware of that special is that if that low voltage battery gets low enough the car will detect it and recharge it from the high voltage battery, temporarily connecting it for that purpose.
> They rely on a 12 V battery or a 48 V battery like a normal car.
Which leads to "fun" situations when that battery runs out, like not being able to get into your car or start it. However not much power is needed, so a tiny portable jump pack is enough to get things going.
Both me and my sister has experienced this, me a Nissan Leaf and her a VW ID.4, good times.
Both my old Bolt and Ioniq 5 had alternate key entry systems in the door handles.
Fair enough, at least my Leaf had that too, and I guess the ID.4 as well. However for the Leaf and my current car it's just the driver side, and you still can't get the car started, or turn on the heat say.
The latter can be an issue as my sister got stranded in the mountains during winter. Battery ran flat while they were on a long ski trip, and they couldn't get it fired up when they got back. Took a few hours before rescue vehicle arrived and gave them a boost.
I have too. Mach-E.
Well that was what I meant - the battery pack meaning the entire system of batteries, be it 1 or 2 or 3.
That really enables them to have a continuous state of power supply for a long long time. This cannot be achieved by ICE cars and not even hybrids for that matter.
In theory. In practice, a lot of EVs (and hybrids, which could do the same thing to a more limited extent) ship with the same cheap flooded lead acid 12v batteries that ship with ICE cars and don't handle constant charging/discharging well.
This puts a cap on how much the "smart" systems can do because it dramatically increases cycle count and thus the risk of the 12v battery losing the ability to produce enough voltage to start the car, leaving the driver marooned somewhere.
It could also result in a noticeable "vampire" drain on the high voltage battery which looks bad and could put you at a disadvantage vs. competitors.
My EV also has an extra-tiny 12V battery because it doesn’t need to crank anything over.
So extra drain would be an extra big problem.
you are mistaken. Not a single EV or hybrid car uses power directly from the traction battery for the 12 V system.
It depends on your definition. Tesla Model 3 has a dedicated low-current connection to the high-voltage battery that bypasses the main contactors, specifically to power the 12V system.
Even those models still include a 12 V battery. The point stands - the traction battery is not a replacement and larger energy source in any car.
Typically, yes. Although I chalk much of that up to traditional ICE companies being extremely slow to adopt new technology and implementating it poorly or only superficially.
We just bought a Cupra Tavascan; turns out VW Group Australia decided to forgo connected car features for EVs (or at least the ones we looked at).
Win.
Cupra Born in aus, same thing here haha
Though it means connected charging via API stuff doesn’t work. Not that it’s mattered to me!
Have you met https://slate.auto ? :)
Doesn't even have automatic windows.
Ah yes, the previously-marketed $20,000 Slate which is actually $30,000 now, still comes with nothing, and hasn't hit production yet. If only BYD could come in and destroy the non-smart/budget EV market.
I mean, dude asked for a non-smart car.. BYD isn't fitting that either.
Jesus Christ... this entire thing looks like such a far-fetched dream to me. I am worried for the VCs that dumped their money into this idea.
Jeff Bezos was one of them. He’ll be ok.
We'll see soon enough, they promise trucks on the road later this year.
Does the 2026 Nissan Leaf meet your criteria for a dumb car?
All it's connected features appear to come from Android Auto or Apple Car Play. AKA from a connection to your phone.
I like the looks of it because it appears to be a serious EV unlike too many which are just some company getting their toes wet.
Did the new Leaf get dumber? I have an old 2019 model and it’s connected. In the mobile app I see its location, turn on AC etc.
Does Nissan still not put telematics in the base model in 2026?
Looking at the specs page the base model includes "Dual 12.3" widescreen displays" Why? What the hell is wrong with modern cars?
Lots (most?) cars are going to LCDs for the instrument panel. The second screen is the infotainment.
My previous car had its infotainment system reboot several times while I was on the expressway. The idea of my instrument panel, or other more critical systems, crashing and rebooting while driving terrifies me.
The infotainment is not connected to the ECU and other car control electronics. At least not on my Tesla nor my F150 Lightning. You can reboot them to your hearts content while driving down the road.
Yes, but it is still rather unnerving when part of the car goes dark. It also makes me question the QA on this stuff. If that is crashing, will the other systems be crashing at some point as well? Is there redundancy? These are the questions that went through my mind while hoping the screen would come back on before I missed my exit. Even knowing the systems are completely separate, it spoke to overall quality.
I agree that it is unnerving, but I expect it to be normal in the future. They save a bunch of time by being able to push out a 90% product with low risk of catastrophe and just push updates later to fix it up. As a bonus, they can market the frequent updates as a benefit rather than cleaning up technical debt they would have had to iron out before shipping the first car.
I've had multiple vehicles have instrument cluster failures while operating them. None of those have been screens. "Analog" gauges have not actually been analog for a while. They're all digital controls being read by a computer.
Even a carbureted motorcycle I owned from the early 2000s had "analog" gauges with values given to it from a computer!
> from the early 2000s
For sure, and even earlier -- I had a 1995 Mustang with faux analog gauges, it has definitely been a Thing for decades now.
Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement. Plus touchscreens are much cheaper than buttons and knobs.
> Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement.
Sure, however....
> Plus touchscreens are much cheaper than buttons and knobs.
And how much LESS safe is using a touchscreen while operating a motor vehicle? Its literally no different from using an iPad.
There are large implementation differences in touch screens. My wife's care needs several second: turn the radio on, wait for the splash screen, press the drives heat control, wait for it to appear (100s of ms - long enough to notice) then find the button in the miedle of the screen - finally I can change the heated seats. My car that button is always has the button at the bottom of the screen in the same place so is is ms to look and see.
You still lose the tactile feedback of the button though. It's much harder to hit it while not looking versus a physical knob.
There's a reason Euro NCAP requires physical climate controls for ca models to get a five star safety rating starting in 2026.
Backup cameras are an enormous safety improvement.
You know that a backup camera can be added to practically any car right? My ~2002 Toyota has a Pioneer deck from around 2007 (I guess?) that supports reversing camera input. My wifes 2012 Toyota hybrid has a reversing camera using some POS cheap Chinese deck that's so shit it doesn't even support Bluetooth audio.
No part of reversing cameras are dependent on any of the "modern" trends in cars that are being discussed here.
I responded to a comment about screens.
You don't need 'dual 12.3" touch screens' for a reversing camera.
I should have mentioned a digital dashboard is also cheaper than a traditional one, I guess. But isn't that obvious?
What's that got to do with reversing cameras?
Dual screens. One for infotainment, including the backup camera, the other for the dash.
Have you never seen a newer model car?
I feel like you're deliberately missing the point.
You don't need them to have a reversing camera. Literally millions of cars over the past 2 decades have perfectly fine reversing cameras using the screen of a regular double-DIN deck (or fold out single-DIN deck).
Does Nissan still air cool their batteries or have they wised up?
The 2026 redesign has put in a proper liquid cooling loop.
(Battery heating is inexplicably an extra $300 option, and not available on the base trim AFAICS?)
Not happening any time soon, sorry. Car manufacturers want that sweet sweet subscription revenue.
Just buy one and remove the SIM card.
They often have eSIMs I think, but (depending probably on the car) pulling the modem's fuse can be safe. That's the case for the VW ID.4 at least.
If the modem has no fuse, physically damaging the NIC chip in the module will also work.
I want the car to be able to contact emergency services, but not to otherwise be able to use the cellular network. Is there a good way to sabotage the eSIM, without otherwise breaking the modem? (This would still allow the car to be tracked via IMEI, but I'm not too worried about that: anyone capable of that is also capable of tracking my actual phone, and anyone buying that data will already know what car I own.)
why do you want your car to contact emergency services? the people around you can do that just fine and very reliably.
How on earth did we survive as a species before our cars could make automated phone calls?
There's often been a few cases of "disappeared" people who went missing and it turns out they actually crashed off the road somewhere and weren't found for a week or two.
That's extreme of course but there are probably a lot of accidents that happen in low-density rural country areas or late at night when there aren't many people around. The automatic e-call from the car gives exact GPS coordinates and severity of the accident, even if you are unconscious or if your phone that was neatly in the cup holder before the crash was flung somewhere else (potentially even flew out of the car etc) and you're trying to find it while someone might be dying in the seat next to you etc.
People didn't survive before all this. It's a mandatory feature now because it's so effective at saving lives. 2 to 10% reduction in fatalities and serious injuries apparently. Would you also question why we have mandatory airbags and traction control?!
There's often no cell service in those locations as well.
right, but airbags, seatbelts, etc. are not internet connected. That's the critical distinction. I do not want the risks that come with my car connecting to the internet.
A much more reasonable ask would be for your car's systems to use your phone to place a call to emergency services. I absolutely do not want yet another internet connected device in my life, especially one like a car, where examples exist of hackers being able to disable the electronics remotely.
It uses a automated voice call and a SMS message I think. It's not internet based, it just dials 112 like a human would
The parent comment is interested in the survival of themselves and passengers. The survival of the human race is a low bar to pass.
I don’t give rats shit about species when it’s my safety involved. What even is this type of virtue signalling??
Funnily enough, I mostly hear about it from hyper-individualistic types. It's probably a facet of some American conservative-traditionalist belief cluster invented in the last 40 years, but it's hard to say for sure, because the people who say this tend to be bad at introspection, so can't answer my questions about it (even when they're curiously cooperating with my investigation).
I don't love smart TVs either, but why not just buy a smart TV and not use the smart features? I have a few "smart TVs", but I haven't even connected them to Wi-Fi, and I instead opt for an Nvidia Shield TV or just a laptop computer plugged in instead.
Depending on the TV, it will still kick you to their bloated “smart” interface all the time, instead of just simply cycling through inputs.
A few years ago it came out that one of the manufacturers (my hunch is Samsung but I don't remember the specifics) had their "smart" tvs aggressively try connecting to any and all networks it can find in range, if you didn't connect it to one.
I reluctantly bought an LG with webOS (least bad option available) a couple of years ago. For some reason they weren't content to let the TV menu/remote work with up/down/left/right buttons.
That's too fucking predictable, and anyone who's used a tv in the last 2 decades could use it....
Let's give it a fucking nipple, just like those horrific fucking IBM/Lenovo laptops.
Then of course it also tries to "help" by detecting HDR content and change view mode... while something is playing.... which makes the screen go black for several seconds.
> I just hope "dumb" EV's become a thing soon
What business case is there for a "dumb" EV?
By using touchscreens and software for most functionality, you dramatically reduce your supply chain overhead and better enhance margins (instead of managing the supply chain for dozens of extruded buttons, now you manage the supply chain of a single LCD touchscreen).
This was a major optimization that Chinese automotive manufacturers (ICE and EV) found and took advantage of all the way back in 2019 [0] - treat cars as consumer electronics instead of as "cars".
Edit: Any answer that does not take COGS or Magins into account is moot.
[0] - https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/automot...
The business case is that I will actually buy it. I won't buy "consumer electronics" garbage when I want to buy safe and reliable transportation.
That hasn’t worked for TVs. Or phones. Or plenty of other things.
Not sure what your point is when we're talking about cars, where fixed physical controls are demonstrably more usable and safer for drivers that need to keep their eyes on the road. Multiple manufacturers have pulled back from excessive touch controls (not just touchscreens, but capacitive buttons and sliders) and reinstated more traditional buttons and dials.
Physical controls and smart cars are not mutually exclusive. That’s why they’ve been fixing that.
I agree that was an idiotic trend.
But if someone wants a car without connectivity, it’s too late. The market is not strong enough to get rid of that. Most people either like it or don’t care enough to avoid it.
Just like most people liked or didn’t care enough to avoid smart TVs.
So that’s all you can buy.
I declined the master data agreement when Toyota updated it, and my car hasn’t connected to the Internet since. They also wanted to charge me like $20 a month for stuff like bothering me with notifications that my wife has failed to lock the car when I’m halfway across the city after the first year of ownership.
I suppose they could still remote kill the car though, and have no idea what would happen if I hit the emergency button.
Oh, true. I got sidetracked by alephnerd's argument about touchscreens.
^ This
The business case is the same as every “dumb” device since the dawn of time, up until maybe 10 years ago.
Sell and product with enough margin to make money. Don’t sell it at or below cost, then spy on your users and sell them to the real customers, the advertisers.
“Dumb” stuff has a very simple and honest business model. Market the cars by exposing what every other car brand is actually doing.
>Edit: Any answer that does not take COGS or Magins into account is moot.
Auto quality touch screes are not cheap. A high quality switch/button assembly is still cheaper for a give lifetime (100k, 200k, whatever), which is why it's what the 3rd world compact cars all use. The switches start losing when you start having a ton of different sets of features the car needs to support.
The case is that you’ll sell more cars giving people options. Slate is bucking the trend, we’ll see if successful.
Have you been in the new Model Y? I was all for the „dumb car” until I tried one of those. Never going back.
You only want „dumb” bc the other car companies fk’d it all up.
Other car companies fucked it up is funny way to put it. Tesla hasn’t made a new car in a decade and the whole lineup is for my 80-year old Dad. I have 2014 Tesla S, my neighbour 2025, same car. Tesla X is from a decade ago, Tesla 3 is basically Toyota Corolla and Y is basically Model 3 that was pumped up a bit to look like a “crossover”
Wow. This comment makes me wonder if really earth is flat.
when I bought my Tesla S there was a lot of head injuries from people turning around to see this new amazing cars. now, not only are sales tanking but the cars look so old and dated that my first assumption when I see say Model Y is “gotta be someone’s grandma”
when was the last time you saw a Tesla and went “oh cool car!”? been awhile, right? Now ask the same question for BMW, Benz…
> Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again
FYI, if you want to search for this, it is called "The long tailpipe" theory (1) or "long tailpipe fallacy".
1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe
And it is a fallacy for obvious reasons, including
a) electricity generation is more flexible, and rapidly shifting to solar and other non-polluting sources.
b) Moving pollution away from people is better. Cars are inherently around people, streets, residences etc.
c) One centralised plant with no weight restrictions is easier to control for emissions and efficiency than many thousands of mobile, weight-constrained power plants.
d) Wikipedia: "The extraction and refining of carbon based fuels and its distribution is in itself an energy intensive industry contributing to CO2 emissions."
We are about 2-3x battery capacity to never look back at ICE vehicles ever again. That or 5 min to 80% charge times with current capacity.
The current generation of Lucid, BMW, etc. are 400+ mile vehicles.
You think we need 800-1200 mile batteries?
As for charge speed, the twice a year someone needs more than 400 miles isn't as significant in real world EV usage...
I plug in on a dopey 1.3kW (~115V, ~12A) outlet and my car is at 80% charge in the morning. For commuting, a 5pm to 7am charge is ample for most people living ordinary lives.
And if I have to park on the street at night where I live?
Once a week you plug it in for ~30 minutes somewhere.
EVs charge unattended, so they can be left charging while you do something else. Shopping malls often have chargers.
At city distances and city speeds BEVs often have enough battery to last a week or two, and the battery doesn't drop when the car isn't used.
You don't have to charge to full if you don't have time. Even if you plug it in for 10 minutes, you'll probably return home with more charge that when you left.
I can't think of the last time I've willingly gone to a store to shop. I do all my shopping online and everything is delivery including groceries. Going to a physical store feels like a huge waste of time to me.
I drive quite a bit for work as I drive around and calibrate and repair lab equipment so it just seems like a major inconvenience to my schedule to have to go places to charge for awhile so often and hope they are working and hope they are not being used.
Based on my firsthand experience, cold weather (big one) or hauling/towing significantly reduces that 400 mile range (sometimes by 50%+). Yes to comfortably get 400-500 miles per charge in the worst case scenario it needs to be atleast 2x.
If you're saying 100% only EVs with no use cases whatsoever for gasoline, then I suppose so. I don't think that's a smart goal, though.
More like, more people should understand how EVs can easily work for them, and then try to shoehorn gas-powered vehicles into the few niche they need to be in.
How often does someone need a 400 mile range again? Towing? When is the last time you towed something 400 miles? The most I ever towed was... using a rental truck and a rental trailer when I moved. (Anecdotes are not data!) But why in a rational purchasing decision would I need an 800 mile EV battery for a car just because sometimes it's cold out?
It depends on your lifestyle. I haul my RV around sometimes two weekends a month. In my F-150 lightning I get around 100 miles between charges which is pretty dismal. I’m assuming you live in a city or in Europe. Where I live people regularly haul RVs, boats etc. I also frequently drive long distances and even in the best case scenario 2.5 hours of driving followed by 40 minutes of charging is a pain. These aren’t unusual driving patterns where I live.
RVs need to have a dual purpose battery pack on board. I feel like long distance boat hauling is rare. Either they're driving across town to a launch, or it's moored/docked for the season.
No need to double twice. 250 miles (~4 hours of driving) is about what you want. Pretty much everybody needs to bathroom at least that often. And nowhere on a road in the continental US is more than 150 miles from a charger.
So yes, you want 400-500 miles of range, but that's because you've doubled the 250 for weather, safety margin, etc.
I believe we need 700-800 miles of stated range which will result in 400-500 miles of actual range in the worst possible conditions. That’s about what you get from a tank of gas and what it would take to reduce range anxiety. Stopping every 2 hours for 40 minutes doesn’t make sense, stopping every 4 hours for 40 minutes is much, much better.
Which is much better served by faster charging than a larger battery.
I want to drive for 4 hours and then stop for 20 minutes. So >250 miles of 70mph range between 10-80% charge.
I recently did a day trip of 800km while it was freezing and snowing. Yes the range is impacted, so i never did more than 200km in one go. Then a quick 15 minutes break to recharge and continue. It takes a bit longer, but not bad enough to go back to ICE cars. EV drives so much nicer.
> Some people argue the source of electricty can be contested against because that involves fossil fuel burning again
I would argue that this provides us the possibility of energy flexibility, which is a good thing given the current global geopolitical situation
> I hope ICE cars completely become a thing of the past in the next couple of decades to come.
for this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE. I don't see this. On top of this EVs tend to push ideas from Software/Tech companies, such as recurring revenues (because the underlying technology lends itself to it better).
Personally I'm unsure that this will be accepted by all consumers as much as is needed. After all the automotive marketing has since Ford insisted that driving was about "freedom". So some pivot needs to happen in the messaging. Suppose decades is a lot of time to change it. Personally I think EVs are nonsense, and a better utopia would be making sure public transport is abundant, high-quality and free.
> For this to happen the EVs depreciation needs to drastically improve compared to ICE.
Define "improve" ?
One way for "ICE cars completely become a thing of the past" is for there to be lots of cheap, reliable, second-hand EVs. If you can buy a good used EV for less then yes, a barrier to quitting ICE cars has been removed.
That's an improvement. The car doesn't have to be an asset, it could be more like a utility.
EV depreciation seems to be driven by
1) rapidly advancing state of the art, which should eventually stabilise and
2) Fears of battery lifespan, which in current vehicles is largely unfounded
https://www.wired.com/story/electric-cars-could-last-much-lo...
https://insideevs.com/news/763231/ev-battery-degradation-lif...
Public transport will never recreate the freedom of car ownership.
It’s a collectivist dream not rooted in reality.
I’m not going to try to convince you that you can’t control your immediate environment better in a car, but not having to deal with parking or insurance or traffic is quite freeing.
Rarely in everyday life situations do I feel as claustrophobic as being in a car in traffic in a typical road.
Can’t change direction (one lane no junctions), can’t change speed (vehicles in front and behind), can’t stop (flow of traffic), can’t break concentration (driving), can’t change body position (car cabin is tiny, seats and hand/feet controls are fixed, no space to stand), can’t look away for more than a moment (responsibility of driving).
And the only places to go are on the predetermined road, from a car park, to a car park, following a lot of strict prescribed rules about how.
This meme of “freedom” is brainwashing and marketing (which has been picked up as an identity thing by the right wing recently).
There’s nothing free about having to use a $20,000 vehicle to buy bread because no other options are available.
I do not own a vehicle, and most of my life I've depended on public transit. Lately, I take Waymos or I ride scooters, or use public transit as usual.
Sometimes, for special errands, I rent a car. For example, I intended to move across town last year, so I rented a car for 3-4 days.
It was the most excruciating pain I could have. I chose a little Mitsubishi Mirage, and firstly, it was the middle of July in the Sonoran Desert, and the A/C hardly worked, so I was sweating, and the car would heat up real good in parking lots. No sun shades, dark upholstery. Also, the USB connection was flaky, so sometimes my phone didn't charge, and whether or not, it was directly exposed to the Sun and overheating.
By the second day, my legs hurt a lot. I had spent an unexpected amount of time on my feet and walking around, despite the vehicle. Do you know how big parking lots are these days?!
I tried sitting down at every opportunity. I have a running gag/dispute at my bank to see whether they will allow me to "sit down" at the "ADA/Disabled" teller window.
Driving home at night on the last night, my leg cramped up really bad. I was in such pain, I nearly pulled over because it was my accelerator/brake leg and I was going to lose control of the car.
Thankfully I was able to hold it together, and returned the car the next day, but boy I did not want such a vehicle ever again. And it was not a stick-shift; it was an automatic transmission.
Next time I'm going to be really sure that the USB and A/C work. And that my legs are super-comfortable and has cruise control.
No one is forcing you to drive if you have these peculiar feelings about it.
For most of the country you can't really get groceries or have reasonable employment without operating a car. We've designed our cities to make it effectively a requirement.
That’s not true, that’s your mental gymnastics to try to defend the ideology you have taken on.
While there are no alternatives with similar funding and societal support to driving, car dependency forces many people to drive even for trivial things. Most car journeys are less than three miles. That’s a bonkers state of affairs for the planet and for human history.
All 110 billion humans who ever lived couldn’t possibly be considered “not free” because they didn’t have cars to get to the nearest stream or nut tree. Wild animals aren’t considered to have “no freedom” because they don’t own cars.
It entirely depends on where you live. You could live in a dense urban area with abundant transport options, where owning a car is more trouble than it's worth, or in a more spread-out community where it's nigh-essential.
You know what would make me more free? Being able to just walk and bike to all the places I want to go, and not have to pay car insurance and the energy cost and the high upfront cost or a loan to buy a giant chunk of metal every time I need a loaf of bread.
You know what would make my kids more free? If they could just play outside without the giant death machines flying by with their operators looking at their phones well over the speed limit.
I'm trapped in a world where I need to spend a good chunk of my life in a cage just to work and eat, and you call that "freedom".
You’re free to live in some dense urban environment where amenities are a five min walk away, and everyone relies on underground trains, busses and taxis.
If you think “freedom” means not having a car, then there are options for you.
I moved out of a dense urban public-transport-and-cycling environment into a countryside town with heaps of space, and where everyone happily owns cars to give them the freedom to go wherever they like, whenever they like, taking family and cargo with them, without issue.
I would never go back to the urban environment, waiting around for public transport, being limited to the routes served by public transport, useless cycle lanes everywhere (what good is a bike when I need to transport my 3 year old, 6 year old, and all our shopping?). And the stifling density of housing and amenities was oppressive and unpleasant.
There is a better way. Move to countryside town, buy an EV that cost negligible amounts to run, cases negligible local pollution, and is a joy to own.
> You’re free to live in some dense urban environment where amenities are a five min walk away, and everyone relies on underground trains, busses and taxis.
Not really. People are often tied to lots of areas for a number of reasons, and we don't build this much of this kind of urban environment in the US. We've made it largely illegal to build this in most of the country. I'm not free to really live that kind of life.
For most Americans, it's not an option.
> what good is a bike when I need to transport my 3 year old, 6 year old, and all our shopping?
If it was designed well enough your six year old should be able to ride on their own bike with you. You can take a lot of stuff with you with an even mildly powerful electric bicycle. And I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to have the option for a car, but we've designed our urban spaces to be actively hostile to everything but a car when we really didn't have to. Freedom is being able to choose, not be forced into only one option.
Yep and politicians believe they can recreate utopian Singapore wherever they are governing. Regarding eliminating car use.
> Hey! Stop right there! Do you have a license and registration for that freedom?
God I love freedom so much.
The pollution and grime that cars produce comes from tires rubbing off, not exhaust. (The exhaust pollution is mostly invisible.)
Electric cars are heavier and produce more tire grime.
> No surprises.
What about all the resources and people used to develop the cars?
Six months break even and then it’s more carbon friendly than an ICE for the rest of its working lifetime
Tesla has used more than 40 billion of capital
They've made almost 9 million cars overall, with a lot of those made in the last several years. Spreading it over the cars they've made so far, 40,000 / 9 = 4,444.44.
Doesn't seem that crazy. I'm not seeing your point.
That 40 billion is investment money, not the cost of goods sold. I’m saying its not obvious at all that environmental cost is recouped.
That's 9 million (and probably many more unless Tesla disappears tomorrow) far cleaner cars on the road, offsetting what would have probably been ICE sales.
I'm no Tesla-stan but spending $40B over a decade to inject massive amounts of change in an entrenched industry to move forward in efficiency and emissions sounds like a pretty good investment to me.
Now do the same for internal combustion cars. What a silly argument.
Yes do the same for ICE - very constructive suggestion. Completely unnecessary to call the argument silly though.. There are marked differences in what's needed in an EV vs an ICE, most obvious of which is the giant battery with a very different supply chain.
You're then acting as if the energy supply chain and it's impacts are about the same. They're radically different.
It’s probably still more net efficient in the long run. Besides, the main advantage EVs bring isn’t being more environmentally friendly. The main advantage is that it allows a nation to have more flexibility with its energy sources. i.e. an EV can run on anything that can generate electricity like coal or natural gas, while ICE cars mostly only run on gasoline.
Is that true? EV have much higher emissions of micro plastics and pfas (or variations thereof) due to increased tier degradation. EVs are typically way heavier than similar ICE due to the batteries and combined with the higher torques, tires wear faster.
> EV have much higher emissions of micro plastics and pfas (or variations thereof) due to increased tier degradation
I find those claims highly suspect: I own an EV and haven't had to change the tires more often than I did on a gasoline-powered car. My EV bought in 2021 still runs on original tires and they're fine (although I do change from winter to summer tires, so that's 2 sets technically).
I suspect black PR, and there is always a grain of truth in black PR: emissions are indeed likely to be higher. Probably not "much higher" and probably not in a way that really matters.
Just because a tire lasts as long doesn't mean it isn't wearing in different ways. EV specific tires are a lot different than their ICE counterparts.
This isn't "black PR". It's comparing apples and oranges. But throw non-EV tires on one and you'll definitely chew those tires up much more quickly [0][1][2][3].
[0] https://www.wheel-size.com/articles/how-are-electric-vehicle... [1]: https://www.pepboys.com/car-care/tire-care/ev-tire-wear [2] https://recharged.com/articles/do-ev-tires-wear-faster [3] https://www.evuniverse.com/whats-the-difference-between-regu...
But my Ioniq 5 is lighter than a large number of ICE SUVs on the road.
While it is true that EVs are heavier than the equivalent ICE vehicle, and that this causes more tyre and road wear.
1) this is not the only or even the overriding factor when comparing the two. There are engine emissions (none for EVs) and braking (EVs have regen braking)
2) There is a trend for larger, heavier ICE vehicles in the USA as well. Big trucks and SUVs. It is very selective to argue against EVs in this way without also arguing against these.
I have a heavy and high performance EV (Tesla Model S) and I have replaced my tires twice in the last six years. So it’s about the same as an ICE vehicle in that regard.
One thing that differs is brake wear. My car is ten years old and still on its original brake pads and discs. The regen braking is amazing for avoiding mechanical braking. So that means less particle emission from brakes, compared to ICE.
>"I have a heavy and high performance EV (Tesla Model S) and I have replaced my tires twice in the last six years. So it’s about the same as an ICE vehicle in that regard."
Well no, it's not "the same". We have things like physics to tell us that more torque and more weight means more tire wear, despite your anecdote. There are even studies on this. They also have a greater impact on road wear.
EVs have many advantages over ICEs. I don't understand why people have to lie and say they are worse nowhere.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-orig...
They were saying "the same" in context of how often you have to replace the tires. Now, EV tires are often a slightly different compound (and more expensive) to deal with the higher weight and torque. I don't know how that plays into the particle emissions from those tires though.
It is amazing the amount of bs and grasping at straws that the oil company will push to keep their amazing polluting stuff going on
No I'm sure fracking and pipelines and all the crap the oil industry needs just to exist does not have any pfas or micro plastics
Micro plastics pollution is a relatively new problem and thus many direct and indirect effects are not yet fully understood. Moving emissions from CO2 (gas) to micro particles (solid), means emissions will be deposited more local to roads. Moving emissions from 'big oil' installations to the road, means more local emissions/deposits nearer to your home and backyard.
Additionally, due to the fourth power law [0], you only need 20% weight increase to obtain a 2x road wear. Asphalt/concrete production is also accompanied with substantial emission, although progress is made to reduce it [1].
Is there a break-even for weight vs emission reduction? And if so, is it somewhere between personal and cargo vehicles or is it 'EV always better'?
Are we trading 'well-known and bad for global environment'-emission for 'poorly-understood and possibly very bad for local environment on a global scale'-emission?
Of course, with the available information EVs seem to be the better solution, but it should not prevent us from researching/solving unknown effects or being careful choosing a single solution on such a large scale.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
[1] https://www.pbl.nl/uploads/default/downloads/pbl-2022-decarb...
> A 1988 report by the Australian Road Research Board stated that the rule is a good approximation for rutting damage, but an exponent of 2 (rather than 4) is more appropriate to estimate fatigue cracking.
> The accuracy of the law of the fourth power is disputed among experts, since the test results depend on many other factors, such as climatic conditions, in addition to the factors mentioned above.
It's incredible one agency in the '50s did some small limited tests and everyone will parrot it as if it's tablets handed down from God.
"The oil companies! The oil companies!". Yeah, they only lie, nobody needs their products! We all hate it! Buy a car from a good company with honest leadership, like Tesla (made of oil products)!
The real scandal isn’t just battery degradation… it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground.
Battery swapping changes the game entirely. Imagine a national network of exchange stations (co-located with existing petrol infrastructure, you can use the overhead canopy for solar). Standard pack sizes scaled by vehicle class: compact cars get 2 cells, vans get 4, lorries get 8.
Whoever owns these battery packs now has skin in the game for longevity. Their profit depends on keeping packs in service for 20+ years, not selling you a new car.
Suddenly the R&D money flows towards batteries that last, obsolescence now costs them money, and isn’t a happy accident that keeps you hooked on buying more cars.
You’d still have the option to buy your own packs outright if you only ever charge at home, but the network creates the economic pressure for genuine improvement of longevity in battery tech that’s completely missing today.
I’m aware that a company called “Better Place” failed. But they were a startup trying to strong-arm the automotive industry. A nationally coordinated infrastructure concern is different, and the air quality data from this study suggests we can’t afford to keep muddling through - and I really think that peoples concerns about batteries are not misplaced.
Perfect is the enemy of good, but damned if we can’t at least align incentives for better.
Battery swapping is a dead technology, it is simply not economical. It is too expensive, much harder to scale and incompatible with cell-to-chassis designs. Industry barely managed to agree on a charging connector!
Meanwhile, battery longevity is essentially a solved problem. Manufacturers do have an incentive to improve it due to customer demand, and modern NMC chemistry, cooling and BMS have improved significantly to the point where they're expected to maintain 70-85% capacity after 10 years[1], far from worthless. At this point, components like the motor likely fail before the battery does.
Given the much lower failure rate of everything else in an EV, TCO is dramatically better than ICE cars even with degradation[3].
Manufacturers like Mercedes even guarantee 70% health after 8 years (a worst-case estimate).
There is a significant commercial incentive for aftermarket battery repair shops. EVClinic[2] is very successful and a glimpse into the future.
[1]: https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
[2]: https://evclinic.eu/
[3]: https://evclinic.eu/2025/12/31/diesel-mythology-vs-ev-realit...
believe it when I see it.
no car you can buy with this longevity tech, no phone either- same issue.
The Tesla Model S has been out for almost 13 years, so you can already see it.
Your phone doesn't have liquid cooling temp management and is probably recharged daily. With a car that has 300 miles range, a lot of people probably only do a full cycle every week.
It was recently in the media that old Tesla’s are now worthless once the batteries are dead and that this is happening now.
Heres one such source but theres hundreds if you care to look: https://min.news/en/auto/2a2636e0ac962b5d94ee68babcd09a3d.ht...
So 7000 to 8000 euros to replace a battery of a 80 to 100k car?
It depends on how many miles it has driven and how much other maintenance the car has had. It's a big expense but a battery dying is probably comparable to a timing belt breaking, those aren't cheap either and thats not even for luxury cars...
where did you get that number?
parts and labour is $15,000 to $22,000 from all sources I can find.
Heres one: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-replace...
The article linked speaks of 70 to 80k yuan, which I then turned into euros
for parts only, in china
but, sure, fair enough.
> are now worthless once the batteries are dead
13 years old dead luxury cars are worthless, yes, especially when the tech is quickly evolving. That doesn't say anything about how long it takes for them to die or how reliable the tech is.
And even those those ancient luxury cars can often be repaired by a third-party shop like EVClinic.
There aren't many 10+ year old EVs yet, and demand is limited. This is changing, and EVClinic will be the first of many aftermarket EV repair shops.
Old ICE cars are also usually dead when major drivetrain parts fail after a decade and a half.
For old ice car the solution often is to swap with used parts from wrecked vehicles. Not suitable for batteries.
We had a 2010 Ford Transit van (diesel) and after 189000km, we sold it because the parts were becoming too hard to source (disclaimer: in New Zealand).
For old EVs the solution is to deal with used parts from wrecked vehicles. It can absolutely be suitable for batteries.
> it’s that manufacturers have zero incentive to solve it. Your car becoming worthless after a decade suits them down to the ground.
They've been aiming for the same or worse in regular cars for over a decade now.
That being said, there is an incentive for EVs: competition from China:
https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/19/byd-extends-battery-war...
Very much like when Japanese cars first got a foothold in the US.
I get what you’re saying but I think it misses that battery longevity can be a competitive advantage for the companies with better technology.
The Nissan Leaf 15 years ago came with a 5-year/100,000km battery warranty, now Toyota are at 10-year/1,000,000km.
You’d be proving me wrong with this fact if the data showed that they’re moving more units because of this marketing.
As it stands the Nissan Leaf is an outlier only in Norway, where it was practically a free car due to subsidies, otherwise their growth is pretty much in line with other EVs.
I was giving the Leaf as an example of a worse warranty offering from 15 years ago sorry. Toyota now have the longer warranty compared to all the others, and even as a fairly poor EV they’re hugely popular with taxi drivers etc.
I’m a bit EV obsessed so spend a lot of time answering questions about them online, the longer warranty is 100% impacting buying choices.
This seems like something EV buyers would care about. If they don't, it raises the question of why a solution is needed at all.
“I’ll sell my car before it becomes an issue” - common statement I’ve heard.
It needs to be fixed, because aside from someone being left with the economic bag of disposing of the vehicle, it is actually an environmental issue to build these batteries.
Just not as bad of an issue as running ICE cars for the same period of time.
People tend not to think more than a certain amount of time away for some reason.
It is a horrible setup that the manufacturers would much rather sell you a new car than a new battery.
We saw this play out with phones. We used to have easily swappable batteries. And since battery chemistry was (and hopefully still is and will continue) improving, by the time you actually swapped the battery there were ones around with a higher capacity than the battery the phone shipped with. And typically for little money.
Now everything is glued and messy to swap so the manufacturer can sell you a battery swap for much much more money than it used to cost.
I believe cars should have swappable somewhat standardized batteries. Even if not swappable by the user, it should not be a more than 1h job at the mechanic (ANY mechanic, not just the manufacturer).
Imagine picking a car and not caring about battery at all. You want a Tesla but BYD batteries are better - so get a Tesla without a Battery and put a BYD one it it. Or maybe Tesla has the best batteries right now, so you get that. And once you have to swap the battery, you again just pick the best manufacturer at the time - who might not even be a car manufacturer at all but rather someone specialized in batteries exclusively.
And since hopefully 10 years have passed since you bought the last battery, chemistry has improved so you pick from options that are all (hopefully a lot) better than the battery you had initially.
We could have some proper competition where manufacturers would have to compete on pricing and performance.
But car manufacturers don't care. They want as much of your money as they can get. And opening their cars to third party batteries and not keeping up as many walls as they can is the opposite of that.
So until forced by regulation every manufacturer will continue to put batteries in their cars that only they themselves will sell and put a slightly different one in every car. So guess what, even if you swap your battery in 10 years, they will sell you the same battery you can buy right now. Because the newer stuff is for new cars only and compatible with your car.
Battery degradation is largely overhyped and there is growing real world data to illustrate that in practice it's not a dealbreaker. Million mile batteries now exist.
Show me a million mile gas/diesel engine.
Also let's not forget that Toyota has a well funded corporate program rewarding employees to spread anti-EV propaganda.
You mean this, or something else; https://www.motorbiscuit.com/ev-battery-last-3-million-miles...
A theoretical battery that is not actively produced, let alone actually gone the distance…?
On the other side I can tell you at least SaaB has had a million mile ICE car, from 1989. There’s assuredly more than this.
> 1989 Saab 900 SPG - 1 Million Miles
https://www.saabplanet.com/1989-saab-900-spg-with-1-million-...
Anecdata, my i3 range was not perceptibly reduced after ~8 years, 82k miles. But the pack was thermally managed, and from what I understand, also didn’t allow you to go to true 0 or true 100 SOC.
Tesla lets you use it all, which gets bigger range numbers (for a time) but at the cost of degradation, if you use it.
It will take a regulator fix. Likely from the EU, who brought us USBC instead of plugpack hell.
So you don't think the free market will force manufactures to compete on better batteries? I always thought the benefit of the free market was that it forced companies to compete on product quality... /s
To be honest with you, the free market does work when incentives are aligned.
If you get maximum profit from the maximum social good, people will do that (or find a way to cheat); but as it stands, theres money to be made in not doing this and the consumer won’t care too much if its 9 years or 10 years that their car lasts, so its not hurting sales to not fix this (even if fixed perfectly, it would take 10 years to prove after all!).
I think I’m dreaming, the investment would have to be enormous, who wants to hold stock of so many batteries? Who will convince manufacturers to integrate standardised batter packs instead of the more profitable “built-in phone style” that is used today, and the automotive marketing machine is really strong and will (correctly) lean on the idea that by having the battery replaceable would require less rigid car bodies, so their current incentive would be to fight this initiative and they would probably lead with the safety angle.
The anti-EV propaganda already works pretty well with the very little it has to work with (farming batteries is harmful), so, imagine what they could do with something of actual substance.
>The anti-EV propaganda already works pretty well
Is that why EV sales have absolutely sky rocketed?
That’s because of the government subsidies.
The USA's ICE auto industry has been bailed out twice (in 2008 and 1979) and is currently protected from imports.
What free market?
i moved to beijing in 2015.. and i have to buy a air purifier, prepare masks for winter. pepople talks about air polutions so much, it feels like we are struggle, not living a life. i remember one day, it was so bad, i have to wear gas mask to go outisde, i know it's rare, and people are staring, but yes, its that hard.
it's 2026 now, you barely see bad days in Beijing, most people wear mask only for the flu, not for the air pollutions. basically its only a few days in winter. and just wait for the wind, it all goes away.
shutdown factory and move them to other places sure helps, but nobody will deny that adopt ev contributes a lot. i remeber the sales data for 2024 is nearly 45%+ of new cars are EV, and 2025 is 51.8%. i'm sure the number will go up and reach nearly 100%.
Both ICE and EV cars require a support infrastructure. As sales trends change, so the emphasis on support infrastructure changes, and that accelerates the trend.
For example EVs depend on charging, so we're seeing more public charge points, as well as more home chargers, work chargers and so on.
ICE depends on gas stations (which is the tip of the gasoline distribution industry.) It also depends on ICE mechanics. As demand for those services drop off, so they'll become harder to find. (To be clear, that's not happening soon, there are a LOT of ICE cars out there...)
But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
> But 50 years from now most of that ICE infrastructure will have disappeared.
I'm guessing it will be already in 20-30 years from now. In 5-10 years from now, no-one will buy an ICE vehicle. Add to those 10 years a lifetime of 10-20 years for the last sold ICE vehicle and you get 20-30 years. So 20-30 years from today there will not be many ICE cars rolling on the streets and most gas stations and other needed infrastructure will be gone as it is not economical to stay in business.
The average car is 12 years old (us, but other countries are similar). so gas stations are likely still common in 20 years. in 10 years new gas stations will be built a lot less often, but nobody will close an existing one that they wouldn't close anyway.
If GP's prediction that no one is buying ICE cars 5-10 years from now, and the average car is 12 years old, by 20 years from now we're down to less than half the current ICE fleet by natural replacement.
But the replacement isn't random. Rather people who drive the most all already replaced their vehicles to minimize costs. Gas stations would, under just natural replacement, be down well below 50% of their former sales.
And that makes it worse. Gas is less conveniently available, and more expensive. Replacement isn't just targeted towards people who drive a lot, but it's well above replacement.
I'd be surprised if there was 10 years between the last mass marketed gas cars being sold and the entire mass market fleet of cars no longer using gas. The infrastructure becomes unprofitable and ceases to exist in a negative feedback loop.
Excetpt there will be a long tail of stations that wouldn't instal pumps today - but since they already have them they will keep selling gas so long as everything passes inspections.
I mentionedf a lifetime of 10-20 years for a car. So 20 lifetime and 10 years from now is when the last ICE car is sold that makes 30 years from now there will be basically no ICE cars circulating.
I think a lot of the smaller gas stations will slowly die off and we'll see continued growth of those kinds of fuel stations known for their food adopt EV charging as well and grow to offer food + energy whether that be gas or electric.
Buc-ees these days has tons of rows of EV charging, often both Tesla and Mercedes brands. I imagine we'll see a similar thing with other brands.
It varies. As one station dies that temborarly strengthens the others on the same corner. Ev charging on highways will remain big business, but small rural town that support a few gas stations will support no ev charger because everyone charges at home.
I do largely agree with this. Those small and more remote rural towns are also likely some of the last places to highly electrify due to the particular needs of those kinds of lifestyles. You're far more likely to be towing a horse trailer if you live in such a place, which is something EVs will probably struggle with for a long while.
farmers already own their own gas station on the farm. They have on road diesel forethe trucks, off road diesel for the tractors (no road tax, otherwise the same - DOTs check this so nobody cheat), and gasoline for cars that never go to town (also for lawn mowers). Of course distance from town matters, if you live near town you won't have your own, but the farther town is the more useful your own personal supply is.
True, but there's also that range of household that aren't truly a real farm operation yet live in that kind of space.
Half the US takes pride in pollution though, and despise efforts to reduce it, so that's not gonna be the case everywhere.
In the US, money talks. I believe EV cars will be much cheaper to produce than ICE cars in 10 years from now. They will also have lower maintenance costs, better performance and lower energy costs. So there will be no reason to buy an ICE car over an EV in 10 years from now.
EVs are already cheaper to produce. That’s why the US has a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs.
And the air conditions in Chengdu and Chongqing are getting worse with the recent smog making the headlines, despite also one of the highest EV adoption rates in western China. Being able to mandate factory shutdown surely helps for Beijing, but is unfortunately not the case in other chinese cities
Factories were one source, but in-home coal furnaces were a gigantic pollutant source in aggregate. I read articles about villagers banned from this who couldn't afford cleaner heat sources. Is that still the case?
Yes. This issue was exposed by netizens on social media and has been widely reported by numerous media. The local government has now lowered natural gas prices and increased subsidies. but i think the cost is still likely higher than burning coal. Hopefully they will continue to improve this situation.
That’s true. I remember during start of Covid lockdown we had a curfew for a few weeks yet the pollution was at 250-300. Mostly because of home heating.
It’s well known at this point, it’s always polluted in the winter yet summers are “fine”.
I want the future to focus more on the brakes and tire dust, and the increase in cancers and other problems by people who live near busy roads or highways experience. Nobody studies this, and combustion or battery, everyone is affected by it. Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.
It gets studied. EVs are often heavier, which is worse for tire wear, but use regenerative braking, which is better for brake dust.
Overall, EVs are likely a net win on the combination of these two things, and a big win on exhaust emissions, but it would be nice if we could shift to lighter and smaller vehicles and increase the mix of non-cars such as e-bikes and mass transit.
Source: https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/4...
ICE cars also require large and heavy trucks to transport fuel around constantly.
ICE cars also often leak all sorts of liquids onto roadways (and thus into our water ways).
This will be met with consternation, not appreciation. The people who comment about brake dust in EV topics are the people who complain about birds when talking about windmills.
We know it is disingenuous because no one cares about this when discussing overweight trucks and SUVs. Good news about a reduction in pollution from EVs? Can't have that. It's like the "At what price" meme around headlines about China.
Going forward, I will downvote any comment about "brake pollution" and "tire pollution" that does not begin with - specifically - "This is a bigger issue for large, gas-powered trucks and SUVs", and invite you all to do so to. The association of these shitty comments with EV topics is as organic as lighter fluid.
Hi, I’m indeed the same person. I also hate oversized trucks. I’m generally against things that make the world worse for marginal benefits.
The cybertruck clocks in at around the same weight as oversized trucks. Whenever I see people alone in either, I’m pretty annoyed.
Semis for long haul are also annoying and we should substantially increase rail infra in the US
Isn't brake pollution a lot less with EVs?
The theory is that they're heavier so more brake dust ... but that is offset to a degree by regen braking (which hybrids have too). It's a silly argument though. Brake dust is definitely bad but the idea of keeping ICE cars to minimize brake dust doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
I'm the person who commented it and I don't appreciate your straw man here.
Please don't downvote comments because you don't agree with the argument. Downvotes should be for comments that add little to the discussion.
I agree that discussing weight with regard to EVs, without acknowledging that (in the US) the fashion is for big heavy ICE cars is just as polluting is disingenuous.
That said, outside the US the trend is for smaller cars, and equally the weight of a small EV is not hugely dissimilar to a common ICE car.
Frankly I'm not sure there's a whole lot to say about tire dust- cars need tires. EVs generate less brake dust. If there's a tire dust discussion to be had, then that discussion is independent of the vehicle fuel source.
And wouldn't you say that when a comment is made in bad faith, or misrepresents (deliberately or not) a major component of its argument, that it adds little to the discussion?
It's all well and good to have high-minded ideals of pure intellectual discussion, but in the real world, there are many people who are coming into the comments with a strong political agenda in mind, and are both willing and able to make disingenuous and bad-faith comments to support that agenda.
Presenting the increased tire dust of heavier vehicles as being an exclusive property of EVs—a bright-line differentiator between them and ICE cars—is disingenuous and misrepresents the facts. I think it's reasonable to say that makes it "add little to the discussion".
I understand that it can feel like you're having to make the same point over and over (I certainly feel like that sometimes) but personally I'm more inclined to give the person the benefit of the doubt when it comes to good faith.
Out in the world there are common misconceptions which are propagated by vested interests and believed by many at first glance.
Having the opportunity to see those arguments, and rebuff them , (over and over again) is key to balancing the public discourse.
I agree, some argue in bad faith, that's going to be true in some cases. But I think most times it's honest misconceptions.
As a personal policy, that can work: you can always choose which conversations to engage in and which to ignore.
As a site policy, it cannot. If you demand that everyone coming there in good faith treat everyone else as also operating in good faith, even when they open with arguments that are very common when sealioning people, you are telling every troll, every bad actor, everyone paid by a massive corporation or a foreign government to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about particular political or economic positions that this site is ripe for their use.
I've seen far too many people even on here "just asking questions", or using the Gish Gallop, or other techniques of bad faith debate, to believe that it can possibly be a good idea to treat everyone as if they are good-faith rational actors seeking open debate for the sake of finding the truth.
If you're still not convinced, do some research on Brandolini's Law [0], also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. It really does take massively more effort to refute bullshit with truth than it does to spin bullshit everywhere.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
Plug-in hybrids are a wonderful middle point on the Pareto frontier.
Wikipedia lists the 3rd-gen Prius Prime at roughly 3,500 pounds curb weight, and the Tesla Model Y at 4,100-4,600 pounds, I assume depending on the battery it's equipped with.
The Prius Prime has 40+ miles of all-electric range, and it can reach highway speeds with the gas engine off. So your day-to-day driving is all electric, then you still have an engine for harsh winter days, power outages, and you have 600 miles EPA range on gas for sudden road trips.
People are really sleeping on hybrids. Even a used non-plug-in Prius will get 50 city and 50 highway MPG. No gas sedan can do that.
PHEVs are a very interim solution. There are some advantages while range anxiety is an issue.
Yes, EVs have a weight penalty of ~250-500kg of battery currently.
Battery technology is rapidly advancing, when Na-ion batteries are introduced more widely, the whole range anxiety issue will become moot, because a recharge will take as long as refueling an ICE vehicle.
The weight difference will also start to reduce, both due to newer batteries, but also moving to lighter weight construction and increased use of alternatives to steel.
Arguing for ICE technology in 2025 is like Blackberry/Nokia users complaining about the loss of keyboards & T9 texting.
Unfortunately most people's actual usage patterns for plug-in hybrids appear to make them worse than just a straight up ICE - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/16/plug-in-...
I looked into PHEVs on my last vehicle shopping go-round, since few pure EVs met my cargo size requirements (stroller/baby life is a whole thing).
Ultimately, it was way more worth it to go all the way up to an F150 Lightning than to go with a good PHEV, partly due to up-front cost, but mostly due to ongoing cost: I will need to change the oil on the electric motors maybe every 150,000miles, and I never need an emissions test again. PHEVs require keeping the gas engine up, and getting it emissions-tested.
A whole category of cost just straight-up disappeared, for cheaper than I could get a RAV4 Prime too.
The cost to maintain and inspect a PHEV engine in most vehicles is so minuscule as to be a rounding error. Engine oils last a long time these days.
When you've got kids, there's no such thing as "rounding errors" in terms of time costs.
It's an entire chore I never have to do. That time savings is significant when I'm already underwater all the time.
Hybrids don't solve the main problem which is global warming, which demands zero carbon, not 50MPG gas cars.
> but use regenerative braking, which is better for brake dust
Which unfortunately also increases tire wear from regen braking during periods when an ICE vehicle would be coasting without braking.
EVs are much (much much) better for CO2, much better for brake dust, and much worse for tire dust.
That literally makes no sense. There’s a point on the accelerator pedal curve where you are coasting (between it applying power or applying regen), you get used to staying around that position pretty quickly because you stop short of where you are aiming to stop otherwise. You basically only back off past that point and into regen when you would be braking in an ICE car, so there is really no difference.
Yes, you learn to stay around that point.
You don't stay at the zero point. It's an impossibly small target. This is not news to anyone who drives an EV and keeps an eye on the readout showing current power usage/regen.
I don't think it's impossibly small. Maybe it depends on your software - you don't need to have a completely linear response across the full range of the pedal.
Braking from regen or braking from a brake pad has the same net impact on tire wear. EVs can coast too and don’t apply full regen the moment you apply brakes. Some even have brake coach alerts to get you to gradually apply the brakes to maximize energy return.
> EVs can coast too
EVs could coast if a manufacturer chose to make one that allowed that without shifting into neutral. In practice, when letting off the accelerator, existing EVs will instead regen brake.
The default setting just moves the coast point to a slightly depressed accelerator. This is because EVs typically have lower drag, so this behavior mimics a higher drag vehicle. If you use the accelerator to achieve the desired speed, you will coast when possible. You can also monitor the display to see the coast point. My 2013 plug in hybrid only supports this style of operation.
Modern EVs have easy adjustment for this. The Hyundai/Kia EVs for example have shift style paddles for adjusting this on the fly which includes a mode for regen only when depressing the break pedal.
The Hyundai/Kia EVs do not have a mode that only regens when pressing the brake. The best you can do is limit the car to 2kW of regen braking when not touching the accelerator. You can't disable it entirely.
It's true though that using this mode will extend the life of your tires.
People driving an EV learn, in a matter of minutes, to coast by just applying the right amount of pressure on the "gas" pedal.
They learn to sort of coast. The car feels like it's coasting. Sure.
Next time you do this keep an eye on the actual power readout. See if it's actually zero or if it's reporting ~3kW of braking or accelerating.
It hovers depending on how my foot modulates the speed. I don't want or need "exactly zero power readout", I only need to reach my target speed at my target spot on the highway, without having to action the physical brakes at any time.
Whether that is more or less efficient than a zero-power coast followed by some kind of braking exactly at the end... I assume the difference is so tiny that it makes no difference.
The difference is tiny from an energy efficiency perspective. But we're discussing tire wear, and the periodic regen followed by power that a human foot gives because it can't perfectly match the car's PID loop, wears the tires a bit each time. Which adds up over ten thousand miles.
Indeed it adds up, over ten thousand kilometers, to a lot less wear than the equivalent coast-then-hit-the-brakes in an ICE. If I follow your reasoning correctly.
Less wear on your brake pads. More on the tires.
Porsche
The tires and their dust don't care whether you're braking by regen or friction. The reason there's more dust is from the increased weight of the EV not because of regen braking. You can coast in EV as well, that is not exclusive to ICE.
> The tires and their dust don't care whether you're braking by regen or friction.
I'm aware. The point I'm making is that EVs apply more braking than ICE vehicles do, due to the specifics of the implementation of regen braking that all manufacturers have chosen.
> You can coast in EV as well
Not without literally putting it in neutral. If you just take your foot off the accelerator, any modern EV will apply some amount of regenerative braking. It's not really possible to hold the accelerator pedal at the exact position where you are not applying motor power but also have 0kW of regen braking, certainly for any extended period of time.
If your point is that someone could make an EV to which regen braking contributes no more to tire wear than an ICE vehicle, you're correct. Unfortunately, no such EVs are currently manufactured. Even the ones that allow you to "turn off" regen braking will generally apply 1-2kW of regen if your foot is off the accelerator.
> I'm aware. The point I'm making is that EVs apply more braking than ICE vehicles do, due to the specifics of the implementation of regen braking that all manufacturers have chosen
Hyundai and Kia EVs have a 5 level setting for what happens when you lift up on the accelerator, either partially or fully.
At level 0 the regeneration is so low that I don't notice a difference between that and being in neutral. It slows down way less than an ICE does when not in neutral.
> If you just take your foot off the accelerator, any modern EV will apply some amount of regenerative braking. It's not really possible to hold the accelerator pedal at the exact position where you are not applying motor power but also have 0kW of regen braking, certainly for any extended period of time.
Tire wear is not a linear function of acceleration. Is there any reason to believe that variations from not being able to hold your foot perfectly steady, assuming you aren't have spasms, will be big enough and/or last long enough to make a non-trivial difference?
The amount of braking force needed to take a car of X weight from Y miles per hour to zero in a given amount of time is the same whether by friction brakes or regen brakes.
You can reduce the total braking force needed by extending the time, in which case aerodynamic forces and rolling resistance will contribute some more to the reduction in speed.
In an EV with one-pedal driving you can still stop quickly or slowly. In an ICE car you can stop slowly with more coasting or quickly with more braking force.
I don't see how the drivetrain is going to make a difference to the amount of braking needed to stop and thus force exerted on the tire. The added weight of most EVs would be the larger factor.
But ICE vehicles can be in engine breaking mode. You pretty much never "coast" (e.g. put the vehicle in neutral or hold the clutch in). I get what you're saying but it feels like it's way in the margin if an effect at all. Do you have some reference? People keep talking about tire wear but my model 3 tires (which are relatively high performance soft tires) aren't wearing any faster than the wear I used to get on my Subaru before. I just don't drive aggressively. Flooring the accelerator must be the big difference. I don't think the weight difference is that large, certainly compared to trucks.
The amount of engine braking applied by an automatic transmission ICE vehicle when you take your foot off the gas is an order of magnitude less than the regen braking applied when you take your foot off the accelerator on your Model 3.
Here's a reference for you: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/07/elect...
First off, my Renault Megane e-Tech has paddles that allow me to change the regen strength on the fly. I use it actively when driving.
But anyway, I find I drive differently with an EV. I don't let off the throttle unless I want to slow down. If I want to coast, I just reduce my throttle input to where its coasting.
Sure, lots of vehicles allow you to change the strength. Some allow you to set the regen very very low.
Generally they do not allow you to turn it off.
I'll have to double-check, but as I recall it the lowest setting in Sports mode was off. But maybe just very, very low.
In any case, what's the problem with having it very, very low vs off? Like, what do you really need coasting for? Not something I've felt I've been missing.
You're right that turning the auto regen way way down also essentially prevents the accelerated tire wear I describe.
My main point is that most people don't turn it off. One pedal driving is convenient!
Adaptive cruise control lets you set a speed, usually the speed limit, and then you just have to steer.
In a gas car that means the car is using the brakes and gas engine (obviously) but it’s a jarring experience compared to a BEV or hybrid. The regenerative braking and smooth acceleration are much more pleasant.
I tend to agree with your overall point, but if we're talking about a 1-2 kW of "standby" regen, surely the rolling resistance of any kind of vehicle is in the same ballpark anyway (source: it takes multiple people to push a broken down car).
The bearings and whatnot that cause rolling resistance on an ordinary car also exist in EVs; this is 1-2kW on top of that, when the car is in Drive. Furthermore, it's common to use one pedal driving- it's generally much more than 1-2kW.
Plenty of ICE cars let you control the transmission, and not just MT. Engine braking is effectively the same as regen braking to tires.
Regen is lossy, so there’s no incentive in slowing down to capture 1W just to speed up and spend 1.1W
Porsche has modes for coast and regen. Applying brakes in coast mode will use regen up to a threshold and then use conventional pad/rotor.
So I am sorry to inform you that you’re just wrong.
There are EVs that can coast.
EVs are not braking more.
Whether you use conventional brakes, engine braking, or regen braking, it’s all the same to the tires.
You make a fair point that engine braking is not dissimilar. However the impact of engine braking is orders of magnitude smaller.
The reason to capture 1W and then spend 1.1W is it keeps you at a consistent speed. That's why manufacturers do it.
Lots of people in these comments who have never actually driven an EV while looking at the energy usage readout.
Personally I've never driven a Porsche but I've driven EVs from Nissan, Tesla, VW, Chevrolet, Kia, and Hyundai and they all do this.
So I am here to inform you that you are just wrong. There's no need to be sorry about educating someone, though, don't apologise next time :-)
You should answer for yourself why any of the three stopping methods would result in more or less tire wear than the other.
I have, multiple times, in comments here.
The responses tend to be either "actually regen braking wears tires just as much as using brake rotors" by people who didn't actually read, or "surely manufacturers wouldn't do that, it doesn't match the mental model in my head" by people who've never paid close attention to the power readouts while driving an EV.
Your own response was "actually one manufacturer does have a setting that will avoid the effect if someone sets it, therefore the whole concept must be wrong".
>> Nobody studies this
Tire dust has been studied for decades and the most recent research I've seen suggests the issues are less concerning than previously estimated.
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/news/illusion-truth-surrounds-inacc...
Brake dust is significantly reduced by EVs:
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/running/do-electri...
> Nobody studies this
> Even playgrounds are filled with shredded tires, which borders on biohazard.
They don't study it, but you're worried about it? I'm curious to know why these things in particular (brake dust and rubber tires) are on the radar.
(And a quick search shows that people do study this.)
EVs should do much better on brake dust thanks to regenerative braking, no?
But heavier so worse on the tires.
It isn’t intuitive that they’d be better off, and they might be worse on this particular dimension.
Yes current EVs are heavy. It's not at all clear that this will prevail as solid state batteries evolve to become standard. It is highly possible that EVs will soon be lighter than comparable ICE vehicles [1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505975
No no no. Sure, there might be a future where solid state batteries become the standard for electric vehicles, but you cannot link to Donut Lab's announcement from this month. There is no credible evidence they've achieved the holy grail of batteries so far until they actually deliver these motorcycles in hand and people independently verify them.
Time will tell on their battery, especially if the bike they're putting it on delivers. I think the overall point could be that there's active R&D in trying to find geopolitically sustainable materials, and lowering the weight of materials used.
The best solution is to build walking or biking environments.
This was discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43672779
(saving a click)
We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for. The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that even small increases in axle load can cause exponentially greater damage to the road.
A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.
The solution is to tax trucks 31,000 times more than cars. Improve walking/biking/trains/public transportation. Private cars should be a luxury which is made a necessity with zoning laws.
That 4th power law works both ways. A 40 ft bus 2 axle bus with 80 passengers will weigh about 40 000 pounds. The axle weight is 20 000, so by the 4th power law the damage is proportional to 2 x 20 000^4 = 3.2 x 10^17.
If instead those 80 passengers each drove alone in a Kia Niro EV it would be about 4 000 pounds each, so an axle weight of 2000, so the damage would be proportional to 160 x 2000^4 = 2.56 x 10^15.
That's 125 times less road damage than the bus!
Another interesting 4th power calculation is EV vs ICE. My car is available as an ICE, a hybrid, or an EV. I've got the EV which weighs more than the ICE.
Based on the 4th power law I should be doing about 40% more damage than I would if I had bought the lighter ICE model.
But wait! With the ICE model I'd need to regularly by gasoline, and that gasoline is delivered by a tanker truck. Tanker trucks, especially when they are traveling between wherever they load and wherever they unload, are very heavy.
I calculated what would happen in a hypothetical city where everyone drove the ICE version and then all switched to the EV version, and how many tanker truck gas deliveries that would eliminate. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was something like if mid sized tankers were used for gas delivery then if they had to drive more than a few miles from wherever they loaded up to wherever they unloaded the elimination of those trips by everyone switching to EV would reduce road damage by more than the damage caused by the EVs being heavier than the ICE cars.
Thank you for doing the calculations. This is interesting and useful. Yes, people should switch to EVs, but mostly because it helps build resilient independent grids (eventually), EVs add a layer of energy storage, we can dump excess energy when its negatively priced (or free) and supply power back to the grid when its costly, replacing peaker plants.
I wasn't talking about passenger buses, because thats unlikely going to happen in US. Almost all of damage is done by 18-wheelers. A fully loaded 18-wheeler: 80,000 lb. Everytime a discussion comes on ICE vs EV, the fossil fuel proponents immediately jump to but EVs weigh more (debatable) and cause more damage. The damage they cause is insignificant compared to 18-wheelers. I'm not entirely sure if EVs weigh more either, maybe the earlier models did, but energy density keeps increasing. Also, there is no compelling reason to have 300+ mile range batteries when most of the trips are under 3 - 5 miles.
> A 40 ft bus 2 axle bus with 80 passengers [...] If instead those 80 passengers each drove alone in a Kia Niro EV
Bzzzt. Wrong, unless you literally have a bus that goes from A to B without stopping. City buses do not carry "x passengers", they serve trips. An 80-passenger bus serves way more trips than 80 (though not on average of course), as people can freely get on and off at any time.
And of course, there are way more aspects of this problem than just road wear, parking space for one.
But sure, we absolutely should put buses on rail tracks!
I want the future to focus on things that actually solve the massive problems that come from mass use of automobiles: I want bike paths and trains. Yes, so boring compared to EVs I know! And so cheap! And no catchy names like "gigafactory" for making cities bikable, or turning parking lots into children's playgrounds.
Anyone can argue ICE vs EV all night long but there's only 1 metric I care about, in favor of EV:
When I am going to take my son to school, he doesn't have to smell the gas and the fumes from the exhaust in the garage.
I have another one: _I_ don't have to smell your gas and fumes when I bike behind you!
Most of the exhaust fumes your son smells near school is going to come from other people's cars though.
Very true, to the point that I am considering asking the city council to forbid ICE in a 1-km radius around places where children regularly use the sidewalks.
Even if the idea doesn't outright gain traction, enough insistence will shift the overton window.
I did daily (old station wagon in the rear facing seat), as well as school buses. Kindof liked the smell in moderation as a kid.
Still in favor of EVs, just a curiosity that this is so negative for you.
I suspect OP is considering health effects, not enjoyment.
Plenty of people like cigarettes and opium too, that doesn't mean you want your kid exposed to the smoke.
How long are you running the car in your garage? A minute of idling isn't going to cause any problems.
I live in Oslo, Norway, and it's insane how much more pleasant parking garages have become to use in the last 10 years.
Well, if EVs are made mandatory we'll have even less air polution because fewer people will be able to afford a car.
The auto industry seems to have ran out of early adopters already. Now they need a kick in the privates to make cheap EVs.
Chinese EVs are much cheaper then traditional ICE cars.
... for now. They're starting to be taxed.
Also, someone who doesn't think in SV lattes may not afford to buy a car with unknown reliability.
I’m reading your comment more sardonically about the state of US manufacturers, but globally I don’t think this holds up. Some of the most expensive vehicles—trucks and SUVs—have the worst mileage. Often the cheaper a new car is, the better gas mileage it gets.
This dynamic might not hold as consistently with used cars but it’s not entirely eliminated, either.
What does this have to do with mileage? It's about affording to pay for the damn car itself.
Compare the same category of car in gasoline and EV versions. See how the EV adds 10k to the price.
Not much by silicon valley latte standards of course. A lot by "i can barely afford a barebones renault" standards though.
I did say something about SV lattes didn't I? Not everyone is over there.
Plus how much is the EV version of a 60k usd truck? 75k? More?
I know I will be damned for this comment but nevertheless even EVs produce pollution with regard to tire abrasion. Tire abrasion itself is the main contributor to microplastics
There are three main sources of air pollution from cars:
1) Byproducts from combustion (like soot and nitrogen oxides). Only ICE produce these, EVs don't
2) Break abrasion. EVs tend to do better, because they can do most of their breaking through the motor and recuperate a part of the energy
2) Tire abrasion. EVs tend to do worse here, because they tend to be heavier.
So yes, EVs aren't a panacea, but overall on the topic of air pollution, they score much better than ICEs.
Recent research suggests the issues are much less concerning than previously estimated.
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/news/illusion-truth-surrounds-inacc...
This study is about air quality in neighborhoods. So it would show the same thing even if EVs just moved pollution from where people use their cars to where power plants get placed, because that's not the question it's addressing.
People live in neighborhoods.
Even if the pollution is identical, moving it from where everyone lives and works over to more isolated areas where power plants are would still be a big benefit.
We know EVs are cleaner than that. And when the pollution is centralized in one power plant it’s also more economically feasible to apply filtration or particle capture isn’t it?
Even if all the electricity for EVs came from a centralized coal plant (it doesn't) it would be better than using combustion in individual vehicles. Centralized pollution in one area is better than attempting to mitigate diffuse pollution everywhere.
Coal power plants are also massively more efficient than ICE cars. They can run consistently at their optimum rpm rather than start stop usage.
One other decent argument I heard in favor of EVs is that they’re agnostic to where that power is generated. So once that coal plant is replaced with natural gas, solar, wind, or whatever, all the EVs in that area will instantly become cleaner without everyone having to buy a new car after the changes is made.
This is highly dependent on your country's approach to power generation.
Nitrogen pollution is usually reasonably local to the plant but also can be srubbed. Its not practical to scrub moving objects, but it is for stationary generators.
Same with particulates, you can capture quite a lot with electrostatic scrubbers.
OK but we already know that EVs don't just move pollution around.
AIUI there are still disagreements about how to calculate that exactly. This study doesn't (and doesn't try to) provide any input towards settling that.
There are no reputable studies that show EVs having anything like the harms of legacy cars. The worst you can get is that if you're on a carbon-intensive grid, a Hummer EV might be as bad as a compact gas car.
there are no disagreements about the fact that any electric is FAR more efficient than any combustion car.
I've developed a habit of holding my breath for a few seconds whenever a particularly smelly/polluting car drives by me while I'm walking on the street, so when I hear/see an EV approaching I often feel relieved. I'm lucky to live in a city with comparatively clean air, but I hope a time comes when we treat car exhaust gases the same way as we treat second hand tobacco smoke because in both cases pollutants are literally being absorbed into our bodies.
You can already tell how much of a difference it makes in a city. Visiting Boracay after visiting other philipin island is heaven. I heard some Chinese cities are basically just EV, I can’t imagine how much nicer it could be to walk through New York without all that noise pollution
Does the study account for things like coal-fired power plants in Delta, Utah being operated by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power? This makes for less pollution at the site of the vehicle, and more pollution two giant western states away.
No, it's based on measurements in California where in-state coal is negligible (something like .1% of our total electricity). A power plan in Utah would only show up if the pollutants wafted their way across state lines
Yes, studies account for worst case coal power production. The pollution controls at a power plant are significantly more effective than the on-vehicle pollution controls for a gasoline engine.
What do you think refineries are doing
Having spent a significant amount of time in Bangkok - the city center (and many urban hubs) is an amazing walkable place with pedestrian walkways suspended above major roads, lots of frequent public transit (metro, skytrain) that honestly makes my home city of Sydney feel like a developing country.
The only downside is that traffic creates a lot of pollution, and the engine noise (not honking, there's very little of that) is so bad that you need to yell to a person standing next to you to have a conversation.
As a visitor, I can't claim to know how to fix the problems facing locals, however I can't help but feel that urban centers would be 1000x better with mass adoption of EVs (bikes, cars). I have seen a spike in the number of Chinese EVs across the city - however I'm aware that economic pressures prevent mass adoption by the majority of the road-users
To me, Bangkok feels very much like a developing country.
If you go to Chinese cities, the EV adoption has incredible positive effects to the vibe, though. Shanghai’s French concession is so quiet and peaceful now that most cars are EVs.
Try walking around Newtown in Sydney haha. "Charming" multi-million dollar "victorian-style" shanties with public transit that are a 30 minute walk away and break down every few days.
I think tier 1 Chinese cities are in a league of their own though. It's a shame it's so difficult to stay there for a prolonged period of time as a foreigner.
Thailand strikes a good balance of accessibility and development - that said I certainly agree that there are noticeable signs of it being a developing country. Still better than Sydney on balance though.
Those cities used to be filled with smokey two-stroke motorbikes and mopeds. One of those is worse than a dozen of normal cars, to say nothing of EVs.
They’re still filled with motorbikes and mopeds, they’re just electric.
There is no place called the French Concession in Shanghai today.
OK, the Former French Concession.
Western countries will never match the new East Asian cities. All cities decay as the residents begin to oppose change. All residents begin to oppose change as they age and become wealthier. So whatever you become before the population gets rich is what you will remain.
There will be no new fast subway in San Francisco and there will be no maglev in NYC. There will be no autonomous buses in Sydney and London will be entirely devoid of skyways.
This is the nature of growth. One grows then dies as one fossilizes. The next one grows past but no one will ever reinvent themselves.
This is why death is crucial to improvement.
That doesn't make much sense to me. HK added transit long after it was a big city. Tokyo added transit. Heck, all the cities of Europe started long before transit became a thing and then added it later.
I agree it seems hard in NYC, SF, etc but other cities have added transit
Developing in Hong Kong has been much harder and expensive than before. The high speed rail that connected Hong Kong to the mainland system was (IIRC) the most expensive rail project per kilometer. (They did it anyway since it was a national objective from the central authorities.) And, given the recent tragic fire in Tai Po, there has been a lot more worry about people not being able to afford to renew aging infrastructure (as in residential buildings).
Not advocating for autocracies, there's something to be said about the relationship between building essential infrastructure and the ability to ignore NIMBYs.
Bangkok just built a new metro line and are currently developing a high speed train from Malaysia to Vietnam, which would eventually lead to a train from Singapore to China.
Australia can't even build a functioning train to the outer city suburbs, let alone between major cities
Something that needs to be pointed out, especially for those who want to push back against findings like this and essentially defend ICE vehicles:
Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
The downsides of gasoline cars are actually pretty crazy: complicated engines and transmissions with heavy maintenance schedules, emissions, more NVH, worse interior space and packaging, need to wait for HVAC rather than it being ready ahead of time, need to go to a special gas station to add fuel, worse/slower performance.
You would have this laundry list of downsides and your only potential plus sides are faster fueling on road trips over 4 hours long, lower curb weight, and lower cost.
And those three minor down sides are very likely to be resolved sometime within the next 10-20 years.
[1] Not talking about Baker Electric type of stuff that was quickly surpassed by internal combustion of its day
Kind of funny anecdote, as a bit of a car enthusiast.
I drive a Polestar 2, and someone asked if it was my favorite car I've owned. And I said, no that's a Mazda 3 hatchback... 6-speed manual. Lovely vehicle to drive. Economical, but luxurious for the price. Very practical, too.
But... if you asked me if I'd go from the Polestar 2 back to the Mazda 3? I'd say no. I'll keep the electric. Of course it's not a fair comparison... one had an MSRP of $27k and the other $67k. One has 186HP and the other 476HP (and all-wheel drive).
One had a lot of routine maintenance of the engine, while the other has needed wiper blades and tires. And one requires standing outside in 10° F days like today pumping gas, while the other one is charging in my garage (and warms up the cabin from the press of a button on my phone.)
The Mazda 3 was more of a driver's car, and if I had bought either new, it would be a very different equation. (I bought the 3 w/ 8K miles on it for $20k; I bought the Polestar w/ 20K miles on it for $29K.) The Mazda 3 has a vastly better interface - better auto-dimming headlights, tons of buttons for climate, stereo, etc.
But the Polestar 2 is the one I would rather be driving... for now. (I just hope more "driver's car" electric options come to our shores.)
I feel similarly to you. I really miss having a manual transmission car that has some more fun factor.
I periodically have to stop and think about how annoying it might be in city driving with the constant stop and go.
But someday I might buy myself a little shitbox with a manual that I can park on the street, maybe a Fiat 500 or something.
> Baker Electric type of stuff
In the 1920s, a lot of auto startups had a unique idea. Then they got crushed by Henry Ford's and GM's production lines. And then the depression.
The Model T was a farm car. 50% of the population lived in rural areas, and they didn't have electricity. There was a market for an urban electric short-range car, it just didn't hit the economy of scale at the right time. But not because it was a bad idea.
His wife Clara Ford drove an EV until the 1930s.
https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digita...
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
I travel monthly through rural parts of the US where EVs really don't make sense. I get the most people on HN live in suburbs/cities, but there's a lot of stuff that happens in the rural parts of the country that absolutely demands ICE vehicles. Yes the population of people out there is much smaller, but if you've ever spent serious times in these parts of the country you'd realize petroleum runs everything.
Even in a world where electric vehicles came first this would still be the case.
80% of Americans live in urban areas and that number is rising, so I think in this scenario where EVs came first we’d see maybe 20% of vehicle sales being ICE vehicles.
But today we’ve got basically the opposite.
I would disagree with the idea that petroleum would run everything out there if EVs came first but I won’t argue that point super hard with you. I can see and understand how petroleum is a lifeline for things like oil heat, generators, etc.
Still, batteries are very well-suited to off-grid usage, and EV batteries can even power your house for a week or more in the event of a power outage. Let’s not forget that solar panels exist.
There are entire islands that have switched from imported diesel fuel power generation to grid scale solar+battery and they have had a great deal of cost savings and reliability benefits.
I'd call the that country that adopted EV's first and gasoline second... extinct after WW2. If nothing because the country wouldn't be able to launch an airforce to counter the bombers hitting your power plants. If not that then there's the constant contention of having to pull power lines forward and leaving them vulnerable to artillery fire while the petrol tank hit and run with impunity.
Plus now you have problems moving tonnes of food, water, ammunition on BEV vehicles that no longer have reliable charging access. Being unable to supply your military is more or less a death knell for any fighting force.
Even setting aviation aside, a lot of the reason why gas engines were adopted was because agriculture was among the first to do so, they were less finicky then ox and horses. Rural areas didn't have access to electricity like cities did at the time though; It was a lot easier to have a tin of whatever liquid fuel (gasoline was a byproduct of kerosone production at the time).
I didn’t say EVs would be used for military vehicles. It’s more like a scenario where 80% are buying EVs and 20% are buying ICE.
Again the hypothetical was modern EVs with modern infrastructure.
And this hypothetical isn’t that crazy. Many Chinese car buyers’ first vehicles are electric, and many of those people buying cars are quite used to electric scooters as their transportation method.
Speaking of wars, how many wars for oil would be avoided if there wasn’t a widespread dependency on cheap oil? If the gas price ever goes above $5-7/gallon in America it basically triggers a recession.
>Really step back and imagine a world where the modern EV [1] was first to market and a gasoline combustion engine was second.
.... you worded that extremely poorly. Being first to market is completely different then someone's personal first experience. Between that first sentence and the follow post, it's like reading the question what if the smartphone came out before the electric telegraph.
If you're trying to say like a future time when we've got fast chargers everwhere with no need for an app, and at home charging is common which makes BEV's 80% of the market? Sure that makes sense. Probably it's going reality by 2040 or so.
But for me right now, as is, I'd probably still sticking to ICE, or MHEV engines for a while. No easy access to home charging, and I don't have data on my phone which makes fast charging way more complicated. And I don't drive enough KM in a year to make break even point in costs reasonable.
And I've test driven BEVs and I could afford to buy a BEV. The advantages don't outweigh the drawbacks in my situation at least, and there wasn't enough there for me to want to just put objectivity aside.
Per your third paragraph, that’s exactly what I’m saying. If BEVs of modern capability were either first to market and/or the first car-buying experience, those network effects and preconceptions/biases wouldn’t be a big buying hurdle like they are today.
I did mention the three major drawbacks: fueling time on long trips, extra curb weight, and cost. But I also mentioned that even in the non-hypothetical status quo, these issues are almost certainly going to be solved soon (let’s say by 2040 like you picked out). In a world where BEVs came first, these issues would likely already be solved. Automakers weren’t really investing any development money before the 1990s, so our current BEVs are like owning a gasoline car from the 1950s in terms of time spent in the development oven. Now you have every battery technology company on the planet in an arms race to deliver the next big thing for automotive applications.
Remember that gas stations weren’t on very corner when the gasoline car was invented, either.
Don’t read what I said as some kind of exact computer science logical language-qualified statement where I must say the exact correct parameters, you understand my general point.
I also think your use of your personal anecdote isn’t a very convincing argument by itself. BEVs aren’t right for you as of today, in a world which isn’t a part of this hypothetical. You also pointed out that you are a minority outlier by having odd requirements like “I don’t have data on my smartphone.” Do you think that’s common? I think most people even un in developing countries have smartphone data access. Isn’t this argument kind of like saying gasoline pumps need to take cash to become popular? Of course they took cash in 1990 since most of their users still primarily used cash. In today’s status quo, most EV owers are the kind of person to own a smartphone. (And of course, this is already a non-issue for Tesla owners, and increasingly a non-issue for other manufacturers who are adding the ability to “just plug in” to major charging networks, something that would obviously not be an issue if BEVs came first)
The USA should be an ideal EV market but there are consumer perceptions that are barriers.
Over half of homes in US housing stock are single family houses with implicit access to charging. Daily commutes are around 40 miles. I argue that we should logically see ~50% of new vehicles being EVs but we are way below that number and I put that on customer familiarities and preconceptions.
I think the problem with this hypothetical is that technology was the main constraint back in 1900, not marketing.
Battery technology was significantly much worse. Lithium batteries were only discovered in the ‘70s.
Gas engines were far more polluting but way less complex in 1910.
Well, gas engines were never less complex. They were just more practical and convenient because they could go faster/further and be refueled easier.
Recall that my hypothetical is “modern EVs” not pre-lithium EVs.
> Who would actually decide to switch from a modern EV to gasoline on purpose of their own choice?
Anyone who likes the sensations of driving and not just going fast in a straight line. When you show me the equivalent of an EV Lotus Elise, I'll be properly swayed.
What percentage of the car buying market buys enthusiast vehicles? The top of the charts is made up of cars like the RAV4, Model Y, and CR-V. These all represent versatile practical family transportation.
Enthusiast vehicles are disappearing in the middle class segment of the market. Where are the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Toyota Celica, Toyota MR2, Chevrolet Camaro, Z4/Supra getting discontinued, Focus RS, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, the list goes on? The Nissan Z was just updated but sales have been abysmal. The only survivors seem to be the Mustang and the MX-5, and Dodge is busy screwing up the Challenger’s replacement Charger model.
Super expensive cars like the Lotus Elise are irrelevant to the broader market.
Look at the (p)reviews of the upcoming Porsche Cayenne EV. It’s the best Cayenne ever made. I think the Porsche Taycan and the Lucid Air Sapphire are fun to drive, competent performance vehicles. Even the Ioniq 5 N is a great time.
There are a number of electric supercars and hypercars on the market: https://www.roadandtrack.com/rankings/g45639363/best-electri...
I love EVs, ever since I test drove an BMW i3 in 2012. Quiet with high drag - of course this is the future.
BUT I don't think switching to EVs will help reduce CO2 in any way - not even if all the EVs are charged using 100% solar/wind. The narrative usually is "I get an EV instead of an ICE, charge it with regenerative energy and have 0 emissions, thus not burning oil and saving on CO2".
But that is not how a globalized world with free markets works. In order to save on CO2, we would need to keep that oil not burned by the EV underground, but that does not take place. The market reality is that oil price will just drop with less demand from ICE vehicles. But with falling prices, other business models that require refined oil will become viable and the oil is still burned - just somewhere else. No one so far has made a good argument why the Saudis or Russians would leave their ressources underground, just because demand from ICE vehicles drop.
What you're missing here is that oil production and processing has huge fixed costs. Producers can't just pump out infinite oil at zero cost. The economies of scale break down and fuels become more expensive as demand drops.
Cars do zero Carbon capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS). The potential is there to emit negligible CO2 when it's only energy-intensive large industry doing the fuel burning.
Having said that, the path being taken in some countries to remove ICE is simply pushing large swathes of the population out of the car market. I don't support that, although I'm sure there are many people who do.
Reduced demand for oil reduces the quantity of oil extracted and purduced. The price drops and hardwr to extract oil stops being produced
> Reduced demand for oil reduces the quantity of oil extracted
That is not true. Reduced price leads to higher demand. This is economics 101.
> The price drops and hardware to extract oil stops being produced
Oil extraction costs differ vastly amongst countries, and there is a lot of potential for increased productivity and efficencies when the margins become lower - price pressure is a driver for innovation. And countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have a very high incentive to keep extracting oil and sell it, because their economy relies on it.
> This is economics 101.
OK.
And did you go to Economics 201?
Because there, you might have learned that the basic economic principles you describe as "economics 101" are the equivalent of the "spherical cow in a frictionless vacuum"-type examples you get in introductory physics classes.
In the real world, demand is affected by all kinds of things, and sometimes, a product or service is just no longer desired by the population. Do you think that if you were selling buggy whips for $0.05 each, you'd be able to make a profit on them today? Of course not, because people don't need them. You'd barely sell any, and those purely as a novelty.
While there's still a lot of work to do to make it fully possible, and certain political groups are actively working against it, the world at large recognizes that getting off of fossil fuels is an important goal. Demand for oil is going to continue to drop—maybe not monotonically, but overall—regardless of what the price of oil does.
Your entire point hinges on EVs idrying up the oil market that there is no more demand. But ICEs don't run on oil, they run on gas or diesel. Oil is used in far more industries (aviation, ships). Plus, you cannot account for business models that become viable, that haven't been viable before. People come up with new ideas all the time.
...No? It doesn't?
My point is not that if there are no more ICE cars, there will be no market for oil. It's that the portion of the market for oil that has, heretofore, serviced ICE cars is starting to disappear, and it won't be coming back, nor will it be repurposed to service anything else, to any significant degree.
The broader point is that, because of the environmental consequences, people all over the world are diligently working on ways to eliminate the other markets for oil. And they will also not be coming back.
Oil is on its way out, period. Not this year, not this decade, possibly not this century...but it's going. And the world will be much, much better off for it.
(It's just possible that there will be some tiny fraction of the current uses for oil that we can't find any meaningful replacement for, but it's not going to be much.)
Come on, our world is running on plastics and oil as fuel for ships and aviation. EV savings will be eaten up within years by those.
Which businesses will become viable that will consume oil at this scale?
Aviation industry comes to mind. The price of an airline ticket is mostly the fuel. With cheaper airline tickets, more people can afford to fly (especially in developing countries). And also, poor countries suddenly are able to get oil cheaper and built their industries just as we did 50 years ago.
Yeah, this kind or Validate my own Beliefs that EV won't solve the fossil fuel burning. But they can at least make energy used by vehicle independent of the source used to generate the energy. Basically, the government and private sector can switch to renewable energy at some point even if they are using Fossil fuels today.
imo The final hurdle for mass adoption is solving the refueling planning problem.
I was in the market for a new car in 2024. Thought seriously about a few electric options but opted for another ICE vehicle because 2025/2026 are years of many road trips, and the issue that kept coming up for me was "can I just pull off any random highway and refill my car in a few minutes?"
Unfortunately for the environment I guess, I prefer not being forced to strictly plan my trips around distance and availability and speed of chargers. I can go pretty much anywhere in North America and be reasonably certain there's a gas station just off any highway, let alone an interstate.
"Oh, do the kids need to use the bathroom ASAP? Might as well fill up a quarter tank while we're there" opportunities would also vanish.
And even if charging stations were magically placed across the country to match gas stations, there'd still be the "time to charge" problem.
Not sure what age your kids are, but if they're below 10 I can guarantee you that your kids will be slowing you down, bit the car. Kids need to use the bathroom would be filling up the battery well over 25% if it wasn't almost full.
The one thing people that have never owned an EV seem to miss is the benefits that you get to experience every day.
No gearbox, so seamless acceleration. No maintenance on, spark plugs, timing belts, gearbox. No oil changes. A quieter ride, especially nice on a road trip.
The thing with young kids is they tend not to be good at timing restroom breaks with the availability of charging. By the time they tell you, you need to stop at the nearest gas station - they can't wait for you to drive 20 miles to the next charging station.
> No maintenance on, spark plugs, timing belts, gearbox. No oil changes. A quieter ride, especially nice on a road trip.
I'm thinking of getting an EV, so I'll see how much I like this. I can say that this is pretty much not a hassle for me with my ICE car - over the last 20+ years. But then I tend to buy reliable cars and didn't fall for the manufactured "3 months or 3000 miles" rule.
I keep track of all my costs. I average about $500 a year in maintenance (includes tires, oil changes, brakes, etc). I just checked with the insurance company - the increase in my annual premiums for the EV car I'm looking at is $400 more than if I got an equivalent ICE car. And one still needs to change tires, etc on an EV. So the repair/maintenance savings aren't there.
The insurance premiums here in Sweden are very similar between ICE and EVs, with one exception: Teslas!
They are 2-3x as expensive as many comparable EVs to insure.
The insurance part will settle out over time as they get more data I would imagine.
500$ a year is very little for any car, but I opened a Nissan leaf for 8 years and spent less that 2K, of which 1K was for the AC
> The insurance part will settle out over time as they get more data I would imagine.
I'm not so sure. The issue is two-fold: First, If you get into an accident and you're at fault, the average damage is a lot more than with an ICE, due to the much heavier weight. Second, compared to an ICE, just about any repair is a lot more expensive. If some of the battery gets damaged, that's crazy expensive. There's also not a good ecosystem for parts - they are more expensive and less modular than with an ICE (or so I'm told).
It apparently is a lot more common for EVs to be declared a total loss compared to an ICE just because of the expense to repair.
> 500$ a year is very little for any car
This is over 3 different cars. And all of them very old (I bought two of them when they were 8 years old, and another when it was 15 years old - still driving that last one).
About $80/year for oil changes. That's it. Then every once in a while there is an expensive repair (brakes, tires, some engine problem, etc). Doesn't happen every year - so the average comes out to $500.
I also don't go to the official dealers. Everything is more expensive with them.
And yeah, the cars are old, so few electronic parts to repair. I imagine if I get another 8 year old ICE, the annual cost to repair will be more just due to the extra safety systems that can go wrong.
> but I opened a Nissan leaf for 8 years and spent less that 2K, of which 1K was for the AC
Leafs are the best case scenario. They're small, not heavy, and thus don't have much tire wear.
Same trip, w/ the kids, took 10h with an Ioniq and 6h with a diesel.
This is becoming less of an issue, but there’s no question it’s a barrier.
To be honest, the bigger barrier I see is around political will to charge the true social cost of gasoline.
Some nonprofits think the true cost of burning gas is $10-15/gallon. If filling up with gas cost $250 and charging an EV was 85% cheaper, I’d be willing to wait 30 minutes for an occasional charge.
I have got 15kw solar and EV, barely pay more than 50 bucks a months and that too mostly consists of daily supply charges.
Personally, I hope EV adoption (in Indonesia) improves, as they mostly come from China and challenge the status quo of Japanese cars.
Chinese cars are a "better deal" because they give more bang for the buck. Japanese cars, on the other hand, are very "stingy" due to decades of near monopoly.
I was out skating today. Everyone was having a fun time until a diesel truck simply drove down the nearby road. It stunk up and polluted the frozen lake air for a solid few minutes. I hate diesel trucks with a passion and if I live long enough to see it happen, I will celebrate the day they become defunct. Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars.
Ev trucks have already reached 50%+ sales in China this year so diesel truck will be gone soon but unlikely to be Tesla trucks though.
Here in Japan as well delivery companies are all moving to EVs, which is great in the neighborhoods where they idle their trucks in the summer when hopping out to make a delivery. Yamato using Mitsubishi Fuso eCanter trucks[0] and Japan Post adopting Mitsubishi Minicab EVs[1] and Honda EV bikes.
[0] https://www.yamato-hd.co.jp/news/2023/newsrelease_20230912_1...
[1] https://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/jp/newsroom/newsrelease/20...
I see the BYD utes are increasingly common in Australia now.
Electric seems like a pretty clear winner now.
Just when I was thinking about Tesla’s main failure being their pickup truck you remind me how they completely missed the obvious delivery van market for which EVs are ideal.
And the semi is such vaporware that I forgot it was even a thing.
Not only is diesel exhaust more polluting than gasoline exhaust, but because it burns cooler than gasoline, the fumes remain near the ground longer, affecting people.
yeah, its an interesting analogy with smokers and the smell and pollution they spread. they dont seem to notice it themselves, but the non smokers around them and up to 100 meters away all notice them.
I’m not sure that’s really the case here. There’s simply no way you can’t notice bad pollution from vehicles.
Standing near the average car isn’t that bad at all. EVs are way better, but it’s not that bad.
But stand near a car that has some sort of exhaust problem or isn’t burning fuel correctly and it’s bad. Just horrible to breathe.
I’ve found cabin air filters either activated carbon help immensely. I started buying them on someone’s recommendation but I had no idea how much they affected things.
I’ve driven on brand new asphalt and not noticed the smell. I’ve been behind horrible cars and I don’t notice a thing, unless I put my window down and then it suddenly hits me.
All of a sudden lately I’m smelling the terrible cars again. Time to change the filter.
> Tesla's EV trucks need to deal the same hard kick to diesel trucks that they did to cars
That won't happen until they design a normal truck. The Lightning sold more than the CT and it still ended up getting canceled(ish). It isn't going to be Tesla that does it, it will probably be someone else, and the driving factor is battery capacity. We've got a ways to go yet. It would help to have 400+ kWh batteries and megawatt chargers.
The post-cancellation EREV Lightning is 99% an EV, for the purposes of air pollution. Agree with everything else.
That's why I said (ish). I agree, it's predominantly an EV. I hope they backpedal on the decision a bit and offer both an EREV and a regular EV at the same time. I'm quite happy with my Lightning and will buy another, but I'm not super interested in the EREV as it just adds expense, complexity, and maintenance requirements without offering me much additional functionality for my use case.
I thought the whole point of an EREV is to reduce expense by having less battery in the vehicle.
The whole point is to sell more cars, the EREV Lightning will not be cheaper to produce or sell.
At current prices, the standard range battery in a Lightning (which is nominally about 107kWh or so) should cost under $10K. They will not be able to shrink the battery enough to offset the cost of putting in an engine and generator. For one, they have to stay competitive with the Dodge EREV pickup, which will have a ~90kWh battery.
My guess is they leave out one or two modules from the standard range pack and price the truck starting at $70K. They won't make a ton of money, but they might be able to get a nice boost in volume to make up for it.
Anyone know how far off economical EV motorcycles are? They'll be game-changers for many south east asian cities where traffic is 90% motorcycles, which seem to pollute as much (/more ?) than cars.
? They're already here. Seeing more and more delivery drivers zooming around on them, especially since a year or so ago. And they're not choosing them for ethical reasons, I can tell you that much.
They are still a luxury item, only affordable by a few.
Although to be fair new ICE cars are also a luxury item. Most people can only buy used ICE cars these days
That used to be true; it no longer is. In the EU, some of the cheapest cars on the marker in 2026 are now electric. There are a few nice options in the 15K-20K Euro segment. These are the opposite of luxury cars. There are a quite a few new more joining the half dozen or so that were for sale last year. The trend here is that EVs are becoming the cheapest option.
A few cars from Stellantis that are available in ICE and EV variants are now actually cheaper in the EV variant. This reflects the reality that batteries are now cheap and EVs don't have a lot of moving parts. So, they should be easier and cheaper to assemble. That's a trend that is spreading across all price segments in the next few years. Driven by component and cheap battery availability.
Used EVs are widely available now as well. You can get some amazing deals on cars that mostly still have their drive trains + batteries under warranty. Lots of cars coming out of lease programs are sold on second hand. EVs have been very popular for car leasing for the last 6-7 years now. These are mostly still the relatively expensive models from a few years ago.
The cheap EVs that are now on the market will inevitably start penetrating the second hand market in larger and larger numbers. Cheap ICE cars are disappearing rapidly from the market as models are being discontinued by manufacturers and as the market shares for ICE vehicles keep on shrinking. That means they'll also start getting more scarce in the second hand market in a few years. You'll still be able to get your Ford Fiesta. But it will be a model from before it was discontinued a few years ago. Or the new electric model that they are rumored to launch soonish.
Way too expensive for most europeans countries and it’s after heavy subsidies from governments. Most people buy second-hand ICE cars and they will do it as long as they can be driven on roads. Stellantis cars are trash and in general the low-cost EV are trash for long travels.
> a few nice options in the 15K-20K Euro segment
You are making my point. Most folk can’t afford that for transportation. 10k is already a stretch.
Depends on the country. People living in richer European countries buy more new cars on average, while people in poorer European countries give second life to those same cars once those "rich people" decide to sell them and fail to buy any buyer domestically.
This is still a net positive even in poorer countries. If you can't afford a new car, you buy as close to a new car as you can afford. The newer the car is, the higher the EURO standard is that it had to abide by when it was sold brand-new, achieving the same result of reducing pollution.
I live in one of those poorer ones where most people can't afford new cars, but even if you can, the percentage of brand-new ICE cars that are even available for purchasing is going down pretty fast in recent years. So those better off are slowly being pushed towards EVs (or at least hybrids), and the vast majority of others still relies on importing like 15 years old second-hand cars (EURO 5 standard) to replace their 25yo cars (EURO 3 standard). In the capital, cars below EURO 4 are even banned when air pollution gets really bad, but the vast majority doesn't even realise this rule exists because their cars are now EURO 4 or above.
In the US, that is. In China, several EV models sell for under $10k, with some, like the Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, starting as low as $4k [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
Hmmm. Do we have to do a study of that? The AQI around LHR was 3 when I went there last year. Then realized all gas cars are banned at the airport.
Assuming LHR is London Heathrow then ICE cars are not banned there. I drove and parked in short stay parking just a few weeks ago.
What's the reasoning for banning the cars specifically at an airport? Don't the airplanes burn way more fuel?
Aircraft burn more fuel, but they do so far from where people are, and Jet A burns more cleanly than gasoline from a particulate perspective.
From an air pollution perspective you are much better off a half mile from 10 jets taking off, than you are surrounded by a hundred idling gasoline cars.
Anyone remember yellow-orange skies before emissions standards?
I want and EV but I don't have a charger and I cant have a charger since I live in an apartment.
If you park in the street, and there are public chargers in a 1-km radius around your apartment, you can probably make it by "topping-up" every two or three days on a public charger.
Unless you spend upwards of 40% of your battery daily, you'll be good.
If you own a parking spot in your apartment complex, and depending on your jurisdiction, you can install your own charger.
You can even charge once a week or even less, depends on the usage.
You also don't have a gas station inside your apartment. Depending on which car you get, you could go charge it to charging station. I'm not saying this is instant process.
That's a poor excuse today. I'm not trying to be pushy but have you dismissed the LFP battery EVs? Those you charge fully once every other week, just like your average ICE vehicle. The time spent recharging can be spent grocery shopping or something else productive.
Talking generally and depending on many factors the fossil fuel yearly energy consumption for private transportation is similar with that of home heating. ICE cars are replaced with electric and boilers with heat pumps. Both help, may be the same, but in the latter case the increase in average temperature of the last three years adds to the mix.
Comparison with the lockdown data would be interesting.
We have a huge power source called the sun, but our greed is not letting us use it fully.
Reduction in pollution in where EV are used or where produced?
Who could have possibly anticipated this?
They’ve just moved the pollution out of the gentrified areas that can afford to purchase EVs at scale. Which was part of the initial goal when pushing for this insanity, as the plebs were polluting with the air of the much better off by using their 20-years old clunkers (or at least that was the discourse here in Europe). Mission about to be accomplished, those plebs now can take the bus if they still want mobility.
For the environmental impact within a specific region, electric vehicles are indeed much better than cars. However, when it comes to things like greenhouse gases and global warming, that's likely just Elon Musk's lie.
What? That makes no sense
It also causes roads to be damaged/destroyed FAR faster due to the vehicales on average weighing significantly more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
It also simply moves the pollution to places like Africa where the extremely dirty lithium mining is externalized away from wealthy westerners.
Environmental externalization.
And gasoline just magically appears at the gas station? Wars over oil are being fought for decades and nothing similar has happened over Lithium yet?
The lithium mining is surely not causing anywhere near as much pollution as fossil fuel burning. If you think it's actually significant, please show relevant studies and/or analysis.
Only poorly designed EV's are significantly heavier.
A Tesla 3 and a BMW 3 are about the same weight.
BMWs are all pigfat today. Compare it to a proper sports car like a Miata.
Most cars are far too heavy and should be made lighter. Only Mazda seems to understand this and that's why the Mazda SUVs/sedans are by far the best driving vehicles in their class.
BMW has hardware and software bloat for sure, I hate driving them. But sedans, even the heavy ones, don't really hurt roads much compared to a lorry.
As your wikipedia link indicates, any road that is designed for lorry use should be able to take heavy sedans all day and not be worse for wear:
> Therefore, the resulting stress difference between truck and car is 15,000 to 1.
Has the study made an effort to exclude any other factors? For example, a reduction in commute during the covid years?
> For the analysis, the researchers divided California into 1,692 neighborhoods, using a geographic unit similar to zip codes. They obtained publicly available data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles on the number of ZEVs registered in each neighborhood. ZEVs include full-battery electric cars, plug-in hybrids and fuel-cell cars, but not heavier duty vehicles like delivery trucks and semi trucks.
> Next, the research team obtained data from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), a high-resolution satellite sensor that provides daily, global measurements of NO₂ and other pollutants. They used this data to calculate annual average NO₂ levels in each California neighborhood from 2019 to 2023.
> Over the study period, a typical neighborhood gained 272 ZEVs, with most neighborhoods adding between 18 and 839. For every 200 new ZEVs registered, NO₂ levels dropped 1.1%, a measurable improvement in air quality.
Seems pretty clear to me that that's controlled for.
I see. Thanks for the quote. I missed that part in the press release.
The problem is battery recycling. It's highly polluted and a huge source of lead and lithium exposure.
How isolated is that compared to air pollution?
But don’t they cause higher pm2.5 and pm10 pollution from braking due to the fact that EVs are heavier than vehicles powered by internal combustion ?
Maybe if they used their brakes all the time, but they don't. (Regen braking uses no brakes). That's why EVs, while heaver, require fewer brake pad replacements than ICE cars.
Interesting.
But what about the use and abuse and shredding of tyres?
1 pedal braking means evs often dont need new brake pads for 150K miles
One problem they are experiencing is rust and glazing on the pads from disuse.
They are heavier than the equivalent sized ICE so have more tire wear, but dont have to be that large in an absolute sense. Most are large luxury cars.
You’re right but one pedal drive is the wrong term. Regen braking is what you’re thinking of.
One pedal drive can still use the brake pads, regen braking is what saves brake usage regardless of one pedal drive being on or not.
I'm no EV expert, but I almost never use my EV's brakes — it mostly brakes using regenerative braking.
If you live in North America and have a house or townhouse get a Tesla. It is such a no brainer. $5 for 500km vs $100 for 500km (gas) is just too good
Sorry but where in the US does electricity cost under 10c/kWh (assuming something like 80kWh for 500km)? And 100$ for 30-40l of petrol? That'd be over 10$ per gallon
Or, y'know...get literally any other EV.
One that doesn't support a neo-Nazi trying to wreck America's economy and political system for his own gains.
I hear the Hyundai Ioniq is supposed to be pretty good.
Try both. Report back. You people read too much news. Never the source.
Ah, yes. Buy two $40k cars, one of which funds one of the people actively trying to destroy democracy.
There's. A lot to unpack there.
But I've still got 3 suitcases of my own stuff sitting waiting for me to get a real flat, so I think I'll pass on that and just let you assume that everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and can't do their own research. And, I guess, has $80k just lying around to spend on whatever.
Tires and brakes still contribute to a lot of particulate matter pollution even from EV's, but they're at least a step up. The best EV's are still eBikes though.
Tires yes, but EVs tend to have regenerative braking which will reduce brake particulates significantly.
The study is about NOx levels which have nothing to do with tires or brakes.
Ok, but tire pollution is still a problem:
https://grist.org/transportation/electric-vehicles-are-a-cli...
https://caltrout.org/news/did-you-know-your-cars-tires-could...
True. But there are 2 ways to read this:
1: Yes, let's stick with ICE cars and die of preventable illnesses because EVs are only a massive improvement, rather than absolute perfection
2: Hey let's take this massive improvement and enjoy enormously cleaner air
I meet way too many people from group 1 unfortunately.
That's exactly what I wrote: "it's a step up".
I mean, it kind of is. But I'd say the framing is about general air pollution, and they happen to use NOx levels as proxy indicator. So from that perspective, I think it is important to note that there are other types of pollution that go up with electric cars.
Recent research suggests the issue is much less concerning than previously estimated.
https://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/news/illusion-truth-surrounds-inacc...
It's great to see a reduction in local pollution but it is worth remembering the electric vehicles ultimately have zero impact on climate change and petroleum consumption (which as continue to rise year-over-year).
Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
Electric cars are great for the city/suburbs but don't really make a dent in the larger resource usage issues facing us.
> Oil not used in ICE cars is just used someplace else.
That's simply not true. Oil used someplace else would have been used someplace else either way.
There is a supply/demand effect where reduced oil demand would lower its price and therefore arrest the loss of oil demand from cars by other consumers of oil, but the net effect would still be that less oil is burned and used.
You're simply wrong.
Most of the world is priced out of purchasing oil.
When the price declines those people can (and do) buy the oil westerners aren't using.
But don't trust me, here's the data.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-primary-energ...
> When the price declines those people can (and do) buy the oil westerners aren't using.
You're missing that the supply drops as well since it is not economical to produce the same amount of oil as before at a lower price.
As long as the supply curve does not change (and nothing about EV usage changes the supply side here), a reduction in demand leads to lower consumption.
Edit: And in addition, your chart doesn't show anything like you purport it to show. By your claim, oil consumption by non-Western countries should have been drastically higher in 2000-2007 when oil prices were lower than they are today. Yet the opposite is true.
Oil consumption is up over time, including in non-Western countries, but that was driven by organic changes in demand, not changes in supply. Switching to EVs would act as a reduction in demand and therefore reduce overall oil usage, at least as compared to a world where vehicle transport required ICE vehicles.
Because this is HN, (in Allo Allo's Michelle Dubois voice...) "I shall say this only wonce": If you're curious, have a look at Earth's historical temperature and co2 data going back millions of years. What you'll notice is that there's always been oscillations, like a more or less predictable wave. Human activity is polluting the Earth, yes, but this fixation on co2 and other gases (cow farts, really?) is unhealthy to put it mildly.
I'd like to see the same attention being given to plastics (so much single-use crap and how much of it can be recycled?), synthetic clothing, and all kinds of other chemicals including the ones we put in ourselves (pharma, food) and the environment, like fertilizers or the byproducts of mining today's fashionable minerals like lithium. Not to mention the explosion in electromagnetic frequencies activity, which somehow is taken as normal and ok by the same scientific establishment which accepts thousands(?) of fake papers every year for publication. You just have to love the irony when something like Science is deemed 'settled'-- in that regard, it's almost as if we went back a few centuries.
There's certainly a lot to be said for humans needing to take better care of the planet. Co2 just gets a little too much attention for my taste. And don't take from this that I love oil. I find fracking to be abominable and another big factor in polluting the land and the water tables.
> There's certainly a lot to be said for humans needing to take better care of the planet. Co2 just gets a little too much attention for my taste.
GHG are a matter of life or death for hundreds of millions living in poverty in coastal areas or living from their own agriculture.
Of course you live in a 1st world country and it likely won't kill you, just cost you tons of money
It's not about "take better care of the planet", whatever you think that means
>GHG are a matter of life or death
That's what I hear from mainstream media all the time. Do you have some information or argument that will help me see things differently?
>Of course you live in a 1st world country and it likely won't kill you, just cost you tons of money
A little presumptuous to assume my living conditions
>It's not about "take better care of the planet", whatever you think that means
Now that's just snarky and done in bad faith. If I didn't care would I have posted it, already antecipating the downvotes?
We humans got where we are much due to technology, but we have to start thinking seriously where we go from here or there won't be land or water (or air?) that isn't polluted by something the planet is not well equiped to process. Have you read on the kind of places that microplastics have been found already? In the human body?
> Do you have some information or argument that will help me see things differently?
I already told you 2 things, coastal areas and agriculture.
This is Bangladesh elevation map. Bangladesh is amonng the most dense countries in the world, and also among the poorest.
https://www.floodmap.net/elevation/ElevationMap/CountryMaps/...
People are gonna lose their homes and starve to death, this will create massive refugee crises. They won't care if you have micro plastics in your testicles
> notice is that there's always been oscillations
There's always been oscilations, true, but the rate o change and trend on those oscilations is the real issue.
Happy to be shown where I can learn more about this different rate of change and trend which sets our current climate change apart from the rest of Earth's history.
Almost anywhere where the measurements behind climate science is being discussed. Just pay attention to the x axis on the plots.
It seems like you won't have any trouble finding that yourself if you really wanted to. This "I'm just asking questions" mode you're in can be considered a type of trolling called "sealioning".
More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
More bad faith interpretations.
Here is at least something tangible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surface_temperature#Glo...
On this page can be found the following graphic https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/ca/EP...
On that graphic -- under the heading 'Ice cores (from 800,000 years before present)' in case the link gets truncated -- one can observe regular peaks in temperature that took place before the current one. I'm happy to be explained what caused them, as it could not have been human industrial activity.
That's it. I'm open to dialogue but won't entertain any more lazy dismissals and unfair characterization.