Ikone

Some relevant points at the 10min mark.

M3Inline6

When did questioning (…and inquisitiveness ​​​​​​), critical thinking and/or preference become hate? It’s the most annoying shift in the use of diction. Questioning the narrative, deductive reasoning, debate, etc. used to be the pillars of conversation and the pathway toward the acquisition of knowledge. Nowadays anytime a person disagrees, questions or criticizes it’s now labeled “being a hater”. On an intellectual level such an approach to bifurcating conversation is ridiculous. The term hater has become diluted like the word racist.


To your question….


​​​​​​…..I haven’t personally lived with an EV. After all, I would need to have a desire to own one to fit within that criteria. Most of us have some EV experience, be it driving a car owned by family members and friends, renting an EV, etc. Acknowledging the merits of an EV doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of the narrative surrounding their implementation, the long term effects on the environment, the out of warranty costs, the reality chasm between the government’s pipe dream and the interface with the population as a whole, etc. EV’s don’t work for everybody and the vast majority of the population simply isn’t interested.

From an industry standpoint, EV’s don’t work for us in law enforcement or my fire department partners. The F-150 Lightning was a failure for SDG&E, a public utilities company that gave the trucks a true shakedown, so all of the trucks just sit. I could go on and on, but there will never be 100% implementation across this entire country in our lifetime, at least not without it being forced by the government in a heavy handed power grab (…which opens up an entirely different can of worms to consider).

aggie57

Fair enough, the word 'hater' is a perhaps little much but there is a huge group of people in the US, and it's mainly a US thing as far as I can tell, who trot out the same easily disproven oil industry promoted arguments against EV's but who in most cases have no real world experience with them. Personally I tell anyone who has no experience with EV's not to rent one, especially a non-Tesla, not because there's anything inherently wrong with them but that the paradigms ingrained into us over decades operating ICE vehicles don't necessarily apply for EV's. But make some adjustments and not only do EV's generally work well, they can be way better to live with than an ICE vehicle.

I can't comment on SDG&E's experience with F-150 Lightnings.

M3Inline6

You bring up a great point about cultural adaptation. People, in general, just have too much range anxiety surrounding EV usage despite a decent charging network in major metropolitan areas. There’s no trust in the platform and people are generally resistant to change. Low/lower-middle class families aren’t in a position to adopt EV’s on a large scale, and like mentioned in another post, the apartment/condo/high-rise residents simply can’t adopt EV’s reliably either. It’s an intricate set of problems to navigate for sure, especially once we factor in politics/political machinations……..and this EV situation is politically charged without a doubt.

Tobeit

Good points, and you also have to consider distances between Cities aka dense chargingn network in US vs EU - much more anxiety if I want to make a 500mile trip here to my sons college with 1 metro area in between. Its possible for sure but not like with an ICE where you grab your keys and go knowing there are plenty of gas stations in your tanks reach. For condo's - we have charging stations inside our garage but the fire department stated they will not enter that garage if it's an EV fire. Soooo, our HOA has a safety dilemma on hand and in addition a mini war of EV vs ICE drivers. The charging stations are not metered as they were installed on the common parking garages. So, some ICE drivers feel they pay for their EV friends charging their cars based on community electrical power use. EV's will be the future but as a society and communities we have a long way to go to figure that all out.

detansinn

I’ve regularly done 1000 mile round trips between my place and Columbus, OH. There are 13 (THIRTEEN) high speed charging stations between here and there going through the most rural parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

We do Maine regularly (880 mile round trip). There are so many charging options between here and there that you can practically wing it.

More charging infrastructure is being built and will be welcome, but we are well beyond the pioneer days of this stuff. EV road trips are nothing special in 2024.

Bluehighways

Can you provide a source for this? I tried Google and nothing negative is showing up, from any source.

Tobeit

That's good to hear...but I don't see that many down here in FL. When I do see them at the large Bucee's etc there are car lines waiting to get a spot (even though they did add a lot of stations already).

M3Inline6

The source was one of the project managers and one of their executives. We - meaning my department ​​​​​​- were/are testing EV’s for patrol use and had met with other agencies (…e.g. law enforcement, public utilities, etc.). There was a consensus about viability, and that’s how we were informed about how the Lightning failed as a serious work duty truck. It just can’t handle the rigors nor the power requirements. The trucks couldn’t even make it through a typical work day.

ipse dixit

Every time I hear or read someone say that EVs are "not for them" because they can't do a 500 mile [or some other long range trip] road trip in them because of the inadequacy of the charging infrastructure, I throw up in my mouth a little bit.

Without debating that point, and assuming it's totally true, who cares?

EVs are admittedly a poor choice for long distance road trips.

But so what?

No one ever said an EV was a jack-of-all-trades vehicle that can and should be able to do everything.

If you bought a 911, do you then complain that it is a terrible vehicle to tow jet skis? Or a bad vehicle for overlanding? Or just a terrible choice to go camping with a family of four? Of course not.

C'mon, the whole "I cannot buy an EV because they are bad long distance road trip vehicles" is a total red herring.

EVs are great for daily driving, which is what most of us use our vehicles for 90% of the time. For those 10% of the time when do something else, i.e., road tripping, camping, tracking, HPDE, etc., we use other cars (or at least ideally we would).

Tobeit

Well, I can only speak for myself but I just was at the point to decide to either go the EV route or not for my daily SUV, which I also use for my long distance trips… and ended up with an ICE SUV as the pro/contra simply did not convince me yet.

Bluehighways

I believe you need to make your results public in a way that can be reviewed. An official release of a public document or an internal SDG&E document that can be publicly checked for its validity is called for if one is going to make this sort of a serious accusation. If not, it's really just an opinion. An opinion is probably not something that can stand up to public scrutiny. Where's the data? Is there a paper trail? etc. I'm no friend of SDG&E, but it's important to be fair, in order to be taken seriously. Everything I can find on-line is quite complementary of this program and it certainly may be biased or inaccurate, but if so, where's the Beef?

RRich

Or you could buy a Hybrid and get the best of both worlds in ONE car. Seems the market is speaking and this is what most people want.

Hybrid sales grew five times faster than EV sales in February 2024, according to Morgan Stanley.

aggie57

Most newly released volume ICE cars these days are hybrids so in that sense they are selling very well, most buyers wouldn't even know they're buying one especially as in most cases those cars are as affordable as pure ICE ones. And manufacturer's are making the shift, and pricing them attractively, for the very same reasons Porsche is doing it, to meet mandatory emission and mileage targets.

As far as PHEV's (plug-in hybrids) go, there's a huge push on them as well particularly from the likes of Toyota who missed the boat badly on BEV's (battery EV's) and are in damage control while they ramp up BEV production. Commercially for them that makes perfect sense. Ultimately though PHEV's are a compromise, if you can and are willing to switch to pure EV then that's a much better choice. Here's a couple of pieces that explain it far better than I can:

https://www.motortrend.com/features/...inion-feature/
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2024/04/0...e-surging.html

jmrichards

The majority of Americans disagree with you:
https://apnews.com/video/electric-ve...fa2dc18e716cd8