- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
Funny thing is, Chinese EVs are at the place where Japanese cars were back in the 1970s. Widely mocked as cheap crap, but consumers like them well enough, and the quality keeps improving. The US reacts by shutting them out of its market, but they’re doing awfully well everywhere else in the world…
Partially because the Chinese government is good at covering up any negative news about them.
Japan changed the manufacturing game.
10 years later people are taking business trips to Japan to learn how to do it.
I learnt about Japanese manufacturing in the last 10 years and started a career in it.
Toyota rather falling out of favour in recent years of course
Hyundai/Kia tho …. We can’t lock out the Koreans and someone’s lunch is getting eaten
Even outside the US I would not want to buy a Chinese electric car. Can you imagine trying to get maintenance on that thing.
I’m starting to see proper dealerships from brands like BYD so it’s not so far off. I don’t know the details but if they’re implemented physically in the region then I assume they provide maintenance.
mmm ketchup …
You want ketchup? With lobster?
You’re a smeeheee
A complete and total one.
Ketchup?
Catsup?
Until they (every one of them) catch-up with price to ICE it’s gonna be tough. Same story with every single automotive brand we had in past decades. They thought they’re invincible, until…
Just need to start doing away with fuel subsidies
Ah yes those fuel subsidies keep the up front cost of vehicles so high… (sarcasm)
Get a new one liner that’s contextually correct. Or is that the point, to be a pointless broken record.
The higher up-front cost of an EV can be justified when you consider the lower running costs. If gasoline costs more and outpaces any rise in electric costs, the running costs gap is that much wider and the up front costs are easier to overlook
How many people can’t finance that though, they are going to be on a ridiculously high interest loan that will way outstrip the fuel savings.
The second hand market won’t be there for years (you can get a just about works petrol car ridiculously cheap) and who knows what their batteries will be like at that point
Said no one ever who has done the math.
The cost on a same-same ICE is nowhere near the cost difference. Even over the long term the EV value falls off a cliff as the battery approaches zero so you can’t claim the cost back at the secondhand sale.
For example Korean sedan to Korean EV say Hyundai sonata ($40,000) vs IONIQ6 ($82,000 after gov rebates) is a difference of $42,000 just comparing up front costs. Fuel cost is (250x8.1(L/100)) is 2,025 x $1.8 is $3645 per year all in AUD and km.
The more these overstaments are made the less credibility is given to the discussion of decarbonising the transport network. We need honest, cards on the table discussions. That’s my math. What’s yours?
I paid $37,880 for my Model 3, and got a $7500 tax credit. I do not believe there’s a $30k car that can compete with the base model 3.
In Australia the base is over $70,000 after tax breaks and Government rebates
If you can find an equivalent ICE do the math and post results. I’ve been looking to buy an EV for city commute but it’s just far too expensive and frankly the net result is still burning coal (remote combustion vehicle).
Sounds like you’re the target market for early adoption!
Said everyone that I know that bought an EV.
You need to get out and touch grass. There is more missinformation (and disinformation) about EVs than factually correct information. No one is willing to have a real discussion because the cult is regurgitating the misinformation and big oil disinformation. Right now EVs are for the rich and the lithium would be better being used on solar farms to clean the electricity grid.
I’m willing to have one, I thought we had one, but you are just starting to talk about cults …
Are you working out all the prices in Australian fun bucks?.. Because an ioniq 6 is not $82,000 usd for any of the trim levels and after running comparable TCOs vs fuel it will start paying for itself after the 15 year mark (well within the expected useful lifespan of a modern temperature controlled lithium pack (old EVs had significant degrading from temperature fluctuations, but new packs level off at about 10-20% wear now for an expected lifespan of 25-40 years >80% SOC)). Biggest downside is tax, payments, and higher than usual insurance which I’m not including in the TOC Calc because it’s so varied based on location that it’s hard to estimate.
Learn to read.
AUD.
Go visit their website in Australia. 70-90k.
Start pay for itself after 15 years
Battery only lasts about 12 years of normal use before needing replacement hence the poor secondhand values. What are you going to run it on, gasoline?
Fuck off.
The 12 years you’re referring to is a assuming batteries without thermal management via nrel modeling, the ioniq 6 must face HEAFTY import taxes in your country (which is not the fault of the vehicle), and there are alternatives to running on gasoline like recycling the old cell (already a reality) and replacing it with another.
Learn to have a discussion with people without being a dickhead about it.
Keep drinking that coolaid cultist
Ya sure got me there! Congrats
Good point, just delete the second paragraph…
Exactly.
And when parts become available at my local auto parts store. One of my friends had a Model 3 and it took 1 MONTH to replace a broken passenger door mirror. It also took 3 WEEKS to fix a power seat issue. The same car had multiple growing pain issues that took way too much time to fix.
They were thrilled to trade it in on a new Camry so they could have a functioning car again.
This is just the state of the auto industry at the moment. There’s just as many teslas and evs waiting on parts as there are traditional ICE models when adjusted for market scale. The days of having everything in stock at the dealer for a quick swap are dead and gone.
Was this in the last 4 years? Because supply chains and labor are still in recovery everywhere.
All the people vehemently defending ICE in this thread are missing the point.
All the expensive maintenance/problems with my current ICE are with things that do NOT exist on a BEV:
- head gasket
- timing belt
- catalytic converter
- oil change
Also, the scumbag dealer straight up LIED because I specifically asked about the common head gasket issues with Subaru and they assured me that they had been fixed, and then proceeded to sell me a car with the exact engine which had that issue even though the same model year had started shipping with a new engine that didn’t have the problem.
So I do NOT give a SINGLE fuck about the environmental tradeoffs between lithium extraction and all the dirty fluids involved with a ICE. If you have a hard-on for breathing smog, I won’t kink-shame you.
In summary, I’ll be getting a BEV because:
-
It won’t ever blow a head gasket and spew coolant and oil all over itself for no fucking reason while I’m just trying to get home from work. The battery will slowly degrade over many years, but that’s very predictable and can be planned for.
-
It won’t ever force me to replace it because it needs a catalytic converter that costs more than the car is worth and can’t pass emissions. Again, I won’t kink shame you if you get off on breathing smog, but I also don’t believe you have the right to force that on everyone else with your bypass kits and rolling coal BS.
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I will NOT have to deal with lying scumbag car dealers. These middlemen add NO value to the transaction and they lobby to force the state governments to keep them involved.
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I’ll never have to go with a gas station and deal with their bullshit gas pumps with poor usability, I can charge at night and while I WFH
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My car will be able to run on any fuel that can generate electricity: natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, etc. ICE cars are dependent on a very specific nasty byproduct of petroleum refinement which is constantly price gouged for windfall profits by greedy corporations and our government just lets it happened because they are bought and paid for by the same industry, they’ll even send subsidies their way as an extra fuck-you to the taxpayer. I’ll stick with my local, municipal electric company which is held accountable to provide me electricity without padding the windfall profits of the 1%.
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An electric motor is a much better engineering solution to the problem of creating forward momentum than an ICE. There are some things that you need to burn a liquid fuel for, like if you’re going to try to launch a rocket. Turning a wheel is NOT one of them. Do the ICE fetishers even know how an ICE works? It’s immensely over-complicated to create an explosion and then harness the power of that explosion to create rotation, which is trivial to achieve with electricity. So many moving parts which all have to be properly lubricated and aligned or it will literally explode and spew metal and toxic chemicals everwhere. No thanks. Kids can make electric motors in science class.
All that being said, I’m still not going to drop 3x the cost on a BEV over an ICE, the prices DO need to come down. Thankfully, with lots of options in the market it looks like they will.
Which is where fuel cell cars come in. They are also EVs. It pretty much renders the BEV obsolete. A lot of BEV advocacy are from people stuck in the early 2000s, totally unaware that technology has past them by. It is similar to the past obsession with diesel cars, which at one point was see as unbeatable.
Aren’t there still immense challenges with the safe storage and transportation of hydrogen? Will I be able to generate that hydrogen from my own solar panels?
I’m actually in agreement that FCEVs are the future, I just haven’t seen anything to convince me that those challenges have been addressed. Didn’t Toyota screw up by betting heavily on FCEVs instead of BEVs and now they have to play catch-up?
No, there are not. A lot of these concerns are from people stuck in the past, or have an agenda.
You can generate your own hydrogen, and there are a few companies building products for that. Though realistically there will be some degree of centralization. Most people will buy hydrogen and not bother with home production.
BEVs are really the result of subsidies and virtue signaling. It is a mandate driven by delusional pseudo-environmentalists. The same people that got nuclear banned in much of the world. It is not a serious attempt at green transportation. And it will likely die-off in favor of FCEVs or other ideas once the time comes.
So you’re saying that the major issues with storage and transportation of hydrogen have been resolved? Do you have a source? Everything that I’ve read today is that they still can’t store it without it evaporating at a pretty high rate.
In an abstract sense, I understand that FCEVs WILL be better once infrastructure exists and the problems with transportation and evaporation are resolved. Ideally the hydrogen would be used as energy storage for renewable sources, though my understanding is that most hydrogen produced today is produced using oil and gas.
The reality is that I’m going to need to replace my ICE in the next year or two, and there is not currently a FCEV available for me to replace it with or infrastructure for me to fuel it. My house gets good sun, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to power my small amount of driving with my own solar and a BEV
It’s not really productive to say that people who support BEV over ICE are stuck in the past. What would you recommend people do? If your answer is “buy another ICE until hydrogen is a realistic option”, isn’t that MORE stuck in the past than someone advocating for BEVs?
We have had hydrogen pipelines for decades, and large scale storage in the form of underground salt caverns. These things basically work the same as natural gas pipes and storage systems. The only real challenge was local storage, which has mostly ceased to be a problem with the rise of carbon fiber tanks. There are tens of thousands of FCEVs around the world, and rarely any issues with dealing with hydrogen storage.
The main limiting factor is infrastructure, or rather lack thereof. But the difference here is that you think it is technically impossible or at very least difficult. I believe it is simply a matter of building it, which is pretty straightforward.
BEVs also were impossible to buy for most people until around the mid-2010s. They went a century of near non-existence before then. FCEVs are simply going through a similar process. Sooner or later, they will be everywhere and BEVs will be abandoned afterwards.
You can buy whatever you want right now. It’s not like anyone’s stopping you. The point is that BEVs are not the answer. They are just a transitional idea and won’t last.
I thought the nationality was called “Japanese”, so “Japanese automakers”?
Or Japan’s Automakers.
Headlines in general just seemed to be terrible. It’s like when they decide the word “and” is too hard to type so they just use a comma instead, but also still use commas sometimes for their original purpose. Leading to some very weird sentences.
Father, daughter win lottery, separately
That’s a genuine headline I’ve seen in a local paper.
lol yeah, it does sometimes seem like headlines will compromise grammar in favor of brevity to the point of incomprehensibility…
BEVs are a dead end. It’s an idea older than internal combustion and is already obsolete. The world needs to shift focus to concepts like e-fuels or hydrogen cars.
E-fuel? So like what? Electricity…
It’s fuel made using electricity as the energy source.
The problem with fuels made from electricity is that pesky thing called thermodynamics. If an efuel was developed that was more efficient than electricity then we’d be able to use it to produce more electricity than we put in.
Lots of fuels (like petrol) are a lot more energy dense than out best batteries. If we can synthesize fuels like that just using electricity as an energy source (that can be generated from renewables) then you have a carbon free dense store of energy that can be used to power a vehicle for a long distance without refueling.
The problem with these (fuel cells etc) is that the conversation rate is inefficient, wasting a lot of energy. As we are not using 100% renewable energy this means carbon is being released still.
If we had an entirely renewable energy grid (with oversupply when sunny/windy etc) then those energy losses would not matter.
You avoid the giant, expensive battery though. People are obsessed with efficiency in a self-defeating way.
People are obsessed with efficiency because it’s the only metric that matters. We have a finite amount of resources on this planet and efficiency is the only way we can make it last. If you aren’t a ‘save the planet’ type of person then efficiency still matters because it’s directly correlated with cost.
Better ban solar panels cause they’re only 15-20% efficient. /s
You are comparing different efficiencies. Solar panels are 15% to 20% efficient at converting light into energy. As far as I’m aware every Efuel being developed (and every hydrocarbon fuel for that matter) has a 0% efficiency at converting light into energy but if I am mistaken please do correct me.
Or just move to building proper public transport like Europe did.
Europe is a huge continent. What do you mean, exactly?
The UK is in Europe, and in many cities here the public transport options are terrible, with driving being the only safe option, as cycling is very dangerous on our roads.
There are also huge parts of France, Italy, and Germany where public transport is poor, expensive, or infrequent.
I can charge my EV in the garage and not have to stand at a gas station in -30. Why on Earth would I want a less convenient hydrogen or other fuel car?
Because not everyone has a garage, and you still have to use the equivalent of gas stations if you’re travelling long distances.
In reality, BEVs pre-date ICE cars. They were abandoned because they were found to be less practical. The vast majority of people actually want gas stations and not the reverse.
We’re still in the early adoption stage. They were less practical because batteries were absolute trash 100 years ago. The vast majority of people want a car that will fill fast and go far. They don’t care how it happens.
We are also in the early adoption phase of other technologies. They will be far cheaper and more practical than what they are now. At some point, we have cars that are exactly as practical and cheap as conventional cars, only zero emissions. That is likely the end of the BEV.
Why do you think BEV is going away? Toyota is predicting they’ll have 1200km range and charge in 10 minutes by 2028. Even now the average city dweller can charge enough on a small service to make their trip to work and back. There is no upside to changing to something else.
They’re unsustainable, not to mention expensive and difficult for society to adopt. Toyota just say things while not actually being interested in them.
The marketing that they are “acceptable” for most people is not good enough. Eventually, there will be zero emissions cars that are just as practical as existing ICE cars and just as cheap. Basically no one will want BEVs once that happens.
They’re not unsustainable. Lithium is infinitely recyclable. Not to mention batteries are lasting way longer than expected. I’ve been in Tesla cabs with almost a million kilometers.
If you don’t have a garage you don’t need a car
If only…
I’m going to say that less than 30% of houses here in the UK have a garage/carport etc (either individual or shared).
Most of the individual garages will be sized to fit an old mini, not a modern car (even a small one)
Yeah, quit using the efficient stuff, we need something similarly inefficient as gas powered cars.
Batteries are unsustainable and have massive resource requirements. It’s basically an obsession with “efficiency” while actually being extremely wasteful.
You say that while promoting the idea of more inefficient energy transfer systems. Electric motors operate above 90%, traditional motors around 25-30%. Trying to mitigate that with wasting more energy by creating an artificial fuel is even more wasteful.
Burning stuff is unsustainable, using batteries, that are recyclable is not.
Solar panels are only 15-20% efficient. No one is going around saying we need to ban solar panels.
Fuels made from solar power are the opposite of unsustainable. They are the most sustainable ideas possible. It is basically artificial photosynthesis.
We don’t make fuels from solar power.
Unless you mean hydrogen, which by itself is already 30-40% less efficient then just using the electricity directly in a battery.
And that is without counting all the hydrogen that just escapes through any form of containment we try to keep it in.
Hydrogen is a fuel. E-fuels are hydrogen plus CO₂ and converted into synthetic hydrocarbons.
You are blatantly ignoring the part where solar power is incredibly inefficient to begin with, and we don’t care. It’s still cheap energy.
You’re confusing the efficency of solar panels with the efficiency of burning hydrocarbon based fuel (perhaps intentionally?). Yes, solar panels convert about 20-30% (they’re getting better with time) of the energy provided by mankind’s closest and most beloved fission reactor into energy we can use, the rest being reflected or turned into heat, but the source (that giant ball of fission) is infinite and non-detremental to the environment to keep running. Hydrocarbon production not only requires this original source but once calculated would provided you end delivery efficency levels that are dramatically lower (likely less than 1%), Natural hydrocarbons are limited in supply, and the whole chain is significantly more toxic for the planet when you calculate in byproducts produced during production or consumption. It’s legitimately not even close and if you truly believe hydrocarbons are even remotely viable you’ve misinterpreted one of the data points somewhere in your calculation.
Where is the comparison to the solar panel? I’m comparing methods of propelling, you are comparing solar panels and?
If you can use the energy more efficiently and choose not to it’s not sustainable (or at least not very smart)
Because it is solar power ultimately powering it all. If you don’t care about the efficiency of that step, you don’t really care about all of the later steps. It is still green energy and still cheap.
The problem with BEVs is that while it is efficient in one respect, it is insanely wasteful in others. As a result, it is an unsustainable idea and functionally just greenwashing.
So it’s the same if you have to build 5 times as many solar panels to do the same thing? It’s just not.
I’m going to say that if you can charge at home, then electric cars are awesome, otherwise a HFC style car might be better.
Both are going to require significant infrastructure build out, but electric chargers are much easier to install.