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Comment by heaney-555

10 hours ago

Range is not a real issue for electric cars. Charging time is, though, and there are massive improvements happening for that right now.

26 comments

heaney-555

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superxpro12  9 hours ago

Tell that to my polestar 2 pls. and then come back again in the winter when it drops another 30% due to the battery heater energizing

  • piquadrat  9 hours ago

    Your Polestar 2 battery is based on battery technology that is 5+ years old. Right now you can buy a BYD car in China that charges at up to 1500kW - close to 10x the peak charging rate of a Polestar 2.

jqbd  9 hours ago

I would wager charging time is basically solved, adoption is only thing that's left.

  • rogerrogerr  9 hours ago

    Yeah, when I take a road trip I genuinely enjoy the cadence of charging. 5-10 minutes every two hours, just enough to go to the bathroom or walk around. I get to my destination not materially later, and feeling far more relaxed than when I was doing death marches in a gas car.

    • SV_BubbleTime  6 hours ago

      This is such a euphemism to pretend that you’d like to wait two hours at a refueling station.

      Anyone who’s ever driven between Seattle and Portland and seen the e16b charging lots of people sleeping in their cars knows there is a whole different side to your rosey picture.

      EV owners are still internalizing their range anxiety into a benefit.

      I get it; I like EVs for their around town purpose, but man it’s almost fantasy to sell it as “5-10 minutes every two hours”.

      4 replies →

not_the_fda  7 hours ago

Its a huge issue in cold climates.

  • zuzululu  7 hours ago

    uphills + cold/hot climates, the ranges won't be able to compete with ICE. its basic physics. cold uphill still reduces charging speed, available power, and range, while sustained heat accelerates degradation. Thermal-management systems mitigate those weaknesses by consuming energy and adding cost, weight, and complexity.

    meanwhile ICE has gotten ridiculously clean and efficient over the years it is more efficient at the shaft does not settle total-system efficiency, cost, weight, resource use, grid losses, battery production, or suitability for every operating env. Comparing an engine with a motor while ignoring the battery and electricity supply chain is silly

    I still do not trust that sitting on a pile of lithium batteries is safe. NMC does not mean non flammable or consequence free. LFP cells can still enter thermal runaway, release toxic gases, reignite, and require difficult firefighting procedures. They also generally trade energy density and cold-weather performance for that improved safety. Also the speed charging ? That dramatically reduces the stability and lifespan of the batteries. Ton of used EVs not being sold because the battery replacement is somewhere between 40~60% of the car's value.

    we had ICE for over a century now, its just like a software that gets continuous updates ICE systems are highly optimized, repairable, energy-dense, fast to refuel, and supported by enormous infrastructure. EVs are improving faster partly because they still have major weaknesses to solve. A steeper improvement curve does not prove that the present technology is superior for every use case neither is using the latest javascript framework.

    • epistasis  6 hours ago

      > its basic physics

      Could you ELI5 these basic physics? I've heard many people make claims like this but there's never any physics that actually follows. I've had most of an undergraduate curriculum of physics, so if it's beyond basic, then don't be afraid to refer to those physical ideas.

      > meanwhile ICE has gotten ridiculously clean and efficient over the years it is more efficient at the shaft does not settle total-system efficiency, cost, weight, resource use, grid losses, battery production, or suitability for every operating env

      Is 30% "ridiculously clean and efficient"? 35%? I'm not sure I can agree with that at all.

      Battery production? That's ridiculously efficient. For a very small amount weight, there's an insane amount of Wh that get shuttled through that material, which can then be recycled into even more kWh of storage than went into the recycling process, due to the continual improvement in battery production efficiency.

      Meanwhile, every single gallon of gas results in 20 pounds of CO2 emissions. Fracking oil requires disposing of 2-10 gallons of dirty waste water for every gallon of gas. That's a massive amount of waste for only 20-50 vehicle miles.

    • heaney-555  7 hours ago

      The latest battery chemistries perform incredibly well in cold and hot climates.

      Internal combustion is not clean, and is inherently significantly less efficient than an electric motor.

      Also, LFP chemistries are incredibly safe compared to NMC, which is what you're concerned about in terms of thermal runaway.

      ICE is mostly stagnant tech. Meanwhile EV tech is rapidly improving!

      5 replies →