Electric and Hybrid cars

FAT$TACKS

Not Average Joe., Not Average Homeowner., Not Aver
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Who here owns an electric or a hybrid.

Who here plans on getting on in the not too distant future.

I've been kind of looking at some of them. A hybrid car is pretty common to see around here. An electric car is something I seldom see.

There isn't the support for one. Not locally and not any place that you would drive to around here until you get beyond the range of a lot of them. There are maybe a few chargers I know of in the next bigger city over, and then beyond that there maybe one at a dealership here. Then next to nothing along the way to anyplace a person would want to go.

I don't see that they will be really viable for many years at the current speed that charging places are popping up.

The thought of never having to pump gas again is pretty awesome though.

I've been looking at cars a little. Seen a used Hybrid I'm interested in and not a single electric car that I like the looks of, but I like the idea of them.

So many hybrids and electrics seem to look like ass to me.

Maybe by the time it's new car time there will be more options.
 

racecar

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Biden give out a $7500 credit on electric cars, maybe once there a few more choice out the price would be more competitive. I think all the engineering are base on California standard. Mileage might vary , won’t work too well for cold weather.
 
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terry.330

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The Prius isn't too bad in winter weather since it's so damn heavy because of the giant ass battery. My Sister, Niece and Mom all have them and love them.

They're everywhere here and Teslas aren't uncommon but I've never seen a single charging station. Not buying gas does seem awesome but I agree every model except the sporty Tesla is ugly as fuck.
 

NeoSneth

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Not yet for me. I'm still a good 3-5 years out. If I need to get another car before that time, then I plan to buy something used that will hold me over.
 

Heinz

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Still driving a pre Diesel-gate VW caddy so for me not for a very long time. I see plenty of hybrids around, mostly Taxi's and some Tesla's every now and then. Waiting for Hydrogen....
 

LoneSage

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Plenty of them cars over here. They get green license plates. Many of the buses here are converted as well.
 

StevenK

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Full electric cars are here and there but they're still prohibitively expensive for your average joe. Hybrids are absolutely everywhere - but they're a waste of time. They don't seem to offer any advantages that I can see - mpg is about average, emissions are about the same as a standard petrol, it's all for show.

They do have plug in hybrids which on paper seem like the best of both worlds - electric for local journeys, combustion engine kicks in when you need to go for a long trip. Real world results aren't panning out though - people just don't bother to charge the battery when they get home and end up just on permanent petrol.

The infrastructure here for plug ins is now fully established. For the 35 people who have a full electric car. If someone cracks a £10k electric family car the whole thing is going to come crashing down without some serious investment.
 

fenikso

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The next car I get is going to be electric. I'm hoping to buy a decent second-hand electric sometime early next year, and then upgrade to something new, once solid state batteries get off the ground, hopefully in 2025.

Funny you guys don't have any charging stations... Here in Dubuque, IA, better known as BFE, there are two or three Tesla charging stations not far from my house. I haven't looked into other, non-Tesla, charging stations, but I'd almost be surprised if there wasn't at least one somewhere.
 

joe8

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Who here owns an electric or a hybrid.

Who here plans on getting on in the not too distant future.

I've been kind of looking at some of them. A hybrid car is pretty common to see around here. An electric car is something I seldom see.

There isn't the support for one. Not locally and not any place that you would drive to around here until you get beyond the range of a lot of them. There are maybe a few chargers I know of in the next bigger city over, and then beyond that there maybe one at a dealership here. Then next to nothing along the way to anyplace a person would want to go.

I don't see that they will be really viable for many years at the current speed that charging places are popping up.

The thought of never having to pump gas again is pretty awesome though.

I've been looking at cars a little. Seen a used Hybrid I'm interested in and not a single electric car that I like the looks of, but I like the idea of them.

So many hybrids and electrics seem to look like ass to me.

Maybe by the time it's new car time there will be more options.
Everyone is waiting to see if electric cars can become a mainstream thing in the US. Because that's where a lot of technology things really start. The Tesla 2 (which will sell for $25,000) and the Tesla Semi might be the game changers.

Governments haven't pushed electric cars as much as they could, which may be because they won't be able to heavily tax electricity, like they can with diesel/petrol/gas.
Whenever people talk about the benefits of electric cars, it's always about climate change & fossil fuels. They never talk about other environmental issues, like air quality.

People think they will run out of electricity, while they're on the road, and they can't just walk to the nearest gas station with a jerry can. The switch from everybody using petrol cars, to everyone using electric cars, is not as simple as you might think, there are quite a few things that are stopping it happening.
 
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FAT$TACKS

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Locally, I've seen at least 3 different Tesla cars. One was the X, the other two I think were one of the sedan models.

As for the Hybrid cars I would be cool with, a BMW I8 looks pretty good, but from what hear they are kind of shit in some ways. Also, the price on those I feel is kind of much, even on the used ones.
 

racecar

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Here a good side concept, a back up battery service that offer the car 50-100 km on a spare suitcase battery . This it’s like back in the 90s when early cellphones first came out everyone will carry a spare phone battery.
 
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Arcademan

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I see Teslas all over the place here...oh wait...I live a couple blocks away from a Tesla dealership and mechanic shop :tickled:
 

NGT

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I have a 2016 Ford Fusion. It's a hybrid, but plugs in. It gets me between 16-22 miles per charge. Depends on the time of year. Less in the winter. That almost gets me to work and back. I went from filling up once a week to once a month or longer. Cut about 150-200 off of our monthly has bill. I haven't noticed any real increase in our electricity bill either.
 

Dochartaigh

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I don't think the infrastructure is there yet for pure-electric cars. I'm not going to go out of my way to find a charging station while traveling, then wait there for 10-100 times longer to charge the car than it takes to fill the tank with gas. My commute each way to work is 50 miles (pre-covid of course), and I commonly drive another ~30-50+ miles after work if I see something cool on CL/Marketplace to pick up – the car would most likely run out of juice. Not to mention long weekend road trips (just to the shore is 102 miles each way)... An electric car sadly just wouldn't work for me.

Also, if you're purely into this to help the environment, people tend to forget that their electric car is STILL usually using fossil fuels to recharge it in most parts of the world - the majority of power plants in the USA for example are still powered by fossil fuels.

Even if you live in a country/area which has a more sustainable energy grid, mining the materials for the huge rechargeable batteries used in these cars is also one of the most utterly destructive processes known to the environment and uses TONS more resources to produce and refine.

Overall the jury still seems to be out on the overall impact or electric cars vs. gas-powered car over their lifetimes. I've read multiple articles that say electric cars are like 80% less impact vs. gas car, then read another couple other articles (all are in reputable publications and seem to be researched and cited) that say that electric cars actually have MORE of a negative impact on the environment over their lifetime than a high-MPG gas powered car does...
 
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Digmac

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Here’s my take from someone on the west coast.

In my state and in my area, there are charging stations everywhere. Every town around me has charging stations installed, and some larger cities have Tesla super chargers in place. It’s completely viable to purchase an electric vehicle here because you can actually use it. You can even take your electric vehicle on a road trip to the seaside, because we have charging stations installed at the coastal towns too. I see electric vehicles often, and there are plenty of Teslas on the road. I’d say they’re common, along with the Nissan Leaf and BMW i3. In other areas of the United States, this isn’t the case, so I don’t recommend even considering one unless you have the level of infrastructure I’ve mentioned.

My family has had two hybrid vehicles, both designed as hybrids, meant to be hybrids (Toyota Prius, Honda Insight). I think you reap the benefits of having that type of vehicle if it was designed to have the gasoline/electric powertrain exclusively. Some vehicles offer both a gasoline engine option and a hybrid one. I think the mileage differences between those can be meager, and really only make an impact in heavy city driving.

At the end of the day you’ll need to weigh the pros and cons for what you specifically need out of a vehicle, but with the trend of smaller displacement engines paired with a turbo, pure gasoline vehicles have never been more efficient. If you really did want a hybrid that doesn’t look like one, get a Lexus.
 

FAT$TACKS

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I don't know how long it will take for car charging infrastructure to get in place in this part of the country but the way things have been going, I would not expect it any time soon. I would be kind of surprised if it was even this decade. There will be some charging places pop up I'm sure but I can't imagine fully electric cars will be really adopted here for quite a while.

Also, trucks and sport utility are the big deals here. Jeeps are all over the place. The roads are over all good compared to most places I've drove on road trips, but still they are pretty crappy in a lot of ways. I feel that is because people driving big floaty SUVs don't feel every little defect like you do in a sports car, so there isn't any impetus for the state, city, or whatever to improve the roads until they go to total shit.

There are some streets I just avoid all together. With the cost of what repair work is needed for the roads I fully expect to see some kind of electric car tax or mileage tax put into place to cover for the lost money from the tax on fuel. So I half way figure by the time we are able to have electric cars here, there really won't be much if any savings to be had anymore as I also expect most tax credits on that sort of thing to be expired as well.
 

evil wasabi

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I think my next car will also be an ICE. I’m totally for TSLA, and have a lot of it because I believe in the power storage, solar, etc. But not trying to be in a Tesla.
 

NeoSneth

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I don't think the infrastructure is there yet for pure-electric cars. I'm not going to go out of my way to find a charging station while traveling, then wait there for 10-100 times longer to charge the car than it takes to fill the tank with gas. My commute each way to work is 50 miles (pre-covid of course), and I commonly drive another ~30-50+ miles after work if I see something cool on CL/Marketplace to pick up – the car would most likely run out of juice. Not to mention long weekend road trips (just to the shore is 102 miles each way)... An electric car sadly just wouldn't work for me.

Also, if you're purely into this to help the environment, people tend to forget that their electric car is STILL usually using fossil fuels to recharge it in most parts of the world - the majority of power plants in the USA for example are still powered by fossil fuels.

Even if you live in a country/area which has a more sustainable energy grid, mining the materials for the huge rechargeable batteries used in these cars is also one of the most utterly destructive processes known to the environment and uses TONS more resources to produce and refine.

Overall the jury still seems to be out on the overall impact or electric cars vs. gas-powered car over their lifetimes. I've read multiple articles that say electric cars are like 80% less impact vs. gas car, then read another couple other articles (all are in reputable publications and seem to be researched and cited) that say that electric cars actually have MORE of a negative impact on the environment over their lifetime than a high-MPG gas powered car does...

This is almost all wrong and it sounds more like excuses. You don't need to make excuses if you are a petrol head, or you just like big trucks. Just own it. I'm gonna be driving my petrol sports car well into the EV generation just because i like the sound of explosions.

Your commute example has the car running out of juice at ~150miles, which I highly doubt you drive daily. Fair enough, some people do commute quite far where it's expensive to live near the city. The cheapest Tesla has a range of 244 miles. Almost 100 miles extra for your Range Anxiety, which is a real thing with EV driving. Almost any electric car can do this. Even old ones.

You don't need to go to a quick charging station. If you do, most of them are 30minutes. Much longer than a gas stop, but its closer to 50% longer when you compare the average road trip stop. Everyone I know with an EV tops off at home. That's the benefit. You are full every day, which would reduce your total stops per week. So if you are driving 150 miles a day, that would be roughly 2-3 gas stops a week vs 0 stop with EV charging at home.

You are correct that manufacturing is not any better, and possible worse than a petrol vehicle. Long term ownership has a much lower environmental impact, but there is an upfront penalty with these batteries. The energy grid is a lose - lose with petrol, so I don't see that argument. We do need more Nuclear plants vs coal and gas.

Overall impact is not even debatable. You will use 10,000's of gallons of petrol, and gallons and gallons of motor oil throughout the life of a standard car. The upfront penalty for battery production is not even close to that. Prius battery packs will also skew this data, as they are much worse than the packs of the last 5 years. Hybrid cars are one of the biggest jokes on the consumer market, right next to bottled water.
 

LoneSage

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I think my next car will also be an ICE. I’m totally for TSLA, and have a lot of it because I believe in the power storage, solar, etc. But not trying to be in a Tesla.

I tutor a kid whose dad works at Tesla. Took me for a ride in his and I quite liked it. Why not drive a Tesla?
 

Heinz

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That's a cool lookin Honda. Reminds me of the Audi TT but fat.
 

LoneSage

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I know there's something wrong with me, when I only care about a car being able to bring me from point A to point B. wasabi is made of sterner stuff, undoubtedly.
 

Lastblade

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Our battery technology still sucks. Too heavy and doesn't hold enough juice. I do like them once the tech improves.

Covid, OTOH is the real MVP in terms of cutting emissions and pollution.
 
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