Comment by bigbadfeline
11 hours ago
> Maybe roads would last longer if we weren't all being forced to buy super heavy SUVs
Maybe not.
Due to battery weight, EVs are super heavy even if they aren't SUVs, so are delivery trucks without which an urban community cannot and will not exist. Urban roads should be able to handle the weight even if everyone converted to EVs.
This has little to do with EVs, and much more to do with the idea that whoever brings a heavier vehicle to collision, wins (and lives). Hence the propensity to drive truck-sized SUVs and actual F-150s with just the driver, and the light load, but the pleasant feeling of safety. Who's gonna survive in an incident of road rage gone bad, a Ford Explorer or a Fiat 500?
Coming back to the EVs, a small EV is a possibility, because it takes less power to move a lighter and smaller car. But would it sell on the US market?
>it takes less power to move a lighter and smaller car
A smaller car has less space for battery than an SUV. Because batteries are extremely heavy, that smaller car needs to be overbuilt compared to its gasoline counterpart, which further reduces room for battery. Then, because safety standards are harder to meet with small cars, the smaller car needs to be overbuilt even more.
This means that you get cars that only have half the range a gasoline-powered car does, and the gas powered car recharges an order of magnitude faster than the EV does. Oh yeah, and the people who buy smaller cars like this tend to live in places where there's no charging other than going to a gas station anyway.
It wouldn't sell on the US market because better alternatives exist. It could sell on the Chinese market because there are no better alternatives.
It takes less power to accelerate a lighter car, but about the same to keep it moving. And some of the energy is recouped during gen-braking.
Even EV weight is tiny compared to haul trucks. Yes they have multiple axles (hence "18-wheelers"), but even then pressure on the road surface is much greater still.