Electric Cars

[Kai]

Hey Eric, I want to hear your thoughts about electric cars.

My understanding of “electric cars” has always been the kind slow moving tiny cars that has to be charged up every 10 miles…until now!
I have heard Tesla before, but I did not know the sport model Tesla Model S P85D makes a whopping 691 horse power and is capable of a 0-60 of 3.1 seconds. It can go 300 ish mile if fully charged. The car is very spacious and comfortable to ride as well.

I would say with the rapid advance of technology, electric cars will dominate the consumer market in 10 years. Tesla is really expensive, but they will become very cheap once they are mass produced. Think about it electric cars are so simple, a one speed fixed transmission is enough, because electric motors can start making power any moment, they don’t need to be idling all the time as internal combustion engines do. The main obstacle now is battery technology, once that bottle neck is overcome, electric cars will largely replace conventional vehicles.

Lets imagine some day, 5 or 10 or 20 years from now, when electric cars start to take over, most gas stations are converted to electric charging stations, the only few gas stations that are left sell gas ridiculously expensive… There will be a lot of sentiments about internal combustion engines, but eventually people opt for electric cars because it is just so easy to make reliable POS electric cars than to make internal combustion cars.

To be honest, I really like cars as they are now (and they were from the 70s), I will feel sad to say goodbye to them, although the rational part of me will choose electric cars.

Topic

[Mike]

Electric cars lie to you.

The promoters always massage and spin the numbers so that best-case scenarios are always presented as “normal”. 300 mile range? Not during a cold dark north east or mid west winter, when you’re tapping battery capacity for cabin heat, rear window defogger, and other necessary accessories to make your commute survivable.

And for solving the “bottleneck” of battery technology, people have been promising that the solution is just around the next corner since before the First World War. We’ve turned a lot of corners since then. You can’t overcome basic chemistry and electrical properties, and every “advance” comes with unintended consequences. These days we have modern rechargeable batteries that are unpredictable fire hazards and are classified as hazardous cargo.

The promise of electric vehicles is alluring and seductive. The reality of electric vehicles isn’t quite so wonderful.

[EricTheCarGuy]

I don’t have a great deal of experience with them so I don’t have a lot to draw on here. I’ll read up to see if I can come up with something. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Room_24]

I also have same questions in mind as we are also planning to buy electric car. I think nowadays these cars have got good speed and the battery capacity is also increased but still I need detailed Electric car buyers guide to be clear with this decision. Hopefully will find one soon.

[Author]

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