Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

I used to own the first gen electric i3 with its tiny range. I didn’t wish to have the hybrid ICE version to drive further, but I did wish for more electric range and more fast chargers along the road.

Nowadays, I have a cheaper car with a lot more range, almost 4 times more in real life conditions, and plenty of fast chargers everywhere. I don’t see why I would bother with an ICE. It makes no sense for me.

It’s because I live around Oslo in Norway, a place where it’s the age of electric cars.

I think ICE for cars has a very limited future in the age of electric cars. I see it reserved for specific applications where the energy density is a must, and some car enthusiasts activities.

Hybrids are some kind of temporary solutions for places where the EV infrastructure aren’t good enough yet. Once the infrastructure is good enough, some people will still buy ICE for a little while as they are unsure, but most switch to full electric eventually. At least that what happened around Oslo and happens now in the country side of Norway.

I am a big proponent of EVs, but I personally think hybrids will have a really long tail, especially as the technology improves: we could feasibly end up with a situation where much city driving in a hybrid is zero-emission EV-mode.

Two reasons:

First, in relation to your point

> Once the infrastructure is good enough

I live in the UK and I think this is gonna take a long, long time here. Not only will we need to build an enormous amount of fast chargers, but there will need to a significantly greater number of them than petrol stations, to offset the fact that even the fastest chargers take 5-10x as long as filling up with petrol (2-3 mins vs 20-30).

Of course, the ideal scenario with EVs is that most charging is done at home, with fast chargers used only on long journeys. Problem is, by some estimates 2/3 of UK households do not have off-street parking. We would need to roll out en-masse solutions for on-street charging and, to my knowledge, we have not even began to think about this outside limited trials.

Second is cost. Almost all cars have got crazy expensive over the last few years (I’m unsure if the rise of the PCP is a cause or effect of this), but over here full EVs are still not affordable for a huge number of people—myself included.

I really wanted to go electric, and was looking at the MG4; widely considered to be the best value in EVs in the UK right now. But for the model with a range that would suit us, and the cost of installing a charger, you’re looking at close to £30,000. I just don’t have that sort of money, and a finance deal would be half my mortgage again. And for context, I make nearly double the median UK salary.

If you think about cost, long term it’s cheaper to skip the ICE and have a slightly better electric power train with a bigger battery capacity. That’s what Carlos Tavares said to the French government many years ago. Hybrids have two systems and that’s expensive and complex.

Installing electric power plugs everywhere isn’t that challenging. I’m sure UK can manage it if the local government decides to do it seriously.

By the way, 35k€ for a brand new car that is cheap to run isn’t a bad deal. New cars are expensive. Maybe you can wait a decade or two before switching with a cheap used EV that has enough range.

> even the fastest chargers take 5-10x as long as filling up with petrol (2-3 mins vs 20-30)

I just drove to the airport in a bit of a rush. Drove straight up to pump, tapped credit card, authorized for $100 and opened cap at same time. Stuffed the pump in and held it at max flow. 45l of gas later (small car), cap back on, pump away and moving again.

I don’t think it would be possible to be faster.

Total time stopped: 7 minutes.

Is this intended to be an anecdote about life in Oslo, or are you suggesting that you expect the world outside of Scandinavia will somehow become more like Scandinavia over time?

Yes, with the right political decisions most countries could switch to electric vehicles. EVs also are nicer to drive and cheaper over the vehicle lifetime. It’s just a matter of time in my opinion.

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