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Comment by fwungy | Hacker News Reader

Energy density is the issue. Gasoline has amazing energy density out of the box. Getting batteries anywhere near that may be impossible.

Battery applications are critical. Tons of money has been spent on research. If there was something revolutionary to discover it's likely it would have happened.

100 mile EV town cars would be great, they'd be much less money than the long range EVs and target air pollution in the places that need it most. Trying to make EVs take over for ICEs via policy mandate is just insanity.

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The proplem with the 100 mile ev is most people have the 1% trips they don't work for. extra cars are expensive so you are better off with one that does it all instead of trying to figure out those exceptional trips.

i've tried to rent cars and been turned away because they were out. I've tried to rent but discoverd I wasn't allowed to do what I want (rocks are hard on trucks so I don't blame them, but it means I have to own for those weird things)

depending on how much cheaper a 100 mile range EV was, I might be willing to consider it and then rent an ICE vehicle for the few times a year I needed extra range. I am considering that option anyways since, while my current EV is fine for long (10+ hour) drives, it is potentially too small for when I have a second kid + dogs. While I'm hoping that a roof rack will make the vehicle still work (hopefully the range hit won't be too big), if it doesn't work, renting a car a few times a year is more than offset by my fuel savings the rest of the time.

Had a 100 mile range EV been available at a significant cost savings, I might have done that and started renting now for range reasons rather than space reasons.

Batteries are expensive though, so it is unlikely. Or to put it differently, how many people with a large SUV also have a tiny car? back in 2006 I did the math and concluded you would need to drive double the natioal average to make the numbers work, gas is cheaper now and cars cost much more. (but used cars should be cheaper)

I'm a little confused by your comment. Yes, batteries are expensive, therefore a shorter range EV should have a cheaper price than a longer range one, because you are removing expensive battery.

I think there might have bee some confusion. I meant "cheaper than an EV with the usual 250ish mile range", not cheaper than an ICE vehicle.

I bought an EV last year. It was more expensive up front than a comparable ICE vehicle, but the loan payments + charging costs were actually cheaper than the loan payments + fuel costs would have been. With my vehicle, I may, in the future, have to rent a larger ICE vehicle on rare occasions. This was a possibility I considered before I purchased the vehicle and decided I was fine with it, since my monthly fuel savings will more than offset this cost. I was suggesting that, for a sufficient discount, I would have bought an EV with less range and started renting a vehicle now, instead of potentially in the future.

while short range is cheaper, they are still expensive. Note too that li-ion batteries like to run between 20% and 80% charge (I don't recall the exact #, but close enough), so you want more battery to save life long term, so your 100 mile range becomes 60 - which suddenly isn't enough to handle the unexpected life events (it will get the average person to work, lunch and back home - but there is no reserve for anything else to come up - and it gets worse as the battery gets old. I'd say for a cheap car 150 miles is the lowest you really should go (I know the leaf only got 70, but it wasn't only practical if you had something else as a backup - according the everyone I know who bought one)

I've been looking at EVs, like you I expect that the savings in fuel will be significant - but the car it would replace is paid for so the loan is hard to stomach. (that car is 12 years, 215k miles, and otherwise showing age - I'm going to look hard at the id.buzz when it comes out this summer - but if I can buy a used minivan for half the price...)

If gas wasn't there people would have settled for electric cars with the range they had and taken the train (maybe even a land ferry) if they needed to go further.

> extra cars are expensive so you are better off with one that does it all instead of trying to figure out those exceptional trips.

Or the town cars can be designed to take an extra battery that you can easily rent (preferably from a charging station) when needed.

I did the math (kinda).

I save so much on the 99% of drives when driving with electricity vs gasoline so I can just rent a car for the or fly/go by train and get a taxi in my destination.

I've done the math myself, and it never works out to fly/take the train. Of course part of this is I have a family. I'm buying 5 plane/train tickets - and always in the busy/expensive time when everyone else is also off school and trying to travel. I'm not renting a small car - my family won't even fit - but a minivan (if you can find one). Sure I'm spending 4-5 days driving, but that is a substantial cost savings.

Energy density is one major fact the EV propagandists don't get. What they get is policies and mandates to work for their cause.

The fact that gasoline is significantly more energy dense than batteries is so easy to grasp that a monkey could probably understand it. Do you honestly believe that this is the missing piece that EV fans don’t get? That teaching them 6th grade physics will make the whole thing go away?

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