I live in Oregon, and I went for long drive last weekend. I tried to charge twice at Electrify America charging stations... and both had lines of people waiting!
I did pledge years ago that my next car was going to be electric only, but now there are a bunch of 30+ mile plugin hybrids, and some of these stories about chargers make it sound like it hasn't gotten any better than when I had my Leaf about 8 years ago. Maybe I want to use gas for road trips and electric for everything else...
I used to feel that way, then I got an electric car with a 250 mile range last year. I really have not felt the desire to ever have a gasoline car since. Hybrids have so many more parts needed, that I feel like they will simply have more problems long term. In an EV, there's not much that will ever need to get replaced due to "wear" other than tires and brakes.
As for charging, this last weekend was the first time I've ever had a problem finding a charger on 300 mile days. Most people I know don't even go on as many long drives as I do, as I enjoy driving for driving sake.
Same here. The little extra time I spend on the road trip we make twice or three times a year to grandma's house is more than offset by the 10 minutes a week I don't spend putting gas in. I never want to give up home fueling.
The lifespans of cars have little to with the power train. Any post-2000 car is capable of about 200-400k miles.
After that, wear and tear takes its toll. I live in the northeast, where salt and other factors takes you to the lower end. As an example, I drove a 2003 Honda Pilot for 260k miles. I made the decision to get rid of it as the suspension and frame rust made repairs far in excess of the value of the car.
Electric cars are the classic capital vs operational expense discussion. More expensive to buy, sometimes cheaper to own.
A lot of cars get totaled. My car would’ve made it to 200k but someone ran into it at 196k. Due to depreciation and mileage - it was a full write off after that crash.
For reference, I could still drive the car after the crash just barely. It would’ve been a lot of work to fix but on a 50k car, it might’ve been worth it. On a 5k car? No.
It would be interesting to see any data on the reasons why cars are scrapped. I have a hunch that electronic problems make up a large percentage of them, along with rust.
Cars typically have pretty predictable depreciation schedule but after you hit a certain point the car could be worth anywhere from scrap value to a few thousand dollars. Few banks are going to write a loan for a 10 year old car, insurance valuations may not cover the loan value in the event of loss and few qualified customers are in the market for an old car.
As a result, you’re limited to cash buyers and parts buyers. Cars that meet whatever the cash buyers value are worth a lot. Even minor variances from whatever the car/truck guys want will take the value from $5-7k to scrap.
State regulations have an impact as well. In New York, all check engine light issues make inspection/registration a no-go. Many repairs exceed the value of a new car. In a place where the state doesn’t do inspections, you can run a beater longer. That circles back to the finance issue - banks won’t write loans for cars that may be pulled off the road.
> Hybrids have so many more parts needed, that I feel like they will simply have more problems long term.
Hybrids are well tested technology. Both Toyota and Honda have been producing hybrids for over 20-25 years now. We had a Prius that worked flawlessly for over 250K miles, before it had to be retired when its catalytic converter was stolen.
It isn't. There's a transfer case between the electric drive and the gasoline engine. It's not that complicated, basically a planetary gear mechanism, and is pretty rugged and trouble-free.
Exactly. In fact hybrid is easier on the ICE since it takes a lot of load while starting the car and during acceleration. So, they, IMHO, have longer life than just ICE cars.
Agreeing with others, it might be less complicated.
With the generally accepted drive train (pioneered by Toyota, and adopted by everyone else), there's two electric motors instead of one, but the gearing between the engine, the two motors, and the output shaft is fixed. There's no transmission actuators to break (other than the park pawl, but that's pretty simple). You can still have problems of course, Ford messed up something on early HF35 transmissions and many of them have bearings fail, leading to a short service life (mine was covered under warranty, so now I've got a new transmission).
Is THS-like hybrid system now common? For Japanese manufacturers, only Toyota uses THS-like system. AFAIK Germans too. I've researched past for my curiosity, but it seems that parallel-hybrid is more common for worldwide. Chrysler Pacifica also looks like THS-like. I wish manufacturers open how system work.
Same, although the very rare road trip is more annoying. I can always rent an ICE in these situations. Totally worth it otherwise, especially as I watch fuel prices go up.
Yeah, if you get unlimited miles, it makes A LOT of sense to rent. I've done weekend trips covering 1000km and wondered that I should have rented for the weekend because it would be more economical to put the meterage on vehicle that isn't my own. Plus if I have a mechanical issue, it's the rental companies problem, not mine.
Genuine question: is the use of “meterage” the common/standard way to refer to the total distance a car has traveled (as we would use “mileage” in the US)?
The point is that they have much fewer of them, not that they have none.
Not having to withstand thousands of explosions per minute (whatever RPM the engine is turning at, times the number of pistons in the engine) as a requirement is an extreme advantage.
Modern combustion engines are very robust and usually not any significant source of failure. Cars on the verge of being scrapped have everything else wrong — rust, suspension, ac lines, electronics, locks, windows, lights, etc etc.
Engine failure is a non-event. Since efficiency and emissions standards raised the bar on engine design and tolerances, even the cheapest engine is reliable.
Hell, I bought a lawn mower that had a 5 year warranty that the mower would start on the first pull.
I had a 2006 Cadillac CTS that had to get the engine rebuilt (btw, very comfortable cars, but they're basically garbage made out of styrofoam). I know it's infrequent, but it happens.
And either way, the issue isn't just with the engine-- having an ICE means you need to make a bunch of design choices you wouldn't otherwise have made, you're forced to use certain materials over others, you're forced to account for all sorts of material stress and vibrations, your centre of mass is quite high, you have a lot of weight on the front tires, etc etc. All of these other problems more or less come with the engine.
There's also transmission and gearbox design, etc.
Mine was first or second, so they kind of padded themselves in the marketing. The only time I've had it take more than 1 or 2 was when I needed to clean the fuel line. After that, right back to 1 or 2. It's now 8 years old
It's not a 1:1. ICE has things like: belts (less so now), exhaust, cooling that goes all over the place, vibration, fuel handling (injectors, lines, pump, sometimes more than one pump!), air handling with intakes and filters, sensors for all that junk (oxygen, MAF), oil and oil routing if there's a cooler, transmission cooler in some cases. Lots of these subsystems are total deletions in electric cars.
I'm not saying mechanics will go obsolete, but you're not going to see nearly as many of them. There's simply less to go wrong. I'm sure that something that goes wrong will be on the order of 10k~ :D.
I don't have it at hand, but there was a picture of the frame containing non-drive train components for the Model S, and it was maybe 2ft by 2ft.
You haven’t had to service it, except for the things where you had to service it? ICE cars also don’t need much servicing in their first five years, except for a couple of oil changes.
The Toyota HSD has had remarkably good service life and results across almost 20 years now. Is it going to be 100% as good as a BEV? Probably not. Would I bet on it economically reaching 250K miles without major drama? I would.
I'm not claiming for a second that the cadence of swapping batteries is going to be anything like all the consumable filters and gaskets, transmissions, bearings, etc but when the day comes to replace seven thousand 18650 cells in one go, it's going to sting.
I have a Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid. For my use case it is absolutely perfect. It gets about 30 miles of range on a charge which is more than enough for dropping the kids off at school and running errands around town. The battery charges just fine overnight from a regular 120V outlet so there’s no need to upgrade the power in the garage. And the occasional road trip is super easy.
> Maybe I want to use gas for road trips and electric for everything else...
This is effectively my setup. Got an SUV for all those bigger, longer hauls, and a little 60-90 mile range VW eGolf for "around the town" trips.
This weekend we used the SUV and filled up for the first time in about 1-1.5 months and couldn't believe my eyes when I saw $75 after the pump stopped.
Unfortunately, I just don't feel comfortable without having a fuel based option in the garage. Although the new F-150 lightning with range-extender (only a patent atm) and a price drop (yeah right) might convince me otherwise.
