Father; husband; mechanical engineer. Posting from my self-hosted Lemmy instance here in beautiful New Jersey. I also post from my Pixelfed instance.

  • 21 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • What you’re describing only works if an increasing number of parking spots have chargers installed at them. I just don’t think it’s sustainable or feasible.

    My main contention is that long range BEVs are a bad idea. They might mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but that comes with the above infrastructure problems, increasing demand on the problematic battery industry, and in turn creating more battery disposal problems. Furthermore, they perpetuate the living room on wheels paradigm that holds us back from the real solution to transporting people over land: rail. Meanwhile, short range BEVs are great because they make the most of their batteries, barely require any new infrastructure, and save their owners the hassle of needing to visit a gas station or find a “fast” charger at all.


  • BEVs aren’t compatible with the gas station model because they take too long to charge. ICE vehicles and even FCEVs are in and out of a gas station in five minutes, so you don’t need a big footprint to fuel up a lot of vehicles. BEVs need to park for a while to get a substantial charge, not even full one. The fast chargers get Teslas to 80% in something like thirty minutes. So, if these fast charger were installed adjacent to gas pumps, the price to charge your BEV would have to be something like 6x the cost to refuel in order to cover the missed fuel sales.

    As for what type of vehicle a someone should own for the scenario you describe, a long range BEV is overkill. Either keep a ICE car for all your driving or keep a small BEV for local trips and rent a more appropriate vehicle for infrequent long trips. Better yet, take a train or bus for those long trips and rent a short range BEV closer to your final destination.



  • When these batteries burn, they can’t be put out except by cooling them down somehow because they contain their own oxidizer. So fire departments tend to just let them burn and send whatever metals and other chemicals into the atmosphere. A gasoline fire can be put out with fire suppressants that deprive it of air. Apart from that, the batteries are also hazardous in terms of their manufacturing and disposal lifecycle and also just by making vehicles heavier. Heavier vehicles mean more energetic collisions and they also require bigger brakes, which means more brake dust pollution.