Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people | Hacker News Reader

Electric vehicles are the future for everyone – except disabled people

theverge.com

29 pointsadrian_mrd51 comments

While I definitely don't want to come across as unsympathetic or uncaring towards those with disabilities, I am quite frustrated by tone of this article.

Yes, putting the battery in the floor makes the current ways that disabled people modify their vehicles to be more friendly easier, however, the need to modify the vehicle is not unique to EVs - they were already taking non friendly vehicles and making them friendlier.

> "We shouldn’t just be behind the wheel of electric cars, we should also be calling the shots on how to build them."

I'm also all for more diversity and representation in engineering (what percentage of companies have people with mobility needs on their engineering teams?) however it fundamentally doesn't make sense to take any group brought together by a particular need and have them design something for mass consumption.

It kind of feels like a "hit piece", as the author paints this specifically about how "big EV" doesn't care about disabled people instead of suggesting ways that the situation can be improved.

> however it fundamentally doesn't make sense to take any group brought together by a particular need and have them design something for mass consumption

I see this line of thinking a lot when disability discussions come up and I think it’s fundamentally flawed. People with disabilities aren’t a homogeneous “group of people brought together by a particular need” - quite the opposite. They have many different and varied needs. The accommodations they seek are often the same I see developers griping about on HN every day: interoperability, hardware standards, and enough flexibility for the owner to decide what works best for them rather than the manufacturer.

Why is it perfectly acceptable for us to have these complaints about MacBook hard drives and batteries but a “hit piece” when people in need of accommodation have similar complaints about Tesla batteries?

It's fine to complain about both things. The difference is how it's represented: as discriminatory.

It's also of note that for all the complaints, right to repair isn't unanimously supported on HN either.

Finally, one of the big issues of interoperability / hardware standards is not accommodation, but outright hostility (purposefully changing things often, making them hard to modify by design or law).

> It kind of feels like a "hit piece"

Is your comment a hit piece? The comment is mostly about the article; it doesn't much add to our knowledge of disabled people using electric cars.

Every article posted on HN receives similar responses. They seem like hit pieces to me. What can we learn from those motivations?

A flat skateboard design, which is Tesla's current approach, VW's approach, and virtually everyone else making dedicated EV platforms, should enable ramps just fine I would think.

EVs because of this skateboard and the lack of need of an engine compartment and numerous other ICE systems will offer MORE interior room and body design possibilities.

I'm really chomping at the bit for a EV Minivan, which should just offer a ridiculous amount of storage and flexibility. Certainly such a platform will be able to accommodate wheelchairs.

Finally, SOME kind of self-driving is coming. Even if last-mile local street self-driving is delayed for quite a while, the ability to have a "remote driver service" is certainly possible, so even if the wheelchair can't go in the driver's seat, the wheelchair person can drive from a glorified game console, supervise the self-driving program, or have a remote person navigate for them via cameras.

The notion that we'll be unable to make some way for wheelchairs to use skateboard design EVs is really stretching reality.

Counter evidence: https://youtu.be/cuZYROM4Vrs

In fact, much of the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel is counter evidence for this claim, as Zack shows taking two electric bikes and welding them together for a seriously good and relatively inexpensive first pass at an “off road wheelchair”, and then ups the ante with his custom-designed “notawheelchair” a.k.a. “Rig”, and plenty of other videos with his lovely now-wife Cambry.

Now, if someone is dependent on staying in their electric wheelchair and they need a van with a lift or a ramp, then the current fleet of EVs aren’t very suitable for that. But I’m sure that situation will change. But claiming that there is absolutely no future in electric vehicles for disabled people is quite … disingenuous … at best.

That’s got little to do with the article.

Their primary issue is EV’s have batteries in the floor. This is great for driving as it lowers the center of gravity and adds space for a frunk, but adding a wheelchair ramp etc becomes extremely difficult. It’s fixable, but significantly more expensive to deal with.

Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also few charging stations have been added to disabled parking spaces.

"Charging cables are heavy and require precision making them difficult for many disabled people to use. Also few charging stations have been added to disabled parking spaces."

Interesting. Why isn't the ADA used to require such affordances?

I can’t speak to the entire EV charging landscape, but Tesla’s 250kw charging pedestals are liquid cooled and have thin, easily manipulated charge cables and Supercharger stations (at least in Florida) have dedicated handicap spots.

Gas stations have signs posted saying that if you need ADA assistance and more than two people are working the station to tap your horn or call the number to get full service at normal pump prices.

Something similar for “manned” charging stations would likely suffice (though many are unmanned).

I don’t think it will be any more complicated then having a slightly different ramp. Existing disabled support vehicles in the article are already minivans or vans and they don’t have a particularly low floor to start with.

Disability ramps can’t be overly steep which means the higher the point they need to reach the longer the ramp needs to be. It quickly gets to the point where the only practical solution is a char lift which is expensive and less reliable. Extending the ramp into the vehicle is therefore critical from a practicality standpoint.

It’s likely there will eventually be a viable EV alternative, but for now nothing from Tesla for example is viable.

nothing from Tesla is really a minivan or van. Their affordable suv is more of a minsuv. I haven’t seen any ice mini suvs accommodating wheelchairs.

It’s common to add ramps to SUV’s. EX: https://youtu.be/OdPwvKwcTeM

For comparison the Model X is 198.3” L x 89.4” W x 66” H, where the shown Honda Pilot (excluding mirrors) is 196.5” L x 78.6” W x 70.6” H.

Long distance driving is going to be a point of difficulty for electric vehicles for quite a while but for most day to day uses, charging will happen at home where everything can be set up to make charging easy for the wheelchair user. But the point about the vehicle floor is indeed something that will need to be addressed.

>>But claiming that there is absolutely no future in electric vehicles for disabled people

You didn't read the article.

The thing that struck me about the Tesla video is that they're still using after market mechanical controls for acceleration and braking. This is very similar to what my aunt used in her car back in the 80s. Since Tesla is at least partially drive-by-wire, it seems like actual controls on the steering wheel without a mechanical component would be trivial to add. Perhaps there are regulatory reasons for this or maybe Tesla simply hasn't been asked for or prioritized this functionality.

Most cars now are partially drive-by-wire. The mechanical interconnect serves as backup.

> Perhaps there are regulatory reasons for this or maybe Tesla simply hasn't been asked for or prioritized this functionality.

My guess, which I understand to be true with many similar issues: There are enormous safety engineering issues. Unless someone can demonstrate an enormous benefit to changing from a mature, well-tested, safe solution that everyone is already trained on, it's not worth changing. And regarding training: Imagine someone decided to change the driving controls for everyone; imagine the cost.

> claiming that there is absolutely no future in electric vehicles for disabled people

Where does the article say that? Maybe I missed it. The article quotes one engineer saying,

“It’s not insurmountable, but companies have to start working with us now,” Frayne said.

This too shall pass. The design of gas vehicles have not always been very friendly to disabled people, and bespoke upfitters like Braunability and MobilityWorks have done heavy duty engineering work to bring us into a golden age of affordable ramp vehicles. [1] As the EV market supercedes the gas market, someone will figure it out for EVs too. Smells like a promising market niche if you have a proclivity for hardware.

[1]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/203485967149

> This too shall pass.

Said John Maynard Keynes to other economists (1923):

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

Most of the article is about the position of the battery, but this remark also seems very wrong:

"And the price tag will only go up with new technology."

Electric equivalents are predicted to be cheaper up front to buy soon, and already are cheaper in terms of TCO in many jurisdictions.

Electric vehicles seem generally easier to make modular and reconfigurable.

Seems like the basic EV design of "thick slab with wheels at the corners and everything else flexible and bolted on" could actually be an advantage in a lot of ways. Slide out ramps may not fit, but lifts shouldn't be a problem and internal movement could be easier.

Heck, height adjustment of the entire body (or just one side) is probably not out of the question when you don't have to worry about mechanical connections to the engine because the motors are contained in the wheels.

I think you are right. As a “platform” these designs might end up with a lot to offer.

Misleading headlines like this are very irresponsible.

It’s especially frustrating because the article itself presents the challenges as largely surmountable as long as there is adequate awareness.

Yup. I really don’t fault authors or journalists for the ridiculous headlines their editors foist upon everyone. It’s SOOO frustrating. This headline will absolutely be used as fodder to oppose EVs and maintain the status quo ICE-centrism.

My wheelchair bound friend would never be able to afford a car even if he could drive it. All cars and car dependent infrastructure makes his life more difficult. He takes the bus or the bike lane, and neither option is very good.

The automobile industry can do some amazing engineering. Examples: lowering emissions, increasing safety, and switching to electric engines. The main thing they need is some pressure from the public. Accessibility for disabled people is an engineering problem that the industry can solve if they feel enough pressure.

Nothing in this article makes sense. Others have pointed out the design argument is silly.

I can also find no data that backs up the notion that there are 61 million disabled drivers out there. It’s certainly possible but no idea where that stat comes from and searching doesn’t find it.

The 500 million disposable income is also weird to highlight.

That would mean each of the 61 million disabled drivers has about $8.50 in disposable income. That isn’t going to buy them anything ev, or not.

So my guess is the article is just mixing lots of different and irrelevant data to try to make a point (and failing)

We’re not even in the “Model T era” of EVs yet. The landscape is still evolving and will become more available and accessible to more people.

I’d argue we are just in the era of the Model T with Tesla’s model 3.

I'd argue the model t of electric vehicles was the Electrobat in 1894. EVs came before gas, and the ICE hit the pause button for a century on EV progress.

Model T wasn’t the first car. It was the first mass-market, “Everyman” car. What I’m talking about is a car that pretty much anyone who can afford a car can afford.

I'm fairly certain that Tesla's are way cheaper than the model T was.

It isn't like families could afford multiple cars back then. They were selling less than a million model Ts a years - which would have represented a large segment of the car market.

If the prices here[0] are correct, then the inflation adjusted price of a Model T would be around $7000-$23000, according to this[1].

[0] https://www.fordmodelt.net/m/facts.htm

[1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

The Electrobat was at least 30 years after the first electric car. The bat was the first mass produced on that got any traction in the market.

Cars in general are not that useful for disabled people. There are people for whom a car can be adapted to their disability, but there are tons of people for whom this is impossible, including everyone with vision disabilities. If you care about mobility for the disabled, you should not be trying to center your plans around cars with wheelchair lifts, but instead around compact urban forms with broad, flat sidewalks, minimal obstacles, low-floor transit vehicles, and no cars.

This is not necessarily a large constraint and we are just starting to see most large manufacturers offer electronic vehicles. There is one huge advantage to locating the battery in the floor as it brings the center of gravity down which is made even more useful and important by the height of many popular models.

On the other hand, it seems the move to self-driving electrical vehicles would be welcomed by alternatively-abled people that suffer from visual, motor, or gender-impairment.

Why do electric cars even need the format of a car? I can imagine a wheelchair that docks/undocks from the car to charge while driving.

The Verge’s tagline should be “Your Daily Anti-Tesla Stories”

All their stories are opinion pieces, missing out critical facts to suit their narrative.

I think hydrogen fuel cells are the future if we can't make nuclear work.

This doesn’t make sense, hydrogen fuel cells are essentially batteries/an energy store, and it takes a large amount of electricity to produce the hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells are closer in relation to lithium ion batteries or gasoline, you still need a massive energy producer to extract the hydrogen (like wind, solar, hydro, fossil fuel, or nuclear). So hydrogen is not an alternative to nuclear, if it ever took off it will really increase demand for large energy producers like nuclear.

Hydrogen is more convenient to those who travel long distances often and / or do not have an opportunity to charge at home. As someone living half way through Germany, there is no way for me to drive up to Hamburg, neither to Munich in an EV without planning to stop at a charger at least once in both directions. Maybe that’s reasonable in the summer but in the winter, that’s an uninteresting offering. It makes a one day round trip pretty difficult. FCV would make that possible.

Hydrogen as a fuel is one of the biggest cases of successful astroturfing in modern times. It is not an ecologically friendly fuel, and currently the most popular source of hydrogen is crude oil.

Advocating for hydrogen should be accompanied with an explanation of:

- how to generate the hydrogen carbon-neutral or better with less loss than alternative-energy+grid transmission.

- how to store and transport it to fueling stations

- how to build out the fueling infrastructure, since the grid already exists for BEVs

- how you will prevent people from simply using methane as a cheap alternative for H2 production, which the fossil fuel industry will very much want and will lobby to make viable

- how you will practically refuel cars

- how the cars will store the hydrogen

- why we should invest trillions in h2 infrastructure when it's all largely unproven at scale and BEVs seem to beat it economically at a midpoint of economies of scale growth

Nuclear has an entire other list of issues/challenges to maintain economic relevancy as Solar/Wind/Storage costs plummet. And I'm a serious fan of LFTR and believe ongoing research for modular MSRs should be funded even as we mostly focus on solar/wind/storage.

"The disabled community doesn’t want to drive gas-burning cars while everyone else zips around in zero-emission vehicles"

I do not understand this craze for EVs. The German Fraunhofer ISI found evidence [1] that it might take up to 93,000 miles / 150,000km until you hit a break even point with regards to emissions (58 kWh; compared to Diesel).

Is that also a factor in most buyer's decisions or is it just about the feeling of "zipping around" in a EV?

[1] https://www.isi.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/isi/dokumente/sust...

EVs CO2 emmissions depends of the carbon intensity of electricity consumed. So that is true that Germany with now 323gCO₂eq/kWh has a higher break even. But if you take the same data for exemple in France where electricity is much less carbon intensive, (now 32gCO₂eq/kWh), break even is as low as 15000km for an EV. Germany should just emit less carbon for electricity generation.

[1] https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/DE

[2] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/transport/vehic...

Those are really valuable resources, thank you!

Although France's electricity mix is exceptionally low, I'm surprised to see that the EU average (438gCO₂eq/kWh) is even higher than in Germany ([2], page 74).

In the US, it's over 600gCO₂eq/kWh, in China even 1,000gCO₂eq/kWh (1.3 million EVs were sold in China in 2020).

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