Electric car thread

[toast2266]

Not quite. If I had 1 gasser and 1 EV, the routine maintenance would be significantly reduced overall aside from the things you can't get away from, ie tires, suspension, coolant, wiper fluid, etc.

I think having 2 normal cars is a PITA. I'd much rather have an EV for city duty and the occasional (well planned) road trip, and keep a gas powered wagon around for true cross-country capability. OR just rent a car for the occasional road trips. That's actually probably be much cheaper overall anyway.

Even maintenance on tires, etc. is reduced. Pretty much all maintenance is, essentially, just a function of miles driven. If you're driving the same number of miles but splitting those miles between 2 vehicles, your maintenance on each vehicle is significantly reduced.

I've been doing this for years. Like Adiron says, there's a 20% use case where there's no replacement for a big vehicle. Towing, hauling, etc. requires a big truck, so I drive a big truck when I need to do those sort of things. And I don't see EV's replacing big (consumer) trucks any time in the near future. But driving a big truck day in and day out is dumb. They get shitty mileage, they're a pain in the ass to park, they handle like a big dumb truck, etc. So I drive a much smaller car for the other 80% of the time. And as soon as EV's become cheaper, I'll be replacing that smaller car with a full electric. Seems like a no-brainer.

[altasnob]

Curious why you say tire maintenance is reduced? Aren't electric cars heavier, or just as heavy as ICE counterpart? Wouldn't weight be the primary factor on tire maintenance?

[MontuckyFried]

The problem is states have already codified laws banning ICE vehicles (new sales in CA post 2035). You aren't overcoming these issues just because there is an end date, which is my entire beef. Governments are forcing a hand 90+ percent of consumers know damn well makes things worse for them.

The vast majority of consumers are bringing in their vehicle to a mechanic for routine maintenance anyways. Just eliminating an oil change does nothing to affect the consumers day to day life, which still requires a trip to the shop every 5-10k miles.

I hear ya on the state mandates. I'm not a fan of that pie in the sky regulation either. I'd put money on them extending the deadline when we get to 2035 and the infrastructure still isn't able to handle the transition in full.

That said, the reduced maintenance isn't limited to merely oil changes. Particularly as one approaches 100K, we start talking all the big ticket items. Timing belts and tensioners (or chain tensioners in the case of BMWs and Audis), water pumps, spark plugs and coils (cheap on mine, but can be a very expensive service on others), engine flushes, valve cleanings (looking at you VW GDI engines!), the list goes on.

Now there IS the chance that reduced battery life or battery failure completely upends the calculus, but as a whole, I'm hearing great things about Tesla battery life. I think the biggest change that NEEDS to happen is enable indie shops to be able to service and repair EVs more easily. As a DIY'er of the biggest things that made me decide against going the way of a salvage Tesla was that they lock you out of the supercharger network, which completely defeats the best selling point of getting one to begin with. Thankfully they've altered that policy to allow salvage vehicles back on, but ONLY if the repairs are done at an official Tesla repair facility, which will completely wipe out any savings you thought you had. Biggest issue I'm having with EVs as a whole is that every manufacturer is trying their best to make them all walled gardens, a la Apple. I understand they have some valid reasons for this (mainly safety), but they're also screwing over the long-term second hand market of them. Especially as they age and further devalue. When the costs to repair exceed the values, more are going to end up in the junkyard or crushed, which is certainly not quite "green" compared to keeping existing vehicles on the road as long as possible. This trend is NOT exclusive to EVs however, as vehicles are increasingly becoming dealer-only serviceable anyway thanks to being so software driven.

Waiting for some enterprising hackers to blow those walled-gardens wide open. Combined with a better battery remanufacturing industry, things could turn around at some point. I hope. I REALLY want to get into wrenching on EVs someday, but it's tough as it currently stands.

[Cisco Kid]

Fewer oil changes, spark plugs, alternator, etc.

[MontuckyFried]

Curious why you say tire maintenance is reduced? Aren't electric cars heavier, or just as heavy as ICE counterpart? Wouldn't weight be the primary factor on tire maintenance?

I think he means like having summer and winter tires. Your tires last "twice" as long when swapping out sets twice a year. When you have two vehicles, the mileage applied is half on each.

[carlh]

If you are already a 2 car household switching one to ev is a no brainer. We have a used leaf for around town and it was cheap to buy, sales tax exempt and costs like $0.04 per mile in electricity. Gas close to home is still close to $5/gal and my wife does tons of short trips for errands. We also have a Honda Pilot for road trips, towing a small camp trailer, MTB and skiing. This is a great combo for reducing gas usage and costs. I could further optimize gas usage with a longer range ev that I could take up skiing but the cost tradeoff isn’t worth it right now.

[mcphee]

Curious why you say tire maintenance is reduced? Aren't electric cars heavier, or just as heavy as ICE counterpart? Wouldn't weight be the primary factor on tire maintenance?

Read to the end of his 1st paragraph.

[MontuckyFried]

If you are already a 2 car household switching one to ev is a no brainer.

Exactly. Except in rare edge cases, it's not like BOTH cars are going out of town everyday. I was heavily considering a used Leaf with a bad battery before prices shot up and fixing it myself with a refurb. The math REALLY penciled out insanely well a few years back. We'll hopefully get there again. Either way, the range of the newer Leaf especially is more than enough for most urban duty.

[uglymoney]

Where are you going to drive your gas truck to when the environment collapses?

I remember when you could just plan a backpack and go. Now we have to have 2 or 3 destinations in mind based on forest fire activities. Had to postpone a vacation because a historic derecho wrecked my home town and then change to a different mountain range in order to avoid being incinerated by unprecedented forest fires.

Ski resorts are hedging against the weather with mega passes and now you can't even drive to Alta when they get snow because the same knuckleheads who hate electric cars don't want to fund mass transit to get up to the fucking hill.

You can argue electric cars suck, don't actually help, aren't the right answer, and we might as well own a gas guzzling truck for all of our needs. But you are ignoring that existential reason for cars and trucks in the first place...to improve our lives and mobility which, unfortunately this very tool is now fucking up.

So like with heat pumps replacing your furnace, electric cars replacing your ice, windmills replacing your coal plant, none of these solutions are perfect but neither are the options they replace. Plumbing is a pain in the ass as well, but we all used to agree it is worth the price to keep our shit out of the river. Plumbing doesn't work without water and a treatment plant and those come at a cost as well. The cheapest option is to just step outside and squat. Freedom shits fuck your neighbor, no smelly bathrooms.

This is no different.

Electric cars aren't perfect. They aren't the whole solution. They have costs. They require infrastructure. But unless you ignore the big picture, it's where we have to go if we want cars, at least until a better technology comes along or there is nowhere left worth driving to.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

[schuss]

A lot of people not reading the "right now" portion of my post. We have more than a decade until 2035 and ICE will be on the road well after that. Already EVs could probably fulfill more in the 90% as anything other than towing or ultra long distances they do fine.
By then infrastructure, power units and batteries will be better. Remember phones or the internet 10-15 years ago? Very different.

[AdironRider]

Where are you going to drive your gas truck to when the environment collapses?

I remember when you could just plan a backpack and go. Now we have to have 2 or 3 destinations in mind based on forest fire activities. Had to postpone a vacation because a historic derecho wrecked my home town and then change to a different mountain range in order to avoid being incinerated by unprecedented forest fires.

Ski resorts are hedging against the weather with mega passes and now you can't even drive to Alta when they get snow because the same knuckleheads who hate electric cars don't want to fund mass transit to get up to the fucking hill.

You can argue electric cars suck, don't actually help, aren't the right answer, and we might as well own a gas guzzling truck for all of our needs. But you are ignoring that existential reason for cars and trucks in the first place...to improve our lives and mobility which, unfortunately this very tool is now fucking up.

So like with heat pumps replacing your furnace, electric cars replacing your ice, windmills replacing your coal plant, none of these solutions are perfect but neither are the options they replace. Plumbing is a pain in the ass as well, but we all used to agree it is worth the price to keep our shit out of the river. Plumbing doesn't work without water and a treatment plant and those come at a cost as well. The cheapest option is to just step outside and squat. Freedom shits fuck your neighbor, no smelly bathrooms.

This is no different.

Electric cars aren't perfect. They aren't the whole solution. They have costs. They require infrastructure. But unless you ignore the big picture, it's where we have to go if we want cars, at least until a better technology comes along or there is nowhere left worth driving to.

Sent from my SM-G991U1 using Tapatalk

This is just sensationalism. Like wildfires didn't exist 100 years ago.

[dunfree]

Thermodynamics is a thing and cannot be changed.

My Tundra is just my example, substitute some Ford or other Toyota ICE vehicle of your preference for all I care. It doesn't change the cost limitations of EVs, and you are never, yes never, overcoming the charging problem. Physics is real and immutable.

NIO does battery swaps, takes about 3 minutes. Last week they did over 60k in a day. There’s definite limitations but some of the perceived ones are just because the early US market leader Tesla made dumb limiting choices and sold that shit as the future

[AdironRider]

Reminds me of the old Foxworthy joke:

You might be a redneck if the value of your car goes up or down depending on how much gas is in it

Outside of basically renting a component worth around 25k per, that does seem like at least one way of tackling the problem.

[mcphee]

This is just sensationalism. Like wildfires didn't exist 100 years ago.

Lol. Lmao

[BCMtnHound]

While this conversation is all well and good, has anyone actually advocated for people in N.America to just consume less? Our car culture has matured on subsidized fuel, roads, and vehicles. The amount of km’s I read about people travelling for pleasure purposes is just astounding to me. Damn but some of you spend a lot of time behind the wheel. Any thoughts on just staying closer to home for your recreation needs? You know, just consuming less overall? It always seems that everyone is looking for some way to not reduce their exorbitant standard of living, expecting tech to somehow solve this problem, or as in the past, transfer the costs onto another set of people/community. We are too fat and greedy, and are trying to treat a symptom, and not the root cause. All this talk just seems to be a fool’s errand, and if past effort is any indication, not moving us towards a more stable environment within the timeframe the doomsayers are predicting.

But then, this is a message board primarily populated by affluent white privileged (male) folk. So the circle jerk about the pros and cons between various types of consumption, without a reduction in the core attitude that creates the need in the first place, will continue.

[schuss]

While this conversation is all well and good, has anyone actually advocated for people in N.America to just consume less? Our car culture has matured on subsidized fuel, roads, and vehicles. The amount of km’s I read about people travelling for pleasure purposes is just astounding to me. Damn but some of you spend a lot of time behind the wheel. Any thoughts on just staying closer to home for your recreation needs? You know, just consuming less overall? It always seems that everyone is looking for some way to not reduce their exorbitant standard of living, expecting tech to somehow solve this problem, or as in the past, transfer the costs onto another set of people/community. We are too fat and greedy, and are trying to treat a symptom, and not the root cause. All this talk just seems to be a fool’s errand, and if past effort is any indication, not moving us towards a more stable environment within the timeframe the doomsayers are predicting.

But then, this is a message board primarily populated by affluent white privileged (male) folk. So the circle jerk about the pros and cons between various types of consumption, without a reduction in the core attitude that creates the need in the first place, will continue.

Because if recycling, vegetarianism, prior conservation efforts etc. have taught us anything, it's that people want to do what they want to do and will stick their head in the sand and ignore future ills or broad impacts if it means their quality of life will suffer for any length of time. Humans are dicks that way.
This is also why modern EV's and others are part of a different strategy, an abundance agenda that shows how this new stuff is better (as they accelerate faster and make less noise than ICE cars). There's plenty of shitheads that won't hear an ounce of sense about what non-impactful change they can make to make things better for people (hell, look at those rolling coal guys that actively torch their own reliability), but they will adopt things that are better.

[Ted Striker]

This whole conversation is getting ridiculous. It is comical for people to argue that EV's, which had an average sale price of 66k in 2022 (compared to 48k for ICE), are in any way remotely affordable.

But the dentists on TGR are going to say hey a BMW or Mercedes depreciates a bunch also so Tony the plumber better shut the fuck up and get on board with the electric revolution.

I'm not saying that. Quite the opposite, most of us TRG dentists are already firmly in the bougie car category. Higher trim Tundras are north of $60k. And if Tony doesn't make $100k as a plumber, he's doing it wrong.

Currently, EVs aren't for everyone. A lightly used Corolla will win for most use cases. But driving full sized pickup trucks on a daily commute to an office doesn't make any financial sense either, yet a large subset of Americans do just that.

I, and the vast majority of consumers, really struggle with the entire concept of the EV only being sufficient for 80% of use cases. That in turn requires 2 vehicles, twice the maintenance etc. Nevermind the inherent fact that having two cars is going to completely offset any environmental gains.

Just shy of 40% of American households already have two cars. Another 20+% have three or more. Almost 10% don't have a car at all. So that 30% (mostly single, mostly renters) may/may not need something beyond a commuter car. That's a thin slice.

Really, you're rationalizing an irrational market. Most people's car choices are silly. The number of times I've heard the phrase "but I need four wheel drive" and/or "all-seasons are great in snow"... People wear cars like clothing. They start with an identity statement, and attempt to justify the rest.

[Buzzworthy]

I, and the vast majority of consumers, really struggle with the entire concept of the EV only being sufficient for 80% of use cases. That in turn requires 2 vehicles, twice the maintenance etc. Nevermind the inherent fact that having two cars is going to completely offset any environmental gains.

These are problems that are never going to overcome. And that is where people very much give a shit about a Tundra (or Rav4, etc ICE vehicle).

We disagree on a lot of things but not this.
Personally I’m just not there yet with what I need in a vehicle and and EV is not the solution as it stands.
But hell, my Tundra mpg sucks so there’s that.

[Ted Striker]

How are states addressing tax revenue for road maintenance and whatever else gets funded by gasoline taxes? I haven't looked at it any. Just wondering, because an electric car charging at the owner's home wouldn't be assessed any taxes under the current taxes that are all "at the pump" type assessments.

WA was looking at direct road tolls but the idea doesn't have much traction.

[AdironRider]

I don't disagree with most of your points Ted, but I would probably argue that plenty of truck driving Americans make that trade off because they do need a truck (in my case about 25% of my miles driven are towing my boat around) a certain amount of the time and the savings of having an entire second vehicle for when I don't doesn't offset the added cost of having that other car in the first place.

You are correct I'm bringing rationalization into a market full of irrational actors, but that sorta works both ways right? Like people rationalize their Tesla as if they are saving the planet, when they really aren't, just like the truck guys who need 4wd when they really don't.

And now I'm dreaming of my personal identity statement, which is a 2wd regular cab short box V8 sport truck with a blower, preferably in pull me over red with limo tint.

[Dantheman]

While this conversation is all well and good, has anyone actually advocated for people in N.America to just consume less? Our car culture has matured on subsidized fuel, roads, and vehicles. The amount of km’s I read about people travelling for pleasure purposes is just astounding to me. Damn but some of you spend a lot of time behind the wheel. Any thoughts on just staying closer to home for your recreation needs? You know, just consuming less overall? It always seems that everyone is looking for some way to not reduce their exorbitant standard of living, expecting tech to somehow solve this problem, or as in the past, transfer the costs onto another set of people/community. We are too fat and greedy, and are trying to treat a symptom, and not the root cause. All this talk just seems to be a fool’s errand, and if past effort is any indication, not moving us towards a more stable environment within the timeframe the doomsayers are predicting.

But then, this is a message board primarily populated by affluent white privileged (male) folk. So the circle jerk about the pros and cons between various types of consumption, without a reduction in the core attitude that creates the need in the first place, will continue.

[alpinevibes]

I don't disagree with most of your points Ted, but I would probably argue that plenty of EV driving Americans make that trade off because they dont need a truck/large vehicle (in my case about 95% of my miles driven are short trips around town) a certain amount of the time and the savings of being thoughtful about my trips and renting/borrowing a larger car or making do with what I have doesn't offset the true cost that much versus $5/gal gas and my 'Merican Made Beast.

You are correct I'm bringing irationalization into a market full of irrational actors - who are acting for both egotistical and altruistic reasons, versus my own selfish needs - but that sorta works both ways right? Like people rationalize their Truck/SUV as if they really need it for towing/hauling/mudding those sick parking lots, when they really aren't, just like the EV deniers who claim they need 600mi range, 10min 0-100% charging and no decrease in battery performance whatsoever - when they really dont.

And now I'm dreaming of my personal identity statement, which is a simple EV that takes care of my needs and most of my wants.

FIFY.

[gravitylover]

Range, charge time/cost/location are going to be solved by technology in fairly short order with new battery technologies and things like roads that are chargers. Those same roads will also log miles traveled and the vehicles will be taxed accordingly. A lot of the things that are currently problems most likely won't be within ten years, even for the fringe, as commercial needs will be the driving force that will get the rest of us to the right place (literally and figuratively). I want to go E and will as soon as it suits my needs, that just isn't now.

[Ted Striker]

First hit on google image

[Ted Striker]

Maher is not wrong, but the Tesla Roadster was really a Lotus with a retrofitted electric motor, and the 2nd gen Prius was actually a great car. Progress happens. Maybe not fast enough...