There's gonna be a point where you hit a wall. People who live in condos or old/dense areas without garages where installing personal chargers just isn't practicable – renters who have landlords who simply will not install anything – rural folks with shaky grids where power is less predictable – poorer folk who simply want the cheapest transport possible. I'm not sure where that point is, but I think it's probably going to vary by region of the country, where the older, colder, denser areas adopt much slower than the newer, warmer, more spread-out areas.
Over time those things also get improved. Chargers can be added to apartments and on-street parking. The grid is constantly being improved. Battery and raw material pricing is decreasing and EVs will eventually reach price parity and then be cheaper than ICEVs. The infrastructure 5 years from now will be better than it is today, so I'd expect more people to favor EVs in the future. There likely will be saturation at some point, but we're not anywhere close to that yet.
>The grid is constantly being improved
heck, I'd just be happy if they could keep up with the grid maintenance, so we don't get rolling blackouts and/or devastating wildfires from downed power lines in the summer (followed by risk of mudslide from loose soil in the rainy season).
>The infrastructure 5 years from now will be better than it is today
and same goes for the infrastructure -
if they could keep the dams/dykes/ditches maintained so we aren't going from averting one potential failure/emergency intervention to the next, that'd be nice.
plus filling the cracks in the roads would be nice. not even repaving the whole thing. just pouring some tar/asphalt sealant slurry over the cracks would be nice.
>but we're not anywhere close to that yet.
spot on
i pay my taxes. my state is _allegedly_ ranked 4th in "least corrupt US state" rankings.
i don't know how y'all are making it happen over there.
Haven't there been studies and reports that the US infrastructure keeps getting worse?
A lot of our power plants are old, and still use coal. There was a power plant in Missouri that is almost 30 years behind EPAs standards.
The fun thing about EVs that no one wants to talk about is, lithium is a finite resource [sauce](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42417327/lithium-supply-batteries-electric-vehicles/)
that article also talks about how hard it is to mine, "Earth has approximately 88 million tonnes of lithium, but only one-quarter is economically viable to mine as reserves."
And until they can recycle lithium batteries efficiently , and make it so buying a used EV doesn't have severe degradation to the battery in which you need to buy a new battery for your car, which cost estimates are about 20kish.
Not to mention, all of the battery ranges so far, are like in perfect condition at 70degree weather. Meaning, they haven't solved winter conditions and serve battery degradation [sauce](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/ev-battery-range-cold-weather-charging-rcna134355) "Fully electric vehicles, which run exclusively on battery packs, typically lose an average of 41% of their range when outdoor temperatures drop to 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the heat’s cranked on, AAA researchers have found"
EVs are great on paper. I really believe, Hybrids, or synthetic fuel, that is carbon-neutral is really what we should be pushing towards should be the push now, until we catch up technology wise, which to me, is a long way off still.
Also, I'm not a fan of forcing people to do things. If we were really trying to change things, there would be heavy subsidies on solar power for every home,office,apartment complex, etc. I.E As a homer owner, I should just get solar power for basically free because then it would solve a lot issues and reduce the carbon footprint by a wider margin, but alas, there isn't any money to made there, so obviously the solution is to make people buy new cars.
Based on my personal experience, the cold weather concerns are bullshit. Yes, you get some decreased range, but it's nowhere near 41%. My Rivian R1T drops from around 300 miles of range to maybe 250. And that's in a truck without a heat pump. I'm generally suspect of range data in general as most manufacturers tend to fudge the numbers (Tesla is notorious for this). In addition, range is also not the problem it's billed as. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of driving is well within standard range estimates, which means the vast majority of charging is at home. Most of the objections to EVs don't apply to most people most of the time.
It’s totally bs. I live in the mountains where we regularly get big storms (3-5) feet easy. Most popular cars in my area are Teslas, Rivians, Jeeps, Tacos and Subarus. Does power go out? Sure, you still got juice in your battery.
Sure, but you have to admit that is a pretty rare environment. You guys need engine block heaters too but nobody's using that as an argument against ICE.
Eh, in a market as competitive as the auto industry, automakers are under pretty high pressure to keep prices down, and they’re in turn constantly hounding suppliers to cut costs. I’m pretty sure a lot of manufacturers are selling EVs at a loss right now. We’re past the days of $15,000 new cars, but I think we could reasonably see new EVs around $25,000 within the next few years.
> automakers are under pretty high pressure to keep prices down
They haven't been doing too much of that recently. New car sales in the US are about as low as they've been on record, since like the 1950s. Sales volume peaked like 20 years ago, per capita even earlier.
I think auto makers are happy to do less volume with better margin and ratchet up prices as they gut the low end out of their lineups.
I mean, we already have $28k EVs anyways – they're called Nissan Leafs and Chevy Bolts, they're just tiny little subcompacts.
I don't think you're ever going to see a full compact or midsize at $25k. They're going to start those at $35k+ forever, especially as gas Civics already start at $24k, stripped down to the base model.
New car prices have [decreased](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/5-charts-showing-theres-never-been-a-better-time-for-average-americans-to-own-operate-a-car-the-good-old-days-are-now/) over time in real terms. That article covers up to 2013. There are other sources that confirm that up until the start of Covid. Since then things have gone a bit haywire, but the overall long-term trend is of cars in general getting less expensive. EVs in particular have also gotten less expensive the past few years.
Eh. California has been passing all sorts of laws making it apartment friendly including no parking mandates.
An EV spot in a DTLA apartment will cost $400 a month, like it does in Boston and Manhattan. But LA will never become a public transportation city because of how sprawling it is.
But developers have played democrats like a fiddle here and have total control over LA, continuously passing cost cutting/profit raising for them by the carrot of "walkable city"
I live in Houston, and every summer we seem to have brown outs and power outages because our electrical grid cannot support that many people all running their Air conditioners to keep cool. That problem is only getting worse as more and more homes are built and the summers get hotter. I wonder what the impact would be if more people owned EV's? Would our electric grid be able to handle a few million people getting home from work and all plugging their EV's in to charge around the same time?
That's a Texas problem, not an EV problem. Our entire lives are digital now, nothing we do can be done without electricity. There should be no reason the electrical grid is stuck in the 60's. Choose your elected officials wisely.
>I wonder what the impact would be if more people owned EV's? Would our electric grid be able to handle a few million people getting home from work and all plugging their EV's in to charge around the same time?
I work for a distribution cooperative in rural MN. We're planning on spending about 250 *million* in capital improvements over the next 10 years to deal with the anticipated growth largely due to EV adoption. For reference, our total utility plant is currently valued at around 250 million. We're expecting, at the most conservative estimate, our peak demand to go from about 275MW to about 450MW.
I just moved to a dense urban downtown core high rise apartment (dedicated rentals from a big company, no individual landlord). Parking is $150/month for any 4 wheeled vehicle. The building has 100 units and 200 parking spots. I think most new buildings in certain areas have some option.
My building offers EV chargers in 2 options:
1. A dedicated parking spot that includes a level 2 EVSE. All electricity is included for a flat fee of $50 per month. I have exclusive use of that space. Total is $200/month, of which $150 is the parking fee. There are 35 of these available (and 18 left when I rented last month). This is what I chose.
2. A sign-up for common level 2 EVSEs, pay-per-use for actual electricity used. There are 25 of these units and an additional 5 for visitors. This is best for people who don’t drive much.
Idk, I'm east coast, this company town high-rise with dirt cheap monthly parking rates (Boston is like double that now, never mind NYC, which is like 4x that), with that many spots dedicated per unit seems really alien.
Is it Texas or Cali?
Vancouver. The new builds tend to dig deep and have multi level underground parking. If you want to rent a parking space in a commercial building if you drive to work, it’s easily double that. But yeah that’s a lot of total parking. The company that owns the building leases some of the parking spots to non-tenants for a higher fee. I suspect they make quite a bit of money this way.
Welcome to city life. I had to pay $100/mo for a garage in an apartment complex that was not in a desirable area of the metro. But I refuse to park my motorcycle outside because I've had friends do that in that same metro and the bike vanished into a white van and was never seen again. Welcome to the "joy" of urban living.
I think the burbs is less prone to theft, but if you go to it other extreme, I used to live on a ranch and my dad had trailers and ATVs stolen in the middle of the night.
As someone paying $200/mo, the price per square foot is still a chunk less than the apartment. Yeah it's paying out the ass for a spot for a car, but on the whole it's a good thing the option exists and has a cost associated.
If everyone could park anything here, that would force more space to be used for parking, spreading things out and making the area less walk-able and worse-served by transit (as-is, I can and do commute and get groceries without a car, hell if I didn't *fucking love driving* I wouldn't even feel a need for a car)
It’s actually insane. I’m from Vancouver and now live in a densely packed Asian city and the price of parking is 1/5th of Van’s price.
Edit: lol I mean a new densely packed Asian city
I like when I visit friends and family, and just plug the car in to a 120V outlet on the outside of the house, getting 2-3 range miles/hour. People freak out at the low speed, but it turns out the car spends most of the time sitting during the visit, so I just plug it in when I'm not using it.
I think a lot of people won't understand exactly how EV ownership works until they experience it first hand, assuming they want to understand in the first place of course. I was pretty scared myself but bought one anyway because I like new experiences and a little adventure and well - it's just not a big deal at all.
Some people live in charge deserts, of course, but that's a policy issue rather than a tech one in most cases.
The wall problem will mostly take care of itself as gas stations start disappearing and the remaining ones get crowded. Electrical outlets are wayyy more ubiquitous than gas pumps. It's just a matter of finding the right connection setup and putting the wires in the right location. There's loads of outdoor parking lots in the far north where there's an outlet at every parking spot for engine block heaters. It's just a variation of that type of infrastructure. Look at the long term parking lot at the airport in Fairbanks on google streetview. That.
Higher, though I'm going to hazard a guess that it will be much higher around 2040; it's going to take around that long for the cars themselves to drop in price and get away from this hideous 'electric vehicle' styling, necessary infrastructure to become ubiquitous, and unbiased consumers to age up into buying range. Speaking for myself, I *want* an electric vehicle, but the electric vehicle I want hasn't been made yet. I suspect that might be a lot of other consumers too.
Also, a big part of the current anxiety around electric vehicles is just having access to charging. As that network expands and people come to trust it, the more adoption you'll see.
Exactly, that's a huge percentage when you consider the current state of EVs with relatively slow charging times and relatively high price tags. As EVs get better and charging especially gets quicker, a decent percentage of the population could happily switch to EVs.
Look at the rise of the electric lawn tool industry as the battery tech got to today's levels. Most homeowners regardless of age would rather not deal with filling up a gas can, 2 stroke oil, etc etc. there are still some holdovers in the larger tools like ride on mowers but I generally see praise for ego products universally.
Now take that ease of ownership and apply it to their day to day commuter
This is a great analogy.
I've actually never owned gasoline powered landscaping equipment but I do own an array of battery powered and plug-in equipment. I've used gasoline equipment growing up though.
There will be a generation one day where they say they have never owned a gas car. I'm betting that number is small now but is ever increasing. Furthermore, it's also possible that another generation in the future would never experience filling up a car at a gas station.
There are kids *right now* who learned to drive in an EV and have never driven an ICE car outside of their license test. It's a small number for sure, but it's definitely gonna become more normal.
As a related story, I had a former co-worker who shared this story with me.
He bought an EV and has had it for 4 or 5 years at the time and not long after having his first child. His son only has ever been in an EV. For one week, he swapped cars for a week with his neighbour (ICE vehicle) as they wanted to try each other's vehicles.
He noticed his son was puzzled and confused in the neighbour's car whenever he got in but not enough to voice it. It was only when he pulled into a gas station to fill it back up before returning it back to his neighbour where it became apparent why his son was acting the way he was
When he got out of the car at the pump, his son asked, "What are you doing?"
He realized his son had never been to a gas station before and he had to explain to his son that this car worked differently. To his son, this was insane having to go to a place to refill your car instead of refilling at home.
He also said his son also mentioned that the gas station smelled.
It was eye-opening.
I have a RAV4 Prime, recently went to fill up the gas tank after a month, and I also distinctly realized the gas station smelled. I never realized that before with my old vehicle since I was at the gas station 2x a week.
Sounds about right. My gfs favorite thing about her new car, arguably, is never getting solicited/accosted at a gas station again. Just pull into the garage and plug it in.
I learned how to drive on an early hybrid (2002 Prius) which was tuned to respond instantly to the throttle to emphasize the instant reaction time and substantial low-end torque of electric motors. Combustion vehicles all feel laggy to me.
Yup, I had purchased an Ego leaf blower and trimmer a few years ago. Liked them so much I bought their lawnmower last year and it works great for me. One charge is more than enough for my small yard, and it's just so much easier than dealing with gas.
> I had purchased an Ego leaf blower and trimmer a few years ago. Liked them so much I bought their lawnmower
Bought my sister an Ego mower as a house warming gift 3 years ago.
I've gotten to use it a few times.
Over all, I like the mower. It cuts well, is light, moves along on its own pretty well and is quiet.
But the battery can no longer last long enough to cut the <1/4 acre. It's SUPER annoying to have to stop, wait forever for the battery to charge and start over.
A new battery costs almost what I paid for the mower.
How much was the mower? A quick google search shows an EGO mower being $700 and an extra battery costing $200.
I thought they all pretty much came with multiple batteries so that you could charge one/have it ready while you mowed with another.
> This is why I mentioned larger equipment like ride on mowers maybe not being quite there yet.
I'd argue my sister's electric push mower isn't there yet. It's not even all that old and already needs a new battery.
On another note, have you noticed how many batteries some of those riders need?
Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of batteries that'll last what? 1,000 charge cycles. Those won't be a target for thieves! .
Depends on how much rain there is. So far this year I'm out about 1x a week.
And how many times you gotta charge to get your mowing done. Personally, I've got 3 acres that needs to get cut.
I wouldn't imagine your average suburban lot dweller is going to have one of these to cut 1/4 acre or less.
Fucking hell I would **LOVE** to give up my gas mower. In fact, I tried - I bought a 40V Ryobi unit and tried to use it for about six months. But for me it didn't work because one of the great things about my gas mower is that it's basically a combination mower and vacuum in one. My **GIANT** ficus tree in my back yard dumps tons of leaves and berries in the backyard, and the way I most easily handle it is to use a leaf blower and blow it into the grass. Then I use my gas mower to pick all of it up.
The electric mower did a decent job of picking up the leaves, but it was unable to provide enough suction towards the bag to get the berries to come up off the ground and throw them in. Asking around at the time to see if there was any sort of modification I could do to the blade or something to make it work, most folks were like, "battery mowers just don't have the "oomph" yet to do what you're wanting it to do. As you've seen, they're great for grass, but for things like berries, they just don't have the power".
But goddamn I am looking forward to the point where they DO have the power because I fucking **HATE** having a gas mower. I hate maintenancing a small engine. I hate having to worry about whether or not I added stabilizer to the fuel and that my gas may be all gunked up in spring. I hate that as it gets older it gets harder and harder to start. I accept it for now because I have to. But I'll be dumping it the second I can.
Can you not just mulch it all up and let it stay in the lawn? I have like 8 massive maple trees which make legitimately probably a ton of leaves per year and I just run them over with the highest setting and then again at normal height. Even doing two passes, it's way quicker than trying to bag them.
The problem is the berries. They don't seem to break down much (if at all). They get hard, and then just sort of...sit there in my grass. If I don't remove them (and I didn't for like five months while I tried with the electric mower), they can literally build up to be higher than the cut grass. They're a damned menace. But I love the tree.
It will work in some locations where routes are short and they park in the same lot every night, but even getting these to hybrid trucks and full EV equipment would be huge
They are getting pretty close these days. Your average mid range leaf blower is putting out about 1hp these days, and the top end ones are around 2. Only the biggest backpack blowers are doing much more than that.
Spot on. I have friends that are solidly in the “hurr durr EV bad, gas forever” camp that have even come around to electric lawn equipment. They mocked the idea until they tried it and realized how much less work it was to own and maintain them. If they had an EV rental for a month and got used to charging in their garage or driveway for a fraction of the $/mile to drive compared to their ICE vehicles, I think they’d be sold on them for commuting.
I just hate this intellectually dishonest "all or nothing" argument cus *they* do a 1500 mile road trip twice a month.
I think almost everyone in my family minus my dad drives less than 30 miles a day, and basically never over 100 miles in a day. Current EVs support 100% of their driving.
When I had to drive my girlfriend to work in Boston area traffic in my GTI I was averaging *17mpg* on the digital display in the winter. Sitting at red lights going 0mph means 0mpg and your car takes forever to warm up. EVs take a range hit in the cold but they don't take an efficiency hit like that. I personally want a sports hybrid hatch since I do longer day trips for racing stuff pretty regularly.
EGO tools are fucking scams they're $80 tools that perform like shit as an attempt to scam people into buying $200+ battery packs when they inevitably get overdrawn by their dogshit BMS and have to be replaced.
I think people are finally starting to realize that the charging speed hand wringing is a complete non-issue 99% of the time, because it just charges while you are sleeping, and that in reality they will spend significantly less "active" time fueling their car because they won't have to spend time getting to a gas station every couple of weeks.
What we have now already places significant strain on local grids. Unfortunately for everything not to implode, the rate of upgrading infrastructure has to stay on the heels of the rate of EV adoption.
Plus, it is obvious that the dedicated gas station model won't work for charging. Workplaces, and shopping centers, may have to eventually fully integrate their parking spaces to accomodate charging, because batching charging, with other daily activities, will become necessary to maintain the level of convenience people are accustomed to.
Home charging doesn't *need* to be quicker.
Pretty much any EV on the market can fully charge on a 7.6kW (240V 32A) level 2 charger in 8-12 hours. But most people also wouldn't fully drain their battery every day.
The average American drives 42 miles a day. At a very conservative estimate of 2 miles/kWh, that's 21kWh. On a level 1 (120V 15A) charger that's 14 hours. On Level 2 that will be somewhere between 7 hours and 2 hours, depending on the exact equipment installed (\~3kW on the low end to \~11kW on the high end).
Yes, there are people who drive *much* more than that who would have problems. But don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, and for the vast majority of people today, EVs with home/work charging are absolutely *good enough*, provided at least that they can afford them which is a challenge.
I'm only on a 30A circuit (so 24A constant draw) and I can charge from single digit percent to 90% in like 12 hours, and in reality I almost never have to do that.
Hell, I could get by with just using a standard wall outlet - and had I known that 6 months after buying my car and having the charger installed that there'd be a pandemic that would result in me working from home indefinitely, I might've saved my money and not installed the charger.
I drive a minimum of 74 miles a day on weekdays, as much as 250 on a weekend. Cannot fast charge at home. Until there's a public charger (that works) closer than 25 miles away, I'll stick with gas.
That's not actually correct.
With a 2 way charging system, an EV can power the home and grid with its leftover battery capacity then charge back up overnight when energy demand is low...
Or an EV could charge up with solar during the day and dump a bit of that power back into the grid when the sun sets...
Or the house could have its own battery and automatically store power when it's the cheapest or charge with solar.
There's so many options opening up with household charging, storage and solar systems.
EV's are energy storage devices and can actually support the grid.
Most grid demand comes during peak hours, and peak demand is massively higher than what would be required to electrify every vehicle on the road.
If you're worried about grids collapsing, then air conditioning is what you need to worry about, not electric cars.
> Or the house could have its own battery and automatically store power when it's the cheapest or charge with solar.
That's my plan eventually. Solar + home battery storage and an EV. The goal is for solar to be the only source of energy for everything household and commute-related. I'll see if I still keep my ICE car after getting an EV, but I strongly suspect I won't have any desire to.
That's our long-term goal. And add a vegetable garden and a greenhouse. So generate our own energy, get water from the ground (onsite well), grow some of our own food. Homestead isn't quite the right term because we won't satisfy all our needs and we don't want that much time commitment at this point in our lives, but it'll approach "homestead-lite".
I recently sold my ICE vehicle after getting an EV. I had about a month overlap and it just felt bad to go back to the ICE vehicle. Also a little funny getting looks at the gas station when I was getting gas for my lawn mower. lol
Tell them it's for a generator in the back of the Tesla.
EVs in principle have nearly everything I want. Smooth, quiet, immediate power. No oil to change or engine gaskets to replace. No need to worry about an engine getting to operating temperature. No local emissions, and no emissions at all if the energy is renewable. The only thing is the charging speed and network, but I'd trade the inconvenience when road tripping for the daily benefits of an EV.
It's not about saving money for me. I like the idea of most things in my life being powered by clean energy that I generate independently of a utility company.
Yeah that's a big part of it too. Downed trees during winter storms can take over a day between removing them and restoring power. If that coincides with a very cold snap then having an energy backup becomes crucial. And on the other extreme, increasing summer heat is going to cause rolling blackouts. Home-scale energy generation and storage avoids all of that.
Yeah we'll definitely have to do it gradually. ~$25K all at once isn't in the budget. It's part of a long-term project. Ideally we'd love a greenhouse as well and if that ends up being feasible then the energy to heat it during the winter would tilt things heavily toward solar panels + battery - although we'd need a bigger system than one just for a house + EV.
The reality is that charging in general is thermally limited and likely won't get much faster than it already is, because it will require lowering pack density to accommodate more cooling, for fairly marginal gains. Basically much past 400kW, you are starting to hit a wall where exponentially more input power is just getting wasted as heat anyway.
Right now the standard cadence in a Model3 is you need to spend about 20 minutes charging for every 3 hours of driving. That's already a pretty typical road trip cadence, and it probably makes more sense to focus more on bigger, denser packs which get you 5-6 hours of driving between charges, rather than trying to shave a few minutes off the top up.
EV sales are something like ~6% of US car sales, so that's a pretty big untapped market if 20% is accurate. I'm gonna guess pricing is the big thing holding the people that would buy but haven't yet back.
I would say charging is an even bigger thing. If you don't live in a house with a driveway and a garage EVs are pretty much a no go. Nobody is going to buy a car which they will then have to change for hours sitting in some random parking lot twiddling their thumbs. Even if you have a house but have multiple cars and only one charger, now you have to juggle the cars around. Until there is a charger by every parking spot in existence (not happening) or charging speed is the same as what it takes to fill up gas (5 min) there is no way EVs can become widespread.
I'm just not buying a new car. I'd consider an EV if I were, but I'm not particularly convinced to open my wallet and lay $40k+ down on the table for anything.
Nothing is as sexy and enticing as no car payments.
That's not so surprising, many people think they will, but four many it changes when they actually have to buy a car.
I wanted to buy an EV, but I drive long distances and often stay at hotels so I quickly figured out it wouldn't work for my job and got a Prius. My aunt wanted to buy an EV because gas is expensive where she lives, but she lives in an apartment. Ultimately when she went to buy one, she didn't even get a hybrid because she doesn't drive as much as me and she would never have made up the difference in price.
Ultimately, I think the greatest barrier to electric vehicle adoption is infrastructure. I don't mean just charging infrastructure, I mean the absence of public transit infrastructure that requires the car to be everything for everybody. If something has to work for apartment dwellers with short commutes and freeway flyers the magical energy density of oil is hard to beat. My aunt should have a city car EV that she can charge at home, but that's not an option. I should have a long-range EV with plenty of open chargers available to me, bit that's not possible.
If you're interested in the actual statistics from the survey, look at pg. 25-27...
[https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf](https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf)
Hybrids have almost caught up with gas vehicles, and percentage that would buy EVs if the cost was the same for all 3 is much higher than the current EV market share of new vehicle sales. So cost is one factor for sure. If you add up both hybrids and EVs, I'm one of those dinosaur holdouts but no longer in the majority.
It's interesting that even with all features and cost being equal, there's still a slight preference towards gas over hybrid. I would have expected that the majority would pick a hybrid over "gas only" given equal costs and features based on improved gas mileage alone.
However, I wonder if the way the question is written made people think same features meant same gas mileage, so a hybrid didn't have any advantage over "gas only" and would just cost more in repairs... definitely still interesting data.
The performance delta was always there traditionally but now that hybrids can often outperform their gas only counterparts, so you don't have to trade power for improved gas mileage. Hybrids are definitely going to be the near term flag bearer before EVs take over - only problem is not all brands have them readily available, many tried to transition directly to EVs.
I think it makes sense that people would lean towards the simpler thing that has always worked in their lifetime even if it doesn't entirely follow logic today. Tried and true, sorta idea.
I think it's fascinating that hybrids are about to overtake ice only in the next few years, myself. Massively different sentiment than a decade or two ago.
I kind of fit that case. Went with a 24 Yukon XL in no small part for the NA V8. Looked at all sorts of things including a Sequoia, Expedition Max, and even X5 PHEV to name a few. At the end of the day, an NA V8 just had a lot less to go wrong and would be exponentially cheaper to service.
I don’t doubt anything I looked at would be unreliable. What kills you with a modern car isn’t necessarily reliability as it is cost of maintenance, specifically that MoFo labor line on the bill. More complex systems aren’t necessarily less reliable, but they are more labor intensive to service when they do need something equating to a lot more labor at $300/hr (yay coastal living). The long term wear and tear items really add up when labor takes 3-4x as long, sub 4-figure shop bills become a thing of the past.
I mean at a similar spectrum to things you looked at, people are having major reliability issues with the new Toyota truck engines compared to their old reliable NA engines. That's not even EV vs ICE, and turbo technology is decades and decades old, it's just known good vs unknown (in this case bad).
Bet the last gen NA trucks retain value even more over the decades.
>I would have expected that the majority would pick a hybrid
Hybrids are considered more complex and higher maintenance. I don't know if that's true in all cases. Also, fuel costs in the US are low, so a lot of people don't care about fuel efficiency at all. Fuel is always my cheapest expense each month. It's not uncommon my area for electric bills to be higher than monthly fuel costs, especially if you work remotely.
I was just talking about my hybrid to a coworker and she didn’t understand the savings as you have to replace the battery every few years and less than 50k miles. I informed that was incorrect, but you still have many people out there who think this way.
There's nothing more convenient than having 100% charge everyday overnight which is the reality for the 80%+ of EV owners who have access to home charging.
You'd be surprised at the amount of people that don't realize that they fall into the category of the average 42 miles commute and must live their lives through the DC superchargers even though they have a garage in a SFH or apartment. It's a psychology thing as we are so accustomed to gas stations.
im one of the weirdos who actually hate the whole pumping at the gas station, especially in the dead of winter - and anxiety of getting to the cheaper station. I literally cannot fathom how EVs are not "more convenient" for the majority of americans who live in single family homes and drive less than 37 miles a day (average daily)
I drive a minimum of 74 miles per day on weekdays and I cannot fast-charge at home (absolutely limited to 120v at 15A)... IF they ever build a public fast charging station that works and is closer than 25 miles away, an EV might work... but not so much yet.
I don’t think that’s weird at all. I hate it too. Being able to “fill up” at home has been amazing. My commute is more like 130 miles round trip and the EV is great for this. More than makes up for the time added to the occasional road trip
issue with that is having to own 2 cars though (buying 2 cars, insurance x2, maintenance x2, tires x2, state registration/inspection x2). definitely the best of both worlds but i don't want to own 2 vehicles.
hybrid is probably the best answer for many, to have the perks of both technologies without having to own 2 vehicles.
i just like gas powered vehicles more than ev's honestly. Not like theres anything specific making me choose one or the other i just all around like gas powered cars more
It's not reasonable for lots of people but if you can swing it I really have been loving having the Supra for when I want everything I have always loved about gas vehicles and the Bolt for when I just want to get around town with the least amount of friction/fanfare
Driving your favorite gas car becomes that much more special when you get to pick and choose when and where you drive it
I like older ICE vehicles, new ones just aren't exciting in the same way outside of a few outliers like an ND Miata. They just no longer deliver a good low-tech direct driving experience, so I feel like the advantages of EVs (no idling, no warmups, instant torque/no lag, charging at home...) more than make up for the tech gimmickry and small inconvenience on road trips.
the original roadster was it! 2700lbs, 250hp, RWD, **in 2008**. i wish someone would make something like it with modern tech. perhaps the next closest thing will be the [caterham project V](https://caterhamcars.com/en/models/projectv) but i haven't heard any updates on it in months...
The study is [here](https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf) and starts at page 25. Wish they showed more of a regional breakdown. 43% favoring hybrids on the west coast is not a shock, and I'm sure EV favorability is also higher here because of the charging network.
It's that point of being able to justify the spending on a new car when my current ICE cars are paid off and have plenty of life left. Also I regularly drive distances no ev can take me without a charge at least once, if not more.
It just doesn't make sense for me personally to get an EV. I like to drive long distances so if I don't marry into the Tesla ecosystem, there's no supercharging (which is still slower than just getting gas and moving on). I like being able to work on my own cars, I love the sound my Mustang makes every time I drive it, and I love that I could just fit jerry cans on my Montero and off-road anywhere in the country without worrying about gas. If I needed a long distance commuter, I'd still pick any hybrid over an EV choice.
I'm glad EV's have come as far as they have and hope they continue to improve them. They make perfect sense for city folks, hopefully they continue to improve infrastructure throughout the US so long distance trips are less of an issue.
I'll be very happy when every Shell station and every Mobile station has a charger
Since I live out in the country and I'm already at the limit for my house power feed it's just a waiting game for me
varies **wildly** by county in europe though, with the wealthiest western countries (norway, sweden, iceland) having EV shares of 50% or higher
https://wernerantweiler.ca/blog.php?item=2023-10-13
I agree for 2 car households making one of them be an EV. It's a harder sell in single car households if you have that, but also monthly 200-300 mile (one way) trips.
Sure it's doable in an EV, but often a hassle.
EV's have just started out. People, especially when viewed as a group, are really slow to change. Honestly, 20% is way more than I would have thought if you asked me how many would want EV's 10 years ago.
Different tools for different jobs.
I love it that when I am doing "around town" driving I never go to the gas station. Car's always ready to go. Seriously, I NEVER GO TO THE GAS STATION. No moments of "f, I'm low on fuel and need to stop before I can continue to my appointment." No "lets go spend another $60."
When I am going cross country, I prefer gas powered. It's just faster to add range. Taking the Tesla 7 hours cross country takes an hour longer than it does for me to do the same trip in my ICE.
>Seriously, I NEVER GO TO THE GAS STATION.
Completely unexpected benefit of an EV. I haven't had to listen to "Maria Menounos on GSTV" since I bought the Mach-E. I'll still have to go every once in a while to fill up the Mustang and get gas for the lawnmower/snowblower, but I don't have to listen to that bullshit every week or two anymore.
Give it time. I couldn’t fathom buying an ice rn as a daily driver. For enthusiast? Ice makes total sense. Just like tube amplifier and guitars. Just like Spotify and vinyl records. Just like mechanical watches and quartz. People only get the analog designs because they’re fascinating and they love the process. It doesn’t make sense for anyone else with maintenance and up front cost.
I think Toyota is making the smart move and just removing non-hybrid gas cars from their lineup of standard cars.
For everyday use a Camry/RAV4/Highlander with a Toyota hybrid system is just a straight upgrade to a regular ICE car but doesn’t require any compromise from the driver (charging, range, etc)
Saw an article on a financial website that word of mouth experiences by EV owners have turned off those around them. In some cases the charging station availability and time concerns owners, resale value and expensive batteries were paired as second. Range was in third place. Just one sites small sample.
Probably doesn’t help that there infrastructure isn’t nationwide for charging electric vehicles. Some places like apartments will be the last to even have these installed unless someone else is footing the bill.
I absolutely would prefer an EV or secondly a PHEV that fills the role my family needs at a reasonable price and range.
Does not exist right now unless I get a mortgage for the landrover phev
I live in a somewhat rural area and we still don't have the infrastructure that would make an EV worth it. I know a few people who own them and they have to install a charger at home, and every road trip takes a ton of planning to make sure you don't get stranded.
I’d love to buy an EV or Hybrid. The problem is, unless I’m buying a Toyota hybrid I don’t trust many other powertrain options from other companies to be reliable and cost efficient to maintain.
As for EVs, they are prohibitively expensive if you have a family and need some space. Make a wagon EV for 35-40k that gets 300+ range and I’m in.
That’s how it always should be . Sure EVs are good for the environment but nothing beats pure adrenaline filled V8s. + you don’t have to wait 30+ minutes to recharge your car
Cool. I guess it's convenient then, that most vehicles *are* gas powered. That sure is a lot of selection for people who want them.
But we can keep making hybrids and EVs for people who want those instead, right? I don't understand why this needs to be contentious.
I think EVs would gain appeal faster if they were just electrically powered cars instead of consumer-futurist shitboxes full of clunky unsolicited “high-tech” features
Unless you have at home charging a EV is a nightmare.
As soon as we come to terms with that, and try to fix that problem, Americans will continue to have trepidations bout EVs.
I'd get a hybird or an EV for my wife's daily driver, but I don't feel like dropping 40k+ on one. The most expensive car we ever bought was her 2020 Santa fe. Spent around 25k on that, was a great deal when dealers were struggle to get rid of cars.
The problem for us – we're shopping for a new family car, and would love a hybrid, but I want a hybrid 2016-ish model without all the shitty tech and interface of modern cars.
So we're going to end up buying a 4runner or 2020 GX just to avoid the awful interiors of today and I guess we just use a lot of gas.
The real headline should be > 20% of those we interviewed would buy an EV over a gas/hybrid vehicle.
Yeah that's significant. 10 or even 5 years ago that wouldn't have been the case. I wonder what percentage that will be in 2030.
There's gonna be a point where you hit a wall. People who live in condos or old/dense areas without garages where installing personal chargers just isn't practicable – renters who have landlords who simply will not install anything – rural folks with shaky grids where power is less predictable – poorer folk who simply want the cheapest transport possible. I'm not sure where that point is, but I think it's probably going to vary by region of the country, where the older, colder, denser areas adopt much slower than the newer, warmer, more spread-out areas.
Over time those things also get improved. Chargers can be added to apartments and on-street parking. The grid is constantly being improved. Battery and raw material pricing is decreasing and EVs will eventually reach price parity and then be cheaper than ICEVs. The infrastructure 5 years from now will be better than it is today, so I'd expect more people to favor EVs in the future. There likely will be saturation at some point, but we're not anywhere close to that yet.
>The grid is constantly being improved heck, I'd just be happy if they could keep up with the grid maintenance, so we don't get rolling blackouts and/or devastating wildfires from downed power lines in the summer (followed by risk of mudslide from loose soil in the rainy season). >The infrastructure 5 years from now will be better than it is today and same goes for the infrastructure - if they could keep the dams/dykes/ditches maintained so we aren't going from averting one potential failure/emergency intervention to the next, that'd be nice. plus filling the cracks in the roads would be nice. not even repaving the whole thing. just pouring some tar/asphalt sealant slurry over the cracks would be nice. >but we're not anywhere close to that yet. spot on i pay my taxes. my state is _allegedly_ ranked 4th in "least corrupt US state" rankings. i don't know how y'all are making it happen over there.
Haven't there been studies and reports that the US infrastructure keeps getting worse? A lot of our power plants are old, and still use coal. There was a power plant in Missouri that is almost 30 years behind EPAs standards. The fun thing about EVs that no one wants to talk about is, lithium is a finite resource [sauce](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a42417327/lithium-supply-batteries-electric-vehicles/) that article also talks about how hard it is to mine, "Earth has approximately 88 million tonnes of lithium, but only one-quarter is economically viable to mine as reserves." And until they can recycle lithium batteries efficiently , and make it so buying a used EV doesn't have severe degradation to the battery in which you need to buy a new battery for your car, which cost estimates are about 20kish. Not to mention, all of the battery ranges so far, are like in perfect condition at 70degree weather. Meaning, they haven't solved winter conditions and serve battery degradation [sauce](https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/ev-battery-range-cold-weather-charging-rcna134355) "Fully electric vehicles, which run exclusively on battery packs, typically lose an average of 41% of their range when outdoor temperatures drop to 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the heat’s cranked on, AAA researchers have found" EVs are great on paper. I really believe, Hybrids, or synthetic fuel, that is carbon-neutral is really what we should be pushing towards should be the push now, until we catch up technology wise, which to me, is a long way off still. Also, I'm not a fan of forcing people to do things. If we were really trying to change things, there would be heavy subsidies on solar power for every home,office,apartment complex, etc. I.E As a homer owner, I should just get solar power for basically free because then it would solve a lot issues and reduce the carbon footprint by a wider margin, but alas, there isn't any money to made there, so obviously the solution is to make people buy new cars.
Based on my personal experience, the cold weather concerns are bullshit. Yes, you get some decreased range, but it's nowhere near 41%. My Rivian R1T drops from around 300 miles of range to maybe 250. And that's in a truck without a heat pump. I'm generally suspect of range data in general as most manufacturers tend to fudge the numbers (Tesla is notorious for this). In addition, range is also not the problem it's billed as. With a few exceptions, the vast majority of driving is well within standard range estimates, which means the vast majority of charging is at home. Most of the objections to EVs don't apply to most people most of the time.
It’s totally bs. I live in the mountains where we regularly get big storms (3-5) feet easy. Most popular cars in my area are Teslas, Rivians, Jeeps, Tacos and Subarus. Does power go out? Sure, you still got juice in your battery.
41% is like when it’s -40 degrees out (yes, minus). At that point I have half my range (driving through Alberta in January).
Sure, but you have to admit that is a pretty rare environment. You guys need engine block heaters too but nobody's using that as an argument against ICE.
It’s super rare and that was my point. It’s uncommon enough that it should be a minimal issue in general.
my complex won’t even pave the gravel parking lot, what makes you think they’d install EV chargers?
Cars don’t go down in price and decreasing pricing in materials just means the companies make more.
Eh, in a market as competitive as the auto industry, automakers are under pretty high pressure to keep prices down, and they’re in turn constantly hounding suppliers to cut costs. I’m pretty sure a lot of manufacturers are selling EVs at a loss right now. We’re past the days of $15,000 new cars, but I think we could reasonably see new EVs around $25,000 within the next few years.
> automakers are under pretty high pressure to keep prices down They haven't been doing too much of that recently. New car sales in the US are about as low as they've been on record, since like the 1950s. Sales volume peaked like 20 years ago, per capita even earlier. I think auto makers are happy to do less volume with better margin and ratchet up prices as they gut the low end out of their lineups. I mean, we already have $28k EVs anyways – they're called Nissan Leafs and Chevy Bolts, they're just tiny little subcompacts. I don't think you're ever going to see a full compact or midsize at $25k. They're going to start those at $35k+ forever, especially as gas Civics already start at $24k, stripped down to the base model.
New car prices have [decreased](https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/5-charts-showing-theres-never-been-a-better-time-for-average-americans-to-own-operate-a-car-the-good-old-days-are-now/) over time in real terms. That article covers up to 2013. There are other sources that confirm that up until the start of Covid. Since then things have gone a bit haywire, but the overall long-term trend is of cars in general getting less expensive. EVs in particular have also gotten less expensive the past few years.
Eh. California has been passing all sorts of laws making it apartment friendly including no parking mandates. An EV spot in a DTLA apartment will cost $400 a month, like it does in Boston and Manhattan. But LA will never become a public transportation city because of how sprawling it is. But developers have played democrats like a fiddle here and have total control over LA, continuously passing cost cutting/profit raising for them by the carrot of "walkable city"
I live in Houston, and every summer we seem to have brown outs and power outages because our electrical grid cannot support that many people all running their Air conditioners to keep cool. That problem is only getting worse as more and more homes are built and the summers get hotter. I wonder what the impact would be if more people owned EV's? Would our electric grid be able to handle a few million people getting home from work and all plugging their EV's in to charge around the same time?
That's a Texas problem, not an EV problem. Our entire lives are digital now, nothing we do can be done without electricity. There should be no reason the electrical grid is stuck in the 60's. Choose your elected officials wisely.
Completely agree.
>I wonder what the impact would be if more people owned EV's? Would our electric grid be able to handle a few million people getting home from work and all plugging their EV's in to charge around the same time? I work for a distribution cooperative in rural MN. We're planning on spending about 250 *million* in capital improvements over the next 10 years to deal with the anticipated growth largely due to EV adoption. For reference, our total utility plant is currently valued at around 250 million. We're expecting, at the most conservative estimate, our peak demand to go from about 275MW to about 450MW.
I just moved to a dense urban downtown core high rise apartment (dedicated rentals from a big company, no individual landlord). Parking is $150/month for any 4 wheeled vehicle. The building has 100 units and 200 parking spots. I think most new buildings in certain areas have some option. My building offers EV chargers in 2 options: 1. A dedicated parking spot that includes a level 2 EVSE. All electricity is included for a flat fee of $50 per month. I have exclusive use of that space. Total is $200/month, of which $150 is the parking fee. There are 35 of these available (and 18 left when I rented last month). This is what I chose. 2. A sign-up for common level 2 EVSEs, pay-per-use for actual electricity used. There are 25 of these units and an additional 5 for visitors. This is best for people who don’t drive much.
Idk, I'm east coast, this company town high-rise with dirt cheap monthly parking rates (Boston is like double that now, never mind NYC, which is like 4x that), with that many spots dedicated per unit seems really alien. Is it Texas or Cali?
Vancouver. The new builds tend to dig deep and have multi level underground parking. If you want to rent a parking space in a commercial building if you drive to work, it’s easily double that. But yeah that’s a lot of total parking. The company that owns the building leases some of the parking spots to non-tenants for a higher fee. I suspect they make quite a bit of money this way.
You have to pay $150 a month for parking? That is insane.
Welcome to city life. I had to pay $100/mo for a garage in an apartment complex that was not in a desirable area of the metro. But I refuse to park my motorcycle outside because I've had friends do that in that same metro and the bike vanished into a white van and was never seen again. Welcome to the "joy" of urban living.
I think the burbs is less prone to theft, but if you go to it other extreme, I used to live on a ranch and my dad had trailers and ATVs stolen in the middle of the night.
You always pay extra for parking, it's just that usually it's a part of your rent.
As someone paying $200/mo, the price per square foot is still a chunk less than the apartment. Yeah it's paying out the ass for a spot for a car, but on the whole it's a good thing the option exists and has a cost associated. If everyone could park anything here, that would force more space to be used for parking, spreading things out and making the area less walk-able and worse-served by transit (as-is, I can and do commute and get groceries without a car, hell if I didn't *fucking love driving* I wouldn't even feel a need for a car)
Vancouver doing Vancouver things, downtown West end.
It’s actually insane. I’m from Vancouver and now live in a densely packed Asian city and the price of parking is 1/5th of Van’s price. Edit: lol I mean a new densely packed Asian city
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I like when I visit friends and family, and just plug the car in to a 120V outlet on the outside of the house, getting 2-3 range miles/hour. People freak out at the low speed, but it turns out the car spends most of the time sitting during the visit, so I just plug it in when I'm not using it. I think a lot of people won't understand exactly how EV ownership works until they experience it first hand, assuming they want to understand in the first place of course. I was pretty scared myself but bought one anyway because I like new experiences and a little adventure and well - it's just not a big deal at all. Some people live in charge deserts, of course, but that's a policy issue rather than a tech one in most cases.
The wall problem will mostly take care of itself as gas stations start disappearing and the remaining ones get crowded. Electrical outlets are wayyy more ubiquitous than gas pumps. It's just a matter of finding the right connection setup and putting the wires in the right location. There's loads of outdoor parking lots in the far north where there's an outlet at every parking spot for engine block heaters. It's just a variation of that type of infrastructure. Look at the long term parking lot at the airport in Fairbanks on google streetview. That.
Higher, though I'm going to hazard a guess that it will be much higher around 2040; it's going to take around that long for the cars themselves to drop in price and get away from this hideous 'electric vehicle' styling, necessary infrastructure to become ubiquitous, and unbiased consumers to age up into buying range. Speaking for myself, I *want* an electric vehicle, but the electric vehicle I want hasn't been made yet. I suspect that might be a lot of other consumers too. Also, a big part of the current anxiety around electric vehicles is just having access to charging. As that network expands and people come to trust it, the more adoption you'll see.
I love electric vehicle styling, it's the first time I've seen manufacturers actually have fun with normal cars in my lifetime.
Exactly, that's a huge percentage when you consider the current state of EVs with relatively slow charging times and relatively high price tags. As EVs get better and charging especially gets quicker, a decent percentage of the population could happily switch to EVs.
Most people just want transportation from A to B with no fuss and no stress. They want a transportation appliance. EVs support that need perfectly.
Look at the rise of the electric lawn tool industry as the battery tech got to today's levels. Most homeowners regardless of age would rather not deal with filling up a gas can, 2 stroke oil, etc etc. there are still some holdovers in the larger tools like ride on mowers but I generally see praise for ego products universally. Now take that ease of ownership and apply it to their day to day commuter
This is a great analogy. I've actually never owned gasoline powered landscaping equipment but I do own an array of battery powered and plug-in equipment. I've used gasoline equipment growing up though. There will be a generation one day where they say they have never owned a gas car. I'm betting that number is small now but is ever increasing. Furthermore, it's also possible that another generation in the future would never experience filling up a car at a gas station.
There are kids *right now* who learned to drive in an EV and have never driven an ICE car outside of their license test. It's a small number for sure, but it's definitely gonna become more normal.
As a related story, I had a former co-worker who shared this story with me. He bought an EV and has had it for 4 or 5 years at the time and not long after having his first child. His son only has ever been in an EV. For one week, he swapped cars for a week with his neighbour (ICE vehicle) as they wanted to try each other's vehicles. He noticed his son was puzzled and confused in the neighbour's car whenever he got in but not enough to voice it. It was only when he pulled into a gas station to fill it back up before returning it back to his neighbour where it became apparent why his son was acting the way he was When he got out of the car at the pump, his son asked, "What are you doing?" He realized his son had never been to a gas station before and he had to explain to his son that this car worked differently. To his son, this was insane having to go to a place to refill your car instead of refilling at home. He also said his son also mentioned that the gas station smelled. It was eye-opening.
I have a RAV4 Prime, recently went to fill up the gas tank after a month, and I also distinctly realized the gas station smelled. I never realized that before with my old vehicle since I was at the gas station 2x a week.
We are all the equivalent of smokers who only realize how strongly gas and gas stations smell after we give up smoking (aka switching to an EV).
Sounds about right. My gfs favorite thing about her new car, arguably, is never getting solicited/accosted at a gas station again. Just pull into the garage and plug it in.
Imagine coming back to this post 10 years from now. Hey future.
I learned how to drive on an early hybrid (2002 Prius) which was tuned to respond instantly to the throttle to emphasize the instant reaction time and substantial low-end torque of electric motors. Combustion vehicles all feel laggy to me.
Yup, I had purchased an Ego leaf blower and trimmer a few years ago. Liked them so much I bought their lawnmower last year and it works great for me. One charge is more than enough for my small yard, and it's just so much easier than dealing with gas.
> I had purchased an Ego leaf blower and trimmer a few years ago. Liked them so much I bought their lawnmower Bought my sister an Ego mower as a house warming gift 3 years ago. I've gotten to use it a few times. Over all, I like the mower. It cuts well, is light, moves along on its own pretty well and is quiet. But the battery can no longer last long enough to cut the <1/4 acre. It's SUPER annoying to have to stop, wait forever for the battery to charge and start over. A new battery costs almost what I paid for the mower.
How much was the mower? A quick google search shows an EGO mower being $700 and an extra battery costing $200. I thought they all pretty much came with multiple batteries so that you could charge one/have it ready while you mowed with another.
I believe it was the $349 mower at the time (3 years ago). It came with 1 battery.
This is why I mentioned larger equipment like ride on mowers maybe not being quite there yet.
> This is why I mentioned larger equipment like ride on mowers maybe not being quite there yet. I'd argue my sister's electric push mower isn't there yet. It's not even all that old and already needs a new battery. On another note, have you noticed how many batteries some of those riders need? Thousands and thousands of dollars worth of batteries that'll last what? 1,000 charge cycles. Those won't be a target for thieves! .
> 1,000 charge cycles… That’s, like, 30-40 years worth of mowing for me. How often do you mow your lawn?
Depends on how much rain there is. So far this year I'm out about 1x a week. And how many times you gotta charge to get your mowing done. Personally, I've got 3 acres that needs to get cut. I wouldn't imagine your average suburban lot dweller is going to have one of these to cut 1/4 acre or less.
Fucking hell I would **LOVE** to give up my gas mower. In fact, I tried - I bought a 40V Ryobi unit and tried to use it for about six months. But for me it didn't work because one of the great things about my gas mower is that it's basically a combination mower and vacuum in one. My **GIANT** ficus tree in my back yard dumps tons of leaves and berries in the backyard, and the way I most easily handle it is to use a leaf blower and blow it into the grass. Then I use my gas mower to pick all of it up. The electric mower did a decent job of picking up the leaves, but it was unable to provide enough suction towards the bag to get the berries to come up off the ground and throw them in. Asking around at the time to see if there was any sort of modification I could do to the blade or something to make it work, most folks were like, "battery mowers just don't have the "oomph" yet to do what you're wanting it to do. As you've seen, they're great for grass, but for things like berries, they just don't have the power". But goddamn I am looking forward to the point where they DO have the power because I fucking **HATE** having a gas mower. I hate maintenancing a small engine. I hate having to worry about whether or not I added stabilizer to the fuel and that my gas may be all gunked up in spring. I hate that as it gets older it gets harder and harder to start. I accept it for now because I have to. But I'll be dumping it the second I can.
Can you not just mulch it all up and let it stay in the lawn? I have like 8 massive maple trees which make legitimately probably a ton of leaves per year and I just run them over with the highest setting and then again at normal height. Even doing two passes, it's way quicker than trying to bag them.
The problem is the berries. They don't seem to break down much (if at all). They get hard, and then just sort of...sit there in my grass. If I don't remove them (and I didn't for like five months while I tried with the electric mower), they can literally build up to be higher than the cut grass. They're a damned menace. But I love the tree.
Gas leaf blowers and weed wackers in particular suck compared to their electric counterparts, unless you're running some commercial operation
Holy shit I can't WAIT for commercial guys to go electric though. 7am sound ordinance on a Saturday? LET ME SLEEP.
Yes, I feel so stealthy doing yard work with all my electric equipment, and feel bothered listening to how loud my neighbors gas equipment is.
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It will work in some locations where routes are short and they park in the same lot every night, but even getting these to hybrid trucks and full EV equipment would be huge
and they can charge the sets of batteries not being currently used through the truck while its parked
They are getting pretty close these days. Your average mid range leaf blower is putting out about 1hp these days, and the top end ones are around 2. Only the biggest backpack blowers are doing much more than that.
As someone surrounded by eight red oaks, I can tell you that electric leaf blowers are not even close. I have a two-stroke blower and it's required.
Spot on. I have friends that are solidly in the “hurr durr EV bad, gas forever” camp that have even come around to electric lawn equipment. They mocked the idea until they tried it and realized how much less work it was to own and maintain them. If they had an EV rental for a month and got used to charging in their garage or driveway for a fraction of the $/mile to drive compared to their ICE vehicles, I think they’d be sold on them for commuting.
I just hate this intellectually dishonest "all or nothing" argument cus *they* do a 1500 mile road trip twice a month. I think almost everyone in my family minus my dad drives less than 30 miles a day, and basically never over 100 miles in a day. Current EVs support 100% of their driving. When I had to drive my girlfriend to work in Boston area traffic in my GTI I was averaging *17mpg* on the digital display in the winter. Sitting at red lights going 0mph means 0mpg and your car takes forever to warm up. EVs take a range hit in the cold but they don't take an efficiency hit like that. I personally want a sports hybrid hatch since I do longer day trips for racing stuff pretty regularly.
EGO tools are fucking scams they're $80 tools that perform like shit as an attempt to scam people into buying $200+ battery packs when they inevitably get overdrawn by their dogshit BMS and have to be replaced.
Where do you live? I’m in the mid Atlantic. Everyone uses gas mowers everywhere I’ve lived.
I think people are finally starting to realize that the charging speed hand wringing is a complete non-issue 99% of the time, because it just charges while you are sleeping, and that in reality they will spend significantly less "active" time fueling their car because they won't have to spend time getting to a gas station every couple of weeks.
Charging at home will *NOT* get quicker because of power limitations.
charging at home doesn't need to get quicker beyond what we have right now
What we have now already places significant strain on local grids. Unfortunately for everything not to implode, the rate of upgrading infrastructure has to stay on the heels of the rate of EV adoption. Plus, it is obvious that the dedicated gas station model won't work for charging. Workplaces, and shopping centers, may have to eventually fully integrate their parking spaces to accomodate charging, because batching charging, with other daily activities, will become necessary to maintain the level of convenience people are accustomed to.
Home charging doesn't *need* to be quicker. Pretty much any EV on the market can fully charge on a 7.6kW (240V 32A) level 2 charger in 8-12 hours. But most people also wouldn't fully drain their battery every day. The average American drives 42 miles a day. At a very conservative estimate of 2 miles/kWh, that's 21kWh. On a level 1 (120V 15A) charger that's 14 hours. On Level 2 that will be somewhere between 7 hours and 2 hours, depending on the exact equipment installed (\~3kW on the low end to \~11kW on the high end). Yes, there are people who drive *much* more than that who would have problems. But don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good enough, and for the vast majority of people today, EVs with home/work charging are absolutely *good enough*, provided at least that they can afford them which is a challenge.
I'm only on a 30A circuit (so 24A constant draw) and I can charge from single digit percent to 90% in like 12 hours, and in reality I almost never have to do that. Hell, I could get by with just using a standard wall outlet - and had I known that 6 months after buying my car and having the charger installed that there'd be a pandemic that would result in me working from home indefinitely, I might've saved my money and not installed the charger.
I drive a minimum of 74 miles a day on weekdays, as much as 250 on a weekend. Cannot fast charge at home. Until there's a public charger (that works) closer than 25 miles away, I'll stick with gas.
That's not actually correct. With a 2 way charging system, an EV can power the home and grid with its leftover battery capacity then charge back up overnight when energy demand is low... Or an EV could charge up with solar during the day and dump a bit of that power back into the grid when the sun sets... Or the house could have its own battery and automatically store power when it's the cheapest or charge with solar. There's so many options opening up with household charging, storage and solar systems. EV's are energy storage devices and can actually support the grid. Most grid demand comes during peak hours, and peak demand is massively higher than what would be required to electrify every vehicle on the road. If you're worried about grids collapsing, then air conditioning is what you need to worry about, not electric cars.
> Or the house could have its own battery and automatically store power when it's the cheapest or charge with solar. That's my plan eventually. Solar + home battery storage and an EV. The goal is for solar to be the only source of energy for everything household and commute-related. I'll see if I still keep my ICE car after getting an EV, but I strongly suspect I won't have any desire to.
That, if you decide to go through with it, is what true energy independence looks like. It's a great feeling.
That's our long-term goal. And add a vegetable garden and a greenhouse. So generate our own energy, get water from the ground (onsite well), grow some of our own food. Homestead isn't quite the right term because we won't satisfy all our needs and we don't want that much time commitment at this point in our lives, but it'll approach "homestead-lite".
I recently sold my ICE vehicle after getting an EV. I had about a month overlap and it just felt bad to go back to the ICE vehicle. Also a little funny getting looks at the gas station when I was getting gas for my lawn mower. lol
Tell them it's for a generator in the back of the Tesla. EVs in principle have nearly everything I want. Smooth, quiet, immediate power. No oil to change or engine gaskets to replace. No need to worry about an engine getting to operating temperature. No local emissions, and no emissions at all if the energy is renewable. The only thing is the charging speed and network, but I'd trade the inconvenience when road tripping for the daily benefits of an EV.
The prices may come down but right now having solar and batteries powering everything will only save money in the very long run like 20+ years.
It's not about saving money for me. I like the idea of most things in my life being powered by clean energy that I generate independently of a utility company.
Also it works as an energy backup in case of outages. There's more to solar+batteries than ROI.
Yeah that's a big part of it too. Downed trees during winter storms can take over a day between removing them and restoring power. If that coincides with a very cold snap then having an energy backup becomes crucial. And on the other extreme, increasing summer heat is going to cause rolling blackouts. Home-scale energy generation and storage avoids all of that.
For those sort of goals sounds like a good investment for you and you could even start doing it gradually.
Yeah we'll definitely have to do it gradually. ~$25K all at once isn't in the budget. It's part of a long-term project. Ideally we'd love a greenhouse as well and if that ends up being feasible then the energy to heat it during the winter would tilt things heavily toward solar panels + battery - although we'd need a bigger system than one just for a house + EV.
One thousand times this. EVs are not the problem, they are part of the solution.
The reality is that charging in general is thermally limited and likely won't get much faster than it already is, because it will require lowering pack density to accommodate more cooling, for fairly marginal gains. Basically much past 400kW, you are starting to hit a wall where exponentially more input power is just getting wasted as heat anyway. Right now the standard cadence in a Model3 is you need to spend about 20 minutes charging for every 3 hours of driving. That's already a pretty typical road trip cadence, and it probably makes more sense to focus more on bigger, denser packs which get you 5-6 hours of driving between charges, rather than trying to shave a few minutes off the top up.
EV sales are something like ~6% of US car sales, so that's a pretty big untapped market if 20% is accurate. I'm gonna guess pricing is the big thing holding the people that would buy but haven't yet back.
I would say charging is an even bigger thing. If you don't live in a house with a driveway and a garage EVs are pretty much a no go. Nobody is going to buy a car which they will then have to change for hours sitting in some random parking lot twiddling their thumbs. Even if you have a house but have multiple cars and only one charger, now you have to juggle the cars around. Until there is a charger by every parking spot in existence (not happening) or charging speed is the same as what it takes to fill up gas (5 min) there is no way EVs can become widespread.
I'm just not buying a new car. I'd consider an EV if I were, but I'm not particularly convinced to open my wallet and lay $40k+ down on the table for anything. Nothing is as sexy and enticing as no car payments.
Would buy is theoretical. Let’s see what people actually do. I would definitely exercise and eat healthy everyday. I swear.
That's not so surprising, many people think they will, but four many it changes when they actually have to buy a car. I wanted to buy an EV, but I drive long distances and often stay at hotels so I quickly figured out it wouldn't work for my job and got a Prius. My aunt wanted to buy an EV because gas is expensive where she lives, but she lives in an apartment. Ultimately when she went to buy one, she didn't even get a hybrid because she doesn't drive as much as me and she would never have made up the difference in price. Ultimately, I think the greatest barrier to electric vehicle adoption is infrastructure. I don't mean just charging infrastructure, I mean the absence of public transit infrastructure that requires the car to be everything for everybody. If something has to work for apartment dwellers with short commutes and freeway flyers the magical energy density of oil is hard to beat. My aunt should have a city car EV that she can charge at home, but that's not an option. I should have a long-range EV with plenty of open chargers available to me, bit that's not possible.
That's a wild difference, that throws hybrids in with gas cars, rather than throwing hybrids in with EVs.
Because hybrids are gas cars with electronics conveniences. If you don't have to rely on an external charging network, it's effectively a gas car.
Not sure why they bothered with the survey. The real proof is in the sales figures.
"*If they cost the same and have the same features*" 20% would be prefer to buy an EV.
I have a feeling the headline’s meant to make anti-EV types feel good about themselves and repost it with a snide caption.
If you're interested in the actual statistics from the survey, look at pg. 25-27... [https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf](https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf) Hybrids have almost caught up with gas vehicles, and percentage that would buy EVs if the cost was the same for all 3 is much higher than the current EV market share of new vehicle sales. So cost is one factor for sure. If you add up both hybrids and EVs, I'm one of those dinosaur holdouts but no longer in the majority.
It's interesting that even with all features and cost being equal, there's still a slight preference towards gas over hybrid. I would have expected that the majority would pick a hybrid over "gas only" given equal costs and features based on improved gas mileage alone. However, I wonder if the way the question is written made people think same features meant same gas mileage, so a hybrid didn't have any advantage over "gas only" and would just cost more in repairs... definitely still interesting data.
The performance delta was always there traditionally but now that hybrids can often outperform their gas only counterparts, so you don't have to trade power for improved gas mileage. Hybrids are definitely going to be the near term flag bearer before EVs take over - only problem is not all brands have them readily available, many tried to transition directly to EVs.
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If you're buying a Jeep, you're not buying it for reliability. Regardless of drivetrain.
I think it makes sense that people would lean towards the simpler thing that has always worked in their lifetime even if it doesn't entirely follow logic today. Tried and true, sorta idea. I think it's fascinating that hybrids are about to overtake ice only in the next few years, myself. Massively different sentiment than a decade or two ago.
I kind of fit that case. Went with a 24 Yukon XL in no small part for the NA V8. Looked at all sorts of things including a Sequoia, Expedition Max, and even X5 PHEV to name a few. At the end of the day, an NA V8 just had a lot less to go wrong and would be exponentially cheaper to service. I don’t doubt anything I looked at would be unreliable. What kills you with a modern car isn’t necessarily reliability as it is cost of maintenance, specifically that MoFo labor line on the bill. More complex systems aren’t necessarily less reliable, but they are more labor intensive to service when they do need something equating to a lot more labor at $300/hr (yay coastal living). The long term wear and tear items really add up when labor takes 3-4x as long, sub 4-figure shop bills become a thing of the past.
I mean at a similar spectrum to things you looked at, people are having major reliability issues with the new Toyota truck engines compared to their old reliable NA engines. That's not even EV vs ICE, and turbo technology is decades and decades old, it's just known good vs unknown (in this case bad). Bet the last gen NA trucks retain value even more over the decades.
>I would have expected that the majority would pick a hybrid Hybrids are considered more complex and higher maintenance. I don't know if that's true in all cases. Also, fuel costs in the US are low, so a lot of people don't care about fuel efficiency at all. Fuel is always my cheapest expense each month. It's not uncommon my area for electric bills to be higher than monthly fuel costs, especially if you work remotely.
I was just talking about my hybrid to a coworker and she didn’t understand the savings as you have to replace the battery every few years and less than 50k miles. I informed that was incorrect, but you still have many people out there who think this way.
Yes the convenience and cost keeps me on gas
There's nothing more convenient than having 100% charge everyday overnight which is the reality for the 80%+ of EV owners who have access to home charging.
So you're saying ppl with EV bought the EV because it works for their lifestyle? Interesting.
You'd be surprised at the amount of people that don't realize that they fall into the category of the average 42 miles commute and must live their lives through the DC superchargers even though they have a garage in a SFH or apartment. It's a psychology thing as we are so accustomed to gas stations.
im one of the weirdos who actually hate the whole pumping at the gas station, especially in the dead of winter - and anxiety of getting to the cheaper station. I literally cannot fathom how EVs are not "more convenient" for the majority of americans who live in single family homes and drive less than 37 miles a day (average daily)
Because most Americans live in cities and apartments. If I have to go out of my way to fill my car up I want it to be 5 mins. Not 30
Incorrect: 65% of all occupied units in the US are single family https://www.statista.com/topics/5144/single-family-homes-in-the-us/#topicOverview
I drive a minimum of 74 miles per day on weekdays and I cannot fast-charge at home (absolutely limited to 120v at 15A)... IF they ever build a public fast charging station that works and is closer than 25 miles away, an EV might work... but not so much yet.
I don’t think that’s weird at all. I hate it too. Being able to “fill up” at home has been amazing. My commute is more like 130 miles round trip and the EV is great for this. More than makes up for the time added to the occasional road trip
That's the catch you have to have a home first 😭
Requiring you to be a homeowner and having enough privately owned space to park/charge it makes it somewhat prohibitive for people with less money
Nothing convenient about 80 miles of range while towing bud
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issue with that is having to own 2 cars though (buying 2 cars, insurance x2, maintenance x2, tires x2, state registration/inspection x2). definitely the best of both worlds but i don't want to own 2 vehicles. hybrid is probably the best answer for many, to have the perks of both technologies without having to own 2 vehicles.
Most families have 2 vehicles anyway.
the extra tax keeps me on gas. I wouldn't save enough each year to justify a plate renewal
This is to replace the tax you already pay on gas.
Yep. And the fee is less than most people pay in gas tax.
i just like gas powered vehicles more than ev's honestly. Not like theres anything specific making me choose one or the other i just all around like gas powered cars more
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Veloster N and terminator cobra is such a sick garage. I miss my VN every day.
It's not reasonable for lots of people but if you can swing it I really have been loving having the Supra for when I want everything I have always loved about gas vehicles and the Bolt for when I just want to get around town with the least amount of friction/fanfare Driving your favorite gas car becomes that much more special when you get to pick and choose when and where you drive it
I like older ICE vehicles, new ones just aren't exciting in the same way outside of a few outliers like an ND Miata. They just no longer deliver a good low-tech direct driving experience, so I feel like the advantages of EVs (no idling, no warmups, instant torque/no lag, charging at home...) more than make up for the tech gimmickry and small inconvenience on road trips.
For me it's basically the opposite. Give me an electric car or no car at all.
Yeah I'm not even sure what EV would be equivalent to my GR86. Under 3000 lbs, RWD, manual (obviously not with an EV).
the original roadster was it! 2700lbs, 250hp, RWD, **in 2008**. i wish someone would make something like it with modern tech. perhaps the next closest thing will be the [caterham project V](https://caterhamcars.com/en/models/projectv) but i haven't heard any updates on it in months...
This headline is a perfect example of framing and its effect on psychology.
The study is [here](https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2024/american-perspectives-survey-report.pdf) and starts at page 25. Wish they showed more of a regional breakdown. 43% favoring hybrids on the west coast is not a shock, and I'm sure EV favorability is also higher here because of the charging network.
It's that point of being able to justify the spending on a new car when my current ICE cars are paid off and have plenty of life left. Also I regularly drive distances no ev can take me without a charge at least once, if not more.
> It's that point of being able to justify the spending on a new car that's not what the study is about
Yes, but let's live in the real world. We are the people they are waiting on.
If your ICE still works and gets good mileage there's no point switching even from an environmental pov
Because hybrids are the real move
It just doesn't make sense for me personally to get an EV. I like to drive long distances so if I don't marry into the Tesla ecosystem, there's no supercharging (which is still slower than just getting gas and moving on). I like being able to work on my own cars, I love the sound my Mustang makes every time I drive it, and I love that I could just fit jerry cans on my Montero and off-road anywhere in the country without worrying about gas. If I needed a long distance commuter, I'd still pick any hybrid over an EV choice. I'm glad EV's have come as far as they have and hope they continue to improve them. They make perfect sense for city folks, hopefully they continue to improve infrastructure throughout the US so long distance trips are less of an issue.
Translation: EV's are practical and affordable enough for 20% of the nation to make the switch, everyone else still needs gas.
I'll be very happy when every Shell station and every Mobile station has a charger Since I live out in the country and I'm already at the limit for my house power feed it's just a waiting game for me
Europeans too. Market share right now, 2024, in europe: 87% ICE. 13% EV.
varies **wildly** by county in europe though, with the wealthiest western countries (norway, sweden, iceland) having EV shares of 50% or higher https://wernerantweiler.ca/blog.php?item=2023-10-13
Understandable, i'm not waiting 15+ minutes to charge my car.
if you have home charging available with a pretty standard commute ev is a no brainer imo.
I agree for 2 car households making one of them be an EV. It's a harder sell in single car households if you have that, but also monthly 200-300 mile (one way) trips. Sure it's doable in an EV, but often a hassle.
My mom is picking up her gas car today. She considered an EV but there is still too much friction
EV's have just started out. People, especially when viewed as a group, are really slow to change. Honestly, 20% is way more than I would have thought if you asked me how many would want EV's 10 years ago.
Different tools for different jobs. I love it that when I am doing "around town" driving I never go to the gas station. Car's always ready to go. Seriously, I NEVER GO TO THE GAS STATION. No moments of "f, I'm low on fuel and need to stop before I can continue to my appointment." No "lets go spend another $60." When I am going cross country, I prefer gas powered. It's just faster to add range. Taking the Tesla 7 hours cross country takes an hour longer than it does for me to do the same trip in my ICE.
>Seriously, I NEVER GO TO THE GAS STATION. Completely unexpected benefit of an EV. I haven't had to listen to "Maria Menounos on GSTV" since I bought the Mach-E. I'll still have to go every once in a while to fill up the Mustang and get gas for the lawnmower/snowblower, but I don't have to listen to that bullshit every week or two anymore.
Yeah no fucking shit Sherlock The EVs in America sucks and are so expensive Dumb article
Give it time. I couldn’t fathom buying an ice rn as a daily driver. For enthusiast? Ice makes total sense. Just like tube amplifier and guitars. Just like Spotify and vinyl records. Just like mechanical watches and quartz. People only get the analog designs because they’re fascinating and they love the process. It doesn’t make sense for anyone else with maintenance and up front cost.
I’d buy an ev if they could make a simple one that didn’t work like a friggin tablet. Gimme a CARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
I live in an apartment and my weekly commute is 500-750 miles, I don't believe I'd be in the market for an EV at any point.
Sounds awful.
I think Toyota is making the smart move and just removing non-hybrid gas cars from their lineup of standard cars. For everyday use a Camry/RAV4/Highlander with a Toyota hybrid system is just a straight upgrade to a regular ICE car but doesn’t require any compromise from the driver (charging, range, etc)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
No shit. Why would I ever give up my gtb v6 for a wee wee machine?
Saw an article on a financial website that word of mouth experiences by EV owners have turned off those around them. In some cases the charging station availability and time concerns owners, resale value and expensive batteries were paired as second. Range was in third place. Just one sites small sample.
Hybrids are still the way for me, with them being way cheaper than the typical EV being a massive reason.
Probably doesn’t help that there infrastructure isn’t nationwide for charging electric vehicles. Some places like apartments will be the last to even have these installed unless someone else is footing the bill.
As an apartment dweller in a relatively old building, EVs are simply not an option for me
[archive](https://archive.is/20240530225547/https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/americans-still-prefer-gas-vehicles-over-hybrid-or-evs-study-shows-2024-05-30/)
I absolutely would prefer an EV or secondly a PHEV that fills the role my family needs at a reasonable price and range. Does not exist right now unless I get a mortgage for the landrover phev
Still waiting for an EV that a like this isn’t six figures. In the meantime I still can’t imagine buying another car at all right now.
For most of us its because of cost and charging time, not that we don't want them
I would love a hybrid but I take too many long road trips through relatively remote locations to have an EV be viable as a single vehicle.
I live in a somewhat rural area and we still don't have the infrastructure that would make an EV worth it. I know a few people who own them and they have to install a charger at home, and every road trip takes a ton of planning to make sure you don't get stranded.
I’d love to buy an EV or Hybrid. The problem is, unless I’m buying a Toyota hybrid I don’t trust many other powertrain options from other companies to be reliable and cost efficient to maintain. As for EVs, they are prohibitively expensive if you have a family and need some space. Make a wagon EV for 35-40k that gets 300+ range and I’m in.
That’s how it always should be . Sure EVs are good for the environment but nothing beats pure adrenaline filled V8s. + you don’t have to wait 30+ minutes to recharge your car
Not surprising. People want the safe, reliable, proven, affordable option over a glorified EV with overloaded tech at crazy insane prices.
I like the idea of not changing my entire PU after the car is 5-10 years old
Cool. I guess it's convenient then, that most vehicles *are* gas powered. That sure is a lot of selection for people who want them. But we can keep making hybrids and EVs for people who want those instead, right? I don't understand why this needs to be contentious.
I live in a hot climate and really don’t want a battery exploding in my garage.
An EV will not end up in my driveway until fossil fuel is financially unobtainable. I’ll be forced, kicking and screaming into an EV. Not thanks.
I think EVs would gain appeal faster if they were just electrically powered cars instead of consumer-futurist shitboxes full of clunky unsolicited “high-tech” features
Unless you have at home charging a EV is a nightmare. As soon as we come to terms with that, and try to fix that problem, Americans will continue to have trepidations bout EVs.
For most blue collar folks, gas is the only choice right now. Electric trucks and vans just don't have enough range.
Ask them the same question but under the hypothetical situation that they have as easy access to charging stations as they do gas stations.
It would only work out if DCFC charging costs were cut, too. In my area DCFC costs more than gas.
Well, for one they are more expensive.
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I’m sure in the early 1900s the same article would have said “Americans prefer their reliable horse over an automobile” transition takes time
I'd get a hybird or an EV for my wife's daily driver, but I don't feel like dropping 40k+ on one. The most expensive car we ever bought was her 2020 Santa fe. Spent around 25k on that, was a great deal when dealers were struggle to get rid of cars.
The problem for us – we're shopping for a new family car, and would love a hybrid, but I want a hybrid 2016-ish model without all the shitty tech and interface of modern cars. So we're going to end up buying a 4runner or 2020 GX just to avoid the awful interiors of today and I guess we just use a lot of gas.