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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Another incentive to go buy an EV.

EVs still are less than half the utility of normal cars. Until charging becomes as standard as filling your car (i.e don't have to go find a charger, every gas station has one, and so on), no matter what the advantage they give you it won't overcome that fact.

> half the utility

Utility measured how? Be specific.

value/dollar in terms of what you can use a car for (transportation, carrying stuff, time spent driving versus time spend filling up)

Cheapest EV is 30k right now - nissan leaf.

For that much, you can get a Prius Prime , which can be driven like an EV to work and back, charge at home, and when you go on a long trip, you don't have to worry about finding charging stations

You can also get a hybrid Ford Maverick. While you can't charge it at home, It gets 500 miles tank of gas, a full bed for carrying stuff, outlets in the bed for tools or camping, and offroad capability, and again, can fill it up at any gas station.

If Nissan leaf was like 100 mile range, basic vehicle for $10k, then it would be a different story. But right now, paying the same for way less capability doesn't make sense.

So you don't have a quantitative measure of utility of which you can precisely determine a "half", you have a vague idea of "value" on which you want to place a veneer of quantitative analysis that will last exactly until someone calls you on it. That's not specific.

Lets say utility is time that you can spend driving the car versus it sitting still, multiplied by amount of weight you can carry, divided by cost of vehicle.

Let's say that every unit of time spent driving a vehicle is of equal utility for every person, and that the utility scales linearly with the absolute length of a given stretch of driving or time between. Let's say everyone uses their car to go basically the same distances to the same kinds of places carrying the same cargo and passengers, with basically the same costs for needing an alternative. Let's also say that cows are frictonless spheres in a vacuum.

Or we could just not pretend that "utility" is a concept that can be applied uniformly across all car-shaper objects.

I haven't had to find a charger or think about them in over a year. I just plug it in when I get home and I'm done.

I did a ~10000km road trip around western Europe and while I started with ABRP, I switched to just driving normally and stopping at an EV charger when I was below around 20% and happened to see a sign.

I'm not saying this is the case everywhere, I opted for an ICE engine when I visited Australia for example. "Half the utility of normal cars" is utter nonsense in my experience though.

The thing is, if you just plug in when you get home, you likely drive very few miles. Id be for a $10k brand new EV with 100 miles of realistic range (i.e not having to keep speed below x). These don't exist. You pay for higher range in even cheapest EV, so you are paying for utility that you don't use most of the time.

There aren’t any new gas cars for sale at that price point…

And if it’s sitting at home for 14 hours per day, a normal 120V outlet will get you 70 miles of charge. That’s fine for most commutes, but if you actually need more than that, you can use a dryer outlet that gets you like 4x that charging rate (280 miles of range over that 14 hour charge). Or installing a proper wall charger will get you twice that again, but it’s really not necessary.

>There aren’t any new gas cars for sale at that price point

Yes, because a modern gas engine that makes a measly 112 hp is still a very complex piece of machinery that requires a lot of precision manufacturing and assembly.

An EV is dead simple by comparison. To make a 100 mile range ev, you don't need fancy motors. Industrial AC motors will work.

And as for charging, this requires you to be at your house every few days. If thats your average use case, you don't need high mileage EVs.

I guess, what's the general breakdown of cost between engine and the rest of the car, and the amortized R&D?

Most commuters use it mostly for commuting, but also day trips, and 100 miles is really cutting it close for day trip round trips in a lot of US metro areas.

Isn't it more an incentive to buy an older car that cannot be controlled remotely? You know, a car that can be fixed with a spanner.

With the cold snap in the eastern US I'm quickly learning EVs range and charging short comings in below freezing weather.

I agree. But if you are stupid or want humongous car aka PHEV - there are now some that support remote heating using batteries.

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