Electric transportation? The future or?

Looks like a good time :+1:t2:

Very, very bold choice of name

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Anecdotal stories donā€™t solve real issues. Just to be clear, I fully support transitioning from fossil fuel powered transportation to electric powered transportation but there are real and often very troubling issues to be overcome and managed. The pro EV crowd tends to gloss over these issues, sometimes with worthless anecdotal stories, but more often by simply ignoring them.

In the US the main issues with EVs appear to be a very severe lack of charging stations, particularly in urban areas, range issues and high cost of ownership. The cost issue is all about the rush by the manufacturers to offer EVs as either giant SUVs/pickup trucks or as high end luxury cars. Need to buy a car for under $30K, then itā€™s a new compact ICE car or a used ICE vehicle.

The pro EV crowd really needs to start addressing the issues and criticisms with workable solutions instead of promises of things to come, like that jet pack Iā€™m still waiting for.

I agree very much with most of what @danny wrote but I want to call out one point.

@danny wrote:

in response to @Jim_Fā€™s comment from December:

We have a Mach-E. Itā€™s our second electric - it replaced a Tesla Model S which we had for 3 years.

We absolutely love the Mach-E and, in the balance, I donā€™t consider it an inferior product at all. Itā€™s far more comfortable than our Tesla was, has better electronics including CarPlay, and is fun to drive. BlueCruise is winning rewards and accolades for its cruise-related features. Itā€™s different than Tesla. It doesnā€™t do as much but having used both extensively, Iā€™d choose BlueCruise over Tesla. Itā€™s a bit difficult to explain but it feels smarter and more collaborative with the human driver.

On a related note, I strongly believe that we need to move further and further in the direction of electric micro-mobility vehicles. For all of Elanā€™s historical bluster around saving the planet, Tesla sold the world on the vision of everyone swapping their big, resource-heavy internal-combustion-based automobiles for big, resource-heavy, battery-powered automobiles. Iā€™d like to see us move further towards micro-vehicle friendly urban environments where electric bicycles, scooters, motorcycles are the norm for short distance travel. I do my part with a Zero electric motorcycle :slight_smile:

Absolutely! We, especially the ā€œweā€ here in the US, need to move to a more varied transportation system. EVs of all sizes, e-bikes, e-motorcycles and MASS transit systems that donā€™t suck!! Plus some form of vehicle rental system of those long distance trips.

Regarding mass transit here in the US, when one party is power they do everything in their power to destroy the existing mass transit systems and offer no plans for any expansion or future mass transit systems. When the other party is in power they do everything they can to repair the damage to the mass transit systems caused by the other party. Back and forth we go with the end result being aging and badly broken mass transit systems with little hope of improvement, expansion and new mass transit systems.

Please donā€™t delete or ban this post because it mentions ā€œpoliticsā€ but rather understand that itā€™s more about looking at the situation realistically so that the depth of the problem can be better understood.

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Software is a massive part of ā€œthe product.ā€ I have zero confidence in Ford in this domain. I love that my Tesla stays exciting and feels new year after year due to significant software upgrades. My family gets a lot of joy beyond the driving and the seats.

That said, Roon exists because I feel the same about audio hardware manufacturers!

Has BlueCruise left the highway yet? I have a friend with the Mach-E and he said his hasnā€™t. Donā€™t know when you replaced the Tesla, but FSD beta continues to get better and better every month. I saw the same thing happen with Auto Pilot in 2017. It used to do some pretty strange stuff, like ping-ponging in the lanes, but it just got better and better. Last year, Auto Pilot only activated on highways because FSD took over on local roads. A recent update got FSD going on highways too. The last few updates to FSD make Auto PIlot look primitive.

There are segments of the population that are early adopters whose experiences can be thought of as foretellings of the future. While my experience in Brooklyn in 2017 was uncommon, that same garage is full of Teslas and chargers today. I rent out that condo now, and my renter also uses my spot with a Tesla. Not everyone that looked to rent my place had a Tesla, but it was more common than I would have thought.

Where I live now, in the suburbs, the majority of my local friends (we all have similar lives) have Teslas with chargers at home. Two of these families have 2 Teslas! The combo always seems to be 3/S + X/Y, but that makes sense for people with kids. Some still have 1 ICE, but are just waiting for the lease to end or waiting for it to end.

One guy has a Tesla and a Lucid, and the Mach-E ownerā€™s husband is waiting for a Cybertruck.

Maybe we are just in a weird neighborhood. Itā€™s filled with older folks with adult children and a ton of new transplants from NYC who have young children.

I :heart: trains! Happy to live in a region in the US that actually uses them.

Iā€™ve had ICE bikes in the past, but I donā€™t find them super useful. Iā€™ve not really commuted for the last 15 years, so theyā€™ve always just been entertainment. Post-kids, no way.

When the Bukk arrives later this year, itā€™ll be entertainment as well. I didnā€™t even get the street legal kit.

I did use the Revel scooters in NYC though! Pretty fun, but those things were in pretty rough shape.

Completely off topic but worth a comment:

FiiO appears to be working hard to show that audio manufacturers can do ā€œsoftwareā€, however they are doing it by embracing existing software solutions (Android, Roon) rather than developing new and all too often unworkable software of their own.

The Mach-E had a rocky start with OTA updates but Ford has improved quite a bit. Regular updates now. Significant updates to everything from UX, to BlueCruise capabilities, to HVAC, etc. Even games on the screen, if thatā€™s your thing. CarPlay is a massive differentiator, too.

Hasnā€™t left the highway. Canā€™t even do lane changes. But I still think itā€™s safer and better. I donā€™t trust Tesla whether Iā€™m behind the wheel or Iā€™m sharing the road with one. Especially on a motorcycle. Iā€™m sure you know what Iā€™m referring to. The decision to go with pure vision was nothing but hubris. Ford is certainly behind in some ways, and more conservative in others, but I just donā€™t see this as a resulting in an ā€œinferiorā€ product.

With respect to the rest of your perspective on EVs, I couldnā€™t agree more. We do have the benefit of living in a single-dwelling home with a charger in the garage. Our Mach-E and my motorcycle have the same port, so we can charge either at high capacity. Iā€™ve got a 110v charger for my motorcycle which I typically use. Our second car is an ICE car that we use for longer drives. The one caveat for us about electric is that my wifeā€™s folks live about 200 miles away and have health issues. When we have to get down there, we take the ICE car because we need to get down quickly, without worrying about charging. When we arrive, we need to be ready for whatever driving we need to do - again without worrying about charging. So the electric isnā€™t perfect for us for all scenarios, but for daily driving, itā€™s exceptional.

The bukk! :slight_smile:

I used to commute - now I work at home. I actually find my Zero to be exceptionally useful. I have an SR/S with side and top cases which make it very capable for all sorts of errands, appointments, etc. Sometimes I do head into the office which is about 20 miles away but involves a bridge and roads with HOV lanes which motorcycles are permitted to use. In commute traffic home, being on a bike can halve the drive time.

I understand this is your situation, but holy crap. Thatā€™s like a 4-hour drive! I guess I donā€™t drive much, because being stuck in a car for that long sounds like hell to me. I would never arrange my life to even have that possibility.

All the DAP manufacturers are in this situation, with varying levels of polished product. HiFi Rose also embraces this idea on component-level devices too.

Thatā€™s really nice. The Bukk only has a 3kWh battery, so it doesnā€™t really impact my future forest adventures, but l hate the idea of having 2 chargers.

Back on topic, I could never use a ICE dirt bike hereā€¦ way too loud. My neighbors, even as far as they are, would kill me.

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You drive 50 mph? I go a little faster.

Weā€™ve lived in and around Seattle since 1998. My wifeā€™s folks decided to move from California to a fairly rural spot about 200 miles south of us to ā€œbe closerā€. Itā€™s complicated. Wasnā€™t my choice. I wouldnā€™t say that I ā€œarranged my life to ā€¦ have that possibility.ā€ It was done without my consent :slight_smile:

If you think you can help here, Iā€™ll give you their phone number. Might be worth a shot.

I donā€™t ride dirt. I get at least 80 miles of mixed road use on my SR/S. That turns out to be plenty.

Thatā€™s a very urban perspective. And, no offense, well-off urban owner in a major metropolis. What about people in apartment complexes covering the suburbia?

You must be very light on the accelerator. Summer P-Zeros would barely last a summer on a decidedly ICE-powered car for me, Granted, on a faster side but with nothing like Tesla torqueā€¦

The last thing I would trust Felon Tusk is with software that had actually been tested in any way. Well, maybe the fart jokes functionality does get tested, because itā€™s one thing that *is important to Melon, but not anything to do with safety of life.

Isnā€™t ā€œFSDā€, all of Huskā€™s bluster aside, the least developed and reliable of all major driver assistance systems available?

Letā€™s rewind to my thoughts on infrastructure and why I think we are not remotely close.
Until charging stations are as plentiful as gas stations and you donā€™t need an app to tell you where you might find a charging station ( and no guarantee it will be either in service or occupied already) then the situation remains completely unacceptable to the vast majority.

Now letā€™s fast forward and say we actually have all those plentiful charging stations.
Where do you suppose all the electricity is going to come from?
Our electric grid is already at a very heavily strained state right now with some places already past breaking point, West Coast rolling blackouts are already a reality.

Now letā€™s increase our draw on the grid from say 7% vehicles right now to 50 or 70 or 90%!
What on earth does anyone think is going to happen?

Yes it will all get there probably but NOT this decade or even the next I fear.

So I stand by my statement that we are nowhere near being ready and will not be in my lifetime.
I truly do wish it was otherwise but I just donā€™t see it.
Will be happy to be proved wrong :grin:

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These are all issues that need to be solved, can be solved, will be solved. Or, we can all throw up our hands and burn to death. Maybe not in my lifetime, but perhaps in my grandchildrenā€™s.

Iā€™m waiting for a wind powered car.

My idea is that all the roads be paved with embedded solar cells and we hang metal strips off the rear bumper.

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Exactly Jimā€¦and really that was my main point initially.
They are solvable and will be resolved but I fear for the future of companies like GMC who gone public with a statement of they will be all electric only by 2035.
That might be a risky move.
Just 12 more years to get everything in place?
I seriously doubt it.

This is a very interesting and clean (sic) discussion, letā€™s not attack people instead keep it to the discussion of ideas and the technology.

EVs are a stepping stone to the greater issue at hand.

Our beautiful planet cannot take many more decades of willful pollution.

Many sources available online show between 12k to 50k miles before a EV is greener than an ICE equivalent. Thatā€™s based on production and running (charging).

Charging an EV only makes sense if the power is 100% renewable. No supplier can guarantee this, even those that claim they are 100% renewable arenā€™t and itā€™s in the small print.

Electrical grids may not be able to take the extra load and to bring this up to a standard that can and will, will create more pollution.

One hell of a vicious circle.

What to do?

Drive less? Take peopleā€™s civil liberties away will not be welcomed lightly.

But, we need to use less. Less fossil fuels now. Less electric now.

Why?

Because we have taken for granted that these commodities are just there for us and sadly havenā€™t really had a second thought about it.

Iā€™m teaching my kids daily about how we can save money. Do they listen, no, but Iā€™m doing my best to educate them of the reason why. They pick up on bits of what I talk to them about and they try there best.

Since our electric and gas costs rocketed the other year, we made adjustments to our lives.

Cold, put a jumper on rather than increase the thermostat by 1Ā°C. We actually turned ours down from 21Ā°C to 18Ā°C over the last two years through winter and used a lot less natural gas, although the cost wasnā€™t by the same ratio due to the unit cost of natural gas.

We have the absolute minimal essentials plugged in and then plug in what we need as and when needed. Roon Core always on and I monitor the consumption of this regularly. May go back to my 20watt core rather than my Dell PC with a 200watt supply.

Whilst Iā€™ve digressed from the topic, itā€™s all relevant.

We are trying to preserve our planet.

Ultimately it isnā€™t going to be practicable for everyone to buy all electric. The used car market will go nuts on ICE vehicles. Whenā€™s the date for ICE having a total ban?

Well, new petrol and diesel cars/vans 2030 and hybrids 2035. These dates may shift.

The used car/van market has no date set.

The ban in producing petrol and diesel has no date set.

So buying EVs right now, whilst in principle is good, itā€™s not as green as we thought.

Like my earlier post says, Toyota needs to pull their finger out on these hydrogen ICE units. Thatā€™s the way forward IMHO. Until something else is invented.

Walk and cycle more. Might get healthier in the process.

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I donā€™t think I had made any attacks (not intentionally, anyway) against any participants here. It was a general statement, and not even particularly controversialā€¦