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Comment by Panzer04 | Hacker News Reader

This has always been true for anyone who knows anything. Batteries rapidly deteriorate from 100%, but the degradation gets slower the more capacity has already been lost.

Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%, and they are exposed to much harsher conditions than EVs (no temp control, daily full cycling, etc).

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Very slow degradation after reaching 70% capacity is cold comfort when EV batteries are barely adequate for many people at 100%. EVs typically start with ~300mi range. 70% of that is 210mi. I live in the city, but my parents live ~150mi away from the city along a route that has zero superchargers and only a handful of slow chargers along the way. I couldn't even visit my parents reasonably on a single charge, therefore my next car(s) will be a hybrid. Hybrid sedans can give me the traditional ~600mi range so I can drive from Austin to Ft. Worth and back before filling up a small tank.

Hybrids are great. If they had slightly larger battery range (50ish miles), I'd probably go that route myself. More people should probably be choosing them.

But I think that the situation you are posing: quasi regularly driving a trip that is >100 miles with no ability to charge at all is actually pretty uncommon. And even in your case, since you are driving that far (and visiting family), I assume you are staying overnight. You can get a portable lvl 2 charger for a couple hundred bucks that will plug into a dryer plug and charge your vehicle back to full overnight. (admittedly. this assumes the drive is in ideal conditions and you get the full 210 miles; given where you are going and the apparently lack of infrastructure, if this is mountainous at all, then yeah....very well might not make it)

To me, the issue that actually affects more people is that if you need a family sized vehicle, your options are A) pretty limited and B) almost all >$60,000. For a single person, or a childless couple, EVs are pretty accessible, for families, that's much less true.

There is a ton of infrastructure between Austin and Ft. Worth, it’s almost a contiguous city at this point. And there are no mountains in the vast majority of Texas, it’s very flat. There are a lot of chargers on that route, not sure what OP is talking about.

I totally missed that they had actually specified the route, and was just commenting on a generic one (which is why I guess it might be mountainous, definitely places in the West where you can drive >100 miles without charging infrastructure....just also not many people to visit).

Austin to Ft Worth is not the route to my parents, it’s a separate drive I sometimes need to do. Yes there is good charging along that route, my point was that a hybrid could make that trip without wasting time for charging or filling up.

As someone with two kids, a Model Y or a Mach E are very reasonable vehicles for a family. Both are under $60k.

That's fair. I was basically taking my family's "worst case" scenario (10+ hour drive, 2 kids, 2 dogs, + luggage) and assuming that was typical, when in actuality that's probably as rare a situation as the one I was replying to. We can, just barely, make our current vehicle + roofrack work with 1 kid and 2 dogs when we visit my parents, but since we are planning a second kid, we are looking around for something larger.

For anyone not trying do to both kids + dogs, there are probably a lot more options.

Model Y is very spacious. I can take 2 kids + week worth of glamping gear. I did fit 3 kids in back before, but you'll probably want to get slimmer seats (which are far cheaper than upgrading 3 row car). It's ridiculous how versatile this car is.

The average adult drives roughly 40 miles per day. An EV battery with 25% the original max would still satisfy literally hundreds of millions of Americans for the vast majority of their driving needs.

Temple Buccees has a supercharger, as do many other places. Still, Texas is not a great place for EVs. Everything’s so far apart. Instead of a Hybrid, how about a PHEV or an EV with a range extender? The problem with hybrids is they have all of the complexity of an ICE as their main drivetrain, whereas an EV drivetrain is much simpler, more powerful and more reliable. If you can get a vehicle where the gas / diesel is just there as a power plant for the EV, you get the best of all worlds, plus the gas engine can run at peak efficiency which gives you better fuel economy and if the ICE has issues you can still drive with just the EV part.

We have a Volkswagen e-Up with a max range of maybe 150 miles, we drive it every day with longer trips on the weekends and I literally never even had to charge it outside of home in the few years I owned it.

Not everyone's use case is the same.

Even for consumer devices, battery aging and capacity loss is very slow after 70%,

My laptop, power tools and iphone beg to differ....

Do not charge them to 100% and you'll be sweet. For macOs there's free "Battery" tool on github. Charge your mover 1hr before moving and leave it half full. Power tools are trickiest as they sit full for months and months which is the most damaging. Still can estimate charge time tho.

> This has always been true for anyone who knows anything

Not sure that's true. I have seen comments on HN multiple times over the years claiming batteries die in a few years and were almost never downvoted.

This might not be quite as strong a rebuttal as you were hoping for!

> I have seen comments on HN multiple times over the years claiming batteries die in a few years and were almost never downvoted.

Car batteries - very unlikely. Cheap portable electronics made in China - all the time.

The problem with these comments is that there are at least 10 different battery chemistries, and dozens of potential use cases and duty cycles you can put a battery through.

So yes, some combination of that will make batteries die in a few years. Most won't.

HN downvotes are not signal for truth, just popularity.

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