We’re rat-holing a bit here. Yes, tech can always be better, but those attributes aren’t what’s slowing down EV sales. The Model 3 became the best selling car in the USA despite those characteristics.
Sales are declining for other reasons. My suggestion here is that one of the most obvious reasons sales may be declining is that it’s a lot more expensive to “fuel” an EV than it was just a few years ago. Utility prices and NEM policies have driven op costs a ton.
You would think, but the policy moves the state has made, between mandating rooftop solar on new homes, and new net energy metering billing policies have inverted the finances of EVs. They are more expensive to buy, and often more expensive to operate than gas engine vehicles because we have completely fucked electricity prices. We are 3-4x the national average per KWh, and and easily double (if not more) what it costs in other states to install rooftop solar.
Our electricity prices have more than doubled in the last 5 years, and the cost of rooftop solar has balooned even independent of the batter requirement for new rooftop installations.
The issue is massive pricing disincentives for EVs at a time when gas prices are decreasing.
Ah, yeah, I missed that you referred to America. We do have it pretty good here in CA, and my use case is favorable for an EV. I’m able to charge at home, and rarely need to charge en route to get somewhere. Those few occasions when I do, the 10 mins to charge up isn’t a big deal. If I couldn’t charge at home, or regularly took very long trips, the EV wouldn’t make sense.
As for the weight… I just looked and my EV (a model 3) is 50 pounds heavier than my other car (a Lexus hybird sedan). That’s a pretty negligible difference. It’s about 500 pounds heavier than the Honda accord I used to have. That’s a more material difference, but not as big a deal as people online make it out to be.
They are part of the problem, but inability or unwillingness to build quality public transit has been a problem in CA longer than they’ve been alive.
EV charging Infra is actually pretty good statewide these days, and battery range isn’t bad. (I drive an EV regularly). The real challenge for EV sales is that fueling an EV has gotten more expensive than fueling a comparable gas car.
Agree on car reliance though. We’ve neglected building decent transit systems for generations.
EV sales will likely continue to decline because we’ve made charging obscenely expensive. It’s typically >50 cents/KWh at retail, and if you charge at home, it’s not much cheaper if you don’t have rooftop solar. We’ve let PG&E and SCE kinda ruin this.
Fully agree that the DE doesn’t matter much. I’ve used KDE and XFCE the most over the years, and cinnamon, gnome, and even enlightenment a bit over the years. I was never a big fan of gnome, however I recently got a 2in1 laptop, and after a few days of tinkering… I think gnome is a bit better for that kind of interaction than than the others.
There are things to like and dislike with all of them I’d say.
Compare to ‘90s-now materials
Car bodies today are still made out of sheet metal and plastic. Sheet metal is the same today as it was in the 60s, and while the plastic is better, it isn’t lighter. Moreover, cars are bigger and heavier for crash protection. If you’re talking about composites like carbon fiber, well… we’re not making car bodies out of carbon fiber.
The numbers aren’t wrong. You can verify them yourself instead of spouting nonsense.
Headline is super misleading… the article says that chat gpt told him it couldn’t give him drug advice, and that he should seek help. He goactually got good advice from chat gpt, but didn’t like it, didn’t trust the good advice chat gpt gave him, then spent months trying to get chat gpt to give him the dodgy advice he wanted.
Of course chat GPT shouldn’t be giving that sort of advice, but man that headline is as misleading as it gets. He literally didn’t trust the advice he got from chat gpt to seek help.
he same HEAVY materials that made-up The ‘65 Ford Mustang’s body
The 65 Mustang was not made of heavy materials. It was (at the time) modern unibody construction made of thin guage sheetmetal. I’ve owned a few. The 65 200ci mustang I had in my teens was one of the lighter cars I’ve every owned; 2400lb / 1100kg or something like that. It was very easy to push, which you occasionally needed to do because Mustangs were godawful piece of shit cars. I did for a while own a early production 65 289 K-code 4 speed. It was one of the rarer early Mustangs, but still a total piece of shit. The body panels were flimsy and dented easily, the bumpers would bend if you stared at them too hard.
I recall cars of the 40s and early 50s all seemed to use a heavier guage sheetmetal, and body on frame construction. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, but they were heavier and sturdier.
Also, if you look at solar panel production and EV energy consumption, I’m not sure that powering an old, unaerodynamic design is realistic with body mounted panels. It’s something like 3 miles per KWh to push a tesla model 3 down the road, and the big house panels are 400w panels. You can kinda do the math from there.
I’m sure that the research team is awesome, and maybe saying this is important to some audience, but even to non-experts, it’s pretty obvious it’s already started.