Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

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I'm 99% sure this is a troll, but I hate to see misinformation go uncorrected. If this isn't a troll, you've been misled by fossil fuel industry propaganda, and I'm sorry.

While EVs can be heavier, they often achieve high safety ratings due to their low center of gravity and robust battery protection. Advanced safety features are standard.

Studies suggest that EV charging, especially when managed, can help stabilize or even lower electricity rates for everyone by improving grid utilization.

Many new technologies, including EVs, receive initial support to foster adoption and scale production, similar to past support for other industries.

While EV manufacturing has an upfront carbon footprint, their lifetime CO2 emissions are typically lower than gasoline cars, even with current energy grids. This advantage grows significantly as more renewables are added. Hybrids are a good step, but full EVs generally offer a greater reduction in emissions over their lifespan.

Charging infrastructure is rapidly expanding and improving in reliability. Typical daily driving is well within the range of modern EVs, and charging to 80% is often a time-saving measure for DC fast charging and helps prolong battery health, not a fundamental range flaw. Preconditioning optimizes battery performance but the energy used is a small fraction of overall capacity.

Efficient hybrids have their place, but EVs represent a significant step forward in reducing transportation emissions and improving urban air quality.

It is not a troll.

I was talking about safety for the drivers in the car that collide with the EV. They are less safe with EVs on the road.

When we have marginal electricity pricing, and electric cars necessarily being marginal demand, then they will ramp pricing a lot for all users, not just those driving electric cars. This far outweighs the benefit of grid balancing services (which this green revolution has created the need for).

I think you are not informed on the cost of renewables and therefore co2 cost. Just look at interconnection fees in the US. They have until recently got off for free on being added to the grid, but there was always a cost they imposed on the grid they didn't pay for. Now they have to pay high fees, and therefore high co2 costs to upgrade grid infrastructure.

My experience, in the UK and Europe, with ev infrastructure has been pretty terrible, especially when compared to just filling up with petrol. The cost advantage is also disappearing fast especially at public charging electricity rates.

Efficiency above 80% is clearly worse than below 80%. I drove 30k miles in a Tesla on road trips and saw that consistently.

I forgot to mention that once I lost 3% battery in waiting in the heat and air conditioning at a border crossing one time. That glass ceiling is not a good idea in hot climates.

> I was talking about safety for the drivers in the car that collide with the EV. They are less safe with EVs on the road.

This argument would look sensible if the car industry, especially in North America (but the rest of the world is slowly following suit) wasn't pushing for bigger and bigger and bigger cars, that are inherently safer for their passengers and way more dangerous for everyone around.

You can have BEV and reasonably sized cars. Car bloat overall is way bigger than the EV weight issue.

> I was talking about safety for the drivers in the car that collide with the EV. They are less safe with EVs on the road.

So is a Model T. But we aren’t all still driving Model Ts, are we? Technology improves, and of course older cars are less safe. There is a weight difference, but it’s no different from that of an SUV vs. a Corolla.

> Efficiency above 80% is clearly worse than below 80%. I drove 30k miles in a Tesla on road trips and saw that consistently.

Depends on the car, but the reason for this is almost solely because you lose regenerative breaking at high SOC. That’s less efficient, but not less efficient than an ICE car, and you only do it on road trips, which don’t happen often.

I am not certain it's because of the lack of regen. On road trips you're mainly doing motorway driving anyway.

My point about safety is that extra weight is inherent to the technology and the alternatives available (combustion engine). Horses were not an alternative to the model t in the same way.

I think you know this is propaganda. I know that you won't, but anyone else reading this might like to look up the weight of the most popular vehicles sold in the US. You might be surprised that virtually none of the heaviest ones are BEVs.

https://flowingdata.com/2024/09/04/weight-of-cars-and-fatali...

> I forgot to mention that once I lost 3% battery in waiting in the heat and air conditioning at a border crossing one time. That glass ceiling is not a good idea in hot climates

Unless you were stopped for half a day, that didn’t happen.

Come on, that's perfectly feasible. I've sat for an hour at a border crossing and lost that much on a hot day.

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