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Cars are like horses: people will soon realise EVs are just better, claims VW boss
(www.autoexpress.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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A prius prime weighs less than a Tesla model 3. Model 3 is 1931kg with the long range battery and Prius is 1534kg for the heaviest verision.
A lot of people fail to realize exactly how much more energy dense gasoline and diesel are compared to batteries still. Imo one of the last big hurdles to overcome before complete adoption of evs.
It is energy dense, sure, but on average 70% of that energy is wasted as heat. However, in EVs, at least 80% is electricity is converted to mechanical energy. Thus, EVs are about 250% more effective. Of course, if you, are going diesel -> generator -> EV you are multiplying the efficiency, and you are much better using an ICE vehicle instead. But you don't have this issue wish solar to EV directly.
All in all, it comes to how much range can you get per potential energy. Solar or wind? Good. Coal, gas, diesel? Not so much. That's why having larger renewable ratio is helping EVs to reach economical goals.
Do you pay (absolutely imagined ratios) 1$ in diesel which yields 100km range, or 1$ in electricity which yields 200km range? Or 110 even. Then there is charging time. Do you spend 2 hours for one full tank for 10$, or 2 hours and 30 minutes for same price for electricity and 30m charging time on top? What's if it was 8$ to fully charge, meaning you paid 2$ less for 30 minutes of extra time?
Everything is just a numbers game. Are you saving the environmentxat the cost of your time? Are you paying less per kilometer so it outweighs cost of your time?
Currently, it is heavily personalized. Soon, either will make economical sense. Which one, we will see, but as we as society lean towards EVs and renewables, we'll soon see a shift towards EVs, hopefully.
I am not against one or the other, currently I understand some people economically prefer EVs while other prefer ICE.
Right but I'm strictly talking about weight. One pound of diesel gets u so much further than one pound of batteries, and once we get past that weight hurdle on EV the performance and efficiency of them will increase tremendously! I am excited to see what the figure holds, and the fact we got so far so fast as it is is promising.
And of that incredible energy density, most it get wasted by a significantly less efficient drivetrain.
Also, EVs have the potential to basically be "100% efficient" if they happen to be charged by solar. With combustion engines you're never going to get any sort of improvement, it's just always what it is.
Not necessarily true, things like direct injection, VVT and VVL and variable compression engines and variable vane turbos and 8 + speed transmissions have increased the efficiency of gas cars. The gas engines are still wasting a lot as heat, if you have any interest in that u should look into smokey yunick and his hot vapor engines. There are improvements to be made in ice but it will still never be 100% efficient. We have far from mastered internal combustion, and I suspect we never will as hopefully EV eventually replace most combustion vehicles.
Combustion engine efficiency is limited by hard physics and modern day combustion engines have gotten impressively close to that theoretical limit. So no, the remaining potential of ICE is not that great anymore.
Actual efficiency of BEVs is way better than even the theoretical limit of ICE.
Of new gas cars though. But by changing how you charge a battery you change its effective efficiency. A gas engine can't run on anything but gasoline. (E.g., gas and diesel engines aren't compatible with the opposite liquid.)
Right. But what I'm getting at is when we can have 1/3rd of the battery weight with the same capacity, the vehicle range will be even greater cuz it won't have to lug the batteries around too. Once we get past the weight of the batteries and are able to produce LIGHT evs, the ICE will become even less appealing. Weight has always been a struggle with electric vehicles, and to me is the obvious next big step in tech to improve them.
Battery weight isn’t as much a deal as you think it is. It can actually be beneficial. For example, instead of the weight being in the front of the car, you can have a lighter motor and have all that weight in between all four wheels. It really does wonders for winter traction.
It does wonders to increase ur inertia so u can't stop as well in snow too, and makes it harder to change direction. I live in a snowy mountain range and my 2900 lb shit box runs circles around the Tesla's and big trucks and suvs around here lol. Weight is the enemy of range, speed, efficiency, and gobbles up tires. I'm not saying the weight is an end all be all to things, but it is imo one of the major hurdles left to make EVs so much more competitive than they are. I mean shit a mid 90s geo metro is about as efficient as a brand new Prius. Why? Weight. Once evs can be produced in the 3k lb range they won't need as much battery for a 300 mile range, or the heavy EVs will have some fucking crazy 800 mile range. THAT is what will knock ice out of the park and get them all replaced. The next big leap in battery tech will about kill gass cars, and only ice left on the road will likely be diesel 18 wheelers. But what do I know? I just work on these things every day.
Honestly the only point you have is tires and not for the reason you think. No matter how stiff the rubber, it’s still flexible. So when you accelerate hard, which everyone with an EV does because it’s incredibly fun and we can’t help ourselves, the rubber will in the center of the tire and the rubber outside in the tread deform and go out of sync. It causes that tread the stress and bite harder, wearing much faster. It’s much more damaging to the tire than the weight difference from an ICEr.
There are 2 solutions to this: 1, implement a reduced acceleration rate from stop programmatically. Simple to do but it takes away a selling point on the car so you might introduce that as a “tire saving mode.” 2, self discipline. That’s never going to happen.
Considering there’s really nothing to break or wear on these cars aside from tires and wipers, manufacturers aren’t in any hurry to fix the tire issue.
As for reduced weight vehicles, look into the aptera. They are attacking this problem like you suggested, and the vehicle is so light and efficient solar panels become useful.
If you put the same tires on a 3k lb car as a 4k lb car and drive exactly the same, the 4k lb car will wear them quicker. Trust I'm no stranger to high power cars burning tires up, that's not what I'm talking about lol. And it was just one example. If you have 2 cars with same kwh batteries, but one is lighter, which is going further? This is basic physics to the point of bordering on common sense. I absolutely love the torque of EV cars and I can see how it would be hard to stay off the skinny pedal on a merge lol. The aptera looks freaking awesome and is imo sort of the next evolution of things. Simply, the lighter you make a transportation device, the less energy it takes to move. Humans are a pretty insignificant part of the weight of a car, the vehicle is mainly trying to move itself and with or without a driver in it would have quite similar range. The easier you make it to move the vehicle, the faster and further they will go. I think that this threads conflating my critique of battery weight for saying EVs are bad, which I'm not. I'm simply saying the energy density of batteries per lb is pretty far away from fuel right now, and as that gap closes with newer battery tech the argument for ICE cars gets increasingly more feeble. I personally am waiting for batteries to get LIGHT and CHEAP enough to make 200 mile range motorcycles an affordable and viable option for me! We are damned close and I think the future of electric transport is going to be awesome. I'd love to have a small array of pannels on my roof to charge an EV and never have to worry about spending a buck on range, and simplify my maintinence to making sure the tires have tread and none of the suspension components are falling off from getting after it on the dirt roads here LOL. My gas car doesn't ask for too many parts but of the repairs it has needed in the last 2 years, maybe 1/3rd of the components even exist on an EV.