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Isn't New York trying to require heavy duty vehicles to be electric by 2045? That's a couple decades, but we can't even get people to adopt commuter vehicles because of the inconvenience of charging. How long and how many volts does an F750 need to charge? A 24 foot box truck? A semi?

I commute 40 miles each way. It's going to be a very long time before my workplace has electric vehicle plug-ins. Even longer before my apartment complex even considers them. And can you imagine what they'd charge(hehe)? And God forbid we go on a road trip. A 300 mile range is a joke in the Midwest. It's 100 miles round trip to the capitol if you need something from the shops down there.

How long will a decent size truck go on a charge? What if I'm hauling a trailer? 2 horses? 4? If we can't get a sedan to go more than 300 miles on a charge, how far is a decent-sized truck going to go hauling a load? You can put more batteries on them, but what about when you misjudge and you're between nothing and nowhere? Is someone going to bring a jug of electricity out to you to get you to the next charging station?

I like the idea of an electric vehicle, I really do. It is absolutely not feasible for me. Or the majority of my coworkers. It would make way more sense for me to pick up a motorcycle to commute on as far as sustainability and energy efficiency. But the weather here is prohibitive for that. Even if I could reasonably charge an electric vehicle for my commute, I could not own it as my only vehicle. And I can't afford the taxes and maintenance on a second vehicle. It is just not an option for me or for most of the people I know who aren't upper middle class.




We can mandate EV chargers anywhere we want them. Workplaces, apartments, wherever. We already do this with handicap parking spots, and the US government can and does subsidize commercial EV installs using tax code.

If you run out of charge, you get a tow to a fast DC charger or home. AAA piloted an EV charger truck for dead EVs, and deprecated it because no one was using it.

We can fly a helicopter on Mars, but we’re wringing our hands over the equivalent of dryer outlets and where they’re installed. It’s comical. Europe mandated all fast DC chargers inter operate, and everyone swapped their cables to CCS and supported frictionless payments because it was the law (even Tesla at their Superchargers) [1].

It’s a climate emergency [2], not a climate inconvenience, and we should start acting like it collectively.

[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/16/standardization-of-ev-c...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-are-living-in-...


You going to pay for my tow? The increase in cost to the apartment complex that's going to get passed straight to me on top of the cost of the electric vehicle?

How about maintenance? I do most of my own work on our vehicles. I bought an older truck because I didn't want to deal with all the electronics. Now I'm supposed to buy a vehicle that's not only all electronics, but has potentially dangerous batteries that I don't have the skills to touch? My windows roll down with a crank handle. That was one of my requirements when I bought it. When that mechanism breaks, I can get replacement parts out of the junkyard or off ebay and throw it back together with a little common sense.

I am all about the environment. It's a big deal for me. I cannot, absolutely can not, make an electric vehicle work for my lifestyle. My horse injures her leg, you going to pay the extra $50 for the vet to make a farm call on top of the $500 I'm already going to owe for meds and treatment? That's if it's within office hours. Because I can't haul even my cheap little straight load with a Tesla.

Electric vehicles make sense in the big city. For us out here, who need to haul livestock, hay, shit, even just furniture to move, an electric vehicle is not an option if you can't afford 2 vehicles. Oh, just hire movers. Get delivery from the furniture store. $50 to deliver a grill that doesn't fit in an electric car and you know what kind of vehicle is going to deliver it? Surely not an electric one.


> You going to pay for my tow?

How often have you run out of gas? That's a stupid mistake you make as a kid once and it never happens again. Running out of charge will be little different.

And next gen EV's like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will be able to give other EV's a top-up.

> The increase in cost to the apartment complex that's going to get passed straight to me on top of the cost of the electric vehicle?

Tax credits in the new infrastructure plan should cover most of the cost. And if costs tons of money to run power to every stall you're paying the wrong electrician. Even 115V power sufficient for most city EV drivers, but a dryer outlet is better.

> How about maintenance?

One of the main advantages of EV's is that they need far less maintenance.

> Because I can't haul even my cheap little straight load with a Tesla.

All the EV trucks coming on the market will tow a heck of a lot more than gasoline trucks will.

> you know what kind of vehicle is going to deliver it? Surely not an electric one.

Short haul delivery is an ideal use case for electric vehicles.

> Electric vehicles make sense in the big city.

Electric vehicles make a lot of sense out in the country. You've got lots of room for solar panels so you can save a lot of cash and are no longer dependent on fuel deliveries. Electric motors deliver tons of the torque that is crucial when doing real work.


Oh, neat. I looked it up and EV's don't need oil changes as such. At least not as often as conventional vehicles. That does help. Still not something I think we could pull off in the next 5 years. The Honda you can piss in and it will be fine, but the diesel needs 15 quarts of oil a couple times a year.


Neither of my Chevy EVs has ever been in the shop ever, for any reason except inspection (grudgingly)


I can get from one gas station to another on a tank. Barely sometimes, but I can make it. There's stretches I used to drive on a regular basis where the only gas station within 60 miles closed at 5pm. You think Thedford is going to be able to install chargers that won't take 8 hours to fill a battery? That and Stapleton are the big towns in the area and neither is much more than a gas station between cornfields. I worked for the government doing aquatic ecology surveys. We'd drive over 300 miles just to get to the hotel we were based out of for those sampling locations. Is there a vehicle out there with the storage space of an F150 with a covered bed that can make that trip and be ready to bounce around the middle of nowhere 8 hours later?

You work out those tax credits and let me know. That's going to cost the government a lot of money they're not going to part with easily.

Electric vehicles don't need headlights changed? Oil? Alternator? I'll give you that I'm 99.9% sure they don't have spark plugs. How about the windows? Automatic door locks? How much will a new key cost me? The 2008 Subaru cost $150 per key. Not even the fob, just the key. My truck keys costs $3 at the hardware store. Is it going to have one of those frustrating touch screens that I can't see during the day? How about when it does need maintenance that I can't do? How much does that cost? Labor's already 75% of the repair cost. What's it going to be when it's the labor of someone willing to mess with the sort of batteries that are used in electric cars?

>All the EV trucks coming on the market will tow a heck of a lot more than gasoline trucks will.

When they come on the market. How much will they cost? I paid 10k for my F250 diesel. 2004, 170k miles on it. 5 years ago in a market that had an abundance of rust-free trucks. How many decades is it going to be before I can get an electric truck in that range? I can't afford last year's F150. Shoot, I was trying to buy an F150 under 10 years old when I found the diesel. There wasn't one in decent shape under 15k. How am I supposed to buy a brand new, new tech, electric truck?

And how far will they tow this weight? Please map me a reasonable route from Flagstaff Arizona to Witchita Kansas where you think there will ostensibly be charging stations in the next 15 years. Add to that the fact that a horse should not be left in a trailer for more than 8 hours. Pretty much every stop to charge at that point will have to be an overnight stay somewhere the animal can move freely and lie down. We made it a 2 day trip with the diesel. We pushed my mare up towards 10 hours and had to pull over before we got to our stopping point to rest her because she was struggling. How about paying for a transport? Joke's on me, transports on that route cost $2-3k if and only if you can even find someone willing to go that way.

Short haul delivery? I've driven box trucks. The small ones have 100 gallon tanks. We filled them about every other day. Are you telling me we already have the technology to charge those in the 10-12 hours they're not in use?

Yes, electric vehicles are torquey. I'd love to have one. I'm a sucker for zippy little cars. But I even ignoring the cost, I could not buy one because they are not at all reasonable for my usage. I miss my grand prix. That car was a hoot. I would kill for a Tesla to zip around town in. But I can't afford to buy one even for 20k and I would have to have a second vehicle which costs money in taxes and upkeep that I don't have.


You got down voted a bit for this, but it's pretty much the exact rant I wanted to make in response to the earlier comment.

I'm in Launceston, Tasmania, and half the people I work with are in your situation or similar. An electric vehicle sold new today, bought second have in 10 to 15 years is not going to work for your situation and plenty of others like you.


Thanks. I really couldn't care about the votes. Either people understand where I'm coming from or they don't.

I'm not in the middle of nowhere. I'm on the outskirts of a decent sized city. I've never lived in that city and I have no idea what it's like to live on the coasts in the US. I have lived in a number of places, a little bigger and much smaller, have drive commercially, and think I have a pretty good feel for the logistics of the policies that are being proposed. I'm concerned that lot of people who are pushing for electric vehicles either don't know the reality of living in a rural area or are too well paid to realize that the cost of any new vehicle and especially one full of new tech is prohibitive to those in our situations.


I agree completely. Most of the EV proponents (and I am one of them!) live in densely populated areas that work well for EVs. I live in a rural area. Sure, I could charge an EV at home, but every where else it would be a hassle.

Saying things like "EVs are great for towing because torque" completely misses the point that you need to get that torque to the road through the drivetrain and to tow the vehicle through a chassis that can take the load. You're not towing a two-horse slant with a Model S, no matter how much torque it has. Until that's possible, we just keep buying used pick up trucks.


I live in a rural area and plug my car into my house. I tow with my farm truck but that is a few times a year or none. What percentage of people are towing all the time? Can't these people be seen as the exception? Instead of acting like they are the rule?


The point GP poster was making is that you can't just handwave away different use cases and say "everyone can just use electric for everything." You're making the same point she was by showing that you use two different vehicles for two different uses.

I mean, I get the excitement over EV's but people really need to stop glossing over the fact that they won't necessarily work for everyone at the present time: it just makes it easier for the whole movement to be dismissed.


If it puts anything in perspective, it's about $250 a year to register a vehicle in my state under 14 years old. So consider however much the new vehicle costs, plus sales tax, plus registration on 2 vehicles every year, plus fees on 2 vehicles, plus maintenance. And add $15 for my crappy old trailer which is a joke after I've paid for vehicle reg.


> How about maintenance? I do most of my own work on our vehicles. I bought an older truck because I didn't want to deal with all the electronics. Now I'm supposed to buy a vehicle that's not only all electronics, but has potentially dangerous batteries that I don't have the skills to touch?

What your doing is great, don't change a thing. If your happy with your system, absolutely DO NOT go out and buy an EV. Your doing more for the environment by continuing to use that older vehicle than buying electric. The carbon emissions of manufacturing a new vehicle are often as high or higher than the lifetime tailpipe emissions [0], and it's a price that has already been paid. The longer we can keep existing cars on the road the better.

Sure if it's a given your going to buy a new car, and EV is probably better for the environment than an something gas or diesel powered, but if your looking to really do what's best, keep that existing vehicle in good condition as long as possible.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...


You're linking to a article from 2010. It was wrong then, even more wrong now.

Production of an electric car emits about 17.5 tonnes of CO2. Each litre of gasoline emits 2.3 kg of CO2. (Yes, the CO2 weighs more than the gasoline. If the old gas car gets 10l/100km, that's 76000 kilometers. The commenter is a rural driver, so that's probably about 2 years worth of driving.


As far as I can figure with a little too much liquor in me, I drive about 20,000 miles a year for work. Which more or less jives with the fact that I bought this truck at around 170k miles and rolled over 240k miles a month or so ago. So 76k km is a little high for 2 years, but not completely off base. Please understand though, that a new electric vehicle was supposed to cost 20k by now, but I'm not sure there's reliable vehicles on the market for that price. And even if they are available, I've been piling away the stupid amount of overtime that I'm working trying to buy a house for which the market is not in my favor and even 15k is not an expenditure I can pull off right now.

Financing is a thing, I know, but the idea of paying an extra couple thousand in interest to have something right now that I can put money up to afford later is hard to handle for me,

5k? 10k? I could make it work if I had a way of charging it when I'm working 10 hour days plus the nearly 2 hour commute. Over 20k for a car, plus I have no way of charging it. Plus even if I parked it in my parents' garage, it might not have enough juice for the commute plus errands? I can't do it. My husband could get away with one, but then you're really pushing the edge of how much environmental impact an EV has vs maintaining an old vehicle. Maybe he gets an EV and I take the Honda that hates me? We still have to pay maintenance and taxes on the truck which I can't replace because there's nothing on the market for it and we couldn't afford it anyway. I do steal the car from him when he doesn't need it, which with my schedule is pretty often. You can say that I'm an edge case, but a large portion of the interior I'd the US is in the same predicament .

Maybe I should move closer to work? I'd love to, but my husband works in the city. And the town that I work in is literally a valley that was underwater last year and most likely will flood more and more often because of the global warming we're trying to escape. I'd love property near there, uphill.a bit, but as of this spring and summer, we can't afford it. I guess we're between an island and a long commute. Maybe I'm just putting these posts up so that people whose living situations can afford a new vehicle or public transport realize that there's a lot of us out here in cow country that just can't afford the tens of thousands that it would take to be environmentally friendly as they see it.


Hey, if you can only afford a 20 year old truck, nobody's going to fault you for only buying 20 year old trucks. But there are tons of brand new $60K trucks in rural areas. Many of those people should be buying EV trucks when they become available at the end of the year. But many won't because of FUD, which we need to combat. So if you can convince one of your neighbours to buy one, maybe you can buy it off them in 10 or 20 years time.

And keep that Honda, it's a gem. Great fuel efficiency, embodied carbon long paid off. An EV would be better, but that Honda is a close second.


Thank you for understanding where I'm coming from. I consider myself an environmentalist. I was, in fact, in the biology and ecology field until I realized I couldn't afford to bounce from temp job to temp job for the 10 years before finding something permanent. That seems to be the average from speaking to my peers all over the country and I don't suck dick well enough to speed that up.

I hope when I get life together enough to buy a new car, that EVs have gotten to a point where I can reasonably own one. But as of now, I'm going to keep my truck and my husband's little jerk of a Honda going and reduce my impact in other ways.




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