I‘m aware this is only a tiny datapoint, but as someone who is now finally living completely ICE-free since June, when we switched the larger family car to a BEV, too: I will never go back.
It’s hard to describe really, but driving an ICE car by now simply feels — wrong. And I don’t mean on a moral level, I really mean the feeling of the physical act of driving.
Eh. In most countries the majority of electricity generation still comes from fossil fuels so people are essentially doing what the ad is depicting just with extra steps.
It's a good way to put the general wastefulness we exhibit with electricity into perspective though.
This is the kind of comment that sounds "wise" and "realistic". But it's important to think a bit deeper.
Existing electricity generation goes to powering existing consumers. We'd burn those fossil fuels whether or not we bought more electric cars. Electric cars are a new electricity consumer. So the source of energy for this additional electricity is what matters.
In 2022, 83% of new electric capacity was from renewable sources. [1]
We can quibble about timing issues. For example, there's a lot of solar energy during the day but electric cars are often charged at night. But it's clear that renewable energy and electric cars are rising together.
Not exactly. Power plants + EV is more efficient than burning gas in an ICE. Plus you remove the pollution from population centers. And of course the EV will get greaner over its lifespan as electricity production is transitioned away from fossil fuels.
This is factually inaccurate. EVs from a fossil fuel grid are still cleaner than internal combustion (“well to wheel”). The grid keeps getting cleaner every year, a combustion vehicle burns petroleum its entire life.
An ICE vehicle will always and forever run on fossil fuels. An EV may start its life getting electricity generated from fossil fuels but can get its power from whatever the generation changes to
Efficiencies of Scale is a thing, as is specialization of technology.
Power plants can run at near constant rpm, and power thousands of households; inspections of emissions equipment and practices at that site can be enforced and fixed. Versus the same thousands of cars, a few have a check engine light on, a few have a leaking oil gasket, a few have a worn out ignition system, some of them bought contaminated gas. Any parking lot oil stain disproves you.
The delayed throttle response is really aggravating whenever I get into an ICE car. And the noise, the vibration and the smell of the fumes.
You really start noticing these things around you when you’ve got used to the clean and silent operation of an BEV. And I’ve certainly noticed the cost savings - going from filling a tank with £60 of petrol to charging my car conveniently at home for £5
Unless you’re driving a very high end car, pretty much any ICE definitely vibrates. It’s especially noticeable at start/stop with cars equipped with auto start stop.
Also, the older the car, the more you’ll start getting weird smells and more vibrations. Oil leaks, motor mounts wearing out, etc. Most of those can be fixed, but who hasn’t driven a car earlier in their youth that perhaps wasn’t in the best shape? I knew a guy who drove a car that he had to put a liter of oil in it every 1000mi… none of those are problems with an EV besides perhaps aging suspension components.
Emphasis on the "at home" part. Unless you have your own home with private parking and charger, EV ownership is a pain due to how expensive ,lacking and shit public charging infrastructure is. I'll have to stick to an ICE until they fix those since owning a house with my own parking space doesn't seem to be on the cards for me financially. People somehow forget this demographic exists.
There’s nothing on earth like the low end torque of an electric car. Everyone should experience it once. But I went back to ICE the same way i go back to vacuum tube guitar amps.
I’ve had a Ford F-150 Lightning for about 6 months and ICE vehicles viscerally feel poisonous and clunky. The responsiveness, torque, quiet, low cost of use, low maintenance and just how clean they are (no poisons spewed) is just something I can’t give up anymore. There are still problems with range and charge times specifically for a truck but we are very close. A doubling of the standard range and a halving of the charge time would make ICE irrelevant in the truck space outside of very long distance towing.
The new Chevy Silverado EV has a massive 200kwh battery and 275kw charging. That’s going to be an absolute minimum of 300 miles of range and more realistically 400-500 miles per charge.
The constant explosions in four different compartments might have something to do with it feeling wrong. I wonder if anyone can tell us how many mounts support the engine and give it some opportunity to dampen the explosions -- and through what apparatus.
My last car had a v8 engine mounted on hydraulic engine mounts, and you could hardly feel the engine (but certainly hear it). The sound was glorious, and it’s the only thing I miss about that car having gone to EV 3 months ago
EVs are nice at first but if you enjoy cars as a hobby the problems become apparent. They all have the same torque curve, doesn’t matter if it’s a Tesla or a Kia or a GM. They are all as heavy as a truck, understeer like crazy and have over boosted steering. Most are difficult to maintain and the mfgr’s are downright hostile to backyard mechanics.
On paper they can get great times around a track have instant torque and all the things we already know, but in real life they feel like a kitchen appliance. Some people like that and more power to them. For a gearhead it leaves so much to be desired.
The most popular cars in the US are the RAV4, Toyota Camry, ford f150, Tesla model 3, etc. the market has voted on stable and boring, I don’t think 90% of cars on the market by volume sold will lose really anything in the transition to electric tbh.
If like 5% of people keep buying gas powered sports cars or things like large trucks and SUV’s which are just expensive or less practical to electrify for their use case I don’t think it will particularly stem the tide of electrification in the US and that’s also ignoring manufacturers like lucid which are making esoteric expensive high performance EV’s.
There are plenty of electric motorcycles now and we're seeing ebikes crop up as a new class of vehicles between bicycles and motorcycles popular with kids who can't drive either cars or motorcycles (yes they're technically under a bunch of restrictions but in practice people put throttles on them and ride on them at 30 mph on the road) but either way electric motorcycles are definitely also switching to electric, just not in the US where they're mostly leisure vehicles. China is making and using a decent amount of electric motorcycles
Motorbikes aren’t used for day to day usage in the USA like they are in Southeast Asia and China. But cars in the USA are, so they aren’t in the same usage bucket.
Motorbikes have been mostly superseded by electric bikes in China. I’m sure the same thing will happen in Southeast Asia, but the last time I was there in 2016 it hadn’t happened yet.
It doesn’t because 40 year old Samantha who buys a minivan to take her 3 kids to soccer practice would have nothing to do with cars or buying a car if she lived in a place where the fastest transportation option was literally anything other than driving. She (and by extension the average car buyer) is just buying whatever the minimum cost and maximum reliability product that lets her accomplish what she wants to, which is everything other than driving or cars. By contrast the motorcycle market in the US is basically all enthusiasts lol. The 20 year old car guys who like working on their old sports cars are such a small percent of the market they don’t really matter when it comes to EV’s being boring stopping electrification.
As someone who has a very high end car (ie 2.3 seconds 0 to 60 and that's with what others claim is, um, 'acceleration lag' and a standing stop (ie not the way Tesla apparently does it) in almost all driving you don't go around trying to zip from a complete start. In fact it's actually dangerous to do so (on a consistent basis). (My other car has a respectable 0 to 60 of about 4.3 and I don't do anything like that either). When I drive my wife's car (0 to 60 8 seconds) it fees fine simply because there is no reason to rip from a stop light except in edge cases.
That said the fabulous acceleration is either for special occasions (when other cars are not around and you want a buzz) or in some emergency situation where you need the extra power.
I assume you're talking about on-street charging? If so... I think you're right. The UK, like Poland (where I live), has a LOT to do in terms of supporting folks that live in a flat. On-street charging really needs to be properly prioritised, properly funded, the paperwork/process streamlined, etc.
In Poland, especially in the cities, parking is always an issue and doubly so around large blocks of flats. I doubt the new coalition government has the backbone to do much about the situation, but while EV adoption is low here, they have the chance to get ahead of the curve and mandate new builds have a meaningful percentage of parking with ~11 kW charging points. Existing builds should be heavily supported but it should also be mandatory to retrofit charging at existing parking spots.
Yes, or some regions in China have pretty good battery swap infrastructure, for example NIOPower.
Whatever the solution, there isn't one in the UK. I think UK has to get over its NIMBYism before any serious infra projects can take place. We even struggled to build a space port in the middle of nowhere, and it was for a national cause in a way.
I actually happen to know about Poland's situation because I lived in Central/Eastern Europe for a while and it's the same thing everywhere. Lithuania's capital Vilnius has solved this by seemingly allowing private companies to convert some parking spaces into EV charging bays. Now there are more bays than there is demand for.
Maybe the government should simply let private companies convert building block parking lots to electric car charging stations in part. Perhaps up to the % of EV users in each block of flats. So if 10% of car owners drive EVs, 10% of all common parking spaces can be converted. Of course, if the situation is similar in Poland to how it is in Lithuania, some of the condominium buildings and the land they are on are owned by the unit owners fractionally. But NIMBYism isn't a problem in Lithuania. Is it a problem in Poland? I think people could be quite supportive of upgrading some parking bays, even if they owned a fraction of the land under them.
If it wasn't for NIMBYism, I am pretty sure the UK could do this too for roadside parking.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadIt’s hard to describe really, but driving an ICE car by now simply feels — wrong. And I don’t mean on a moral level, I really mean the feeling of the physical act of driving.
anyway i think this ad illustrates the difference nicely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn__9hLJKAk
It's a good way to put the general wastefulness we exhibit with electricity into perspective though.
Existing electricity generation goes to powering existing consumers. We'd burn those fossil fuels whether or not we bought more electric cars. Electric cars are a new electricity consumer. So the source of energy for this additional electricity is what matters.
In 2022, 83% of new electric capacity was from renewable sources. [1]
We can quibble about timing issues. For example, there's a lot of solar energy during the day but electric cars are often charged at night. But it's clear that renewable energy and electric cars are rising together.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
Power plants can run at near constant rpm, and power thousands of households; inspections of emissions equipment and practices at that site can be enforced and fixed. Versus the same thousands of cars, a few have a check engine light on, a few have a leaking oil gasket, a few have a worn out ignition system, some of them bought contaminated gas. Any parking lot oil stain disproves you.
You really start noticing these things around you when you’ve got used to the clean and silent operation of an BEV. And I’ve certainly noticed the cost savings - going from filling a tank with £60 of petrol to charging my car conveniently at home for £5
In this day and age? Which car do you 'smell the fumes' or 'the vibration' unless the vibration is intentional (for the experience).
Also, the older the car, the more you’ll start getting weird smells and more vibrations. Oil leaks, motor mounts wearing out, etc. Most of those can be fixed, but who hasn’t driven a car earlier in their youth that perhaps wasn’t in the best shape? I knew a guy who drove a car that he had to put a liter of oil in it every 1000mi… none of those are problems with an EV besides perhaps aging suspension components.
Emphasis on the "at home" part. Unless you have your own home with private parking and charger, EV ownership is a pain due to how expensive ,lacking and shit public charging infrastructure is. I'll have to stick to an ICE until they fix those since owning a house with my own parking space doesn't seem to be on the cards for me financially. People somehow forget this demographic exists.
On paper they can get great times around a track have instant torque and all the things we already know, but in real life they feel like a kitchen appliance. Some people like that and more power to them. For a gearhead it leaves so much to be desired.
And who's buying them? All I hear is loud pipes everywhere which is probably why motorcycle lovers buy them in the first place.
>just not in the US where they're mostly leisure vehicles
How come the leisure vehicle argument doesn't also apply to ICE cars then?
Motorbikes have been mostly superseded by electric bikes in China. I’m sure the same thing will happen in Southeast Asia, but the last time I was there in 2016 it hadn’t happened yet.
It doesn’t because 40 year old Samantha who buys a minivan to take her 3 kids to soccer practice would have nothing to do with cars or buying a car if she lived in a place where the fastest transportation option was literally anything other than driving. She (and by extension the average car buyer) is just buying whatever the minimum cost and maximum reliability product that lets her accomplish what she wants to, which is everything other than driving or cars. By contrast the motorcycle market in the US is basically all enthusiasts lol. The 20 year old car guys who like working on their old sports cars are such a small percent of the market they don’t really matter when it comes to EV’s being boring stopping electrification.
For around a city or a commute to work they’re great, but very impractical for going on a ride.
The Ariya's real heavy, but it's surprisingly nimble. The Bolt feels zippy and doesn't weigh much more than the average SUV.
Definitely feel you on the appliance thing. Electric cars are almost too easy to drive.
https://about.bnef.com/electric-vehicle-outlook/
That said the fabulous acceleration is either for special occasions (when other cars are not around and you want a buzz) or in some emergency situation where you need the extra power.
Acceleration in a thing that in every other aspect feels like an internet appliance (tesla+friends) kind of misses the point in my experience.
Labour ought to be doing all of this already, but I haven't seen it yet and this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrddz2407zo ... is a good example of the situation.
In Poland, especially in the cities, parking is always an issue and doubly so around large blocks of flats. I doubt the new coalition government has the backbone to do much about the situation, but while EV adoption is low here, they have the chance to get ahead of the curve and mandate new builds have a meaningful percentage of parking with ~11 kW charging points. Existing builds should be heavily supported but it should also be mandatory to retrofit charging at existing parking spots.
Whatever the solution, there isn't one in the UK. I think UK has to get over its NIMBYism before any serious infra projects can take place. We even struggled to build a space port in the middle of nowhere, and it was for a national cause in a way.
I actually happen to know about Poland's situation because I lived in Central/Eastern Europe for a while and it's the same thing everywhere. Lithuania's capital Vilnius has solved this by seemingly allowing private companies to convert some parking spaces into EV charging bays. Now there are more bays than there is demand for.
Maybe the government should simply let private companies convert building block parking lots to electric car charging stations in part. Perhaps up to the % of EV users in each block of flats. So if 10% of car owners drive EVs, 10% of all common parking spaces can be converted. Of course, if the situation is similar in Poland to how it is in Lithuania, some of the condominium buildings and the land they are on are owned by the unit owners fractionally. But NIMBYism isn't a problem in Lithuania. Is it a problem in Poland? I think people could be quite supportive of upgrading some parking bays, even if they owned a fraction of the land under them.
If it wasn't for NIMBYism, I am pretty sure the UK could do this too for roadside parking.
https://ev-volumes.com/news/ev/global-ev-sales-for-2023/