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Comment by cosmic_cheese | Hacker News Reader

Even as things currently stand, some folks just have a bone to pick with EVs. Even if future models have an 800mi range, can charge to 100% in 5 minutes, and have useful lifetimes as long or longer than ICE counterparts, some will figure out some reason to get angry about them.

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A person I know is upset about EVs because they are built around the assumption that every system in the car will phone home to the car manufacturer (or perhaps the cops), and basically require you to have a proprietary smartphone app in order to interact with EV chargers and perhaps the car itself. Of course, this is also true of new ICE cars, but it's at least possible to continue driving an older ICE car with more limited telemetry, whereas effective, mass-available EVs basically came onto to the scene at the same time that spyware car computer systems did.

I personally do want an EV, but I have qualms about the smartphone-ification of such cars as well. More importantly, the place where I currently live doesn't have a parking spot with an EV charger (there's a limited number of such spots, you have to join a waitlist to get one). If electric cars really could be charged to be ready to drive 800 miles in 5 minutes, that wouldn't be a problem - but even if this press release is being more or less accurate about the battery claims, I can't buy an EV with this technology today, and as far as I'm aware it still takes significantly longer to charge an EV than to fill up with gas to an equivalent amount.

I have a car without a screen at all (which is illegal to sell as a new car today), so there is no phone home and telling the insurance industry how fast I drive. Really though, it would show how little I drive.

This battery and the 5min charging for it, I thought was for the motorcycle is it going in first.

My concerns are the computerization of vehicles in general. The issue is not entirely with the telemetry itself, as you frame it. My issue is "what happens when the telemetry is not available?" You, and perhaps your friend, seem to be framing the problem as though the concern is that the car is filled with "spyware." My issue is that the car is filled with "DRM" from the manufacturer. When I buy a car, I expect to own that car entirely, forever. If I wanted to rent the right to someone else's car... I'd lease a car.

Musk touts the CyberTruck as "the perfect armageddon vehicle" but if you have no cell phone service how do you charge the truck? What if Tesla disappears, or GCP is down, or WW3 actually happens and the datacenters go dark? Can you operate the vehicle? What if the power goes out because... Armageddon. How do you fuel the vehicle?

What if Musk sees what I said about him on social media and accuses me of violating the TOS? Will he disable my vehicle remotely? I've seen this in the real world when a machine shop missed it's payment to Haas.

In a real armageddon, my 1997 shitbox would still function. My 2013 F150 would function right up until the EMP hit. A 2025 EV probably would not make it to a fueling source within 24 hours after the power goes out.

In armageddon, you would run out of fuel around day 3 and then that's it.

A CyberTruck will charge just fine from anything that can generate the proper AC or DC, no phoning home needed. Many home solar installations can work off grid and charge your car.

To charge a 57,000 watt tesla with an 800w consumer solar panel would take 71 hours of sunlight. There is not 24 hours of sunlight in a single day. This also is not considering the battery management which heats the battery passively. So it would take a week to charge a Tesla with equipment that you could carry inside the car.

Strange that you assume a single solar panel? If you’re installing solar at home, wouldn’t you install more than one panel?

I have a 15KW setup at home (kinda large, but adjust the numbers to what’s reasonable for you), it should charge the Tesla in less than 4 hours.

Have you tried to fuel a ICE vehicle in a power outage? I waited a week in the Congo.

Getting fuel out of underground tanks and paying for it are non trivial with no power.

I can charge an EV off my solar panels.

And solar is just one of many ways of generating electricity. Wind turbines continue to work, as do hydroelectric plants (and on a smaller scale, water wheels). Worst case scenario, you can burn more readily accessible carbon based fuels like wood to make steam to generate power. Vehicles that are dependent on extraction and refinement of petroleum are actually quite limited in comparison.

On a side note, you should look up "wood gas". There are YouTube videos of 110v generators running off wood gas, and while it takes a bit of setup, it's within the realm of what a country person could do in a weekend or two. By weight, I think I remember that it takes 4x of wood vs gasoline to get the same energy. So while a generator takes 6 lbs of gasoline (a gallon) to give you ~5kw, it takes 25 lbs of wood. Sounds bad til you realize how much a tree weighs.

The battery in a model X is 57,000 watts. To charge that with an 800 watt consumer grade wind turbine would take 71 hours. Try again.

71 hours is waaaay shorter than the week I waited in the gas lineups in Congo, Sudan , Ethiopia and more.

And even after that week of waiting I was only allowed to buy 20 litres max.

You forgot to bring your pump, spotter, and nail-tipped bat. If you had those I'm sure you would have been able to fight your way through and have your go juice in no more than 15 minutes.

Not in a line of hundreds of people waiting days.

You find another car and use a center punch on the gas tank. Drain it into a container and fuel whatever you want with it.

You'll be charging a 57kw model X for AT LEAST an entire day using solar panels that would barely fit in the trunk.

And, ah, during a time of gas shortages, exactly which cars have gas in them just sitting around not being used, and who is going to let you do that to their car?

I can tell you’ve never actually lived this reality, you’re just making stuff up.

I had gas pumps not work due to lack of electricity (and lack of gas in the tanks) on half a dozens occasions in different countries.

I have a diesel car and in theory you could fuel it with used cooking oil if you needed to.

I don't think I'm likely to do that as I think this would gum up the engine but I know people that have told me they've done it with a filtration.

For the record I would like to switch to an electric car next but my current diesel seems to have a lot of life in it yet.

I don't think my Lightning has any more telemetry than the equivalent ICE F150, nor do I think there are any repercussions from disabling that telemetry altogether (aside from no OTA updates, which aren't really much of a thing with Ford anyway).

> More importantly, the place where I currently live doesn't have a parking spot with an EV charger (there's a limited number of such spots, you have to join a waitlist to get one). If electric cars really could be charged to be ready to drive 800 miles in 5 minutes, that wouldn't be a problem

It might still be a problem, depending on why you want an EV. There are two annoyances with fast DC charging compared to home charging, and that super fast 800 miles in 5 minutes only addresses one of them.

The one it addresses is time to charge. 800 miles in 5 minutes is similar to ICE cars, and it would mean you can deal with charging with about the same level of hassle as an ICE driver has dealing with gas. I.e., you don't really have to think about it since it is only a few minutes.

However, DC chargers often cost significantly more per kWh than home charging, and also often have additional fixed fees.

If having low energy costs per mile is an important consideration in many places it turns out that an EV only charged at DC chargers will cost more per mile for energy than a Prius or a hybrid Civic or maybe even a hybrid RAV4 or CR-V.

With home charging a Prius and sometimes other hybrids can still beat an EV in some places so if energy cost is important you need to do the math for your area, but in most places the EV will win at least in the US.

There are nice things about EV besides low energy costs, but even if you get one mainly for other reasons the low energy costs can quickly become a favorite feature.

For example, a sandwich chain restaurant in my town raised their prices. My favorite sandwich, which I'd get there once a week, went from something like $9.20 to $12.99. That chain's store in the next town is owned by a different franchisee, and that sandwich is $10.39 there.

Before I got my EV it wouldn't have been worth going to that other town to save $2.60 because the gas for the round trip would come out to around that.

With my EV, charged at home, it is only about $0.60 round trip, so I save $2.00. It does take longer of course, but as I said I like to get that sandwich once a week. There's a weekly podcast I listen to. I use the time driving for the sandwich listening to that, so it is time I otherwise would have spent on the couch listening my my home entertainment system so it cancels out.

It’s range anxiety and it’s real. And it’s not entirely unjustified. Where I live in the Midwest I have literally never seen a public charging station. I know they exist because I can search for them on maps app and I see dots, but it speaks to their general small numbers that I’ve never seen one in person that I can remember.

Now, prior to this, I lived in California for many years from 2011 until 2019, and I saw tons of EV charging stations there. I left with the impression of “wow, charging stations are everywhere”, and that was 7 years ago.

But now in my Midwest metro area, I can honestly say there are zero that I can think of within a 10 mile radius of my house. Not one. (They’re out there somewhere, but they gotta be tucked away because I never notice them enough to remember them.)

It’s no small wonder that all my friends from California drive electric cars, and all my friends from this area (near my childhood home, so I know lots of people) think EV owners are crazy. [0]

If EV charging stations were visibly everywhere and charged in 5 minutes I could say without a doubt that every one of them would be swayed. So I don’t think they’re being irrational at all.

- [0] It is common to go on long road trips here, since the weather sucks, and people really don’t want to rent a car to do it. Plus a ton of people tow shit. Half my friends have campers and the other half have boats.

I suspect that the causation runs the other way. They think EV owners, Californians, and anyone who doesn't smell like petroleum is crazy. Therefore they won't buy electric cars and so nobody builds charging stations.

I can only speak for the people I know well (I know people from lots of different backgrounds here), but I can confidently say that every one of them would love EVs if charging stations were everywhere and charged in 10 minutes.

There may be a real chicken-and-egg problem with building the charging stations, but if it were magically fixed and ultra fast charging stations were ubiquitous overnight, I think minds would change overnight as well. It’s just nobody has the motivation to take the financial hit to build them and jump-start things.

My point being that they’re not irrational, and it’s not EV hatred that is driving it.

The biggest issue is that people think EV's are gas cars that have electricity instead of gasoline, with the main difference being you have to sit at the "gas pump" for 45 minutes instead of 2.

But the way you daily an EV is totally different than a gas car, and even the way you travel is totally different. People have no concept of EV ownership, so they just go with the gas model that they know. But it is totally incorrect.

> The biggest issue is that people think EV's are gas cars that have electricity instead of gasoline, with the main difference being you have to sit at the "gas pump" for 45 minutes instead of 2.

If you don’t live in a conventional house with access to overnight charging, this is exactly what EV’s are. But we keep talking down to people like this, as if every non-EV owner must just be stupid or something.

We're not speaking down to people like that, we are telling them they are not part of the conversation. You really shouldn't get an EV if you cannot plug in overnight.

> I can confidently say that every one of them would love EVs if [...]

And I can confidently say I see rural pickup owners rolling coal about weekly, so no, they will not be loving EVs, because it hampers them destroying their surroundings.

I cannot understand “rolling coal” at all. I’d love to know more about the psychology of this and what makes it so attractive that you actually spend money and time to do so.

It's uncomplicated. I have coal rolling enthusiasts in my extended family. They're flag waving 'patriots' who have legitimately drank all the Kool-aid and believe that everyone to their left hates the country and is trying to destroy it in any way possible. And since the left-leaning folks often support green energy and efforts to reduce damage from the impending climate disaster, that hatred manifests as doing whatever they think is the polar opposite of what their left-leaning friends and family would like. It is precisely the same motivation that underlies embracing the 'deplorables' moniker (I think none of them actually read the whole remark) by intentionally acting like an asshole.

It's not issues based at all, they really are playing hard core identity politics and they consider anyone who disagrees with them to be morally contemptible and inhuman.

As I said, I am only talking about people I know personally. Not everyone is like that, please stop lumping everyone together.

Not everyone who dislikes EV’s is doing so irrationally. Not every one of them is a moronic anti-environmentalist. Most people are just trying to get by and they’re looking at what they think is best for them. Thinking everyone who disagrees with you must be a backwards coal-rolling moron is… not a great approach. You can do better.

> Thinking everyone who disagrees with you must be a backwards coal-rolling moron

Certainly uncharitable, but you should hear what those people say about everyone left of the far right.

Rolling coal is rude an obnoxious but doesn't "destroy" anything. I think you are projecting something personal against the stereotype guy that does that. Just like someone who was bullied might irrationally hate tough looking bikers.

Some men (and women!) like large and overpowered trucks. You don't have to like them, but you should praise the freedom that this country gives us to choose our own pursuits.

Rolling coal is cumulatively destructive to the local environment and to the health of the people in the area in the more general sense, and in cases where truck drivers do it to cyclists and hybrid/EV drivers directly and immediately harmful to their health.

If nothing else, rolling coal with the intent of placing somebody within the plume should be considered assault. Diesel fumes/soot is some nasty stuff.

driving any ICE vehicle is cumulatively destructive. It's not any worse just because you can see carbon particles vs clear exhaust.

Yeah surely rolling coal and SULEV are exactly the same. Never mind the fact that the other one is literally specced to produce less than 10% of the average emissions, surely they are the same.

Intent matters. Some older diesel vehicles smoke a bit. That is normal. Intentionally detuning the engine to inject massive amounts of fuel in order to induce billowing clouds of black smoke is indefensible. It is especially bad because they are not out there using this capability in innocent fun, it is specifically aimed at passersby who happen to be driving a fuel efficient vehicle or riding a bicycle.

Some of us do enjoy large, overpowered trucks. Like me -- with my Lightning. Faster than a Hellcat (off the line, at least ;-)) and more efficient than a Prius. And waaaaaaay faster than nearly all of the coal-rolling morons. Best part is that I'm not intentionally polluting the air everyone around me is obligated to breathe. Go out, have fun, be civil about it.

It's always a lifted chromed-up truck with oversize exhaust. The one's I'm talking about are 100% intentional, and put money into it. Work pickups look distinctly different.

Work trucks are usually more along the lines of a beat up old 2006 Tacoma or a 2014 F-150 with a stripped down trim and fleet white paint. Totally different species.

> My point being that they’re not irrational, and it’s not EV hatred that is driving it.

That's just your particular bubble. I have met very few anti-EV folk who were not deeply political about it. They don't oppose EVs on rational grounds, they only have the talking points. Matters not at all to them that the talking points were proven false years ago.

Most current EV owners charge at home for daily needs, you really only need charging stations for long distance and owners w/o options where they park (i.e. renters or street parking only) Even with street parking, I see lots of people running cables across the sidewalk (with safety / step covers thankfully)

I drove across the country and accounted for midwest charging. Generally the rocky mountain states are minimal, but I was not without a charger ever 30-40 minutes of travel time through the midwest. Most of them are either in Big Store parking lots or at gas stations like Casey's. You need far fewer of them than gas stations, so we should expect to see fewer of these vehicle refill stations in the future anyway

Yep. Mine is always charged at home, and so I've never needed to use a charging station locally. They're around just by virtue of the area being part of a major metro, but I haven't needed them.

I haven't yet done a cross-country drive but would like to and have plotted out routes with ABRP, and yes, there's more in the midwest states than you'd think. Enough that just about any EV with EPA 250mi range or better can manage a long haul trip without too much trouble (just with a few more bathroom/snack/coffee stops).

yup ABRP was awesome for the trip, nothing out there comes close

Be warned, as you approach and cross the Rockies, there is a lot of uphill and wind. Didn't mention this, but I also did the trip in early March, temps were just above freezing most of the trip, range was terrible. There's a spot in NE, which I'll never forget. Only stop in the middle of a long gap in stations, steepest incline in NE, blew through most a charge in 90 miles. Then the charger is old and very low charge rate (like 5+ year old speeds). The saving graces are (1) public restroom (2) Awesome awesome coffee shop owner who made me a nice brew after hours when I asked him where I might find one as we passed on the sidewalk.

WY was worse on the charger infra, most unreliable and sketchy part of the trip (mostly because of snow in the mountains as temps dropped below freezing, but also the worst charging infra at any point)

Yeah, if/when the trip happens it'll probably be during the warmer months just to keep things simple, and the west → east half of the loop will probably be on I-40 which shouldn't pose too many problems.

Yes, I think people mistakenly believe that if chargers aren't as ubiquitous as gas stations, there must not be enough of them. Range anxiety can still happen on a cross country trip, but not for the vast majority of daily driving. Now, if you live in an apartment building where it's difficult to charge at home, it's a different story. Not so much because of range anxiety, but because the cost of public fast charging rivals and sometimes exceeds the cost of gasoline.

Where I live (Ōtepoti Aotearoa) charging at a charging station works out to be about the same price as petrol

I have a plug in hybrid, and close to zero expertise, but I only charge at home, now

I am doubtful that an EV is remotely economical if you cannot charge it at home

That is basically correct in the US as well. Fast charging is about the same cost per mile as gasoline. If your only way to charge the car is with a fast charger, I recommend considering carefully whether it's the right choice for you. The improved driving dynamics may still be worth it, for sure, so it's a very personal choice -- rarely do big purchases like this come down entirely to the bottom line cost.

With my plugin hybrid I have currently the best of both worlds. The 2x25km commuting is electric, and longer weekend drives are gas. And being in Europe, I am not worried about charging stations for whenever I'll switch to full electric - I enjoy taking gas station breaks. I know it's only one data point, but it's my data point :)

I'm in California, and cost per mile of electricity vs gasoline is pretty similar in a Gen 1 Chevy Volt. I get 35 miles per gallon. That's also how for I can go on 10kwh in the good conditions. If gasoline is below $4.50 a gallon, it's cheaper to just run the volt on gasoline than it is to charge it at home.

That's particular to PG&E, as I recall, not all the utilities in California are so horribly mismanaged or got sued for burning an entire city to the ground. IMO the state should burn PG&E to the ground and replace the entire management structure with people who don't suck.

It’s also the case for me in the Midwest. I drive a Chrysler Pacifica PHEV and it gets about 32 miles per gallon and 32 miles on a charge, and a 16KWH battery. Electricity is $0.22 during peak hours, which equates to a breakeven point of $3.52 per gallon. Non-peak is $0.18, which is a breakeven of $2.88 per gallon. Gas is usually around $3 per gallon so I have to remember to not charge it until after 7pm (this is a setting you can set in the car to make it automatic.)

I’ve since bought solar panels for my house so it makes charging a lot more obvious, but I think it’s actually quite common for people to be paying more for charging than for gas.

I emphasize, somewhat, with them for some complaints. The thing I love about our EV is the greatly reduced maintenance. No oil changes, no transmission fluid changes, greatly less parts means less that can fail, etc. That's awesome, but it also means people in industries supporting those will see their industries reduce or go away. This is good for us overall, but is painful for those in the midst.

That's why there is a big backlash against EVs, and I get it. Long term progress means short/medium term pain for some people. Think about all the stress facing software developers with AI progress.

Some empathy and plan to handle these changes would go a long way.

The tail on the move to electric is going to be quite long. It’s accelerating, but I doubt it’ll ever get to the point of radical overnight change. There will still be ICE (or hybrid) cars on the road in need of service 10, 15, 20 years from now, even if EVs become overwhelmingly advantageous, because that’s just how people work. Demand will gradually taper off and there will be opportunity for most in the industry to figure out alternative employment.

Some portion will be able to train and transition to working on EVs, too. EVs might need less maintenance generally, but things still go wrong sometimes plus people get into accidents and such. There’s also a nascent motor/battery retrofit industry that’s sprouting right now and will grow with time.

Just like there are still horse and carts on the road today, and steam powered locomotion.

It's fine, those folks can just get angrier and angrier as the market makes their ICE cars more and more difficult and expensive to own.

I'm still waiting for the EV that's a car instead of some kind of techbro reimagining of personal transportation with a 27" tv glued to the dash. So far the plug-in hybrid market is figuring that out first -- the Mazda CX90 is a real car. The VW ID3 gets close, but it still feels like someone tried to design a B-movie space ship.

There's a great market out there willing to buy B-movie space ships, but if EVs are going to be the default (and I think they are) they're going to have to get over the toys and start shipping cars.

Unfortunately, most ICE cars these days are buggy tablet-enhanced rolling privacy invasions, too. I think the trend is starting to abate but physical climate control buttons alone won't fix the less immediately obvious issues with tech bro car design

It’s fun driving a spaceship, though. :D I’m just glad we’re past the phase where apparently EVs had to look like science experiments. That’s one thing Tesla got right, they built a car that was electric, rather than building an electric vehicle.

Nissan is skipping the US for the 2026 model year due to tariff issues, but their Ariya is reasonably close to "a car, just electric". They designed it specifically to make transitioning from an ICE car less abrupt, including making the acceleration curve more gentle. Its cabin design leans minimal, but more in a luxury Japanese zen style than tech bro style.

The 2026 Leaf, which is based on the same platform, is pretty good in this regard too.

I like the "panoramic vision" screen across the base of the windshield on the BMW iX3. But wish they dropped the main screen. I only want the minimal one on the windshield, and a heads-up on the windshield. Big screens in cars are like CRT tube televisions. give me the future!

> the Mazda CX90 is a real car

A Mazda 3 has been my daily driver for the past decade and I really wanted to like the Mazda CX90 PHEV when I was buying a larger vehicle last year. It was pretty difficult to justify the CX90 PHEV, though. It gets 42 km of range on an 18 kWh battery (2.4 km/kWh). For comparison, the EV9 I ended up purchasing gets 450 km of range on a 100 kWh battery (4.5 km/kWh).

Don't get me wrong. The CX90 PHEV is still the most efficient CX90 by a wide margin. I had seriously considered buying one, but the efficiency was a deal-breaker. I don't love the giant touch screen on the EV9, but I can live with it. If I couldn't, I would have gone with the Ioniq 9 for more physical controls.

My Lightning is difficult to distinguish from an ICE F150 unless you know specifically what you're looking for. Especially the trims that do not have a larger-than-usual infotainment screen.

It didn't save the Lightning from being canceled, but at least they pumped out a hundred thousand of them or so before turning tail and giving the market to GM.

Also they’ll be dead soon enough and the world will just move on without them.

Can’t roll coal, no rumble, too hard to self repair, not “old school”, rely on foreign Mumbai jumbo, etc etc

The list is endless

If you live in the north, lithium ion batteries are not a great bet for longevity of a vehicle. There are legitimate reasons to not be pro EV in their current form.

The batteries on modern EV's have full dedicated heating and cooling systems. They will not charge until they heat up to charging temperature.

Discharging in the cold and sitting in the cold are not bad for the batteries, but it does limit available power.

Believe it or not, Canada has a robust EV market.

People say this, but some of the most popular places for Lightnings are in Canada. And I don't mean BC. They seem to enjoy how well it handles cold weather.

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