Featured The Dirty Truth About Combustion Engine Vehicles

I never said they aren't good enough for anyone. I've said they aren't good enough for probably 90-95% of the US market. That's not 100%. And they're good enough for a larger fraction if we assume that many people have a conventional car for trips where BEVs don't work, which many do.

So, yes, BEVs are good enough for people with a second, conventional car and good enough for people who rarely leave town or the main interstates. In that sense, they are good enough for me since I have the Prius Prime for difficult trips. What they are not good enough for is replacing my Prius Prime or the conventional vehicles of most people, at least with current charging infrastructure and car charge rates.

 

With a reasonable reduction in “range anxiety”

 

I don't like that term. It makes it sound like a psychological problem. It's not. It's a real problem - the problem of getting stranded somewhere because of lack of energy. There are tons of stories and videos of EVs being towed because they ran out of energy for one reason or another. Some people run out of gas but that's almost always their own fault because they weren't paying attention, rather than not having fueling stations available.

I've seen videos and read stories of EVs being towed because a charger was broken, because vampire drain killed their range while parked, because of bad weather depleting their energy, because the power was out along their trip due to a storm, because they were towing and the car's range estimate didn't account for that, and so on. In my 35 years of driving, I've never run out of gas. This is because fueling is readily available and fast, and because conventional cars typically have 400+ miles of real-world range after every fuel-up. EVs don't because most people don't sit and wait for the long, slow taper charge and because of what Bob said above - having just enough range to reach the next charging station is the fastest (and least safe) way to travel in an EV.

 

You do know I was basically agreeing with you, right ? Not taking the mick.
agreed with all your points. I’d love a bev that could do a range of 400 plus miles that could get me from London to Glasgow in one charge.

 

“Range anxiety” is largely a physiological issue.
Most people that have range anxiety don’t drive BEVs.
And most people I speak to that got over their range anxiety, got over it through experience owning a BEV.
It is quite possible, even likely for one person to have range anxiety, while another doesn’t on the exact same trip, in the very same car in the same conditions.

“Range anxiety” is largely subjective.

 

I think getting stranded or being unable to make the trip are not subjective.

 

Are you under the impression that everyone with “range anxiety” gets stranded or is unable to make a trip.
How about the two people in the same car on the same trip, one has range anxiety while the other does not.
Does the person with range anxiety get stranded while the person without range anxiety makes it to thier destination?

 

No, I'm under the impression that many people don't own EVs because they don't want to get stranded or don't want to avoid some of the trips they want to make.

What I'm saying is that that's not the issue. People can have anxiety for many reasons. The issue is *actually* being unable to make a trip and the result is either not starting the trip (or taking a conventional car) or getting stranded. That's not anxiety and it's a far more serious issue than any internal psychological issues people might have around EVs.

 

Range anxiety is a real thing, and not limited to BEVs. When I rode motor cycles I had several that got 50 MPG with a 2 gallon tank and no gas gauge. On a long trip I was very aware of the fuel stops along the way and religiously filled the tank all the way to the top each time I gassed up.

There is nothing like being on the coast Highway late at night, 25 miles from the next gas when you switch over to reserve because the gas station you normally used was closed for remodeling.

I had similar problems with an F150 that only got 10 MPH going into a head wind. 120 miles per tank is not a lot when you are traveling through the desert late at night.

 

My wife would get anxious when the low fuel light came on, and I wouldn't pull into a gas immediately.

That isn't what range anxiety refers too. It refers to when people worry over not being able to make the trip, even though the car has plenty of range for that trip. It isn't limited to BEVs, as there are plenty of short range ICE vehicles on the road.

Many people don't know how far they are driving in an ICE car. They may know a rounded figure of miles driven on the car in the year, but have no clue the actual distance their commute is. Probably because time of the trip is more important for daily planning. So they tend to overestimate how much range a BEV needs for them.

 

Well I can understand that you like to say it, but you seem to keep coming up with excuses and problems that will continue to stop you from buying a bev. I have no interest in dissuading you. You are ill suited to own a bev. Your comments show a distortion and you seem to be unable to let people make positive comments about bevs without some snide remark.

So no. I do not believe you really want one. I expect that even if every thing you said you wanted was solved you would still be happier with a car with a big gas tank and an engine. That is fine. You still are using less oil. But don't act so hurt that we don't believe you or that your use case is typical of more than a tiny percentage of the market.

I am quite impressed with how well my car operates. In 10 years they will be even better. In the short 2.5 years I've owned it, battery improvements have added 40 miles to new ones, they upgraded computers (changed mine out) so that it can react to traffic lights and signs correctly, and cut cost.

 

What I'm saying is range anxiety isn't a real problem. Range is.

 

Like not being able to go where I want to go.

I'm planning a trip right now (for this summer, hopefully) that includes a 572 mile leg with no fast charging at all and only two L2 chargers, one at a McDonalds and one at a dealer. Spending 6 hours at a McDonalds sounds like hell on Earth to me.

And yet, I'm actively looking for one. The Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and 2022 Bolt seem like the current ones that are interesting. There is one short-term destination I'm planning they would take me to where there is no Tesla charging but the above-mentioned trip will still require my Prime.

And you'd be dead wrong. I'd rather have a BEV, just one that works. Either that or current BEVs, just with 10x improved charging infrastructure.

Around 90-95%, according to my analysis of the NHTS data. Maybe that's why BEVs are 2% of the current market.

 

Tons?
There are also tons of videos of people jumping off roofs

Do as search on Youtube (EV towed dead battery) and many are asking if you can charge an EV by towing, or how to prevent needing to get towed.

But sure, "man bites dog" syndrome is at work here.
And the "anything to bash Tesla" crowd loves a Tesla catching fire too

Mike

 

I've seen perhaps 20 or so.

 

Range anxiety keeps people from even looking into BEVs. Until that is addressed, it doesn't matter if the actual range actually works or not.

Plug ins are selling better than hybrids in this point since introduction, and BEVs are outselling PHEVs at this time.

According to this, National Household Travel Survey, 5% of private vehicle trips are greater than 31 miles. At a glance, most are 10 miles or less. There is going to be at least two trips in a travel day; going where ever, and then coming home. Other trips can happen, but they aren't likely to all be at the long end of the scale at 30 miles. Even if they were, they wouldn't start challenging current BEVs until you got over 5 trips.

That leaves the question of long trips, like vacations, but over half of US households have more than one car, and I know many people that rent for a trip even when they have perfectly working ICE cars at home.

 

Am I reading this right, Trollbait??? Are you saying that 100 mile range is gross overkill for 95% of all private trips? Is a 30 mile range PHEV actually better environmentally than a large BEV with 80kWh battery pack?? A thousand pounds less material dug out of the ground sounds like a big gain.

I did not find a list of what questions were asked. It's hard to make sense of some statistics only from the labels on tables.

 

That's right. Most people don't understand "the tail of the distribution".

The average wind speed in south Florida is around 2m/s. So design your house for 5m/s and you should be good, right? 60m/s winds from the occasional hurricane are rare and so can be ignored, right? It's fine if the house blows away - you've got a second one in another state. Or you can rent one. Right?

Not me. I design for the tail of the distribution plus a safety factor. That's how almost everything is designed. Yeah, there's always that last little bit. Design for a 50 year wind but buy insurance for getting hit by a tornado.

That's the problem with EVs today. My 25 range miles handles 98% of my days and over 99% of my trip legs when I'm in the city. Yet a 400 range mile EV won't handle the tail of the distribution even without a safety factor. Right now, I'd need 650 miles to barely limp in and 800 to maintain a safety factor. That's a whole lot of expensive batteries to pay for and haul around for very rare use. That's why BEVs of today suck - you need a small battery 80% of the time, a medium sized battery 98% of the time, but that last 2% is a killer - you either don't cover it or cover it at extreme cost. Current EVs don't cover it.

And that's why plug in hybrids are so much better. You use one low-energy-density but high power source most of the time (batteries) and a separate high-energy-density source for the tail of the distribution.

But oh well. It's too late to do the right thing. Now we're stuck with the wrong thing. The only solutions are a massive build out of the charging infrastructure or a massive battery breakthrough.

 

Maybe professionals in the energy engineering field like Lee Jay could get together and start creating some papers that we can use to lobby our politicians. While it might be prohibitive in resources and money to build 100kWh battery packs to replace every ICE vehicle by 2030, I suspect that it would be quite doable with a PHEV design similar to the Prime.

 

PHEVs aren't dead.

Economics of hydrogen to fuel them means it only has a chance if the trucking industry adopts it, and builds it along thru ways. It is too expensive for someone to do for cars that will be as expensive as BEVs now, at best.