this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
64 points (88.1% liked)
Technology
59402 readers
3121 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wouldn't purchase one myself that was more than a hybrid until Honda and Toyota (they're currently closest) square out making solid state batteries that can last a long time. They should be smaller, lighter, cheaper to make, and charge much, much, faster if need be.
Right now if an all electrics battery goes bad it's costs a massive amount of money to replace and for many vehicles it's really hard to take out of a vehicle. Toyota is claiming a production vehicle should be 2027-2028 and that company doesn't generally blow smoke up people's ass about something only 4 years out. They should be able to get a car with a 300 mile range that can charge in a few minutes in a battery compact enough to easily be removed if it goes bad. That's what electric vehicles really need. Something that won't cost $60,000 and end up in a scrap yard after 15 years.
Your belief that EVs aren't ready yet is the entire point of Toyota's constant news articles about solid state batteries. Toyota also says EVs are toys and hydrogen is the future, but I'm sure they're totally serious about EVs.
They've been saying solid state batteries are coming in a year or two for years already and still don't have a prototype to show off.
They haven't been saying a release window for years.
They aren't currently the only company saying around 2028 because it has multiple companies involved.
Hydrogen would be the better option, but delivery is much more complicated than electricity.
Lithium batteries still suck and are a poor choice for all electric vehicles no matter if solid state batts come out or not. They don't last long enough, can't be replaced easily enough, weigh too much, and cost too much to replace.
It's also not a nail in the coffin to end needing oil or pollution. It will help a lot, but passenger vehicles use about 1/4 of all oil used and are far, far less than that for pollution created. So even if every single passenger car, suv, mini van, and pick up truck was all electric with batteries that never sent bad, you're looking at like 5% less pollution and 25% less oil consumption, and that's before you add some pollution back into the mix for what it will take to create all the extra electricity that would be needed, since we haven't gotten all of that switched over yet to solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear.
I'd love not needing to rely on gas for my vehicles, but at this time today it only minorly helps pollution and will make overpriced paperweights 15 or so years after purchase.
Hydrogen is terrible. It is much more expensive than even gasoline, adds way more complexity compared to all electric, and extremely inefficient. It's a joke. It might make sense for semis in the future but will never make sense for passenger cars. The Mirai is a concept science experiment sold as a consumer car.
Batteries are expensive to replace right now but that's only because we don't have battery recycling infrastructure yet. Eventually they will be much cheaper to replace. Already, even factoring replacing the battery every 100k miles, electric cars are cheaper to own than gas and many batteries are known to last 200k+ miles. It really is only the Leaf that has the shitty battery that needs replacing.