OT: The OT Thread | The Thread of Destiny

[credulous]

i love cars and hated tesla's (those cheap interiors just ruined them for me) so ruled out evs but i bought an id4 for my 'going to get groceries' car and i loved it so much i ordered a taycan within a month of getting it. evs are just so much more fun to drive than gas cars. instant torque is a powerful drug

 

[Jerry the great]

i love cars and hated tesla's (those cheap interiors just ruined them for me) so ruled out evs but i bought an id4 for my 'going to get groceries' car and i loved it so much i ordered a taycan within a month of getting it. evs are just so much more fun to drive than gas cars. instant torque is a powerful drug

I've been in an EV since 2015 (1st gen leaf...now a Volvo and an ev9), they're great if you have exclusive use of a (L2) charger and don't mind the additional upfront cost of the vehicle. Total cost of ownership vs comparable combustion vehicle is materially lower over the life of the vehicle and they don't require a lot of maintenance (any!) which is pretty appealing IMO.

One problem is the drug you speak of. I feel like it's just a matter of time before i get a very expensive speeding ticket; it's a miracle it hasn't happened yet tbh.

 

[MS]

When we bought our last new car in 2018 we assumed it would be our 'last gas car' - EV ranges at that point were 350-450 km which wasn't enough for it not to be a bit of a pain in the ass for us, and based on how technology works and progresses we assumed that by 2025 when the lease was up we'd be buying an EV with a 1000 km range.

6 years later, and unless you buy something insanely expensive it's mostly still 400-500 km ish.

So our 2018 VW is still in great shape and we're just going to no-payments it for a year or two and hopefully EV ranges get up a bit higher.

 

[RobertKron]

When we bought our last new car in 2018 we assumed it would be our 'last gas car' - EV ranges at that point were 350-450 km which wasn't enough for it not to be a bit of a pain in the ass for us, and based on how technology works and progresses we assumed that by 2025 when the lease was up we'd be buying an EV with a 1000 km range.

6 years later, and unless you buy something insanely expensive it's mostly still 400-500 km ish.

So our 2018 VW is still in great shape and we're just going to no-payments it for a year or two and hopefully EV ranges get up a bit higher.

Yeah, I think there was a tendency to assume that we'd inevitably have some kind of battery breakthrough very soon that would just solve everything.

While I'm in the same boat, where I assume/hope my current car is the last combustion vehicle (or at least purely so) that I'll own, I also spend a lot of time going very far - and also going fairly deep off-highway - and I'm unsure where I necessarily fit in with EVs.

I've come to terms with the reality that - just like with the switch from horses to combustion engines - the switch to EV will require a fairly fundamental change in the way that travel looks, I still can't really wrap my head around how to solve the outright range problem. Luckily, I should be able to stick with my current vehicle for quite some time and fairly easily increasingly shift away from using it for anything under 40km round trip or so, but I do wonder what happens with folks in similar circumstances who necessarily physically aren't able to bike/walk/etc as readily as I may be.

 

[MS]

Yeah, I think there was a tendency to assume that we'd inevitably have some kind of battery breakthrough very soon that would just solve everything.

While I'm in the same boat, where I assume/hope my current car is the last combustion vehicle (or at least purely so) that I'll own, I also spend a lot of time going very far - and also going fairly deep off-highway - and I'm unsure where I necessarily fit in with EVs.

I've come to terms with the reality that - just like with the switch from horses to combustion engines - the switch to EV will require a fairly fundamental change in the way that travel looks, I still can't really wrap my head around how to solve the outright range problem. Luckily, I should be able to stick with my current vehicle for quite some time and fairly easily increasingly shift away from using it for anything under 40km round trip or so, but I do wonder what happens with folks in similar circumstances who necessarily physically aren't able to bike/walk/etc as readily as I may be.

Yeah, we do a lot of traveling/camping/ski trips/off the grid sort of stuff that just don't really fit into a 400 km range - especially given that a) you'd never want to 'drive with the gas light on' for the last 50-100k of that range and b) I'm pretty sure that 'real world' ranges don't quite stack up to manufacturer claims, just like MPG estimates. Even just the trip to my parents' house would be a pain in the ass, especially since their electrical isn't upgraded.

An 800k range is kind of my tipping point. It's slowing getting there, but it hasn't been a quick process.

_______________

The thing I'm really interested to see with EVs is how the cheap used car market plays out.

Basically everyone driving an EV right now is either upper-middle class or outright rich, and can make the choice to make the switch based on financial math or virtue signaling or just because they think it's cool. Virtually nobody is driving a 10 year old EV.

But eventually the crowd that are still driving 1998 Pontiac Sunfires they picked up for $1500 are going to have to make the switch and I'm absolutely fascinated to see what that looks like, how well EVs age, how cheap resale values get, whether they end up being crappy iPhones that are totally unreliable past 8-10 years, whether we'll see an epidemic of lower-middle class families who scrape together $10k for a 10 year old Tesla and then immediately get hit with a $20k battery replacement.

 

[RobertKron]

Yeah, we do a lot of traveling/camping/ski trips/off the grid sort of stuff that just don't really fit into a 400 km range - especially given that a) you'd never want to 'drive with the gas light on' for the last 50-100k of that range and b) I'm pretty sure that 'real world' ranges don't quite stack up to manufacturer claims, just like MPG estimates. Even just the trip to my parents' house would be a pain in the ass, especially since their electrical isn't upgraded.

An 800k range is kind of my tipping point. It's slowing getting there, but it hasn't been a quick process.

_______________

The thing I'm really interested to see with EVs is how the cheap used car market plays out.

Basically everyone driving an EV right now is either upper-middle class or outright rich, and can make the choice to make the switch based on financial math or virtue signaling or just because they think it's cool. Virtually nobody is driving a 10 year old EV.

But eventually the crowd that are still driving 1998 Pontiac Sunfires they picked up for $1500 are going to have to make the switch and I'm absolutely fascinated to see what that looks like, how well EVs age, how cheap resale values get, whether they end up being crappy iPhones that are totally unreliable past 8-10 years, whether we'll see an epidemic of lower-middle class families who scrape together $10k for a 10 year old Tesla and then immediately get hit with a $20k battery replacement.

IMO, like everything, we're likely to just see vehicles follow the larger trend of a further shift away from what remains of the middle class and below outright owning anything, and vehicles falling - even more than they already have - into the general trend toward churning over every item you own on a X year cycle (I don't know what to call this? The general iphoneification of everything?). I'd imagine rates inevitably coming back down will also help push this along.

Part of the "luxurification" of cars (like basically every other f***ing thing in life) has, IMO, been that the perception of them as a commodity prestige item rather than a tool owned for the long-term has increasingly crept into broader and broader swaths of the population.

 

[Hodgy]

Unfortunately for me, my 4runner is almost 20 years old and has almost 270K so while I want to wait a few more years to replace it with a good plug in hybdrid that can tow, I probably can't stretch that and will need to buy something now. I was also hoping the market would change enough where there would be good plug in hybrid truck/SUV options but that isn't really the case. You have the Jeep 4xE which is both expensive and apparently shit. And I am similar to @MS in that my family uses an off grid cabin that's close to three hours from where I live, and I periodically tow a boat up there, so there really isn't anything that makes sense for me.

I like the sound of the new Ram Charger but its both not out yet and will be like 80K when it is out. But I think in 5 years or so perhaps there are some reasonably price plug in hybrid trucks or SUVs. But then again, perhaps not? These cars are not getting cheaper to manufacture when they just add a battery and other tech for the hybrid.

 

[MS]

IMO, like everything, we're likely to just see vehicles follow the larger trend of a further shift away from what remains of the middle class and below outright owning anything, and vehicles falling - even more than they already have - into the general trend toward churning over every item you own on a X year cycle. I'd imagine rates inevitably coming back down will also help push this along.

Part of the "luxurification" of cars (like basically every other f***ing thing in life) has, IMO, been that the perception of them as a commodity prestige item rather than a tool owned for the long-term has increasingly crept into broader and broader swaths of the population.

For sure.

I've just never seen anything involving a 'battery' that has aged well, battery replacement costs for EVs are prohibitively expensive, and I wonder how badly the crowd that are currently driving $1000-5000 cars are going to get screwed post-2030.

 

[RobertKron]

For sure.

I've just never seen anything involving a 'battery' that has aged well, battery replacement costs for EVs are prohibitively expensive, and I wonder how badly the crowd that are currently driving $1000-5000 cars are going to get screwed post-2030.

IMO, I don't know what it'll look like, but I think it's almost a given that it'll look somewhat similar, structurally and I guess ?culturally?, to the wholesale adoption of smartphones, albeit scaled up impact-wise.

 

[credulous]

i don't drive in northern bc so i recognize this isn't a universal experience but i haven't had any problems with range with either of my evs. i drove to telluride from las vegas a few weeks ago stopping in st george, salina and moab for 30ish minutes each and made it in about 12 hours. it would have taken 10ish without the stops probably? that's through some of the remotest parts of the us west

realistically we weren't going to drive straight through for 12 hours anyways. we ate at a couple of the stops and let the dogs out to play at a couple

 

[RandV]

The central problem we have in Canada with this stuff as that living in a major city vs. smaller towns/rural is SO different and it's virtually impossible to impose different rules on different groups of people based on where they live.

Heavy incentivization for bikes/EV/public transport makes sense in Vancouver. It doesn't make since in, like, Quesnel. Or most of the rest of BC. Those people need cars for everything and if you start punishing them for using a gas car ... pitchforks will be coming out pretty quickly.

In the Netherlands, even the most rural areas are still like living in the Fraser Valley or something and it's easy to hook everything together with a great public transit system.

I'm not talking Canada-wide here or just public transit, but the whole mindset for for the dense population areas. Like if you look at the 1970's vs 2010 Amsterdam image I showed, I will assume that with a much greater population density they hit a breaking point on car-first travel much earlier and have now spent a few decades figuring out better ways to do things. One of the reasons we did build the way we did in NA is because we used to have a ton of room to just expand single family housing and car traffic, but as density keeps rising that's not unsustainable.

The Not Just Bikes channel gets mentioned a lot in these discussions and while I enjoy it I do find the guy is a bit biased growing up in lower Ontario. He doesn't really grasp the small town/rural vibe you get in the rest of Canada, and is a little to excited by "urban living" for my tastes. Still though, there's a lot of good ideas to be had. One example is I had a drive through Sylvan Lake a few weeks, which is something like Alberta's Kelowna, and while it's AB so going to be car focused there are some European ideas in here. Like big traffic circles, and along the lake raised crosswalks for pedestrians/bikes which is where rather than stepping from the side walk down to the street the street steps up into a speed bump so it's a flat surface when crossing.

 

[RobertKron]

I'm not talking Canada-wide here or just public transit, but the whole mindset for for the dense population areas. Like if you look at the 1970's vs 2010 Amsterdam image I showed, I will assume that with a much greater population density they hit a breaking point on car-first travel much earlier and have now spent a few decades figuring out better ways to do things. One of the reasons we did build the way we did in NA is because we used to have a ton of room to just expand single family housing and car traffic, but as density keeps rising that's not unsustainable.

The Not Just Bikes channel gets mentioned a lot in these discussions and while I enjoy it I do find the guy is a bit biased growing up in lower Ontario. He doesn't really grasp the small town/rural vibe you get in the rest of Canada, and is a little to excited by "urban living" for my tastes. Still though, there's a lot of good ideas to be had. One example is I had a drive through Sylvan Lake a few weeks, which is something like Alberta's Kelowna, and while it's AB so going to be car focused there are some European ideas in here. Like big traffic circles, and along the lake raised crosswalks for pedestrians/bikes which is where rather than stepping from the side walk down to the street the street steps up into a speed bump so it's a flat surface when crossing.

I think this is something that is often kind of overlooked, which is that everywhere doesn't have to do everything all-or-nothing for everyone all at once, when just adopting some of these concepts in ways that make sense for a specific place still just kind of tends to make things nicer in general.

Like, there's so much constant hand-wringing over the effects of the overwhelming car-centricity of North America: the loss of sense of community, the loss of third spaces, the traffic, the disconnectedness from sense of place, etc. but at the same time folks are so quick to just collectively be like "oh well, I guess that's just the way she goes" instead of trying to implement changes that might improve some of these things even though they might not fixing everything at once.

 

[credulous]

I think this is something that is often kind of overlooked, which is that everywhere doesn't have to do everything all-or-nothing for everyone all at once, when just adopting some of these concepts in ways that make sense for a specific place still just kind of tends to make things nicer in general.

Like, there's so much constant hand-wringing over the effects of the overwhelming car-centricity of North America: the loss of sense of community, the loss of third spaces, the traffic, the disconnectedness from sense of place, etc. but at the same time folks are so quick to just collectively be like "oh well, I guess that's just the way she goes" instead of trying to implement changes that might improve some of these things even though they might not fixing everything at once.

yeah it's not like you can't see the positive effects in parts of the usa and canada. houston texas is the worst suburban sprawl i've ever experienced but it also has an amazing system of bike trails completely separate from the road system that can get you almost anywhere

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

We needed a new vehicle this year and opted for a Hybrid (continuously regenerating battery when you break). We’ve been greatly enjoying the mileage it gets.

 

[RobertKron]

I'm not talking Canada-wide here or just public transit, but the whole mindset for for the dense population areas. Like if you look at the 1970's vs 2010 Amsterdam image I showed, I will assume that with a much greater population density they hit a breaking point on car-first travel much earlier and have now spent a few decades figuring out better ways to do things. One of the reasons we did build the way we did in NA is because we used to have a ton of room to just expand single family housing and car traffic, but as density keeps rising that's not unsustainable.

IIRC, with Amsterdam it was as a response to public outrage in the early 70s over the rate at which children were being killed on the roads.

 

[rypper]

Amsterdam is an awesome city. We stayed at a hotel by the airport and the main train station is underneath the airport. Quick train ride into the downtown passing stops like floppindoopin and rottenhamdam.

Fun city walking around people watching. Red light district and the blue light district lol.

 

[CanuckleBerry]

Really wish Subaru made a plug-in hybrid variant of the Outback or Forester. That would be my next car easily... after a minivan that is. Gotta commute the spawn around.

 

[Jerry the great]

We needed a new vehicle this year and opted for a Hybrid (continuously regenerating battery when you break). We’ve been greatly enjoying the mileage it gets.

it's a great option if you can't or don't want to live with the limitations of an EV. they'll be making these vehicles for decades to come and they can go forever if they're well built and maintained. The old Prius' can log a million KMs+ on original batteries.

When we replaced my wife's 8 yo SUV we got pretty close to going with a new RAV4 PHEV but opted for the EV9 because we needed the extra seating/cargo space (it's massive) and can live with the tradeoff.

 

[Peen]

it's a great option if you can't or don't want to live with the limitations of an EV. they'll be making these vehicles for decades to come and they can go forever if they're well built and maintained. The old Prius' can log a million KMs+ on original batteries.

When we replaced my wife's 8 yo SUV we got pretty close to going with a new RAV4 PHEV but opted for the EV9 because we needed the extra seating/cargo space (it's massive) and can live with the tradeoff.

Those things look pretty sweet.

 

[bandwagonesque]

Yeah, we do a lot of traveling/camping/ski trips/off the grid sort of stuff that just don't really fit into a 400 km range - especially given that a) you'd never want to 'drive with the gas light on' for the last 50-100k of that range and b) I'm pretty sure that 'real world' ranges don't quite stack up to manufacturer claims, just like MPG estimates. Even just the trip to my parents' house would be a pain in the ass, especially since their electrical isn't upgraded.

An 800k range is kind of my tipping point. It's slowing getting there, but it hasn't been a quick process.

It's unlikely to ever get to 800km with any battery technology currently on the table. The problem isn't actually whether we can store that much energy but the physical problem that energy sequestered in one place wants to be released and the technical means of preventing that have to be revised for each new way of storing energy. A battery with twice the energy in the same volume would be in theory roughly twice as inherently unstable and dangerous.

What we should hope for is better charging infrastructure. A charging station may be expensive to build but the downstream costs are far less than liquid hydrocarbon fueling stations. Less pollution, no need for environmental barriers, pretty much everything can be put underground except for the Twix bars

 

[VanillaCoke]

Get the nicest phev you can and enjoy the best of both worlds until the tech catches up.

Tbh a separate thread for GVRD infrastructure/planning/ traffic etc wouldn't be unwelcome.

 

[tradervik]

If you’re interested in EV battery tech, I found this article interesting. TLDR version: lots of promising research is going on with multiple technologies but we’re at least a few years away from a widely available commercial breakthrough.

 

[Jerry the great]

It's unlikely to ever get to 800km with any battery technology currently on the table. The problem isn't actually whether we can store that much energy but the physical problem that energy sequestered in one place wants to be released and the technical means of preventing that have to be revised for each new way of storing energy. A battery with twice the energy in the same volume would be in theory roughly twice as inherently unstable and dangerous.

What we should hope for is better charging infrastructure. A charging station may be expensive to build but the downstream costs are far less than liquid hydrocarbon fueling stations. Less pollution, no need for environmental barriers, pretty much everything can be put underground except for the Twix bars

or a battery technology that meaningfully reduces the 20-80% charging time....because that is the real issue IMO. When we drove from metro van to Kelowna, we stopped to charge in Meritt (DC charger in the Canadian Tire parking lot). there was a no line and an available charger so i plugged in and we walked to starbucks where we waited a kind of hilariously long time for 4 drinks to be made. got back to the car and the battery had gone from ~30% to 93% in just under 30 minutes. Pretty manageable situation IMO. However, waiting for a plug would quickly get annoying if you were on a schedule. On our way home we did have to wait for ~15 minutes to plug in and it wasn't too bad. My wife took the kids to get food at Tim Hortons (hard pass from me).....i only charged for 15 minutes and was done before they had their food. Most other road trips we've done have been easier because you have cell service and can easily find available chargers, but hwy5 is spotty.

Driving that highway in an EV was a difference maker for me. passing people was a breeze and the regen breaking is outstanding on the declines; our car has paddle shifters on the steering wheel to dial the sensitivity up and down on the fly which is handy and keeps you a little more engaged.

 

[AlainVigneaultsGum]

Dave Grohl is a jackass lmao.

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

Dave Grohl is a jackass lmao.

Certainly didn't have that one on my bingo card. Woof.