Six inane arguments about EVs and how to handle them at the dinner table

The evolution of Ars Technica into what it has become today is much of the reason why I'd much rather read HN.

More often than not, the technical discussions here flies way above my head, but at least (except for the political ones), i do not feel like everything has to be turned into a "Black vs White, Good vs Evil, Smart vs Stupid" destruction of the counter-arguing party's arguments, and I usually learn something valuable along the way.

Many of the arguments are silly and stupid. It's not wrong to call something what it is, especially when those propagating the arguments seem to be so immune to correction. They clearly aren't operating in good faith, but rather, at best, latch onto an argument whose conclusion they like without bothering to check if the argument makes any sense.

These articles are a response to bad faith brigading of bad arguments.

Maybe you should focus on the behavior that makes articles like this necessary?

Are they even in the market for a new vehicle to them? Maybe it’s better to learn to change the topic to something else.

> 2. If they can't charge at night at home, get a hybrid (WHAT?)

It's entirely possible a BEV doesn't fit someone's lifestyle. This is a well known issue of BEV's - that charging takes longer than filling up a tank at a gas station. In this case, the advice to get a HEV is perfectly fine if you want some of the benefits of a BEV without the inconvenient issue of wall charging.

Also, if the distances you drive are small, it won't make financial sense to get a BEV, which are more expensive than ICE vehicles of the same size.

To add to the weight problem, in my country (NL), road tax is calculated based on the weight of the car, not the amount of kilometers driven, although VAT and excise on fuel do compensate for that. That said, road tax is included in fuel costs over in Germany.

That said, the long-term theory of EVs is sound; if they have the right sensors and if they're interconnected with each other, more accidents will become preventable and the net result is a safer environment. But that's the theoretical outcome.

The greater wear on tires issue is over stated. By far the greatest impact on tire wear is how you drive. My first set of all seasons in my BMW i4 M50 went more than 25k miles.

The cars being heavy issue may get better due to EVs longer term due to it bringing more attention to efficiency and manufacturers prioriting efficiency more. Additionally, some EVs are not notably heavier than ICE cars in their class; eg Tesla Model 3 and Model Y.

> greater curb weight for the same size chassis

A Tesla Model 3 and a BMW 3 are approximately the same weight, their weight ranges overlap.

In a crash with a pedestrian I don't see how having greater momentum would make much difference compared to an ICE car. In both cases the mass of the car is so much more than the mass of the pedestrian that the difference in what they do to the pedestrian should be small.

For example, an ICE Ford F-150 that weighs 4500 pounds hitting a 200 pound pedestrian at 50 mph would nearly instantly accelerate that pedestrian to 47.9 mph.

Replace that ICE F-150 with a 6500 F-150 Lightning and the pedestrian gets nearly instantly accelerated to 48.5 mph.

Similarly, a 3800 pound ICE Ford Mustang would accelerate them to 47.5, whereas a 4800 pound EV Mustang would accelerate them to 48.0.

For a 100 pound pedestrian, it would be 48.9 mph and 49.2 mph for the ICE and EV F-150 respectively. For the ICE and EV Mustang it would be 48.7 mph and 49.0 mph respectively.

Low speed collisions are also similar. At 10 mph the ICE and EV Mustangs accelerate the 100 pound pedestrian to 9.7 mph and 9.8 mph respectively, and the 200 pound pedestrian to 9.5 mph and 9.6 mph respectively.

For the both the ICE and EV F-150 the 100 pound pedestrian accelerates to 9.8 mph (there is a difference, but it doesn't show up at the precision I'm using). For the 200 pound pedestrian it is 9.6 mph for the ICE and 9.7 mph for the EV.

Which is the bad one no-one makes?

I've seen all these arguments on Facebook, generally with hundreds of political comments. (I withdrew Facebook's right to profile me, so I get completely junk, generic rubbish instead. It's disappointing, but not surprising.)

As someone driving EVs for more than 10 years; maintenance is far less. The articles claiming maintenance is more expensive on EVs are lying. What has happened is there has been a non-scientific survey by Consumer Reports showing people self reporting more problems with EVs. But most of that can be chalked up to going through a period with A) brand new companies like Rivian and Lucid launching their first vehicles and B) EVs from legacy auto companies being brand new models; typically brand new models have more issues than the same model a few years later.

But note that those problems are warranty issues, as in no cost to the owner.

> But time and time again I see articles stating maintenance is far more expensive. This is something I do not understand.

Price gouging.

Understand that manufacturers are earning their money selling spare parts and maintenance. Less maintenance needed? No problem! Increase maintenance cost per item. Even easier to do with "novel" technologies that act as a form of vendor lock-in.

> As for rebates, with the US Election, the idiot that won stated many times he wants to eliminate all incentive for EVs.

Interestingly how quickly he started saying F-U to mister Musk..

"you'd better have the car in a heated garage (it doesn't charge well when it's below -15 C / 5 F)."

This I find interesting. Why doesn't the internal resistance of the battery raise the temperature sufficient that this doesn't matter? If there's some reason it couldn't, then why not add a few temperature-modulated resistive heaters?

I think one of the big things we don't appreciate yet is fires.

It's not so much "These things all explode" (they don't) or "wahh I can't put out the oxidized fire, so much flame, so little water, make it stop burning" (a disruption primarily, you just wait for it to burn out), as it is "The electrolyte in lithium ion batteries is actually lithium HEXAFLUOROPHOSPHATE, which burns in a runaway self-oxidized fire to produce hydrogen fluoride and clouds of phosphoric and hydrofluoric acid."

Tunnel fires were already pretty deadly when we were just talking about hydrocarbon combustion, but hydrofluoric acid day at work is something a lot of chemists will call out sick for. Casual momentary contact can kill or maim you.

LFP still uses fluorine chemistry, but at least it's a lot less likely to burn when abused than NMC. It's going to take one poorly ventilated tunnel fire to trigger a legal mandate to use LFP over NMC forms of lithium ion.

I (/s) like (/s) the elitism in his post.

They're too expensive? No they're not.

Range anxiety? Go buy a car who's cheapest model is $70k.

Also not covered, Musk-hate.