Can you elaborate on what makes them _far superior_?
They're also not nearly as wasteful energy-wise. As mentioned its stupid hot out here. Sometimes I need to park and wait for something such as drive up to go or waiting on my spouse to just run into a store to grab something quick or waiting out front of someone's house while I'm picking them up. I'm going to want to keep the AC running, because its like 110F at a high humidity outside with a bright sun beating down. In my ICE, its wasting tons of gas sitting there idling, probably less than 10% of the energy being consumed is actually going to cool the cabin. Most of it is just spinning metal around, pushing fluids through things, and throwing off tons of waste heat (I don't need any more heat, its already hot outside!). Meanwhile my EV could sit running the AC for a long time without making a pretty big dent in its energy usage. And when its sitting there running the AC and the radio, almost all the energy is being used running the AC and the stereo. This makes the per-minute cost of idling massively cheaper, a cost a lot of people don't think about.
You're right I'm adding a bit of extra heat load to the garage. I'm not about to sit in my garage for a bit though, I'm only stepping into it for a few minutes. And then the sun is going to rise and bake it back up to almost 100F again in an hour or so anyways. Making the temp go from 90F to 92-94F in there just doesn't make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.
And it is definitely a useful thing to do, as it takes a lot of work to get the car cool, energy that now doesn't have to come from the battery. Its an extra kWh or so that doesn't come from the battery.
This was surprising to me, Tech Ingredients tested the fuel consumption of idling ICE vehicles and found them to be incredibly efficient while idling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNiapuA0yTQ
For example you'd waste more gas dropping your kid off at practice, driving home, and returning to pick them up then if you just sat idling in the parking lot waiting for an hour.
FWIW, I own 2 EVs and seeing people idling in their ICE vehicles still annoys me.
Its not really that they're incredibly efficient, its that the energy needed to move you home and back again overall is massively more than what you'd use idling. Its still a very inefficient use of energy, from the perspective of the amount of energy in the gasoline being burned versus the actual useful work you got out of it in the end.
In that video the 2012 Mazda 3 used $1.53 in energy cost to do pretty much nothing at all. There was some snow on the ground but it was otherwise sunny, so I doubt it really needed to try and heat that much but I don't really know the air temp. That pickup used $4.10 in energy cost to once again also do practically nothing. The Outback used $2.95.
My EV has a 68kWh useful battery pack. Idling for two hours in extreme heat might use 10%, but I doubt that. I'll regularly precondition for 15-30 minutes when its hot outside to bring it down to temp (way more work bring it down from 100 than keeping it 70) and it normally only eats a few percent of the battery, but we'll err on the high side it'll be fine. I pay ~$0.10/kWh. 68 * 10% * $0.10 = $0.068. And even then, if it was a decent-ish day outside (sunny, not cold wind or extreme heat, probably like in the video) my EV would have used probably less than 2% keeping the stereo and DRLs on for a couple of hours.
My EV is pretty similar to that Outback. So for about the same idling that Outback would cost almost $3 while my EV would cost less than $0.10.
We tend to think of ICE efficiency in terms of MPG and naturally assume that their idling efficiency to be similar to their maximum driving efficiency and that's incorrect.
In theory, EVs aren't overburdened with emissions standards and aren't really road-trip machines (can't put a marine gas tank in the trunk to increase range...) so they shouldn't be any more complicated than a small mobile robot or electric skateboard. Installing a back-up camera and OBD2 port off the bus at the factory doesn't require a small server farm and LTE connection.
All the other comments seem like people getting stoked about new thing is new and ohhh shiny automagic feature with dubious productivity benefit over time.
If people really wanted dependable, then I'd suggest something that a standard human can comprehend and wrench on (even if the failure rate per mile is a bit higher). Perhaps even something that can be fixed with parts created in a garage. If they wanted to minimize environmental footprint too, they can always buy a good steel frame cargo bicycle and durable weatherproof clothing.
I do get the speed and handling angle, however consider the age old question. Is it more fun to drive fast car slow, or slow car fast?
Yeah like that's a necessary feature for most drivers...
> they can always buy a good steel frame cargo bicycle
But where do I put the 12 gallon marine gas tank on the cargo bicycle?? We just established that's an absolute necessity. Clearly not an acceptable form of transportation! How else am I going to get this thing to go on my daily 1,400mi trip that normal people do all the time??
> getting filled with more compute than anyone should need
Anyone should need is the bar here? We existed before electrical lighting, nobody really needs it.
> Is it more fun to drive fast car slow, or slow car fast?
I definitely think its more fun to have 100% of your torque available at 0RPMs. My EV isn't really a "fast car" from the perspective of high speeds or extreme handling. Its probably not going to win many races at a track. But driving it around town? Loads of fun, way closer to the "slow car fast" kind of feeling than the "fast car slow".
You ratchet strap it to the top of the 'long tail' and fill it with food. Duh. That tank can easily carry enough calories for a cross country trek.
>Anyone should need is the bar here?
Just because we can doesn't mean we should. Restraining technological development to preserve certain aspects of the human experience seems reasonable to me (so long as we aren't able to substantially re-engineer the human genome and change the baseline we've enjoyed for 30k + years).
Plenty of people argue that the car in general has had negative sociological effects. Not going to fight that one here as I like vehicles, but I do think that if people have to drive regularly, it wouldn't hurt to either be more in-tune with the experience or let a robot handle it entirely so that the time can be used for 'more productive purposes' (note, I doubt that people would do much with the time other than entertain themselves, but w/e). Business calls without distraction perhaps? Engage with kids during transport instead of pacifying them with devices?
- Super convenient to never go to a gas station during my every day routine driving.
- Single pedal driving takes less effort overall. I prefer it at least.
- Generally much better performance (acceleration, breaking) at the same price point. The car is so fun. Much more confident making yellow lights and overtaking compared to gas cars.
- Very smooth because no gear shifting. The S is particularly spooky because it sounds about the same in the car driving 60mph and 90mph so it’s really easy to go 90 without noticing if you’re expecting engine noise to hint you’re going fast.
- Less routine maintenance like oil change
- This could be common to all modern cars, but I love having infinity car keys to share with family and visitors since any phone can be a car key
- This could be common to all modern cars, but I love pre-air conditioning the car from the checkout line of the grocery store
- This could be common to all modern cars, but I like that I can leave my dog in the car and know she’ll be cool & comfortable, and people won’t worry about her because the car display shows “dog mode aircon is on!” on the large display.
My complaints, which are about trim and not the drive:
- No Apple CarPlay. Boo. The built in thingy is much better than the average automaker but Apple stuff is better still.
- No over door hand holds :(
- I prefer tactile controls to touchscreen for everything. I will be looking at non Tesla options in the future for this reason.
I do have to say, this is one big reason why I think those cabin noise fake engine sounds isn't entirely a bad idea. Its a useful clue to many. One doesn't need to make it very loud and obnoxious, maybe only play it near the driver or something and for sure have it be an optional thing, but the concept isn't entirely without merit.
People should be using all their senses for driving. Giving auditory feedback can be very useful!
Superior Qualities (in general):
- Less moving parts (less stuff to break)
- No oil changes
- No gas stops
- Lower center of mass = better stability and crash performance (moose test)etc
- Regenerative braking extends the life of your brake pads
- Lower total cost of ownership for comparable ICE platform
- Nearly 100% torque availability from zero RPM
- Full battery every morning if you remember to plug it in
- Reduced exposure to combustion byproducts
- Financial Subsidies and other Government incentives (HOV Lane access)
- You move the emissions from the consumer to the electricity producer who are more likely to have the funds to actually start working on viable greenhouse gas reduction strategies
Inferior Qualities:
- Heavier
- Take longer to "re-fuel" on road trips
- Regenerative braking and heavier vehicle reduces the life of your tires
- Eventually the HV battery will degrade to the point that it might not be practical for your use case
I have never heard that regen breaking reduces the life of your tires (they do reduce brake pad replacements though) - until recently my 5 year old Ford Focus EV @60k miles didn't have to replace any of the stock tires - which is better than I'd have expected for other vehicles.
Regen braking can be done by being blended in on the brake pedal. This gives a near identical feel as driving a regular car, where it doesn't really start pulling power to the battery until you press the brake pedal. Once it reaches its max draw it starts to bring in the brake pads.
Many EVs make single pedal driving modes optional, with some of them not even really having it as a feature at all. Some just essentially have it like its just a medium level of engine braking but will never come to a complete stop on its own.
Regen braking is a big part of why EVs and hybrids can be as efficient as they are; they capture all that energy that normally bleeds off as heat when you're driving around the city. Since I've established you can still have a normal accelerator/brake feel as a regular car while still having regen, what reasons would you have for not having it?
Also, I'd highly recommend actually giving single pedal driving a decent shake before fully judging it. Its incredibly nice just being able to control my speed with a single pedal instead of having to use two pedals to achieve the same end result. And then when I take my foot off the accelerator, I'm fully stopped without having to hold down a brake. I get many cars have an "auto hold" feature but I've yet to feel one as smooth as cars with good single pedal driving and I just can't seem to trust it in the same way.
* Lower maintenance: There's no need to keep a complicated engine with lots of moving parts properly lubricated.
* Much quieter: No sound, even when accelerating like a race car.
* More pleasant: You never again have to pump smelly, poisonous, explosive liquids.
* More storage: Two trunks!
* Better performance: Faster acceleration, smoother driving, better handling -- "grips the road" (most of the weight is underneath).
I could keep going...
It's funny but people actually complain that EVs are noisy because without the droning white noise of ICE you end up hearing everything else going on.
Like, yeah, its 100F outside, the condenser coil still has a fan on it and is trying to reject a lot of heat and there's still a compressor churning away.
Some products are so much better that, when you try them out, you realize there was a quantum leap there. Like when I tried a capacitive touchscreen phone: it was obvious Nokia style phones were deprecated.
Electric traction is just like that. Obviously better. Rent one for a couple of days, and I'm sure you'll reach the same conclusion.