Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

> And even if there were, are you (tax payers) prepared to buy it for me, because I’m not due for an upgrade for about another 400,000 kilometres.

400,000 km is around two years for a commercial driver, isn't it?

In the EU it would be about 7 000 hours of driving so more like three years, or more.

What kind of vehicle is it though? There are battery electric vehicles available now in almost all commercial vehicle segments in Europe.

7000 hours at 60 MPH (i.e. 100 kph) is ~700,000 km. That's assuming highway speeds, obviously, but if you're doing stop and go in a diesel truck you should probably sell it to someone who isn't and be among the first to get an electric one because the difference in fuel costs is so dramatic in that case.

You should be lobbying for cheap electricity so that people put heat pumps in their homes instead of burning diesel for heat.

It seems like you should want the types of vehicles that can avoid using fossil fuels to do so, to keep your own prices down?

What is with this attitude of reflexively interpreting the development of alternatives as if they are mandatory ?

Whether I wanting them or not is irrelevant to the fact that they presently don’t exist, and that I’m not due for a new vehicle for years.

I did try to make that clear in the comment you replied to.

The battery technology doesn’t exist.

I think you misread my comment. I'm asking why you wouldn't want other types of vehicles that can be electrified to be electrified, such that there is less demand for the diesel that yours requires.

For example I've got a tractor that burns diesel, for effectively homeowner use. I too am not going to be replacing this piece of capital equipment any time soon (even though electrical would actually be better in a lot of regards). But since trucking is reliant on diesel and quite demand-insensistive, the Epstein war recently made diesel prices jump 60%. Whereas the fewer economically-critical vehicles there are being powered by diesel (even just the short range ones), the less that price would have spiked.

We can have and use electricity even if that's not what you put in your tank. We can have both things. This is the US government actively trying to eliminate one of them.

This deal has zero to do with someone like you. This impacts our electrical grid. Now instead of harvesting renewable wind energy we will be burning LNG to power that portion of the grid.

I suppose there are still some diesel generators out there, so they might burn that instead. Of course, that only makes you worse off.

You know if demand goes down for fossil fuels because the grid is powered by renewables then the cost would decrease right?

Also “kilometers”? “petrol tank”? Thanks for holding three fingers up and letting me know you’re cosplaying as an American

I live in Australia.

Then why are you asking

> And even if there were, are you (tax payers) prepared to buy it for me, because I’m not due for an upgrade for about another 400,000 kilometres.

When commenting on a story about an American infrastructure project that does not affect you, your taxes, or how your taxes are implemented?

Because in every thread about EVs someone has to chime in with their niche gas only use case, as if that somehow matters to the overall needs of the vast majority of drivers. Cool, you area niche need. Don’t buy an ev for 10 years or so.

> There are no fully electric, or even hybrid, options for the type of vehicle I drive.

So fucking what? Keep driving your air-pollution vehicle. No one (not even Obama or Biden) is trying to take it away from you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com