Diesel pickups are for chumps

[Martinjmpr]

Do you think people had this same conversation about automobiles when they first appeared on the scene?

"My horse can graze while I take a dump in the woods. I don't have to carry any fuel."

"Trains have lines all the way across the country. How am I going to get fuel once I get outside the city?"

They absolutely did, and you know what? They were right!

Automobiles were toys until the infrastructure to support them was created.

Nobody's saying that EVs will never be practical. What we ARE saying is that with the current infrastructure and the current limits of battery technology, EVs are nowhere NEAR being close to replacing ICE vehicles even within the city limits. Once beyond the range of their initial battery charges, EVs are impractical for long distance travel.

And speaking of automobiles, long-distance automobile travel beyond the city limits was impractical until there was a highway infrastructure to support such travel. In the midwest, for example, where the awful roads would routinely become mud lakes in springtime, if you lived in one town and wanted to "drive" in another town, you loaded your car up on a flat bed railroad car and had it shipped to the town you wanted to drive to.

Modern, publicly-funded rural automobile roads weren't really a "thing" until after WW1 (when it famously took Eisenhower 62 days to get a military convoy from Washington, DC to San Francisco.)

https://www.history.com/news/the-epi...highway-system

[Irving]

I know, that's exactly my point. I think people get lost in the heat of the argument on this. It sounds like some people are saying that EV can never replace ICE vehicles, so why even bother?

[BladesNBarrels]

ICE Vehicles good in real cold weather



But there are always haters:

[Gman]

Nobody's saying that EVs will never be practical. What we ARE saying is that with the current infrastructure and the current limits of battery technology, EVs are nowhere NEAR being close to replacing ICE vehicles even within the city limits. Once beyond the range of their initial battery charges, EVs are impractical for long distance travel. [/URL]

There need to be some major advances in energy storage, and there's nothing on the roadmap for at least a decade.

[Aloha_Shooter]

The point here, is that there are people who constantly harp about how range limits and charge times are some kind of show stopper, when in fact, even with a first generation Tesla, it clearly is not, as demonstrated by someone who's undertaken the sort of long-distance endurance driving that very, very, very few people would ever actually attempt. Extrapolating that feat to the sort of long distance driving the average person undertakes once or twice a year seems like a fairly easy exercise, basically assume that maybe it takes you 30 minutes to top up the battery vs. 10 minutes to fill up a gas tank.

The range limits and charge times are REAL and very much a showstopper when you're doing 800+ miles per day. I don't know where you get the idea that very few people attempt endurance driving as I've known tons of people who've done cross-country road trips. IIRC, Tesla's Supercharger gets the battery to 80% in 45 minutes. If you are doing over 600 miles, that charge added over an hour to your road trip, nearly 2 hours added each way for something like my recent drive to/from Tucson. I don't see a lot on Cannonball Runs per se these days but plenty of people do endurance drives whether it's driving between NY and FL or the East and West coasts, they just add in sensible overnight stops that you'd forgo in an actual Cannonball.

As far as I've seen, the MSM is in love with Tesla and Elon Musk. I don't know where you've seen all this negative coverage of Tesla except maybe in the autoblogs and car magazines where the authors and readers are interested in cars that actually finish the Nurburgring or Le Mans.

There is a place for everything, including EVs, but a lot of the buzz about Tesla is just that, buzz and hype. If a Tesla or Chevy's Bolt fit your driving pattern, great. If they don't, traditional car manufacturers are still making incredible improvements.

[68Charger]

Once the Tesla Mega-charger thingys are active for the Semis, we need to start a new tide pod challenge for the darwin-class millennial on youtube.

I call it the "lick a mega-charger challenge".

Wouldn't do a thing... there's a data handshake that takes place first, before the juice flows... but I like the way you think...

Just one more thing to think about- they know who is driving, how much power they're using, where they're going... makes it easier for them to track you when you plug your vehicle into the network every 150-300 miles... next thing you know, there will be people sharing information about charging stations that don't track you.

[68Charger]

I know, that's exactly my point. I think people get lost in the heat of the argument on this. It sounds like some people are saying that EV can never replace ICE vehicles, so why even bother?

IMHO, they're just explaining why they're not interested >at this time<... somebody has to be the pioneer that ponies up six figures for cars that have those limits... even if their motivation so they can be self-important pricks that believe that people using ICE's are neanderthals that are unworthy of their presence...

Once it's more adopted, and more infrastructure is in place and volume manufacturing brings prices down (which is starting to happen, but only starting)... then when they take a look at it, they'll go "hey, this could be a viable option" Tesla has the right idea building the network of charging stations that are high capacity to speed charging- it's just not enough to satisfy your average consumer >yet<

[Irving]

I'm in general agreement.

[Martinjmpr]

IMHO, they're just explaining why they're not interested >at this time<... somebody has to be the pioneer that ponies up six figures for cars that have those limits... even if their motivation so they can be self-important pricks that believe that people using ICE's are neanderthals that are unworthy of their presence...

Once it's more adopted, and more infrastructure is in place and volume manufacturing brings prices down (which is starting to happen, but only starting)... then when they take a look at it, they'll go "hey, this could be a viable option" Tesla has the right idea building the network of charging stations that are high capacity to speed charging- it's just not enough to satisfy your average consumer >yet<

There's also a flip side argument.

Those who say "look at the automobile - people said that never had a chance and they were wrong" are applying 20/20 hindsight by starting with something that's successful now but was once dismissed as a curiosity.

But in the history of automotive travel there are plenty of examples of the opposite: Things that were hailed as "the next big thing" by proponents but that turned out to be disastrous flops.

Steam Cars? Wankel Engines? Cars that could float or fly? Gas turbine engines?

All currently residing in the "what were they thinking?" section of the internet.

I think some form of electric propulsion will eventually become the standard for vehicles, but I'm not convinced it will be 100% electric because of both battery storage limits and charging time issues.

If I was to guess I'd say the "future standard" is going to be something like a fuel-cell hybrid or a hybrid using some other form of power to charge the batteries and create the electric power to move the vehicle.

If battery powered EV's do become a "standard" then I would expect it would radically change the way we travel. A multi day trip would not be done the way we do it now where we load up the SUV, fill it with gas and then spend 2 days driving to Grandma's house, stopping only for gas, meals, lodging or to take a photo next to the World's Largest Ball of Twine. Instead, you'd have to plan your trip to drive to, say, 75% of the battery limit (maybe 200 - 300 miles depending on the size of the vehicle) and then plan to stay several hours while parked at the charging station.

Another possibility might be charging stations at 100 mile intervals with cafe's, playgrounds, WiFi, etc, and the way to take the trip is to stop every 100 miles or so, spend an hour or two at the charging station and move on to the next one. I'm not sure that model would work in the sparsely populated West but you never know -we humans are endlessly adaptive.

[Irving]

I like the idea of putting your car onto a train over large expanses of middle-of-nowhere.