Electric vehicles now represent 19% of the passenger vehicle sales worldwide
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It’s hard to describe really, but driving an ICE car by now simply feels — wrong. And I don’t mean on a moral level, I really mean the feeling of the physical act of driving.
You really start noticing these things around you when you’ve got used to the clean and silent operation of an BEV. And I’ve certainly noticed the cost savings - going from filling a tank with £60 of petrol to charging my car conveniently at home for £5
Emphasis on the "at home" part. Unless you have your own home with private parking and charger, EV ownership is a pain due to how expensive ,lacking and shit public charging infrastructure is. I'll have to stick to an ICE until they fix those since owning a house with my own parking space doesn't seem to be on the cards for me financially. People somehow forget this demographic exists.
In this day and age? Which car do you 'smell the fumes' or 'the vibration' unless the vibration is intentional (for the experience).
Also, the older the car, the more you’ll start getting weird smells and more vibrations. Oil leaks, motor mounts wearing out, etc. Most of those can be fixed, but who hasn’t driven a car earlier in their youth that perhaps wasn’t in the best shape? I knew a guy who drove a car that he had to put a liter of oil in it every 1000mi… none of those are problems with an EV besides perhaps aging suspension components.
anyway i think this ad illustrates the difference nicely.
It's a good way to put the general wastefulness we exhibit with electricity into perspective though.
Existing electricity generation goes to powering existing consumers. We'd burn those fossil fuels whether or not we bought more electric cars. Electric cars are a new electricity consumer. So the source of energy for this additional electricity is what matters.
In 2022, 83% of new electric capacity was from renewable sources. [1]
We can quibble about timing issues. For example, there's a lot of solar energy during the day but electric cars are often charged at night. But it's clear that renewable energy and electric cars are rising together.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
Power plants can run at near constant rpm, and power thousands of households; inspections of emissions equipment and practices at that site can be enforced and fixed. Versus the same thousands of cars, a few have a check engine light on, a few have a leaking oil gasket, a few have a worn out ignition system, some of them bought contaminated gas. Any parking lot oil stain disproves you.
On paper they can get great times around a track have instant torque and all the things we already know, but in real life they feel like a kitchen appliance. Some people like that and more power to them. For a gearhead it leaves so much to be desired.
And who's buying them? All I hear is loud pipes everywhere which is probably why motorcycle lovers buy them in the first place.
>just not in the US where they're mostly leisure vehicles
How come the leisure vehicle argument doesn't also apply to ICE cars then?
Motorbikes have been mostly superseded by electric bikes in China. I’m sure the same thing will happen in Southeast Asia, but the last time I was there in 2016 it hadn’t happened yet.
It doesn’t because 40 year old Samantha who buys a minivan to take her 3 kids to soccer practice would have nothing to do with cars or buying a car if she lived in a place where the fastest transportation option was literally anything other than driving. She (and by extension the average car buyer) is just buying whatever the minimum cost and maximum reliability product that lets her accomplish what she wants to, which is everything other than driving or cars. By contrast the motorcycle market in the US is basically all enthusiasts lol. The 20 year old car guys who like working on their old sports cars are such a small percent of the market they don’t really matter when it comes to EV’s being boring stopping electrification.
For around a city or a commute to work they’re great, but very impractical for going on a ride.
The Ariya's real heavy, but it's surprisingly nimble. The Bolt feels zippy and doesn't weigh much more than the average SUV.
Definitely feel you on the appliance thing. Electric cars are almost too easy to drive.
That said the fabulous acceleration is either for special occasions (when other cars are not around and you want a buzz) or in some emergency situation where you need the extra power.
Acceleration in a thing that in every other aspect feels like an internet appliance (tesla+friends) kind of misses the point in my experience.
Labour ought to be doing all of this already, but I haven't seen it yet and this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrddz2407zo ... is a good example of the situation.
In Poland, especially in the cities, parking is always an issue and doubly so around large blocks of flats. I doubt the new coalition government has the backbone to do much about the situation, but while EV adoption is low here, they have the chance to get ahead of the curve and mandate new builds have a meaningful percentage of parking with ~11 kW charging points. Existing builds should be heavily supported but it should also be mandatory to retrofit charging at existing parking spots.
Whatever the solution, there isn't one in the UK. I think UK has to get over its NIMBYism before any serious infra projects can take place. We even struggled to build a space port in the middle of nowhere, and it was for a national cause in a way.
I actually happen to know about Poland's situation because I lived in Central/Eastern Europe for a while and it's the same thing everywhere. Lithuania's capital Vilnius has solved this by seemingly allowing private companies to convert some parking spaces into EV charging bays. Now there are more bays than there is demand for.
Maybe the government should simply let private companies convert building block parking lots to electric car charging stations in part. Perhaps up to the % of EV users in each block of flats. So if 10% of car owners drive EVs, 10% of all common parking spaces can be converted. Of course, if the situation is similar in Poland to how it is in Lithuania, some of the condominium buildings and the land they are on are owned by the unit owners fractionally. But NIMBYism isn't a problem in Lithuania. Is it a problem in Poland? I think people could be quite supportive of upgrading some parking bays, even if they owned a fraction of the land under them.
If it wasn't for NIMBYism, I am pretty sure the UK could do this too for roadside parking.