Comment by agomez314 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agomez314 | Hacker News Reader

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It's amazing how a banal headline like this, which really does not say much, can trigger correlation vs causation debates. It causes the reader to project his/her beliefs into it -- if you're pro-ev: "great! More works needs to be done!" If you're pro-gas: "You see, it's coastal elites buying EVs." From my perspective it's a neutral headline that creates debate due to the superimposition of beliefs from different parties. The questions I get from reading this headline include:

- Why is there a such a large disparity between California vs "rest of US"?

- What makes people think that it's obvious for California to have more EVs than other states?

- what are the contributing factors to people buying more new cars in California?

- what's the ratio of new evs bought vs used evs? How does that compare to the number of used cars sold?

- how has this proportion changed over time?

- what is the rate of growth of sales in new evs in California vs rest of US? Are there states with higher growth of sales vs previous (ratio vs total)?

>> Why is there a such a large disparity between California vs "rest of US"?

I just moved back to CA from the eastern midwest. I pay $1.50-$2 a gallon more for gas than I did in the East. At that increased price, it starts to make sense to consider EV+solar if you are commuting 50-100mi a day.

>> What makes people think that it's obvious for California to have more EVs than other states?

There are reports that EVs experience degraded performance in low temperatures.

If this is true it seems reasonable to expect that in geographies with considerably lower seasonal temperatures than California, at least some folks would be motivated away from EVs due to this alone.

I can confirm this. Our 2017 Volt's battery-only range drops from ~60 miles in the summer to only ~45 miles in winters.

Location: New England.

Presumably because you're running the heater?

One thing that people severely underestimate is the amount of energy that goes to climate control. I find that it's about 15% of my energy consumption (which dovetails with your numbers).

I mean, Québec has a ton of EVs and it’s ridiculously cold there! Probably paying 5 cent à kWh helps though.

In Europe the further you go north, the likelihood that a car is electric increases. That is simply because people can afford it and there is a government willing to incentivise it.

It's more complicated than that though, because Teslas are extremely popular in Norway, which is known for the coldness of its climate.

Right, Norway has very high taxes on gas vehicles which encourages EV adoption.

Thank you for noting this, I did not know that.

No idea but it’ll do wonders for the air quality in Los Angeles once a significant number of people drive EV’s.

The disparity for cali is partially that all the manufacturers are sending their evs to California before other states. So simply an availability problem.

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