xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas

The motors have never been the problem, it's always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.

This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.

"On the other hand gas has a much higher energy density than batteries and a much faster refuel rate."

But remember, electric motors also require next to no maintenance and can last for many years of runtime. Pros and cons.

Real answer: power density. Pound for pound, gas still contains more energy than our best batteries. The weight of energy storage is still a massive deal for anything that cannot be tethered to a grid or be in close practical proximity for frequent recharging, from rockets, planes and cars (sometimes) to chainsaws and lawnmowers (sometimes).

The price. The price is the problem for all us poors.

Only thing stopping me having one is cost.

Gas engines have decent range. Gas engines are cheaper (as the electric engine prices are artificially inflated, just look at Chinese prices), with gas engines you can listen to the sound of the engine to diagnose problems before they occur, batteries don't degrade (you still have car batteries, but when they degrade, you can still drive a car for as long as with the new battery. You can refuel it in a couple of seconds. Anyone can make one sided arguments. There isn't a best thing for everything.

Gas engine makes good noises. Checkmate.

This comic is clearly about lawn mowers people. Who discusses cars when wearing a hat like that?

He is not wrong, but he is not adressing the actual criticism of electric vehicles, so it is kind of pointless.

It's about the battery, nerd. 🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄

Yeah but petrol cars go brum brum

Gasoline motors can be recharged in a couple of minutes.

Electric cars is not the solution. Sure, it's an improvement, but for a real solution you need to get people out of personal vehicles on onto public transportation. Trains, trams, busses, whatever. Build it in a way that doesn't suck. Assuming american, the US had (past tense) amazing train/tram networks decades ago. Every warehouse had a rail spur, and since walking was considered ok people weren't obese fatasses.

I drive a scooter. It is possible to live without a car, although it does have some difficulties sometimes. If your job is within 10 miles of your home or less, then you don't need a car for your commute. If I can do it so can you. I'd still rather take a bus, if it existed.

From personal experience, you also need a garage to keep an electric car in if you're in an extreme cold climate, those batteries can fail if in the deep cold for long enough and those car companies do NOT have the replacement parts in stock to fix it quickly.

I would absolutely love to have an EV. But they are very expensive, especially compared to the gas-powered car I already own.

If you read comments on Instagram and the like, people hate electric cars because...

...they don't do the vroom-vroom noise.

I feel like this is directed towards ICE vs EV cars. If that's the case, it's sort of frustrating.

EVs have some very real drawbacks. Even if those drawbacks are solvable problems, they are still problems right now. Pushing this narrative that EVs are universally better or that the biggest hurdle to adoption is irrational consumer sentiment will just make people feel gaslit. It'll also make people more hesitant to adopt later on, because they'll be skeptical of positive reviews that are honest.

It's true. But a v-twin motorcycle like a Ducati or Moto Guzzi ignites your balls like no electric motor can.

The one thing stopping me is seeing how they fare long term with the overwhelming amount of electronics added to the cars.

Hopefully car manufacturers goes a different direction as electronic and appliances company went. Everyone I know that are into EVs went through 2 or 3 different one in the time I've owned my ICE car (~10 years). Most because of their lease ending and wanting the absolute newest but others due to battery issues making the car a total loss due to replacement cost.

Actually, piston engines are really bad a torque. It's why they need a flywheel or a large amount of pistons.

Is this a joke I'm not getting, or just a statement?

On the other other hand, gas car makers have regulators by the ballsack. So we've got that going for us which is nice

I'll get an electric when I can get a used one for around $5k and not have to worry about the battery going out and costing $20k.

I'd love to have one, but I don't see it happening any time soon unfortunately.

I'm big into motorcycles and all the electric motorcycles are like 100 lbs more and go through tires like twice a year compared to my gas powered motorcycle changing tires once everyother year and can go fraction of the distance. Idk I want to think electric is the future but with these limits I'm still not too interested. If hydrogen ever comes to motorcycles like Kawasaki, Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki want, I'll definitely get one of those but I can't recommend any electric motorcycles right now and before you say anything I would recommend a Surron if you check your welds before you buy those are great commuters but probably not a motorcycle.

The reason I'm pretty much undecided about EVs is the rare metals in the batteries. The pollution by gathering and the inhumane treatment of the workers who extract these resources. I'm still hoping for better alternatives in the energy storage medium

I'll keep my ICE and ride a bike. I'll still do less environmental damage than you because I am human powered for all but the trips to the mountains, and then I don't have to worry about being stranded without a plug.

And I have yet to hear a convincing argument that taking my perfectly working vehicle off the road to buy another manufactured product is still more environmentally friendly than... not buying anything at all.

I don't give a fuck about initial torque. I'm going to be laughing in my wheetabix when there's not a single EV older than a decade on their original batteries.

Downvotes don't make me wrong, chuds.

Someone has to build quite a few more power stations though. Assuming you're talking about swapping a large fraction of the car fleet to EV, not just a few here and there. That's a substantial increase in total electricity demand. Enough to radically impact the load on the grid.

And if you end up burning natual gas / coal to meet the marginal increase in demand - as would seem fairly likely - then much of the thermal conversion losses you're saving in the higehr efficieny motor just get shifted to the furnace in the power station and transmission/distribution system; so that can erode some of the efficiency benefits.

I guess you could require for every new EV that they also install roftop solar PV and basically buy a spare battery of near same capacity as the car. that might push the up front and periodic replacement cost a bit though - quite nice for the running costs i guess.

Another good alternative is to try to convince people to get together and share their electric motors in things callled trains and do as many trips in those as possible - that's not too popular with most people unless the road congestion is really bad. Something to do with sharing being communism i think,

Gas engines smell good 🥰

An interesting article about the Muskmelon, Tesla, and fuel cells. []https://energynews.biz/will-tesla-release-hydrogen-car/ (take the article with a spoonful of salt I think) It's perhaps another attempt at a pump and dump stock fraud as he does need money for twitter. But, I've seen a couple of these blurbs lately and I can't find where they originate from.

Even the ketamine wonder wants to sound like he thinks Tesla is going to abandon pure EVs and build and sell something with a hydrogen fuel cell evidently. If so,and you can't rule out it out completely yet, the ICE engine might not be done yet - just swapping a fuel source.

so my sisters Mazda MX-30 has more HP than my uncles Peterbilt 389? cool, I'll use it to haul my horse trailer. define "more powerful". Makes the point but XKCD usually does better.

What interests me is the terror threshold. People are just so much more, including me, afraid of electric motors vs ICE per kw.

Thats not very accurate, ICE motors aren't quite out dated just yet. Electric has a long way to go with the storage and refuel cycle

Because "better overall" is a silly concept to use here, and is bring deliberately done to "both sides" the debate.

For driving really fast: petrol

For not killing our planets ability to sustain himan life: electric

Its not that hard

On one hand, electric motors [...]
On the other hand, electric motors [...]

Typo?

Yeah they're great. Just gotta pull out a diesel generator to charge them when it's minus 40

Cool but they sound like shit. No aesthetics in evs. You don't feel connected to the car. Don't feel the engagement. But hey, cars are all about stats, right, right??

Edit: ok so I get downvoted for having a differing opinion from the majority of Lemmy users here. I'm wrong in saying that EV engines sound like shit?PLEASE one downvoter, explain to me how such a statement deserves a downvote?

Majority of you probably just use your car as a means of transportation. I don't. I also drive to have fun. That's also why I never drive automatic as it is (to me) more engaging and challenging with a manual gear box. Let me give you another example: weight. EVs are heavy, always. I don't like heavily cars because I don't find them enjoyable to drive on small roads.

Please understand that there is more to the world of cars than numbers.

Extremely rare XKCD L

Edit: downvote me all you want, it won't make electric cars charge any faster, have any more range, be any more affordable, work any better in the cold, or be any more fixable by their owners.