Vehicles seem to be continuously ballooning in size, so whether that continues or eventual legislation forces more reasonable sizes, higher energy density would be very welcome.
Many households have two cars, one for errands and one for work/travel, so if that's true it helps on both accounts.
The Hummer is a monster either way and is not a good sample.
The Model 3 is 14% heavier than the Audi: https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401999985&veh2...
And the Ioniq5 is 35% heavier than the RAV4: https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401958795&veh2...
9-14% seems comparable IMO and worst case roughly half he mentioned 1000 lbs.
Same for the model S, it's on average about 200kg heavier than a BMW 5 series across the range from most basic model to heaviest on both.
If a car has a 500kg battery, and tech improvements can make that 200-300kg for the same range that would be quite good. Handling improves, safety improves, the suspension can be simpler and in the end also range in stop&go traffic would improve with less weight.
In Europe people frequently buy compact cars.
Let's take VW Golf as an example. The lightest version of the current model weighs 1300kg, more or less.
The EV equivalent, ID.3, weighs 1800kg. That's 500kg extra (!) which is almost 40% more.
That's an insane amount of extra weight for a small car.
The percentage difference becomes less for bigger cars, so I imagine that's why some Americans don't notice it as much.
But for the rest of the world (95% of the world's population), that's a huge deal.
The Rav4 FWD is 3370 lbs, where the Ionic 5 standard range FWD is about 4,000 lbs (the SEL is 4,300).
If the best examples are "only 500-700 lbs heavier" I think there is still room for progress. Rounded, that's the rough 1000 lbs I suggested above.
Electric cars are, in aggregate, simply heavier right now— with implications for crash safety for everyone (especially those outside that vehicle). Any progress toward increasing energy density (and vehicle size) will confer a net benefit to society.
2020 Kia Niro LX (1.6L petrol engine): 3,100lb
2020 Kia Niro Touring (1.6L petrol engine): ~3,250lb
2020 Kia Niro EX (64kWh EV): 3,854 lbs
Batteries are heavy.
A 2023 Rav 4 has a curb weight of between 3615 and 3775 lb [1]
A 2023 Ioniq 5 has a curb weight of between 3968 and 4663 lb [2]
So a difference of between 193 and 1048 pounds between the two. That's actually a lot less than I expected, at least on the low end. 193 pounds is basically equivalent to just having one extra person in the car.
As noted in replies, though, these _do_ take into account different drive trains, so the comparison is not not great from the start.
[1] https://www.toyota.com/rav4/2023/features/mpg_other_price/44...
[2] https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/ioniq-5/compare-sp...
Base models: 3,370 vs 3,968. Flagship models: 3,800 vs 4,663.
So 600-850 lbs differential. Not 1,000, but not just an extra person.
To be fair, the Hyundai does seem larger (12" longer wheelbase).
The current generation of battery tech is just a little heavier than would be competitive to ICE on weight. Gasoline holds a lot more energy than a battery can, but the engine is heavier. If/when battery density is able to double (and this solid state tech is 2x-3x current battery, so it would be a game-changer), you would have very similar car weights. This seems to be one of the reasons the big trucks are first, adding a thousand pounds to a 6000 lb. truck isn't as bad as adding that to a car half the weight. I expect we will eventually see vehicles that weight less than the ICE counterpart that get a reasonable range, but hard to say when battery tech advances that much.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-comparisons/?veh1=401999985&veh2...
If you live in any kind of cold-ish climate (below 10C) and want comfort, imagine a super common scenario:
- heating on
- air temperature below 10C
- highway speeds, so a steady speed of ~130kmph
- car costing less than €30k
Well, guess what, there are barely any EVs costing less than €30k in Europe, and even if there were, their range would be 200km or less under those conditions.
Why 70%? You obviously don't run the battery to zero, 10% is a common amount of buffer to leave. And then when you DC fast charge, the rate of charging drops dramatically around 80%, so people don't charge to full.
These are for ideal conditions, add in any sort of weather and the range drops again as you run a heater, etc.
Living in the Bay Area, driving to Tahoe in the winter without a mandatory recharge should be the gold standard.
It's not an unusual use case, "only" about 180 miles, and yet there aren't any EVs that can do it confidently because going uphill in the cold with aerodynamic-destroying ski rack is really hard.
A car with 500 miles of fair-weather range could probably do it?
So yes, our family is eagerly awaiting a 500 mile range ev
The newest electric cars take a half hour to do this (a non-trivial amount of time) and only go about 2/3rds as far (less on the highway), so if you actually want to go somewhere you're taking on about an extra hour of charging for 6 hours of driving. Recharging this kind of car damages its most expensive part- the fuel tank- and it shrinks every time you charge it (whether quickly or slowly).
Now, if the car had 1600 miles of range, then a half-hour charge time and the slow shrinkage of its gas tank is more acceptable because you're getting approximately the same rate of recharge per minute (as it would be if the 200-mile range electric cars charged as fast as a gas car does). With a range or charge time like that, the other inherent disadvantages to electric cars are muted to a massive degree (a 20% range degradation isn't as big a deal for a car that can still go 1200 miles, and a 30% range reduction in cold months isn't as big a deal if the car could be charged in 3 minutes).
But neither of those things are currently true, and that's in large part why these kinds of cars don't really sell unless they're known to be rolling gimmicks or transformative in other ways (the electric trucks that let you run power tools off their batteries are the best example of this). Which is why Tesla's cars are the way that they are, and why every other major manufacturer who doesn't have a good idea of how to sell their inferior cars take the "look, we can do a massive screen in our car too just like Tesla" approach (and fail specifically because they aren't Tesla), or they just keep developing really good gas cars (an approach currently favored by the Japanese companies).
I've only found this to be true on the internet. In the real world, it is much less common.
Lots of people realize that their truck is just the commuter and home depot stuff hauler.
(Ok: I'm a bit defensive. There's a concerted Internet effort over the past year to paint all pickups as a status symbol without justification, as if every empty bed or fresh-from-the-car-wash truck is proof that the owner doesn't need it. Even if you just move furniture every so often, I totally disagree with the sentiment. If I can afford two vehicles, a pickup and sedan would be a good combo; for now, just a pickup is good.)
This is analogous to how people thought nobody would need a 100 GB hard disk on their personal computer when 1 GB hard disks were the norm.
That’s how I mentally model it anyhow.
Pickup truck owners will die on that hill.
Think of the whole spectrum of EVs, lighter weight e-bikes, scooters, skateboards, or long range e-bikes. Electric aircraft start to become feasible.
Much more flight time out of your toy drone, multi-day battery life for your phone or laptop.
Energy storage in off grid setups becomes simpler, or more capacity in the same space.
Etc. etc.
All that provided this new design could function as a more or less slot in replacement, or better, for current lithium batteries in terms of manufacturing, cost, and what not.
EV owners really only want 500+ miles because charging the battery takes so long. Charging infrastructure is already changing and becoming more available so charging speed will be the real quest
Unfortunately the way this is calculated is absolutely fucking retarded. Basically, the larger the wheelbase of vehicle, the lower fuel efficiency the vehicle can get away with.
This is why these fucking things keep ballooning in size, have a dogshit turning radius, and are causing an epidemic of frontovers and backover accidents killing or injuring thousands of children every year because there’s no up close visibility.
Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azI3nqrHEXM
Old small trucks can actually command a premium because of this bullshit. Very few people actually like these huge stupid boats, but there’s just nothing else to buy when you need an actual work vehicle.
Please consider contacting your legislators and putting this on their radar, and keeping it there.
The top 5 on that list are Ford F-series trucks by a large margin, followed by a Toyota small SUV and a Honda small SUV, before you get to the Toyota Camry, an actual car, followed by a Toyota truck.
Americans just really like their F150's!