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Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

People really need to get away from that notion electric vehicles need to be as similar as possible to ICE vehicles. Most people living in cities don’t ever require that range, because 99% of their rides will be constrained to less than 50 kilometers. And even on the countryside, few people need to drive such long stretches on a single charge.

Keeping up this stoic desire to not having to change your habits around driving at all is dismissing a lot of the benefits small, lightweight electric cars could get us, if they didn’t need to carry tons of battery around—that isn’t even necessary most of the time.

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If you want people to choose one thing, then you want it to be better than or at least as good as the alternatives. The idea that EVs need to be comparable to ICE vehicles isn’t just some silly argument, it’s literally the choice that consumers are faced with if they want to buy a car. Even if longer range travel is only 1% of what consumers will do with their car (which I’m sure is a number you just made up), why would you get a product that only meets 99% of your needs, when you can get the competing product that meets 100% of them?

It’s definitely a hyperbole number I made up. The point is that the technology isn’t equal or better, but different. It has other constraints and capabilities, but pretending an engine is an engine as long as the hood is closed gets us in the current situation where car builders struggle to recreate ICEs, but electric, consumers are never satisfied because they have wrong expectations, and regulators don’t ensure the charging infrastructure that would actually required exists.

With an electric vehicle, you can get an extremely low-maintenance, easy to drive, fast accelerating, ecologically efficient car. That has its on merits. On the other hand, it has a lower range than an ICE engine, and is less reliable in cold weather.

> consumers are never satisfied because they have wrong expectations

Consumers are satisfied with buying ICE vehicles, which is why 90-something percent of them do just that when buying a new vehicle. You’re not saying anything about consumers expectations here, what’s happening is (most of them) just they don’t want what EVs are selling. You can’t be wrong about wanting something, we’re all allowed to choose what it is that we want for ourselves.

This is just the EV version of “the world would be much nicer if everybody thought like me” argument.

People keep extolling EVs as being "low maintenance", but I'm not sure the data bears that out. They have all kinds of issues, just different ones.

I consider my ICE low maintenance, too. Semi-annual service, brakes and tires as needed. How much better are EVs?

I think it’s unreasonable for people to think everything has to be business as usual whereas the true cost of a galon of fuel should have been 50 dollars if we facor in the environmental cost.

I think I don’t like that people see consumption as a birthright, and pretend there aren’t any consequences.

This is the main reason I never plan on buying one. I really hate all of the car-driven-by-a-computer functionality. I don’t want to drive a car where an internal computer can take over control of the vehicle, I especially don’t want one where the computer in charge of the car can connect to a network, I never want to drive one that has a mandatory always on connection. I also really want buttons, dials and switches, and think a yoke is such a stupid idea for a road car…

Plenty of ICE vehicles are starting to get these features as well, but I don’t buy those cars either, and all of the half decent EVs seem to have (nearly) all of those features I hate, configured in the worst way I could possibly imagine.

Lol fuel would be dirt cheap if we removed taxes.

Consumption is my birthright. You can do whatever you want.

Yeah, and so far EVs almost universally have a couple "no-go" bullet points for me: touch screen controls, and always-online. Either of those just instantly excludes such a vehicle from my consideration. Uhh, unsurprisingly, I have no clue what I'm going to do when my current vehicle becomes unusable! Replace it with another old one, I guess?! >_<

> Most people living in cities don’t ever require that range

Very true! But most people in cities can't charge at home (street parking, rental, etc).

So charge time and access (finding a working station with a reasonable wait time) must also be considered before we tell people they're dumb for resisting change.

Even if you drive 10km per day the big advantage of long range is that you don't have to refuel/recharge frequently.

Yeah, but as it turns out our planet can’t sustain that model of consumption. The challenging technology requires you to insert a plug at night. Is that really that tough of a sale?

Yes, because the majority of people dont leave in the suburbia with their own garage. People leave either in apartments with shared parking that may have like 2-3 charging spots, or they just street-park and they have 0 charging spots. It is very annoying to have to search and fight for a working power plug multiple times per week.

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