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Comment by iamleppert | Hacker News Reader

EVs are a textbook case in falling in love with a solution, not the problem. The focus should be on producing an efficient, reliable and cost effective vehicle that is widely accessible to as many people as possible.

When measured against that criteria, how well does Tesla actually stand up? Outside of tech and car enthusiasts, people view cars as a tool that gets them from place to place. I don’t care if it’s an EV if it’s more expensive, less reliable and a hassle. I don’t care about self driving features and don’t want my life to revolve around a form of transportation.

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To your first point, "The focus should be on producing an efficient..." it's not even close:

> Out of the 8.9 million barrels of gasoline consumed daily in the U.S. on average, only 1.8 million gallons, or approximately 20 percent, actually propel an internal combustion vehicle forward. The other 80 percent is wasted on heat and parasitic auxiliary components that draw away energy. As the world begins its shift to EV proliferattion, the good news is electric vehicles are far more energy efficient on the road. [0]

Meanwhile, EVs start at around 77% energy efficiency and go up from there.

This alone is why EVs will take over mobility.

[0] https://www.motortrend.com/news/evs-more-efficient-than-inte...

The problem EVs are trying to solve is weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. If EVs are more expensive, less reliable, and a hassle, then in the end that doesn't matter because continuing to use ICE cars doesn't solve the problem at all.

An expensive solution is better than no solution, especially when the problem being solved is potentially existential.

That's an odd view, considering that the main problem with ICE vehicles was not that they failed to be efficient, reliable and cost effective. The problem was that they spewed CO2, warming up the Earth, with disastrous consequences.

That's the chief problem EVs are trying to address, not reliability or cost.

> the main problem with ICE vehicles was not that they failed to be efficient, reliable and cost effective. The problem was that they spewed CO2, warming up the Earth, with disastrous consequences.

The average consumer doesn't care about those things. She cares about whether her gas prices are cutting into her budget though, and that's the problem that EVs are solving for her.

>The average consumer doesn't care about those things.

Only because the externality is unpriced - we all have to bear the cost of her tailpipe emissions, whether we want to or not. In markets where fuel taxes are anywhere near the actual cost of the externality, EVs have a markedly lower TCO.

Like trains and buses?

Fixed it for you:

EVs are a textbook case in falling in love with a solution, not the problem. The focus should be on producing an efficient, reliable and cost effective _public transit systems_ that are widely accessible to as many people as possible.

That grossly ignores the majority of rural america where public transit systems will never effectively serve their needs given the economics

That's why public transport shouldn't be left to the market. The benefits to society are huge in terms of environment so it's well worth subsidizing it.

And what of suburbia? Must us urbanites continue to support their lifestyle, to our own detriment?

Many rural areas continue to provide real value. So we're only too happy to accommodate them.

But the suburbs? Not so much.

Devils advocate here - if you tax buses according to the road wear they cause they’d be nowhere near affordable…

I live in NYC and subways (with both express as well as local) are very time efficient, especially during the few hours of rush hour. My iPhone appointments would tell me to leave 45 mins early since it assumed I as using a car, but the real transit time including walking was 15 mins using subways.

Changing zoning laws so that there is more density would shift demand to mass transit.

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