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Comment by zuzululu | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised they didn't flag and downvote you. There seems to be a certain crowd that seems view EV as sort of a panacea without considering the true realities which involve experience and research to know they are far from replacing ICE

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If ICE is the only vehicle for you, because of religious reasons, thats okay. There are large and small countries ( China, Norway) that have majority EV cars and continue to grow. There are 120+ other countries that are buying EVs. Even in US, there are a few people who have bought EVs and realized it works for them.

A person who really needs an ICE car would encourage others to buy EVs because it would reduce oil demand, and with demand destruction, considerably lower oil prices. With lowered demand, Saudi Arabia can supply a barrel for $5 - $10/barrel from Ghawar Field. Which means a gas-head who commutes every day from Yukon, Canada to Guadalajara, Mexico has a significantly lower gas bill.

The only people who wants everyone to buy ICE are fossil fuel shills.

> If ICE is the only vehicle for you, because of religious reasons, thats okay

so you admit EV is a cult if ICE is a religion ? that's not okay.

I find this whole discussion weird.

The whole world is in a transition phase. For some it will make sense to jump to pure EV use, for others it won't. That whole “The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.” thing...

I have one of each. They work well for different reasons.

EV is the charge-at-home city car that is preferred for every day use.

The ICE is for when two cars are needed and long distance travel because charging stations here are not well sorted yet.

My plan for the future: The ICE car will be replaced with a hybrid with a significant emphasis on battery. Then eventually it'll be an EV as well. We'll get there.

Thats right, most families with 2 cars can immediately switch to an EV and use it as a daily driver.

This is the correct use for EV. A second car, around town. Perfect.

The EV push back is because the MBAs decide to market them as replacement daily drivers. And despite the people that went all in being part of the same reality that has caused the massive pushback against EVs… they will defend their purchases to the death.

I have had two EVs for around town. Love em. But not real for only car outside of California.

> But not real for only car outside of California.

Tell that to the millions of people in EU and China who have EVs as their only car. I swear Americans live in the 50s in 2026.

Thats correct, but Americans are conditioned by fossil fuel shills that EVs are not for them, driven by irrational fear of range anxiety. To dispel a lie, we need to spend 100x effort[1]. Its hard to convince everyone to switch to EVs, perhaps we agree with the false premise, but break it down and focus on certain demographics that it will work for.

a) 37% of US households own two vehicles. This is the biggest demographic and they can definitely have one EV.

b) College students and professors/administrators who live close to campus. They drive a lot less, ~5K miles/year instead of 12 - 15K miles/year.

c) Retired people, very old people who only drive around town for shopping, doctor appointments.

As adoption increases, most Americans would have seen first hand that EVs work and they can charge anywhere, electricity is not scarce and every building has electricity (don't need to go somewhere special just to charge it), electricity is not the work of the devil, it is okay to use EVs.

[1] https://criticalfallibilism.com/brandolinis-law/

I suspect there's a big of cognitive dissonance here. My guess US has more emphasis on road trips, longer distances, vastly more wilderness areas, etc.

Europe is mostly urbanized it's almost boring. Dunno about China, but I guess they cracked charging infrastructure.

Exactly this.

“Oh, but Norway uses EVs a ton!” … cool, Norway is the size of an average US state, the population of Connecticut, over an extremely thin area which optimizes one vector of infrastructure automatically. And makes the majority of its money on oil.

Geez, almost like EV ultra-success stories aren’t even remotely comparable the rest of the world.

USA is the outlier here.

If Norway is the size of an US state, what’s stopping every state from being like Norway? Or does it somehow matter for EV efficiency or charging speed how far away the borders are?

It's different use cases and daily living styles entirely. You can't compare nations and cultures as though they operate in an equivalent manner.

Very happy with an EV as our only car here in Europe. No charger at home. The car does about 24k kilometers per year, including road trips and vacations. Remember that there are other countries on the planet and lots of other people.

I finally met someone who plans to downgrade from EV to ICE. He does 100k km per year, running multiple businesses. Lives 120km outside Dublin. Biggest issue seems to be wait at public charge stations. IMO he needs to get long range EV and get better chargers at home/work. But oh well, I'm not going to stop him if he's going to get luxury sports cars instead lol.

> Biggest issue seems to be wait at public charge stations.

No one has ever said “man, I love this gas station and wish I could stay here for two hours”

… idk, I guess people like Buckeys for some reason.

TBF Most of my stops aren’t enough to have quick meal with kids, let alone proper dinner.

If you live your life in a hurry it can def be a problem.

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