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heh. This reminds me of electric cars. I've been happily driving one for 9 years.
Lots of people online and in person tell me "Electric cars aren't there yet. They won't work." Well, you must be correct then. I just handed down my first EV to my kid and bought a second one.
Battery situation could be better.
Sodium batteries seem promising, though density is lower than Lithium.
Anyone who says electric cars aren't there are making inaccurate statements at best and at worst are telling non-factual ones. The truth isn't that electric cars aren't ready, is that the energy distribution isn't ready. Only urbanized areas are prepared to offer that much energy at scale and living in an urbanized area you shouldn't need a personal vehicle for most of your travels anyway.
Side note, this is why I think plug-in-hybrids are the baby step we need to achieve first. Even with their obvious flaws they fill the gap between an internal combustion engine and full electric.
I bought a PHEV back in June (Ford Escape), have driven 1500 miles since and have yet to add any gas. For most daily trips the battery gets me there and back without using any gas. I love it and am excited for full EV for my next vehicle.
Wish I could empathize, but I refuse to trust a car I can't fix myself. There's entirely too many computers and entirely too many points of failure-- it's a good thing that I'm medically 'advised' not to drive. I wouldn't be able to switch over until someone released an EV with the kinds of home-maintainability that like. A 60's Mustang once had.
I'm not tryna have to have the shit towed to a Firestone-- or god forbid the manufacturer themselves-- just to have to pay hand-over-fist to fix the errors borne of their shoddy fuckin work.
I refuse to trust a car I can't fix myself
Isn't that basically all cars nowadays? It's not about the type of engine, cars have gone "no serviceable parts inside" for at least a decade.
Yeah, and my last car was from the 80s lmfao. After seeing the way my coworkers were practically beholden to mechanic shops just to keep their cars running like every six months, I said 'no thank you'.
Good news, oil changes on electric cars are not a thing. Wiper blades, wiper fluid, air filters, rotate tires is about it. Maybe brakes and brake fluid at some point but haven’t needed it in over 5 years yet.
Only thing I’ve needed at the mechanic is rotate/balance tires and replace cracked windshield as I don’t want to own the equipment for that.
Yeah I've had an electric car for several years now and it's by far the least I've ever had to think about my car.
It’s all situational.
My wife could absolutely rock an EV for her 3 mile drive.
However, for road trips we don’t have enough charger coverage where we live, so alas we have an ICE
To paraphrase the great wisdom observed in another comment:
You can literally say the exact same thing with gasoline cars. That's how you "electric" peeps feel, constantly yelling "why are you burning oil! Stop having fun!"
Are fossil fuels perfect? Nah. But does it work most the time? Yeah. All the bitching about oil being shit and yet my 500+ hp v8 SUV just works..... Crazy....
How about just let people use what they like and shut up with the damn "my car is better than yours" nonsense?
It's posts like this, that even though I've seen an electric car in the past, make me immediately think "nah, fuck that, I'll stick to killing the planet. I don't want to deal with those people."
When is the last time you drove either down an unpaved washboarded road for 30 hours one way without any charging locations, and then back, and how did it fare? Also let me know how it works at -45 C.
I'm sure it works well for suburban/city streets, doubtful it works well for the above.
I'd be curious to know the stats of how many driving trips are done in cities vs your washboard example.
Well, "30 hours" disqualifies >50% of trips, because most trips are under 3 miles.
I'm not saying it's not a good option for the majority of people, I'm saying that there are definite use cases for gas vehicles which electric vehicles cannot fulfill at this time. The majority of my trips are short and are in a city, however if I had an electric vehicle, I'd be fucked the 2 times a year I have to make a drive like that because you can't carry batteries for an electric car like you can carry gas cans, and they won't be building charging stations in the middle of federally protected natural reserves. Furthermore, there are definite problems with electric vehicle range in low temperatures even for travel within a city. If electric vehicles met those requirements I'd be buying one immediately, but as it stands, a gas vehicle is simply more capable and is a better value when it comes to the money as a result.
Renting a gas powered vehicle could be an option for the two times a year needed.
It's the same argument when discussing why people need a pickup truck as their daily driver for the one time a year they need to haul a trailer or move a couch. When faced with the possibility of switching from a half-ton to a sedan, suddenly everybody needs to carry their refrigerator with them everywhere.
Valid counterpoint.