EV owners, environmentalists, cynics, optimists, what do you think of electric cars today and in the near future?

We bought a Tesla a few years ago, back when Elon Musk was a douchebag but before he outed himself as a right-wing attack dog.

It’s a great car, probably the best we’ve owned. We don’t have a means to charge it at home (we live in a high-rise), but that hasn’t been an issue. We also taken it on on longer trips (Chicago to Ohio a couple times, Chicago to NY once), with no hassle.

I don’t own one (holding tight to an older car at the moment), but they are NC. Love the technology.

Not without their flaws. Wish they were less heavy, though that’s also a function of people wanting larger cars. Would be interested in seeing if hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles will give EVs a run for their money, but probably a decade or two away if it happens at all.

Regardless, a better direction for the future than internal combustion engines running on gasoline or diesel.

Not crap. Production and disposal of the batteries is another matter, though.

Musk is apartheid-beneficiary crap.

Wood Goblin wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:29 pm We don’t have a means to charge it at home (we live in a high-rise), but that hasn’t been an issue.

So what does your charging routine look like?

losthighway wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:58 pm

Wood Goblin wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:29 pm We don’t have a means to charge it at home (we live in a high-rise), but that hasn’t been an issue.

So what does your charging routine look like?

The closest supercharger is about a mile away, in a shopping area, so we’re often able to combine charging with other errands. It’s not one of the extremely fast chargers, so it typically takes 30 to 40 minutes to get from 30% to 80%. For most of the year, we can go a couple weeks without charging, but you need to charge more frequently in the winter.

But we’ll also use the slow chargers in parking garages if we’re going out to dinner, a show, whatever, and there happen to be options nearby. Those are much slower, but it doesn’t really matter. You have to park somewhere either way.

We would never go back to a non-EV. If we had to travel by car to somewhere without a lot of great options on the way, we might rent a car. But there are fewer and fewer of those places. Plenty of hotels offer charging these days, too.

We went partially EV last year and got a RAV4 plugin hybrid in November. We have mostly had it in cold temps and it was doing 34 miles in a charge, which is good for 3-4 days of trips, on average. It warmed up a bit and my last charge was 46 miles.

Electricity is like 30 cents per kWh here and my rough math puts it at maybe 30% cheaper that running on gas. Not great, but if you’re in an area with better rates and don’t drive over 40 miles a day it would be in the sweet spot. I still like having a car I seldom need to gas up.

Seems to be decent Toyota-quality. The allegedly premium stereo blows compared to the VW it replaced, so that’s a bummer.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 8:12 pm The allegedly premium stereo blows compared to the VW it replaced, so that’s a bummer.

Is it the JBL system?

I drove a 2014 Volt for many years, and drive a Audi A3 e-tron PHEV now. My wife has a Kia Sorento PHEV that she loves, and probably 90% of her miles are EV-only miles, so it works great for us. I also work at a domestic US battery company and design the battery management system (basically, the electronics that monitor and control the battery), so I'm probably biased. That being said, some automakers are doing it better than others, and the industry has changed enormously even in just the past 2 years or so.

The Inflation Reduction Act implemented some pretty strict mandates about sourcing battery materials in the US in order to claim tax credits, so there's a mad scramble to build battery factories here now. Some may view it as a kneejerk protectionist reaction to all of the cheap batteries coming out of China and South Korea, and that's probably partly true. However, there's a lot of money getting pumped into R&D, especially for Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) cells, as those three elements are readily available in the US and fairly easily acquired. Other chemistries rely heavily on Nickel and Cobalt, that latter only really being available in the Congo, which comes with its own set of problems (slavery, black markets, unsafe labor conditions, etc.).

Yes, the RAV4 has a JBL system. I think there is a package that’s a level better, but you couldn’t even get those when we were looking. It’s really a bummer how underpowered and unfocused sounding it is and I’m seriously considering upgrading if I knew anything about car stereos.

Anyway, another thing about the Toyota (and perhaps other) plug-ins. I was pretty ignorant going in, and I thought the drive system was electric motors powering the wheels, and those would be powered by battery, and the internal combustion engine would drive a generator to charge the battery when needed. But I was way wrong, as the engine powers a planetary gear in eCVT, which also provides the electric drive and power generation. I’m barely explaining this correctly, but my point is the whole drivetrain on this was more integrated and complex than I thought, going in.

Krev wrote: Thu Apr 25, 2024 6:56 pm Not crap. Production and disposal of the batteries is another matter, though.

Isn't this the thing though? People are so excited to declare that they've saved the planet that the ugly truth is kind of kept out of the conversation.

Lithium mining is one thing, but as I understand it, the current "plan" for disposal/recycling is that Mr. Musk invents something before it becomes a problem. Not terribly comforting. Also, unless your electrical grid is 100% renewable (not typical), you're still polluting whatever percentage that is. It's already been confirmed that driving a sensibly-sized fossil fuel car pollutes less than a EV Hummer.

So....probably we've got a ways to go. Ride a bicycle instead, not much to complain about there.