[HN Gopher] Electric cars produce less brake dust pollution than...
___________________________________________________________________
Electric cars produce less brake dust pollution than combustion-
engine cars
Report: https://www.eiturbanmobility.eu/knowledge-hub/mastering-
mobi...
Author : tzs
Score : 494 points
Date : 2025-07-24 02:13 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (modernengineeringmarvels.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (modernengineeringmarvels.com)
| chasebank wrote:
| I went to get new tires on my truck last month. 3 of the 5 bays
| at the tire shop had teslas getting new shoes. I asked the shop
| owner and he said EVs eat tires. Like 9-12 months max lifespan,
| great for business. I couldn't believe it but I've always heard
| there's exponential wear on tires relative to weight.
| fossuser wrote:
| Depends how you drive - I change my teslas tires every 50k
| miles, it takes that long to wear out.
| ab_testing wrote:
| Have heard the same that Teslas eat tires like crazy. But why
| is that where their weight is comparable to a regular minivan.
| Is it due to the fast acceleration. If so can tire life be
| extended if the user is gentle on the accelerometer from zero.
| justinholt wrote:
| Acceleration combined with the style many EV manufacturers
| chose. Lots of "sporty" looks leaning on large rims with low
| profile tires.
| bityard wrote:
| Almost all tire wear comes from accelerating and
| decelerating. Some from turning and cornering. Basically
| anytime you are asking them to stick to the road when the
| car's velocity is changing. Just coasting in a straight line
| does not cause any significant wear, regardless of weight.
| (Unless the tires are grossly under-inflated.)
|
| EVs eat tires when people drive them like they're on a race
| track, which is most of the time.
| nostrademons wrote:
| This doesn't make sense. A Tesla weighs about as much as an
| SUV. We don't hear about SUVs eating tires.
|
| If Teslas specifically are in the tire shop more, perhaps it's
| that Teslas ship with shitty tires. I've heard of a number of
| car makes that ship with really fragile OEM tires as a way to
| get you back into the shop for service.
| derektank wrote:
| EVs can accelerate much faster than an SUV. I imagine that
| could explain part of the difference.
| cheald wrote:
| It's a combination of the weight of the vehicle and the
| torque that the electric motors produce.
| nostrademons wrote:
| That makes more sense, but if that's true, you can avoid
| the extra tire wear by driving like a granny (which
| reportedly works, according to one of the other comments
| here).
| cheald wrote:
| Well, if you can convince my wife of that, you're more
| than welcome to try. I just crossed 100k miles on my
| Model 3 and I think I'm on my 5th set of tires.
| xeonmc wrote:
| Tesla also has faulty camber/toe settings out of the factory
| that concentrates tyre wear on where it's weak:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1kdxm5cKfA
| cyberax wrote:
| My last two sets of tires on a Model 3 last for 30000 miles.
| rayiner wrote:
| Our bz4x has 16,000 miles and the tires are like new. And it's
| 400 pounds heavier than a Model 3.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| How are you finding the bz4x? I've read some negative things
| (possibly just seen negative headlines) about Toyota's
| commitment to electric cars and that the bz4x is a bit of a
| wet fish attempt at an electric.
|
| Interested in the FUD level going on.
|
| As an owner of a (2014 model) Nissan Leaf, which my wife and
| I both love, it does seem that Nissan somehow dropped the
| ball on electric given how good the Leaf still is (11 years
| later) as a suburban commuter vehicle and how it was a very
| early electric production car.
| rayiner wrote:
| This might be colored by the fact that we're a Toyota
| family, but we have a 2024 and love it. It's well-built,
| trouble-free, and predictable implementation of EV
| technology that's a cycle or two behind Tesla in terms of
| range and charging speed. I think the 2023 had some failure
| modes in cold weather, but the 2024 fixes those. It's fine,
| not great, on fast charging speeds. We get around 220 miles
| range, dropping to 190 in January/February when the
| temperature drops into the 30s here in Maryland. Right now
| it's reporting 3.7 miles per kWh, which is a tick behind
| what you'd get in a Model Y.
|
| I get the criticism--why pay Tesla prices to fall 10-20%
| short of Tesla specs? But the fit and finish is a cut above
| the Model Ys we drove, the ride is very comfortable, and
| the electronic features are, while more primitive, more
| intuitive and predictable. We'll probably get the 2025 to
| replace our Subaru Forester (which we've been very unhappy
| with in terms of reliability). I hear the 2025 model
| squeezes another 30 miles or so out of the battery, which
| would enable us to make the trip to NYC on a single charge,
| which is the only complaint we have.
| qwerty_clicks wrote:
| Slow speed turning wears tires hard and unevenly. Like geologic
| erosion, such wear can promote and accelerate more cutting.
| thefourthchime wrote:
| depends on the car, model 3 weighs the same as a M3
| thebruce87m wrote:
| > Like 9-12 months max lifespan
|
| It's easy to spot when people are just making stuff up. Why
| would he tell you lifespan in _months_ rather than distance?
| brtkwr wrote:
| An an EV owner, I can testify that the tyre wear more than makes
| up for the reduction in brake dust. I've had to change tyres
| every 10K miles.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| We went 70,000 km on our first set.
| tjkrusinski wrote:
| Are you constantly accelerating quickly? Haven't had this
| experience.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > "Even when summing up emissions from tires, brakes, and road
| wear, BEVs produce 38% less particulate pollution than gas-
| powered cars before even considering their lack of tailpipe
| emissions."
| jayd16 wrote:
| Presumably this is a joke. Mine lasted 5 years, 50k miles.
| jader201 wrote:
| No, it's not a joke. EVs are heavier vehicles, and it's
| common for EV owners to have to change tires much more
| frequently.
|
| https://www.cars.com/articles/do-evs-wear-through-tires-
| more...
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's only common because Tesla is popular. Other brands put
| reasonable tires on.
| jader201 wrote:
| Anecdotally, I own a Kia EV6, and had to get new tires
| within two years, under 20k miles.
|
| I leave it in eco mode, so acceleration is nerfed, too.
|
| We'll see how long the new set of Michelin Defenders
| last.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Some models of the EV6 come with Pilot Sport 4S tires
| which is absurd.
| YZF wrote:
| I have a model 3 and still running my original set of
| summer and set of winter tires. 6+ years. I just don't
| put pedal to metal every time I accelerate.
| loeg wrote:
| The tires that came on my Kia EV9 are bad in several
| dimensions (Kumho Crugen HP71) -- poor longevity, poor
| winter performance. People seem to get 15-20,000 miles
| out of them. (I replaced them with CrossClimate2s.)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I assumed instead they were soft compound tires with a low
| treadwear number. Nice for "sport" driving but they wear very
| quickly.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| All the people claiming EVs wear tires faster probably
| don't have the slightest idea that tires even have
| treadwear ratings. That coupled with the total uselessness
| of personal anecdotes...
|
| Performance oriented EVs, _just like performance oriented
| ICE cars_ , are going to have softer, stickier tires that
| wear faster.
| loeg wrote:
| > Performance oriented EVs, just like performance
| oriented ICE cars, are going to have softer, stickier
| tires that wear faster.
|
| brtkwr has a Kia Niro, not a Taycan. It's not a
| performance vehicle.
|
| That said, I agree he's likely got tires with shit
| longevity.
| rapsey wrote:
| Do you accelerate with full power every time or something?
| ghushn3 wrote:
| What are you doing to your tires that they only last 10k miles?
| I think that might be a driver error issue, because my EV (a
| heavier sedan) basically never needed tire replacement barring
| me running over a screw or something.
| brtkwr wrote:
| Just normal driving, it wasn't quite so bad on our previous
| car which was a Nissan Leaf (with 30kWh battery) but our
| current Kia Niro just has a lot bigger batter (64kWh) and it
| is a lot heavier I suppose, the tyres just don't seem to last
| as long. I'm pretty sure I'm using summer tyres all year
| round (I live in the UK) this was recommended by the dealer
| HPsquared wrote:
| Some tyre compounds wear a lot faster than others (though
| often with better grip). I wonder if that's contributing.
|
| The other thing is poor alignment (especially toe settings)
| which cause the tyres to fight each other constantly. It
| can be a very small difference, almost imperceptible but
| still accelerate the wear.
|
| 10k miles is very short for a tyre.
|
| Often you can tell a lot from the tyre temperature after a
| drive: if they're getting very warm, it can indicate
| problems, e.g. if one axle has much warmer tyres than the
| other (hard to give an objective standard on that, though,
| so many factors)
| thedougd wrote:
| Aren't higher speed rated tires softer? Maybe try
| swapping for a lower speed rating unless they plan on
| driving it at extreme speeds.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I have the Hyundai Kona, which I'm pretty sure is just
| their version of the Nero (same 64kWh battery at least).
| I'm on my original tires after 44k miles.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| I also have a Kona and I had to replace mine at around
| 30k.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| My numbers are probably better than average since, living
| in a rural area, a lot of my driving is either freeway or
| long stretches of rural road without many stops, so I do
| less accelerating/decelerating/turning corners than
| someone driving in a city, which, as many people point
| out in this thread, is where most of the wear happens.
| Your experience is probably more typical than mine is,
| but even yours is a heck of a lot different than every
| 10k miles.
| foepys wrote:
| Are you driving fast(er than with a ICE vehicle) in
| corners? Since EVs have a very low center of mass, drivers
| tend to take corners a lot faster than they would in ICE
| vehicles which is very hard on the tires.
|
| A friend got hit by this as well and since readjusting his
| driving style (read: not flying through corners for the fun
| of it) he gets more (but still not equal) miles on his EV's
| tires before he needs new ones.
| sockaddr wrote:
| I'm sorry but I've got two EVs and I'm not seeing anything
| like what you're reporting. On my first set of tires for a
| model S I got 60k miles which is longer than I usually like
| to run tires but they were still in good shape. My driving
| pattern is about 80% grandpa-mode and 20% speeding to loud
| music.
|
| I assure you. If your EV tires are only lasting 10K miles
| you have one of the following cases:
|
| - You are driving VERY aggressively
|
| - Your car has an alignment issue or some sort of torque
| vectoring problem
|
| - Your tires are absolute shit
| ljf wrote:
| He (like me) is in the UK - unless you go for a brand
| name, many of the tyres people run here are low quality
| import tyres - while 10k is low, my ICE has occasionally
| only got 20k from a set, but that is mainly due to the
| tyres cracking from sun damage (still got over 4 year out
| of them before that happened).
|
| Cheap tyres are often a bad investment, but I drive
| country lanes with a higher risk of punctures and I was
| burning through brand name tyres, a full set is worth
| more than my car!
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Mine lasted 11k km before I was seeing interleave.
|
| Alignment is fine, had it checked when I had a new set of
| continentals fitted.
|
| My problem is purely that I drive like an asshole, on
| _very_ windy, empty roads. Every day is track day.
|
| Decent tyres, too, continentals - soft compound, hard
| roads. Means it corners like a dream right up until the
| tyres are bald.
| slt2021 wrote:
| remember, your regenerative braking comes at cost of tire
| life.
|
| If driving Tesla, you can reduce the regenerative breaking
| from Maximum setting to Medium.
|
| this will reduce regeneration and will increase the
| "breaking distance" when you just let go of accelerator
| pedal.
|
| but it will increase your tire life significantly.
|
| also make sure to buy the "commuter tire" models - tires
| with high mileage warranty (50k miles+) and harder
| compound. Even if it wears out faster, tire manufacturer's
| warranty will make up for it by giving you discount for the
| replacement tire purchase
| avalys wrote:
| Huh? What do you imagine is the tradeoff between
| regenerative braking and tire life? Are you suggesting
| that stopping the car with conventional iron brakes is
| somehow easier on the tires?
| slt2021 wrote:
| the level of regenerative braking directly impacts your
| accelerator pedal behavior.
|
| by reducing regeneration, you will increase tire life by
| virtue of modifying your acceleration behavior. Its hard
| for me to explain, but I just suggest trying the medium
| regenerative setting and you will see it yourself.
|
| You will feel it, because the most of the tire wear
| happens when car decelerates. On less regeneration your
| car will decelerate less and will wear out tires slower
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| That's a whole lot of assumptions based on what?
|
| I could come up with a list of plausible sounding reasons
| why regenerative braking leads to less tire wear. Unless
| you have some actual measurements, I wouldn't trust
| either one.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| I'm reading it as referring to a setting where the car
| will brake some amount (instead of coasting) if you
| completely let go of the pedals, and as being a claim
| that the commenter can't maintain speed but gets stuck in
| a cycle of accelerating and then letting the car brake.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| I've never driven an EV, only a hybrid a few times, but I
| thought for all cars with aggressive regenerative brake
| settings, you just kept the accelerator pedal slightly
| depressed to coast.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| I use one peddle driving all the time and manage to keep
| a steady speed as I'm doing it. Why would you be
| constantly taking your foot off the accelerator unless
| you need to slow down?
|
| I'll also throw another anecdote in for this thread,
| 500hp EV, 50k miles on the tyres.
| NewJazz wrote:
| _most of the tire wear happens when car decelerates_
|
| Is this generally true? I imagine it depends on the
| car/driver to a certain extent, but still I'd be curious
| what numbers are out there.
| slt2021 wrote:
| when car decelerates, the kinetic energy has to go
| somewhere, large part of it goes to battery as
| regeneration (60%), the rest goes to tire/road friction
| and wear
| NewJazz wrote:
| That doesn't answer my question even a little bit.
| slt2021 wrote:
| From the physics perspective, where does kinetic energy
| go in E=1/2mv^2 ?
|
| Up to 60% goes back to battery, part goes to air
| resistance and rolling tire resistance (can be ignored
| for our case as its the same regardless of regen
| setting), the rest goes to friction of tire/road due to
| slowing down tire speed
| NewJazz wrote:
| Your claim was that most of the tire wear for cars was
| due to deceleration. Acceleration could be to blame too.
| I asked for a source for your claim, not math equations.
| avalys wrote:
| No one is debating that deceleration results in tire
| wear.
|
| The two claims you've made are that deceleration results
| in more tire wear than acceleration, and that
| regenerative deceleration results in more tire wear than
| non-regenerative deceleration. These are what people are
| questioning you about.
| slt2021 wrote:
| acceleration is irrelevant because you need to accelerate
| to move regardless.
|
| what is relevant to prolong the tire lifetime is reducing
| the unnecessary tire friction against the road.
|
| There is constant component that depends on the weight *
| velocity * mileage - you gonna encounter it in all
| scenarios
|
| There is also a variable component that is driven by 1st
| derivative of speed (rate of acceleration/deceleration).
|
| The high regeneration allows you faster
| acceleration/deceleration, but medium/lower will (1)
| change your driving behavior so that you accelerate more
| smoothly, and (2) change your deceleration so that you
| coast more and decelerate less
|
| remember, car's kinetic energy is not a perfect energy
| storage, so that you could freely move energy from
| battery into car speed, and regenerate it back into
| battery.
|
| apart from air resistance, there is 60% loss on the way
| back + tire wear penalty depending on accel/decel curve
| (1st speed derivative)
| mikestew wrote:
| _remember, your regenerative braking comes at cost of
| tire life._
|
| No, it doesn't. The tires don't care if it's the car's
| motor slowing things down, or some friction material
| grabbing a disc.
| NewJazz wrote:
| I guess they are saying that the sharper braking curve
| that is default on Teslas is going to cause more wear
| than a slower braking curve. The logic makes sense, but I
| have some doubt's that sharp regen breaking is more to
| blame for tire wear vs. Sharp manual braking and
| acceleration.
| talldan wrote:
| Some EVs have low rolling resistance tires to increase the
| range. I think they will wear out faster, especially if
| cornering sharply.
| lnsru wrote:
| I heard Kia Niro has the front wheel drive issue and the
| tires wear on the front very fast. So you should swap front
| wheels and rear wheels every year to get best wear result.
| I drive very poorly and fast, but usually mid-range tires
| last for at least 30k miles on different cars.
| bobmcnamara wrote:
| This is known as rotating tires, and is a good idea to do
| periodically for other reasons as well.
| bacon_waffle wrote:
| The additional battery weight would be something under
| 250kg (having handled a few Leaf battery packs), and
| wikipedia says the Niro EV is about 1700kg
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I too am UK based, but I have a Zoe, which is not as heavy
| as the NEO.
|
| But my inlaw has a neo from new and hasn't replaced the
| tyres yet, and hes an auto obsessive. He lives in the
| midlands and drives 18k a year.
| padjo wrote:
| Perhaps do an advanced driving class? Assuming no
| mechanical issues the next place to look is your driving.
| 10k is way too low, something is not right.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| 10k per set of tires seems like a high "smiles per
| gallon" number to me.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The factory fitment LEAF tires seem to be made of cast
| iron, based on the unimpressive levels of cornering grip
| but also on their impressive long-wearing nature.
|
| I'm likely to end up replacing mine based on age-related
| degradation rather than wear.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Either you're lying about your driving habits, or there's
| something wrong with your car.
|
| I've got a Model 3 Performance which came with the Michelin
| Pilot Sport 4 tires which are only warrantied for 30,000
| miles. I had them for 5 years and 35,000 miles and they
| STILL had plenty of tread left. I had to replace them
| anyways because I hit a nasty pothole that caused the tread
| to separate.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I can roach a set of economy tires in 20k but I slide through
| four ramps a day if there's no traffic. I can see someone in
| something modern that has 3x the power, 1.5 the weight and
| takes a way softer lower profile tire roaching them in less.
|
| Lower profile rims also beat up tires way harder if you drive
| hard because the lack of sidewall flex lets you put more
| force to the ground which has to go through the tread of the
| tire to get there.
|
| Modern tires for modern cars also bias toward soft and high
| wearing because there's pretty much no other way to keep
| higher end vehicles stuck to the ground with the power to
| weight they're making these days.
| relaxing wrote:
| EV owners aren't exactly rare around these parts. Neither are
| people who drive cars of a similar weight, such as midsize
| SUVs.
|
| There's no good reason why you should be changing your tires at
| 10k miles.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| When you can see interleave that's a good reason to change
| your tyres. My stock tyres on a model Y lasted 11,000km - but
| my daily drive is a tortured ribbon of tarmac with nothing
| but corners.
| relaxing wrote:
| I don't know what interleave means in your country but the
| way to measure tire wear is replace when tread depth gets
| below 1.6 mm.
|
| Next time get tires with a 50k mile warranty, like Pirelli
| Scorpions.
| barbazoo wrote:
| This is not at all my experience after 2.5 years and 20,000km.
| It's kinda obvious that it's completely up to the driver.
| altairprime wrote:
| Rivian?
| xeonmc wrote:
| If you're on a Tesla, it might be because of incorrectly set
| cambers out of the factory:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1kdxm5cKfA
| i80and wrote:
| There is something seriously wrong with your tires if that's
| actually the case. I drive a pretty heavy EV myself (an AWD
| ID.4) and your wear is ludicrous.
| irjustin wrote:
| How is tire wear related to the method of power? It could be a
| steam engine for all it mattered.
|
| Accelerating and decelerating, in regards to the tire, don't
| care what is causing the force.
| dgemm wrote:
| It's related to vehicle weight, electric cars can be
| significantly heavier.
| ddispaltro wrote:
| My understanding is a model X is 20% heavier than a similar
| size mid-range suv like a telluride, which I would consider
| the same size SUV.
|
| The Model X's curb weight ranges from 5,148 lbs to 5,531
| lbs, while the Telluride's curb weight falls between 4,112
| lbs and 4,482 lbs.
| loeg wrote:
| Model X is somewhat smaller than a Telluride, but close
| enough.
| ccc3 wrote:
| Mass. Electric cars are much heavier. F=ma.
| jaggederest wrote:
| For tire degradation I believe it's actually something like
| the 4th power of the mass, same as for roads.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The tire isn't constant like a road is though. Tires
| intended for bigger heavier vehicles get harder rubbers.
| trimethylpurine wrote:
| If the steam engine were to stop faster then it would put
| more wear on the tires. Imagine if it were floating through
| space. You hit the brakes. Did it help?
|
| The tires are doing the stopping. As you said the engine is
| the part that doesn't matter. But if it increases the
| stopping power, it's doing that by increasing the load on the
| tires.
| RowanH wrote:
| To be fair EV's can have some very high initial torque
| delivery, and are heavy = tyre shredding beasts.
|
| I know I know, people aren't supposed to be taking off from
| every light at full chat, but, given the capability some
| people can't help themselves.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| The biggest problem for new EV drivers, in my view, is that
| EVs generally have extremely good traction control systems
| that prevent chirping due to the ability to cut back power
| to the motors much more quickly than you can with a gas
| engine.
|
| What this means is that you can push tires to the absolute
| limit and not chirp them (which, is best for traction
| anyways) which absolutely roasts them. Most people
| associate chirp = too fast, but with EVs you can never hear
| a chirp even when you stomp on the accelerator so they
| might think everything is ok.
|
| Nobody should be shredding a set of tires in 10k miles in
| any EV unless they're super low tread wear (poor tire
| choice, hard to do that bad), there's an issue with the car
| suspension, or they're just being idiots.
| cyberax wrote:
| I went through my first set of tires in 10k miles. By
| doing car racing (on official tracks!) every month or so.
|
| Though it might fall under the "being idiot" category.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| I guess I should have caveated it as 'you won't go
| through a set of tires in 10k miles unknowningly'.
|
| If you're track racing, it should be obvious you'll blow
| through a set of tires much faster than the treadwear
| ratings would suggest.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| You can absolutely get them to chirp, you just have to
| be, uh, brave. Or stupid. I deposited my tyres along my
| daily commute over four months - it's like having one of
| those racing line markers in a game.
|
| Although I may drive a bit more sensibly for now as EUR4K
| a year on tyres wasn't in my budget.
| neilwilson wrote:
| That's very likely due to the tyres having less tread depth - a
| common trick with EV tyres to reduce rolling resistance.
| Michelins are the main culprit.
|
| Of course the tyre companies love that little trick as they can
| pretend they are being green while selling more tyres.
|
| Always check how much tyre you're buying
| breakyerself wrote:
| I have a 2019 model 3. 200,000 miles. I'm about on my 3rd set
| of tires.
| linotype wrote:
| Are you racing? I haven't had to change our tires on our EV for
| 30k miles (we just hit that on the odometer; these are dealer
| tires).
| lokar wrote:
| There are three things at play here:
|
| - evs have a reputation for fast acceleration, and many drivers
| use it. More wear.
|
| - evs are heavy due to large batteries trying to match ICE
| range. More wear.
|
| - evs often come with low friction tires to improve range, they
| wear faster
|
| The second two issues should gradually go away as battery (and
| charging) tech improves.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Low friction tires wear slower, not faster, on account of
| being ... Low friction. Friction is what wears tires.
| pengaru wrote:
| > Low friction tires wear slower, not faster, on account of
| being ... Low friction. Friction is what wears tires.
|
| They're not low friction tires, they're low rolling
| resistance tires.
|
| Friction relates to the grip, rolling resistance relates to
| the heat generated by the deformation of the tire. A less
| compliant, often narrower tire may wear faster than a more
| compliant wider one.
|
| It depends.
|
| "Tyres account for about a fifth of the energy required to
| power a car. They provide friction, so that the vehicle can
| grip the road, but some of the power supplied to the tyres
| is then lost as heat. Indeed, Michelin, a French tyremaker,
| estimates that this "rolling resistance" accounts for 4% of
| the world's carbon-dioxide emissions. Tyre designers have
| therefore sought to improve fuel economy by reducing
| rolling resistance. However, this not only reduces a tyre's
| ability to grip, making drivers take corners sideways, it
| also wears out the tyres more rapidly."
|
| from: https://www.economist.com/technology-
| quarterly/2009/12/02/ro...
|
| without login: https://archive.is/TiIUk
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >They're not low friction tires, they're low rolling
| resistance tires.
|
| Those two attributes are pretty decently tied together,
| can't get one attribute maxed out without a solid showing
| of the other.
| _factor wrote:
| Sure, but how big is your contact patch? They're low
| friction for a reason.
| loeg wrote:
| > low friction tires to improve range, they wear faster
|
| Some of the lowest rolling resistance tires also last 80k+
| miles. It's not a tradeoff in the way you're claiming.
| webprofusion wrote:
| Mine did more than 25,000, just get better tyres. The basic
| premise is that EVs are heavier and have more torque than
| average cars, but it's a 20% difference in real life, so your
| tyres may last 20% less.
| graemep wrote:
| Is it a linear relationship?
|
| I know road damage is far higher (fourth power of weight) so
| maybe wear on tires is also worse than linear?
|
| heavier vehicles are also worse in many other ways (e.g. less
| safe for pedestrians, require more space for parking,...) and
| we really should be encouraging smaller vehicles.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Don't accelerate like a maniac.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Switch tire brand and type or get some advice. Whatever you are
| currently getting isn't the right tire for your car, obviously.
| You should be seeing much longer lives for your tires. Even
| with an EV. So, something is off.
|
| And tires of course aren't created equally. There are many
| different types of tires and they are optimized for different
| circumstances. If you mismatch your tires to e.g. weather
| conditions, you are going to have issues. Not just with EVs,
| but with any car.
| sjducb wrote:
| Agreed parent needs to get advice from 2/3 different tyre
| shops. Changing tyres every 10k means something is wrong.
| infecto wrote:
| That or just slow down. I swear 90% of the people that
| complain of tire wear drive oblivious and are flooring it
| after every stop. Even a Kia Beri which what the parent
| has, has more kick than a ICE.
| sjducb wrote:
| Maybe, I think the tyre shop is encouraging premature
| tyre changes. My local tyre shop recommends changing the
| tyres at 3.9mm. The tyre's data sheet says it's ok down
| to 1.6mm. You're wasting 2.3mm of tyre, which is 30% of
| the life of the tyre.
| snowe2010 wrote:
| That's not normal. You're either doing something incredibly
| wrong or you're changing your tires when you don't need to.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| I'm not sure I can agree with this. I have 2 EVs, and the tire
| looks almost brand new after like 10k miles. I think the
| driving habits matter more than whether the car is EV or not.
| loeg wrote:
| It's probably the specific tire being awful, or alignment.
| yreg wrote:
| I have 42k km / 26k miles on the tires Tesla equipped me with
| and they are in good condition.
| mpyne wrote:
| I own one EV, at 40k miles, and have had to change the tires
| only once so far, and even that was more because of damage to
| one that required replacement than due to excessive tire
| wear.
|
| I can vouch for the very low brake pad usage as well.
| reissbaker wrote:
| The article says that even including tire and road wear, EVs
| generate 38% less particulate pollution than ICE cars _before_
| considering the lack of tailpipe emissions.
| labster wrote:
| But tires are black, and black carbon has additional climate
| effects -- even once the aerosol lands, it can still have
| effects like black carbon on snow.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| On that topic, Norwegians have been reporting that the
| piles of snow at the sides of their roads are noticeable
| cleaner since EV adoption took off.
| mort96 wrote:
| It's not like brake dust is white...
| infecto wrote:
| Guess what comes out of petrol and diesel exhaust? Guess
| what color brake dust is. I guarantee the EV is going to be
| a lot cleaner.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Wonder what that ratio will be when battery tech advances
| enough that BEVs weigh the same as, and eventually less than,
| ICE cars.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| > An an EV owner, I can testify that the tyre wear more than
| makes up for the reduction in brake dust
|
| How could you possibly measure that just from your personal
| experience?
|
| Sounds more like a wild guess that is in contradiction with
| actual studies.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >How could you possibly measure that just from your personal
| experience?
|
| Simple napkin math by comparing longevity of parts with
| volume of parts consumed.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Sure, but your personal experience could very easily be on
| the higher end of the distribution. You simply CANT confirm
| something like that based on personal experience. Either
| your personal experience lines up with some statistical
| fact or it doesn't, either way, without the proper
| statistical context it's borderline useless.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Sure, but if the napkin math spits out results orders of
| magnitude higher than reasonable personal variance then
| you're still on the way to a decent answer.
|
| FWIW I think the qualitative difference between tire and
| brake dust is going to mean a lot more than individual
| variance.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I wonder if you got unlucky with tires. Seems some mfgs are
| playing with new recipes and eco friendly ingredients causing
| the tires to dramatically miss their stated lifetime. My last
| tires were Michelin Defender somethings from Costco and they
| lasted about half the expected mileage even with regular
| rotation and proper inflation.
| cbeach wrote:
| I think there might be something peculiar about the driving or
| environment. I have put 50,000 miles on my EV over the course
| of a few years and only changed the tires twice in that time.
| The car is MOT-tested every year so I have precise measurements
| of tread.
| originalvichy wrote:
| You are an anomaly. The overwhelming majority of EV drivers say
| their tyres last very long.
| bluedino wrote:
| I was just reading an article where an electric car had the
| original brakes on it for 250k miles
| infecto wrote:
| I am firmly in the camp that problems like these have less to
| do with being an EV and more to do with one of the following:
|
| 1) Aggressive driving which is easier to do in a number of EVs
| due to instant torque. 2) tire compound, a lot of oem tires are
| soft 3) something wrong with the cars drivetrain or suspension.
|
| 10k is comically low, my model y oem tires lasted to 30k before
| tread depth passed the safety threshold. I also keep it in
| chill mode.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Good to have more data points and evidence, but this seems
| extremely well established by now?
|
| Zero tailpipe emissions, drastically removed brake dust, slightly
| higher tire wear (due to weight), but much better overall than
| ICE.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I am just excited because the more EVs mean fewer idiots in hot
| rods running without mufflers.
| oaiey wrote:
| I think these will switch last and will found new
| opportunities to annoy you once switched.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Exactly. What people really hate are loud young people from
| lower class than them backgrounds. Civics with stupid
| exhausts are just an example implementation of that.
| They'll just find something else to hate if you remove that
| implementation.
| goda90 wrote:
| When loud engine noises cut through my neighborhood from
| blocks away, I'm not thinking about the age or class of
| the person driving the vehicle. I'm thinking about how
| they're a jerk for modifying their car to be louder and
| intentionally revving their engine to create noise. If an
| old billionaire decided to make their private jet louder
| and then buzzed over my neighborhood, I'd be pissed as
| well.
| jajko wrote:
| Well there are new classes of idiots I see pretty frequently
| - a typical tesla driver going 90 in 120 region of highway
| without any reason, presumably saving last bits of battery
| (that has at least some rationale, if they do it due to ie
| fear then they should not be driving or having license).
|
| Over say 50km part of highway, maybe 2000 cars need to
| overtake such almost stationary object (to regular traffic
| which generally moves exactly at the speed limit). Fine if
| you have 3+ lanes, but most highways in Europe have 2 only.
| Then you have all the trucks, buses and rest of traffic
| trying to overtake via that 1 free lane, which in heavier
| (but still cca smooth) traffic will create a massive moving
| traffic jam immediately.
|
| If I didn't see this every other day (and for some reasons
| its 90% tesla drivers where I live and rest is caravans) I
| wouldn't believe it to be so common, but it is. Summer now
| makes it even worse with all holiday drivers.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > going 90 in 120 region of highway without any reason,
| presumably saving last bits of battery (that has at least
| some rationale, if they do it due to ie fear then they
| should not be driving or having license).
|
| Was _very_ concerned until I realized you were talking
| about kilometers and not miles.
|
| Otherwise, I'd _hope_ the average driver would firce
| themselves to drive slower than 120mph out of some sense of
| fear, or at least a sense of self-preservation.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Miles are bigger than kilometers so the guy doing 90
| among traffic that wants to go 120 might actually be
| worse in miles because it's a larger speed differential.
| moate wrote:
| ...that...that was his point...
| alliao wrote:
| it'd tell you what speed to travel at if you want to get to
| where you want to go lol, chances are they're low and just
| trying to get to their destination
| mnmalst wrote:
| Are you saying it's not ok to drive 90km/h in a zone where
| 120km/h is allowed?
|
| 80km/h is the usual maximum allowed speed for trucks, at
| least in Germany, so no idea how a car driving 90km/h is
| such a big problem. That's not a "stationary object" at
| all, far from it. You are even allowed to drive vehicles
| with a minimum speed of 60km/h on the Autobahn.
|
| If a car driving 90km/h is the cause for a traffic jam
| there are definitely other factors at play. Not just in
| zones with a limit of 120km/h but everywhere even without
| limits.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think it's a hilarious example in how buyer demographics
| effect things. Every Tesla is a potential rocket ship if
| the driver wants it to be yet they're rarely if ever not
| driven circles around by laden work vans.
| beached_whale wrote:
| You see this on the 400 series in Ontario, Canada and it's
| not just Tesla drivers. Some people don't want to go that
| fast(speed kills) and others cannot. It's a non issue if
| they stay right as expected.
| baq wrote:
| > 90 in 120 region of highway
|
| so just like any truck.
|
| if you think it's a problem, you're the problem. sorry.
| sroussey wrote:
| Depends on what lane you are in...
| Hilift wrote:
| "Artificial engine sounds" is the next step in that evolution
| pipeline. Or just blast advertisements.
| neogodless wrote:
| See the Ioniq 5 N. But those sounds are piped inside... not
| blasted to the neighbors...
| beached_whale wrote:
| Can it be disabled? I love quiet
| neogodless wrote:
| I mean, no one would buy the Ioniq 5 N specifically if
| they _didn 't_ want the zoomy car sounds! (OK maybe they
| just want the fastness! Fair enough)
|
| But yes, they can be turned off.
| Hilift wrote:
| There's probably a federal or local law requiring some
| sound. Like the Waymos that incessantly beep beep beep
| when backing up at the recharging station at 1 mph.
| You're about five years away from hearing beep beep beep
| everywhere you go due to the proliferation of driverless
| vehicles.
| neogodless wrote:
| To be clear, the exterior sounds hybrids and EVs make is
| different from the "engine" sounds the Ioniq 5 N pipes
| inside the car.
| pavon wrote:
| The N-line is Hyundai's high-performance designator, like
| Type R for Honda. It has way more power than you would
| ever need for normal driving, hopefully to be used on a
| track and not street racing. The normal Ionic 5 has no
| faked engine noise (beyond the low-volume external sounds
| required by law).
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I love the look of the Ioniq so much, I wanted to reward
| the guts it took to create such a unique looking car! I
| wanted to buy the new one but I just couldn't not get a
| Tesla because of FSD. Cars without FSD are fighting for
| second place imho.
| pornel wrote:
| I like Hyundai's HDA much more than Tesla's.
|
| With Tesla it's all-or-nothing, and when it inevitably
| drives poorly, I can only turn it off. It physically
| resists me turning the steering wheel while it's driving,
| and overcoming the resistance results in an unpleasant
| and potentially dangerous jerk.
|
| OTOH in IONIQ I can control lane assist and adaptive
| cruise control separately. The lane assist is additive to
| normal steering. It doesn't take over, only makes the car
| seem to naturally roll along the road.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The kids will find a way to be flagrantly annoying. Always
| has been always will be. Taking their fart can exhausts will
| be a minor bump in the road. It's not like EVs don't come
| factory equipped with tons of power to drive the kind of
| audio systems that people like you also hate.
| teleforce wrote:
| >drastically removed brake dust
|
| It will be very interesting to see the data for the same car
| that has many powertrain versions for example the Lexus UX with
| the UX 200 (ICE), UX 300h (hybrid) and UX 300e (EV) to test
| which one the best and the worst in term of brake dust residue.
|
| My hypotheses is that for brake dust residue the best is
| hybrid, 2nd will be ICE and the 3rd will be EV. This is due to
| the fact that the EV version has at least several hundreds kg
| extra weight (about 400 kg extra), that makes the brake dust
| residue comparable to ICE if not worst based on the
| approximately 30% extra vehicle weight for the battery. The
| hybrid however only has approximately 5% more weight or extra
| 80 kg different compared to the ICE version.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Yea, but the EV need not use the disc brakes to stoppe.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| My hypothesis is that in normal driving the EV with 30% extra
| weight will be using its brakes 90% less, making it beat the
| ICE version by a lot.
|
| EV versus hybrid I couldn't say, it comes down to exactly how
| strong the hybrid regen is and how aggressively the owner
| brakes in comparison.
|
| Why is your hypothesis so different from mine? How much use
| do you expect the EV brakes to get?
| doikor wrote:
| EVs don't really use the brakes during normal driving being
| mainly used for emergency braking.
|
| You could achieve the same with engine braking with ICE but
| most don't bother.
| sjducb wrote:
| My EV doesn't use the brakes in normal driving. It can pull ~
| 0.3G of regen before the physical brakes engage.
|
| It will regeneratively brake all the way to a stop.
|
| The brake disks are there for emergencies and spirited
| driving.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think buyer demographics are gonna play hugely into it.
| Some makes and models are highly popular among the drivers
| who are on the low side of the bell curve and basically never
| hit the brake when not stopping because they're almost never
| coming upon slower traffic. Some makes and models are highly
| popular on the other side of the peak of the bell curve where
| the drivers are always hitting the brake way more than the
| median or average. An ICE Tacoma may very well use way less
| brake than a EV Altima because the venn-diagram of people who
| drive like a bat out of hell and the people who buy Tacomas
| is approximately two circles.
| masklinn wrote:
| > that makes the brake dust residue comparable to ICE if not
| worst based on the approximately 30% extra vehicle weight for
| the battery.
|
| Did you miss pretty much all data on EV brakes, notably that
| they get used so little they'll rust to slick and
| manufacturers have to implement de-rusting cycles to ensure
| they can actually do something? Your hypothesis is
| nonsensical on its face. Calling it a hypothesis is
| insulting. Even to flat earthers.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Your hypothesis has already been tested multiple times. It
| has always failed.
| 30gdan wrote:
| Much better at what ? Do you have decent data for what it takes
| (CO2, child labour , cost of supply chain, ...) to make your
| Lithium based battery VS melting an ICE ? Same question for
| recycling ? Comparing only the lifecycles of products doesn't
| make any sense if you don't put in perspective creation &
| destruction and this is where the massive lie is, no EV
| constructor has ever been transparent about this because it's
| overall just way dirtier by no way cleaner !
|
| Extracting rare metals from Africa, sending to China for
| transformation into batteries and back to US/EU for putting
| into an EV (that we cannot properly recycle yet) just cannot be
| cleaner than melting an ICE with processes that are 100+ years
| old and that can be done locally without the use of ships to
| make 3 roundabouts on earth.
|
| Yeah established on a truncated view of reality !
| mmaurizi wrote:
| Ships are actually much more fuel efficient than trucks, by
| weight/volume.
|
| Saying it must be inefficient because it includes ship
| transit instead of trucking "locally" is innumerate.
| 30gdan wrote:
| I'm saying it's inefficient because of a combination of
| many things not only shipping. Also add to this the fact
| that your electricity in the US cames from fossil fuel and
| you'll see how clean your EV is !
| ceejayoz wrote:
| From your own source:
|
| > In countries that get most of their energy from burning
| dirty coal, the emissions numbers for EVs don't look
| nearly as good--but they're still on par with or better
| than burning gasoline.
|
| Trump's own EPA calls your argument the #1 myth about
| EVs. https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-
| myths
| 30gdan wrote:
| Myth #2 numbers from graphical representation are totally
| off from the 80% initial C02 difference in the MIT study.
| IDK where these numebrs come from but I'd tend to trust
| the MIT more than some propaganda from your beloved
| president.
|
| Same goes for myth#1 IMO numbers are Trump related
| propaganda and have nothing to do with reality.
| Furthermore on myth #1 they talk about efficiency of EV
| vs ICE but totally forget to mention the efficiency of
| generating that said energy : 33% efficiency for coal
| based electricity generation VS 90% for petroleum
| refinement .... In the end when you sum up overall
| efficiencies are identical so I call bullshit and
| propaganda ...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Ah, we've journeyed quite a ways from "I'm saying it's
| inefficient because of a combination of many things" to
| "when you sum up overall efficiencies are identical" in
| just one comment!
|
| I also trust MIT more than Trump (I'll trust a poodle
| over him), especially on EVs. The point is _even Trump 's
| loony EPA_ clearly states they're better for the
| environment, _inclusive_ of coal power. (Which MIT agrees
| with; I quoted _your source!_ )
| tartoran wrote:
| > Ships are actually much more fuel efficient than trucks,
| by weight/volume.
|
| Ships are indeed more efficient if you look at it on per
| mile comparison but distances are much bigger. Shipping
| things from one side of the planet to the other is not
| something too efficient imo. It's just makes sense if you
| look at economics and differences in price of labor,
| regulations and so on but these do have externalities that
| eventually cancel out the benefits.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Do you have decent data...?
|
| > just cannot be cleaner...
|
| _Someone_ doesn 't!
| 30gdan wrote:
| MIT : https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-
| vehicles-defini...
|
| Quote : This intensive battery manufacturing means that
| building a new EV can produce around 80% more emissions
| than building a comparable gas-powered car
|
| Show me anything else if you have ; just don't troll
| dude...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The very first line of your article says "yes... they
| more than make up for it by driving much cleaner under
| nearly any conditions".
|
| It seems you agree with the poster upthread, who stated
| "much better overall than ICE".
| 30gdan wrote:
| First of all don't forget the important 'Over the course
| of their driving lifetimes' before your quote; it changes
| everything. So yeah this MIT article says EV is 80% more
| CO2 expensive to build but makes up over it's lifetime
| not quite exatcly what you are saying.
|
| Also this article does not take into account recycling of
| batteries which is way dirty that recycling ICEs.
|
| And my initial remark was show me data, show me
| interesting stuff and you just dumbly troll (quoting
| truncated stuff) on what I have shown you. Nice man, u
| smart !!!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > it changes everything
|
| It changes nothing. People buy cars to drive them.
|
| > Also this article does not take into account recycling
| of batteries which is way dirty that recycling ICEs.
|
| I'm sorry you can't be bothered to read your own link.
| This is in the footnotes as a source for it:
|
| Erik Emilsson and Lisbeth Dahllof. "Lithium-ion vehicle
| battery production: Status 2019 on energy use, CO2
| emissions, use of metals, products environmental
| footprint, _and recycling_. " IVL Swedish Environmental
| Research Institute, in cooperation with the Swedish
| Energy Agency, Report C444, November 2019.
| 30gd4n wrote:
| 'People buy cars to drive them' : how long did you own
| your last EV car ? enough to pass the limit for the EV to
| become interesting ? You think all Tesla & BYD owners do
| that ? Don't think so ! So in the end your ownership (and
| 95% of the other) of an EV was more CO2 intensive than
| equivalent ICE because you don't keep it enough to become
| efficient. And don't talk about second hand use because
| this is clearly not the way our society is going; it's
| all about buying new stuff and changing cars every couple
| of years; huge hyprocrisy when you say that EVs need time
| to become more efficient than ICE.
|
| 'I'm sorry you can't be bothered to read your own link.
| This is in the footnotes as a source for it:' just click
| on the damn link, use google trad, find the paper and
| READ (not just troll as if I didn't) the recycling
| chapter by yourself ! It does not include real-world
| data, it's theoretical/research data IF batteries were
| recycled in EU/US with up to date processes. As of today
| 2025 all batteries are 'recycled' (joke..) in China/India
| by underqualified people with a CO2 cost WAY higher and
| this is NOT taken into account in the study. So yeah I'll
| say again : real recycling, the one we do right now IS
| NOT ACCOUNTED FOR !
|
| Useless discussion anyway, you don't add any argument or
| source, just trolling on my words, nice !
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > how long did you own your last EV car ? enough to pass
| the limit for the EV to become interesting ? You think
| all Tesla & BYD owners do that ?
|
| Again, I reference your source:
|
| "Yet when the MIT study calculated a comparison in which
| EVs lasted only 90,000 miles on the road rather than
| 180,000 miles, they remained 15 percent better than a
| hybrid and far better than a gas car."
|
| Both of my cars have 100k+ miles on them, with plenty of
| life left. Modern vehicles seem to do 200-300k miles
| regularly.
|
| I am not an outlier:
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/americ...
|
| "The average age of U.S. cars and light trucks this year
| rose to a record 12.6 years, according to the report by
| S&P Global Mobility on Wednesday, up by two months from
| 2023."
|
| The average American drives 12k miles a year.
|
| I'm not sure why you zeroed in on a source that openly
| debunks all of your arguments, but I do appreciate the
| assist.
| sofixa wrote:
| > slightly higher tire wear (due to weight)
|
| And thus higher tire particle pollution. And it's not slightly,
| EVs are on average 10-15% heavier than similar ICE vehicles.
| We've now found that a lot of the various small particle
| pollution (e.g. in bodies of water) come from tires.
|
| So, while still drastically better than ICEs, they still have
| externalities (pollution, time wasted in traffic, vehicle
| accidents) and there should still be efforts to try to reduce
| the number of cars on the roads instead of just replacing them
| 1:1 and calling it a day.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| I'm sure you feel the same way about cutting down on cell
| phones right? How about we just let people keep their cars
| (preferably EVs), but feel free to go live in a dense cell
| block and eat bug juice if that is what floats your boat.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > feel free to go live in a dense cell block and eat bug
| juice if that is what floats your boat.
|
| That this is considered a valid response to someone
| suggesting we need more mass transit is a sign that our
| discourse has fallen off a cliff. You can and should do
| better.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Why is it that these "do better" suggestions always feel
| like an attempt to shut discussion down. Being anti-car
| does not make you some moral authority
| p_j_w wrote:
| "You want everyone to live in a prison cell and eat
| nothing but bugs" is not discussion.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's hard to share a cell phone. If there are opportunities
| to make them more environmentally friendly (longevity,
| production processes, better batteries, etc.) we should
| absolutely try to do those things.
|
| EVs are better than ICE cars, but shared-use
| buses/trains/etc. are often even better. We can do more
| than one thing.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| It's really not hard to share a cell phone, you and eg
| your spouse could alternate days and have one phone for
| example. It is just a tradeoff you are not willing to
| make. But, not having a car is a tradeoff YOU are willing
| to make so your are ok with pushing it on others.
| sofixa wrote:
| > But, not having a car is a tradeoff YOU are willing to
| make so your are ok with pushing it on others.
|
| Nobody is trying to take your car away, you scared person
| who cannot fathom not being attached to a car.
|
| I'm merely saying there _must_ be alternatives to
| driving. I don 't care what they are, they will be
| location dependent. If you want to drive, as long as you
| pay your externalities, nobody cares. But it's
| fundamentally wrong to gatekeep all of society behind a
| fundamentally inefficient manner of transport (individual
| cars). It's wrong socially (no social mobility), it's
| wrong ecologically (cars are still the most polluting way
| of transportation, even EVs), it's wrong economically
| (very inefficient), it's wrong from the amount of people
| dying from cars, it's wrong on every possible measurable
| metric.
|
| So, alternatives should be present, so that those that
| _wish_ to do so, or for whom it 's better/faster/more
| efficient/can't use anything else because of mobility
| issues/can't afford anything else, they can take them.
| Bike lanes, trains, buses, whatever, doesn't matter.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Don't be afraid piglet, I won't take your phone. Nobody
| is trying to outlaw public transport- but there
| absolutely people advocating for an end to private
| ownership of cars
| sofixa wrote:
| > I'm sure you feel the same way about cutting down on cell
| phones right
|
| How many people die in cell phone accidents yearly where
| you live? How many have reduced lifespans due to the
| pollution of cell phones? And how many hours can be saved
| per year per human with good cell phone sharing? I would
| guess the number is 0 for all of those, but quite a bit
| higher for cars alternative transportation options.
|
| If you feel personally offended by the mere idea that there
| might be alternatives to cars, and that at the scale of a
| human settlement, they're often better, you need to take a
| step back and consider why you identify yourself with cars
| so much. And if that doesn't help, consider that more
| people having alternatives means less cars on the roads, so
| more space for you to vroom vroom around and less people
| bothering you on the road!
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Do you have any idea how many hours the average person
| uses their phone? There is no other object that has been
| a greater detriment to mental and physical health in
| human history. This is just another instance where
| someone is willing to push something (only using public
| transport) on someone else because it fits their
| viewpoint, but you can't even consider something that
| would have a similar impact on yourself in return (giving
| up your phone).
| sofixa wrote:
| > Do you have any idea how many hours the average person
| uses their phone
|
| Irrelevant on the topic of there being more efficient
| modes of transportation of humans in dense environments.
|
| > There is no other object that has been a greater
| detriment to mental and physical health in human history
|
| While potentially true, that's _entirely_ ignoring all
| the extremely useful things people do with their phones.
|
| > only using public transport
|
| The fact that you take a mention of providing
| alternatives to cars as a stance on "only using public
| transport" indicates to me that you're not interested in
| having an actual discussion, and your car is part of your
| core identity. None of that is healthy, so again, step
| back and consider the benefits. Even purely selfishly,
| more people out of cars because they can bike or take the
| train is better for you because there will be less
| traffic for you.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| For your own mental health, you need to take a breath and
| try and not take alternative viewpoints as personal
| attacks. The post I responded to referenced "efforts to
| try to reduce the number of cars on the roads instead of
| just replacing them 1:1 and calling it a day." i.e.
| reducing personal car ownership. Don't ignore the fact
| that people do extremely useful things with their cars-
| lifesaving activities. You obviously are attached to your
| phone, the same way people are attached to their personal
| cars. A little bit of empathy would go a long way here
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > How many people die in cell phone accidents yearly
| where you live?
|
| To be fair: thousands.
| https://www.ncsl.org/transportation/distracted-driving-
| cellp...
| boringg wrote:
| Tire wear isn't as great -- since tires have a lot of bad
| polymers in it.. hopefully we can solve that one soon.
| rayiner wrote:
| We should obviously ban combustion engine cars, at least starting
| with cities. I can't think of a single clearer win for air
| quality.
| jjayj wrote:
| I would love to have gone electric (bought a car in September)
| but I rent and don't have any way to charge at my residence.
| How do we solve the renters-that-cant-charge-their-cars
| problem?
| barbazoo wrote:
| And everyone you ask has a slightly different situation so no
| generic solution does it. We'll have to spend some money and
| retrofit at least where possible. We'll need free level 2
| chargers wherever people congregate. And folks will probably
| have to adapt their expectation toward mobility in a way.
| Things change.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| All our local Tesla drivers park their cars partially
| blocking the alleyway each evening.
|
| They can't make it into their garages on the narrow road, and
| there are no curb side plugs in the front (NEC safety rules.)
| Funny until the Garbage truck rage mashes the horn at 6am...
| lol =3
| stouset wrote:
| Public EV chargers are pretty widespread nowadays. Not as
| much as gas chargers obviously, but for most people in the
| country if you don't have a way to charge at home it's not
| fundamentally that different from not having a gas pump at
| your house.
|
| Plus, most people _can_ charge at home with an extension
| cord. It 's not particularly fast, but you should be able to
| get 4-5 miles an hour. In the worst case scenario where you
| can only charge at home and can only charge for 10 hours
| overnight, that's still 40 miles of driving which is enough
| for a lot of commuters. Even if it falls short--again--you
| can use public chargers.
|
| Lastly, eliminating the sale of ICE cars will be a pretty
| rapid forcing function on the deployment of EV chargers.
| Still, I'd be all for locations that ban combustion engines
| mandating that landlords provide EV charging facilities.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Popularity has costs, some are waiting in line for 45
| minutes to use a fast charger.
|
| EV is not for everyone, but those Rivian are nice though.
| =3
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Well given Rivians rank among the worst EVs in the world
| efficiency-wise, maybe if you care about not spending
| your life at charging stations, don't buy a Rivian? Or a
| Tesla for that matter, since Tesla lies about their
| efficiency numbers and the real-world numbers are
| middling at best.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| It is the low temperature performance that make most EV
| impractical. A Tesla power pack heater means the charge
| will be completely depleted if left outdoors for more
| than a week in winter.
|
| EV are meant for people that live in 4'C to 42'C weather,
| and have excess capacity on their solar installations.
| Everyone else is getting subsidized by their neighbors
| paying for excess electrical capacity. =3
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Someone needs to tell all those people in Norway.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| NY and Chicago are a little closer... =3
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Walmart has some gigantic amount of sites under
| construction or in permitting at many of their stores,
| and many are being built by other operators too. Charging
| proliferation hasn't slowed down.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Indeed, the entire community is paying to upgrade the
| grid to support that infrastructure. =3
| mattlondon wrote:
| > Not as much as gas chargers
|
| In the UK at least, there are more EV chargers than
| gas/petrol stations:
| https://www.vertumotors.com/news/there-are-more-charging-
| poi...
| Aachen wrote:
| Also after you divide the amount of time required? So if
| an average charging session is 100 minutes and getting
| petrol is 5 minutes, you'd need 20 times more chargers to
| break even on availability. And I'm not sure that even
| works the same when considering that these events are
| probably bursty (most people will arrive at an energy
| station at a similar time of day)
|
| In case it sounds like I'm gas station lobby: I'm not
| against EVs at all and don't own a car, I'm just
| wondering if this is a fair comparison
| mattlondon wrote:
| I don't think it even includes the ones at people's homes
| where probably "most" charging happens. No one has a gas
| station at home.
|
| FWIW a fast charge is like 10-15 mins usually while you
| grab a coffee or something - in modern EV cars you have
| 100-200kw (or more!) charging where you can get like 400
| or 500 miles in an hour, so 15mins gives you 100-125
| miles extra range etc. If you time it, filling up a gas
| tank and going in to pay and all that is not like 40
| seconds but more in the 5-10 mins mark, so 15 mins top up
| on a longer journey is not that much longer than filling
| up.
|
| It's a bit of a different mentality really - with
| petrol/gas I'd fill up to the brim then drive until I was
| almost empty, but with an EV I wake up with a full tank
| and just do a quick top off here and there during the day
| (assuming I ever need it which 99% of the time I don't)
| until I can get home and charge overnight where is way
| way cheaper.
|
| With petrol I'd never stop to just put in a few litres at
| a time, but doing it with an EV is so simple and easy,
| and you can go do something else while it's happening.
| Picking up some groceries, getting a coffee, bio break
| etc - perfect time for a top up
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Only a tiny fraction of EV chargers are 100+ kW. Most are
| 10-20 kW. These are great for office parking garages or
| shopping malls, but stopping at one for 15 minutes gets
| you nowhere.
| Quitschquat wrote:
| Well if you have a Tesla, I believe you can sit in it and it
| offers games to play on its iPad to kill the time.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Everytime I fill my truck up, I'm at the gas station
| thinking _"man, I wish I could just hang out here for two
| hours!!"_
| Quitschquat wrote:
| I'm keeping my Tacoma forever
| Toutouxc wrote:
| More like 20 minutes, but ok, not everyone likes that.
| genewitch wrote:
| what happens when there's more people that need 20
| minutes? it takes me less than five to pull up, fill up,
| and go. when the gas station is packed, i might have to
| wait 4-5 minutes for my turn.
|
| Now quadruple this.
|
| "super extra 1gigawatt charging" isn't coming to my area,
| potentially ever. Afaik there's two "super chargers" in
| my metro area, both at dealerships. i've actually _never_
| seen a Tesla charger in person.
| matsemann wrote:
| With home charging, I'm almost never charging anywhere
| else. Maybe a few times a year when doing a longer trip.
| I just drive, and plug the charger in some times when I
| get home. I literally never think about range or having
| to drive a detour to fill it up.
|
| But you have to do that probably weekly. And then also
| spend a lot of money while doing it. It seems you believe
| those driving EVs are "suckers", but do you realize you
| probably spend hours and hours more in a year going to
| the station and pump compared to most EV owners never
| having to do that in their daily life?
| genewitch wrote:
| what about people who live in apartment buildings or
| houses where they have to park on the street?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Why is your civic infrastructure so crippled? I'm not
| sure if I'd trust driving over bridges or drinking water
| in a municipality which is incapable of installing
| electric plugs.
| genewitch wrote:
| Not everywhere on the planet is huge metros with millions
| of people.
|
| for instance, my nearest gas station is 2 miles away. The
| nearest place to actually buy fresh food is a 36 mile
| round trip.
|
| furthermore calling the gigawatt charging stations
| "electric plugs" is real disingenuous.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| 20 minutes to get you home if there is a free charger,
| ok.
|
| Zero to a hundred, you know that isn't even remotely
| true.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| My cheap EV gets 200+ km of range (124 mi) from 20
| minutes of charging. Again, why the hell are you talking
| about two hours. Why are you saying that 20 minutes gets
| you "home". Why are you talking about charging from 0 to
| 100 % when that's NOT how you charge an EV, ever. Sounds
| like you've never driven one.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| No. It doesn't.
|
| Your display says that. And your display is bullshit.
|
| I work with the people that make the displays man. There
| are entire groups dedicated to deciding what is
| indefensible lies, and what "could be true under the
| right circumstances so we're allowed to say/show that"
|
| > Why are you talking about charging from 0 to 100 % when
| that's NOT how you charge an EV,
|
| lol, go to a charging station sometime and see the people
| sleeping or watching tv. If it's your primary vehicle and
| you want to go somewhere, you are going from 0 to 100.
| bhandziuk wrote:
| Your Tesla has an iPad? Or you're saying someone sitting in
| a car can play on an iPad if they have one?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| You could possibly have come to an arrangement about getting
| a 50 Amp (think dryer plug) hookup in the garage and provided
| your own charger. Also depending on your driving patterns a
| trickle charger in a 20 Amp socket may have worked for you as
| well. Mine takes about 48 hours for a full charge on the
| trickle charger.
| jjayj wrote:
| There's no garage, and the only driveway-facing outlet is
| at the front door - opposite where my parking spot is
| allocated (an extension cord would have to go under/through
| the landlord's cars.) I have to drive 60km to work every
| day.
|
| Only laws (accommodate EVs and/or WFH) or spending time
| sitting at a gas station will help me here. No landlord is
| interested in accommodating an EV unless it's a net benefit
| to them (and thus a net negative to me, who already spends
| 40% income just to have a place to work.)
| jjayj wrote:
| ... to live, not work. I can't edit comments from
| Harmonic.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| Sorry to hear that.
| Aachen wrote:
| Maybe it's possible to rent a cheap parking spot with
| charger elsewhere and take a
| tram/metro/bus/bicycle/scooter for the last ten minutes
| of distance as you get deeper into the city?
|
| Having a car right out one's door is a real luxury
| though, no more than two steps through any weather. I can
| see the appeal, just not sure if the collective downsides
| are worth it compared to arranging good transport inside
| of, and between, cities. Outside of populated areas,
| yeah, whatcha gonna do, but at least inside of major
| settlements we ought to be able to get this done (in many
| cities it's already okay to not have a car, but imo the
| facilities to get to the countryside are relatively
| annoying and needlessly expensive)
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'm in the same situation, but I did go electric. I'm in a
| bigger city in Europe and the public infrastructure here is
| adequate and reliable. I rarely have to wait for the car to
| finish charging, it mostly fits my usage.
| nottorp wrote:
| Why renters? I own but I still wouldn't have any place to
| charge if i owned an EV...
| esperent wrote:
| If you own a house, generally you can do things like
| install charging points (also backup batteries, solar
| panels, better insulation, all kinds of fun things) that
| renters can't.
|
| I'm sure there are some homeowners who can't - maybe listed
| buildings, or these weird HOA rules I hear about from
| Americans.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yes, especially on the 6th floor :)
| esperent wrote:
| Well, that's an apartment. We're talking about house
| owners.
| nottorp wrote:
| No the OP was talking about owners without qualifiers.
|
| Make EVs chargeable for those who choose to live in the
| urban jungle and then talk about their merits.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| So not the city. Can't wait till we ban ice vehicles from
| the suburbs.
| mattlondon wrote:
| In the UK, in London at least, they're starting to put in
| more and more ~4-5KW chargers on the electric street
| lamps/lamp posts.
|
| So far its like 1 or 2 a street (and not all streets either),
| but hopefully one day it will basically be all of them in
| every street so you don't need to worry.
|
| So if you need to park overnight on the street anyway, park
| next to a lamp post that has the socket. Its "slow" charging
| at 4 to 5 KW, but if you're parked for 8-12 hours (while you
| are asleep), that is quite a considerable top-up in the
| 40-50KWh range.
| empath75 wrote:
| The same way you fix parking problems and lots of other
| problems. You have regulations that require landlords to
| provide certain amenities.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| One option may be to ask your work to electrify a parking
| spot for you? Depending on the type of company there can be
| big enough subsidies and tax-write-off capital investments in
| adding more electric parking spaces that they might do it
| just for that. (It can be fun to use accounting games in your
| personal favor.) For other types of companies they may see
| that as a possible "captive audience" revenue source, with
| nickel and dime-ing electric charge fees on top of existing
| parking fees to be a a fun game to play with their own
| employees whose cars are stuck in the same place for many
| hours at a time because they "must" be in the office.
|
| Either of those two common types of companies you can
| possibly "win" an easy way to charge your daily commute.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > How do we solve the renters-that-cant-charge-their-cars
| problem?
|
| By solving the renters-think-they-need-to-own-a-car problem.
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| We don't have a housing problem. We have a people think
| they need a room with a window problem.
| Zambyte wrote:
| Lacking windows is incompatible with high quality
| housing. Cars are incompatible with high quality
| transportation.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Yeah maybe starting with what they're doing in places in Europe
| where gradually emission requirements become more strict.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Excluding the worst polluters makes a surprisingly big
| difference, yes.
|
| It's still been a problem in several places though, because
| it forced poor people with old cars to either upgrade or stop
| driving. An equitable alternative would have included a way
| to get a new car free or at least cheap.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Sure, first we spend a trillion dollars for over capacity
| electrical distribution grids and generation plants.
|
| B100 is almost carbon neutral, and has the energy density
| necessary for commercial logistics. Finding responsible
| manufacturing methods is far more feasible.
|
| EV only make sense with distributed generation like home solar.
| =3
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| Biodiesel doesn't solve the pollution problem. It's also very
| expensive, and often produced in an unsustainable way.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I like the company looking at a genetically engineered
| solution, and waste organic matter conversion.
|
| It is cleaner from a sulfur content and long-term carbon
| cycle perspective, but is very similar to regular fuels.
|
| The dilemma is whether B100 it more difficult to scale than
| trying to retool our entire global energy infrastructure
| with finite rare earth metals. =3
| altairprime wrote:
| If all of us renters were forced to convert to electric there'd
| never be an open charger in any city again for the next five
| years, because no landlord will voluntarily afford that cost,
| and no municipal region can pass a ballot measure to afford
| that cost. California's impending ban of combustion car sales
| hinges wholly on a magical DC-charging network that doesn't
| exist in U.S. cities yet (i.e. at parking meters), only at U.S.
| personal dwellings.
|
| I would love to switch to electric but at current charging
| times and absolutely horrendously incompetent grid deployments,
| there's no way all of the thousand people in my building could,
| much less the million other renters in the city. (And certainly
| transit can't cope with us either, given the continued
| homeowner hostility to paying taxes for such things.)
|
| What city has charging available for an average of _greater_
| than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents?
| What parking garages anywhere in the U.S. have 25 or more
| electric vehicle chargers per 100 daytime and /or overnight
| and/or reserved parking spots, in order to diffuse the grid
| cost through trickle charging? What funding model is proposed
| to ensure that's built whether corporate garage owners like it
| or not? How will states who depend on fuel tax to keep roads in
| repair avoid cutting off city services to suburban outregions
| when their asphalt budgets crater?
|
| Technology has downstream effects, and it's not as simple as
| "buy a Prius" when you consider U.S. non-homeowners. (I assume
| the prospect for India electric conversions would be much
| worse, too.) "Ban combustion vehicles" is a lofty goal, but
| until the charging grid problem is solved, it's an unattainable
| one.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Level 1 charging overnight on a standard 120V outlet, while
| not ideal, is surprisingly adequate. Granted, many people
| rely on street parking or otherwise don't have a parking spot
| that is right beside their dwelling, but for rented houses or
| complexes with private garages/parking areas the size of the
| lift isn't necessarily "get upgraded service and a bunch of
| 240V EVSE put in".
| bruckie wrote:
| I'll second this. We got a Chevy Bolt a couple of years
| ago, and I assumed we'd need to install a 240 V EVSE, but
| it turns out that regular 120 V 12 A charging is totally
| fine for us. I think there's been one time in the 2.5 years
| we've had it when we had to go to a nearby fast charger
| because the battery was getting low.
|
| Of course if you're commuting 2 hours every day, things
| will be different. But for us, it's been great.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Yeah I'm charging an EV (with a huge battery) at home on
| 120v and it's fine 9 out of 10 days.
| Thorrez wrote:
| None of the apartments I've lived at had a 120V outlet near
| my parking spot that I could use.
| altairprime wrote:
| There are no renter-accessible power outlets anywhere in
| the 300-spot parking garage for my current complex, nor
| the 300-spot parking garage for my past complex, nor the
| 12-spot covered parking for my previous complex, etc.
| (The one prior to all those, I parked directly outside my
| bedroom window, but we were expressly prohibited from
| using A/Cs -- and so one can safely assume electric
| vehicles -- because the supply run for the property's
| buildings was so badly underprovisioned that we risked
| melting it and twice blew the entire property circuit
| altogether.)
| mattlondon wrote:
| Same here. Got an EV before we got the proper 7KW charger
| installed in our house. We had an outdoor socket that the
| gardeners use for whatever and just have a "granny charger"
| hooked up to that which I think charges at perhaps 2KW (10A
| on a 240v UK plug).
|
| We use perhaps 5% battery of our VW ID.3 on a typical day
| (school run, shops, visiting friends or whatever) so we
| just do an over-night top-up back to 80% maybe once a week
| when we get down to ~50%. Working surprisingly well - I am
| not sure I can be bothered to get the proper charger
| installed (which is annoying as I have already bought it
| and the cable for about PS800 and its just sitting in my
| shed!)
| altairprime wrote:
| Certainly that's a factor -- but, with quantity 300 parking
| spaces, it's not exactly the main attraction. Very
| approximately:
|
| Assuming a 120V / 20A = 2400W circuit (more or less
| standard in a garage):
|
| 100 parking spots = 200A / 24000W; 300 parking spots = 600A
| / 72000W.
|
| So a distribution line can carry 72kW readily enough --
| that seems to be about where they are anyways -- but if
| it's carrying that load, it cannot carry _any other load_ ,
| which means that _each_ high-capacity parking garage will
| need a dedicated line from the nearest substation is.
|
| Then, that parking garage will need to distribute that
| current to 300 parking spot chargers. Even at 120V/20A,
| that's 300 new circuit taps; 300 wires, initially. You can
| use three-phase to reduce that to 100 wires @ 120/20A or
| equivalent each, which is a lot. Or you can reduce that to
| 3 wires @ 120V/200A or equivalent, at which point you now
| have the safety considerations of an outdoor distribution
| wire in a small enclosed fire-prone space, and you're
| facing the christmas light problem of "one blown bulb"
| versus one third of your garage.
|
| Then you need to confront "the chargers need to support
| burst-mode" so that people can push a button to get a
| temporary fast-charge ignoring all other concerns -- but
| also "the chargers need to default to trickle-mode", while
| also considering that trickle-mode should run faster when
| fewer cars are plugged in (or else tenants will take
| offense that the chargers aren't using provisioned and
| available capacity), and that Time-of-Day concerns should
| cap trickle-mode during peak so that the grid doesn't fail.
| And that electric vehicles are foreseen as a component of
| localized grid storage, so garages might need to support
| backfeeding from cars.
|
| And this all has to be coordinated across three hundred
| chargers and who knows how many feeder circuits, between
| one three-phase and three-hundred one-phase, assuming that
| 72kW (120V/600A) is provisioned to trickle-charge the
| entire garage each evening at 15A per car max (have to
| leave some headroom for the burst needs, for momentary
| overdraw before a charger fuses out a defective vehicle,
| etc).
|
| This is all _doable_ , but it is logistically _expensive_ ,
| and I would estimate that cost at perhaps tens of millions
| of dollars at that scale. Doing this for my old
| 12-apartment complex would _merely_ require 2.4kW of new
| power delivery, taps, and distribution under the pavement
| (there 's no room for overhead poles to be introduced),
| without sinking the property into the riverbed it's built
| on, and without breaking the local emergency services grid
| that it's drawing from when the creek next door floods
| every few years.
|
| Retrofit costs are estimated at $5000-$15000 per single
| parking spot (new buildings are wired more efficiently so
| halve that cost for anything built since the Model S came
| out). California at one point was offering a 30% subsidy on
| retrofits; so, for my example, 300 spots * $5000-$15000 =
| ~2-4 million dollars (napkin rounded) for a single
| apartment complex. At local 1-bedroom housing prices,
| that's around 1000 rent-months of capital investment with
| _no future gain_ -- and that 's the most critical part
| here. The complex cannot recoup that investment through
| maintenance and usage fees, because those will have to be
| paid out in actual maintenance and kilowatt-hours -- and
| tenants, in this economy, cannot _afford_ to subsidize the
| buildout cost.
|
| So until retrofits are either state-funded or state-
| mandated, landlords have little to no reason to invest
| their money into the future of electric cars, because
| they'll get pennies on the dollar at best from their
| investment. And, given their tendency to collude via
| RealPage, no one will be the first to build out a 100% EV
| charging garage because that will not only long-term
| devalue their other properties without increasing the
| short-term value of the one improved, but also will start a
| race to the bottom that they are already colluding to try
| and prevent.
|
| Yes, trickle-charging is electrically feasible -- it's
| compelling the profitless capital investment that is not.
| xyst wrote:
| Car based transportation is just not scalable.
|
| Other countries have figured this out. Norway in particular.
| Working transportation models exist and this country has the
| funds to make it happen. However because of American
| Exceptionalism, we have very limited options.
| jajko wrote:
| I'll add another country with even better public transport
| (especially trains) - Switzerland. A small, dense and very
| wealthy country that has train station at the heart of
| every city and many villages, and the rest is covered by
| buses.
|
| Yet every single morning and evening there is huge traffic
| jam around every city. Every single year highways are more
| full, more issue with parking.
|
| If it can't be solved in such ideal country for public
| transport, I am not holding breath for rest of the world,
| and just wishing something ain't gonna make it real. There
| are many reasons why situation is as it is (it costs a lot,
| even such transport doesn't cover many people's cases well
| enough and nobody wants to spend 120 mins every day
| commuting via public transport when its say 60 with cars).
|
| What I can imagine actually working - uber style shared
| robo (meaning _cheap_ ) taxis/minibuses. Big enough network
| that one can even switch a car in some 'taxi station' for
| more efficient trip that would take just marginally longer
| than driving oneself. This solves a lot of parking issues
| in cities and would reduce traffic to maybe half or a bit
| less.
| altairprime wrote:
| _This_. This, this, this. I cannot stress enough how
| critical this point is. Either we invest a trillion dollars
| in electrifying parking spots or we invest that in building
| out transit and bicycling systems. None of them will ever
| be profitable over the long-run, so we continue with gas
| vehicles. I would so much prefer not to have to drive to
| the grocery store when I don 't have 2 hours round-trip to
| spare on four intersecting transit schedules, or to risk
| life and limb every time I want to try and bicycle those
| 2.5 deadly miles across four highway on/offramps where
| vehicles ignore every "no turn on red" sign in the region
| and police that don't enforce.
|
| Banning gasoline vehicles is the goal. In the U.S., _all_
| known solutions require capital investments that
| corporations can 't extract a 'growth in profit growth over
| time' from, while disadvantaging the vehicle owners caste.
| Solve _that_ , and you'll solve a lot more than just
| gasoline vehicles.
| rayiner wrote:
| > Car based transportation is just not scalable.
|
| We have scaled it! We're a country of 330 million people
| where almost everyone drives.
|
| > However because of American Exceptionalism, we have very
| limited options.
|
| It's only "American Exceptionalism" insofar as Americans
| are rich compared to Europeans. Upper middle class people
| across Europe also live in suburbs and drive to places.
| American wealth/land space simply enables middle and lower
| middle class people to do the same thing.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > We have scaled it!
|
| said the man, 37 trillion dollars in debt. Go team!
| cyberax wrote:
| > If all of us renters were forced to convert to electric
| there'd never be an open charger in any city again for the
| next five years, because no landlord will voluntarily afford
| that cost, and no municipal region can pass a ballot measure
| to afford that cost.
|
| Landlords can charge tenants over the price of electricity.
|
| > What city has charging available for an average of greater
| than one spot per five hundred multifamily-housing residents?
|
| Shanghai: https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Latest-
| WhatsNew/20240508/...
| altairprime wrote:
| The difficult is not electricity prices; those can simply
| be tariff'd for overhead-slash-profit as all U.S. chargers
| do already. The difficulty is building out hundreds of
| chargers within a single city block's worth of the city's
| x,y grid. That level of power density is generally only
| seen in heavy industrial zones, and residential
| distribution grids can barely cope with air conditioners,
| much less with electric vehicles on top of that, _before_
| the prospect of upgrading every multifamily residential
| zone from low-density power to high-density power.
|
| Napkin math time. Assuming that Shanghai has ~1% of China's
| 420 million vehicles, given that Shanghai has ~2% of
| China's population (~8 million) and assuming a car
| ownership rate of 0.5; then Shanghai can be estimated to
| have 4 million vehicles, while only having 0.8 million
| charging locations (as the article indicates). 20%
| certainly does exceed 0.2%, and they're ahead of the game
| with ~2 charging locations per EV today -- but that also
| means that they've only converted ~10% of Shanghai's
| gasoline vehicle population and are only provisioned to
| support 20% conversion right now.
|
| However, I think that China has a significant advantage
| versus the U.S. -- they are primarily selling _very small_
| vehicles for intra-city use. So, their charger capacities
| can be _significantly_ lower per vehicle than in the U.S.,
| which reduces their difficulty of electric conversations
| probably by a full order of magnitude from ours.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > I think that China has a significant advantage versus
| the U.S. -- they are primarily selling very small
| vehicles for intra-city use
|
| This does not match what I've seen in China at all. Nor
| does it match up with any data I've seen about the best
| selling cars in China. Do you have any data on this?
| altairprime wrote:
| Nope, but I have a pile of napkins here covered in
| scribbles. Appreciate the correction.
| te_chris wrote:
| I've got an EV in a flat with a terrace in London. There's 4
| 22kw charging car parks within a few min walk, and a lot more
| further, plus a few more expensive fast chargers. Works well.
| russdill wrote:
| Where you park, are there lights? Then there's electricity.
| It's something that's fixable, we just have to have the will
| to do it. It's worth it.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| That's just not how it works. There might be electricity
| there, but only enough to charge one car at a time. Works
| for my home garage, but would not work for apartment
| complex.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| It's really not as big of deal anymore. My co-worker got an
| electric car and has his own house with a garage and never
| ended up installing a wall box. He simply charges at work or
| while buying groceries.
| altairprime wrote:
| How many chargers per hundred spots do his work or grocery
| store have?
|
| Typical car density for my nearest three grocery stores is
| 25-100 vehicles fluctuating during three or four peak
| hours. The highest number of chargers at any of those
| stores is 8, followed by 2 and 0; of those, 8 have been out
| of service for the past 60 days because someone is playing
| negotiation hardball with the charging services provider.
|
| When the chargers were working, they were nearly at
| capacity for the entire day, at _current_ (low) levels of
| electric car fraction of the population; there 's no way
| they're prepared to cope with a full conversion, at which
| point the same power density and distribution problem that
| impacts multifamily parking garages instead (or as well!)
| affects grocery stores.
| graemep wrote:
| Also a problem in the UK, not just for renters, not for
| anyone who does not have off street parking.
|
| There are smaller and more practical changes that would have
| huge benefits. More public transport, pedestrianised areas,
| encouraging people to drive smaller cars (lots of ways to do
| that - e.g. reserve some parking for small cars, tax vehicles
| on weight) would all have huge benefits.
| randunel wrote:
| I have an electric Leaf and I've never, ever, used a "fast"
| charger. I've been plugging it in my 10A garden socket and
| it's perfect for overnight charging, it goes from 10% to 80%
| from dusk until dawn.
|
| Annoyingly, I've already invested in a 11kW charger (with
| 22kW infrastructure) which I've never used!
|
| You don't need "magical DC-charging" to go EV.
| empath75 wrote:
| Demand induces supply. Probably don't ban it _all at once_,
| but a gradual phasing out will give plenty of time for
| chargers to get built. They won't be _free_, but they will be
| available.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Demand induces higher prices which induces supply. So yes
| this is 100% solvable by normal market forces, but that
| doesn't change the fact that it would be very expensive for
| everyone involved.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's a good point! I hadn't thought about that. The benefit
| of EVs seem highest in the city,[1] but the charging
| infrastructure isn't there in urban areas.
|
| [1] My wife, being from the west coast, used to walk around
| NYC in flip flops, and would come home with her feet black
| from brake dust and soot and god knows what else.
| Zambyte wrote:
| I never have to wait in line or had issues with supplying
| power while charging my electric vehicle in my bedroom. The
| problem is thinking gas car and electric car are your two
| options.
| HKH2 wrote:
| Yep, sell your ICE and buy a jet plane instead.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I'm against a ban. That sort of pollution is an externality and
| we could price it in.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The externalities are all the costs of medical problems and
| deaths due to pollution, as well as reduced property values
| due to polluted areas being less desirable. For the former
| I'd say a ban is appropriate, unless you're suggesting to
| somehow literally clean the polluted air and pay for it with
| a gas automobile tax.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| I mean even campfires and smoking in public have negative
| externalities which cause cancer. The marginal cost of each
| is tiny and probably hard to price, but it has a price.
| Adding this price would slightly offset the cost but more
| importantly act as a disincentive for buying a polluting
| vehicle.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Smoking in public is widely banned. Campfires in
| populated areas are usually limited to very specific
| recreational areas. Home wood fires in populated areas
| are often banned and should be as long as there are
| reasonable alternatives.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Yeah, because that's worked so well in other sectors.
|
| You know how Tesla makes a fuckton of money? Selling their
| carbon credits to industry so they can pollute. So all the
| pollution reduction caused by people driving Teslas enables
| industry to pollute instead of controlling their emissions,
| reducing energy waste, decarbonizing, etc.
| mhb wrote:
| Isn't that exactly how carbon credits are supposed to work?
| linotype wrote:
| Then we go to price it in people will say it's anti-free
| market.
| KingMob wrote:
| Based on the long history of trying to price in
| externalities, bans are probably more effective. Just look at
| how many games are played with carbon "credits", and how
| little real impact they've had.
| loeg wrote:
| > Just look at how many games are played with carbon
| "credits", and how little real impact they've had.
|
| Credits are indeed a scam but they are not a mandatory
| component of a carbon externality tax.
| tim333 wrote:
| On the other hand China didn't ban petrol but has heavy
| incentives for electric and is now at about 50% EVs,
| similarly Norway is at about 90%. Not exactly pricing the
| externalities but it kind of works. Like in China I think
| if you want a vehicle you need a permit and can get one
| straight away for EVs but have to wait 8 years for petrol
| or something like that.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Wow.
|
| Well, I like that the people that think like this also probably
| live I places where you are actually driving a coal powered
| car.
|
| Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for EVs...
| their power comes directly from burning crude oil.
|
| I'm an automotive EE, and and the truth about EVs is in a rush
| to push them out the door, the media and politicians have set
| the tech back at least a decade by pretending it is something
| it's not.
|
| EVs for most people outside of California. Make a great town
| vehicle or second vehicle.
|
| A ban on ICE... wow.
| webprofusion wrote:
| I don't agree with a ban, but burning crude oil (are you sure
| about that, it's usually refined at least a little?) can have
| centralised carbon capture and filtration, whereas cars
| pretty much just pump it straight out. Luckily they made the
| smoke invisible so it's ok, almost like it's not even there!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| They don't even unload it from the tankers. Absolute crude.
| Seen it with my own two.
|
| Exactly, as long as no one sees it, it isn't happening.
| Same with them burning plastic and trash.
| throwaway473825 wrote:
| > Well, I like that the people that think like this also
| probably live I places where you are actually driving a coal
| powered car.
|
| That's still an improvement for both global and local
| emissions.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| There are more benefits to EV conversion in a community than
| the use of renewable energy, noise and roadside air quality
| being pretty big ones. Also... how do you know there aren't
| Hawaiians charging their EVs using rooftop solar? I hear
| they're known for being in the sun sometimes.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > Also... how do you know there aren't Hawaiians charging
| their EVs using rooftop solar?
|
| Because of math.
|
| A 6 kW house, to charge a 60 kW battery... so long as
| everyone with an electric vehicle is charging them at their
| house for 10 sunny hours to charge from empty, you're right
| and I'm wrong.
|
| Some people could get by, but it leaves the solar for
| nothing else. If you leave the house while the sun is up
| you better get back because you're losing daylight!
| simonsquiff wrote:
| If you don't use your solar, it is pushed to the grid (or
| batteries, if you have them), so really its about the
| collective solar that exists in the grid and not a house
| specific view. As solar rollout increases, the greenness
| of your EV increases even if you don't charge from your
| rooftop.
| tzs wrote:
| Dude...we are talking about Hawaii. The largest of the
| islands is just over 4000 square miles. None of the
| others are over 750 square miles. People drive a lot less
| in Hawaii than in most of the rest of the country.
|
| The average is 8900 miles per year which is a little
| under 24 miles per day and a little under 750 miles a
| month.
|
| If you can charge with solar at 6 kW on a typical EV that
| will give you about 20 miles per hour of charging. If you
| can do a little over an hour a day you will be covered.
|
| If you find plugging in for an hour a day to much of a
| hassle it is under 9 hours a week or 37 hours a month.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Dude, literally every single EV-related number you've
| mentioned around here is so insanely off. Two hours at a
| charger, 20 minutes of charge just to get home, charging
| an EV 0 to 100 % and now again, charging a 60 kW battery
| every day. I don't know what kind of terrible EVs you've
| seen, but they weren't what normal people drive. Either
| get some real world experience with EVs or just stop
| posting about them.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Interesting... so, for reference I'm an automotive
| engineer and have worked one at least three EV platforms
| for big4.
|
| Good to know how wrong I am on this topic. Let me guess,
| you own an EV? Well, that certain explains it everything.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| You received some better corrections in earlier replies,
| which you've chosen to ignore... That's your prerogative
| of course, but there's no need to resort to "I'll have
| you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy
| Seals"-style reverse ad hominem to make an argument.
|
| You made some basic mistakes in your previous reply, such
| as confusing power (kW) and energy (kWh) and assuming
| that a typical driver in HI commutes something like 250mi
| each day. This isn't even typical for drivers on the
| mainland, where plenty of EV+solar owners manage to
| replenish most or all of their EV usage using rooftop
| solar generation just fine.
|
| (If you're going to answer "well, I never said I was
| considering the median distance/day case - I was talking
| about the most extreme scenarios!" then I'd suggest at
| least bumping up the hypothetical solar installation to
| 10kW instead of going with the median.)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| While I think there is some merit to what you're saying,
| you're forgetting two major diferences between driving am ICE
| car and an EV charged on fossil fuel electricity.
|
| First, EV engines are far, far more energy efficient than
| ICEs. Secondly, fossil fuel power plants are far more
| efficient at converting fossil fuels to energy than ICEs are
| (since the energy efficiency of a thermal engine is
| proportional to its volume).
|
| The result is that the EV car mileage you'll get by burning
| 1t of oil in an oil power plant is much, much higher than the
| mileage you'll get from that same 1t of oil in ICE cars. I'm
| not 100% sure if this holds true for coal based power plants,
| but those should be getting relatively rarer.
|
| Not to mention, fossil fuel power plants can have much better
| filters and some CO2/CH4 capture technologies, so the mileage
| you get per ton of greenhouse gas emissions is even better
| than the energy per ton of fossil fuels.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I'll add that Hawaii currently generates 20%+ of their
| electricity from non-fossil fuels. Plus they are actively
| reducing fossil generation with a view to removing it
| completely.
|
| Changes on this scale take time. But to make the islands
| much less dependent on fossil fuels, a two-pronged strategy
| is in play. Reduce fossil fuel generation, but _also_
| reduce the dependence on fossil fuel in transport.
|
| As a long-term strategy, reducing the cost of importing all
| that fuel, over vast distances, seems to be a huge win for
| the islands. In every way (politically, economically,
| socially, environmentally) generating their own energy is a
| win.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Yes. Only 80% crude oil they pull a tanker up, fuel the
| plant directly on the tanker and roll another one right
| in.
|
| Literally the most unrefined and dirty way to create
| power, as long as the tourists don't see it, and the EV
| owners that think they're making a different don't know,
| g2g.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The choice is between EVs (20% green + 80% oil with
| extreme energy efficiency, pollution concentrated in
| industrial zone) vs ICEs (100% oil, extremely energy
| inefficient, pollution directly where people live).
|
| Seems a pretty simple choice from my point of view.
| KingMob wrote:
| Well, most of us don't have a plan B if the Earth is wrecked
| by pollution, but I guess if you beg Musk hard enough, he
| might invite you to Mars.
|
| We can either do drastic things now, or _desperate_ things
| later.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| Hyperbole like that doesn't help anyone.
|
| Pollution and environmental destruction are big problems,
| but there are no remotely likely scenarios where the Earth
| "is wrecked by pollution" and a HN reader would need to
| question the viability of remaining on the planet.
| tzs wrote:
| > Like the clowns in Hawaii that have extra subsidies for
| EVs... their power comes directly from burning crude oil.
|
| If all their electricity comes from burning crude oil than
| they'd get about the same amount of miles in an ICE by
| refining that oil to gasoline for the cars and an EV by
| burning the crude oil for electricity, distributing that over
| the grid to drivers to charge their EVs.
|
| However, about 22% of Hawaii's electricity comes from solar,
| so the EVs will come out ahead.
|
| Even if we ignore solar and assume the EVs only use
| electricity from burning crude oil, the crude oil fueled
| generators should be cleaner than ICE engines, so there would
| be a significant reduction in total green house gases and
| particulates.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| Automotive EE engineer? I'm sure everyone here would love
| your explanation of EV efficiencies vs ICE in different
| situations.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| No they wouldn't.
|
| The all people here shitting on reality - are doing so
| because they're defending their purchases.
|
| Most people with EV as a primary vehicle were fooled into
| marketing that does not accurately reflect the product, and
| they don't want to hear otherwise.
| webprofusion wrote:
| I don't think banning combustion engines is fighting the right
| battle, but incentivizing the alternatives (e..g lowering or
| removing sales tax) is a good idea.
|
| We don't actually want to scrap working cars unless they have
| reached the end of their life or passed an air quality
| threshold (UK tests every car over 3 years old, every year,
| called an MOT). Reduce, reuse, recycle etc.
| mjmas wrote:
| Requiring LPG would be a better option. (~10x less CO)
| xyst wrote:
| Ban _all_ cars, bud.
|
| Make streets narrower. Reduce parking. Return road
| infrastructure in favor of walkability, green areas, and
| reducing urban heat islands.
| matsemann wrote:
| Just don't do as we did in Norway. Sure, we've seen great
| adoption to electric, but with the insane amount of money spent
| and subsidies, we've could instead have improved public transit
| and _reduced car dependence_.
|
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23939076/norway-electric-...
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I can think of many. The list should start with coal power
| plants (hello, green Germany), then two-stroke engines (both
| mopeds and leaf blowers / lawn mowers), then diesel engines,
| especially diesel buses and trucks. None of that is in place.
|
| Modern gasoline and hybrid cars are fine, banning them at this
| point in time would mean a drop in quality of life for
| negligible gain.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Diesel transport trucks and busses are getting a lot of work
| done per gallon. How much worse are their emissions?
|
| Hybrid cars might be good enough, but banning pure combustion
| cars _from cities_ sounds perfectly reasonable to me. No real
| quality of life impact.
| boesboes wrote:
| And how are we going to charge all those EV's? the grid is
| already overloaded in many places. Here we are requested to
| not charge our cars during certain times to reduce load.
|
| And how will all the people that are buying 500EUR second
| hand cars afford electric?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I think there is merit in a ICE free
| future, especially in urban areas, but the practicalities..
| And I am not convinced the long term impacts of EV are
| fully appreciated necessarily.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Realistically this is what's happening in the UK with "low
| emission zones", the worst of the emitters are banned.
| Although public buses of course get an exemption until they
| can manage a changeover.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Meant German cities have electric or natural gas buses.
| Electric local delivery vans are becoming more common.
| badgersnake wrote:
| I live in a city and I don't have a car. There are very few
| places to charge it, and many of the lamppost charges are
| seemingly permanently broken. Charging at home is not an option
| as I would have to park it on the street. If I needed a car I
| would definitely go ICE or hybrid, thankfully I don't.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I pick up a bad screw every year from careless Ute drivers with
| leaky toolboxes and have to throw 1-2 tyres in the bin.
|
| Tyre wear isn't that important to me.
| defrost wrote:
| > and have to throw 1-2 tyres in the bin.
|
| That's your choice.
|
| We jack the car, pull the wheel, extract the screws, and use a
| tyre plug kit.
|
| Howto repair tubeless tyres with plugs:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwWPlaghfs
|
| Tyres with inner tubes can also be repaired, that's slightly
| more involved.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| depends where the puncture is. too close to the sidewall and
| you have to bin them. if they've already been plugged once
| and theu get another puncture its off to the bin.
| defrost wrote:
| > if they've already been plugged once and theu get another
| puncture its off to the bin.
|
| Again, that's your personal choice.
|
| We've got off road and on road tyres we still use with four
| to five tyre plugs in them that have lasted a few years
| since their last puncture.
|
| I'm in non urban Australia and have cars actively used with
| > 500,000 km on the clock. We were raised to maintain gear;
| be it cars, trucks, aircraft, excavators, bob cats, etc.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| It's a choice in so much as I would be gambling against
| how likely I am to get knocked back at a safety
| inspection for having plugs on the side wall. I'm in
| urban NSW and whether I'd get by a safety inspection
| would be a gamble on how particular the mechanic is. One
| of the mechanics I go to warned me about a single
| slightly cloudy headlight for my next inspection, which
| is comical compared to some of the cars I've seen on the
| roads in Sydney. I'm sure he'd be a big fan of those
| tyres.
|
| Understandable if you're rural though.
| defrost wrote:
| I didn't advocate sidewall plugs.
|
| What I can say is that properly fitted plugs in the tread
| can last a long time with little leakage and that three
| or four plugs in the tyre tread (widely spaced, not all
| jammed in a big hole) seem to last a fair few years.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Yes, this, it depends. It has to be in the middle 100mm or
| so of the tyre, and not between the treads, otherwise they
| won't plug it.
|
| Annoyingly, plugs are not perfect either: after a tyre has
| been plugged I'm putting air in it like every 2 months, so
| anecdotally I guess the plugs leak really slowly.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I plug shoulders in large part because it drives certain
| people up the wall. I'd say maybe half the time they last
| the life of the tire. Frequently they're finicky and
| unreliable. Less often than that they start a tread
| separation bubble. In either latter case I just trash the
| tire since that's easy enough.
|
| Yeah a proper internal glue on patch would likely perform
| better in the shoulder but ain't nobody got time for that,
| that's like 90% of the work of changing the tire.
| spike021 wrote:
| Almost entirely unrelated but this comment reminded me of the
| Mighty Car Mods youtube channel.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A lot of tyre shops offer insurance which might be beneficial
| for you if you reckon you have a higher-than-average rate of
| punctures.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That doesn't change the rate at which tires get replaced for
| damage though, just the payment structure.
| senectus1 wrote:
| lol no shit sherlock.
|
| I've owned a Pirus (hybrid), Camry Hybrid and now a Rav4 Hybrid
| plus a MG4 EV.
|
| The rav and MG4 are too new to count, but the other two I owned
| for about 10-13 years each.. we NEVER needed to change the brake
| pads.
|
| Not once.
|
| If you're having to change the brake pads on a car like this,
| you're a leadfoot with no core strength issues :-P
| nine_k wrote:
| I suppose the same should apply to hybrid cars, which outnumber
| pure EVs significantly [1]. The effect comes from converting the
| kinetic energy back to the battery charge via generation instead
| of wasting it via friction, which is the whole point of hybrids.
|
| [1]: https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/how-many-
| electric...
| frollogaston wrote:
| And manual transmission cars kinda, though the energy is still
| wasted of course
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Depends on how you drive. I never engine braked on my manual.
| Brakes are easy to replace. Clutches are not.
| eptcyka wrote:
| You need not burn your clutch to engine break.
| hassaanr wrote:
| engine braking does not have any effect on the clutch,
| other than while downshifting, which if you're
| blipping/rev-matching has practically no effect
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Exactly, if your clutch suffers abuse when you are
| shifting gears (unless you're trying to aggressively
| accelerate of course) you need to rethink what you're
| doing.
|
| Not saying it's smart but when predictably decelerating
| on the highway I sometimes shift gears by rev matching
| and changing without even touching the clutch, for the
| fun of it.
| stouset wrote:
| Same on a motorcycle. My current bike has a quickshifter
| (for both up and down shifting) but even without one you
| can shift up and down without ever touching the clutch
| just by pushing on the shift pedal while blipping the
| throttle off-and-on (for an upshift) or on-and-off (for a
| downshift). That's all the quickshifter is really doing
| anyway, it's just quicker at it than you are.
|
| I'd wager bordering on 100% of my clutch use is when
| coming to a complete stop.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| You don't engine brake with the clutch, you engine brake by
| downshifting and using the higher engine RPM in lower gears
| to brake the car via wasted compression.
| dotancohen wrote:
| And that downshifting involves a clutch operation, moving
| the engine into a higher RPM. That most certainly wears
| down the clutch, talking as someone who's replaced quite
| a few of them.
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| Are you really shifting so much that your clutch slip in
| the middle of the shift effects clutch lifetime?
| beau_g wrote:
| I've seen an interesting A-B test with this seeing the
| difference in clutch wear between the Ferrari F1
| transmission in the 599 and 612 and the DuoSelect
| transmission which is essentially the same box in the
| Quattroporte. The shifting strategy and technique is more
| of a controlled variable here because the shifting is
| automatic though it's a somewhat traditional manual
| gearbox with hydraulic actuation. The QP is a bit heavier
| but the Ferraris make a lot more power. From what I saw
| the cars that fared far worse were the Quattroportes, and
| those that ate the most clutches by far were the ones
| putting around the city, especially in San Francisco,
| Marin, Los Altos Hills, etc. where people are slowly
| creeping into parking spots on hills. On the Ferraris
| that are weekend warriors that get driven hard the
| clutches could go 30k+ miles no problem, Quattroportes
| would come in with smoked clutches in a few thousand
| miles sometimes.
| jve wrote:
| Sorry, ain't native: Which car use downshifting to help
| braking? Cannot wire in my brains whether this example is
| pro-downshift braking or not.
| masklinn wrote:
| I think their point is that you eat clutch when you slip
| it e.g. when you're getting in and out if parking on
| hills, or in city stop and go traffic. When the clutch is
| fully engaged there's little wear even hard-driving, and
| doing a straight in-and-out does not bother clutches
| much.
|
| Hence Quattroportes eating clutches like nobody's
| business while the harder-ridden higher-power Ferraris
| don't.
|
| As such downshifting would not wear clutches much.
|
| And anecdotally I've never suffered from or heard of
| engine braking causing clutch issues.
| frollogaston wrote:
| I semi-daily drive a DuoSelect Quattroporte, but usually
| in light traffic. The clutch-eating problem is sorta
| inherent to the car. First off, it uses extra clutch to
| smooth out shifts in non-sport mode, and you don't always
| want sport mode because it stiffens the suspension a lot.
| But even in sport, you can't always get it to behave
| predictably. So given an experienced driver with both
| cars in city traffic, the DuoSelect will eat clutch
| faster than a stick. Some install an aftermarket box
| (Formula Dynamics) to improve this, but still.
|
| Idk how the Ferraris are different. They're lighter at
| least. Think they also have a different version of the
| "Superfast" software.
|
| Anyway... I do engine-brake it. The real brakes
| appreciate not having to stop that limo by themselves.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Forgot to clarify, there is a clutch-eating problem when
| driving the car properly, but it's not THE clutch-eating
| problem people talk about where it dies in 10-15K miles
| from treating the car as a regular automatic.
| pbmonster wrote:
| The clutch wear on a standard downshift must absolutely
| negligible when compared to accelerating from a full stop
| and especially when compared to slower-that-idle
| operation, i.e. parking.
|
| Also, I have never ever had to replace a clutch, and I
| drive my cars way past 100k miles.
| wazoox wrote:
| My 300k km Volvo S60 still runs on its original clutch,
| and I changed the brake pads only once. Engine braking is
| the way.
| mort96 wrote:
| I didn't quite get if you think changing gears for the
| purpose of engine braking wears the clutch more than
| normal or not. Are you using the force from the clutch to
| force the engine to go from a low RPM to a high RPM? In
| cases like that where the difference in RPM is
| significant, I would press the clutch pedal, then speed
| up the engine by pressing the gas pedal, downshift, then
| release the clutch. Rev matching, basically. It does wear
| the clutch a teeny tiny bit, but not more than any other
| gear change.
|
| If your comment wasn't meant to imply that engine braking
| wears the clutch more than normal gearing, if you just
| want to avoid gear changes as much as possible, disregard
| this comment. (Although... I'm not sure that that's a
| valid worry, modern clutches last a _LONG_ time when used
| properly)
| frollogaston wrote:
| You might not execute the rev-match perfectly every time,
| esp if you're doing a heel-toe. I think it's also harder
| on the synchro.
| mort96 wrote:
| Sure, and I definitely don't rev-match close to perfect
| every time. I'm just saying you don't have to use the
| clutch to accelerate your motor all the way from minimum
| RPM, which it sounded like my parent comment might be
| suggesting
| frollogaston wrote:
| I think that suggestion was that you're holding the
| clutch pedal in longer while you bring up the RPMs,
| compared to upshifting which is faster. The clutch does
| wear a bit even when "fully" disengaged. But I don't
| think it matters enough here, just don't leave it like
| that during a red light.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Most of clutch wear comes from making it slip, while
| accelerating from a standstill.
|
| You don't make it slip when shifting gear.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Yes but actually no.
|
| It wears the clutch but clutch wear is massively
| dominated by starts from a stop or other cases where you
| actively slip it any noteworthy amount so just rowing the
| gears up and down doesn't do much.
| NwtnsMthd wrote:
| It's a negligible amount, especially if you (or your car)
| does rev matching. My last car (BMW 328) made it to 300k
| miles on the original clutch.
| supportengineer wrote:
| Clutch wear occurs when the clutch is _slipping_ so you
| always want to minimize the _slipping_ time.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Actually you'll get some engine braking by just letting
| off the gas and stepping on the break. Fuel will get cut
| off in these cases in most cars (unless you're running a
| very old carburetor car)
| 01100011 wrote:
| Yep, years ago I had a friend with a VW Beetle and he'd
| never use the brakes unless he had to. I thought it was
| cool and carried the story with me. One day I mentioned it
| to a mechanic friend and that was his exact response. I've
| never changed a clutch, but I've changed plenty of brakes
| and yeah, not hard or expensive.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| You don't need to touch your clutch to do engine breaking.
| If you wear out your clutch by shifting gears you're doing
| something wrong
| cloverich wrote:
| Surprisingly you can get nearly same effect in automatics. I
| put around 60k miles on my first automatic (after120k+ on my
| first two cars, manual transmissions) and when i got my
| brakes checked at 63k they noted my brakes were still "brand
| new". I do gamify reading traffic to try and brake as little
| as possible (to help pass time etc), but was still surprised
| how far this takes you given i do plenty of stop and go
| traffic driving. This was a v6 sedan so lighter than an suv /
| truck. I expected it to not work in automatics but it does to
| at least some extent. I swapped for an EV before taking it
| the usual distance and curious if anyones pushed further and
| how far.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| It's not "nearly". It's exactly the same effect.
| Compression braking. Even if you're not on the throttle the
| engine is still rotating as it's connected to the wheels.
| If the engine is rotating it is compressing air. If it's
| compressing air but not igniting fuel (throttle closed)
| then it will suck energy out of the wheels to compress the
| air.
|
| You can do it in an automatic, you just have to force it to
| select a lower gear using the gear number options (1, 2, 3,
| 4) or using the tiptronic mode. The lower gear means the
| engine will displace more air in the same amount of time,
| increasing the rate it pulls energy from the wheels.
|
| People think you can't do it in automatics because they try
| very hard to keep engine RPM low where the effect is
| diminished.
| peterbecich wrote:
| Related to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressio
| n_release_engine_bra...
| agurk wrote:
| If it takes energy to compress the air in the cylinder -
| doesn't it also release most of that energy when that
| compressed air is expanded on the subsequent stroke?
|
| If you release the compressed air without pushing the
| cylinder down you would lose that energy, but you would
| need a extra device to do so (by lifting a valve at the
| right time). This option does exist for large vehicles
| like trucks as a compression release engine brake [0],
| but this isn't something you'd have on a family car.
|
| In a petrol engine you always want the same ratio of
| petrol to air in the mix that is taken into a cylinder.
| As you want to vary the amount of fuel, and therefore
| power developed, you have to be able to therefore limit
| the amount of air that is sucked in. Otherwise the engine
| would always run at full power.
|
| There is a mechanical restrictor called a throttle plate
| that lives inside the throttle body that restricts how
| much air the cylinder can pull in (and therefore how much
| fuel is injected to get the same fuel/air mix). This is
| controlled by the throttle. When you are coasting, this
| plate is in its most closed position. This creates
| significant resistance on the intake stroke, and is where
| the majority of energy is lost during engine braking.
| This is also known as a pumping loss.
|
| Diesels always intake the same amount of air, so they can
| compress it enough to autoignite the fuel. They vary the
| amount of fuel injected to the same volume of air. This
| means no throttle body or plate, so unless an extra
| exhaust restrictor has been added there is minimal engine
| braking on a diesel engine.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compression_release_eng
| ine_bra...
| MindSpunk wrote:
| You're right. Petrol engines are air pumps so I should've
| realised the explanation wasn't correct.
|
| Though the ECU would be doing the AFR management on
| modern EFI engines as the injectors aren't vacuum
| operated like Carburetors were. You should be able to cut
| fuel injection when coasting in a modern engine, can't
| run lean if there's no fuel at all. Not sure if carbs
| could do the same.
| agurk wrote:
| On all the fuel injected engines I have owned there is a
| physical cable that controls the position of the throttle
| plate. There is an airflow mass sensor the other side of
| the plate to measure the amount of air and therefore how
| much fuel needs to be injected. So interestingly in these
| sort of engines you're really just controlling airflow to
| the engine rather than fuel/air mix like on one with a
| carburettor.
|
| More modern engines have electronically controlled
| throttle plates, and this is definitely somewhere you
| could do something clever like you suggest - cutting fuel
| flow but also maximising airflow when there is zero
| throttle input.
|
| I assume engine braking is generally considered a
| beneficial thing by manufacturers, but it could be fun to
| be able to customise the amount. Or do something like
| have the braking come on gently at first then harder.
| Maybe even try and have a linear or flat response curve
| vs. engine rpm.
| yetihehe wrote:
| > Or do something like have the braking come on gently at
| first then harder.
|
| You can do this by letting go of gas pedal slowly. I have
| "current amount of fuel used" info in my car
| (liters/100km), it shows pretty clearly, that when going
| fast and slowly letting go of gas, amount of fuels slowly
| goes to 0. If I let go of gas fast, the engine is
| intelligent enough to not close throttle as fast as
| possible, still probably takes 1 second.
|
| > More modern engines have electronically controlled
| throttle plates, and this is definitely somewhere you
| could do something clever like you suggest - cutting fuel
| flow but also maximising airflow when there is zero
| throttle input.
|
| They cut fuel flow and close throttle plate almost
| completely but still allow some small amount of air, in
| order to actually do engine braking. If you need to
| coast, you can apply clutch in manual. Don't know that
| much about automatic, but from what I've driven, they use
| "lift gas" as a "engine braking" signal, so probably they
| can't really coast that good.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| I've got both at the moment on my two Hondas. Both
| manual, one with a throttle cable and one with throttle-
| by-wire. There's quite a bit of difference in how they
| handle off throttle. The cable will just slam the
| throttle shut if you just jump off the pedal (obviously)
| and it jerks pretty hard. The throttle-by-wire car hangs
| the throttle a little when letting off and doesn't just
| immediately start decelerating. Then it's much smoother
| once it does start slowing down. The ECU definitely doing
| something to smooth it out.
|
| Funny because the cars build dates are only 2 years
| apart, 2005 and 2007, and they're both K20 engines but
| the engines handle so different.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The ECU is doing that because rapid changes in state are
| bad for emissions. Letting you just slam the throttle
| closed could result in a tiny, but measurable at OEM
| scale, amount of extra fuel going half burnt out the
| tailpipe. Slamming it open can cause too lean combustion
| and oxide byproducts which.
|
| The OEMs try real hard to prevent this because the
| amounts of emissions byproducts that aren't water or C02
| they're allowed to produce are on the order of single
| digit grams per multiple miles (you can mentally file it
| as "about the baseline air quality in urban areas" though
| the rules are hugely more complex than that) so these
| edge cases matter.
| tkj922 wrote:
| An idling I4 has about 10 injection cycles per second.
| And the ECU clocks injection time corrections at least at
| that rate, more likely at double that rate or more. So I
| think that the smoothing is mostly there for the owner's
| wellbeing, not emissions.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > it could be fun to be able to customise the amount
|
| Some recentish motorbikes have an option to customise the
| amount of engine brake, I suppose cars could have
| something similar, too.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > cutting fuel flow but also maximising airflow when
| there is zero throttle input
|
| You don't want to do this. Much of the engine braking
| effect is from pulling the intake air charge past the
| mostly closed throttle plate. On a car with a wide open
| throttle plate [even with no fuel], the engine is acting
| more like a spring than a damper. On the intake stroke,
| it will pull an intake air charge past the small
| restriction of the open intake valve(s), then compress it
| on the compression stroke, then release that compressed
| energy on the "power" stroke, then exhaust it past the
| small restriction of the open exhaust valves. Pushing air
| past the valves will cost energy, but it's not much.
|
| This is why diesel trucks' engine braking works
| differently. (Diesels don't have a throttle plate.) They
| can open the exhaust valves to prevent the energy
| recovery in the "power" stroke to create a higher net
| braking force. Jake Brake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Compression_release_engine_bra...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| What everyone is missing is that a petrol engine is
| sucking against a vacuum behind the throttle blade.
|
| It's basically like an air compressor that just keeps
| running despite hitting max pressure and every pump just
| goes out the blow off valve.
| jve wrote:
| I'v bee downshifting manually with automatic especially
| when riding downhill. The effect with Chrysler T&C 2009
| was very noticable and effective.
|
| Toyota Sienna 2015 - the braking effect is unfortunately
| minor.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Many modern automatics are smart enough to do this for
| you if you tap the brakes while rolling downhill.
| yakkers wrote:
| An aside on your last point: In the D gear, a lot of auto
| transmissions will be set up to allow for the wheels to
| spin somewhat independently of the engine (in any gear)
| when you aren't accelerating, which accounts a lot for
| how well an automatic will coast when you release the
| throttle, even if you're not going fast enough for top
| gear (especially apparent with older four speed boxes).
|
| Using the numbered gear options will enable
| clutches/bands that provide more engine braking.
| MindSpunk wrote:
| Huh, interesting. I had thought it was just from the
| higher gears being used. Vast majority of my driving is
| with manual, I've only really driven modern autos with 5+
| gears (and a Toyota hybrid, which don't really have gears
| at all).
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| It depends on the implementation. I ride an automatic
| motorbike which will downshift if I grab the brakes a bit
| harder, even if I'm only slowing to a speed to which it
| wouldn't otherwise shift.
|
| For example, if I brake somewhat hard from 130 km/h to
| 90, it will downshift from 6th to 5th. When riding
| normally, it would stay in 6th down to around 50.
| frollogaston wrote:
| Auto trans downshift is designed for long hills, not
| downshifting frequently to stop signs etc like you'd do
| with a stick.
|
| Even with paddles, there's a delay, or it briefly goes
| neutral, or it doesn't rev-match well. Or you can't
| double/triple-downshift, which is worse when you have
| 8-12 gears. Allegedly wears them down faster too, which
| idk but would not be surprised if it were true given how
| unhappy it feels.
| masklinn wrote:
| No reason for it not to work, even more so if you think to
| downshift. It's more common with manual as downshifting is
| a lot more natural but not fundamentally different.
|
| It's just trivially easy with electric thanks to regen
| braking.
|
| Though with modern cars getting heavier if you have a small
| ICE these days you have almost no engine brake which makes
| some cases more difficult (unless it's a mild hybrid with
| an electric kers like some of the small engined fords).
| SUVs tend to have giant engines and pretty high rolling
| resistance, which I'd think would somewhat compensated for
| their higher inertia.
|
| It's all about learning your car's behaviour and planning
| for it.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I don't know about today's engines, but some early fuel
| injected engines would actually use more fuel when engine
| braking. In those early designs spark could not be cut
| off, so if this extra fuel were not added then the
| mixture would run very hot and risk pre-ignition and
| damage. I don't know about carbureted vehicles.
| wazoox wrote:
| It only applies to mechanical injection and carburettor
| engines. With electronic injection, which is the norm
| since the 80s, this is not a problem.
| ajross wrote:
| To some extent, but not really. Effectiveness of regenerative
| braking depends on having an extremely large battery that can
| sink enough current to stop the car. An EV can do that, hybrids
| at best help the brakes out some. You just can't charge the
| battery fast enough doing anything but a very slow rolling
| stop. My model Y can effect a very reasonable stop in traffic
| without touching the brake pedal except to hold the car at the
| end.
| jeffbee wrote:
| In normal driving hybrid regen is more than enough to do the
| job. Just look at the front wheels of any Prius. There are
| reasons all the Uber drivers choose the Prius.
| dyselon wrote:
| We finally gave up our Prius after 12 years, and we never
| changed the brakes once. The brakes were just peeking into
| the yellow on its last service upgrade. I was really
| impressed with how well the "normal" hybrid could take
| advantage of regenerative breaking, honestly.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| I first changed the brakes on my Mitsubishi Space Star
| (combustion) after 13 years. It is a small car, less than
| 1000kg, so there is little for the brakes to do. If we
| produced more percentage of small cars, many environmental
| risks would be reduced. And btw.: The tires are now 19
| years old and still good (less weight, less abrasion!).
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| Rubber degrades with UV exposure, even if the tread depth
| is ok. Be careful, esp at higher speeds.
| lazide wrote:
| Beware of dry rot. Rubber that old is likely not in as
| good shape as it might appear, and could fail
| catastrophically in the right conditions.
| jajko wrote:
| That's not OK by any means, you don't have mandatory
| periodical technical inspections? This would fail
| immediately in any half-decent country. An example -
| wife's older Seat has 6 years old winter tires which were
| given for free when buying it second hand a year ago.
| Technician just told us even those are beyond acceptable
| here in Switzerland and we need to change them before
| next inspection.
|
| Your very old tires makes you a serious threat on the
| road while completely oblivious about this fact... not
| cool, please change them if you drive on public roads, if
| not for you just for the sake of others.
| Helmut10001 wrote:
| We are in Germany, which has the highest inspection
| standards. The tires have passed every inspection. They
| look like new, but I will still replace them soon, just
| in case. I am writing this because most people cannot
| imagine that a 900 kg car puts very little pressure on
| tires, so they are hardly used.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| Seriously, you should not use tires older than 10 years.
| They degrade over time.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Time based degradation is mostly a factor of exposure to
| the sun and the weather.
|
| I just trashed some 15yo Firestones last month, after
| wearing them completely bald of course.
| Swizec wrote:
| > My model Y can effect a very reasonable stop in traffic
| without touching the brake pedal except to hold the car at
| the end.
|
| My manual car could do this 20 years ago. My fully ICE
| motorcycle can do it today.
|
| I know engine braking is cool but it's not some amazing new
| thing only EVs can do. Altho granted it only produces heat
| and noise in petrol vehicles. But it also makes your heart
| sing so that's nice
| shmoe wrote:
| The difference is neither of those generates gasoline on an
| ICE vehicle.
| tzs wrote:
| Yup. For example on a round trip today in me EV (2025
| Hyundai Kona) on the out here are the stats:
| 2 kWh for the drivetrain 809 Wh regenerated
|
| On the way home: 2 kWh for the
| drivetrain 547 Wh regenerated
|
| For the round trip that's 33% less energy use than if the
| car did not have regenerative braking.
|
| I'm mostly happy about that but there is one thing that
| annoys me. 33% is close to how much a kilometer is
| shorter than a mile (38%).
|
| Why the fuck would I care that these two numbers are that
| close? It is because of a mystery in the Hyundai app.
| When you look up the trip details for an EV trip it gives
| you mileage, duration, and energy use (drivetrain,
| climate, accessories) and regeneration.
|
| The mileage is substantially less than what the car
| shows. For example for the aforementioned trip home that
| trip odometer shows 8.0 miles but the Hyundai app shows 5
| miles. The car odometer has the correct distance.
|
| There are two theories to explain this.
|
| 1. The app is showing how many miles worth of energy you
| used rather than your actual trip mileage. All the other
| data it shows (except for the duration) is energy
| related. For my 8.0 mile trip I got 3 miles worth of the
| energy the drivetrain used back via regeneration, so I
| only actually paid for 5 miles worth of electricity.
|
| Based on the Wh given it should actually be 5.4 miles,
| but the app only displays integer mileage so 5 it is.
|
| 2. It's a botched unit conversion. E.g., the car uploads
| the data in miles but the expects the data to be in km,
| so it is doing a conversion. That would turn the 8.0 into
| 5.0, which would be 5 in the app and so matches what
| theory #1 predicts.
|
| I've checked several of my trips and they have always
| happened to have the right amount of regeneration so that
| the two theories match due to the app only showing an
| integer mileage.
|
| I did a test today to try to tell them apart. I changed
| the car's settings to km and took a trip. The idea was if
| the car had been uploading in miles that would hopefully
| change it to upload in km, matching the app's
| expectation, and so the miles shown in the app would
| match the actual miles of the trip if theory #2 was
| correct, and show the regeneration corrected miles if
| theory #1 was correct.
|
| The result was that the app still showed miles consistent
| with theory #1. So mystery solved, right?
|
| Maybe not. When the car was set to miles everything
| showed in miles. Speedometer, odometers, efficiency
| (mi/kWh), speed limits it read from traffic signs, and
| speed limits it gets from the map data when using
| navigation on highways.
|
| I expected than when I switched it to km all of those
| would be in km, and I would not see miles anywhere. Also,
| I expected that when it saw a speed limit sign that said
| say 60 it would interpret that as 60 km/hr.
|
| What actually happened is that miles mostly did go away,
| except on the speedometer it added a smaller mi/hr
| display under the km/hr display. For the traffic signs it
| still knew they were in mi/hr and it converted them, so
| when I got on the freeway as soon as I passed the sign
| that said 60 the speed limit sign shown on the instrument
| cluster said 97, and the red dot on the speedometer
| showing the current limit was placed in the right place.
|
| That suggests that the car knows it is in a country that
| uses miles, and doesn't just go by whatever the units
| setting in the setup screen is set to. It could be that
| in miles countries the car also uploads in miles all the
| time, and so switching the units setting to km would not
| change the results if theory #2 was true.
|
| Now my plan is to find a big parking lot that is mostly
| empty overnight, such at a Walmart or Home Depot or a
| mall, go there and turn the car off and then back on
| which starts a new trip, set regeneration to 0 which
| turns off automatic regeneration on the accelerator so
| the car only regenerates when you use the brake pedal,
| and then drive around the parking lot for about 10 miles
| without using the brakes, then coast to a stop and turn
| the car off the end the trip.
|
| Then I'll turn it back on, drive home, and check the trip
| details in the app. If theory #1 is right then the miles
| in the app should match the odometer miles. If theory #2
| is correct the app miles should still be 38% shorter than
| the odometer miles.
| yreg wrote:
| And how often did you engine break with that ICE car when
| driving around the city? Because I did it only when driving
| down extreme slopes. It also cannot do a full stop.
|
| With an EV I don't touch breaks unless in situations I fail
| to/couldn't predict (maybe up to 10% of all speed
| reductions and even less stops).
| Swizec wrote:
| > And how often did you engine break with that ICE car
| when driving around the city?
|
| Oh all the time. I used to drive like a typical youth.
| I've been in USA for 10 years now and still hate driving
| automatics because they shift into too high a gear and
| then you have to constantly use the brakes. It's
| annoying.
| stavros wrote:
| I have an ICE car and motorcycle, and an EV. The EV slows
| down much more quickly when slowing down, to the point
| where it's a good replacement for the brake, as opposed to
| the ICE vehicles, where you need to use the brake a lot
| more. It's not comparable.
| Swizec wrote:
| > The EV slows down much more quickly when slowing down,
| to the point where it's a good replacement for the brake
|
| Are you comparing to an automatic ICE or a manual?
|
| In my experience of driving EVs their engine braking is
| sub-par to what I'm used to at least from my motorcycle.
| Bikes have silly high compression compared to their
| weight. You def have to be careful about chopping the
| throttle.
| stavros wrote:
| An automatic, with a manual you can shift down to
| whatever you want, so there's no standard there, really.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Can't really compare the engine braking of a Model Y and a
| ICE vehicle to be honest.
|
| I also like the noise, but it is noise pollution that is
| very annoying to everyone else.
| arnonejoe wrote:
| I test drove an EV and the regenerative braking was difficult
| to get used to. You have to constantly ride the gas pedal. I
| would buy an EV if it weren't for this feature.
| Rover222 wrote:
| You can toggle off regen braking on most EVs
| mrpippy wrote:
| Some EVs allow different levels of regenerative braking to
| be selected. The Hyundai/Kia E-GMP-based cars have level
| 0-3 plus a 1-pedal mode, and also an "auto" mode that slows
| down more based on radar proximity to the car ahead.
| schmookeeg wrote:
| We have owned 4 EVs and each allow you to configure the
| regen braking strength. You'll need another reason to not
| buy one.
| apelapan wrote:
| Tesla is a quite common EV brand. They do not allow
| configuring regen braking, except for the behaviour at
| stand-still.
|
| (They also don't do blending between friction brakes and
| regen, so the cars behaviour when letting of the
| accelerator is highly inconsistent depending on
| temperature and charge level).
|
| One of the reasons I long for the lease on my Model Y to
| end so I can replace it with a less stupid vehicle.
| stavros wrote:
| I agree with the general sentiment, but this isn't
| relevant in the context of making a purchasing decision.
| Simply buy another brand.
| apelapan wrote:
| I have learned my lesson on regen. Lots of people online
| (and offline, for that matter) told me that you'll get
| used to the Tesla behaviour in no time and not to worry
| about it feeling weird during the test drive.
|
| Many thousands kilometers later I hate it almost as much
| as at the start, so lack of regen configuration will be a
| dealbreaker next time I pick a new car.
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, what do you hate about it? I have a BYD and I always
| leave it at "strong", as otherwise it's too little
| braking (same as an ICE).
| apelapan wrote:
| There are two aspect I don't like:
|
| 1. It is inconsistent, especially during winter and when
| fully charged.
|
| 2. Crossings with shrubbery/objects that hides
| approaching pedestrians/cars/bikes and it is rare that
| there is anyone actually crossing. I encounter these
| several times per day.
|
| My preferred way of approaching #2 is to reduce speed
| well ahead, start gliding and put my foot on the break
| pedal to be ready for a complete halt in the rare case
| (once in a 500 maybe) that I need to give way to someone.
| In the Tesla I must reduce speed to almost standstill and
| creep slooooowly, since it would take half a second to
| move the right foot to the break.
|
| I understand it sounds like an extreme corner case, but
| for me it is all the time every day. Central Scandinavia.
| stavros wrote:
| Hmm, I don't really understand what you mean. If I want
| to reduce speed far ahead, I just ease up on the throttle
| pedal a little, and the car slows down a little. If I
| ease up a lot, it slows down a lot. I'm not sure what you
| mean...
| apelapan wrote:
| I want to glide at roughly constant speed for some
| distance. Some mild breaking is fine. I cant glide if I
| let off the accelerator, then I come to a fairly firm
| stop.
|
| I want my right foot on the break pedal, ready to brake
| _hard_ and _fast_ in the rare case that something comes
| across the road.
|
| I don't want to reduce speed any further than is
| necessary to have a safe breaking distance at fully ready
| state.
|
| With any other car (that I have driven) than the Tesla, I
| can approach a situation like this at between 20kmh and
| 40kmh, depending on the specifics. In the Tesla I need to
| go at between 5 and 10kmh.
| stavros wrote:
| Ah OK, I see what you mean. Yeah, on my car, that's a
| setting I can toggle.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| regenerative braking can be uncomfortable for passengers
| as the car is constantly alternating between accelerating
| (or constant speed) and braking. It isn't even light
| braking, it is significant braking.
|
| I generally turn off the auto regen braking because i
| find it uncomfortable.
|
| Importantly, regenerative braking is a danger on icy
| roads. I disable it entirely in the winter in eastern
| Canada because it often causes the tires to lose grip.
| apelapan wrote:
| There must be some connection between traction control
| and regen braking in newer Teslas, because I didn't
| really have any problems with it during the past winter.
| A friend working in auto industry was involved with doing
| competitor analysis and was shocked back in 2014 or
| something like that, the Teslas they tested simply spun
| out of control when letting go of the accelerator in
| slippery conditions.
|
| They didn't care much for convential wisdom and car
| building competence in the early days of Tesla.
| stavros wrote:
| I agree about the icy roads, but for the braking, that's
| easily remedied by just not completely releasing the
| accelerator. I just modulate how much I want to brake
| with the accelerator pedal.
| jjfoooo4 wrote:
| Is that not what "Chill Mode" is? I've activated that on
| my car to relieve some of the jerkiness and it seems to
| have worked well
| KingMob wrote:
| > test drove
|
| > was difficult to get used to
|
| To ask the obvious, how used to something are you going to
| get on a test drive? It takes time.
| bruce511 wrote:
| I don't think this comment should be down-voted since it is
| indeed a real point of difference and it is worth
| discussing.
|
| The key takeaway is that there are differences to driving
| an EV to driving an ICE vehicle. Equally those differences
| are in fact easy to adjust to given a bit of practice.
|
| Of course cars have always had different control options.
| Automatic and Manual gearboxes spring to mind. When I first
| learned some cars had a gear selector as an arm on the
| steering column, and so on.
|
| EVs like a somewhat gentler foot, because the torque is
| instant, so a heavy foot is likely to be a more
| uncomfortable ride.
|
| So yes, different cars, different styles. But of course we
| adjust very quickly, and its not really difficult to drive
| anything- it just takes a bit of practice.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Many electric cars are also overpowered. For those with a
| more reasonable ~100kw, gentleness hardly matters.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Except it's not a real point of difference. Just because
| some cars are programmed to act that way doesn't mean we
| should treat it like a universal constant of EVs. EVs can
| be programmed to only engage regenerative braking when
| the brake pedal is pressed, no riding the gas pedal
| needed.
| cloverich wrote:
| To be constructive, took me a little over a week to get
| used to. Also i test drove four, and absolutely hated 2 of
| them. One felt very similar to my ICE car (VW ID4).
| Eventually settled on ioniq and after a week, it quickly
| became my favorite driving car ever (which coming from
| sporty manual transmissions, is not at all what i expected
| or why i bought it).
|
| All to say, check out a few to be sure, im still shocked
| how much i love driving this thing (and how criminally fast
| it is, totally absurd).
| rgmerk wrote:
| Firstly, most EVs that have strong regenerative braking
| ("one-pedal") setups allow you to adjust the strength or
| turn it off. Tesla, as usual, is the outlier in this
| respect.
|
| Secondly, I rented an EV for a week and by the end of it
| actually preferred the strong regen setting. It was
| convenient in stop-start traffic, and on a twisty road, you
| could use it to tighten the nose as you entered the corner.
| NewJazz wrote:
| As another data point, I've owned PHEVs and EVs for gosh
| 6 years now and I still prefer the "weak" regen with the
| Chevy paddle brake to modulate. Sometimes when I have a
| clear path, e.g. a down hill on a highway, I just throw
| it in neutral for a pure coast and shift back into drive
| when I need to.
| avidiax wrote:
| > you have to constantly ride the gas pedal.
|
| Are you not? Do you drive by blipping the gas every few
| seconds?
|
| I've had Uber drivers do this and it is annoying bordering
| on nauseating as a passenger. It is probably pretty bad for
| mileage and transmission wear as well (constantly taking up
| and releasing the backlash in the gears).
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| I've got regenerative breaking on my EV without one pedal
| driving, it acts just like my other car does.
| tzs wrote:
| Take a look at more EVs. There are many that aren't as
| opinionated about how you should drive as the one you drove
| (a Tesla, by any chance?).
|
| For example here is how it works in Hyundai EVs (and I'd
| guess Kia too). It is easy to set them so that they drive
| very similar to an ICE. I believe several others also work
| similarly. There are only a few that try to really push you
| to one pedal driving.
|
| 1. When use explicitly use the brake pedal that car uses
| regenerative braking unless you are trying to stop faster
| than regeneration can handle in which case it will also use
| the friction brakes.
|
| There may be a setting somewhere in the settings menus
| where you can adjust how strong the braking is, but I don't
| remember because the way the car comes from the factory the
| brake peddle feels a lot like an ICE car's brake peddle.
|
| 2. There is a regeneration level setting that controls what
| happens when you ease up on the accelerator or remove your
| foot from it. This setting has 6 possible settings: Level
| 0, 1, 2, 3, i-Pedal, and Auto.
|
| There are two paddles on the steering wheel that let you
| move through these settings quickly and easily, and you can
| do this while driving so you are free to pick whatever
| setting fits the conditions and your mood the best. Here's
| what they do.
|
| * In level 0 there is no braking associated with the
| accelerator. Take your foot off and the car coasts is if it
| was in neutral.
|
| * Level 1 provides a small amount of automatic braking when
| you let up on the accelerator. In ICE terms it is similar
| to the engine braking you would get on level ground going
| fast enough to be in 3rd gear in a 3 speed automatic. You
| slow down faster than coasting, but not so fast that if you
| were on the freeway and your felt the need to shake your
| right leg around a little it would slow enough to be a
| problem.
|
| * Levels 2 and 3 step up the amount of automatic braking. 3
| is enough that in city driving most of the time you can be
| quite leisurely when it comes to moving your foot from the
| accelerator to the brake at most stop signs, but it will
| not bring your car to a complete stop. It will get quite
| slow and then creep at that speed.
|
| * i-Pedal is one pedal driving mode and corresponds to what
| that EV you test drove was doing. In this the braking is
| similar to level 3 as far as aggressiveness goes, but it
| will take you all the way to a stop most of the time. Once
| you get used to it you should be able to do most city
| driving and most highway driving without touching the brake
| pedal. About the only times you would need the brake pedal
| (outside of emergencies) is if a light changes on you when
| you are too close to the intersection.
|
| * Auto mode automatically switches between 0, 1, 2, and 3
| based on the distance to the vehicle in front (using the
| same system that adaptive cruise control uses) and the
| slope of the road. If you are on the freeway for example
| with a good distance between cars it will be in 0 or 1. In
| the city where you are close to the next car it might be in
| 2 or 3.
|
| * If you press and hold the "increase regen level" paddle
| for at least 0.5 seconds it will switch from whatever your
| current setting is to i-Pedal and stay in i-Pedal as long
| as you continue to hold the paddle. Release the paddle and
| it switches back to whatever your previous setting was.
|
| This system gives you plenty of flexibility and you should
| be able to easily find a setting you like. Some people
| really like one pedal driving and so they can just put it
| in i-Pedal and leave it there (with a slight
| annoyance...when you turn the car off in i-Pedal it comes
| back on in level 3, so you will have to hit the regen up
| paddle once).
|
| Some people set it to one of the numbered levels and leave
| it there (again with slight annoyance at startup where it
| comes on at 1 so they need a paddle flick or two).
|
| Some people use the paddles instead of the brake pedal,
| mixing levels to get the kind of deceleration curve they
| want.
|
| I normally drive in level 0, with an occasional day or two
| in i-Pedal just for a change of pace, but if I'm coming up
| on a series of roundabouts I might switch it to i-Pedal.
| That's great for say a 35 mph road with 10-15 mph
| roundabouts every couple of blocks. (If it is just one
| roundabout I'd probably use the "hold regen up paddle for
| 0.5 seconds" option to just turn on i-Pedal for that
| intersection.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Effectiveness of regenerative braking depends on having an
| extremely large battery that can sink enough current to stop
| the car. An EV can do that, hybrids at best help the brakes
| out some. You just can 't charge the battery fast enough
| doing anything but a very slow rolling stop._
|
| This seems a bit exaggerated. Staying regenerative-only does
| require sticking to about half or so of how fast I _could_
| stop, but so far that seems to work fine unless a light turns
| right in front of me or traffic acts up. Usually it says it
| gets high 90 's or 100%, and it didn't go below 50% even when
| a stoplight did turn at exactly the wrong time. (2022 Ford
| Escape non-plug-in hybrid, recently bought used.)
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| 100% of possible system capacity to accept regenerative
| charge on a smaller battery system will be a smaller
| absolute number than 100% of possible on a larger battery.
| If you assume everything else is constant, motor, inverter,
| battery C-rating etc.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The manual says it's energy recovered (ie, not something
| relative to system capacity), and this seems consistent
| with the other indicator that shows instantaneous braking
| power with a distinction between what the regenerative
| system is doing vs what (if anything) the traditional
| brakes are doing.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| which car? i think the number you're referring to is
| relative to electrical system capacity.
|
| It's NOT relevant to overall (tyre, brake system & engine
| braking & regen braking) braking system performance since
| that's a dynamic value variable over many factors
| constantly.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're arguing here.
|
| Bigger battery is more capacity sure. But their point was
| that even without a big battery they have enough capacity
| to get close to maximum effectiveness, contrary to ajross
| saying that a hybrid's capacity is "not really" effective
| and "at best" helps "some".
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| just mistaken about maximum effectiveness
|
| braking system = circa 1G of deceleration possible
| (depending on tyres, coeff of friction, temperature, ...
| etc etc)
|
| So max effectiveness is unreachable for any regen system
| on a consumer car hybrid or ev, by a factor of around 6x
| i believe?
|
| With recognition of the mistaken framing (near max
| effectiveness) we're back to the larger ev pack has a
| greater ability to sink current, a larger ability to slow
| the vehicle than does a smaller battery (obvious
| considerations about inverter capability, wire gauge etc
| etc aside)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think you might be using a very different definition of
| "effectiveness" than they are.
|
| Their definition of effectiveness is the percentage of
| braking force that turns back into electricity and goes
| into the battery. If your regen system can only do .15G,
| but 90% of your braking is under .15G, then you'll have
| about 94% effectiveness by that definition. 94% is not
| max but it's _near_ max.
|
| It's not about what happens during peak braking, it's
| about what happens over entire drives.
|
| And when they say "half or so of how fast I could stop"
| they're underestimating, that's a comparison to a normal
| but aggressive stop, not pushing the pedal into the
| ground.
| ncruces wrote:
| And when regenerative breaking is not enough, a series
| hybrid can still apply compression breaking, before
| resorting to brakes.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's just that Tesla didn't spend skill points on brake
| blending tech unlockable. Some people confuse it as being a
| piece of technology of its own.
|
| Every other EVs and HVs assign first half of brake pedal
| for regen and bottom half for mechanical brakes. Tesla uses
| bottom half of gas pedal for the same, which eliminates the
| need to accurately determine the appropriate pedal force
| that corresponds to intended braking force to be added up
| with regen to match intended deceleration. Mapping regen to
| gas is `set_motor_torque(1.25 * gas_pedal - 25);` and
| that's much simpler.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They didn't spend skill points because back when they did
| it they wanted to lean hard into the "oooh, fancy
| futuristic EV, look at this cool new driving experience"
| brand image. Same reason performance cars get loud
| exhausts even thought they could have quit ones with no
| decrease in performance.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| This is something that's always baffled me about Teslas.
| I have a Prius, and regenerative breaking being tied to
| the break pedal is easy and intuitive. It also means I
| can easily lift my foot of the gas pedal to coast. IDK it
| just seems like a much better design to have one "stop"
| pedal and one "go" pedal, vs one "stop" pedal and one
| "go/stop" pedal.
| ajross wrote:
| Counterargument is that it's even easier to have only one
| pedal you use to accelerate and decelerate. Having owned
| a Prius and a Y, the Tesla is actually smoother to
| control, by a very significant margin. It's actually a
| superior way to drive, though it is surprising the first
| time you see it.
| ajross wrote:
| I won't speak to your '22 Escape, but I've driven countless
| hybrids going back to a '04 Prius and none of them were
| brake-free in general use. EVs really are.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| That's because the regenerative braking is applied on the
| brake pedal, not by lifting up the accelerator. My '14
| Prius has a dashboard option to show how much of the
| regenerative breaking capacity is being used, and it's
| very easy to stay well below that limit by just gradually
| slowing down. The friction brakes are only really used
| when you suddenly stop, which is something you want to
| avoid anyway.
| cyberax wrote:
| You can just waste energy on eddy currents, and then use the
| car's cooling system to conduct away the heat. After all,
| dynamic brakes on locomotives just dissipate the generated
| electricity using resistors.
|
| Hybrid makers just don't really care about that.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If your Model Y is like my Model 3, then it seamlessly
| switches to friction breaking below 20 kph. That said, I'm at
| 110,000 km and the brakes look like new.
| friendzis wrote:
| > You just can't charge the battery fast enough doing
| anything but a very slow rolling stop.
|
| And it's not a problem when you get used to regenerative-only
| braking distances, which are surprisingly long at highway
| speeds.
|
| It only becomes a problem when idiots thinking "the shorter
| the distance between first and last car, the smaller the
| traffic" start cutting you off when you leave enough distance
| for regenerative braking.
| cperciva wrote:
| _which is the whole point of hybrids_
|
| Part of the point, not the whole point. Regenerative breaking
| is absolutely a win; but there can also be a significant
| benefit from allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot"
| rather than moving around a larger range.
| unglaublich wrote:
| This is how diesel-electric locomotives work too.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| They also use the electric motor(s) for braking, but
| instead of going into a battery it goes into a bank of
| resistors.
| ddeck wrote:
| I think you meant capacitors. Resistors would just
| dissipate the energy as heat.
|
| edit: Thanks for the correction. They do indeed use
| resistors and just dump the energy as heat. Unfortunate.
|
| Hopefully this will change as supercaps continue to
| improve. Maxwell tech's modules are already used in light
| rail, and looks like some work towards smaller
| locomotives in Switzerland here:
|
| https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/servlets/purl/20823697
| trained6446 wrote:
| Nope, resistors. The energy is dumped as heat.
|
| Dynamic brake
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Capacitors have pitiful energy storage capacity.
| Resistors is correct, unfortunately.
| ben_w wrote:
| To add to the other comments:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_braking
| jnpnj wrote:
| I heard about that long ago but couldn't find more, so IIUC
| chemically it's easier and more efficient to have a "one
| mode" combustion engine and let the electric engine deal with
| the variations, to the point that the reaction produces near
| no toxic byproducts, is that right ? I was wondering if there
| was research to keep improving that part. Even though it
| would help sustain the fossil fuel industry..
| Asmod4n wrote:
| Nissan hat the e-POWER system where a petrol engine is just
| used to recharge the battery of your electric car and
| nothing else. In theory they could run that petrol engine
| at the sweet spot where it produces the least amount of
| carbon emissions.
|
| i believe there is also a chinese company which is making
| such a car, their cars have nearly 1000 miles range.
| orwin wrote:
| Diesel-electric engines in trains and tanks worked like
| that during WW2.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| AFAIK this is about engine efficiency. ICEs have highest
| momentum and efficiency sweet spot somewhere in the middle
| of available revs, which depends on the engine construction
| and was being altered by different mechanisms (like
| turbocharging and variable valve timing) but since the
| electric engine (I'm speaking of Toyota solution) is able
| to keep the ICE in the sweet spot with its eCVT, the engine
| can be simplified and even work on different combustion
| cycle (Atkinson's cycle)
| coryrc wrote:
| > ICEs have highest momentum and efficiency sweet spot
| somewhere in the middle of available revs
|
| Close: they have the highest efficiency at about 90% of
| maximum torque for most of the RPM range. So if you want
| double the power, you want to be able to double the RPM;
| and if you want half the power, you want to be able to
| drop the RPMs in half. To pull this off, you either need
| a very quick shifting gearbox or some sort of CVT.
|
| This is also why automatic transmissions, despite being
| ~80% efficient versus ~95% manual transmissions, are not
| much worse on mileage. Because they can quickly switch
| between low RPM and higher RPM (first by torque converter
| lockup, second by switching gears).
| masklinn wrote:
| Afaik that's pure series hybrid and that's almost non-
| existent in cars (outside of range extenders, not that there
| are that many of those).
|
| There are a handful but most hybrids are either parallel or
| series-parallel. I assume because the power range is so low
| that the conversion losses are way too noticeable compared to
| a mechanical drivetrain.
| federiconafria wrote:
| That's something I wish there had been more focus on,
| instead of focusing on massive heavy batteries, develop the
| hybrids further.
| ddeck wrote:
| Not sure about the US, but the Japanese didn't stop
| focusing on hybrid development. More than half of all
| sales in Japan are hybrids, whereas electric is only a
| few percent [1].
|
| Honda even recently announced that they're scaling back
| on electric to focus on hybrids:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/japans...
|
| [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/hy
| brid-ca...
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Yes but Honda seems to be doing this because they can't
| make batteries. BYD can, ever cheaper, and they're
| expanding their plug-in offerings much faster than Honda
| is scaling them back. I'm worried for Japanese car
| makers.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| But series-parallel has the very same advantage - can keep
| the RPM in sweet spot.
| phire wrote:
| No, the entire point of a series-parallel hybrid is that it
| can offer the advantage of a series hybrid.
|
| The Toyota Prius powerchain has two motor generators, and
| can take part of the ICE power from one and transfer it
| electrically to the other, remapping the engine RPM into
| more efficient power bands at the same time. It has a mode
| that can do this even when no power is being used from the
| battery.
|
| It's kind of a best of both worlds. They can avoid the
| extra weight of a full series hybrid, because they don't
| need a motor generator pair that handles the full engine
| power.
|
| Actually, power bands remapping is essential for the Prius
| to operate.
|
| There is no clutch, there is no neutral gear, there is no
| torque converter. The ICE is always connected directly to
| the wheels with a fixed gear ratio on a planetary gear set.
| (Which improves transmission efficiency over a
| automatic/CVT gearbox, and actually reduces maintenance
| costs)
|
| One of the motor-generators is on the 3rd input of the
| planetary gear. For the ICE to idle (during warm up, or
| when you have the heater on), the motor-generator much be
| spinning backwards at the exact same speed so that the
| wheels stay stationary.
|
| Power band remapping can also be used for reversing when
| the battery is empty.
| graton wrote:
| Current Honda hybrids are like that. The only time the
| Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) is directly connected to
| the drive train is when the speed gets to above around
| 60MPH. The rest of the time the ICE is used to power a
| generator which then sends power to the electric motor
| and/or the battery pack.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLUIExAnNcE has more info.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| Another part of the point is that you can pack a much smaller
| and more efficient ICE and then substitute the missing power
| and torque from electric motors when needed. Most cars are
| not used at max power all the time. You need max power only
| at short times when accelerating. With pure ICE there is the
| tradeoff - a bigger engine will get you more max power / max
| torque but is going to be less fuel efficient because of
| internal friction.
| mort96 wrote:
| And, you can make much lighter and lower range electric
| cars without all those heavy batteries, and boost the range
| with diesel when needed. Very attractive in principle. Most
| cars are not using their full range all the time, for a lot
| of people a 50 mile range car would be more than enough 98%
| of the time, but that remaining 2% means that people end up
| buying 200 mile range cars instead.
|
| But then, do you end up removing enough battery weight to
| offset the weight of a whole ICE?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Smaller cars have always been available, but people have
| shown a preference for bigger cars where they can sit
| higher up, even though it costs them more.
| mort96 wrote:
| I'm not talking about size, I'm talking about range and
| weight. You can have a huge car or a smaller car, going
| from a 90kWh battery pack to a 30kWh battery pack is
| gonna have the same weight saving in both
| andrepd wrote:
| Maybe they should be at least charged for the
| catastrophic externalities that that "preference" results
| in.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| does "preference" equate to endless, manipulative
| advertising from car manufacturers? Or, perhaps, the
| "preference" of higher profit margins from larger cars,
| pushing manufacturers to entirely abandon reasonably
| sized cars?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| "Everyone who doesn't want what I want them to want has
| been brainwashed by corporate interests" is not a robust
| assertion under even the most casual scrutiny.
|
| I hate to break it to you but something like a Rogue or
| HRV does circles around an Altima or Civic when it comes
| to daily flexibility and utility for a fairly paltry
| additional cost. It doesn't take a degree in rocket
| surgery to figure out why they fly off the shelves. For
| the average person they're a good combination of
| attributes.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| The North American market now only includes a handful of
| sedans. Meanwhile, Hyundai and Toyota somehow manage to
| sell "tiny" cars in Korea, Japan and lots of developing
| countries.
|
| A practical car is a station wagon, not an SUV, many of
| which have less storage space.
|
| Please, cut the needless snark. People do buy vehicles
| for edge cases but the lack of smaller, practical
| vehicles is driven is large part by manufacturer profit.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Many of those tiny foreign cars are unfortunately not
| economically useful to sell in the regulated markets of
| the rich west, and even when they are they often aren't
| without the developing nation sales volume to amortize a
| lot of the fixed costs over.
|
| I agree that there's a lot of stupidity going on when it
| comes to station wagons vs crossovers vs compact SUVs and
| the OEMs really do SUV-ify a lot of things that ought not
| to be.
|
| The shape of these vehicles is fairly preordained by the
| nature of the fuel economy regulations and wind
| resistance and other regulations that apply equally to
| all of them. You're not gonna find "more space" in
| something like a Subaru Outback by squashing it on the
| vertical axis unless you stretch it in another dimension
| or find somewhere else to find space. Maybe you might be
| able to eek out a slightly better angle on the hatch or
| something but it ain't gonna be much. Fuel economy
| regulations make cars with thicc asses like the big
| sedans and station wagons of yesterday nonsensical.
|
| The snark is not needless. It is tautologically
| impossible for the overwhelming majority of people do be
| "doing it wrong" on a matter that is in large part a
| subjective one of preference. If someone wants to assert
| that then I will talk down to them.
|
| People buy these small SUVs left and right because
| they're seemingly the best option when it comes to well
| rounded boring A to B vehicles.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I think the crossover is pretty much the modern station
| wagon. I suppose they get marketed as SUV's but they're
| basically just a bit longer and taller car vs what I'd
| consider a "real" SUV; an enclosed truck chassis.
| elyobo wrote:
| also once everybody else is obstructing your view with a
| bigger car it becomes necessary to have a bigger one,
| it's a race to the metaphorical bototm
| pmg101 wrote:
| I thought about PHEV but in the end went full EV simply
| because it seemed to me with two whole power trains
| that's 2x the components to go wrong/need maintenance.
| happyPersonR wrote:
| This. This times 100x . Also, it's not like each
| powertrain has an independent failure mode. If either
| break, your car is a brick until it's fixed.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I have a friend who drives a Chevy Volt with a dead ICE
| engine; she just charges the battery and uses it as a
| (rather short range) pure EV vehicle. Not ideal, but it
| works for her until she gets something else.
| throwawaylaptop wrote:
| If she was in California she wouldn't be able to pass
| smog at her next inspection, which is a funny problem
| considering she drives in pure EV mode now.
| mort96 wrote:
| Oh I agree completely. I'm driving an old diesel now but
| I have no desire to get a hybrid, I'd get a pure EV if I
| were to buy a new car. But there are some tempting things
| _in principle_ about plug-in hybrids
| m_fayer wrote:
| That same insight applies to regular hybrids, and yet
| Toyota's hybrids are legendary for their durability.
| There's a reason half the cabs where I live are Prius
| station wagons, and it's not their efficiency, judging by
| how they're driven.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Consumer reports found that HEV's were the most reliable,
| and PHEV"s the least reliable. That's nonsensical,
| there's little difference between the two.
|
| Toyota is the biggest seller of HEV's, Stellantis of
| PHEV. That's the difference. EV's on paper should be the
| most reliable, but Tesla is the biggest seller of those.
| If you want reliability, choose by brand rather than
| engine type.
| pmg101 wrote:
| I was comparing a Hyundai Ioniq EV with a Hyundai Ioniq
| PHEV and was surprised to find more problems reported by
| the owners of the Ioniq EV.
|
| Mostly issues with 12V battery, it seemed like.
|
| In the end I bought a Stellantis EV so I probably deserve
| everything I get - but they are cheap!
| kube-system wrote:
| >Consumer reports found that HEV's were the most
| reliable, and PHEV"s the least reliable. That's
| nonsensical, there's little difference between the two.
|
| Eh, it's not so much nonsensical, as it is that you're
| just misinterpreting the data.
|
| This conversation here is specifically about _powertrain
| reliability_ , but that isn't what consumer reports
| measures. They measure complaints about _any feature_ on
| the vehicle, including ancillary accessories unrelated to
| the vehicle 's ability to transport people.
|
| But also as you point out, shitty engineering
| (Stellantis's specialty) is a bigger issue than any
| particular drivetrain type.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| Toyota's success with the Prius proves that this fear is
| unfounded. You will regularly find second hand prius
| models for sale with 500,000 km on the odometer.
|
| Just think - if two drivetrains were less reliable,
| wouldn't you see that with the Prius?
| kube-system wrote:
| That's a common misconception, but hybrids are almost
| never as complicated as an ICE powertrain _plus_ an EV
| powertrain. E.g. most hybrids are able to eliminate many
| parts that ICE vehicles require, like, starters, drive
| belts, multi-ratio transmissions, alternators, etc.
| Because of this, many hybrids surpass ICE-only vehicles
| in reliability.
| teamonkey wrote:
| In some ways it's more complicated. The battery
| management and cooling is a point of failure. It's also
| heavier and so wear and tear on suspension is greater.
|
| On the other hand, a Toyota hybrid doesn't have a gearbox
| at all, not even a CVT. Instead it has something similar
| to a differential, it's mechanically simple and very
| reliable. It uses the electric motor in place of a turbo,
| so that's another common failure point removed. It
| doesn't have a starter motor, and the Atkinson cycle
| engine should suffer less stress than an equivalent
| petrol.
|
| Practically the biggest problem is finding a 3rd party
| garage who will inspect the hybrid parts as part of a
| service.
| usrusr wrote:
| On paper, yes, but did that ever happen? Sorry for being
| sarcastic, but where I live the frugal hybrid is
| exceptionally rare and the "same big engine, but driving a
| much heavier car" hybrid is omnipresent. The kind of people
| who might buy the frugal one buy second or third hand while
| almost all buyers of factory new pick the "same big engine"
| option, and those are the ones who decide what's available
| on the second hand market.
| terramex wrote:
| Omoda 9 (SUV) is sold in Europe only as plug-in hybrid
| with small-ish 1.5L 143HP engine + 394HP electric (145km
| of pure electric range, 35kWh LFP battery).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeed_Yaoguang
| scns wrote:
| > did that ever happen?
|
| In 2010 with the Chevrolet Volt.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think the question is "is that overall effect the
| reality, or do most people buy a very heavy hybrid?"
| graemep wrote:
| I wonder whether people actually understand that they
| need a smaller engine for the same performance?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Despite my overall low estimation of people's ability to
| fluidly reason about engineering tradeoffs, I think they
| generally do understand this one well enough, at least
| for the decisions that they will face. They're only
| deciding which car to buy, not what engine specifications
| are required to make a car successful in the market.
|
| They go test-drive cars, probably glance at performance
| specifications and/or read/watch a test drive review of
| the cars. They can look at the 0-60mph/0-100 kph times
| and get a feel for "this car will be able to get out of
| its own way" vs "this car will be a rolling roadblock".
|
| So "actually understand"? Maybe not, but "understand
| enough to guide their purchasing decision?" and therefore
| enough for the actual automobile product teams to design
| to accommodate? I think they do.
| hvb2 wrote:
| Yes, every single prius for example? The biggest engine
| that was produced with seems to be a ~100 bhp engine
| which isn't much for a 1.5 metric tonne car
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| In most countries, yes. Despite the push for SUV-styled
| cards (which are heavier than a regular city car, but not
| by that much), engines have been small.
|
| Toyota Yaris - HSD - 1.5L 4cyl Renault Clio - E-Tech -
| 1.6L Hyundai Kona (SUV) - 1.6L Honda Jazz - 1.5L Peugeot
| 208 - 1.2L Peugeot 3008 (SUV) - 1.6L Peugeot 5008 (Family
| SUV) - 2L And the list goes on. Even BMW with it's xDrive
| puts out 1.5L engines.
|
| Huge engines are only common in two places: sports cars
| (and even then, only a specific category like AMGs and
| friends, because even a Porsche 992 only has a 3L engine)
| and the US.
| graemep wrote:
| The info is useful, but those do not seem to be all that
| small. There were smaller engines available for the ICE
| version of the Clio, for example.
| ohdeargodno wrote:
| There was, and it was shit. The Cleon-Fonte, despite all
| my love for its BBBBRRRRRRRRRRVVVVVVVVVVV was becoming
| wildly insufficient for the already ever heavier cars
| simply due to electronics and safety measures, and it was
| already a 1.2L. The smallest ever put on a Clio was a
| .999L, and anyone driving a Twingo knows how it behaves
| the moment there's... a slight incline, or two people in
| the care.
|
| 1.5L is an incredibly small engine, especially when
| previous versions required much larger. The Renault
| Scenic IV is a 1.5 ton brick that is happily running on a
| 1.2L engine. The Scenic II's most sold motorization was a
| 2L engine.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I feel like I remember a pickup being available that was
| a 6L v8. So one cylinder in that engine had almost the
| same volume as all the cylinders in a 1.5L engine
| combined. That's pretty crazy to me.
|
| edit: oh it was mine heh, my first car was a 1979 ford
| with a 460 ( 7.5L v8 ). It was a hand me down from my
| grandfather, he said if i could get it running i could
| have it.
| sokoloff wrote:
| A 6 liter 4-cylinder would have the same volume in a
| single cylinder as a 1.5L engine. A V8 of that size would
| have half the volume in a single cylinder, not almost the
| same volume.
| xxs wrote:
| >On paper, yes, but did that ever happen?
|
| Like absolutely, unless you consider 1.4L petrol engine
| large for something with over 170KW (over 220hp). Such
| kind of offerings are quite common at the East side of
| the pond.
| usrusr wrote:
| I'd consider engines with HP in the two digits range not
| big. Few ICE cars (hybrid or not) are _ever_ accelerated
| at the rate you could achieve with a 75 HP engine revved
| into the high but still safe range. People buy big
| engines so that they can get all their acceleration needs
| served at half throttle. And that 's for stick shifting,
| those on automatic pick engine size so that they can
| accelerate on quarter throttle or else the car shifts
| back and it sounds all x "small engine working hard"
| (which would be so much less inefficient!).
| sokoloff wrote:
| Our family owned a Mercedes 240D (71 peak horsepower at
| sea level) for many years. That car's performance was
| lackluster on a good day and trying to merge onto the
| Pennsylvania Turnpike (with very short acceleration
| lanes) was IMO quite unsafe. From that experience, I'm
| pretty sure that people are dipping into more
| acceleration than that car could ever muster.
|
| I have no doubt that some people behave as you describe,
| but I think some of that is driven from a rational
| position of not wanting to buy a car that is incapable of
| anything more than their normal daily driving. If you
| need to accelerate quickly to merge safely into traffic,
| bringing only 75 [or 71] peak horsepower to the table
| isn't a comfortable position to be in.
| tim333 wrote:
| Fiat 500 hybrid 999cc engine, 69bhp (51kW).
|
| I hired one on holiday and it worked fine. Maybe I'm
| getting old but I see less point in getting something
| that does 0-60 in 4 sec when most traffic goes from 0-40
| in about two minutes and doesn't get much faster. It
| still has a top speed over 100mph.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| BMW i8
| kube-system wrote:
| The vast majority of hybrids use simulated atkinson
| cycle... while their cylinders might be the same size as
| N/A vehicles, they leave the intake valve open past the
| end of the stroke, so they effectively are displacing
| less, even though the cylinder dimensions might be the
| same size. The advantage is that atkinson cycle is more
| efficient. But it has too poor performance
| characteristics for an ICE-only car.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Yes, check out BYD's hybrids. The petrol engine is 46%
| efficient, which is pretty damn amazing. This is more
| efficient than most power plants (combined cycle plants
| are better- but most power plants are not combined-
| cycle).
|
| So what is the well to wheel efficiency of this vs. pure
| electric? There are fuel transportation losses in one,
| and transmission line losses in the other. In many cities
| electricity is quite a bit more expensive than gas so
| hybrids are a better deal financially.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > [...] _but there can also be a significant benefit from
| allowing the ICE to remain in the RPM "sweet spot" rather
| than moving around a larger range._
|
| Which is why I'm surprised electric cars with range extenders
| aren't a bigger thing:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_extender
|
| Have the powertrain be all-electric, and have a battery pack,
| but for those with range anxiety have a small generator as an
| option that would go in the frunk (front truck). A
| (proverbial) small Honda EU2200i would be less maintenance
| than a traditional engine.
| jansan wrote:
| Maybe because people don't want to have oil changes,
| emission checks, exhaust gas etc. on their EV. If they
| really need a long range, they will probably just buy a
| combustion engine car.
| JoBrad wrote:
| Perhaps, but other than the upcoming Scout, I'm not even
| sure it's an option for EVs, in the US.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| BMW i3 has/had a REX version and when I researched it
| people seemed to agree it's the least reliable part about
| owning it. But that might be it!
| cjrp wrote:
| The newer London black cabs do that
|
| > The LEVC TX is powered by a full-electric hybrid
| drivetrain. It drives in full-electric mode all the time,
| but is recharged by an 81-horsepower (60 kW; 82 PS) Volvo-
| sourced 1.5-litre turbocharged three-cylinder petrol
| engine.
| darkwater wrote:
| This does not make any sense. It's a cab, it's going to
| stay 100% of the time in a city or really near, moving
| around. If it ignites a petrol engine to recharge the
| battery, what's the point? Surely a cab driver can pause
| 20 minutes every 4 hours to go to the restroom and fast
| charge their EV, no?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Diesel REX vans would be a MASSIVE hit if a company would
| just decide to start making them.
|
| The #1 reason for (european) companies not buying full EV
| vans is range, they need to drive a LOT during the day.
|
| REX would solve that with minimal emissions. And depending
| on the battery size, they could drive on full EV in city
| centres and only allow the REX to charge the battery during
| longer drives.
|
| The BMW i3 REX is a fantastic car, if you can find one, buy
| it.
| thijson wrote:
| They are the cheapest hybrid out there currently, at
| least here in the USA. I think the average American
| prefers a larger vehicle.
|
| I think a Diesel indirect injection REX would be awesome.
| It could burn vegetable oil, which is more viscous, but
| indirect injection doesn't need to atomize the fuel as
| much.
| eftpotrm wrote:
| BMW tried that with the i3, it wasn't particularly popular.
| An engine, fuel system and a generator are all relatively
| complex additions compared to just putting the same cost
| and vehicle space into more batteries, and the public
| charging networks are definitely up to the task by now
| (having been EV-only for almost 5 years now).
| thmsths wrote:
| I've ridden in one and this was basically a case of "you
| get the worst of both worlds". The engine was small and
| running at a constant RPM, leading to an annoying noise
| in the cabin. The range extension was not particularly
| huge. Worse, when we did eventually run out of battery on
| one trip, the range extender was unable to recharge the
| battery after refueling the car, forcing us to scramble
| to find an available charging station with the car on the
| tow truck...
| thijson wrote:
| I've been driving one for a while. On the trips I've
| driven, even on the highway, the engine was able to keep
| up with the energy draw. I think it's around 60HP. If I'm
| on a long trip, I'll start the engine once I reach 75% of
| my battery capacity. That gives a significant buffer for
| the engine. It's a serial hybrid.
| supportengineer wrote:
| >> the range extender was unable to recharge the battery
|
| Could you expand on this? What was the actual problem?
| For example, did the range extender start and run? Did it
| put any energy into the battery at all?
| fragmede wrote:
| The original BMW i3 had/has a lockout that prevented the
| range extender from charging the battery until it reached
| 6% in order to meet California's ZEV BEVx regulation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| For a Honda 2.2kW to aid with range anxiety, you'd have to
| split range anxiety into two categories and I think it only
| addresses the second/lesser of the two.
|
| Assume the car gets 4 miles per kWh delivered and the
| charging cycle is 90% efficient (measured from generator
| output). The 2.2kW generator can add 8 miles/hour of
| generator runtime (2.2 kW * 0.9 * 4 miles/kWh).
|
| For range anxiety of the form "we're driving to a
| destination pretty far away and I'm not sure we can get
| there", that's not very helpful. For range anxiety of "I'm
| driving to a destination that's over half my range and then
| going to spend a full day [or overnight] there, but I'm not
| sure there will be working chargers available there",
| charging 8 mph times 8-10 hours is very helpful.
|
| Worrying about being stuck in the boondocks without a
| charger is addressed by an 8 mph on-board charger, but I
| think that's the less common form of range anxiety.
|
| The Chevy Volt range extender was 75kW; the i3's was
| 26.6kW. 2.2kW is literally an order of magnitude too small
| to replace those.
| sgarland wrote:
| Posted something very similar above. It's worse than 2200
| watts: that's the allowable overload draw, not sustained.
| After about 5 minutes, it warns you to reduce power to <=
| 1800 watts.
|
| Also, something I didn't mention in my post; at full
| power they'll suck their tank dry in a little over 3
| hours. You'll get about 20 miles of range (using your
| assumptions above) from one. Tbf you can also parallel
| two of them, or buy a slightly larger model (EU3200i),
| but either way, it's still not going to be anything other
| than an emergency backup where you have a lot of time to
| kill.
| sgarland wrote:
| The EU2200i can sustain 15 amps. That charges most EVs at
| something like a few miles of range per hour. The biggest
| one that's small enough for a frunk is the 3200i, which
| still only sustains 21.7 amps - plus, that's from an L5-30R
| socket, so you'd need an adapter for the EV, _and_ a custom
| chip to limit charging current below that, since the ones
| I've seen for that socket assume they can pull 24 amps.
|
| Re: maintenance, small engines typically are pretty needy.
| That one wants an oil change, spark plug gap adjustment,
| and spark arrestor cleaning every 100 hours of use. The
| latter two are only usage-based, but the oil is time-based
| as well (6 months) since it oxidizes, and suffers from fuel
| dilution. Then there's the fuel: god help you if you put
| ethanol gas into a small engine and let it sit for any
| period of time. It's often difficult to find E0 fuel, and
| while there are external fuel tanks for generators that can
| hold quite a bit, they also tend to vent vapor in the heat
| (as does any tank, including a car's), which is unpleasant
| when it's in your frunk.
|
| Finally, engines of all kinds really don't like being left
| sitting for months on end unless prepared to do so.
| Generally you want to run them monthly, getting them up to
| operating temperature, putting a load on them for a bit to
| fully exercise all components.
|
| I say all this because I have an EU2200i and dearly love
| it, but am also painfully aware of its limitations and
| needs. I got it when I lived in Texas because the power
| outages were getting to be absurd, and my house wasn't
| plumbed for natural gas, so a whole-house was out of the
| question. The 2200i was plenty to power two fridges, a deep
| freezer, TV, fans, and my server rack. I got really good at
| quickly running extension cords (which is a whole other
| discussion on ensuring proper amperage ratings and
| calculating voltage drop, something most people ignore).
| recursive wrote:
| Range anxiety seems to go away after your first week of EV
| driving.
| dboreham wrote:
| It isn't really "range" anxiety, rather "no charger
| available" anxiety.
|
| Today, if I run out of petrol|gasoline somewhere, even if
| I'm in the middle of nowhere and don't have a gas can, I
| can still recover from that situation within an hour or
| so (hitch a ride to the next gas station, buy gas can,
| fill with gas, hitch back to my vehicle). With an EV the
| density of fueling/charging locations is orders of
| magnitude lower than for gas, _and_ if I end up
| discharged I 'm looking at finding a flat bed truck, or
| perhaps a mobile high power generator.
|
| Disclosure: I own both kinds of vehicles.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'd say more that it _evolves_ rather than goes away. We
| 've had our BEV for over a decade and it's the car we
| tend to choose to drive for short distance errands. We
| like it by all means, but when one of us needs to take
| the hybrid car for a weekend or a local business trip, we
| still have to plan out to make sure the other can manage
| whatever we need to do with just the BEV.
|
| As dboreham says in the sibling comment, the range
| anxiety morphs into charger-availability anxiety. Even if
| I know a charger physically exists at my destination, if
| it's 45% or more of the range away, I still need to worry
| that it will be working, that my access will work, that
| it won't be occupied or blocked, etc.
|
| In nearly 40 years of driving, I almost never researched
| gasoline availability (through the Nevada desert and in
| Central America, I did).
|
| In a little over a decade of BEV driving, I've done _a
| lot_ of EVSE (charger) researching.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Eh, I'd say it goes away after your first road trip,
| unless you're going somewhere remote.
|
| I've had my BEV for about 5 1/2 years. My first road trip
| (Portland -> Santa Clara, ~560 miles each way), I planned
| it out ahead of time with ABRP. These days, I'll just let
| the nav figure it out.
| recursive wrote:
| First time I did an EV road trip, I just plugged it
| straight into the car screen and followed directions. I
| didn't have anyone with me, and was willing to accept
| some degree of "adventure". I did about 800 miles in a
| day, and had zero real issues.
|
| I have been totally unconcerned about it since.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| One 120V 2.2kW generator isn't going do much at all. It's
| really actually 1.8kW which is 15A at 120V.
|
| You'd need to tow around a 7.2kW 240V for 30A at 240V (more
| likely a 14.4kW generator for 240V 60A).
|
| Using the small Honda inverter generator (which is amazing
| for plenty of stuff!) is akin to covering your car in solar
| panels to get range extension, the math just doesn't work
| out.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| This is the thing with good hybrids.
|
| The "gas pedal" becomes a "I want to go faster/slower" pedal,
| its position has zero impact on the RPM.
|
| As an anecdote: A security company I know only buys Toyota
| Hybrids for their guards just because of that. They have a
| habit of driving cars like they stole them and normal ICE
| cars break down from that kind of abuse. Hybrids won't let
| you abuse them, they pick the RPM and you deal with it.
|
| (They also swap the passenger seat for a plastic box because
| the guards threw heavy crap like safety boxes on it, wearing
| down the seat in months)
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Do all Toyotas do that? I'm pretty sure that my dad's
| Corolla will rev the engine when I press the gas if the
| engine is already running.
|
| I'm also surprised for the first few minutes when I drive
| it how little "engine braking" it has (my habit is from
| riding a big motorbike).
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Dunno. My both Priuses did it and the company was
| specifically using the Yaris Hybrid.
|
| Both will rev on neutral, but when the gear selector is
| on Drive there is no link between the pedal and RPM.
| bonzini wrote:
| And on Brake it's even the opposite: above a certain
| speed, you press the accelerator and the RPM _decreases_
| to remove engine braking.
| trklausss wrote:
| Depends on the configuration. If they are equipped with a
| CVT+electric engine on the shaft, then that's the case:
| they rev to the sweet spot (which on gas engines is
| 4000-5000 rpm on acceleration? Depending on expected
| engine load I assume) and the speed is controlled by
| hydraulic force applied on the CVT.
|
| With other hybrids: depends on the generator they have
| installed, but it matches the consumption in amps by the
| engine in order to "go" if it is not directly coupled
| with the transmission, or they just downshift to
| accelerate with help of the electric engine.
|
| I am assuming a lot here: Toyotas (specially RAV4) mount
| CVTs among others, assuming pure electric generator by
| the ICE or coupled to it... So it depends a lot on
| specific configuration.
| taeric wrote:
| Even CVTs will rev the engine if you floor it, no? They
| typically allow for wanting to be in a few sweet spots. I
| prefer to keep it near the max efficiency speed. That
| said, my wife is a bit more aggressive and spends more
| time in the max power mark. It has a predictable change
| on the MPG reported by the vehicle.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I know for a fact you can neutral-drop a prius.
|
| I know it's not exactly the same, but I was a teenager
| and curious, and you can rev them and shift into drive
| with some heel-toe finesse. Not sure if this works on the
| newer ones, this one was an early 2010s model.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Thank you for performing the experiment I didn't even
| know I wanted to know the results of before now.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I performed many experiments on that family prius and
| with complete honestly, my experiments weren't even in
| the top ten worst things that car survived.
|
| Trees, multiple motorcycles, final destination esque road
| debris, an accident that should have totalled it if not
| for an insurance mistake, leading to repairs worth more
| than the car. Three teenage drivers and two adult drivers
| with heavy feet. Not to mention many many hardware store
| runs hauling various sacks of yard materials, baby trees,
| lumber, etc.
|
| My favorite times were rallying on compacted un-plowed
| snow. The thin tires and light weight meant it absolutely
| shredded.
|
| It's my opinion that the Toyota Prius is one of the
| greatest vehicles ever built and they should be respected
| and feared.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's an amazing testimony to its grit. I could stand to
| hear more of those stories over the appropriate beverage.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| it's possible that the engine rev is just the speakers. a
| lot of cars are doing fake engine sounds.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| The dash has an RPM gauge which moves. Also, the noise is
| horrendous, not sure why they would have chosen that when
| they could have used a nicer-sounding tone. This is a
| tame small car, not something you'd buy to impress your
| friends.
| coryrc wrote:
| They're programmed to rev in situations like that,
| because people are used to it. Under normal operation,
| RPM is decided by power needs. If you start accelerating
| on the freeway, for example, the engine might jump from
| 1100 RPM to 3000 RPM with just some pedal, while a manual
| transmission obviously changes very little.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| The whole "pas pedal" becomes faster/slower (one pedal
| driving) is coming to an end. Its being banned as default
| in the world's largest EV market (and largest EV export
| country).
| taeric wrote:
| I'm curious what you mean? I'm fairly confident the post
| you are responding to was only talking about newer
| transmissions. Which, I can't imagine those are going
| away?
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| The post is talking about most people drive with BEV ,
| which is one pedal driving. My Tesla does one pedal
| driving my default.
|
| China has banned "one pedal driving" as a default.
| taeric wrote:
| I took it to be people that are far more aggressive with
| the gas pedal than they really need to be. That is, it
| was more the heavy foot than it was letting off to brake.
|
| Regardless, your point stands. People that have gotten
| used to not directly using brakes to indicate you are
| slowing down is a dangerous thing with how reliant we are
| on the standard indications that you are slowing. All the
| more so if you need to rapidly lose a ton of speed, where
| even regenerative brakes often fall back to friction.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > People that have gotten used to not directly using
| brakes to indicate you are slowing down is a dangerous
| thing with how reliant we are on the standard indications
| that you are slowing.
|
| Most, if not all, EVs will light up the brake lights when
| you're slowing via regen braking as long as the
| deceleration rate is above a certain threshold. I know my
| Tesla does.
| taeric wrote:
| This addresses the signalling to the people behind you
| problem. You still should have the foot nearer the brake
| so that you can fully stop, if you need to do so rapidly.
|
| Emergency brake systems probably help a lot with this
| problem, of course. Still seems wise to follow some of
| the older practices that we used to drill into people.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| So you just type in the speed you want and hit enter?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Huh, that's interesting. Apparently China will be banning
| cars from having one-pedal driving as the default.
|
| Losing muscle memory of pressing the brake pedal. Makes
| sense, actually.
| taeric wrote:
| This is less a hybrid thing and more a new transmission
| thing. It, of course, isn't free. The efficiency of a CVT
| is a good 10-20 percent lower than previous transmissions.
| That said, currently, the win from keeping the engine at
| either the max power or the max efficiency speed is
| substantial.
|
| There are some really good videos out there going over how
| newer CVTs work. Looks like some people are working on ones
| that are teeth driven, to reduce the loss from being free
| belt driven. Borderline magical stuff, all told.
| (Obviously, not magic magic. But very very impressive
| designs.)
| klaff wrote:
| I have a Subaru (ten years old w/ >200k miles on it's
| chain-type CVT), and I thought the justification for it
| was that it was more efficient than previous systems.
|
| From a mechanical engineering standpoint, the Subaru CVT
| uses a fairly conventional lock-up torque converter at
| the input, but that gets locked as you pass something
| like 15-20 mph (once the lowest gear ratio is
| satisfactory w/o the torque converter function) and
| beyond that all shifting of the CVT is done w/ the torque
| converter locked. In addition, the clamping force of the
| sheaves is adjusted per the torque load of the
| transmission to minimize the frictional losses.
|
| Anyway I'm curious about data comparing efficiency of
| conventional and CVT automatics.
| taeric wrote:
| My understanding is that the overall system is more
| efficient. It is only the transmission that is less so.
|
| The videos online that look at various CVT systems is
| truly an amazing resource that I regret not having when I
| was younger. :D
| klaff wrote:
| If overall efficiency is what you see reflected in the
| EPA mileage numbers (or similar European tests), in what
| scenario would a lower efficiency transmission (lower
| Pout/Pin over some range of operating points?) lead to or
| even allow better overall efficiency?
| taeric wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the question? You get the
| engine to hit its sweet spot and to hold it there. That
| gain outweighs the loss from the new transmission.
|
| This would be similar to hitting the optimal torque
| point. The idea there would be that you can get out of
| the acceleration phase faster, so that you can transition
| to a more efficient gear to maintain the speed for
| longer.
|
| The wikipedia looks to cover this well. One of the cites
| is specific on the efficiency of the CVT. I think I
| overstated how much higher the loss is, so maybe that is
| confusing things? I thought it was 10-20, but the cite on
| the page shows it solidly around 10.
| klaff wrote:
| Ah, thank you, I see the argument. I'm still a bit
| skeptical though when many non-CVT automatics are 6 or
| 8-speed models that there would be much "sweet spot"
| benefit left by being able to make relatively small
| changes in engine speed. Like many things probably
| depends on exactly what comparison is being made.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean, we are comparing 6-8 to effectively infinite?
| Question then comes into just how much is lost by being
| outside of the sweet spot for an engine. Which, I agree
| that I would not have thought it would be that big of a
| deal. Just going off modestly paying attention in my car,
| I see massive benefits keeping the car around 300 rpms
| lower.
|
| Interestingly, my car gets better gas mileage around the
| 40ish speeds than I do at full highway speeds. That
| somewhat surprises me. It is very dependent on not having
| a heavy foot, of course.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The post you commented on was talking about Toyota
| hybrids though, who don't use a CVT in the sense you're
| talking about.
|
| They use a series-parallel hybrid transmission which is
| sometimes called eCVT, but works completely different
| from a classic CVT. There are no pullies, belts, chains,
| none of that. What they do have is a couple of motor-
| generators and a differential to link the system up with
| the engine and the drive shaft. No friction losses like
| CTVs have.
|
| See https://prius.ecrostech.com/original/PriusFrames.htm,
| or look up "Hybrid Synergy Drive" on Wikipedia or Youtube
| or your favorite search engine.
| taeric wrote:
| Ah, totally fair in that this particular transmission is
| better than the belt driven CVT stuff. I had thought they
| were still a bit worse than other transmissions, but it
| looks like if they are, it is on the order of 1% or so.
|
| Is fascinating to watch these things work.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Most hybrids on the road are parallel and have a mechanical
| connection to wheels and vary rpm as needed, although the CVT
| implementations may hold rpm due to gear ratios like any CVT
| hybrid or not.
|
| A direct mechanical connection is more efficient at highway
| cruise speeds than a mechanical->electric->mechanical
| conversion.
|
| The main win a gasoline hybrid has is in running the Atkinson
| cycle gaining efficiency while losing torque which the
| electric motor makes up. This brings the gasoline engine up
| into diesel efficiency territory.
|
| This is also why you don't really diesel hybrids, the engine
| is already very efficient but it is more expensive and
| heavier and hybrid adds more expense and weight.
| nixass wrote:
| That's the case only with CVT transmission
| pinko wrote:
| Are there still a lot of hybrids without CVTs?
| eulers_secret wrote:
| Hyundai/Kia use a traditional 6-speed auto in their
| hybrids. I drive one, the engine stays at a few RPM
| stepping points during most driving (it likes ~1600RPM,
| ~2200RPM, and ~3600RPM). I had a Prius previously, and I
| like this different setup because it reduces "engine
| droning noise", which was terrible on the Prius.
|
| Though H/K have recently introduced a new hybrid system
| with a CVT, so maybe 2026 or 27 model years will be
| different.
|
| Since I'm only making one comment, I also want to say
| hybrid cars are better than ICE because there are fewer
| belt-driven accessories. Aircon in particular on an
| electric motor is a big improvement. Without the idling
| engine producing heat, hybrids are much nicer in hot
| stop-and-go conditions!
|
| Also my Prius made it its whole life (200k miles and ~20
| years) without ever changing the brake pads... amazing!
| nixass wrote:
| I'd say that the market is very fragmented.
|
| Toyota and Lexus, obviously, use eCVT in their cars.
|
| Honda is also in eCVT camp for most of their models but
| for example new CR-V has weird setup. It acts as an BEV
| until ~80-100kmh and then shifts completely to ICE with a
| single gear. While in EV mode the engine is constantly
| charging batteries.
|
| Then you have KIA and Hyundai with their dual clutch
| setup in all HEV and PHEV range.
| timc3 wrote:
| Lots. BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Porsche, Volkswagen, Volvo for
| example.
|
| I find it a pity that Lexus uses CVTs as I would probably
| sell my BMW 330e and get a Lexus.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Diesel engines with all their turbochargers, EGR, SCR, DPF
| etc equipment, work pretty well as part of a hybrid system.
| All that stuff works much better in steady-state operation.
| Diesel hybrid buses and trucks are much smoother and cleaner
| than non-hybrid.
| supportengineer wrote:
| In order to do this with a gas engine, it can be done but you
| need to completely mechanically decouple the gas engine from
| the drivetrain. The gas engine needs to do one thing and one
| thing only which is charge the battery. The gas engine has
| maximum efficiency at about 80% throttle.
| kube-system wrote:
| The efficiency of the entire system is more important than
| the efficiency of the engine itself. Charging the battery
| and then discharging it also incurs losses. Many series
| hybrids will prioritize generating electricity when some of
| it is also required to directly drive the motor. They
| usually don't sit around at low-load situations just
| generating electricity, unless SOC is low.
|
| > The gas engine has maximum efficiency at about 80%
| throttle.
|
| ICE efficiency varies in multiple dimensions based on load
| and RPM, and in a series hybrid, you have some ability to
| dynamically influence these... throttle would be one of
| those inputs.
| sliken wrote:
| There do exist serial hybrids where the engine produces
| electricity while maintaining the ideal RPM, and then is
| connected to a battery+electric motors.
|
| However in practice the vast majority of hybrids do not use
| this approach and have motors that vary RPM with road speed
| (depending of gearing of course).
|
| The common case of maintaining ideal RPM is the CVT, which
| most folks dislike, so much so that some models have a switch
| to pick how many fake gears you have to break up the boring
| drone of a constant RPM engine.
|
| BTW, the chevy bolt was advertised as a serial hybrid, right
| up to the day it shipped.
|
| I believe the most common serial hybrid today is an EV with a
| range extender.
| fho wrote:
| The rear brake rotors on my Yaris hybrid are basically always
| rusty because they get used so little. After some time you just
| know when to start braking so you only use regen instead of the
| brakes.
| pkolaczk wrote:
| I confirm and that's an unpleasant surprise. Already had to
| replace the rear rotors and pads on my Highlander... because
| of rust. They should add some "brake cleaning" mode to
| temporarily disable regenerative braking.
| mschild wrote:
| > They should add some "brake cleaning" mode
|
| Also known as breaking. You could just do that once in a
| while.
| topsecret wrote:
| Yup, my Golf GTE is mostly used to fetch groceries, but
| every now and again I'll blast down a faster road and
| brake harder than just regen to keep the brakes
| themselves in good condition. It's almost second-nature
| at this point.
| dubbel wrote:
| If you don't break hard enough, it might still be the
| recuperation doing its work.
|
| Car producers can and do resolve this, e.g. iirc Audis
| don't use recuperation for the first breaking of the day.
| That way you don't have to remember to use the no-
| recuperation/break cleaning mode or break unnecessarily
| hard every now and then.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| The manual recommends putting the car in neutral and then
| braking every once in a while to keep the brakes in good
| working order. Putting the car in neutral disables the
| recuperation and makes sure you really use the friction
| brakes.
|
| (When I say "the manual", I mean both the manual of my
| previous car which was a hybrid Toyota Auris, and my
| current car which is a fully electric Volvo XC40.)
| whatevaa wrote:
| Sure, gonna slam on brakes while in front of you.
|
| It's 2025 and hybrids have enough software to automate
| some non-hybrid braking action.
| masklinn wrote:
| Modern EVs tend to do blended braking (at least by
| default) in which case pressing the brake pedal gently
| will likely just do more regen braking. It's only when
| you request more than regen braking can provide that
| physical brakes engage.
| throw0101d wrote:
| *braking
|
| * https://www.dictionary.com/e/brake-vs-break/
|
| The two words are:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophone
| xnzakg wrote:
| Many of the cars with regenerative braking already do apply
| the brakes once in a while to prevent them from rusting.
| masklinn wrote:
| There's been a few suggestions that drum brakes should make
| a come back, for EVs.
|
| They're enclosed so they don't get dirty, the inner face of
| drum will rust less than discs, fade is not an issue thanks
| to regen braking, and before they get too hot and fade
| drums will brake harder than disks (thanks to a higher pad
| surface area). And they're enclosed so they also keep the
| brake dust inside the drum, making it easier to dispose of
| safely.
|
| Drums are heavier tho.
| bradfa wrote:
| Drum brakes are cheaper, too. The VW ID4 has rear drum
| brakes for all of these reasons and it seems to work out
| very well.
| masklinn wrote:
| Also forget about that bit:
|
| > They should add some "brake cleaning" mode to temporarily
| disable regenerative braking.
|
| Some manufacturers do that (iirc tesla calls it
| burninshing, others will switch regen off completely if you
| switch to neutral or something).
|
| I've read that Audi and Porsche will use regular brakes
| once or twice at the start of every drive instead of regen,
| I assume using electronic control to imitate the current
| state of regen braking.
| gambiting wrote:
| It does. My Volvo XC60 T8 PHEV is a 400bhp 2.2 tonne SUV and
| after over 5 years of ownership the pads are about 20% worn.
| And I don't drive like a granny either. The car just does most
| of its braking with the EV motor.
| joezydeco wrote:
| Same here, XC40P8 and the pads are 10% used after 2.5 years.
|
| But I understand the factory tires are a bit stickier to
| create a quieter ride which may be throwing more rubber dust
| into the air. High torque launches don't help either. ;-)
| guidoiaquinti wrote:
| I came across a really interesting video yesterday
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aubi3cK8Ym0) that touches on
| brake-dust pollution. It also explains how regenerative
| (kinetic-energy) charging can cut down on heat pollution,
| something I hadn't realized before. That's actually a big deal
| for underground metro systems; for instance, the London Tube
| keeps getting hotter every year.
| spuz wrote:
| Yes indeed the London underground does use regenerative
| braking on many of their lines. The cool thing about a direct
| rail power system is that the voltage generated from trains
| that are braking can be fed back into the power rail to
| instantaneously power other trains on the same line that are
| accelerating. No need to carry the extra weight of a battery
| or flywheel. And like you say, it helps keep the tunnels
| cooler.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| It has to be the same segment, which is a bit of a pain to
| manage. The amount of power being fed in is getting close
| to megawatts.
| pjc50 wrote:
| UK stats are different: https://www.zap-map.com/ev-stats/ev-
| market , possibly due to the shorter max travel distances.
|
| > As of the end of June 2025, there were 2,450,462 plug-in
| cars, with over 1,585,000 battery-electric cars and nearly
| 865,000 PHEVs, registered in the UK.
|
| > There are more fully electric cars than there are plug-in
| hybrids on UK roads and the gap has been widening. In 2021,
| fully electric cars accounted for 60% of all plug-in cars but
| with the increase in options, range and popularity of fully
| electric cars, and by May 2025 this has increased to 65%.
|
| (That stat does exclude non-pluggable-hybrids, but those are
| kind of pointless stalling of the transition off petrol)
| spuz wrote:
| Your source doesn't consider non-plug-in hybrids also known
| as HEVs because zapmap are a company that sell charging
| services. The number of HEVs in the UK is about twice the the
| number of PHEVs so the total number of hybrids is still
| higher than the total number of BEVs. In 2024, 6% of vehicles
| on the road were hybrid compared with 3.7% fully electric.
|
| https://www.smmt.co.uk/more-than-a-million-evs-on-uk-
| roads-a...
| pjc50 wrote:
| I wonder which vehicles that is - is that predominantly the
| non-pluggable Prius?
| TreeInBuxton wrote:
| There is a wide variety, MHEV is quite popular here due
| to lack of home charging, as many people live in
| terraces, etc
|
| We have a selection of smaller popular hatchbacks with
| MHEV available (ie, the Hyundai i20) that I believe were
| not released in some markets
|
| The leasing culture for "luxury" cars is quite prevalent
| here too, and many new cars from popular brands such as
| Land Rover are at minimum MHEV from new nowadays, in
| order to get fleet emissions down
| seb1204 wrote:
| Many hybrids are not driven to max regenerative breaking. You
| need to drive and look ahead to make good use of the
| regeneration. Short distance breaking is still fast and using
| the discs.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Hard braking is an _insane_ power. Eg. A typical 4,400 lb car
| emergency stopping from 80 mph has a braking power of 940
| horsepower.
|
| Hybrid cars have smaller motors, inverters, and battery packs
| - and none of those components can absorb 940 horsepower!
|
| A 2nd gen prius battery for example has a max in/out of 30
| horsepower.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Always sketches me out using regen for a serious grade
| decent while laden or towing. I have a sneaking suspicion
| that one day it's gonna error out and disable itself
| because too much power and I'll be down to just normal
| brakes.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It will disable itself if your battery is already full...
|
| Some cars it's quite an abrupt change from the regen
| braking to the hydraulic brakes.
| chakintosh wrote:
| On both my Volvo PHEVs I often look at the brake discs and find
| them rusty from the amount of regen braking. it almost
| completely eliminates conventional braking unless it's for
| collision avoidance.
| dboreham wrote:
| My EV turns regenerative braking off for the first use of
| brakes after beginning a journey, to avoid the rusting disc
| syndrome.
| masklinn wrote:
| What car brand is it? I've read that Audi and Porsche do
| that.
|
| Also is it only pedal braking? Or does it "fake" things out
| if you use one-pedal driving?
| tkj922 wrote:
| So your primary and emergency brake system elements are rusty
| and that is now somehow a good thing?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yes, but only to some degree.
|
| Quote from the actual report:
|
| > As the level of electrification of a vehicle rises, the
| dependence on regenerative braking also increases, thus
| lowering PM emissions from brake wear. Based on recent evidence
| [30], regenerative braking can reduce, in the worst- case
| scenario (i.e. highest usage of mechanical brakes or
| equivalently lowest usage of regenerative braking), brake wear
| emissions by 10-48% for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), 66%
| for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and 83% for
| battery electric vehicles (BEVs
| infecto wrote:
| I have not seen many if any Hybrids that use regen to the same
| degree as an EV.
| brikym wrote:
| Heavier cars with more torque at the wheels means more tyre dust.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Who knew that a vehicle with two brake systems would use the
| traditional one less than vehicles with only that type!?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| You'd be surprised at what people don't know.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| But they burn through tires much faster due to the battery packs.
| All that tire friction has to go somewhere right?
| due-rr wrote:
| They mention that in the article. It's not enough to offset the
| higher break wear.
| originalvichy wrote:
| This can also be offset by better traction control. EV engines
| respond to it much faster.
| kingstnap wrote:
| EVs don't burn through tires quickly, they just kept you burn
| through tires quickly.
|
| Tire wear is an extremely strong function of torque. If you
| accelerate and decelerate calmly then the stiff tires they put
| on EVs will last a long time.
|
| A lot of people drive EVs extremely aggressively because the
| motor provides a ton of instant torque and they find it fun.
| mjevans wrote:
| Ban the stop and go hell of rush hour. Cars rolling at freeway
| speed without stopping pollute way less than drivers stuck behind
| idiots who can't just go forward down the road at the speed
| limit.
|
| The human suffering and ecological impact reduced if only there
| would be a focus on enforcing speed minimums...
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| Even if everyone drove optimally, every road is going to reach
| a capacity where its physically impossible to maintain a
| certain speed. It's similar to network congestion. Mandating
| that everyone drive faster won't solve anything.
| mjevans wrote:
| It would reduce the duration of rush hour... once the least
| skilled drivers were improved or removed from the pool. I do
| agree it wouldn't solve a complete lack of capacity, civic
| planning, transportation infrastructure. Including lack of
| busses that travel frequently enough and where people want to
| go.
| oblio wrote:
| > once the least skilled drivers were improved or removed
| from the pool.
|
| Let me guess this straight, the plan would be that:
|
| 1. in a global environment (the following steps are done
| everywhere around the world)
|
| 2. where maximum speeds, though:
|
| - clearly marked everywhere
|
| - mentioned during driving lessons and driving codes/books
|
| - part of the written driving exam every driver has to pass
|
| - enforced by police, cameras, a myriad of automated
| systems etc
|
| 3. are still ignored by, say, 40%+ of drivers
|
| ... so, the plan would be that in this environment,
| mandating minimum speeds would actually improve anything?
| :-)))
|
| I'd be super happy to read the study proving this. Where by
| study, I mean actual physical trial.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >It would reduce the duration of rush hour... I do agree it
| wouldn't solve a complete lack of capacity,
|
| Exactly. Rush hour is like dumping 5gal bucket into a sink.
| You'll always be bottlenecked by the drain but a better
| drain will mean all the drops get where they're going
| faster and with less waiting around.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I think if find a way to fix the worst of the worst it'd
| probably up the throughputs and speeds a lot in the same way
| that quashing TCP retrans problems does.
| mc3301 wrote:
| It isn't just slow or distracted drivers. It is congestion. It
| is too many cars, and the impossible task of making them all
| "go" at the same time.
|
| What we need is fewer cars and better shared transportation.
|
| Heck, we should replace ALL cars with busses, and then they
| could go super fast with all the other buses. Make 'em small,
| so it's maybe 20 people per bus. That's 20 cars off the road,
| right there.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I assume by that you mean provide good and cheap public
| transportation so people no longer have to drive.
| matsemann wrote:
| It's just traffic. The arrogance of thinking everyone else is
| the problem is kinda weird. You're just as responsible for the
| congestion and pollution.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Quality of operation absolutely is a factor in the equation.
| The overall results seem to get dragged down to the lowest
| common denominator. Something like a park-and-ride lot after
| an arrival cleans out way faster/better than a school despite
| both more than saturating whatever their entry onto the main
| road is.
| empath75 wrote:
| What causes stop and go is actually pressure waves that
| propagate backwards through traffic once density hits a
| critical point.
|
| When everyone is following at a reasonable distance (ie,
| there's a couple of car lengths between cars), if someone has
| to hit the brakes for some reason (sun in their eyes, car cuts
| them off, etc), then the car behind can slow instead of
| stopping, and it doesn't propagate. Notably, the person who
| triggered the wave doesn't even need to stop. If the person
| behind them is following close enough, just slowing down a
| little bit will cause the person behind to slow _more_, and the
| person behind them to stop.
|
| Once everyone is stacked on top of each other, any interruption
| in the flow of traffic propogates backwards. That's why when
| you get to the "end" of the traffic congestion it looks like
| people stopped for "no reason". But you've just hit the front
| of a pressure wave. You'll probably hit another one in a little
| while if density doesn't ease up ahead of you.
|
| The only way to eliminate stop and go traffic is to stop people
| from entering onto the freeway after it hits a certain density.
| roschdal wrote:
| So let's make cleaner brakes for combustion-engine cars.
| sitkack wrote:
| 55k miles on my Leaf. Not even halfway through the first set of
| brake pads. I cannot say the same thing about the tires.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > alluding to the black discolorations on alloy wheels
|
| There are ceramic brakes that produce very little particulate
| matter by comparison to semi-metallic. The only downside is
| performance can degrade more in extreme driving conditions
| (sustained racing with heavy braking). For a daily driver, it's a
| quieter and cleaner material.
| apichat wrote:
| > _The EIT Urban Mobility report also refers to the bigger
| picture: moving commuters out of private cars and into public
| transport, cycling, or walking can achieve up to five times more
| reduction in non-exhaust emissions than individual
| electrification._
|
| And this is just one the many nuisances produce by cars.
|
| Electric cars do not massively reduce almost any of the pollution
| produced by cars.
|
| We have to reduce the automobile fleet by at least 95% to solve
| all the nuisances produces by cars.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| A well known fact by Brembo, one of the biggest brakes producers
| in the world, which has been working for years to find new
| products and new markets, preparing for the time when a lot more
| EVs will be on the road.
| gmm1990 wrote:
| I'd think they'd make more money on the bigger brakes needed
| for evs with higher weights than they'd lose on the brake pad
| replacements.
| kazinator wrote:
| Brake pads are small parts that last for years. It is nothing
| compared to the number of tankfuls of gas that an ICE car goes
| through over the lifetime of its brakes.
|
| This is like the March of Dimes syndrome. We got rid of exhaust
| with electric cars, but the cars-are-bad activists continue to
| exist and need something to gripe about.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| On my non EV car I seldom use the break unless in an emergency or
| I have to come to a full stop.
|
| I always use the cruise control to decelerate and accelerate.
| Anyone else has that habit?
| angulardragon03 wrote:
| ... how do you think the cruise control decelerates you? Is
| this a troll post?
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Regen
| rkomorn wrote:
| Maybe this is different on cars newer than 2015 but I've
| never felt cruise control apply brakes.
|
| At most, I've felt it shift down (on an automatic, obviously)
| to use engine braking while it was trying to reduce speed
| going downhill.
|
| Any other time, it's only slowed down by coasting.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It lets off the accelerator to reduce speed to the new
| setting, just like a human would.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| At least on the cars I had over the years, it does not apply
| the brakes. Depending on how far it is from the target, it
| lets of the trottle and it uses engine breaking.
| sub7 wrote:
| Has anyone modeled how much excess cement and asphalt pollution
| is generated by having a tiny car weigh as much as a giant truck?
| Or the water usage of increased lithium mining?
|
| EVs are like an inferior product being shoved down everyone's
| throat when consumer cars don't even account for the most
| emissions globally.
| DataDaemon wrote:
| continuation of EV propaganda, which are much heavier cars.
| oblio wrote:
| They'll get lighter as battery tech progresses.
|
| The first Li-Ion battery revolution has already happened, it's
| just not evenly distributed.
|
| https://www.androidpolice.com/what-are-silicon-carbon-batter...
|
| And that's before we get into stuff like solid state batteries.
|
| 10 years from now we'll probably have battery packs which are
| at least 20% lighter, available in some mid-range vehicles.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Curb weight of a Tesla Model (Long Range) is only 9% over a
| comparable BMW 3 Series.
|
| That's nothing compared to all the savings (tail pipes
| emissions, break dust, noise, ICE maintenance issues...). And
| we're just getting started with battery chemistries and
| renewables energy. This can only get better.
| graemep wrote:
| > Curb weight of a Tesla Model (Long Range) is only 9% over a
| comparable BMW 3 Series.
|
| Which means 40% more road maintenance.
|
| > And we're just getting started with battery chemistries and
| renewables energy. This can only get better.
|
| Which implies it is better to delay switching until we have
| better batteries
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| >Which implies it is better to delay switching until we
| have better batteries
|
| Let's discard everything but road maintenance?
|
| No thanks.
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-mitigation-15c
| graemep wrote:
| > Let's discard everything but road maintenance?
|
| not what I said. The points were:
|
| 1. its not all good.
|
| 2. if we buy cars with battery chemistries that will soon
| be replaced with better ones there is a good argument for
| delaying purchases. Not having to replace the cars again,
| for example.
| originalvichy wrote:
| Electrons are lighter than crude oil.
| gregorvand wrote:
| Does this apply to fixies then as well? I might reignite my use
| of one in a city vs traditional bike if so ...!
| Aachen wrote:
| Fixed-gear bicycles, is apparently what a "fixie" is for anyone
| else wondering
| philipallstar wrote:
| > Gains, however, are not equitable. Low-income neighborhoods,
| which often endure the highest pollution impacts, have seen
| slower EV uptake, demonstrating the necessity of access to clean
| transport on an equitable basis.
|
| Air quality tier list:
|
| S-tier: African/American/Australasian countries that were never
| discovered by the West, and have no energy sources (hypothetical)
|
| B-tier: Western countries and similar (e.g. Japan), and those
| who've had a resource that they've traded for Western advances
| (e.g. Asia/Middle East) that can afford nuclear and renewables
|
| D-tier: Sub-Saharan African/South American countries that now
| have energy needs but are burning coal or diesel to meet them
| newsclues wrote:
| EVs tend to be heavier that ICE vehicles, I'm skeptical of this
| conclusion.
|
| I'm not sure how you get more tire wear but less brake dust.
| Aachen wrote:
| Regenerative braking (i.e. magnets), as mentioned in the top
| comments? I'm not sure I understand the question
| alliao wrote:
| the brake needs a brand new design for EV... as of now it's used
| so little I kind of fear when I need it it's not going to be
| performant. It's not simply not engineered for current EV use
| case where it's touched every once in a while, I think it can go
| weeks without being used. However manufacturers don't have any
| incentive to blend it with regen from time to time, as to get it
| up to temperature requires a LOT of braking, which reduces the
| mileage/efficiency. Even Volvo recently had a recall[1] over
| regen braking bug, it looks like brake-by-wire system where
| software have control over blending brake, and decides in this
| case to not engage physical brakes at all even when user input
| suggests more braking. We just need a new brake system that can
| stay performant without being used at all for a long time and
| won't rust or jam [1]
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a65464238/volvo-brake-fail...
| AngryData wrote:
| That is actually one reason some companies are trying to move
| back to all drum brakes for EVs. The drum protects the brakes
| from water, rust, and debri fairly well and is far more
| reliable when not used as often. The only real obstacle is car
| companies having spent the last few decades focusing all their
| braking and traction control features on disc brakes so they
| need to be reimplemented for use in drums. And really most
| consumer vehicles never should have stopped using drum brakes,
| they are better for everything except high performance
| racing/heat dissipation, but disc brakes were used for
| sales/marketing because race cars use them, and most all the
| improvements for brake systems started with racing so were
| initially and primarily designed for use with discs.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| This comment comes across a lot like the fanboys screeching
| about how their 1985 or 91 Toyota had a "nice" interior as if
| the most rattle prone 2009 GM work truck interior isn't
| better in every way just as a result of sheer cumulative
| progress. Like if you actually put A beside B and look at
| them without the rose tinted veneer of nostalgia it's not
| even a comparison.
|
| Rusty rarely exercised drum brakes have a ton of failure
| modes that result in severely degraded or nonexistent
| performance that the average motorist probably wouldn't care
| about until they really need the brakes and they don't all
| work well enough.
|
| The heat capacity of drums is pretty easily made noticeable,
| not "exceeded" to the point of substantially reduced
| capacity, but noticeable from the driver's seat in just a few
| good stops in high ambient temps (think like stop and go
| light to light in somewhere like DC or Miami) or one decent
| hill. Yeah you can polish the turd with fancy fins and
| materials and airflow, etc. but discs are just so much better
| per dollar and per pound.
|
| Most of the problems discs have are NVH and rotor problems
| that are easily solved for intermittent/lesser use with the
| simple use of better alloys (Dexter even makes stainless for
| boat trailers, which are probably the ultimate example of
| extreme intermittent usage, so it's not like this is
| groundbreaking). Dominant slider pin designs these days are
| highly optimized for performance/NVH at the expense of
| longevity but there's an entire catalog of historical designs
| that one could easily conclude have better tradeoffs for less
| demanding usage.
| AngryData wrote:
| Rusted rarely exercised drum brakes are already known to be
| far more reliable than rusted rarely exercised disc brakes,
| that is why many vehicles still or had until recently kept
| drum brakes in the rear where they get far less usage and
| get 1/10th the attention as front brakes. Or in trailers
| brakes that are utilized far less often.
|
| But people already had this entire debate decades ago when
| disc brakes were first implemented. If you are racing or
| using a lot of braking power, discs are obviously better,
| they have better heat dissipation, they are quicker to
| repair and replace, more predictable for analog/dumb
| traction and stability control systems, and getting them
| rusty and dirty isn't a concern because you are racing
| and/or using the shit out of them. And most of the
| disadvantages became of little concern to consumers because
| when the consumer market moved towards automatic
| transmissions and smaller displacement engines people
| stopped engine braking constantly and were instead clearing
| their brakes off at literally every stop so dirty disc
| brakes stopped being a common concern. But the downsides
| still exist and is why disc brakes haven't taken over all
| applications.
|
| Like yeah, drums have less heat capacity and worse cooling,
| but the entire point of regenerative braking is that you
| don't use them as much and so heat issues don't matter,
| only a small fraction of your braking force will use the
| physical brakes. Ideally in an EV your physical brakes are
| 100% a safety item, not a common usage item, and so
| reliability should be the top concern.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Rusted rarely exercised drum brakes are already known to
| be far more reliable than rusted rarely exercised disc
| brakes, that is why many vehicles still or had until
| recently kept drum brakes in the rear where they get far
| less usage and get 1/10th the attention as front brakes.
|
| My ass. They might be "trouble free" in that you don't
| notice them not doing anything whereas a well rusted
| rotor will be very clearly cranky and/or felt in the
| brake pedal or steering wheel and perhaps the driver will
| elect to take it to the shop.
|
| >Or in trailers brakes that are utilized far less often.
|
| And which have a pretty strong reputation for always
| being in some degraded state or otherwise not working to
| full capacity.
|
| >Ideally in an EV your physical brakes are 100% a safety
| item, not a common usage item, and so reliability should
| be the top concern
|
| In which case a disk is far more likely to work, if
| poorly and loudly whereas a drum is much more likely to
| be completely out to lunch for some huge fraction of the
| cylinder's travel from a long ago seized adjuster or
| whatever.
|
| Yeah, drum brakes "can" be made to work. I bet wagon
| style friction brakes "can" be made to work. But discs
| are just soooo much easier. Throw an 80s style stainless
| slider arrangement on it so pins aren't a concern and
| pony up for a galvanized or stainless rotor and it
| becomes a basically a "good for the life of the car" item
| if you don't go through the pads.
| bartread wrote:
| In four years of plug-in hybrid ownership, and maybe 50k miles, I
| haven't even had to replace pads, and the car wasn't new when I
| bought it. I even commented on the longevity at the dealership
| the last time I took it for a service, and they said they see it
| a lot with hybrids. The regen braking really does make a huge
| difference.
| guywithahat wrote:
| Is 50k a lot? I drove my ford fiesta 120k without changing the
| pads. I'm certain the motor helps, but assuming it's a
| relatively lightweight vehicle I don't think you should be
| changing pads that much unless you're an aggressive driver
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes this is why EV brake pads last 2-3 times more miles. They
| aren't being used due to the regen braking.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| I wonder how does this compare with engine braking. Many people
| in the comment section are surprised that their EV's pads are
| lasting up to 4 years yet as someone who always drove manual
| cars and who leverages engine braking this sound like a normal
| length.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Not sure but very few cars are sold with manuals anymore
| especially in US. Most people here under 40 or even 50 don't
| know how to drive one.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I quite rarely actually use my brakes. Regen for the win!
| StumpChunkman wrote:
| On a meta note, I come to HN for the typically more informed and
| sometimes expert takes on the issues and articles that surface
| here, especially for tech related news. It's interesting how even
| this site is not insulated from some absolutely insane
| misinformation about EV's that starts to show up in the comments
| whenever they are brought up. I mean, just look at how many
| comments this article about brake dust has generated.
| more_corn wrote:
| Due to regenerative braking. Also, obviously.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| It feels like we are still trying to convince ourselves that EVs
| are a good idea. Progress is too slow and too painful.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they obviously be?
| p_j_w wrote:
| Because some people stand to lose boatloads of money if they
| are.
| amusingimpala75 wrote:
| (To be clear I quite happen to like EVs)
|
| And those people who would lose money are the EV
| manufacturers. AFAIK in the US EV manufacturers are barely
| making money even with gov't subsidies (baring Tesla). They
| can't charge what would be necessary without subsidies
| because most people simply wouldn't want or couldn't afford
| such a product at that price point.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| I've been looking for a place to talk about this.
| Seemingly through a potent combination of government
| subsidies, willingness to embrace the technology, and
| general STEM competence, China has _exploded_ with
| quality EV manufacturers. The ICE manufacturers are
| doomed regardless of what type of car they try to sell.
|
| It makes me wonder about this from a policy perspective.
| China, more than any other country, has the power to dump
| products at a net loss to the country for the sake of a
| long term victory. That's tough to combat.
| moate wrote:
| I believe OP is lamenting the fact that we still need to have
| the "EV/hybrids's are better the ICE vehicles" discussion in
| 2025. That there's a segment of the population that needs a
| mountain of such overwhelming evidence to be convinced of the
| value.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Ah yes. Sorry I read that comment and replied with mine
| soon after waking. My brain wasn't fully on yet :)
| boringg wrote:
| The best thing I saw was some Kia beating a Ferrari on a race
| test on instagram. What was great about it was the the
| commentary. The comments were all about how beautiful a ferrari
| was and no longer about its exceptional performance (which is
| the original raison d'etre) - and a lot of nostalgia
| complaining about how EVs are going to be the death of
| beautifully engineered cars.
|
| Yes I know the KIA is only faster during acceleration and
| theres more to cars than acceleration/top speed that ... but
| the commentary was too funny. It made ferrari look like a car
| from the past.
| tim333 wrote:
| There are some technical issues in terms of changing over in a
| hurry due to providing charging infrastructure and the like.
| allthedatas wrote:
| Very urban focused of course given the site and there's nothing
| wrong with an urban focus for EVs.
|
| EVs as they are being pushed on us are made for cities. Outside
| of a dense urban area, EVs without a gas/diesel powered charger
| (aka hybrid) are much less useful, but I do not want to see
| charging stations everywhere either.
|
| Kinetic recovery is great, but as there are orders of magnitude
| less braking required driving outside of cities, the recovered
| energy is also much less, and the brake dust generated is also
| much less. Also there are far fewer cars per mile of road (let
| alone size of the area) and any brake dust pollution is spread
| over a much wider area.
|
| Many of the negative pollution issues associated with cars are
| due to excessive density in urban areas, the added amount of
| braking, the added idling, and the extra acceleration repeatedly
| required in a city with a stop light every block.
| janosch_123 wrote:
| For DIY EV conversions (I built some cars) you usually hook up
| the "regenerate braking" to the brakelight switch.
|
| So as soon as you tap the brake pedal just a little, you start
| regenerating and see the amps flow back into the battery (I have
| a little display on my dashboard). Only when you press the pedal
| further, do you start engaging the friction brakes.
|
| I have no statistics on brake pad differences because we didn't
| build enough cars/didn't cover enough mileage to measure, but it
| is obvious that you would cut down on brake pad usage.
|
| Everything I know about EVs and the tech behind it I share on:
| youtube.com/@foxev-content
| whycome wrote:
| With a manual car, it was common to downshift and use the
| engine to decelerate. I'm wondering if electric vehicles might
| actually cause a return to a third pedal to re-add some of the
| fine tuned controls that a manual transmission allowed. Maybe
| the "downshift" could engage the regen brake specifically.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| Some EVs have single pedal mode, where if you let off the gas
| it will bring you to a complete stop,
| darknavi wrote:
| Some EVs have that. Anecdotally, once you get used to "one
| pedal driving" having that sort of control (via extra input
| mechanisms like steering wheel pedals) is just plain
| annoying.
| toss1 wrote:
| Cool idea. Perhaps a better idea would be to borrow from the
| brake balance adjustment in race cars, wherein an adjuster
| dial/knob allows the driver to alter the balance between the
| front vs rear brakes when the brakes are applied (very useful
| in wet vs dry conditions, high-speed vs low-speed sections,
| etc.). So, instead of adjusting the F-R brake balance, the
| dial could adjust the regen-vs-mechanical braking, up to the
| limit of the batteries to accept power input.
|
| Another way of further reducing brake dust might be to have a
| higher regen setting that dumps excess power to a heat sink
| and cooling system, up to its limit before engaging the
| mechanical brake pads/discs.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Most of the dynamics like that are abstracted away in EVs
| (i.e. dumbed down) or buried in menus and not readily
| accessible. I think this is done in part because the
| majority of people don't know or care about them, and if
| they were readily accessible would toggle them unknowingly
| and be confused or upset. In the Nissan Leaf it was done
| intentionally to make the car feel as much like a
| traditional ICE as possible.
|
| In the first gen Nissan Leaf you can toggle between two
| levels of regeneration by toggling "B mode" which mimics
| automatic transmission car's behavior in "Hill mode" or
| when disabling "Overdrive". In the Leaf it just increases
| regeneration strength when you let off the accelerator.
| Similarly you can adjust the acceleration curve by
| disengaging "Eco mode".
|
| Turning Eco mode off and Hill mode on makes the Leaf a lot
| of fun to drive on winding mountain roads. Unfortunately
| you only get like 15 minutes of drive time...
| kube-system wrote:
| Pretty much all hybrids already do this, but automatically.
| When you press the brake pedal, they will command regen
| first, and only the hydraulic brakes under conditions when
| regen is not enough.
|
| Series hybrids also have the ability to dump excess power
| just like you are suggesting as well. Instead of resistor
| banks (like trains) they often dump energy by using the
| generator to spin the engine... literally engine braking.
| dunham wrote:
| I did this with manual, and my EV does this with a single
| pedal control. Letting off of the pedal will engage
| regenerative breaking to the extent that you let off the
| pedal, it does not engage the brakes. I find that in a lot of
| city driving I don't need the brakes, but they do work fine
| when I need them. I really like this functionality. The car
| can also creep along at 1-2 Mph when necessary - so I don't
| need brakes to deal with slow traffic. (With a manual, first
| gear would sometimes suffice for this.)
|
| So the premise in the title of the article does not surprise
| me, but I thought that the primary pollution complaint about
| electric vehicles was tire pollution and not brake dust.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| I used to do that with a vintage 70's sportscar... later
| learned that it was pretty bad for the long-term life of the
| transmission so had to train myself out of it.
| prova_modena wrote:
| It's gentle on the transmission and clutch if you rev match
| on the downshifts.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Or see the hill coming and downshift before it is needed
| RankingMember wrote:
| Also fun! Half the fun of a manual for me is double-
| clutching (totally not necessary unless you have no
| synchros but it's a fun challenge) and nailing the rev-
| match on a downshift.
| Finnucane wrote:
| 'common'? When I was a young'n, I was taught that that was
| basically an emergency procedure to use if the brakes failed,
| to force the car to slow down. I can't imagine wanting to do
| that routinely.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| If you drive down any significant hill, you either use
| engine braking, or you overheat your brakes. It's a fairly
| basic part of driving tuition and the driving test for a
| good reason.
| morkalork wrote:
| When I visited a nearby observatory it was fun driving on
| the mountain and seeing the signs telling you to use
| engine braking on the way down and trying it for the
| first time.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| ?! - I'm clearly missing something because I'm failing to
| understand how people don't know about engine braking or
| have just tried it for the first time, and actually have
| a licence. It's approximately lesson number four in
| typical driving tuition.
| whycome wrote:
| My car (an old Jetta) lasted ~20 years and was still good
| to go when I got rid of it. Only the body itself had any
| issues. I suppose the use would vary based on terrain? It
| was useful to get to a gear with more torque for taking off
| again. And I guess you're not doing it from really high
| revs -- so it was just using the engine to slow things
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| My Bolt has a hand paddle behind the steering wheel that
| engages regenerative brakes (and only the regenerative
| brakes). I make use of it extensively. When in "single pedal"
| (where the accelerator acts as a speed selector, i.e., the
| car brakes when you step off the 'gas'), it's a lot more
| aggressive than just lifting my foot off the pedal, and when
| in "simulate an automatic transmission" 2 pedal mode, I find
| the paddle is easier than figuring out exactly where the
| threshold is on my brake pedal between regen and friction
| brakes.
| buerkle wrote:
| I love my bolt, but I wish it allowed you to choose a less
| aggressive setting when using the steering wheel paddle. My
| old leaf had that option.
| jgilias wrote:
| Was it that common? Where I'm from that's "winter driving
| mode" because it's safer on slippery surfaces, but rarely
| anyone would do that in the summer time.
|
| My EV is set on max regen mode though, and I sometimes drive
| without pressing the brakes, as there's a paddle I can use to
| use regen for all my braking needs bar an emergency. It even
| has a name - single pedal driving.
| MrDunham wrote:
| Can't speak to if it's common, but it was how I was taught
| and drove in California... so there was rarely any winter
| conditions to speak of.
|
| I preferred downshifting VS braking, personally
| kube-system wrote:
| Some vehicles repurpose shift paddles as a way to trigger
| regen braking. But they're pretty gimmicky and not really
| useful for driving. If you want to use regen in a vehicle
| that supports it, the brake pedal does that. And when regen
| is not enough, the hydraulic brakes are also used. But a
| "sometimes brake" pedal that only support regen sounds like a
| bad idea. Vehicle controls as essential as braking need to be
| consistant in how they respond to input behavior.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| I've been driving a Chevy Bolt for over 8 years now, and I
| regularly use the regen paddle. I drive in "L" mode, which
| engages partial regen when the accelerator is released.
| When I need more slowing, I pull the paddle, and that
| increases the aggressiveness of the regen. I only press the
| brake for quick stops, or to hold the car once it has
| stopped.
|
| I also use the built in "hilltop reserve" feature, which
| limits charging to 90%. This ensures that there is always
| regen resistance, and therefore a consistent experience.
| chiffre01 wrote:
| My DIY e-bike has regenerate braking. It makes no meaningful
| difference for the battery charge. But in terms of brake pad
| life, they do seem to last about twice as long as before.
| tartoran wrote:
| I have an electric unicycle and it also has regenerative
| braking and it seems to make a huge difference in consumption
| when riding in hilly areas.
| nordsieck wrote:
| From what I've heard there's a countervailing effect for EVs,
| though - they end up generating more particulate pollution from
| tire wear because of greater vehicle weight and greater torque.
|
| The number that I've seen bandied about is ~20% greater tire
| wear.
| D13Fd wrote:
| That was my first thought. Fewer brake particles is great, but
| I'm guessing it won't be enough to counter the increased tire
| wear.
| janosch_123 wrote:
| Not sure about that. If you accelerate a 2t vehicle to 60mph
| and then decelerate it back to 0mph then they would stress
| the tyres in the same way, no matter if you do EV & regen, EV
| no-regen or ICE, right? (I am keeping the weight constant).
|
| Prompted by your comment I had a look at vehicle weights and
| two facts stood out
|
| - ALL new cars are getting heavier EVERY YEAR because we keep
| adding more stuff (average car weight, and average SUV weight
| trend upwards from 2016 to 2023)
|
| - The average electric car is heavier than a petrol
| equivalent but is lighter than an SUV
|
| Weight certainly a problem, but the focus on EVs for weight
| is generally blown out of proportion.
|
| https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-13588773/Ne.
| .. https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/weighty-issue-
| of-e...
| tonymet wrote:
| They address this briefly in the article (though inadequately)
| , that tire particles are heavier and doesn't end up in the air
| like brake dust.
|
| But you do raise a good point at the holistic condition, and
| assessing a broader population with less than ideal
| configuration.
|
| They are looking at lightweight EVs at lower speeds. But
| Americans drive heavier EVs at highway speeds. The rotors &
| pads are huge.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| > They are looking at lightweight EVs at lower speeds. But
| Americans drive heavier EVs at highway speeds. The rotors &
| pads are huge.
|
| Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I
| think I use my friction brakes _less_ at highway speeds
| where, in general, you 're not really supposed to do a lot of
| braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my
| friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a
| complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential
| accident.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > Perhaps other EV drivers can chime in but, if anything, I
| think I use my friction brakes less at highway speeds
| where, in general, you're not really supposed to do a lot
| of braking. I'd say, overall and regardless of speed, my
| friction brakes are really used only to bring the car to a
| complete stop or for emergency braking to avoid a potential
| accident.
|
| Some people are very responsible with money - they have an
| emergency fund, contribute to their retirement fund, and
| don't carry a credit card balance.
|
| Other people (who have a choice) spend to 0 every month,
| don't save, and have maxed out credit cards.
|
| In the same way, some people drive very safely; they keep a
| responsible distance between them and the driver in front
| of them, and don't tend to speed much. I think this style
| of driving would naturally lead to what you say - less use
| of friction breaks in general, and especially at highway
| speeds.
|
| And other people are constantly speeding, and tailgate the
| person in front of them when their path is blocked. For the
| people who drive this way, the greater acceleration of EVs
| just lets them drive that much more recklessly. Which ends
| up necessitating _even more_ usage of friction brakes.
| tonymet wrote:
| I'm one of the chill EV drivers too. but imagine the
| distribution over vehicles that are 30-75% heavier, and the
| range of drivers from chill to agro (leaning toward agro),
| and you can see the benefits and costs start to cancel out.
|
| I still expect EVs to be a net improvement on brake dust.
| just not as massive as the study. maybe about 1/2 - 1/3 of
| the study's results
| tonymet wrote:
| You can get similar results with proper deceleration, engine
| braking and downshifting. I've had brake pads last 110k miles
| (with room for 20k+ more), even though I lived in moderate hilly
| area. That's probably 1/3 the brake dust, and comparable to an EV
| .
|
| If you are getting lower MPG than the EPA rating, you are also
| burning up your brakes from heavy deceleration. Improve your MPG
| to 15% over EPA and your brakes will last a lot longer.
|
| Also their studies were in European markets with tiny EVs and low
| speeds. Americans are favoring 7k-9k lb EVs (Hummer, Rivian),
| with massive brake rotors and PADs-- at highway speeds 75mph+. A
| good driver of a 3k lb vehicle will produce less brake dust than
| a typical driver of a 9k EV.
|
| Studies like this are helpful, but they are not comprehensive.
| Similar to the marketing that home LEDs would have 10-20 year
| longevity, yet in practice they burn out after a few years. The
| full supply and application chain has to align for the ideal
| results in practice.
| analog31 wrote:
| Upvoted for making sense of basic physics.
|
| Another factor is speed.
| tonymet wrote:
| tried to capture that via EPA MPG ratings. if people reduce
| acceleration & top speed they can save a lot of brake wear
| SoftTalker wrote:
| But in a manual transmission car, downshifting and engine
| braking produces clutch dust instead of brake dust (basically
| the same thing).
| _jss wrote:
| In a modern car, or if you adequately rev match, the clutch
| wear is extremely small. Only if you are aggressively down
| shifting will that be a problem. It's also only wear at that
| point in time, not the entire time through engine braking.
| tonymet wrote:
| exactly!
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Well, that's just not true at all now is it?
| bevr1337 wrote:
| Anecdotally, every car I've been in where the driver talks
| about engine braking is rode hard and put up wet. Humans seem
| pretty bad at downshifting/engine braking outside of vehicles
| designed for that purpose like big rigs. Cars have much fewer
| gears so it's harder to align the downshift.
|
| Of course there's little use in having this conversation
| since we all think ourselves above average drivers. I've had
| acquaintances reply "I don't even need a clutch I can shift
| so smooth!" (Do not attempt.)
| tonymet wrote:
| automatic transmissions engine brake as well. most drivers
| don't use it, a shame. I can smell the ozone on long
| descents. if they downshifted their automatic, hardly any
| braking would be needed would be needed.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| Mine engine brakes, but it's true that it wouldn't be
| smart enough to engine brake going downhill. This is my
| first automatic after a couple decades of manual. It
| would be really nice improvement for automatics.
|
| There are _moments_ where I would like to exercise more
| control, like the long downhill example or maybe staying
| in a low gear in bad weather.
|
| But, I'm still unconvinced that engine braking on a
| manual transmission in a consumer sedan for every
| stoplight is helpful. Cars weigh a lot, simply let off
| the gas a few seconds earlier.
| tonymet wrote:
| yeah i agree stoplight clutch braking is unnecessary
| wear.
| tonymet wrote:
| not quite. Think of a 2 mile descent. The clutch is only
| engaged for a fraction of a second. rest of the 2 miles is
| engine braking.
|
| When done properly , clutch wear is minimal. My clutch lasted
| > 150k miles and still going
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > If you are getting lower MPG than the EPA rating, you are
| also burning up your brakes from heavy deceleration. Improve
| your MPG to 15% over EPA and your brakes will last a lot
| longer.
|
| 100%.
|
| People need to understand that the brake pedal is an evil
| device that converts your cash into brake dust and heat, so use
| it as little as possible.
|
| Stop accelerating so much in stop-and-go traffic. Drop the "You
| have to tailgate or else people get in front of you" nonsense
| attitude. Release the gas sooner when approaching a red light.
| And for fuck's sake, stop hitting the brakes when you're only
| trying to shave off a couple mph, especially when going up
| hill.
|
| I've gotten better-than-EPA mileage on every car I've owned,
| and I don't even drive slow. Always at or slightly above the
| speed limit. Economy is all about speed management, not
| absolute speed, until you're going 75+ mph.
| tonymet wrote:
| well said
| tonymet wrote:
| brake wear is also an indicator of overall abuse on the
| vehicle. If you drive chill, your car will last longer.
|
| I broke an engine mount from heavy acceleration (and hitting
| a huge pothole) . A lot of strain is put on the chassis from
| gassing and braking.
| klaff wrote:
| This is cool. I have a VW EV and use the B-mode for the "gas"
| pedal. It it not full one-pedal driving but IIUC exclusively uses
| regen. You can't decelerate rapidly, but most driving can be
| accomplished without touching the brake pedal except when down to
| a walking pace, where thanks to that square law relationship of
| speed to kinetic energy there's hardly any energy left to recover
| anyhow.
|
| After a bit you learn how much you can slow down with it and (for
| me at least) it becomes a bit of a game to see if you can avoid
| using the mechanical brakes by choosing early enough to lift your
| foot.
|
| As a result, the mechanical brakes get squeezed on every trip,
| but nearly all uses are during low speed maneuvering. If a light
| changes at the last moment or someone pulls out in front of me I
| will then have to make a substantial use of the mechanical brakes
| but that doesn't happen on every trip.
|
| I never have to ride the brakes down a long hill, and it was
| really satisfying the one time I went down a hill long enough to
| see the battery state of charge increase by a percent or two.
| atoav wrote:
| I dream of a future where societes manage to price in all
| externalities into the objects they produce. This of course
| requires us to be(come) more honest about the hidden costs to
| society each and every objects and its usage brings with itself.
|
| What we do with that knowledge is another question, but right now
| my feeling is a lot of bad actors skew the picture to make
| themselves look good while regular people are left to breath the
| dust.
| tim333 wrote:
| Tricky to do accurately though. Like a car driven occasionally
| in the countryside may cause little damage from brake dust, a
| cab in a city center a lot.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > The health effect is especially critical for urban
| disadvantaged groups, where exposure to partical matter has been
| shown to be related to increased asthma rates, cardiovascular
| disease, and other respiratory conditions.
|
| Why would the health effect be more critical for disadvantaged
| groups than for other urban groups?
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| perhaps the disadvantage is that, over time, living nearest to
| traffic _is_ the disadvantage, as it means living most
| immediately near pollution concentration.
| polairscience wrote:
| Sincere reply assuming sincere question, the implication is
| that they are statistically much more likely to live near
| interstates and highways. Since historically land owned by poor
| 'disadvantaged groups' has been easier for state and federal
| governments to get their hands on.
|
| The sentence, while poorly written, isn't saying that "health
| impacts don't matter for 'non-disadvantaged people'". A reading
| that is disingenuous.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I see. In the areas familiar to the authors, disadvantaged
| groups typically live closer to the source of the pollution.
|
| Makes sense now. Thanks.
| jdsleppy wrote:
| Also disadvantaged groups might consume less healthcare and
| might be less aware of air quality, etc. and so may be more
| likely to have bad health outcomes for given environmental
| inputs.
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| 87k miles on my Leaf and it still has lots of brake pad left on
| the original pads.
| ck2 wrote:
| I really wish Biden had not banned cheap EVs
|
| I think it would have radically improved air-quality around roads
| and highways
|
| Every runner and cyclist would have greatly appreciated it
| namlem wrote:
| Less brake dust but more tire dust for cars of similar size due
| to the greater weight.
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