It'll still take time for me to see savings over a car in the $20-$30k range. But in terms of daily operating costs for equivalent priced cars I'm there. Gas prices can only go up and electrical storage is on a downward trend.
I live in a place that prides itself on being 'green' - but at-home charging stations for apartment dwellers are just a not-thing.
Electric cars have a lot of advantages but they still have enormous negative externalities on cities.
You might want to spend your effort on the parking space rule instead of the extremely minor issue of electric chargers.
The other option (and I do this a lot) is to just go to whole foods and use their monster-fast chargers. You can do a whole car in just a few hours with an L3 charger, it's amazing. This is more expensive than using any kind of outlet, but so is gas.
Please forgive the imposition, but if you live in the dense and expensive part of the city, you probably are best off simply not owning a car.
And governments will tax electric cars to make up for the loss of fuel duty.
I think widespread electric vehicle adaption will happen due to price but you have a very valid point on recharge time.
Basically your car is unusable if low and being recharged and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless swapping heavy batteries becomes practical.
Teslas have a driving range of ~200 miles or something like that right? After driving 200 miles, most people are happy to stop and stretch their legs for 15-20 minutes. Tesla superchargers take about 30 minutes to charge your battery most of the way. Drive another 200 miles and you're ready for lunch or dinner, which could be a ~1 hour break, if you're not getting drive-thru and a chance for a much longer charge.
The only limiting factors I see are cost, the availability of charging options (and density of locations) and charging for apartment dwellers. Charge times are probably "good enough" already and likely to get better.
Very few people do this, that I know.
Note that the Leaf's battery is not actively cooled (it does have heaters for extreme cold). So it could be the case that people living in colder climates could get away with it with little degradation.
Still, you should keep quickcharging to 80%.
I'm sorry but things like this always come up and I can't keep my head from shaking at these types of comments. So, you don't have other options to charge and simply go somewhere else where there is a charger that can do a car in "a few hours"?!
So, I guess you say if you can do it, everybody else in that situation can, too? A short thought experiment, if everybody else did exactly that, how often would you say you will find your charger occupied? And since it is "a few hours" per car, you are in for a nice long shopping spree in whole foods while you wait for the guy in front of you to finally drive off. IF you are already next in line, that is. "Hi Honey, sorry, it'll be a couple of hours till I'm home. What? No, I'm not working late, I just want to gas up the EV and there is one person in front of me."
And before you say "But there are two or three chargers there" I say: And all would be constantly occupied if EV adoption would take of as many here wanted it to. The only way this could technically happen would if if at a snap of a finger suddenly every parking space had a charger available. Then the EV industry could go "Buy an EV today, no matter where you park, you can always charge it" Before something like that is in place, the odd charger at whole foods ONLY works as a solution as long as only a tiny subset of driver choose an EV. If not, you will find yourself cursing all the other EV drivers that constantly block your charging spot and you curse at anyone who still tries to drum up support for EV adoption. Cause that just means an even longer queue to get to your charger.
You can fill a car from a dead charge in a few hours with these type 3 DC chargers. If your car's battery is NOT empty, it'll go significantly faster. Or if your car has a smaller battery.
> So, I guess you say if you can do it, everybody else in that situation can, too? A short thought experiment, if everybody else did exactly that, how often would you say you will find your charger occupied? And since it is "a few hours" per car, you are in for a nice long shopping spree in whole foods while you wait for the guy in front of you to finally drive off. IF you are already next in line, that is. "Hi Honey, sorry, it'll be a couple of hours till I'm home. What? No, I'm not working late, I just want to gas up the EV and there is one person in front of me."
Yours is a great example of a terrible comment. The kind of comment where you showed up wanted to yell at people about something, not talk about something. This discussion is about short term solutions for people in an early electric car market, specifically because the infrastructure isn't there for everyone yet.
That's okay, most people in this discussion do not have the option to purchase a pure electric car, yet.
> And before you say "But there are two or three chargers there" I say:
See what I'm saying about "yelling at" rather than "talking to"?
> If not, you will find yourself cursing all the other EV drivers that constantly block your charging spot and you curse at anyone who still tries to drum up support for EV adoption.
Quite the contrary. EV drivers are pretty good about this and we share where we can. Driving an EV is a interesting experience, because other EV drivers on the road will interact with you.
Not yet. The technology is absolutely ready, it's just stuck at the chicken-and-egg stage in most places. Anywhere you can fit a parking meter, you can fit an EV charger. Rolec produce a street light with a built-in EV charger.
On-street EV charging is ready and waiting for the demand. I think it's almost inevitable that every parking space will eventually have an EV charger.
http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/product/EV-Charging-Str...
How do you propose they charge their cars? On some nights you can fit 20 cars on each side. On others, 10 cars. Sometimes you can park right in front of your house, sometimes you have to park two streets away because there was no room on yours.
Do we just install a charging point ever ~10 meters? If yes, who is going to pay for the absolutely enormous cost of ripping out every single street in the UK to put the necessary cables down? Won't it be an eyesore? How about vandalism and damaged cables?
Same questions could have been asked about fiber optics, cable TV, electricity, telephones, water and sewers. Yet we have that infrastructure.
Also, some people believe by the time that future will come many people would opt out of buying cars, in favor of driverless taxis. These don’t need to stay parked in residential areas.
If we’ll start running out of places to charge EVs, the existing places will raise their per-KWh prices to maximize their profits. This in turn will create incentive to install more plugs, and upgrade electrical grid and generation to supply them. No need to bury millions in advance installing the infrastructure before there's a demand.
Yep. Most homeowners will just install their own charge point on their own front wall, which costs £150 after subsidy (£600 unsubsidised). If your street has chronic parking problems that mean you can't always park in front of your house (a definite minority outside of London), the council or a charge point provider will need to sort it out. The Office for Low Emission Vehicles already provides subsidies to any local authority that wants to install on-street charging infrastructure.
Given the cost savings of running an EV, the infrastructure will pay for itself quite quickly. Shared charge points use a contactless payment system, so it's easy to recoup the cost of installation and maintenance over time through a small premium on metered electricity rates.
http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/product/OLEV-Grant-Fund... https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
>How about vandalism and damaged cables?
Most EV charging cables automatically lock in place, which prevents the petty nuisance of someone unplugging your car for a laugh. If someone chooses to vandalise a cable carrying 7kW, they're likely to experience very swift karmic retribution. The charge point itself may be a target for vandalism, but it's no more attractive a target than any amount of other street furniture. Cars and bicycles are an easy target for vandalism when parked, but it's relatively rare in practice.
Which brings up another interesting point - if you do any work in UK and have to run an electrical cable across the pavement, you have to mark the area so that people won't trip over your cable or electrocute themselves.
In the picture I posted, if you had a charging point on the wall of the building, you would absolutely have to run it across the pavement to get to your car - so how can this be allowed? What about wheelchairs riding on the pavement? Or prams? Or people who trip over the cable?
Can someone else who parks in front of your house use your cable? If not, why not? The street parking is free for everyone, anybody can park there, electric car or not.
>> (a definite minority outside of London)
You mean outside literally any city in UK. Terraced houses are bread and butter of living in the UK and they all have the same problem - you usually don't park in front of your own door.
On-street chargers can be mounted to a bollard or lamp post at the kerbside, avoiding a cable run across the pavement. Alternatively, the cable can be routed through a sunken channel with a removable cover, similar to a standard drainage channel.
>Can someone else who parks in front of your house use your cable? If not, why not?
A private EV charger running from your own electricity supply has a lockable receptacle. A shared EV charger uses contactless cards for billing.
>You mean outside literally any city in UK. Terraced houses are bread and butter of living in the UK and they all have the same problem - you usually don't park in front of your own door.
70% of UK households have access to off-street parking. The other 30% do pose some significant challenges, but they're not insurmountable.
http://www.ecolane.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Ecolane-...
Parking meters is not a thing in Europe though. Usually there's a single ticketing machine, possibly behind a door. You either get a paper ticket and put it behind the windscreen or pay before leaving to get through the barrier.
Note the I've seen a lot of the Europe style meters in the US. Each city gets to choose, and the one machine for numerous parking spaces has some advantages, and other disadvantages.
At least in my city, there's literally no space on sidewalks for per-car meters. And there're no designated spots on many streets - all spaces are fluid. Nobody would be guaranteed to park in front of one. While somebody may be in front of two. Most public garages and big lots are bumper-to-bumper 90-degree parking with not much space either.
Of course, there's plenty of space in suburbs. But there's no parking meters at all over there.
Green is riding a bike.
The things these have in common were winters (indiana), employers without a decent area to change clothes in, lack of places to safely store a bike, lack of places to safely ride the bike, and a lack of public transportation. Some employers wouldn't hire you if you didn't have reliable transportation (a car) : Even McDonalds inquired about this in the late 90's. One job preffered one to have a vehicle occasionally to take deposits to the bank and get small change for customers. The penalty was crappier work hours because you could not meet business needs. The bank wasn't far away (8-10 blocks) and was in a tiny town (less than 3k people), yet the store was neither busy enough nor in a crime area high enough to qualify for an armored car service.
And that's not to mention things like having to go travel to wash clothes or, like some even smaller towns than the one mentioned above, not having even a convenience store in town to get basic items.
But also, I have a child, not yet 3. If you're going to say that I shouldn't have a car in this scenario you're either single or uninvolved in the realities of having a child.
I understand that manufacturing batteries has negative externalities. I'd argue that removing myself from the carbon spraying game has immediate impact (we cannot stop ACC now, but we can temper its course), and that's good. Reducing the US's economic incentive to screw with the world's politics to maintain gas prices: also good.
Don't forget too that there are certainly other interesting infrastructure solutions to deal with as well. A lot of people's cars spend most of their week in the parking lot of a job, so chargers in work places can be a more than good enough option for apartment dwellers.
The interesting thing to electricity is that the grid infrastructure is already very well distributed. Just about anywhere your car sits for more than a few minutes could potentially be a charger. The question is probably less when such things will show up and more what sort of interesting things people will do with that.
There are all sorts of interesting possibilities, such as inductive chargers embedded into street beds and parking lots that the only need is to park on top of them to get a charge.
Consider that a great deal of that price difference may just be scale. Combustion engines are extremely complex and have hundreds of parts, and require tons of automation and labor to make and assemble. Batteries can be spat out of a few machines. Batteries are heavier, and made of more stuff than an engine+transmission, but they are way simpler to build.
Also the highest material expenses of batteries, nickel and cobalt, may also become cheaper at scale.
What!? So many people in the US live in urban environments where getting an oil change and emissions tested is yet another errand and yet another expense. Your "fuel" costs basically get halved. Factor in the time you save by never having to run the myriad errands required of petrol car owners, and if you want to have a shiny, great looking, fun to drive new model car, you're already out ahead! With the subsidy, it's been like that for years, and with the pace of improvements in battery tech and economies of scale, it will also be true without the subsidy.
I don't know what this myriad of errands you speak of are...
GMs and Fords spend a lot more time in the shop/parking lot of AutoZone.
Um, that's a really bad idea. Even if you are using 5k rated oil, you should get your oil changed every 2.5k or so if you are always in city driving.
Why is that?
Severe conditions. Pretty much every oil bottle and car manual says change your oil more often in "Severe conditions". Of course most people think of severe as stomping on the gas and going 100mph, or driving in mud and deep water, or something else just as crazy. Of course that's only part of what your manufacturer calls severe, this is also called severe conditions
* Driving repeated short distances.
* For extended periods of idling or low speed operation.
* More than 50% of driving in heavy city traffic in temperatures above 90°F.
* If using brakes extensively.
I lease a Toyota Corolla and bring it in for the regular maintenance every 6 months, as instructed. They only change the oil every other visit, or roughly every 10-12k miles. The other visits are just inspections and tire rotations.
The maintenance guide says the oil should be changed every 5k miles only if driving under "special operating conditions":
- Driving on dirt roads or dusty roads
- Driving while towing, using a car-top carrier, or heavy vehicle loading
- Repeated trips of less than five miles in temperatures below 32°F / 0°C
- Extensive idling and/or low speed driving for a long distance such as police, taxi or door-to-door delivery use
If you love spending loads of money on oil, sure, but there's absolutely no point. Oil change every 10k miles for new cars is more than enough. My last car had a recommended oil change every 18k miles, or every 12k during "heavy use". I had it changed at 10k and was told it was too early(based on the condition of the oil, not what the manual said).
I change my own oil on my vehicles. With synthetic oil and a new filter, it doesn't cost more than $75 USD per change, and you can take it lower if you get the oil on sale. Mineral oil, even cheaper.
> Oil change every 10k miles for new cars is more than enough.
For new cars, sure. I have used vehicles with > 100k on the odo; I tend to change my oil every 3-4k (so about 3-4 times per year). I could probably go longer between changes, but it would require me to have analysis run. If I'm feeling lazy, though, I know that I can safely get away with a new filter and top-up with a quart or so of oil.
> My last car had a recommended oil change every 18k miles, or every 12k during "heavy use". I had it changed at 10k and was told it was too early(based on the condition of the oil, not what the manual said).
You can't really tell what the condition of the oil is just from looking at it. To really know, you have to have it analyzed:
Now you're just making stuff up, right? To support the narrative of the major hassle of oil changes, right?
(FTR I change my oils every 18,000–19,000 miles, or maybe once in 2 years, and while my city living and driving tends to focus not on churning on grid-locked centre but rather a bit more flowing sub-urban areas – still a far cry from countryside driving – a necessary 2,500-mile oil change scream nothing as loud as a garbage engine, vintages be excluded. Perhaps I should avoid talking about cars with Americans, they seem to live in a complete wacko-world when it comes to many things driving.)
https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/tips-advice/stop-changing-y...
"One GM car Edmunds drove went 13,000 miles before the monitoring system indicated the need for an oil change. We sent a sample of that oil to a lab for analysis. The results showed that the oil could have safely delivered at least another 2,000 miles of service."
Repair of the radiator.
Emissions testing.
Oil change.
Repair of the ignition system (90's Honda CRX).
Repair of the fuel pump.
Change transmission fluid.
Replace timing belt.
Ignition related tune-up, including change spark plugs (Toyota.)
Re-adjustment of ignition timing. (Toyota)
Replace car battery.
Replace alternator.
Replace starter.
http://www.fordfusionenergiforum.com/gallery/image/581-2016-...
EV are much roomier than ICE vehicles.
I trust that is an exaggeration? Strikes me as a pretty odd attitude.
In much of Europe, with tiny streets and parking allowances, I liked that people considered their car more of a practical thing than a fashion choice. In Australia or the US, men act emasculated if they aren't driving a large ute/truck, whereas it's more often the default in Europe that they're just in whatever is easiest to park - a three-door hatch or a small-factor SUV (that would be similar in size to a hatch in Australia).
I wish that here in the US we could still get a small pickup, with a 2-door standard cab and a short bed, but CAFE rules have prevented auto makers from going that route.
I hate four door, extend cab pickups. I hate the long wheelbase. I'd like to be able to buy a new small Ford Ranger again (4wd this time) - but I can't. Even the Wrangler has gone almost exclusively 4-door and "big".
I can't see myself in a car (well - beyond something like a Mustang GT or similar - but I already know one of those would get me in trouble with the law super-quick); I'm currently driving a loaner Camry from my repair shop (while they take care of some problems with my recently purchased TJ), and while it's been a great car (250k and runs like a dream, honestly - for a 1993 its not bad at all!), it just feels wrong to me.
So, for now I'm going to stick with my VehiCROSS and TJ - both used and paid-for, but both suck the cash outta my wallet in so many ways. And let's not talk about the carbon footprint for either (both get around 15 mpg or less - ugh). But I don't have a problem going off-road.
Which for an EV, I'm just waiting for this possibility. Right now, though, there isn't a big enough demand for EVs period, let alone pickups or 4wd. I've seen a couple of EV pickups (Ford actually made an EV Ranger back in the 90s), but the latest concept I've seen is just yet another extended cab monstrosity (but AWD). I don't want or need that.
What would be cool to see would be the OX truck with an EV option (but I doubt that will happen, as it doesn't fit its use or demographics - nor are they likely to be sold to regular consumers).
Finally, of the EVs I have seen - outside of the Tesla - the Volt actually looks rather nice, for a small car.
Although having seen them all in person, I actually prefer the design of the Leaf and i3 to the Tesla. They look a bit cheap but the Tesla looks... disproportionate(?) in person. Maybe it'd just a difference in US design taste vs EU/Japan.
I still chuckle when I see a Prius, especially that newer one that looks like a Batmobile. People are daffy suckers.
I think my Fiat 500e looks great inside and out.
My oil and everything else that needs changing is changed at the yearly mandatory service. You will have to do it in an electric car too so you're not saving any time here.
You will also have to change tyres when they wear out, same as with a normal car, same with brakes and everything else.
The only true point here is that the fuel cost is a lot cheaper especially over here with petrol at over $8/US gallon.
Actually, I don't have that. I have one service based on mileage coming up, which seems like it will be the only one I will ever hit before my lease is up. I've taken it in once for a firmware upgrade, and I've had my EV for a year and a half. (And the dealer washed my car, so for me, it was folded into a car wash errand.)
Actually the EV takes MORE time fore those myriad tasks. With the EV you take an extra minute every night to plug it in, and an extra minute to unplug it in the morning (most of this is time to coil the chord - maybe the time is only 30 seconds, it of course depends on how the location of the charger relates to the front door). With a gas car you spend 10 minutes once every two weeks to put in more gas. As a result the EV cots you 5 minutes a week.
Note that the time for an EV is part of the routine so it is easy to forget about it, but it is still real time.
No, you still save time. Since those 30 seconds are folded into each non-car errand, they really come out of the errand/task-context-switch overhead. By requiring fewer errands, you actually save time.
(Tesla seems to be at about 45-60 minutes for 200 miles with their Superchargers...)
Back of the envelope numbers: Tesla uses 75KWh batteries at 400vDC to go 250 miles. Trying to refill that in 5 minutes is going to be dumping some serious power into the battery in a very short time.
To recharge 75KWh in 5 minutes (1/12 hour) at 100% efficiency would take:
(75,000 / (5/60)) / 400 = 2,250 amps (900KW)
That is going to be one BIG connector and cable going into the car... and the battery's internal wiring will need to be increased by 10x (or more) to carry that current to the cells.
For comparison, the Tesla SuperCharger uses 400v at 250 amps (100KW). To do the charge in 5 minutes would be an order of magnitude more power. It's a pretty good bet that the SuperChargers are close to the max charge current the batteries can accept.
Any inefficiencies in the system will result in waste power that will also have to be dissipated - if the charger were 90% efficient, it will have to get safely dissipate 100KW (1MW * 0.1) for the duration of the charge. A quick google search indicates lithium ion batteries are close to 100% efficient in charging(!) so that really good - the charge won't be cooking the cells themselves, although the battery's wiring and charge current control circuitry will need to be kept cool.
Ref:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Battery
* https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/model-s-battery-volt...
* http://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-supercharger-an-in-dept...
You'd have to scale up the size of the internal wiring, but not that much. The wires are sized for efficiency, not heating. For extreme speed charging it's acceptable for them to heat up briefly.
Finally, a 5 minute charge would be an average of 12 C (1 C means charging in an hour, .5 C means 2 hours, etc). This is high, but there are plenty of batteries that can do it- there are batteries that can charge/discharge up to 40 C. Even if it isn't good for the batteries, that's not really a problem since it would be needed pretty rarely.
[1] These can handle 260 amps per .4 square inches of connector- 3.5 square inches in total: http://www.molex.com/molex/products/family?key=extreme_ten60...
We'll have to tax them eventually.
Seems like a good externalized cost to target.
You can recycle 100% of the lithium in a li-ion battery, but atm it's more costly to recycle than just mine the stuff - hopefully this will change in the near future.
Highly unlikely due to liability reasons. Remember the Galaxy 8? QC for batteries is demanding; QC for refurbished batteries is impossible.
We don't tax non-smokers for daring to breathe nicotine free air, yet we shifted away from governments paying for hospitals with tobacco revenue. Tobacco is crazily expensive nowadays and it takes so long to buy it (with the new all brown packaging looking the same) that it seems to be priced out of accessible addictability. I think ICE motor cars will go the same way, plus there is that external cost of everyone benefiting from clean air.
And my friends who live 20+ miles away will be delighted to have me over for dinner after having worked up a sweat. Not to mention being lucky enough to then pedal 2+ hours after that dinner.
My partner who's got a back injury? Well, tough for them, they should just stay home.
Bikes are a great thing. I have one, and I use it regularly - but they're not an either-or proposition in many environments. The way our cities are structured, we need cars. (On the West Coast. The East Coast has the benefit of a more traditional layout, often making them more walkable)
I forget HN is USA car culture with no public transit until hyperloops magically happen! This is a cultural difference, you Americans can't even walk unless it is a hike up Half Dome or something, walking to the shops is just not allowed - jaywalking they call it?!?
In Europe we have trains for going direct to city or town centre, with plenty of stops in between. I spend quality time with my phone on the train journey there, I arrive alive rather than tired out by breathing the exhaust from the car in front, as happens if you 'sit in traffic' warming the planet. Furthermore, I can drink sociably when out on bike/train - I don't have to ride the road to the station on the way back and I don't have to be the boring driver who cannot go with the party. I also don't disturb people revving an engine late at night or risk the lives of others at the wheel of a two tonne machine. I don't take up parking space or impose on my hosts that they provision parking arrangements for me. As for the sweat thing, that is not a problem on a bike, however, trapped in a tin box, sat on a seat that never gets washed, with 360 degree greenhouse, that can be bad for the sweat thing, even with air-con. I am also not tied to an invisible cord to the car, only able to make a certain amount of paces from it, free rather than chained to all this moral baggage.
Dry cleaning? Basic 30 wash for me. Drip dry. I go to weddings, interviews and posh business things, I am even on first name terms with the guy in the dry cleaners, but my needs for dry cleaning are not in your American league of consumerist normality. The idea that I could not do my dry cleaning because I didn't have a car - I so would love to have that problem rather than laugh at those that do.
Shopping. Do you Americans eat your own weight in food every 168 hours? Yes growing children do need mountains of food but you can get all that stuff delivered these days and you can pick up really fresh nice food on a daily basis from better shops than that big box store you Americans have to drive to.
...ah backs.
Back injuries happen in many ways, IMHO those that don't cycle are headed for back injury from spending too long sitting down, sitting in cars and putting on the pounds.
I know you propose 'cars for all' as the only real world way, but what about blind people? Tough for them. Or people with no arms maybe they should just stay at home. That excuse for 'must have cars' is sub-par for HN logical reasoning.
> Do you Americans eat your own weight in food every 168 hours?
Please just don't. Building upon and reinforcing stereotypes doesn't add to the discussion. Regardless of what you're responding to, do better than this. Some people don't have access to good public transportation: that's just a fact. Sharing how you approach life is great. Doing so in a way that bashes a group of people—regardless of what group it is—isn't helpful or make your statements amenable to reasoned consideration. HN is a community you choose to participate in. Are you accurately described by the statements you attribute to the HN community?
While you could maybe be a bit less polemic about it if you'd actually like to engage in a debate instead of yet another Internet flamewar, you've understood the core of the problem: Introducing bikes in the US is a cultural issue. It's a long slog. Dropping a subsidy for e-cars (which is crucial to drop pollution levels and break petroleum dependency) for bikes nobody will use right now is... not helping anybody.
You might also want to improve your understanding of another culture before you insult them wholesale. So, a few things:
* "jaywalking" means illegally crossing the street. Which exists in Europe as well as the US.
* "As for the sweat thing, that is not a problem on a bike". You really might want to learn about humidity.
* "you can pick up really fresh nice food on a daily basis from better shops". No, no you really can't. The shopping situation here is dismal.
Yes, you can fit all your shopping on a bicycle. You can even take your kids to school on one.
https://www.bakfiets.nl/ https://yubabikes.com/
Yes, your partner with a back injury can ride a bicycle. So can someone with coordination or balance problems, missing limbs or any number of other impairments.
http://hasebikes.com/91-1-Recumbent-Bike-KETTWIESEL-ALLROUND... http://hasebikes.com/104-1-Special-Needs-Trike-Handbike.html
Yes, you can ride 20 miles to dinner without working up a sweat and you can do it in much less than 2 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBjMEuViuPU
If there were the political will to make it happen, American cities could look like this:
2) No, my partner can't ride a bicycle. As advanced as your powers of remote diagnosing may be, they're wrong. It's not an option. We tried. (I'm from Germany. I'm somewhat acquainted w/ the idea of specialty bikes, and trust me, I looked at them)
3) Theoretically, I might fit my shopping needs on a bicycle. Alas, transportation here is so completely shot that taking that bike onto the road (what bikelanes?!?) is essentially a suicide attempt. Colleagues who have the ability to bike to work usually end up with about 1-2 severe accidents (broken bones) per year.
And yes, e-bikes might address the distance problem. I still can't do it in much less than 2 hours because... I live in LA. Nobody goes 20 miles in less than two hours ;)
4) Even if there was the political will to make it happen, no, not all American cities could look like this without ~20-30 years of rezoning and construction. US city planning is... special.
European solutions cannot simply be transferred to the US, as much as I'd wish for that. (Remember, I'm German - I've lived in cities friendly to people, instead of cars. I miss it).
And that's why the suggestion of getting rid of the e-car subsidy in favor of bikes won't work in the US. Nobody will use the bikes because the infrastructure doesn't exist.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't also work on improving the infrastructure, and on changing city planning, and creating workable public transit, and all those things - but they're long-term projects.
You live in nearly the most bicycling-hostile place on the planet. This is important context for your comment.
Everyone's different, but my experience was that leaving LA did wonders for my mindset, health, and general well-being. Though, rather paradoxically, 90% of my bike commute (Santa Monica to El Segundo via Venice and Dockweiler beach) was great. That other 10% was brutal, and my ribs still hurt.
Also - "Nobody will use the bikes because the infrastructure doesn't exist." - perhaps that money could be used to build it?
But while LA is certainly exceptionally bad, many cities in the US suffer from sprawl to an extent that bikes are, right now, impractical. (Which we need to change, no doubt.)
I live in Phoenix.
/right now it's 101 F / 38 C outside...relatively a cool day!
http://www.energinyheter.se/20161227/15749/regeringen-svange...
Even libertarians hate toll roads in practice but it would reduce traffic in big cities. The suburban commuters flood the interstates but don't pay for infrastructure.
Edit: I guess they're still unpopular.
They were very unpopular, and played a role in the governing party losing the election. So I'm afraid: that's not going to resolve the unpopularity.
Privatize, charge a bundle to use them and they're happy like pigs in poop!
I think GP was saying that, however much they might like private pay-per-use roads in theory, libertarians are still annoyed with road tolls in practice.
Not that I agree with that assessment, but that seems to be the intent.
In principle I like that because you pay for the risk you are, but in practice it sucks because I have no way to force the insurance company to just use the data to charge me insurance and not to track my peccadilloes.
It is mafia-like to more than double the amount owed for being late, if only for one day. I think this is a huge problem. Research and studies have shown that if you lower the penalties, you will actually collect more revenue. It is unconscionable that governments rail against late fees by banks, yet can more than quadraple in a period of six months or less.
I love when the bill doesn't show up in the mail or on the website till a day or two before it's late. Our state toll program is practically criminal.
The modern toll roads in France are excellent. So quick and easy.
Here in Japan the majority of the highway system has been privatized and they all have tolls, and it seems to work just fine. Driving solo between two cities 4 hours away is often more expensive in tolls alone than taking the bullet train.
Far more efficient than toll roads, where you have to build toll infrastructure, hire employees, do enforcement and create traffic jams at every toll booth. RFID toll trackers are not enough in preventing the traffic jams. On top of that, you don't have to build anything to implement it today to create a usage tax for roads, since smog check equipment already checks your mileage. It also applies to all roads instead of a select few roads. To determine the distribution of where the tax money should go, you use the passive traffic tracker systems we have almost everywhere.
That might be higher for other folks...
But it's all right. I mean, just for road safety you should take a 30 min break after every hour on motorway unless you're some sort of superhuman. Who could argue it's not a perfectly decent range for travelling? (edited for clarity)
And you can spend that time just thinking where to invest all the money you save from oil changes.
Driving at highway speeds obviously isn't a big part of NEDC rating for EVs.
The Leaf is much worse off than the Bolt or even a 500e when it comes to this. My bolt, I've worked out it is about a 7% range loss using A/C on those hot MtV 280 commutes.
I've driven to Watsonville then back to SF in one day and been comfortably in my range in a Bolt. So... it's getting good very fast. I really do like my car.
Whining about internet points is annoying.
I agree that a Leaf isn't practical for longer trips. EV viability will improve with easier access to rental cars for longer trips. Zipcar doesn't have the coverage necessary to do this in most cities. Maybe Getaround will improve to the point where it's practical.
I consider most EVs to be equivalent to being 100% reliant on public transit; good for commutes, but unacceptable for recreation. And that's okay.
No need for being a "superhuman". All you need is plenty of Mountain Dew, a gas station burrito, a few No-Doz, the window rolled down and the music turned up!
The miles just fly by.
I've easily done 10 hour, 800 mile trips only stopping for gas once or twice. I'll grant that was in the past when I was younger, but even today two or three hours at a stretch would be no problem (heck, just to drive from here in Phoenix to Tuscon would take that long - why stop?).
> And you can spend that time just thinking where to invest all the money you save from oil changes.
I do my own oil changes, and maybe spend a grand total of a few hundred dollars a year doing them. Honestly, I probably spend more on fast food per year (now that is really something I would love to drop - if only it wasn't so tasty at times).
That's well within the range of most electric vehicles on the market.
That's really the relevant point here: at what point do the savings of an electric car make it such that renting another car for the longer trips still ends up with that coming out on top?
There's definitely a long tail of people who drive further regularly for whom electric cars won't be so practical.
300km is a bit much for a commute (I've only had a 50km one-way commute personally, although I do know a few people with 100km commutes), but it's not really that far for a trip you might take on a 3-day weekend to the beach or the mountains. The US really is that large: I might describe myself as living "close" to Chicago since it's the closest city that most people stand a chance of putting on a map, but it's basically as far away as Brussels is from Paris.
We get the advantage of an easy to park and fuel efficient car for the daily commute, but also can take advantage of a larger car for the big trips.