Slacker wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:09 am
Valuethinker wrote: ↑Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:47 am
Tabulator wrote: ↑Sun Nov 19, 2017 9:54 am
Though I am late to the electric party, late is better than never. I keep hearing about the advantages of battery-powered cars. No longer will I be left out.
None of that is really true?
You are not late, for cars that have less than 1% market share. I might as well say "I am late to the steam car party"? (I am, and they were in many ways a superior technology to ICE-- but the best technology does not always win the market war).
Advantages? Isn't mostly what you hear about is how, maybe, it has overcome the obvious disadvantage? i.e. the range anxiety problem *and* the time taken to "refill"?
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I would say a Chevy Volt is a better bet in many ways *unless* your usage of a vehicle really only is commuter &/or errands, and for longer trips you either don't use a car, or are prepared to rent. And I am still not sure about range in a classic Continental climate (90s & humid in summer; minus 10s in winter). Or for running around the city, a BMW i3? (much more expensive, alas).
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I would think the disadvantages were a bit overblown as too many average people concentrate on the 5% of use cases far too often.
I agree with you but I was attempting to counterpoint the tone of the original post. The sense of inevitability-- we are a long way from that (but I think we will get there; solar cells and wind have done on cost what I didn't think possible in the time frame in which they did it, and EVs could as well).
The reality is the cheapest solution for most, unless you do heavy rush hour commuting, is a used car, ICE. The reasons to go EV are not about cost effectiveness compared to that alternative, for most people. Compared to a new ICE car? May well be so.
I think having a full "tank" (charged battery) every morning, little to no maintenance and never visiting a gas station again are great advantages.
The words we are questing for are "Disruptive Innovation"
. As per Clayton Christensen (wikipedia is good on this topic as an introduction "The Innovator's Dilemma"). An EV does some things better than an ICE car and is markedly inferior in other ways. Once EVs are comparably priced to ICE cars, then they are in a position to take off in the same way that PCs disrupted minicomputers and mainframes.
For the disadvantages, clearly there are plug-in hybrids like you point out or one can have a second vehicle that is gas powered (our household - one plug in hybrid and one gas powered vehicle but we'll eventually be one plug in hybrid and one full electric) . I think renting is also a great option. My wife was just talking about how her friend wants her to drive over to their state to visit and I'm telling her it probably is better to just fly and rent a car when you get there -> who really wants to sit in a car for a 7hr drive (2hrs of that drive sitting in LA traffic) and put unnecessary wear and tear on the vehicle.
Although that doesn't do the planet much good
. Flying, I mean. If we all use our savings on EVs to go on more long haul holidays... Apollo, this is Houston, we have a problem
. (This is more of a problem in the UK, perhaps, than anywhere else. As an island with a notoriously wet climate, we like to go abroad, and we tend to fly-- Brits are the world's great travellers (by plane); when I read Raymond Chandler though, that people used to just hop on a train in NYC to head to LA, well, I think we've lost something***).
I think the rental/ Zipcar market has probably reached the point where this is feasible, mostly. Even in America, for some households, to only have 1 car and to make that an EV?
To the OP -> sorry, I don't have any recommendations on books. Maybe find some blog posts and print the posts to paper? I have heard that a kindle is less straining on the eyes -> maybe print blog posts to PDF and read on a kindle? Perhaps you can adjust your lighting situation at home for making reading the computer screen easier on the eyes. I've read that setting the screen brightness to basically match the ambient brightness in the room can help reduce eye strain.
We are agreed -- there are ways around the internet reading problem.
*** because of air resistance, High Speed trains are not that energy efficient. Let's assume for a minute that Musk's Hyperloop is vapour ware. Then it's the electrification of train travel that produces the gains (if you get the electricity from the right sources), not the train travel itself.