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.
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.
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….