"Instead of giving the biggest incentives to the biggest batteries, government policy should focus on electrifying the vast majority of daily trips, which start and end at home and could easily be handled by vehicles with 100 miles of range or less.... That means incentivizing e-bikes, plug-in hybrids, and other small battery electric vehicles, not holding fleet electrification hostage to the 5 percent use cases."
I think PHEV are the interesting option. They can cover the main use case of commuting via electric and fall back to ICE for road trips. Building new BEV cars for ranges that are hundreds of miles seems cost prohibitive and unsustainable. 🫤
@TheWarOnCars moving back to smaller cars rather than enormous trucks and SUVs would help.
In recent years manufacturers have been incentivising larger vehicles as their profit margins are better, despite their using more energy/emissions to drive as well as tyre wear pollution.
This is a problem here in the UK and Europe even more so that the USA since there are fewer real use cases here to justify these monsters.
@TheWarOnCars the e-bikes don’t have a ton of cargo capacity except for the unwieldy cargo bikes. None of them have heat, headlights, air conditioning or rain protection- that is not a 5% use case it’s more like a 75% use case.
@TheWarOnCars Currently driving BEV for local trips and old ICE for long trips. Love the BEV, ICE is a necessary evil. About to move where I'll have to replace both cars with a single one. BEV not an option there (no charging infra), and PHEV costs more than twice as much as plain hybrid, such that I'll find myself with a plain hybrid instead. Sadly, the local infrastructure there makes bikes impractical (too dangerous).
@TheWarOnCars@lisamelton For the vast majority of US suburbia, where even a busy soccer mom/dad will drive 40-50 miles on a big day, a car with an advertised 250 miles range is what’s needed. After losing 50% to cold weather and not charging to full to care for the battery, that still leaves a comfortable margin for extraordinary days. City dwellers can halve that.
EVs require some new thinking, but it’s not difficult. Maybe EPA range estimates for cold and warm days? Highway and city?
@TheWarOnCars We shouldn't be encouraging hybrids at this point, except for very niche cases. Encouraging internal combustion engines is not okay, period.
We need to reduce the number of cars and other road vehicles. Improving buses can reduce the number of miles driven significantly very cheaply and quickly, for instance. Other measures will take longer. But what cars remain will need to be electric.
Hybrids are not better than genuine battery electric vehicles. They may be slightly lighter but the fluff about tyre wear is massively over-exaggerated. Lifecycle emissions of a battery vehicle are lower than anything with an internal combustion engine.
@TheWarOnCars where I live 100 miles is nothing. I'm totally behind more charging stations, but I do need to be able to travel further. It would be great to have stations in areas outside major cities.
@TheWarOnCars please don't forget normal bikes. They even eliminate the need for batteries, solve a lot of City traffic needs, and give some excersize which most of them anyway
@TheWarOnCars “To move forward, we must confront our bottomless desire to see dramatic changes in our material culture without requiring any kind of meaningful personal or collective change.” <— the truth right here!
@cdamian
yeah, PHEVs are basically has-beens at this time. Should be about as relevant going forward as laserdisc was after DVDs hit the home market. @TheWarOnCars
@TheWarOnCars
the range thing I think is a mix of "big numbers good" thinking and what I'd consider bad habits enabled by fossil fuel vehicles.
I've taken some long non-stop trips in a fossil fuel car and … looking back, it was just stupid. Stopping something like every four hours like a professional truck driver for a break would be better for me and safer for everyone else too.
Add comment