this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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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:
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.
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.
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
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%.
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.