I’d be happy to get the advertised charge speeds on my Equinox. The number of times I use a charging station that delivers ~120kW at most is maddening.
And it’s this kind of thing that stops mass adoption. When you fuel an ICE car, the pump just delivers fuel and that’s that. The price of fuel is prominently advertised and the experience is the same no matter the station.
Charging on the other hand is an exercise in frustration. Charging stations have different advertised power delivery rates; often they can’t meet those rates (is it the charging station? Is it your car? No way to know!); pricing is opaque; charging can stop seemingly at random .. and then you get levied the penalty congestion rate for using a charging station.
My parents asked me if they should get an EV. I advised a conventional hybrid. They are too old to have the patience to deal with all this.
It heavily depends on what kind of driving you do. I would say 97% of my driving is local and home charging works perfectly while being 10x cheaper than an equivalent gas vehicle. For the 3% of the time that I do long trips I might have charging issues but frankly it hasn’t been a nightmare, just waiting a little longer at some charging stations.
Once or twice over the last four years, I’ve driven to an Electric America charging station to find that it is being renovated and I only have 30 miles of range left and next closest charging station is 50 miles away. That has mostly been resolved since Tesla chargers became available to Ford vehicles.
Yes, totally agree—I love the car and for nearly all of my driving it’s great. It’s just that the residual of long drives is more of an issue than some say because of how inconsistent the experience is. For someone my parents age, for whom things not working as expected is more befuddling and aggravating than for me, I just don’t think it’s tolerable (and they do many more road trips in retirement anyway).
I honestly think unicastings are a horrible idea. BYD for most of its flagship vehicles do not use unicasting. I think unicasting should be reserved for the cheapest of vehicles in which an accident means the vehicle is recycled rather than unsafely repaired.
Ford once again getting the messaging wrong and shipping what is essentially a glorified sedan with a useless external 4 foot bed.
Why do we have to keep making family-haulers for whipped dads that aren't allowed to have a two-seater? Why do we HAVE to force the entire family to go with us wherever we go? The wife already gets the lifted Expedition XLT to nearly run over little Jimmy with at the crosswalk (or as I lovingly call it, the 'F Series' - Canyonero strikes again).
Give us back a two seat basic pickup like the Ranger used to be, cowards.
Perhaps the way forward is an independent shop service to disable the onboard cellular modem(s) such that they cannot dial-home to load anything new. (It would likely disable the concierge and emergency services features too.) Similar to how there are/were alarm/stereo installation services.
Aging isn't the real problem. Batteries are being found to last ages and ages more than they were ever thought to. By the time it needs to be changed, these will be considered as antiques.
I think the real problem will be in crashes and insurance. The amount of cars that will be totaled for a fender bender will be nuts.
Nah real problem, especially on smaller cells like 18650 back of the day is balance or temperature cable welds that randomly pop off, rendering entire pack useless and very laborious to repair. Rest of the things are very rare. If you crash hard enough to damage battery usually entire car is written off.
I've been looking for used Tesla in Eastern Europe. Battery repairs are so rare (I think I found 2). Post-crash rebuilds are basically 95% of cars sold here. 100% if car is from USA.
The idea of giga casting is horrible. One frame crack and its toast, I don't care how much people talk about that damn "Tesla glue" its forever structurally compromised.
Steel frame rails, good crash protection bolted to those frames and then a battery in the middle. Keep it simple and repairable.
Upgrading would make that a nice to have. 8 years or so and battery tech should have an affordable higher capacity unit that could give new life to it.
I got a refurbed Nissan Leaf with a 40KWh battery (replaced the original 24KWh battery) which added enough range to eliminate range anxiety whilst tootling about the metro area.
Self-driving usually intersects with EV's simply for the fact that EV's are a newer idea, and self-driving can't (sadly) be really well currently added to existing cars. Comma.ai isn't really on the track to compete.
Those that are in market for an ICE car have an order of magnitude larger used car market available for them. You can get a car from the year 2000 and drive it no problem.
If you are looking at a car that's the best worth for your money, while "subsidizing" better future tech that will directly save lives, if the latter is an added negative for you, well that's just misanthropy.
And it’s this kind of thing that stops mass adoption. When you fuel an ICE car, the pump just delivers fuel and that’s that. The price of fuel is prominently advertised and the experience is the same no matter the station.
Charging on the other hand is an exercise in frustration. Charging stations have different advertised power delivery rates; often they can’t meet those rates (is it the charging station? Is it your car? No way to know!); pricing is opaque; charging can stop seemingly at random .. and then you get levied the penalty congestion rate for using a charging station.
My parents asked me if they should get an EV. I advised a conventional hybrid. They are too old to have the patience to deal with all this.
Once or twice over the last four years, I’ve driven to an Electric America charging station to find that it is being renovated and I only have 30 miles of range left and next closest charging station is 50 miles away. That has mostly been resolved since Tesla chargers became available to Ford vehicles.
They may have learned a few tricks from those teardowns of BYDs.
honest question, not sure how BYD handles this either. but BYDs are cheap enough that if you need to you get another...
(although tesla had casting hiccups with the suspension components of the model x)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Press
Why do we have to keep making family-haulers for whipped dads that aren't allowed to have a two-seater? Why do we HAVE to force the entire family to go with us wherever we go? The wife already gets the lifted Expedition XLT to nearly run over little Jimmy with at the crosswalk (or as I lovingly call it, the 'F Series' - Canyonero strikes again).
Give us back a two seat basic pickup like the Ranger used to be, cowards.
I'm looking forward to the IIHS test results.
I think we need car-based ad blockers.
You know what I thought the Maverick was sized like before looking it up? A Volkswagen Saveiro.
the modern Ranger is the same size as the old F-150
Love my ranger. ~700km on a tank of gasoline. Easy to work on at home. The factory installed upfitter switches make adding 12v additions easy.
https://youtu.be/PI_Jl5WFQkA
At least they're not reusing names for entirely new things. Mustang Mach-e is so weird. New vehicle, new name. Good
I think the real problem will be in crashes and insurance. The amount of cars that will be totaled for a fender bender will be nuts.
I've been looking for used Tesla in Eastern Europe. Battery repairs are so rare (I think I found 2). Post-crash rebuilds are basically 95% of cars sold here. 100% if car is from USA.
Steel frame rails, good crash protection bolted to those frames and then a battery in the middle. Keep it simple and repairable.
I got a refurbed Nissan Leaf with a 40KWh battery (replaced the original 24KWh battery) which added enough range to eliminate range anxiety whilst tootling about the metro area.
Those that are in market for an ICE car have an order of magnitude larger used car market available for them. You can get a car from the year 2000 and drive it no problem.
If you are looking at a car that's the best worth for your money, while "subsidizing" better future tech that will directly save lives, if the latter is an added negative for you, well that's just misanthropy.