Poll of the Day > do you own an energy efficient EV?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't have an ebike yet but I'm thinking of getting one this year

Just sold my Rivian truck and been thinking of getting a Nissan Leaf. Owned a Tesla P90D a few years back but don't like the Teslas.

Currently driving a gas powered Volvo wagon

Just a regular old ICE car and a two-cylinder bike. I'd prefer electric over ICE, but with no option for home charging (landlords use the driveway and I'm parked on the street virtually all the time) and the extra cost, it's just not a plausible alternative for us right now.

Effort Value?

adjl posted...

Just a regular old ICE car and a two-cylinder bike. I'd prefer electric over ICE, but with no option for home charging (landlords use the driveway and I'm parked on the street virtually all the time) and the extra cost, it's just not a plausible alternative for us right now.

Same with me, but I live in an apartment complex.

I'll finally have an outdoor plug to charge w/ and our older car is literally 2 decades old at this point.
So I was going to get an EV this year.
But now the tax incentive is temporarily going away, literally right around the time I'll be moving to a place where I could have one. :(
Guess I'll wait it out till this mineral/lithium sourcing crap is resolved.

I'd love an electric car, but they are prohibitively expensive, so I am stuck with my 24 year old truck.

My wife and I were considering buying one, but used the savings for a down payment on a condo instead since we were lucky enough for the opportunity to come up for that.

Considering I only drive like 5000 miles per year, and my current 10 year old car only has 65K on it, getting a new vehicle doesn't really make sense. Maybe in another 10-15 years.

I'm on the wait list for an aptera. Three wheeled EV with solar panels on the roof. The high end version is supposed to get 1,000 miles on a full battery.

No interest in getting one anytime soon. I've been driving a Mercedes C300 for a couple of years now and I'm happy with it. The winters are pretty brutal where I live, so I don't think an EV would fare too well here. The cold does a number on batteries, and all wheel drive is a must have.

No, and probably wont for a long time. Just bought a new ICE vehicle last year, and may go with a hybrid/PHEV after that.

Hell, no.

Electric car costs 4 times too much. So i can't afford it.

I would be willing to stretch for a proper full size car with electric. But no one makes full size cars anymore. Just SUVs. Even compacts are going away. Every time i get in one of those SUVs, i can't believe how tight and poorly laid out they feel. With terrible trunk space and very few seats, and usually terrible safety and terrible anti roll. I don't get why everyone fell for these scams.

I'm hoping by the time I'm in the market for a car there will be pre-owned electric Volvos I can afford.

Nah. I didn't train EVs when I was playing Scarlet.

Yes, my scooter is fusion powered. The seat gets a little hot though.

The technology needs to get cheaper, and soon. Buying a vehicle in 10 years when EVs are required for new vehicles in North America is going to be very tough for the average person. The increased demand this will put on "cheaper" gas vehicles will likely increase the value of used gas cars, too, unfortunately.

faramir77 posted...

The technology needs to get cheaper, and soon. Buying a vehicle in 10 years when EVs are required for new vehicles in North America is going to be very tough for the average person. The increased demand this will put on "cheaper" gas vehicles will likely increase the value of used gas cars, too, unfortunately.

That's never going to happen.

Dikitain posted...

Considering I only drive like 5000 miles per year, and my current 10 year old car only has 65K on it, getting a new vehicle doesn't really make sense. Maybe in another 10-15 years.

I hate driving, so yeah... lack of miles to "make back" the added cost is a major hurdle to me. I'd just go for a cheap model w/ less range, but...those don't exist.

SinisterSlay posted...

I would be willing to stretch for a proper full size car with electric. But no one makes full size cars anymore. Just SUVs. Even compacts are going away. Every time i get in one of those SUVs, i can't believe how tight and poorly laid out they feel. With terrible trunk space and very few seats, and usually terrible safety and terrible anti roll. I don't get why everyone fell for these scams.

Another gripe of mine. Why are they all SUVs, trucks, and hatchbacks? Where's the sedan models?

faramir77 posted...

The technology needs to get cheaper, and soon. Buying a vehicle in 10 years when EVs are required for new vehicles in North America is going to be very tough for the average person. The increased demand this will put on "cheaper" gas vehicles will likely increase the value of used gas cars, too, unfortunately.

Prices aren't going down by sheer manufacturer malicious intent at this point. "Material/battery costs!" has been a bs excuse for a long time. Battery costs have dropped sharply.
So long as they can make huge windfalls selling "luxury" models to those willing to buy them, they don't seem to particularly be interested in switching to low margin, high volume sales of EVs.

https://qz.com/2161731/why-electric-cars-are-getting-pricier-while-batteries-get-cheaper

Revelation34 posted...

That's never going to happen.

The US has legislated that 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 must be EVs. Canada has legislated that 100% of new vehicles sold in 2035 must be EVs.

The only way this won't happen is if a regressive conservative government gets elected in either country, but even then, auto manufacturers are already preparing for this and likely will mostly follow through even if the legislative requirements are lifted.

streamofthesky posted...

Prices aren't going down by sheer manufacturer malicious intent at this point. "Material/battery costs!" has been a bs excuse for a long time. Battery costs have dropped sharply.
So long as they can make huge windfalls selling "luxury" models to those willing to buy them, they don't seem to particularly be interested in switching to low margin, high volume sales of EVs.

https://qz.com/2161731/why-electric-cars-are-getting-pricier-while-batteries-get-cheaper

Yup, this doesn't surprise me at all. Kind of like how the increase in gasoline prices last year was a complete fabrication by oil companies, and the increase in grocery prices was almost entirely driven by corporate greed.

I don't own an EV.

no I don't own any vehicle

SinisterSlay posted...

But no one makes full size cars anymore. Just SUVs. Even compacts are going away. Every time i get in one of those SUVs, i can't believe how tight and poorly laid out they feel. With terrible trunk space and very few seats, and usually terrible safety and terrible anti roll. I don't get why everyone fell for these scams.

It's mostly just a matter of car manufacturers pushing them and phasing out alternatives. When the CAFE emissions regulations were brought in, car companies in the US successfully lobbied to have "light trucks" exempted from some or all of those regulations, claiming that they were impossible to meet without compromising those vehicles' abilities to handle heavy cargo or off-roading. Those same manufacturers then started trying to sell pickups, SUVs, and crossovers (all of which fall under the "light truck" exemption) over minivans, station wagons, and small cars, since between the former generally having higher sale prices and the fact that they didn't have to spend as much money trying to meet more stringent emissions standards, car companies made more money on those. That marketing hinged pretty heavily on fearmongering, making cars that deliberately look imposing (high hoods in particular) to convey the idea that you can't be safe unless you're in an SUV or truck that's just as big and aggressive as what other people are driving (never mind their actual safety ratings, though such ratings are deeply flawed because they only look at collisions between similarly-sized vehicles), and as these oversized (but not actually useful for cargo) vehicles have proliferated, people have understandably become more and more uncomfortable driving small cars next to them.

It's a terrible mess that has significant impacts on safety, fuel economy, and infrastructure costs, all stemming back to car companies being greedy, the government failing to stop them from acting on that greed, and paranoid suburbanites buying into propaganda telling them they need one of these vehicles to protect their families. This video goes into more details on the history and effects of these trends, and is well worth a watch if you're interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&vl=en-CA

faramir77 posted...

The US has legislated that 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 must be EVs. Canada has legislated that 100% of new vehicles sold in 2035 must be EVs.

The only way this won't happen is if a regressive conservative government gets elected in either country, but even then, auto manufacturers are already preparing for this and likely will mostly follow through even if the legislative requirements are lifted.

My fear is that the mix of technology improvements and charging infrastructure in rural and northern Canada won't be adequate for everyone to be served by EVs by 2035.

They all lose 40-60% of their range in extreme cold, which is multiple months/year here, and we still have communities served by temporary ice roads with no intention of ever building roads to them. I can't carry extra charge in a jerry can when a battery car won't go far enough.

In this situation, the choices would be to make exceptions to the ban, lift it entirely, or leave people without their only modern form of transportation.

DarkMinun posted...

My fear is that the mix of technology improvements and charging infrastructure in rural and northern Canada won't be adequate for everyone to be served by EVs by 2035.

They all lose 40-60% of their range in extreme cold, which is multiple months/year here, and we still have communities served by temporary ice roads with no intention of ever building roads to them. I can't carry extra charge in a jerry can when a battery car won't go far enough.

In this situation, the choices would be to make exceptions to the ban, lift it entirely, or leave people without their only modern form of transportation.

Hydrogen is the answer. But unfortunately literally everyone and everything is stupid when dealing with hydrogen. Despite it already being proven to work perfect at -70c weather.

No Too expensive

faramir77 posted...

The US has legislated that 50% of new vehicles sold in 2030 must be EVs.

I sure hope this doesnt happen Unless Im already gone Then it doesnt matter

LinkPizza posted...

No Too expensive

I sure hope this doesnt happen Unless Im already gone Then it doesnt matter

It won't.

DarkMinun posted...

My fear is that the mix of technology improvements and charging infrastructure in rural and northern Canada won't be adequate for everyone to be served by EVs by 2035.

They all lose 40-60% of their range in extreme cold, which is multiple months/year here, and we still have communities served by temporary ice roads with no intention of ever building roads to them. I can't carry extra charge in a jerry can when a battery car won't go far enough.

In this situation, the choices would be to make exceptions to the ban, lift it entirely, or leave people without their only modern form of transportation.

The Canadian government passing legislation that creates/fails to address problems that will disproportionately be affecting First Nations communities? I can hardly believe it!

I can say, though, that they're aware of that issue, speaking as somebody who was closely involved in Indigenous Services' fleet management and procurement until recently. We've been directed (as have all GC departments) to purchase electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles wherever possible when renewing or expanding our fleets. Pretty much every region, however, doesn't have sufficient access to charging infrastructure in/near communities to use vehicles that require charging, and many of the communities are too remote for there to be any options for servicing even regular hybrids, so the best we've been able to do is regular hybrids wherever feasible and gas vehicles everywhere else. The government's at least aware of that because higher-ups have to keep approving exceptions for us. Whether or not they'll extend that same exception to civilians when the time comes remains to be seen, but it's not like they're going to be genuinely blindsided by it.

I have a hybrid and it gets on average about 43 mpg.

Kinda sad that a few people are still desperately trying to slam on the breaks as if there is any stopping what is coming. May as well just gun it into oblivion at this point tbh.

MightBeOverSoon posted...

Kinda sad that a few people are still desperately trying to slam on the breaks as if there is any stopping what is coming. May as well just gun it into oblivion at this point tbh.

We can fix global warming.
Send rockets to the next near miss asteroid. Fix it to hit the earth. Maybe some place no one cares about, like Russia. And the resulting ice age will reset the Earth.

I drive the opposite, a sports car with a 450 HP V8. Vroom vroom

SinisterSlay posted...

Hydrogen is the answer. But unfortunately literally everyone and everything is stupid when dealing with hydrogen. Despite it already being proven to work perfect at -70c weather.

Ehhh, I wouldn't feel safe driving around with a high pressure tank of hydrogen in my car, knowing the average driver.

koopabrosblack posted...

I drive the opposite, a sports car with a 450 HP V8. Vroom vroom

Ehhh, I wouldn't feel safe driving around with a high pressure tank of hydrogen in my car, knowing the average driver.

It's less explosive then gasoline. It has significantly less energy potential than gasoline. But you're fine driving around in a car full of gasoline.
To the disappointment of Michael Bay, do you know what happens when you shoot a tank full of hydrogen, nothing. Hydrogen harmlessly escapes.
Now let's talk about how hard it is to put out the fire from a lithium battery in your car.

No, I'd like an ebike but they are apparently extremely dangerous and I have no place to properly store one.

I don't even own a V.

Judgmenl posted...

No, I'd like an ebike but they are apparently extremely dangerous and I have no place to properly store one.

Dangerous? I can't imagine they're any worse than a motorcycle. Dress for the slide, not the ride.

koopabrosblack posted...

Dangerous? I can't imagine they're any worse than a motorcycle. Dress for the slide, not the ride.

The way they explode...

SinisterSlay posted...

The way they explode...

They're also extremely unregulated in the US.

SinisterSlay posted...

It's less explosive then gasoline. It has significantly less energy potential than gasoline. But you're fine driving around in a car full of gasoline.
To the disappointment of Michael Bay, do you know what happens when you shoot a tank full of hydrogen, nothing. Hydrogen harmlessly escapes.
Now let's talk about how hard it is to put out the fire from a lithium battery in your car.

I would imagine most of the fear of hydrogen comes from the Hindenburg disaster. Despite the fact we have had over 100 years to make it safer, everybody probably still thinks that a tiny spark would cause a hydrogen car to burst into flames and become a giant burning chariot.

Dikitain posted...

I would imagine most of the fear of hydrogen comes from the Hindenburg disaster. Despite the fact we have had over 100 years to make it safer, everybody probably still thinks that a tiny spark would cause a hydrogen car to burst into flames and become a giant burning chariot.

And if memory serves, the primary issue with the Hindenburg was actually that the whole thing was coated in powdered aluminum, which is a pretty potent oxidizer (see: thermite) and made the fire that much worse.

adjl posted...

And if memory serves, the primary issue with the Hindenburg was actually that the whole thing was coated in powdered aluminum, which is a pretty potent oxidizer (see: thermite) and made the fire that much worse.

Yes. Hindenburg like all the other airships actually had hydrogen at the top and oxygen at the bottom and a bunch of passengers walking around smoking inside it.
People are purposely misled and misinformed by big oil to fear hydrogen despite it being safer.
Almost the same reason people are purposely misled and misinformed to fear nuclear power despite it being safer. We have nuclear power plants in Ukraine right now under attack from missiles and there hasn't been any radiation leaks.

I have an eBike and I used to drive a Ford C-Max before I traded it in for a sports car. It developed an $8200 transmission problem so I decided to make it someone else's problem.

My MPG was cut in half, but I can do 0-60 in 5 seconds now, so it was a reasonable tradeoff.