this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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American here. So this is speaking from an American viewpoint.
EV cars are just big golf carts IMO. If you never leave like a 40 mile radius of your home, and you don't live in a location that sees extreme temperatures, and you don't live in a hilly or rural area, they're probably fine. But beyond that, they will be very inconvenient. Maybe for Europe since theyre so dense over there its easier to adopt, but here in the States you can sometimes go miles and miles inbetween homes.
The cost will most likely even out with ICE, if not a little more for the EV. Some will say "I cut my gas expenses by going electric," like yeah, of course you did. But your electric bill went up, and you have to spend higher initial cost on the vehicle, plus installing home chargers and wait times of like, an hour, for the vehicle to charge. Add all that up is it really a big savings?
Meanwhile, I daily my 1968 Ford Galaxie, which has a carbureted V8 that I bought running and driving for $1500 USD. Thankfully I am California Emissions Exempt, but California gas is expensive and I have to cry at the pump from my 27 gallon tank and $6/gallon prices every other week, but California electric bills are just as expensive. Ran the AC last month (California is literally a desert and Edison won't catch us a break on AC) and the bill was like $1100 USD for the month, and thats with the thermostat set to 80F which is like 26.6C for those that use that system. Can't convince me to go electric even if you gave me one for free.
Good for people that don't care about cars and don't travel much, but impractical for most people, IMO.
Yes, I am strange. But that does not invalidate what I said.
You must have really driven a golf cart, as what you describe is nowhere near the real EV experience.
You’re comparing a 2nd hand car to a new EV? Then yes the initial coat is higher, of course. While the 1968 Ford Galaxy is a marvel to behold, it doesn’t compare to modern ICE cars. Even the base VW Golf has better specs… But I digress… Cars like that are the reason we need EVs if we want to control climate change. The amount of CO2 that baby expells is just way of the charts…
Is electricity cheap? No. But I would be more interested to see how much kW/h your AC unit is using. And how much gallons per mile you’re consuming. That is the only valid comparison to make here. And I would seriously encourage you to look at heat pumps.
EVs are good for people who actually look at cars and who know about cars. Not people who are dinosaur guzzling go-carts prejudiced.
I am a professional mechanic, and I have worked at multiple dealerships that frequently service EVs and Hybrid EVs. Most notably Kia, Hyundai, and Jaguar Land Rover. I very regularly serviced both ICE and EV vehicles, since I was certified for both ICE and EV heavy line work. I mainly do engine, transmission, EV motor repairs, etc, basically the big complex jobs that take a long time. Which is another point to mention: EV repairs are expensive in comparison with ICE repairs.
I'm gonna be honest, buying an EV does not really do anything for the environment. It isn't way better than an ICE car, that's just marketing. It just moves the pollution to places you don't see it, like power plants, rare metal mines, etc. I would encourage you to do your research and due diligence. A properly tuned carbureted engine does actually have the potential to pass CA emissions, which are ridiculously strict. Reason most don't is usually old tired engines have worn rings or umbrella seals and burn too much oil thus needing a richer tune.
Its a brand new AC unit, don't know the numbers it outputs but it is what was recommended for the size of the home, which is not a huge manor but also not a tiny apartment. No leaks in the vent tubes or anything, and none of the vents are closed or restricting flow. MPG on the Galaxie is like, 14/15 city, which is actually super good. But that's because I just rebuilt the engine, before I rebuilt it it was running on 200k miles and got like 9/10 MPG. Which was caused by worn piston rings and umbrella seals so old they had literally disintegrated and oil was just dropping through the valve guides.
EVs aren't evil, never said they were. But for Americans that don't live in New York City or Los Angeles, an EV will probably be impractical/unaffordable in the long run.
I understand that EV fans can often feel attacked in these kind of conversations, but let's please try to remain civil in this community, thank you.
The thing is, many places already have power that is free of CO2 emissions and mines are not huge CO2 emitters (afaik).
As a case point: In Toronto, 30% of our emissions are from vehicles, 60% from buildings (natural gas heating mostly). If we ran all EVs, that 30% emissions from vehicles would be eliminated because nearly all our power either comes from hydro dams or nuclear power plants. And there's no shortage of power either - we have loads of excess capacity at night, when everyone would charge their cars.
I think you're getting downvotes because you're misinformed about the cost/benefits of EVs and the broader important (and urgency) of reducing carbon emissions. It's such a critical and urgent challenge that we have to tackle this to avoid huge impacts on our economies due to heating of the climate (crop failures, flooding, more severe weather, erosion, wildfires, etc.).
I am not a professional mechanic, and I know 0 about car maintenance. I do know my EV is cheaper in maintenance than my last ICE. Over the last 15 years i drove an ICE (3 different cars, all new), I had to go to the garage at least 2x a year for a full check up costing me at least 800€ for each check up. First time I asked a Tesla service center to plan a full check up, they jokingly told me they would be happy to change my wiper fluid and charge 1k for that. The only thing I pay money for is my tyres.
I get it that not all cars are built the same and sometimes you have a car which is “built on monday” (one that falls abart at every turn), but judging by my experience, and my friends’ experience with their Teslas, EVs are cheaper in maintenance. But again, I am not a mechanic.
I will not go into the advantages of EV over ICE in environmental issues, as @GameGod has done a better job than I could.
I don’t feel attacked at all. But when you misrepresent EV cars because of your lack of experience with them, and prejudice because 2nd hand cars are chaper than new cars, I do feel I need to speak up. Other people might get the wrong idea…
I drive between Chicago and stlouis regularly. It's adds 18min to the 4.5 hour drive.
Is that supposed to be a lot? The average electric scooter can go 10s of miles these days. The average American lives in the suburbs and drives around 40 miles a day if they commute, which is becoming less common with work from home. While almost every climate report says we need to bring that number down, even if we don't evs can easily handle that. Most pure evs coming out these days have at least a 200 mile range and even a lot of plug in hybrids can handle 40 miles . As for charging installation you can plug a level 1 charger into any old outlet at night and have it charged up for the commute by the morning. You only have to pay for installation if you want level 2 or 3.
Evs work well for the average American. It may make long distance road trips a bit harder but maybe adding a bit more friction on that could be a good thing as it would encourage us to build out more of our abysmal rail system, because current American driving habits are unsustainable.
As an european I'm baffled with your numbers. You pay monthly what I pay yearly in electricity, and your gas bill seems insane too
California will do that. Wish California would do something to regulate the pricing, but thats a pipe dream.
Same here but I live in the state of Missouri…
I agree and disagree with you. My wife owns an Ionic 5 and I drive a '14 Z51 Vette M7. Other than WY her car does fine for long range it just takes longer. But we drive it for 4-6 days at a time between charging.
I'd rather drive my Vette most times but in traffic and long road boring road trips her car is really nice to drive.
We live in CO and the car does better in the hills/ mountains than the flats for range when using one pedal driving.
As long as an ICE meets modern EPA standards a used car is almost always (not really big trucks like 350s and so on) better total impact than any new car including an EV.
Glad you can enjoy what you got, that's most important.
Totally agreed!
They're only impractical if you want them to be.
I have a 55 chevy that runs on gasoline. It's so annoying having to go the gas station every other day I drive it. It's almost like I spend my driving time going to gas stations. I couldn't imagine trying to drive this thing to California, half my trip would be at gas stations. Thankfully though I can charge an EV from house and/or at work. No inconvenient stopping at over priced gas stations every other day.
See, you can make anything look bad IMO. I'm a car guy, I daily one of two 11 second cars. I'm not an idiot, EV is coming and it's the future. I'm fine with it really, ever ride in dual motor model 3 or a 90+ S? They fly, and they don't pollute which is good for you know, saving the planet. I'll always have a hotrod or two, but I'm down with EV swapping something fun. I'd own a Tesla but I refuse because of the asshat running that company.
I mean, if youre filling up every other day then you definitely need to check on your engine's health because that is very bad mileage for any road car.
Regardless, I can see you are very passionate, and will respectfully end the conversation here. Have a nice day/night.
I fill up every other day and I have a 2023MY car. My commute to work is 65+ miles one way and involves a lot of aggressive start and stop highway traffic. I get just above my EPA combo estimated range. It doesn’t have to be engine health. It could just be a stupid long commute.
I can’t switch to an EV unless they install chargers at work - which they have indicated they will not do.
My electric car's payment (Nissan Leaf) is less than I spent per month on gas for my Acura RDX (which got about 24mpg - surely better than a 68 Galaxie). The change in my electric bill is noise compared to weather variations. The car really feels like driving for free. I am in Texas, so electricity is cheap (unreliable, but cheap) to the point where solar panels don't make financial sense. Our temperature is regularly over 100F in the summer (only 100F today), the air conditioner in the car does as well as the Acura's.
The Leaf is our preferred car for virtually every trip. We drive our ICE on long trips or rent. The cost savings alone justify the Leaf. The environmental and noise savings are just gravy.
I don't normally bite but so much of this is wrong.
I work in agriculture and drive 120+ miles most days for work in very rural parts of the Southeast USA in my EV, and this summer the temperatures have been around to 100F with high humidity almost every day. I exclusively charge at home with the free level 2 charger that came with my car.
CA seems to be an anomaly, but here gas was $3.44/gal this morning, electricity is ~$0.10/kwh. For my normal operations in my Honda accord, my weekly gas cost for work is ~$60. That same travel comes out to ~$15 in electricity, for a yearly saving of $2000+ in the EV. My electric bills have largely born this out. Additionally, in my area a new Chevy Bolt was the second cheapest vehicle with a warranty--a used mazda 3 with ~5k miles left on the warranty was $400 cheaper. The home charger came free with the purchase, so if you're looking at cars with warranties (which many people without the time/skill/space to work on their own vehicles are) there are EVs that are hands-down cheaper to buy and run, and it's not close.
Road trips aren't as good (except in a Tesla imo), but there's very few advantages irl of modern gas cars over comparable modern EVs. Hell, my bolt, currently the cheapest EV on market (well, now discontinued), has most of the same performance specs as my '01 3-series BMW: same 0-60, same turn radius, same stopping distance, lighter with a similar center of gravity. The BMW is more fun out in the country (can't beat the feel of a perfect manual shift), but the bolt easily beats the Honda which is the actual market-class comparison, and on crowded roads with merging the instant acceleration is a huge bonus.
That is a fantastic ride! Growing up my mom has a white Galaxies 500 with blue interior. It was an amazing car.
Certainly is, the 60s version of the Crown Vic essentially since that was what essentially replaced the LTD line, which replaced the Galaxie. Mines Black on Black, which is brutal in the CA summer so I wrapped it blue. Its a 2 door that seats 6 people very comfortably, lol.
A fun car to drive and very easy to repair and work on. Fortunately mechanical parts are vastly abundant and ridiculously cheap, since most parts are shared with other models. The only parts that are like, Galaxie specific, are body panels and interior trim parts, so those are the expensive hard to find parts.
My wife used to live in a place called Tennant Creek (Australia) which is a days drive from the closest city Darwin. No EV vehicle can reach there, let alone come back.
I support EV vehicles, they are extremely promising but more advancements are required before they can outright replace the combustion engine.
Yep, definitely a ways to go. California is trying to push for no ICE vehicles new in like, 2035. They're pushing way too fast IMO, I doubt EVs will get to a point where it will be realistically usable for anyone outside of Orange County or San Francisco in 10 years.
The thing is, nothing gets done unless the government regulates it. The industry would just keep pumping out ICE vehicles. The only reason we have EVs at all is because most car companies saw the writing on the wall about the very necessary phaseout of ICE and knew this would be legislated sooner or later. I fully expect EVs will have either great range or super fast charging by 2035 because the market will be there to support it. (Regulating is solves the chicken and the egg problem - it guarantees demand so it de-risks investing in EV tech for the entire supply chain.)
Obviously I do not know Australia that well, but what I gather from Mad Max movies is that you have a lot of desert and silver painted teeth... Just kidding. 😉 Europe is indeed more densely populated than, and we have ‘decent’ infrastructure for travelling. When I started my EV journey 6 years ago, the only superchargers were owned by Tesla, and the fastest non-Tesla chargers would need 4-8 hours to fill my 260kms range car. Which was appalling. Over the past 6 years, I’ve seen enormous improvements, because we want to get rid of ICE cars by 2035.
Today there are superchargers every 50-100kms on highways.
Unfortunately, these (super)chargers do not get as much coverage in ads like gasoline/diesel get, and it took me some time to understand and find my way in chargerland. I’ve learned you need to actively search for the charging infrastructure if you need it.
So I would be interested to see what is happening down under….