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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

You can always rent a car with a higher range for long distance trips. We could build much more efficient cars if we optimized for normal usage, that is, 1.1 people in the car, short trips, city speeds and moderate acceleration, instead of building 250HP monsters that can tow a house and using them to sit alone in traffic jams. If you have exceptional needs, rent something for the day.

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I just have to laugh at putting "250HP" and "monster" together....

I'm a gearhead, I daily drive a ~320HP car and am building a 600HP car, so I realize I'm a statistical outlier when most people just wanna sit in their appliance and commute to work as cheaply and safely as possible. A future of nothing but minimum-range electric toasters on wheels is probably resource-efficient, but definitely sounds depressing and boring to me.

Different strokes for different folks, and all that.

My sole car is a Prius C, which I think is in the neighborhood of combined gas/electric 100HP. A co-worker of mine has a Charger with a ridiculous amount of HP and a large SUV. He likes to tease me about my the hamster under my car's hood, and I like to remind him I've spent less than $500 in gas in the past 24 months.

I don't need a fun car to get to work, and I can rent trucks for hauling. To each their own.

I would think that a gearhead would love e-motors given their torque and general performance.

Telsas generally trounce all other cars off the line. The (still vaporware) Rivian has a 200hp e-motor at each wheel.

Most folks won't ever use this type of performance, and most folks won't buy high-spec EVs, but to write them off as an entire class seems silly IMHO.

I have nothing negative to say about the raw performance of electric motors. As you've said, the torque delivery is simply insane, there are very clever applications of using them to cover the "low points" in the torque curves of turbo-charged petrol engines and whatnot. Putting an electric motor in each wheel gives independent torque vectoring with probably less complexity than a traditional AWD system. From a competitive racing standpoint they have value and very interesting applications.

But from a driver experience/driver engagement standpoint....they are lacking. Same reason why car enthusiasts would rather have a manual transmission than an objectively faster-shifting dual-clutch trans. It's about how your interaction with the machine makes you FEEL.

Huge swaths of America never encounter cities when driving, particularly out west. The population density of states like Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho are so far from solvable with electric vehicles that it's honestly funny to see this topic discussed as if there's some feasible path there. And other western states aren't far behind. Nevada, Utah, Colorado, the Dakotas, they're all extremely sparse. 100+ mile trips aren't uncommon and are rarely pre-planned for.

The other half of the equation is that many people have trucks as a dual purpose vehicle: work and every day use. People need to get grain buckets out to cows, or tow back hay on a trailer. People need to get down the street when it's snowing from October to June. Probably 20% of the roads aren't even paved.

Any kind of sweeping legislation like has been discussed in these comments would basically grind life out here to a halt. Which wouldn't be good considering how much food comes from this area.

I'm in favor of a steep carbon tax. That would allow people who currently have no alternatives to still do whatever they need to do, but provide a strong incentive for finding alternatives.

You can rent a cruise ship if you want. If you are only going to own one of something it makes more sense to go for the Swiss army knife approach, hence the proliferation of crew cab pickups and crossovers. Also, 250hp really isn't that much in this day and age. As someone who rents various kinds of trucks and trailers every month or so I have plenty of sympathy for people who's use case is narrow enough that they can fill it with a single vehicle, even if it is a crew cab F150. Yes, it's a luxury but it's a luxury a lot of people can afford and justify. Renting equipment is a massive hassle and nobody is going to do it to pick up plywood or furniture if they have any other option. You're basically complaining about people rationally choosing to spend their extra income on a luxury that has a big impact on their day to day lives.

It's a luxury many people can afford because they don't pay for the externalities.

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