I love electric vehicles[...] But increasingly I feel duped.
June 5, 2023 8:25 AM Subscribe
Gifted comedian, actor, car lover, and .... electrical engineer?
I read the entire article before I realized it was written by Rowan Freaking Atkinson. Single link opinion piece from The Guardian.
I don't necessarily agree on all of his thoughts (eg, hydrogen is notoriously difficult to refine / transport / store safely) but I thought it was an interesting read.
Also I am /terrible/ at tagging, sorry about that.
I read the entire article before I realized it was written by Rowan Freaking Atkinson. Single link opinion piece from The Guardian.
I don't necessarily agree on all of his thoughts (eg, hydrogen is notoriously difficult to refine / transport / store safely) but I thought it was an interesting read.
Also I am /terrible/ at tagging, sorry about that.
ecce homo qui est electrica ingeniarius
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:41 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 8:41 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Previously, on Top Gear.
A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means.
Carbon emissions aside, burning gasoline (well, burning almost anything really) produces a bunch of other nasties that are pretty awful for human health. On the plus side, synthetic gasoline would be very expensive- if owning a gas car becomes an expensive hobby for enthusiasts like him then that's okay by me.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:44 AM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means.
Carbon emissions aside, burning gasoline (well, burning almost anything really) produces a bunch of other nasties that are pretty awful for human health. On the plus side, synthetic gasoline would be very expensive- if owning a gas car becomes an expensive hobby for enthusiasts like him then that's okay by me.
posted by BungaDunga at 8:44 AM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
I thought it was a very good piece, but there really should have been a bit more meat, in the form of links or statistics, to back up a lot of those contentions.
Any big transition - like ICE cars to EVs - will go softer and slower than its proponents promise.
As many of the article's comments underscored, the solution to the car problem is still: fewer cars.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:49 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Any big transition - like ICE cars to EVs - will go softer and slower than its proponents promise.
As many of the article's comments underscored, the solution to the car problem is still: fewer cars.
posted by Artful Codger at 8:49 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Atkinson is a hardcore car guy. He owned a freaking McLaren F1, for crying out loud.
posted by bz at 8:51 AM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by bz at 8:51 AM on June 5, 2023 [9 favorites]
Electric Vehicle Myths (epa.gov) which includes this graphic showing GHG emissions EV vs ICE. Bottom line: EVs produce way less emissions over the life of the car, including manufacturing and end of life.
But the article is mostly about complaining how people cycle through cars too quickly (which, for sure, hold on to your cars and maintain them longer, can't argue with that) and excitement about hydrogen as an alternative fuel, which most of the world has dismissed as impractical with the major exception of Toyota, which, you know, great, we need to try as many options as possible. If Toyota figures out how to deploy hydrogen cars at scale with much great efficiencies than batteries, other companies will likely follow. If it was a huge mistake, Toyota will course correct and switch to batteries. But ICE vehicles have got to go.
posted by gwint at 8:53 AM on June 5, 2023 [27 favorites]
But the article is mostly about complaining how people cycle through cars too quickly (which, for sure, hold on to your cars and maintain them longer, can't argue with that) and excitement about hydrogen as an alternative fuel, which most of the world has dismissed as impractical with the major exception of Toyota, which, you know, great, we need to try as many options as possible. If Toyota figures out how to deploy hydrogen cars at scale with much great efficiencies than batteries, other companies will likely follow. If it was a huge mistake, Toyota will course correct and switch to batteries. But ICE vehicles have got to go.
posted by gwint at 8:53 AM on June 5, 2023 [27 favorites]
And I know I harp on this every time articles like this get posted, but if you buy an EV today, because the electric grid is getting significantly greener every year, the total lifetime emissions calculation will continue to go down.
posted by gwint at 8:59 AM on June 5, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by gwint at 8:59 AM on June 5, 2023 [17 favorites]
(which, for sure, hold on to your cars and maintain them longer, can't argue with that
Not sure about the UK, but the median age of a car on the road in the US is 15 years, so generally people are maintaining their vehicles and keeping them on the road. The "3 year" stat he mentions is only for a single owner, but that's not the full lifecycle of a car in the US.
And the majority of cars leased in the US are the luxury German brand SUVs, most of which don't have super high sales numbers in the US. Even expensive pickup trucks are still mostly purchased at about 70%.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:02 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not sure about the UK, but the median age of a car on the road in the US is 15 years, so generally people are maintaining their vehicles and keeping them on the road. The "3 year" stat he mentions is only for a single owner, but that's not the full lifecycle of a car in the US.
And the majority of cars leased in the US are the luxury German brand SUVs, most of which don't have super high sales numbers in the US. Even expensive pickup trucks are still mostly purchased at about 70%.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:02 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
While the drivers of tailpipe-emitting and otherwise-emitting cars duke it out - either while stuck in the traffic they have created or at home on their computer keyboards - national politicians and celebrities ignore the rest of us who are traveling via public transit, bicycles, foot, wheelchairs, elderly, children, people suffering the health effects of tire and asphalt pollution and those whose communities and environs have been devastated by ever expanding roadway construction, parking lots, and sprawl.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:04 AM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:04 AM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
I liked this article, and I do like the way it takes seriously the very real trade-offs you need to make when choosing – at a societal level – between the options.
As well as the trade-offs covered in the article (local pollution vs manufacturing emissions, swift and sure transition to a proven technology vs higher-gain but less certain transition to other technologies, etc), there are more: for example any forced transition will be easier on the rich than on the poor – especially those who cannot avoid driving for their livelihood.
Atkinson is a hardcore car guy.
Oh, he really is; and I think that's one reason his contribution is valuable. If we're to solve these massive problems, everyone in society needs to be involved; from environmental activists to politicians, from cutting-edge technologists to mass manufacturers, those who dislike cars and those who love them.
posted by vincebowdren at 9:08 AM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
As well as the trade-offs covered in the article (local pollution vs manufacturing emissions, swift and sure transition to a proven technology vs higher-gain but less certain transition to other technologies, etc), there are more: for example any forced transition will be easier on the rich than on the poor – especially those who cannot avoid driving for their livelihood.
Atkinson is a hardcore car guy.
Oh, he really is; and I think that's one reason his contribution is valuable. If we're to solve these massive problems, everyone in society needs to be involved; from environmental activists to politicians, from cutting-edge technologists to mass manufacturers, those who dislike cars and those who love them.
posted by vincebowdren at 9:08 AM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
This is standard anti-EV naysaying that applies one standard to EVs and a different standard to ICE vehicles to reach a pre-determined conclusion. We of course need to consider the climate impact of manufacturing EVs and their batteries, but we should also apply the same standard to synthetic fuel, hydrogen, etc. Mr. Bean very obviously avoids doing this, because if he did, he'd be forced to reach the opposite conclusion than the one he has (as gwint's link shows). (Note: he should probably also have mentioned that batteries can be recycled.)
I'm really not sure what The Guardian was thinking when they agreed to publish this. What on earth led them to conclude that a comedian who once studied control systems and collects super cars was a relevant voice on EV economics and climate impact? "As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible." Serious, indeed...
posted by dsword at 9:12 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm really not sure what The Guardian was thinking when they agreed to publish this. What on earth led them to conclude that a comedian who once studied control systems and collects super cars was a relevant voice on EV economics and climate impact? "As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible." Serious, indeed...
posted by dsword at 9:12 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Duped, he says?
posted by flabdablet at 9:20 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
If the lithium-ion battery is an imperfect device for electric cars, it’s a complete non-starter for trucks because of its weightJanus Electric disagrees.
posted by flabdablet at 9:20 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hydrogen and synthetic fuel are a desperate push by ICE manufacturers (and enthusiasts), and oil companies to maintain some semblance of the fossil fuel distribution status quo. (Unfortunately the fossil fuel industry has lots of money to hand out to politicians to have governments push this narrative).
I could go on and on listing all the many reasons these two solutions are very much not solutions but, really, the marketplace has spoken. People always use the argument 'we need to give hydrogen a chance." Toyota has offered the Hydrodgen Mirai vehicle for almost 20 years now and they still only sell about 1000 a year. Hyundai sells even fewer. There are (very, very expensive) hydrogen fuelling stations all over Germany, but that hasn't convinced consumers to buy these vehicles. The biggest problem is how much taxpayer money continues to be poured down this rat hole.
posted by eye of newt at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
I could go on and on listing all the many reasons these two solutions are very much not solutions but, really, the marketplace has spoken. People always use the argument 'we need to give hydrogen a chance." Toyota has offered the Hydrodgen Mirai vehicle for almost 20 years now and they still only sell about 1000 a year. Hyundai sells even fewer. There are (very, very expensive) hydrogen fuelling stations all over Germany, but that hasn't convinced consumers to buy these vehicles. The biggest problem is how much taxpayer money continues to be poured down this rat hole.
posted by eye of newt at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Whatever gets people off of fossil fuels is good. Combusting synthetic fuels and hydrogen gets us away from that goal, it seems, but pricing the operation of ICE-based vehicles out of convenience can also be helpful.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2023
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2023
he should probably also have mentioned that batteries can be recycled
and also that even after a decade's service in a car has reduced a lithium battery pack's charge capacity enough to annoy the car owner, it can be repurposed as static grid-connected storage and run profitably for at least another ten years before being recycled.
posted by flabdablet at 9:25 AM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
and also that even after a decade's service in a car has reduced a lithium battery pack's charge capacity enough to annoy the car owner, it can be repurposed as static grid-connected storage and run profitably for at least another ten years before being recycled.
posted by flabdablet at 9:25 AM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
The average scrapping age of cars in the UK is 14 years (or was in 2019) because we build too many new ones; tax and insurance and relatively strict MOT (safety inspection) rules makes it expensive to own a car, let alone a second or third one you rarely use; and there's no export market for old but repairable right-hand drive cars. Therefore once a car of a certain age develops a minor fault (garage labour is expensive) it gets replaced via the plentiful supply of slightly newer ones and the old one has nowhere to go but the scrapyard.
So he sort of has a point.
One policy that would really help is to slow down or stop the supply of new ICE cars, but he's against that (I think), because he's just regurgitating standard petrolhead anti-EV talking points rather than coming up with a coherent alternative position.
My favourite bit is where he calls EVs absurdly heavy, but doesn't continue down that line to whether using a ton or two of metal to move (most often) a single human is itself absurd. Even if he doesn't like bicycles or buses, perhaps he'd like the Citroen Ami.
posted by grahamparks at 9:32 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
So he sort of has a point.
One policy that would really help is to slow down or stop the supply of new ICE cars, but he's against that (I think), because he's just regurgitating standard petrolhead anti-EV talking points rather than coming up with a coherent alternative position.
My favourite bit is where he calls EVs absurdly heavy, but doesn't continue down that line to whether using a ton or two of metal to move (most often) a single human is itself absurd. Even if he doesn't like bicycles or buses, perhaps he'd like the Citroen Ami.
posted by grahamparks at 9:32 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model. This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in. When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for £15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years. It’s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced. Yet we’d be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars.As somebody who has never and most likely will never buy a car that somebody else hasn't already owned for at least ten years, and is looking forward to the day when a car I'll buy is electric and will probably run essentially trouble-free for another twenty, I can only observe that this is the kind of reasoning that would see an engineering graduate's potential employers gently nudge him toward a more successful career in comedy.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
We recently bought a new car. We considered electric, but with the upfront cost, wait time for delivery, no garage in a city that often gets bloody cold winters, an old house with electrical that would need upgrading to support a level 2 charger, the fact we drive so little on a weekly basis that the payback in cost savings would be about 12 years out, plus we do long distance trips about once a month that could not be done one way on a single charge without buying one of the high end electrics, we couldn’t justify getting an electric car at this point. So we bought a gas manual hatchback.
I’m certain our next vehicle will be electric, but that is probably 10 to 15 years from now.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:36 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m certain our next vehicle will be electric, but that is probably 10 to 15 years from now.
posted by fimbulvetr at 9:36 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
While I never cared for his work as Mr. Bean, as I noted a year ago, against all my suspicions otherwise, Rowan Atkinson was a great Maigret. Until I read the effing article, however, I had no idea about his academic background in electrical engineering and control systems. Nor can I quibble about the article's conclusion:
Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.posted by y2karl at 9:36 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I work primarily as an auto journalist. This article is full of disinfo, half-truths, and straight out lies. It's been very poorly received.
As for hydrogen - I'm probably the only person in this thread to have driven multiple hydrogen vehicles, both fuel cell and otherwise. I'm probably also the only person here who's had to refill a hydrogen vehicle from an 18-wheeled mobile generating station, because the next closest actual fueling station (which is the only one on the east coast of my country) exists outside the there-and-back range of said hydrogen car. Oh, and that 18-wheeler could only fill the tank halfway because it was incapable of producing more than 5,000 psi of pressure (a full tank requires 10,000 psi to fill)
In any case, I could go on and on, but TL;DR: it's a pretty terrible article.
posted by jordantwodelta at 9:45 AM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
As for hydrogen - I'm probably the only person in this thread to have driven multiple hydrogen vehicles, both fuel cell and otherwise. I'm probably also the only person here who's had to refill a hydrogen vehicle from an 18-wheeled mobile generating station, because the next closest actual fueling station (which is the only one on the east coast of my country) exists outside the there-and-back range of said hydrogen car. Oh, and that 18-wheeler could only fill the tank halfway because it was incapable of producing more than 5,000 psi of pressure (a full tank requires 10,000 psi to fill)
In any case, I could go on and on, but TL;DR: it's a pretty terrible article.
posted by jordantwodelta at 9:45 AM on June 5, 2023 [23 favorites]
In any case, I could go on and on.
Please do, if only in point form. If it's astroturf, please help tear it out.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:53 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Please do, if only in point form. If it's astroturf, please help tear it out.
posted by Artful Codger at 9:53 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.
So we should just abandon it all instead of iterating? How did that work out for GM and the EV-1? We could have been 10-20 years ahead if people would stop shooting for the moon and work on improving things slowly. But that loses money and We Can't Have That(tm).
I'm a new BEV owner and I make no assumptions that what I'm doing is better for the world at this very moment - but I would like to think I'm sending a message to the powers that be that I don't want to look back.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:55 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
So we should just abandon it all instead of iterating? How did that work out for GM and the EV-1? We could have been 10-20 years ahead if people would stop shooting for the moon and work on improving things slowly. But that loses money and We Can't Have That(tm).
I'm a new BEV owner and I make no assumptions that what I'm doing is better for the world at this very moment - but I would like to think I'm sending a message to the powers that be that I don't want to look back.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:55 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
The article also doesn't mention that hydrogen fuel production currently requires a massive amount of electricity. To produce it at the scale necessary to fuel things like long-range freight would produce a lot of downstream emissions due to the way power is still primarily being generated.
But! Maybe we'll see a future where desalination plants, hydrogen plants, and off-shore wind power all co-exist in big explody (but self-sustaining) pods off our collective coasts.
posted by tmt at 9:56 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
But! Maybe we'll see a future where desalination plants, hydrogen plants, and off-shore wind power all co-exist in big explody (but self-sustaining) pods off our collective coasts.
posted by tmt at 9:56 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Please do, if only in point form.
Hydrogen is a pretty easy target:
- There are fewer than 100 hydrogen fuel stations in the continental US, and they're all in California (with a couple in Hawaii).
- Those stations can be chaotic to use.
-Producing hydrogen fuel takes 20% more energy than it actually stores.
-Wheel-to-well efficiency of hydrogen is a bit over 20 percent. For a battery-powered EV, it's more than 60 percent. That's...pretty terrible, and it only accounts for efficiency, not the carbon footprint associated with production of hydrogen fuel, or transporting it, or storing it.
-Looking at the above a different way, a hydrogen fuel cell stack is only 60% efficient at generating electricity, and when you throw in the energy required to generate that fuel, you're getting maybe 48% of the total energy sent to the vehicle's wheels. An EV battery is between 70 to 80 percent efficient.
-Atkinson talks about the weight of batteries, but neglects to mention that tank required to store 5 kg of hydrogen fuel in the Toyota Mirai weighs almost 90 kg itself, on top of another 44 kg of fuel cell stack used to convert that into electricity. Storing hydrogen is...a big challenge.
As for a few of the other points in the article:
-E fuels do not exist. They are not real. As pointed out in other comments, they are essentially fantasties from petroleum producers flexing their might to remain relevant.
-Focusing on hydrogen has lead some automakers, like Toyota, completely astray, leaving them at the trailing edge of electric vehicle development as they continue to produce novelties like the Mirai, which is completely impossible to own outside of California.
-EV batteries last much longer than 10 years. Try 20 with the latest estimates. There are EVs out there right now with decade old batteries that are revising estimates about lifespan every single year.
posted by jordantwodelta at 10:08 AM on June 5, 2023 [28 favorites]
Hydrogen is a pretty easy target:
- There are fewer than 100 hydrogen fuel stations in the continental US, and they're all in California (with a couple in Hawaii).
- Those stations can be chaotic to use.
-Producing hydrogen fuel takes 20% more energy than it actually stores.
-Wheel-to-well efficiency of hydrogen is a bit over 20 percent. For a battery-powered EV, it's more than 60 percent. That's...pretty terrible, and it only accounts for efficiency, not the carbon footprint associated with production of hydrogen fuel, or transporting it, or storing it.
-Looking at the above a different way, a hydrogen fuel cell stack is only 60% efficient at generating electricity, and when you throw in the energy required to generate that fuel, you're getting maybe 48% of the total energy sent to the vehicle's wheels. An EV battery is between 70 to 80 percent efficient.
-Atkinson talks about the weight of batteries, but neglects to mention that tank required to store 5 kg of hydrogen fuel in the Toyota Mirai weighs almost 90 kg itself, on top of another 44 kg of fuel cell stack used to convert that into electricity. Storing hydrogen is...a big challenge.
As for a few of the other points in the article:
-E fuels do not exist. They are not real. As pointed out in other comments, they are essentially fantasties from petroleum producers flexing their might to remain relevant.
-Focusing on hydrogen has lead some automakers, like Toyota, completely astray, leaving them at the trailing edge of electric vehicle development as they continue to produce novelties like the Mirai, which is completely impossible to own outside of California.
-EV batteries last much longer than 10 years. Try 20 with the latest estimates. There are EVs out there right now with decade old batteries that are revising estimates about lifespan every single year.
posted by jordantwodelta at 10:08 AM on June 5, 2023 [28 favorites]
“Rich guy thinks slightly progressive movement in society is too much, too fast”
I’m bored of rich people telling us how their special car makes them special. Public transport or gtfo.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:09 AM on June 5, 2023 [11 favorites]
I’m bored of rich people telling us how their special car makes them special. Public transport or gtfo.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:09 AM on June 5, 2023 [11 favorites]
The only real advantage for hydrogen vehicles that I've seen is range - the Toyota Mirai has a 400 mile range, which is beefier than almost every EV out there. Unfortunately, the range anxiety is, if anything, worse for the Mirai because of the lack of hydrogen fueling stations.
If I'm driving from SF to LA, which is a trip I've done in both gas and EV, using H2 then things could get exciting. Going down 101, there is one H2 station in Santa Barbara and one in Thousand Oaks. If the one is Santa Barbara is unavailable for whatever reason then I'm okay, but I'm really going to want to stop in TO.
Gas is obviously trivial, and even EV is easy (now). There are over 500 fast chargers along the same route. I'm not quite at the "pull off the road and find a fast charger in 5 minutes" stage, but it's miles better than the H2 situation.
Obviously the H2 situation could be improved, but there needs to be a massive push to do it and it's not happening. Elon Musk is a massive douche-nozzle, but you have to give him (or someone) credit for tossing up super-chargers all over the map and turning range anxiety into range annoyance (seriously? I have to stop again for five minutes? Geez. I should have bought the extended range car...). If Toyota had built thousands of H2 fueling stations across the US then maybe thing would be different, but they didn't.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:13 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
If I'm driving from SF to LA, which is a trip I've done in both gas and EV, using H2 then things could get exciting. Going down 101, there is one H2 station in Santa Barbara and one in Thousand Oaks. If the one is Santa Barbara is unavailable for whatever reason then I'm okay, but I'm really going to want to stop in TO.
Gas is obviously trivial, and even EV is easy (now). There are over 500 fast chargers along the same route. I'm not quite at the "pull off the road and find a fast charger in 5 minutes" stage, but it's miles better than the H2 situation.
Obviously the H2 situation could be improved, but there needs to be a massive push to do it and it's not happening. Elon Musk is a massive douche-nozzle, but you have to give him (or someone) credit for tossing up super-chargers all over the map and turning range anxiety into range annoyance (seriously? I have to stop again for five minutes? Geez. I should have bought the extended range car...). If Toyota had built thousands of H2 fueling stations across the US then maybe thing would be different, but they didn't.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:13 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yeah, hydrogen is currently either natural gas or electrolysis, which means that hydrogen advocacy is basically shilling for the natural gas industry. Only it's "let's take natural gas, somehow magically handwave all of the issues with extraction and processing of that and remove a lot of the energy density, and call it clean".
But, ya know, we used to have the natural gas industry paying Jim Varney to shill for them, now it's Mr. Bean. They definitely have a type.
There's also a lot of discussion right now over hydrogen leakage and atmospheric impacts, and I don't totally know how to evaluate it, but given the number of climate scientists saying "not so fast", I'm open to skepticism.
posted by straw at 10:20 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
But, ya know, we used to have the natural gas industry paying Jim Varney to shill for them, now it's Mr. Bean. They definitely have a type.
There's also a lot of discussion right now over hydrogen leakage and atmospheric impacts, and I don't totally know how to evaluate it, but given the number of climate scientists saying "not so fast", I'm open to skepticism.
posted by straw at 10:20 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Can we also take a moment to scowl at this guild-traitor electrical engineer for siding with the chemists?
posted by ryanrs at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by ryanrs at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2023 [12 favorites]
I always find this topic incredibly frustrating because every discussion seems to be framed to score rhetorical points rather than giving a complete picture. For batteries, my question is how to factor in the negatives of lithium mining (or alternative rare metal mining) that aren't included in lifecycle emissions. Are we moving toward a future where batteries are a renewable resource via really effective recycling? I never see this clearly addressed. And for hydrogen, yes the fossil fuel companies pushing for "blue" hydrogen are poisoning the whole discussion, but projects like Orkney Hydrogen where they've got a ton of wind and tide seem to make sense. And vehicle refuelling time really is an issue. I remain agnostic about whether I think it's more likely my next farm truck will be battery or hydrogen. But would love to read some better discussion that covered all the angles.
posted by Rhedyn at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Rhedyn at 10:22 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
They just opened an EV battery recycling plant in rural Georgia. The technology is here.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:32 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 10:32 AM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Elided in my snark above about the energy storage system, the real problem is that we're continuing to pretend that we can use personal automobiles and sprawl development patterns into the future. I mean, yeah, there's some "complete lifecycle of batteries" or whatever, but the main thing is that even if you solve the propulsion, there's still the pollution from dust generated by that travel, the noise and ecological impacts from all of those vehicles pushing all of that air out of the way, the acres of pavement separating us from each other and where we want to go, the equity issues of forcing people to own a car to participate in society, the deaths and dismemberments from collisions, the fact that all of that asphalt is incredibly expensive to maintain relative to the economic burden it places on us...
So, yes, Rhedyn, it's about the entire lifecycle, and there's no way to evaluate that in which continuing to base our society and built world around moving around a ton or two of vehicle per person for commuting or grocery store trips or whatever makes any sort of sense.
posted by straw at 10:42 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
So, yes, Rhedyn, it's about the entire lifecycle, and there's no way to evaluate that in which continuing to base our society and built world around moving around a ton or two of vehicle per person for commuting or grocery store trips or whatever makes any sort of sense.
posted by straw at 10:42 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
And vehicle refuelling time really is an issue.
Yes and no.
If you can charge at home or work, it really isn't. I've put 12,000 miles on my Tesla 3 and spent about 70 minutes at fast chargers. Everything else was at home.
With a hydrogen vehicle you can't refill at home, so that's a win for EV.
If you can't charge at home then hydrogen has better refill times, except you forgot to take travel time into account and there aren't that many H2 stations around. Obviously that can be fixed, but that doesn't do anyone any good today and may not do anyone any good in the future because "can be fixed" does not equal "will be fixed".
I only care about vehicle refueling time insofar as faster refuel means spaces open up at refueling place faster and that means I'm less likely to run into congestion when I want to charge/refill my car.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:48 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Yes and no.
If you can charge at home or work, it really isn't. I've put 12,000 miles on my Tesla 3 and spent about 70 minutes at fast chargers. Everything else was at home.
With a hydrogen vehicle you can't refill at home, so that's a win for EV.
If you can't charge at home then hydrogen has better refill times, except you forgot to take travel time into account and there aren't that many H2 stations around. Obviously that can be fixed, but that doesn't do anyone any good today and may not do anyone any good in the future because "can be fixed" does not equal "will be fixed".
I only care about vehicle refueling time insofar as faster refuel means spaces open up at refueling place faster and that means I'm less likely to run into congestion when I want to charge/refill my car.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:48 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
This might be relevant: a very good conversation about hydrogen here.
It could be this was linked in an earlier Metafilter post. Don't really know how I found it. It did teach me a lot about hydrogen though.
posted by Kosmob0t at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2023
It could be this was linked in an earlier Metafilter post. Don't really know how I found it. It did teach me a lot about hydrogen though.
posted by Kosmob0t at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2023
I've long thought that a big part of the refuelling problems is removeable energy storage.
Standardized tanks that fit all hydrogen vehicles and a standard form factor for batteries. Then to refuel the empties are taken out and replaced with full/charged ones and you're back on your way.
Then the fueling station can take their time to refill everything.
Eventually it'll be done by robots. Or we can get real fancy have a special segment in some roads so your bus can just drive over that bit and get the tanks/batteries swapped out without ever stopping!
posted by VTX at 10:55 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Standardized tanks that fit all hydrogen vehicles and a standard form factor for batteries. Then to refuel the empties are taken out and replaced with full/charged ones and you're back on your way.
Then the fueling station can take their time to refill everything.
Eventually it'll be done by robots. Or we can get real fancy have a special segment in some roads so your bus can just drive over that bit and get the tanks/batteries swapped out without ever stopping!
posted by VTX at 10:55 AM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
"As somebody who has never and most likely will never buy a car that somebody else hasn't already owned for at least ten years"
Unfortunately that's becoming less and less of a feasible option. I just donated my 13 year old car to public radio this year, for sale for parts, because it's transmission was going out (or rather the transmission's control unit) and I wasn't going to be able to get it registered due to unfixable faults resulting from that. And, lastly, the wiring harness around the engine was barely holding together. If I could've sorted out these things I could've gotten another 10 years out of it at least.
According to my most excellent mechanic the reason that wasn't possible is simply because more and more car manufacturers started to deliberately increase incompatibility of parts between their own models in the early 2000s and to not make or stock those parts beyond 10 years after the model's initial roll-out. So you can fairly easily find parts for much older cars, even new parts, if you're willing to search, but, for newer cars you end up not finding anything after 10+ years, except parts from the scrap yard that likely have the same wear and tear that created your need to look for it in the first place.
At this point it's hard to tell what the used EV market will look like but, at least for ICEs it seems we'll see less and less 10+ years old cars in drivable conditions as these more recent models become the bulk of the used car market.
I switched to driving an EV and am very happy with it but it felt rather wasteful to discard an otherwise well maintained car that could've easily been repaired if it was a model that was just a few years older.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:58 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Unfortunately that's becoming less and less of a feasible option. I just donated my 13 year old car to public radio this year, for sale for parts, because it's transmission was going out (or rather the transmission's control unit) and I wasn't going to be able to get it registered due to unfixable faults resulting from that. And, lastly, the wiring harness around the engine was barely holding together. If I could've sorted out these things I could've gotten another 10 years out of it at least.
According to my most excellent mechanic the reason that wasn't possible is simply because more and more car manufacturers started to deliberately increase incompatibility of parts between their own models in the early 2000s and to not make or stock those parts beyond 10 years after the model's initial roll-out. So you can fairly easily find parts for much older cars, even new parts, if you're willing to search, but, for newer cars you end up not finding anything after 10+ years, except parts from the scrap yard that likely have the same wear and tear that created your need to look for it in the first place.
At this point it's hard to tell what the used EV market will look like but, at least for ICEs it seems we'll see less and less 10+ years old cars in drivable conditions as these more recent models become the bulk of the used car market.
I switched to driving an EV and am very happy with it but it felt rather wasteful to discard an otherwise well maintained car that could've easily been repaired if it was a model that was just a few years older.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 10:58 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
a standard form factor for batteries
That's exactly the approach Janus Electric ^ has taken with its prime mover retrofits, which are compatible with just about any existing prime mover. The battery packs currently get swapped by forklifts, but robots will come soon enough.
and to not make or stock those parts beyond 10 years after the model's initial roll-out
Hearing that. My 1995 Daihatsu Mira is currently waiting for an engine rebuild specialist to make me some bespoke replacement exhaust valves, off-the-shelf OEM and aftermarket replacement parts having become unobtainable.
It's good that there are only three of them in the engine, but I often think I should have done an electric conversion instead.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
That's exactly the approach Janus Electric ^ has taken with its prime mover retrofits, which are compatible with just about any existing prime mover. The battery packs currently get swapped by forklifts, but robots will come soon enough.
and to not make or stock those parts beyond 10 years after the model's initial roll-out
Hearing that. My 1995 Daihatsu Mira is currently waiting for an engine rebuild specialist to make me some bespoke replacement exhaust valves, off-the-shelf OEM and aftermarket replacement parts having become unobtainable.
It's good that there are only three of them in the engine, but I often think I should have done an electric conversion instead.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 AM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I see a lot of arguments being made focusing on suburban commuters as the use case, which is certainly a use case that needs better solutions, but it's far from the whole picture. There needs to be a solution for haulage, and my own solution and that of all the people near me that I talk to about this needs to be closer to that. When your pickup is regularly hauling livestock and hay and logs and fencing supplies etc etc as part of your day to day work you do need a fast refuel. I have wondered about modular battery swap as VTX mentions. But I'm not going to see batteries as the obvious virtuous solution until I see more hard numbers projecting recycling and reuse vs mining.
posted by Rhedyn at 11:12 AM on June 5, 2023
posted by Rhedyn at 11:12 AM on June 5, 2023
Hydrogen can certainly be generated using green power, but however you do it, it's not particularly energy efficient and that is before you take the compression/decompression cycles involved in getting it from the generation point to the car. The number I've seen is 75% of the energy is used for generation/transportation and 25% by the car itself. That's terrible.
EVs, OTOH, also benefit from green energy and electricity losses over long distance power lines are minimal because we've been doing this for a while and are pretty good at it, so they use a much greater percentage of the energy.
Hydrogen for planes has its own problems, but I think you can make a better case for it there. Although producing your own jet fuel via Fischer-Tropsch is possible, too.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:17 AM on June 5, 2023
EVs, OTOH, also benefit from green energy and electricity losses over long distance power lines are minimal because we've been doing this for a while and are pretty good at it, so they use a much greater percentage of the energy.
Hydrogen for planes has its own problems, but I think you can make a better case for it there. Although producing your own jet fuel via Fischer-Tropsch is possible, too.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 11:17 AM on June 5, 2023
Also, I rescued a neighbour the other day when they misjudged the charge in their EV and stalled out on a rural lane. I hadn't realised there's no way to jump start an EV. If it runs out of fuel the only thing to do is tow.
posted by Rhedyn at 11:18 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Rhedyn at 11:18 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
"As somebody who has never and most likely will never buy a car that somebody else hasn't already owned for at least ten years"
Unfortunately that's becoming less and less of a feasible option.
It's still very feasible. Some cars are better than others, and you need to avoid European luxury brands (or European brands in general, at least on the North American market place), but there are plenty of excellent, old options out there. My newest vehicles are both 19 years old as of this year.
15 years into the business and that's the first I've ever heard of OEMs making deliberately incompatible parts for obsolescence, which sounds like an update of the old "planned obsolescence" chestnut. If anything, automakers have increasingly standardized their lineups, moving almost all vehicles to a very small collection of near-identical platforms, which only increases parts sharing and compatibility.
posted by jordantwodelta at 11:19 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Unfortunately that's becoming less and less of a feasible option.
It's still very feasible. Some cars are better than others, and you need to avoid European luxury brands (or European brands in general, at least on the North American market place), but there are plenty of excellent, old options out there. My newest vehicles are both 19 years old as of this year.
15 years into the business and that's the first I've ever heard of OEMs making deliberately incompatible parts for obsolescence, which sounds like an update of the old "planned obsolescence" chestnut. If anything, automakers have increasingly standardized their lineups, moving almost all vehicles to a very small collection of near-identical platforms, which only increases parts sharing and compatibility.
posted by jordantwodelta at 11:19 AM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's Never Lurgi, the question I have about hydrogen inefficiencies is from looking at the Orkney example, where you have a massive wind and water generation capacity but it's not easily connected to the national grid. If you're only getting 25% of what is a really abundant generation resource that would otherwise go to waste, is that a problem?
posted by Rhedyn at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2023
posted by Rhedyn at 11:25 AM on June 5, 2023
I've long thought that a big part of the refuelling problems is removeable energy storage.
I've had a BEV for two years now with a much longer than average commute and I just don't see a compelling reason to add so many moving parts and complexity. It's only a couple of times a year that I drive further than the maximum range in a day and in those cases it's no big deal to take a 15min charge break every couple of hours. Fast chargers are plentiful around here (rural southern Germany).
I think it's easier to add charging capabilities to parking spaces for people who can't charge at home than making batteries removable and add swapping robots to every charger.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:29 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
I've had a BEV for two years now with a much longer than average commute and I just don't see a compelling reason to add so many moving parts and complexity. It's only a couple of times a year that I drive further than the maximum range in a day and in those cases it's no big deal to take a 15min charge break every couple of hours. Fast chargers are plentiful around here (rural southern Germany).
I think it's easier to add charging capabilities to parking spaces for people who can't charge at home than making batteries removable and add swapping robots to every charger.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:29 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
I hadn't realised there's no way to jump start an EV. If it runs out of fuel the only thing to do is tow.--Rhedyn
Some EVs, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5/6, can convert their charge port to a plug. You can drive your Ioniq 5 to their car, and they can plug their EV into your car and charge it up enough to get to a charging station.
Eventually, you could have tow trucks with built-in fast chargers for even faster recovery.
posted by eye of newt at 11:38 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
Some EVs, such as the Hyundai Ioniq 5/6, can convert their charge port to a plug. You can drive your Ioniq 5 to their car, and they can plug their EV into your car and charge it up enough to get to a charging station.
Eventually, you could have tow trucks with built-in fast chargers for even faster recovery.
posted by eye of newt at 11:38 AM on June 5, 2023 [10 favorites]
Jumpstarting a car that's out of gas isn't going to do any good either.
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:48 AM on June 5, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by Zalzidrax at 11:48 AM on June 5, 2023 [21 favorites]
It also continues to be generally true that the least reliable car you can buy today is more reliable than the most reliable car a decade ago.
There's also a massive difference between two cars with, say, 250k miles on them where one has been predominantly interstate travel and the other has been urban/suburban. Long distance driving at interstate speeds is far far easier on a car than the constant changes living in a major metro area. Mercedes did a promotional thing for their diesel wagon where they drove it a million miles in one go, only stopping to refuel and a couple of stops for some minor maintenance (way WAY less than you'd think!).
If anything, automakers have increasingly standardized their lineups, moving almost all vehicles to a very small collection of near-identical platforms, which only increases parts sharing and compatibility
It's weird how it's flipped. I remember back in the late '90s early '00s when most brands had a mid-sized sedan that had a couple of different styling bits than that's company's other brand's mid-size sedan. The Chevy Malibu, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Pontiac Grand Am were all the same car. You could swap a couple of body panels and interior bits and you couldn't tell which was which under the skin. The Kia Optima/Hyundai Sonata were worse. The only different was literally the headlights. You could see on the engine of the Mazda Tribute where the place the Ford badge normally goes.
But these days they'll develop a single platform that is used for practically the brand's whole lineup and they all FEEL very different. Same engine and transmission options across most of the line (usually including an inline 4-cyl 2.0 turbo engine) but used for small and medium sedans and small and medium crossovers.
But then mid-sized sedans, as an egregious example, are all becoming the same. 2.0 4-cyl turbo and the Chevy Malibu, Audi A4/A5, BMW 3-series, Merc C-Class, Honda Accord, etc. are all the same shape. Because for that size and layout, the laws of physics more or less dictate the ideal aerodynamic shape and that 2.0 Turbo configuration gives about the best compromise on power and efficiency. A lot of the same thing with compact crossovers like the Honda CRV, Toyota Rav-4, Mazda Cx-3, etc.
posted by VTX at 11:49 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
There's also a massive difference between two cars with, say, 250k miles on them where one has been predominantly interstate travel and the other has been urban/suburban. Long distance driving at interstate speeds is far far easier on a car than the constant changes living in a major metro area. Mercedes did a promotional thing for their diesel wagon where they drove it a million miles in one go, only stopping to refuel and a couple of stops for some minor maintenance (way WAY less than you'd think!).
If anything, automakers have increasingly standardized their lineups, moving almost all vehicles to a very small collection of near-identical platforms, which only increases parts sharing and compatibility
It's weird how it's flipped. I remember back in the late '90s early '00s when most brands had a mid-sized sedan that had a couple of different styling bits than that's company's other brand's mid-size sedan. The Chevy Malibu, Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Pontiac Grand Am were all the same car. You could swap a couple of body panels and interior bits and you couldn't tell which was which under the skin. The Kia Optima/Hyundai Sonata were worse. The only different was literally the headlights. You could see on the engine of the Mazda Tribute where the place the Ford badge normally goes.
But these days they'll develop a single platform that is used for practically the brand's whole lineup and they all FEEL very different. Same engine and transmission options across most of the line (usually including an inline 4-cyl 2.0 turbo engine) but used for small and medium sedans and small and medium crossovers.
But then mid-sized sedans, as an egregious example, are all becoming the same. 2.0 4-cyl turbo and the Chevy Malibu, Audi A4/A5, BMW 3-series, Merc C-Class, Honda Accord, etc. are all the same shape. Because for that size and layout, the laws of physics more or less dictate the ideal aerodynamic shape and that 2.0 Turbo configuration gives about the best compromise on power and efficiency. A lot of the same thing with compact crossovers like the Honda CRV, Toyota Rav-4, Mazda Cx-3, etc.
posted by VTX at 11:49 AM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Can we also take a moment to scowl at this guild-traitor electrical engineer for siding with the chemists?
Probably not; speaking as a chemist who cut his teeth on the chem-vs-chemE divide (and also on the biochem vs premed divide) I think your battle lines are not up to date here.
posted by traveler_ at 12:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Probably not; speaking as a chemist who cut his teeth on the chem-vs-chemE divide (and also on the biochem vs premed divide) I think your battle lines are not up to date here.
posted by traveler_ at 12:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is a fine place to check in and report about my DIY ebike conversion since it's now just about 3 years old.
Zero problems with the ebike or battery part. Battery is still fine but has maybe about 10% voltage droop and reduced range and is theoretically about 1/4 to 1/3 through its expected lifespan. Total mileage so far is something like 4,500 miles. Total electricity cost per year is under $10 for multiple charges per week.
I broke my old 10+ year old aluminum frame last year after many hard, overloaded miles long before I put an ebike on it and it's now on a nice steel touring bike frame and it's better than ever. The only problems I've had with my ebike are normal bike problems and extra wear and tear on normally consumable or wearable parts like chains and brake pads.
And every time I get on that bike it's totally magic to me that I have a bicycle that can do 25-40+ very hilly miles with basically zero effort and just using the throttle or barely pedaling, that it will climb up hills so steep that I can barely stay on the bike, that it can do 25-35 MPH with a push of my thumb, and even sometimes beat 1000c motorcycles from a cold start across a 4+1 lane intersection, all while barely making any more noise than a normal bicycle and it basically costs less than 5 cents of electricity per "fill up" or charge.
After my whole life of avoiding owning a car and riding a bike, it's really and truly magical to me. It's like I am always cruising down a nice hill with a tailwind. I don't even actually have to pedal or work if I don't want to but I still get all of the pure joy of riding a bicycle, or I can get plenty of exercise by turning the power down or completely off and pedal through the mid drive motor resistance if I want to feel like I'm climbing a hill.
If it wasn't for the total lack of bicycle infrastructure in most places in the US most people could easily replace like 90% of their car trips with PEVs like ebikes, cargo ebikes, trikes and more, even in deepest suburbia. It's totally possible right now at a fraction of the infrastructure and energy costs of BEV cars, you guys just need dedicated, protected bike lanes and MUPs and a suitable ebike and clothes.
And getting over the idea of hauling around half a ton of cosmetically sculpted, colorfully painted steel body panel work and the whole concept of vehicles as a fashion statement or accessory wouldn't hurt, either. Not that this isn't a thing in the bicycle world because it totally is, but that usually means functional but pretty components and parts, not superfluous tinfoil-thick stamped steel sheets that make the car look cool and more aerodynamic so you can do 80 MPH on the highway for slightly better miles per gallon at highway speeds.
We don't have to wait for major problems to be solved like how to store and transport hydrogen or how to make synthetic fuels. Hydrogen in particular has a bunch of nasty challenges, like how much hydrogen likes to leak simply because it's the smallest, lightest element and how hydrogen embrittlement is a known thing that attacks and damages most metals apart from some expensive superalloys.
And the electrical grid is right there waiting to be used and it's everywhere, and EVs don't care where the electricity is coming from and they're totally agnostic about whether the energy came from solar, wind, nuclear, hydro or fossil fuels. Electrons are electrons, so EVs grow with our attempts to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, which is definitely not the case with hydrogen or synthetic fuels.
We can recycle batteries now. Newer battery technologies like solid state batteries are starting to hit the market, and I can go buy safer, longer lasting LiFePO4 ebike batteries compatible with my bike's drive system right now and they have like 4-5x the charge cycles of regular Li-Ion batteries.
Shoot, and if I had a few hundred spare dollars I could buy portable solar panels and a MPPT controller kit to convert my ebike to 100% off grid solar power right now and never plug it into the grid ever again. There's people out there doing solar supported ebike touring and they can basically ride for free for a whole decade or more before having to replace a battery as long as they take care of the mechanical parts of their bikes.
My local bike trails and infrastructure went from about 1 bike in maybe 50 or a 100 bikes being ebikes or conversions to more like 9 bikes out of 10 being ebikes in the space of 3-4 years. That's a faster adoption rate than cell phones or smartphones. That's a faster adoption rate than broadband internet at home. It's been absolutely mind blowing to see how fast ebikes have taken over cycling for casual riders, commuters and car replacement bikes for errands.
EVs are the future and the future is right now.
posted by loquacious at 1:09 PM on June 5, 2023 [16 favorites]
Zero problems with the ebike or battery part. Battery is still fine but has maybe about 10% voltage droop and reduced range and is theoretically about 1/4 to 1/3 through its expected lifespan. Total mileage so far is something like 4,500 miles. Total electricity cost per year is under $10 for multiple charges per week.
I broke my old 10+ year old aluminum frame last year after many hard, overloaded miles long before I put an ebike on it and it's now on a nice steel touring bike frame and it's better than ever. The only problems I've had with my ebike are normal bike problems and extra wear and tear on normally consumable or wearable parts like chains and brake pads.
And every time I get on that bike it's totally magic to me that I have a bicycle that can do 25-40+ very hilly miles with basically zero effort and just using the throttle or barely pedaling, that it will climb up hills so steep that I can barely stay on the bike, that it can do 25-35 MPH with a push of my thumb, and even sometimes beat 1000c motorcycles from a cold start across a 4+1 lane intersection, all while barely making any more noise than a normal bicycle and it basically costs less than 5 cents of electricity per "fill up" or charge.
After my whole life of avoiding owning a car and riding a bike, it's really and truly magical to me. It's like I am always cruising down a nice hill with a tailwind. I don't even actually have to pedal or work if I don't want to but I still get all of the pure joy of riding a bicycle, or I can get plenty of exercise by turning the power down or completely off and pedal through the mid drive motor resistance if I want to feel like I'm climbing a hill.
If it wasn't for the total lack of bicycle infrastructure in most places in the US most people could easily replace like 90% of their car trips with PEVs like ebikes, cargo ebikes, trikes and more, even in deepest suburbia. It's totally possible right now at a fraction of the infrastructure and energy costs of BEV cars, you guys just need dedicated, protected bike lanes and MUPs and a suitable ebike and clothes.
And getting over the idea of hauling around half a ton of cosmetically sculpted, colorfully painted steel body panel work and the whole concept of vehicles as a fashion statement or accessory wouldn't hurt, either. Not that this isn't a thing in the bicycle world because it totally is, but that usually means functional but pretty components and parts, not superfluous tinfoil-thick stamped steel sheets that make the car look cool and more aerodynamic so you can do 80 MPH on the highway for slightly better miles per gallon at highway speeds.
We don't have to wait for major problems to be solved like how to store and transport hydrogen or how to make synthetic fuels. Hydrogen in particular has a bunch of nasty challenges, like how much hydrogen likes to leak simply because it's the smallest, lightest element and how hydrogen embrittlement is a known thing that attacks and damages most metals apart from some expensive superalloys.
And the electrical grid is right there waiting to be used and it's everywhere, and EVs don't care where the electricity is coming from and they're totally agnostic about whether the energy came from solar, wind, nuclear, hydro or fossil fuels. Electrons are electrons, so EVs grow with our attempts to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, which is definitely not the case with hydrogen or synthetic fuels.
We can recycle batteries now. Newer battery technologies like solid state batteries are starting to hit the market, and I can go buy safer, longer lasting LiFePO4 ebike batteries compatible with my bike's drive system right now and they have like 4-5x the charge cycles of regular Li-Ion batteries.
Shoot, and if I had a few hundred spare dollars I could buy portable solar panels and a MPPT controller kit to convert my ebike to 100% off grid solar power right now and never plug it into the grid ever again. There's people out there doing solar supported ebike touring and they can basically ride for free for a whole decade or more before having to replace a battery as long as they take care of the mechanical parts of their bikes.
My local bike trails and infrastructure went from about 1 bike in maybe 50 or a 100 bikes being ebikes or conversions to more like 9 bikes out of 10 being ebikes in the space of 3-4 years. That's a faster adoption rate than cell phones or smartphones. That's a faster adoption rate than broadband internet at home. It's been absolutely mind blowing to see how fast ebikes have taken over cycling for casual riders, commuters and car replacement bikes for errands.
EVs are the future and the future is right now.
posted by loquacious at 1:09 PM on June 5, 2023 [16 favorites]
Not this shit again.
Rowan Atlkinson is wrong and boring.
He's repeating a heap of zombie arguments - arguments that have been disproven time and again by people who actually know what they are talking about, yet keep being put forward.
Here's a quick and timely summary of the arguments, complete with links to actual evidence - Regardless of What Mr. Bean Says, EVs Are Much Better for the Environment than Gasoline Vehicles
I write for national media on climate technology and I do my fucking research. So when people raise bullshit arguments time and again against EVs, when those people keep getting platforms to spread zombie arguments, is this down to their lazy ignorance? Or a lack of good faith on their part? Or systematic bias towards controversial hot takes instead of actual truths?
Auke Hoekstra studies this pattern of bullshit. His summary:
"I’m not entirely convinced Atkinson is being honest here, because he is very precise in cherry picking all the anti-EV tropes"
posted by happyinmotion at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2023 [20 favorites]
Rowan Atlkinson is wrong and boring.
He's repeating a heap of zombie arguments - arguments that have been disproven time and again by people who actually know what they are talking about, yet keep being put forward.
Here's a quick and timely summary of the arguments, complete with links to actual evidence - Regardless of What Mr. Bean Says, EVs Are Much Better for the Environment than Gasoline Vehicles
I write for national media on climate technology and I do my fucking research. So when people raise bullshit arguments time and again against EVs, when those people keep getting platforms to spread zombie arguments, is this down to their lazy ignorance? Or a lack of good faith on their part? Or systematic bias towards controversial hot takes instead of actual truths?
Auke Hoekstra studies this pattern of bullshit. His summary:
"I’m not entirely convinced Atkinson is being honest here, because he is very precise in cherry picking all the anti-EV tropes"
posted by happyinmotion at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2023 [20 favorites]
Carbon emissions aside, burning gasoline (well, burning almost anything really) produces a bunch of other nasties that are pretty awful for human health.
Also, ICE vehicles are tremendously less efficient than EVs. Much of the energy being liberated when the gasoline is burned isn't actually used to move the vehicle forward -- it's just dissipated as heat.
You can magically come up with an entire infrastructure for creating synthetic gasoline, but it won't change that basic problem.
As loquacious said above:
EVs are the future and the future is right now.
EVs are happening, in a big way. There will always be contrarians arguing that the road not taken is better, but the entire industry, as well as governments around the world, are committed to EVs. The sensible thing to do is to make sure they're developed in the best way possible.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Also, ICE vehicles are tremendously less efficient than EVs. Much of the energy being liberated when the gasoline is burned isn't actually used to move the vehicle forward -- it's just dissipated as heat.
You can magically come up with an entire infrastructure for creating synthetic gasoline, but it won't change that basic problem.
As loquacious said above:
EVs are the future and the future is right now.
EVs are happening, in a big way. There will always be contrarians arguing that the road not taken is better, but the entire industry, as well as governments around the world, are committed to EVs. The sensible thing to do is to make sure they're developed in the best way possible.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:35 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’m not entirely convinced Atkinson is being honest here
Could this be a pivot from physical comedy to satire, and he's just pitched it a shade too dry?
I WANT TO BELIEVE
posted by flabdablet at 1:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Could this be a pivot from physical comedy to satire, and he's just pitched it a shade too dry?
I WANT TO BELIEVE
posted by flabdablet at 1:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, I rescued a neighbour the other day when they misjudged the charge in their EV and stalled out on a rural lane. I hadn't realised there's no way to jump start an EV. If it runs out of fuel the only thing to do is tow.
Any car that supports level 1 charging can get an emergency refuel from any outlet or any generator. You can buy cheap gas generators for less than 250 us, little suitcase inverter for start at 600. Ya, not as cheap as a $75 set of jumper cables but still possible. In fact larger but still two person portable generators are available starting around $1500 and would power level two chargers.
Eventually, you could have tow trucks with built-in fast chargers for even faster recovery.
Not built in but see above. I bet there are all sorts of roadside assistance groups that have little tow behind or truck mounted 4-7500W generators for this purpose. Generators in the form of welders are already a basic feature obtainable from truck outfitters. Even a basic welder unit would charge at 240v and 60A.
However i can't even remember the last time I ran out of fuel, it's been at least 20 years. And that wouldn't have happened if my car had a full tank every morning..
When your pickup is regularly hauling livestock and hay and logs and fencing supplies etc etc as part of your day to day work you do need a fast refuel
Keep in mind those groups will be starting out with a full tank every day. And people doing that kind of work currently almost never refuel twice in a single day. Your basic f150 uses 11-15 litres per 100 kilometers and the smallest fuel tank is 87 litres going up to 134l. So on the low end you could drive for 6 hours on a full tank and on the high end 12 hours. No one should be working 6 hours without a 15 minute break during which could be used for fast charging. And that is the worst case of 100% driving. Someone fencing and only turning wheels 10-50% of the time won't ever have to recharge during the work day.
But as always there will be some special cases, not all emerging technology is going to be a 100% replacement for the old way. But those special cases are just that, special, and don't describe even 1% of typical use cases. And just like my grandfather hated when he had to give up his horse for a car (because a car wouldn't drive itself home from the bar and the horse would) people will adapt. Grandfather moved to within staggering distance of the bar.
For batteries, my question is how to factor in the negatives of lithium mining (or alternative rare metal mining) that aren't included in lifecycle emissions.
I'm sure.multiple.groups on all sides have run the numbers but it is hard to imagine it being worse than strip mining vast chunks of the land to get oil out of sand and other abominations
posted by Mitheral at 1:48 PM on June 5, 2023 [14 favorites]
Any car that supports level 1 charging can get an emergency refuel from any outlet or any generator. You can buy cheap gas generators for less than 250 us, little suitcase inverter for start at 600. Ya, not as cheap as a $75 set of jumper cables but still possible. In fact larger but still two person portable generators are available starting around $1500 and would power level two chargers.
Eventually, you could have tow trucks with built-in fast chargers for even faster recovery.
Not built in but see above. I bet there are all sorts of roadside assistance groups that have little tow behind or truck mounted 4-7500W generators for this purpose. Generators in the form of welders are already a basic feature obtainable from truck outfitters. Even a basic welder unit would charge at 240v and 60A.
However i can't even remember the last time I ran out of fuel, it's been at least 20 years. And that wouldn't have happened if my car had a full tank every morning..
When your pickup is regularly hauling livestock and hay and logs and fencing supplies etc etc as part of your day to day work you do need a fast refuel
Keep in mind those groups will be starting out with a full tank every day. And people doing that kind of work currently almost never refuel twice in a single day. Your basic f150 uses 11-15 litres per 100 kilometers and the smallest fuel tank is 87 litres going up to 134l. So on the low end you could drive for 6 hours on a full tank and on the high end 12 hours. No one should be working 6 hours without a 15 minute break during which could be used for fast charging. And that is the worst case of 100% driving. Someone fencing and only turning wheels 10-50% of the time won't ever have to recharge during the work day.
But as always there will be some special cases, not all emerging technology is going to be a 100% replacement for the old way. But those special cases are just that, special, and don't describe even 1% of typical use cases. And just like my grandfather hated when he had to give up his horse for a car (because a car wouldn't drive itself home from the bar and the horse would) people will adapt. Grandfather moved to within staggering distance of the bar.
For batteries, my question is how to factor in the negatives of lithium mining (or alternative rare metal mining) that aren't included in lifecycle emissions.
I'm sure.multiple.groups on all sides have run the numbers but it is hard to imagine it being worse than strip mining vast chunks of the land to get oil out of sand and other abominations
posted by Mitheral at 1:48 PM on June 5, 2023 [14 favorites]
loquacious, I totally agree with you that ebikes (and scooters, skateboards, and unicycles) are a game changer. Delivery drivers already know this which is why so many of them are using ebikes instead of cars now. I see people on these everyday even though there is no real infrastructure for them and it is a great way for people to get around where there isn't convenient public transit. My commute is about 15km and on a regular bicycle going 20km/h to work I am already as fast as taking the bus but with the added benefit of getting some physical activity in. Up that to an ebike going 30km/h and while a car will still be faster it'll be close enough that someone may decide to spend $2k on the ebike instead of $20-30k on a regular car. Especially as the ongoing expenses are so much less for the ebike.
My city (Toronto) is still poorly trying to implement regular bicycle lanes and while I'm sure the civil servants have put some thought into how these personal electric vehicles should be integrated onto our streets nothing's happening with it yet and probably won't for a while. Small single lane residential streets are a free for all which works fine because they're low-speed anyway but the larger, busier streets need re-working because the ebikes and the like sharing a 2m bike lane with people on regular bikes isn't a good solution because it can be really tough to safely pass. Up the lane width to 3m or even a full lane and then they'll be able to safely coexist but I can't see the car drivers agreeing to that any time soon.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:17 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
My city (Toronto) is still poorly trying to implement regular bicycle lanes and while I'm sure the civil servants have put some thought into how these personal electric vehicles should be integrated onto our streets nothing's happening with it yet and probably won't for a while. Small single lane residential streets are a free for all which works fine because they're low-speed anyway but the larger, busier streets need re-working because the ebikes and the like sharing a 2m bike lane with people on regular bikes isn't a good solution because it can be really tough to safely pass. Up the lane width to 3m or even a full lane and then they'll be able to safely coexist but I can't see the car drivers agreeing to that any time soon.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:17 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
We've excellent electric vehicles without fuel tanks or batteries, and much faster than cars too, for almost 60 years: Shinkansen (1964-present), TGV (1981-present), ICE (1985-present), etc.
We could wire some roads so that EVs need only small batteries or no battery, ideally with those lines being the power lines used more broadly.
We cannot afford the minerals being wasted on ICE cars today, much less heavy EV batteries, but an EV could've really extreme longevity, once you've avoided carrying the battery.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:30 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
We could wire some roads so that EVs need only small batteries or no battery, ideally with those lines being the power lines used more broadly.
We cannot afford the minerals being wasted on ICE cars today, much less heavy EV batteries, but an EV could've really extreme longevity, once you've avoided carrying the battery.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:30 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
This is a fine place to check in and report about my DIY ebike conversion since it's now just about 3 years old.
Your what now?! Newsletter, subscription, etc. I'm suddenly very interested in this, particularly about what such a conversion costs. I live in Minnesota so winter is a whole thing and I don't know how well those fat tires deal with it. I've been looking at ebikes but they're expensive. I'm very handy and the idea of buying a good bike now and adding a motor to it later really appeals to me.
This is an electric vehicle so it's still on topic right? Right?!
posted by VTX at 2:39 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Your what now?! Newsletter, subscription, etc. I'm suddenly very interested in this, particularly about what such a conversion costs. I live in Minnesota so winter is a whole thing and I don't know how well those fat tires deal with it. I've been looking at ebikes but they're expensive. I'm very handy and the idea of buying a good bike now and adding a motor to it later really appeals to me.
This is an electric vehicle so it's still on topic right? Right?!
posted by VTX at 2:39 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The newspaper I would like to read, which doesn't exist AFAIK, would explain the source of every item. Who pitched this to the newspaper? Who decided to publish it? Was it ghost-written? Was Atkinson paid by any party, and if so, by whom?
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 2:54 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 2:54 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Greeeeeaaaat, yet another BS piece that will get amplified by all the anti-EV haters. So much wrong, as usual. I've been fighting this shit since 2008. Ignore, move on. And don't amplify by reposting it elsewhere!
posted by intermod at 3:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by intermod at 3:12 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
If it's astroturf, please help tear it out.
https://www.carscoops.com/2021/11/volvo-says-manufacturing-an-electric-car-generates-70-percent-more-emissions-than-its-petrol-equivalent/
I LOVE BEV's torque off the line and also that I can drive 150 miles in my Leaf for $3 thanks to home solar. Don't try that in an ICE.
Environmentally-speaking, if you engage in motivated reasoning you can construct Rowan's dishonest argument, if in fact new BEVs have a larger carbon footprint, the question has to be how many miles to break-even.
Part of this footprint includes all of the economy devoted to maintaining ICE engines, too. With BEV that all goes away!
There were so many inaccuracies and misconceptions in this piece I even missed one, the assertion that packs had "rare-earth" elements. One , this is not true (most – but not all –motors have them) and 2) "rare-earth" elements are not in particularly short supply.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:17 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
- has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030
- Volvo released figures
https://www.carscoops.com/2021/11/volvo-says-manufacturing-an-electric-car-generates-70-percent-more-emissions-than-its-petrol-equivalent/
- [battery packs] only last about 10 years
- New, so-called solid-state batteries [will be better than current batteries]
- Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel
- it’s a complete non-starter for trucks
- we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on
- speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means
- We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give,
- Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.
I LOVE BEV's torque off the line and also that I can drive 150 miles in my Leaf for $3 thanks to home solar. Don't try that in an ICE.
Environmentally-speaking, if you engage in motivated reasoning you can construct Rowan's dishonest argument, if in fact new BEVs have a larger carbon footprint, the question has to be how many miles to break-even.
Part of this footprint includes all of the economy devoted to maintaining ICE engines, too. With BEV that all goes away!
There were so many inaccuracies and misconceptions in this piece I even missed one, the assertion that packs had "rare-earth" elements. One , this is not true (most – but not all –motors have them) and 2) "rare-earth" elements are not in particularly short supply.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:17 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Much of the energy being liberated when the gasoline is burned isn't actually used to move the vehicle forward -- it's just dissipated as heat
and noise
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
and noise
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:21 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
no way to jump start an EV. If it runs out of fuel the only thing to do is tow
Mobile Electric Vehicle Charging Now Available in Select Cities
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:24 PM on June 5, 2023
Mobile Electric Vehicle Charging Now Available in Select Cities
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 3:24 PM on June 5, 2023
Jumping back in again to say that I've actually charged an EV's battery with ANOTHER EV, and I did it in the parking lot of a grocery story, and all I needed was a $20 240-volt adapter commonly used by RVs, and it was dead, dead simple.
So just to put that "must be flat-bedded" argument to rest. Yes, it's probably faster to flat-bed to a DC fast charger. But it's not totally necessary when some EVs can provide 7 kW or more of charging capability over a factory-provided cable.
posted by jordantwodelta at 3:30 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
So just to put that "must be flat-bedded" argument to rest. Yes, it's probably faster to flat-bed to a DC fast charger. But it's not totally necessary when some EVs can provide 7 kW or more of charging capability over a factory-provided cable.
posted by jordantwodelta at 3:30 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
The Inflation Reduction Act has a lot of funding for hydrogen electrolysers. AIUI it's mostly intended to allow green H2 to displace current usage of the dirty stuff as a chemical feedstock, and to start to decarbonise hard problems like cement manufacture. Helping those technologies to climb the learning curve might make it a more practical fuel choice, but having owned an EV for the last 5 years, I'm in no hurry to return to a centralised, gas-station-style, model, any more than I'd want to start taking my phone to a special shop to charge it once a week.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:45 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 5:45 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
Could you imagine him working at Lucas Electric?
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:56 PM on June 5, 2023
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 5:56 PM on June 5, 2023
At some point someone will make an EV that out performs a McLaren F1 and then Mr. Bean will shut the hell up.
For those not in the know, in terms of so-called supercars, the McLaren F1 is the best car. The thing is seriously an engineering feat on the level of the SR-71 or Concorde. To this day I don't think any car has managed to match it. Plenty have exceeded some aspect of it not all of it at once and this car was made in 1995.
I've been a major fanboy of that car since then when I was 15, it's an amazing car and I'd love to have one (I will never be that rich but a man can dream). Unsurprisingly, I love cars and I have a lot in common with Atkinson's attitude about how cool fast cars are.
But EVs are cars too! They have some cool advantages over ICE engines and I'm excited to find out what kind of crazy high performance EVs are yet to come as well as more attainable sports car EVs.
The McLaren F1 is maybe a bit of a stretch that there will be EVs performing on the same level as today's supercars is inevitable. I mean, the first cars had a hard time matching the overall performance of a horse. I don't understand how anyone thought they'd just instantly be better.
posted by VTX at 5:59 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
For those not in the know, in terms of so-called supercars, the McLaren F1 is the best car. The thing is seriously an engineering feat on the level of the SR-71 or Concorde. To this day I don't think any car has managed to match it. Plenty have exceeded some aspect of it not all of it at once and this car was made in 1995.
I've been a major fanboy of that car since then when I was 15, it's an amazing car and I'd love to have one (I will never be that rich but a man can dream). Unsurprisingly, I love cars and I have a lot in common with Atkinson's attitude about how cool fast cars are.
But EVs are cars too! They have some cool advantages over ICE engines and I'm excited to find out what kind of crazy high performance EVs are yet to come as well as more attainable sports car EVs.
The McLaren F1 is maybe a bit of a stretch that there will be EVs performing on the same level as today's supercars is inevitable. I mean, the first cars had a hard time matching the overall performance of a horse. I don't understand how anyone thought they'd just instantly be better.
posted by VTX at 5:59 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means.
Non! No! Nein!
Synthetic fuel still emits CO2 when burnt, the excuse that the CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere doesn’t take into account the fact energy was used to produce that fuel. If the energy is clean , it’s just clean energy that could have been used more efficiently for something else. We already have a CO2 surplus if you pull some out of thin air, please don’t burn it to get this prolong this car madness. Keep it in reserve for usages where we have no replacement.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
Non! No! Nein!
Synthetic fuel still emits CO2 when burnt, the excuse that the CO2 was pulled out of the atmosphere doesn’t take into account the fact energy was used to produce that fuel. If the energy is clean , it’s just clean energy that could have been used more efficiently for something else. We already have a CO2 surplus if you pull some out of thin air, please don’t burn it to get this prolong this car madness. Keep it in reserve for usages where we have no replacement.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 6:16 PM on June 5, 2023 [5 favorites]
All of which just shows that the core problem with transforming our energy systems is (short-medium term) storage, not generation.
Solve that storage problem, and everything else (more or less) falls into place.
posted by Pouteria at 6:44 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
Solve that storage problem, and everything else (more or less) falls into place.
posted by Pouteria at 6:44 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would hate to be a comic actor trying to make a point, and being derided by anyone who doesn't agree with me as "Mr. Bean." Whether he's right or not, it seems too easy a name to wield against him.
posted by JHarris at 6:58 PM on June 5, 2023
posted by JHarris at 6:58 PM on June 5, 2023
How Gordon Murray's T.50 Compares To The McLaren F1
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:00 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:00 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car, made back when EVs were regrettably dead and buried in the aughts, had an extended segment on how "Hydrogen!" was being used as a ridiculous distraction from actual positive advancement in alternative fuels. That was back in (rustles around, checks notes)... 2006. 17 years ago.
Any of us who have spent any time on or with alternative fuels know hydrogen isn't going to be a workable mass-market option in this lifetime. Just like we know that ivermectin isn't going to help us with COVID infections, no matter how much certain people just want us to believe that it's so. Those of us in the EV space, or hell, even the LPG space, know that hydrogen is a ludicrous distraction. It's just something that sounds credible enough that people who don't know better are like "oh yes, that sounds reasonable." When you seriously look at the details, it's just not viable.
Thankfully, EVs have risen again. There are fewer than 12,000 hydrogen-powered cars on the road in the US today, compared with over a million BEVs and more than twice that number of plug-in hybrids.
EVs aren't perfect. But don't let them make you believe they're not radically better in most scenarios than gas-only cars.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 7:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Any of us who have spent any time on or with alternative fuels know hydrogen isn't going to be a workable mass-market option in this lifetime. Just like we know that ivermectin isn't going to help us with COVID infections, no matter how much certain people just want us to believe that it's so. Those of us in the EV space, or hell, even the LPG space, know that hydrogen is a ludicrous distraction. It's just something that sounds credible enough that people who don't know better are like "oh yes, that sounds reasonable." When you seriously look at the details, it's just not viable.
Thankfully, EVs have risen again. There are fewer than 12,000 hydrogen-powered cars on the road in the US today, compared with over a million BEVs and more than twice that number of plug-in hybrids.
EVs aren't perfect. But don't let them make you believe they're not radically better in most scenarios than gas-only cars.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 7:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [7 favorites]
Whether he's right or not, it seems too easy a name to wield against him
This is true and you are correct.
However, he could have helped the matter along by not being mendaciously distracting. Step One, don’t be willfully stupid. I respect arguments, not people (it’s … kinda like the graven images thing but from a different cultural background) and his argument is beyond terrible.
He should be ashamed to have made it, and so we should feel free to shame him for it because he did not argue in good faith in the first place. Shameful behavior begets shaming.
He’s not mistaken, he actively seeks to misinform. I have worse names for this sort of thing, if Bean is just too much to bear.
posted by aramaic at 7:25 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
This is true and you are correct.
However, he could have helped the matter along by not being mendaciously distracting. Step One, don’t be willfully stupid. I respect arguments, not people (it’s … kinda like the graven images thing but from a different cultural background) and his argument is beyond terrible.
He should be ashamed to have made it, and so we should feel free to shame him for it because he did not argue in good faith in the first place. Shameful behavior begets shaming.
He’s not mistaken, he actively seeks to misinform. I have worse names for this sort of thing, if Bean is just too much to bear.
posted by aramaic at 7:25 PM on June 5, 2023 [3 favorites]
Oh, well then, so long as we're clear. I guess the other people in the thread who thought his piece was at least interesting and worth hearing out are just dupes then, as I guess am I. Geez.
posted by JHarris at 7:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 7:46 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Could you imagine him working at Lucas Electric?
Oh, Lordy, yes. He would let all of the magic smoke out!
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:59 PM on June 5, 2023
Oh, Lordy, yes. He would let all of the magic smoke out!
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:59 PM on June 5, 2023
I didn't ad-hom Atkinson at all – but his points in that piece are so bizarrely uniformly wrong that it's clear to me he's putting his love of cars above making the world a better place sooner.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:25 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:25 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
If Toyota figures out how to deploy hydrogen cars at scale
My local Toyota dealer (I wouldn't got a lemon???*) has a literal (not figurative) separate parking lot they are leasing that is full of Toyota's hydrogen car, the Mirai.
Remember when you couldn't get a new car without paying ADM and the lots were empty? Not only were there 50+ cars in the aforementioned parking lot, they had a legit 2 for 1 deal. Checking now you can get 72 months at 0% plus $30k cash back, lol. Actually better than 2 for 1. With 2 years of free fuel courtesy of Toyota corporate thrown in. There I even a hydrogen pump about a mile up Tustin from the dealer.
So, why is there dozens upon dozens of these things on their "lot" right now? Because that local pump doesn't have any hydrogen for up to a week at a time. And the closest other pump (that also doesn't have any hydrogen for a week at a time) is way down in Costa Mesa. Further than that, you are are probably driving your non-hydrogen car since who is going to drive 30 mins to fill up?
Anyway, the "at scale" part is done. The fueling infrastructure, definitely is not.
*Trigger warning for anyone who grew up in SoCal
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:43 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
My local Toyota dealer (I wouldn't got a lemon???*) has a literal (not figurative) separate parking lot they are leasing that is full of Toyota's hydrogen car, the Mirai.
Remember when you couldn't get a new car without paying ADM and the lots were empty? Not only were there 50+ cars in the aforementioned parking lot, they had a legit 2 for 1 deal. Checking now you can get 72 months at 0% plus $30k cash back, lol. Actually better than 2 for 1. With 2 years of free fuel courtesy of Toyota corporate thrown in. There I even a hydrogen pump about a mile up Tustin from the dealer.
So, why is there dozens upon dozens of these things on their "lot" right now? Because that local pump doesn't have any hydrogen for up to a week at a time. And the closest other pump (that also doesn't have any hydrogen for a week at a time) is way down in Costa Mesa. Further than that, you are are probably driving your non-hydrogen car since who is going to drive 30 mins to fill up?
Anyway, the "at scale" part is done. The fueling infrastructure, definitely is not.
*Trigger warning for anyone who grew up in SoCal
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:43 PM on June 5, 2023 [4 favorites]
cars are bad. "'nuff said!"
posted by shoesfullofdust at 9:47 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by shoesfullofdust at 9:47 PM on June 5, 2023 [1 favorite]
I wouldn't want to imply that Mr. Atkinson is perhaps a bit out of touch. But 'how shall I fuel my next British Luxury Automobile' smacks a bit of 'how shall we fuel the AGA cooker? no, the downstairs one.'
Conditions are sort of unique, on Right Hand Drive Island. I wonder how things will eventually work out in that closed market. But having seen somewhat similar conditions before, I wonder if "with the price of fuel these days, we're having the Vauxhall fitted for electric*" will be the new "with the price of fuel these days, we're getting double glazing in, and a new boiler".
*I meant contemporay models. But if they're doing all-electric aluminium-bodied Retro Editions, I would like a Wyvern, please. With proper heating and a cleverly disguised DAB+ radio. Bonus points for placing the factory in Wales.
posted by bartleby at 11:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Conditions are sort of unique, on Right Hand Drive Island. I wonder how things will eventually work out in that closed market. But having seen somewhat similar conditions before, I wonder if "with the price of fuel these days, we're having the Vauxhall fitted for electric*" will be the new "with the price of fuel these days, we're getting double glazing in, and a new boiler".
*I meant contemporay models. But if they're doing all-electric aluminium-bodied Retro Editions, I would like a Wyvern, please. With proper heating and a cleverly disguised DAB+ radio. Bonus points for placing the factory in Wales.
posted by bartleby at 11:06 PM on June 5, 2023 [2 favorites]
Conditions are sort of unique, on Right Hand Drive Island
Great Britain is the world's third most populous Right Hand Drive Island. To be fair, there's a lot of criticism of car manufacturers based in Honshū in this post, too. Of course, Indonesia and Japan and the UK all use the globally accepted standards for motor vehicles*, so maybe a xenophobic ad-hominem based on the author's nationality shows up the person writing it.
*excepting two single countries based on one continent.
posted by ambrosen at 11:43 PM on June 5, 2023
Great Britain is the world's third most populous Right Hand Drive Island. To be fair, there's a lot of criticism of car manufacturers based in Honshū in this post, too. Of course, Indonesia and Japan and the UK all use the globally accepted standards for motor vehicles*, so maybe a xenophobic ad-hominem based on the author's nationality shows up the person writing it.
*excepting two single countries based on one continent.
posted by ambrosen at 11:43 PM on June 5, 2023
Right Hand Drive Island. - a xenophobic ad-hominem
Not sure where that's coming from. To clarify, I meant that the British Isles have all their neighbors driving on the other side. Whereas it is much easier to trade domestic models around/across the RHD Indian Ocean & Oceania region.
But perhaps I'm wrong about that? If I'm in Spain and in the market for a used VW, does it not matter to me if I get a good price, but its for a RHD Polo? Or vice-versa?
Thus the eventual solution for 'how will the UK's cars be powered in the future' is more likely to be a homegrown, domestic-market one than elsewhere. A choice that serves the internal 70 million customer market; because selling them elsewhere requires conversion or a very long boat ride.
Perhaps there will be something that works for the UK (cheap hydrogen from wave power?) that wouldn't work or wouldn't be necessary elsewhere (a hypothetical fleet of all-solar SEATs).
posted by bartleby at 12:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Not sure where that's coming from. To clarify, I meant that the British Isles have all their neighbors driving on the other side. Whereas it is much easier to trade domestic models around/across the RHD Indian Ocean & Oceania region.
But perhaps I'm wrong about that? If I'm in Spain and in the market for a used VW, does it not matter to me if I get a good price, but its for a RHD Polo? Or vice-versa?
Thus the eventual solution for 'how will the UK's cars be powered in the future' is more likely to be a homegrown, domestic-market one than elsewhere. A choice that serves the internal 70 million customer market; because selling them elsewhere requires conversion or a very long boat ride.
Perhaps there will be something that works for the UK (cheap hydrogen from wave power?) that wouldn't work or wouldn't be necessary elsewhere (a hypothetical fleet of all-solar SEATs).
posted by bartleby at 12:53 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are a tiny handful of models that are available on the mainland Europe market that are not available in the UK and Ireland, and correspondingly there are models imported into each of these markets which aren’t sold in other parts of Europe. Steering wheel configuration is not a big deal for any serious car manufacturer.
posted by ambrosen at 1:25 AM on June 6, 2023
posted by ambrosen at 1:25 AM on June 6, 2023
I dunno man. I was just getting a little tired of the usual "if people would just apply MY pet solution, everywhere under all conditions, we could fix this very complex issue" routine?
I just know that in a world where Toyota forgoing batteries for hydrogen research pays off?
They come back in a couple years with "We figured out how to create and distribute green hydrogen for automobiles. The good news is its half the price of gas. The bad news is it only works if you live within 50 miles of the sea."?
They're going to sell 300 to 500 million right hand drive Corolla H2s and Hy-Luxes. Instantly. And make a dent in global emissions. They don't even have to bother with the Americas, continental Europe, or central Asia.
Oh no, we only fixed it for a couple billion people, how inadequate, lets not do that because it doesn't cover everyone. And isn't bicycle based. Ugh.
posted by bartleby at 2:33 AM on June 6, 2023
I just know that in a world where Toyota forgoing batteries for hydrogen research pays off?
They come back in a couple years with "We figured out how to create and distribute green hydrogen for automobiles. The good news is its half the price of gas. The bad news is it only works if you live within 50 miles of the sea."?
They're going to sell 300 to 500 million right hand drive Corolla H2s and Hy-Luxes. Instantly. And make a dent in global emissions. They don't even have to bother with the Americas, continental Europe, or central Asia.
Oh no, we only fixed it for a couple billion people, how inadequate, lets not do that because it doesn't cover everyone. And isn't bicycle based. Ugh.
posted by bartleby at 2:33 AM on June 6, 2023
Funny thing is that there's apparently a good way to store hydrogen safely in cars, using an isotope of lithium ( Li-6 ) that stores H when cold and releases it when warmed. Problem is that this is the same isotope used in hydrogen bombs, being the source of deuterium that gets promoted to tritium by the fission stage...
Another problem tho is that H is just a nasty little atom/molecule to deal with.
Natural Gas / propane burns a lot cleaner in an ICE than liquid fuel so did interest me as an alternative to electric last decade, but the rooftop solar -> BEV charging I have now is so hassle-free (and essentially cost-free) so such a big win with my LEAF that I want to do the same with the RV I've been planning on getting.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Another problem tho is that H is just a nasty little atom/molecule to deal with.
Natural Gas / propane burns a lot cleaner in an ICE than liquid fuel so did interest me as an alternative to electric last decade, but the rooftop solar -> BEV charging I have now is so hassle-free (and essentially cost-free) so such a big win with my LEAF that I want to do the same with the RV I've been planning on getting.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:24 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
They're going to sell 300 to 500 million right hand drive Corolla H2s and Hy-Luxes. Instantly. And make a dent in global emissions. They don't even have to bother with the Americas, continental Europe, or central Asia.
300-500million? I think you are off by at least one 0 there. And the current issue is that gas is not expensive enough across most of the world to change driving habits without punitive regulations. And that the cost of fuel is like 1/4 or less the cost of vehicle ownership, until the vehicle is paid off. And that means a new model with less fuel consumption is waiting for older cars to be no longer serviceable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
300-500million? I think you are off by at least one 0 there. And the current issue is that gas is not expensive enough across most of the world to change driving habits without punitive regulations. And that the cost of fuel is like 1/4 or less the cost of vehicle ownership, until the vehicle is paid off. And that means a new model with less fuel consumption is waiting for older cars to be no longer serviceable.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:23 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
The McLaren F1 is maybe a bit of a stretch that there will be EVs performing on the same level as today's supercars is inevitable.
The Hummer electric pickup is faster 0-60 mph and only slightly slower 0-100 mph than the McClaren F1, which it is limited slightly above 100 mph because it's a rock crawling pickup truck, and costs barely over $100k, is mass manufactured, vs the McClaren F1 around $800k and only 100 of which were built.
I'm sorry but electric cars have already far surpassed past supercars, and that's why they are putting electric motors in supercars today.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on June 6, 2023
The Hummer electric pickup is faster 0-60 mph and only slightly slower 0-100 mph than the McClaren F1, which it is limited slightly above 100 mph because it's a rock crawling pickup truck, and costs barely over $100k, is mass manufactured, vs the McClaren F1 around $800k and only 100 of which were built.
I'm sorry but electric cars have already far surpassed past supercars, and that's why they are putting electric motors in supercars today.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on June 6, 2023
You're comparing apples and oranges. There are other supercars (with or without hybrid powertrains) that can make it from 0-60 in less than the 3.3 seconds the F1 can do it it.
But I don't have to explain how obviously inferior every other performance aspect of that truck is compared to the F1. I remember seeing a video in 1998 of an electrified Mazda RX7 beating a Dodge Viper in a drag race. Or course, the Viper can just drive back to the starting line and be ready to go again while the RX7 then had to be recharged and it was modified specifically for drag racing. You could have driven the Viper home. A car's performance is a set of compromises, the F1 is special because of well it minimized all of those compromises.*
The F1 can keep pace and even beat a lot modern supercars on a track. Please don't try to tell me any truck, EV or otherwise can do the same.
Because what I'm getting at here is that it's inevitable that no matter what kind of vehicle you might prefer, there will be an electric version of that that outperforms everything else in every way shape and form.
It'll be hard to argue that EVs have no soul when every other rich asshole you know is in an EV supercar driving circles around your Ferrari Enzo Ferrari (Using this example just 'cause the name is funny), McLaren P1, etc.
*There was an oral history of the McLaren F1 that was posted here on the blue a few years ago and it's definitely worth a read. It really is an amazing piece of engineering.
posted by VTX at 9:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
But I don't have to explain how obviously inferior every other performance aspect of that truck is compared to the F1. I remember seeing a video in 1998 of an electrified Mazda RX7 beating a Dodge Viper in a drag race. Or course, the Viper can just drive back to the starting line and be ready to go again while the RX7 then had to be recharged and it was modified specifically for drag racing. You could have driven the Viper home. A car's performance is a set of compromises, the F1 is special because of well it minimized all of those compromises.*
The F1 can keep pace and even beat a lot modern supercars on a track. Please don't try to tell me any truck, EV or otherwise can do the same.
Because what I'm getting at here is that it's inevitable that no matter what kind of vehicle you might prefer, there will be an electric version of that that outperforms everything else in every way shape and form.
It'll be hard to argue that EVs have no soul when every other rich asshole you know is in an EV supercar driving circles around your Ferrari Enzo Ferrari (Using this example just 'cause the name is funny), McLaren P1, etc.
*There was an oral history of the McLaren F1 that was posted here on the blue a few years ago and it's definitely worth a read. It really is an amazing piece of engineering.
posted by VTX at 9:33 AM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
Your what now?! Newsletter, subscription, etc. I'm suddenly very interested in this, particularly about what such a conversion costs. I live in Minnesota so winter is a whole thing and I don't know how well those fat tires deal with it. I've been looking at ebikes but they're expensive. I'm very handy and the idea of buying a good bike now and adding a motor to it later really appeals to me.
I had a whole reply yesterday that got eaten by an errant ctrl-W, so I'm circling back to it and rewriting it.
The first thing you should know is that riding bikes in snow and winter is definitely not for the faint of heart, and adding an ebike kit even to a fat tire bike doesn't change that much at all. Like there are unavoidable physics-based limitations to two wheeled vehicles in ice or snow which is why you don't usually see motorcycles out in it, even bad ass off/on road dual sport bikes or enduros.
Spiked/studded tires (and good snow removal) definitely helps, as do good disc brakes, and excellent bike handling and riding skills help most of all. Having a drive and throttle does help some, in that you can plow through/over snow easier, and it's handy for traversing a sketchy icy or slushy segment because you can just feather the throttle and focus on balancing and staying up instead of balancing and pedaling at the same time.
Another issue is major range and battery performance loss in cold temps. Anything near or below freezing and you can expect significant range and power loss in the 30-50% range. Anything below about -14 F and many ebikes basicallly stop working, but I've seen reliable reports of people using good ebike batteries down to maybe -20 F. Below that and Lithium Ion batteries basically fall over and die due to how the chemistry works.
Automobile EVs get around this by having battery heaters and temperature regulation, because below a certain temp you get way more range and peak power outputs if you spend some electricity keeping the batteries nice and warm
You can do this with an ebike battery by putting the battery in an insulated cover and adding a couple of those disposable hand warmers like Hot Hands or Little Hotties. I've done this in snow where I just tape a couple of those directly to my battery case and I wrap the whole thing in a thin aluminum flashing sheet I normally use as a windscreen for my camp stove, but something as basic as aluminum kitchen foil would work. This definitely makes a huge difference in total range and speed for winter riding.
The other really super important dangerous thing to know is that you never, ever want to put a cold or frozen battery on a charger. You want to have a plan to bring at least the battery inside, give it plenty of time to warm up and evaporate any condensation and then put it on a charger. If I go riding in near or below freezing temps I wait at least 2-3 hours with the battery in a warm, dry place before even thinking about putting it on a charger.
Charging a cold battery isn't great for its health in general, but charging a frozen one that's below freezing temps will at best kill your battery capacity by causing battery memory state issues, and at worst it's now a ticking time bomb because you caused dendrite growth in the electrolyte gel in the rolls of the cell and possible or eventual internal short circuits, which is how you get thermal runaway events when one cell shorts out, overheats the nearby cells, and starts a chain reaction of burning cells.
Note that this is true for all conventional Li-Ion batteries whether it's in your cellphone, computer or flashlight. This is why people's phone batteries die when they do things like be out in cold temps all day, get into a freezing cold car, throw their phone right on the charger and drop it in the center console. Or worse, put it on the charger in their frozen car and just walk away and leave it for hours because their battery died while out in the snow and their phone was in an external pocket or something. RIP your battery, you're never getting a full charge out of it again. It's done.
For best battery health and longevity you want to charge somewhere between 50F and about 90F. 60-80F is pretty ideal.
And with all of that if you really want to have a fire safety plan if you're charging indoors in any weather. Getting a fire-resistant box like a large ammo can or metal trash can is a good idea. Keeping it near an easily opened door away from flammable objects is a good idea. Keeping a fire extinguisher and stout leather work gloves, foundry gloves or something else to be able to handle a hot flaming battery is also a good idea. I keep some work gloves out if I'm charging indoors. Never leave a battery on a charger and unattended is also a really good idea.
And weather and temps permitting I try to do all of my charging outdoors. Like 99% of it I'm charging it outside my patio door on a concrete patio, and I even try to remember to remove my battery from my bike so if something goes wrong it doesn't take my bike with it.
Another detail is that freezing temps, snow and ice are absolute murder on bicycles in general. Plastics and polymers and even metal get more brittle and prone to breaking. Ice and snow pack can tear your derailleurs right off. Crashing or falling over can taco your rims and wheels, especially if they get wedged into snow or ice and so on.
Where I live I only rarely get snow and it's super slick, sloppy lowland marine snow. It's not enough snow to justify studded/spiked tires. I do personally have decades of experience riding dirt, sand, gravel, mud and rain and snow or ice is really challenging on skinny, non-studded tires. And skinny tires might be better in fresh snow up to about a foot deep because it cuts through it to find the ground and traction.
And while I've gone on fun rides and adventures or even went to the grocery store, I can't really even imagine trying to commute daily in any kind of snow, but I don't have a whole lot of living in long lasting snow like you probably do.
But if my choice was walking or ebiking for 5 miles in snow, I'll definitely take the ebike.
So, yes, ebiking in winter can totally be done, but you need a plan, some battery safety knowledge and some decent bike handling skills and experience riding in difficult low traction environments.
Ok, let's talk ebike conversions. A good DIY ebike kit on a good bike you already know and love that fits you well is basically the absolute best bang for your buck for an ebike. Having a bike that fits you and your needs is a great thing for any bike whether it's analog or powered.
Your choices these days are mid-drives (where the drive is in/near the bottom bracket and applies power to the rear wheel through the chain) and rear hub drives. Front hub drives are dumb and should not exist, so we will be ignoring them and pretending they don't even exist.
They both have pros and cons, but I'm in favor of mid drives for a number of reasons.
Mid drives generally have more torque and power than hub drives watt-for-watt because they use your normal bike drivetrain and take advantage of the gears. They also leave most of your bike alone so if you wanted to do something like have two sets of wheels running winter studded tires on one and normal summer tires on the other, you can do that and you're just swapping wheels as normal. Or, if you thrash or taco your rear wheel you can just go buy a whole new wheel as normal and drop it right in like a normal bike instead of having your hub motor built up into a new wheel.
Drawbacks are that the tend to be more expensive than hub drives, they can cause significant wear and tear on your chain and drivetrain, and some systems like the Bafang BBS drives have known issues getting a clean chainline so it doesn't cross chain too much.
Hub drives offer more simplicity, less drive train wear and tear, are slightly easier to install and some of them have features like regenerative braking, internally geared hubs and generally leave your drivetrain and chainline alone. And there's some really beefy, bombproof rear hub drives out there now.
Drawbacks are generally less torque or top end speed. They also have a nasty habit of "overtorque" and spinning the faced/milled axle in bike dropout lugs and trashing bike frames. The solution to this is to make sure you use a torque arm, which holds the faced/milled axle in place and straps to your chain or seat stays to prevent this. And if you trash a rim with a hub drive you need to take it to a shop to have it rebuilt with new spokes and a rim.
As for installing these best in class DIY kits, it's actually remarkably easy if you have any bike wrenching skills. I mostly know mid drives so I can talk about that more than hub drives, but the process is similar.
For mid drives like the Bafang BBS series you remove your bottom bracket cartridge, the existing cranks and chain rings, and the front derailleur, shifter and cable. The drive unit slides right into the BB shell of your bike frame and gets cranked down and locked with lock rings on the faces of the BB shell. You put square taper bolt crank arms on the drive, add your pedals back to those, put the chain back on... and that's basically most of the mechanical work.
You also either replace your brake levers with the stock ones that have brake sensors in them, or you add stick-on sensors to your existing brake sensors.
The rest of the install is mostly cable management with lots of zip ties, figuring out where to mount your battery and tray (or whatever) and how to rearrange your cockpit to add the computer/controller and throttle, if any. Like when I did my install this is what took most of the work and time is just figuring out where to put everything. If you get a large battery you want to measure your bike frame to make sure there's enough room for it somewhere, and you need some clearance to be able to slide it in/out of the tray of you're going with this kind of battery.
I don't recommend putting batteries on rear racks if it can be avoided, because it really can mess with bike handling and center of gravity issues, and I'm saying that as someone used to overloaded bike touring and carrying heavy loads.
I'm super lucky in that I ride large bikes with traditionally shaped double triangles with a flat top tube, so I get to put my battery vertically on my seat tube so it's right over the cranks and weight of the motor core and right between my legs and center of mass, so it's like it's not even there for bike handling issues.
Finding room for the battery on more modern bike frames like MTBs or comfort hybrids with swoopy hydroformed aluminum can be a huge pain in the ass or total non-starter, so keep that in mind when looking at bikes *and* batteries and kits.
Another thing with mid-drives is they come in different sizes to fit different widths of bottom bracket. The stock, smallest BBS mid drives will fit just about any standard bottom bracket shell and have plenty of extra room. The larger ones are mainly for fat tire or MTB bikes with extended or wider BB shells.
Installing a rear hub drive is similar, except instead of deleting your front cranks and derailleur, you move your rear cassette over to the new wheel (in theory) install the wheel in your dropouts, install your torque arm and lock it down, install any cadence or torque sensors to the front cranks and then deal with the battery and wiring harness stuff. Most hub drives also have a controller box that needs to be installed somewhere, while this control board is integrated into mid-drives like the BBS drives. The motor controller is a separate part from the computer/display part
In addition to all of this if you're riding in rain or snow you want to think about weatherproofing things, especially electrical connections. I applied dielectric grease to all of my connections and plugs including the contacts of my battery and tray, shrink wrapped those in heat shrink tubing, and I even carefully applied gorilla tape to the open slots and parts of my battery tray to keep the muck and water out of it. You can get dielectric grease in little ketchup packet sized packets for a buck or two at auto parts stores and one packet is enough to treat a bike 3-4 times. I reapply like once a year and clean out any gunk.
For DIY systems on normal bikes the current best mid drives are the TSDZ2B, the Bafang BBS drives, particularly the BBS02 and BBSHD and, now the Cyc Pro drives - and I'm rating these from low price to high price as well as low power to high power.
They all have different features and benefits. The TSDZ2/B has torque sensing, and it can even handle multiple chainrings and a front derailleur. The BBS drives are super reliable and have a HUGE ecosystem of spare parts and mods. I use the Bafang BBSHD, which is still one of the most powerful mid drives you can get as far as total peak watts and torque. The Cyc Pro has more modern features like a stock Bluetooth enabled computer and app you can use to tune power levels and other settings, and while it can be a nice, sedate class 2/3 ebike it can also be hot-rodded to something like an absolutely incredible 6000-7000 watts RMS if you happen to want an eMTB or eMoto that can smoke tires and throw rooster tails in sand.
There are newer Bafang mid drives like the m600 but these need special ebike frames to accept the motor, not unlike the Trek/Bosch style drives.
I don't know much about the current state of the art or what's best for hub drives, but there's some really nice ones out there.
As for cost and purchasing?
Yeah, this isn't something you really want to buy on Amazon, eBay or AliBaba, especially the battery. The battery is the most important part of any ebike system and for best life and safety you don't want to cheap out on this and you want to get it from a reputable dealer.
And there are tons and tons of sub-$500 so called "complete" ebike kits out there that are dangerous hot garbage because they're either counterfeit, use cheap batteries and cells that can't handle the peak current loads and are generally a waste of money.
And, yeah ebikes are expensive. When you see ready to ride ebikes under $1000 or even under $1500 or so, they're cutting a lot of corners, starting with the battery and all the way through to really crappy bike components, bad frames and generally selling totally shitty BSOs (bike shaped objects) with the cheapest possible ebike parts bolted on to it to get it down to that price and still make a profit.
Like you can buy whole shipping containers full of these $1000-ish BSO ebikes and probably get the per unit cost down to like $250-500ish, hire a web designer off of Fiverr and start your own dodgy ebike dealership. That's basically what RadPower did, but with some value-added customer service and brick and mortar stores.
There are now dozens/hundreds of dodgy fly by night ebike companies acting like they're domestic ebike dealers and they pop up for a while under a cool name and then vanish when the customer returns and bad reviews stack up, and then they start over with a new name and brand selling the exact same crappy ebikes with new branding stickers on them.
And the "start with a good analog bike" part here is absolutely crucial. A good bike has a frame, bottom bracket and wheel dropouts that are very precisely aligned and this means much greater real world efficiency even before you start looking at components and drivetrain stuff.
My old aluminum gravel/adventure bike that I destroyed was a decent bike, but when I moved my BBSHD over to my new Trucker the ebike drive was, surprisingly, something like 30+ percent more efficient and longer range even though it's a heavier frame, just because it wasn't so beat up and everything was lined up and set up right.
So the price ranges for a decent DIY kit with a large-ish battery range from about $700-900 for a TSDZ2 or BBS02, to about $1500-$2000 for a BBSHD, to $2000-2500 or much more for a hot-rodded Cyc Pro. These good kits and good batteries aren't cheap, but good bikes aren't cheap, either.
My Bafang BBSHD with a 17.5 aH 52V battery, some spare parts and tools was about $1500 with taxes and shipping at the start of the pandemic, and last time I price checked the same set up a few months ago it was more like $1800+ due to inflation and the increased demand for ebike batteries as the ebike world totally blew up during the pandemic.
My steel touring bike retails for about $1500-2000 new on top of that, complete and ready to ride. (It didn't actually cost this much because I built mine up from a bare frame using existing bike parts, ship of Thesus style.)
But if I wanted to build the same exact setup brand new on a brand new bike I'm looking at, oh, like $3,000 to $4,000ish, not including stuff like racks, lights, helmet and all those accessories and needful things.
Which, yeah, it's a lot if I add it all up. That's in the range of a basic Trek eMTB or comfort hybrid or something with a Bosch drive.
The difference between my ebike and a ready to ride Trek ebike is their Bosch drives are class 1/2. They're generally in the 250w to 500w range with 80-ish newton-meters of torque.
My BBSHD with the 52V instead of stock 48V battery is about 1100-1200 watts RMS and peaks out at 2000+ watts, has 160-180 nm of torque, and is somewhere in a grey area between a class 3 and x-class ebike. It'll easily do 30 MPH on the throttle alone, and I've hit 45+ on a relatively flat, straight road. Shit, I can do 25-30+ with an 80 pound load of groceries and my fat ass on it. I've had that bike up to something like a 500+ pound total weight, too. Try that on a cheap BSO ebike and it would crumple like wet cardboard.
I can buy parts and tools and reprogram the whole thing as much as I want without having to take it to an authorized Trek/Bosch service center.
Sure, I don't really get a warranty but I don't need one since the parts for Bafangs are so available you can replace everything from the casing of the mid drive unit to all of the internal gears and parts (including upgrades, like all steel pinion gears!) and programming patch cables, and even add-on features like a bluetooth compatible computer/controller that lets you reprogram the levels on the fly right on your bike without a computer or patch cable.
If I want to upgrade my controller board to a 50 amp capable board and go with a 72v battery I could do that, and I could probably go 50-60+ MPH on that setup. Not that I want to do 50-60 on a steel no-suspension touring bike, but I could. It would also tear ass right up the side of cliff because I can already climb hills so steep I can barely keep the bike from flipping over. My mostly stock BBSHD 52V setup sometimes throws rooster tails of sand and mud if I get steezy with it.
There are a number of reputable dealers for these systems, so I'll list a few here. These sites also have a ton of resources, manuals and videos about how to install them and overviews of all this stuff works or gets installed.
https://ebikes.ca/
https://bafangusadirect.com/
https://lunacycle.com/
https://em3ev.com/
https://www.electrifybike.com/
You also might want to browse Endless Sphere: https://endless-sphere.com/
posted by loquacious at 1:32 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
I had a whole reply yesterday that got eaten by an errant ctrl-W, so I'm circling back to it and rewriting it.
The first thing you should know is that riding bikes in snow and winter is definitely not for the faint of heart, and adding an ebike kit even to a fat tire bike doesn't change that much at all. Like there are unavoidable physics-based limitations to two wheeled vehicles in ice or snow which is why you don't usually see motorcycles out in it, even bad ass off/on road dual sport bikes or enduros.
Spiked/studded tires (and good snow removal) definitely helps, as do good disc brakes, and excellent bike handling and riding skills help most of all. Having a drive and throttle does help some, in that you can plow through/over snow easier, and it's handy for traversing a sketchy icy or slushy segment because you can just feather the throttle and focus on balancing and staying up instead of balancing and pedaling at the same time.
Another issue is major range and battery performance loss in cold temps. Anything near or below freezing and you can expect significant range and power loss in the 30-50% range. Anything below about -14 F and many ebikes basicallly stop working, but I've seen reliable reports of people using good ebike batteries down to maybe -20 F. Below that and Lithium Ion batteries basically fall over and die due to how the chemistry works.
Automobile EVs get around this by having battery heaters and temperature regulation, because below a certain temp you get way more range and peak power outputs if you spend some electricity keeping the batteries nice and warm
You can do this with an ebike battery by putting the battery in an insulated cover and adding a couple of those disposable hand warmers like Hot Hands or Little Hotties. I've done this in snow where I just tape a couple of those directly to my battery case and I wrap the whole thing in a thin aluminum flashing sheet I normally use as a windscreen for my camp stove, but something as basic as aluminum kitchen foil would work. This definitely makes a huge difference in total range and speed for winter riding.
The other really super important dangerous thing to know is that you never, ever want to put a cold or frozen battery on a charger. You want to have a plan to bring at least the battery inside, give it plenty of time to warm up and evaporate any condensation and then put it on a charger. If I go riding in near or below freezing temps I wait at least 2-3 hours with the battery in a warm, dry place before even thinking about putting it on a charger.
Charging a cold battery isn't great for its health in general, but charging a frozen one that's below freezing temps will at best kill your battery capacity by causing battery memory state issues, and at worst it's now a ticking time bomb because you caused dendrite growth in the electrolyte gel in the rolls of the cell and possible or eventual internal short circuits, which is how you get thermal runaway events when one cell shorts out, overheats the nearby cells, and starts a chain reaction of burning cells.
Note that this is true for all conventional Li-Ion batteries whether it's in your cellphone, computer or flashlight. This is why people's phone batteries die when they do things like be out in cold temps all day, get into a freezing cold car, throw their phone right on the charger and drop it in the center console. Or worse, put it on the charger in their frozen car and just walk away and leave it for hours because their battery died while out in the snow and their phone was in an external pocket or something. RIP your battery, you're never getting a full charge out of it again. It's done.
For best battery health and longevity you want to charge somewhere between 50F and about 90F. 60-80F is pretty ideal.
And with all of that if you really want to have a fire safety plan if you're charging indoors in any weather. Getting a fire-resistant box like a large ammo can or metal trash can is a good idea. Keeping it near an easily opened door away from flammable objects is a good idea. Keeping a fire extinguisher and stout leather work gloves, foundry gloves or something else to be able to handle a hot flaming battery is also a good idea. I keep some work gloves out if I'm charging indoors. Never leave a battery on a charger and unattended is also a really good idea.
And weather and temps permitting I try to do all of my charging outdoors. Like 99% of it I'm charging it outside my patio door on a concrete patio, and I even try to remember to remove my battery from my bike so if something goes wrong it doesn't take my bike with it.
Another detail is that freezing temps, snow and ice are absolute murder on bicycles in general. Plastics and polymers and even metal get more brittle and prone to breaking. Ice and snow pack can tear your derailleurs right off. Crashing or falling over can taco your rims and wheels, especially if they get wedged into snow or ice and so on.
Where I live I only rarely get snow and it's super slick, sloppy lowland marine snow. It's not enough snow to justify studded/spiked tires. I do personally have decades of experience riding dirt, sand, gravel, mud and rain and snow or ice is really challenging on skinny, non-studded tires. And skinny tires might be better in fresh snow up to about a foot deep because it cuts through it to find the ground and traction.
And while I've gone on fun rides and adventures or even went to the grocery store, I can't really even imagine trying to commute daily in any kind of snow, but I don't have a whole lot of living in long lasting snow like you probably do.
But if my choice was walking or ebiking for 5 miles in snow, I'll definitely take the ebike.
So, yes, ebiking in winter can totally be done, but you need a plan, some battery safety knowledge and some decent bike handling skills and experience riding in difficult low traction environments.
Ok, let's talk ebike conversions. A good DIY ebike kit on a good bike you already know and love that fits you well is basically the absolute best bang for your buck for an ebike. Having a bike that fits you and your needs is a great thing for any bike whether it's analog or powered.
Your choices these days are mid-drives (where the drive is in/near the bottom bracket and applies power to the rear wheel through the chain) and rear hub drives. Front hub drives are dumb and should not exist, so we will be ignoring them and pretending they don't even exist.
They both have pros and cons, but I'm in favor of mid drives for a number of reasons.
Mid drives generally have more torque and power than hub drives watt-for-watt because they use your normal bike drivetrain and take advantage of the gears. They also leave most of your bike alone so if you wanted to do something like have two sets of wheels running winter studded tires on one and normal summer tires on the other, you can do that and you're just swapping wheels as normal. Or, if you thrash or taco your rear wheel you can just go buy a whole new wheel as normal and drop it right in like a normal bike instead of having your hub motor built up into a new wheel.
Drawbacks are that the tend to be more expensive than hub drives, they can cause significant wear and tear on your chain and drivetrain, and some systems like the Bafang BBS drives have known issues getting a clean chainline so it doesn't cross chain too much.
Hub drives offer more simplicity, less drive train wear and tear, are slightly easier to install and some of them have features like regenerative braking, internally geared hubs and generally leave your drivetrain and chainline alone. And there's some really beefy, bombproof rear hub drives out there now.
Drawbacks are generally less torque or top end speed. They also have a nasty habit of "overtorque" and spinning the faced/milled axle in bike dropout lugs and trashing bike frames. The solution to this is to make sure you use a torque arm, which holds the faced/milled axle in place and straps to your chain or seat stays to prevent this. And if you trash a rim with a hub drive you need to take it to a shop to have it rebuilt with new spokes and a rim.
As for installing these best in class DIY kits, it's actually remarkably easy if you have any bike wrenching skills. I mostly know mid drives so I can talk about that more than hub drives, but the process is similar.
For mid drives like the Bafang BBS series you remove your bottom bracket cartridge, the existing cranks and chain rings, and the front derailleur, shifter and cable. The drive unit slides right into the BB shell of your bike frame and gets cranked down and locked with lock rings on the faces of the BB shell. You put square taper bolt crank arms on the drive, add your pedals back to those, put the chain back on... and that's basically most of the mechanical work.
You also either replace your brake levers with the stock ones that have brake sensors in them, or you add stick-on sensors to your existing brake sensors.
The rest of the install is mostly cable management with lots of zip ties, figuring out where to mount your battery and tray (or whatever) and how to rearrange your cockpit to add the computer/controller and throttle, if any. Like when I did my install this is what took most of the work and time is just figuring out where to put everything. If you get a large battery you want to measure your bike frame to make sure there's enough room for it somewhere, and you need some clearance to be able to slide it in/out of the tray of you're going with this kind of battery.
I don't recommend putting batteries on rear racks if it can be avoided, because it really can mess with bike handling and center of gravity issues, and I'm saying that as someone used to overloaded bike touring and carrying heavy loads.
I'm super lucky in that I ride large bikes with traditionally shaped double triangles with a flat top tube, so I get to put my battery vertically on my seat tube so it's right over the cranks and weight of the motor core and right between my legs and center of mass, so it's like it's not even there for bike handling issues.
Finding room for the battery on more modern bike frames like MTBs or comfort hybrids with swoopy hydroformed aluminum can be a huge pain in the ass or total non-starter, so keep that in mind when looking at bikes *and* batteries and kits.
Another thing with mid-drives is they come in different sizes to fit different widths of bottom bracket. The stock, smallest BBS mid drives will fit just about any standard bottom bracket shell and have plenty of extra room. The larger ones are mainly for fat tire or MTB bikes with extended or wider BB shells.
Installing a rear hub drive is similar, except instead of deleting your front cranks and derailleur, you move your rear cassette over to the new wheel (in theory) install the wheel in your dropouts, install your torque arm and lock it down, install any cadence or torque sensors to the front cranks and then deal with the battery and wiring harness stuff. Most hub drives also have a controller box that needs to be installed somewhere, while this control board is integrated into mid-drives like the BBS drives. The motor controller is a separate part from the computer/display part
In addition to all of this if you're riding in rain or snow you want to think about weatherproofing things, especially electrical connections. I applied dielectric grease to all of my connections and plugs including the contacts of my battery and tray, shrink wrapped those in heat shrink tubing, and I even carefully applied gorilla tape to the open slots and parts of my battery tray to keep the muck and water out of it. You can get dielectric grease in little ketchup packet sized packets for a buck or two at auto parts stores and one packet is enough to treat a bike 3-4 times. I reapply like once a year and clean out any gunk.
For DIY systems on normal bikes the current best mid drives are the TSDZ2B, the Bafang BBS drives, particularly the BBS02 and BBSHD and, now the Cyc Pro drives - and I'm rating these from low price to high price as well as low power to high power.
They all have different features and benefits. The TSDZ2/B has torque sensing, and it can even handle multiple chainrings and a front derailleur. The BBS drives are super reliable and have a HUGE ecosystem of spare parts and mods. I use the Bafang BBSHD, which is still one of the most powerful mid drives you can get as far as total peak watts and torque. The Cyc Pro has more modern features like a stock Bluetooth enabled computer and app you can use to tune power levels and other settings, and while it can be a nice, sedate class 2/3 ebike it can also be hot-rodded to something like an absolutely incredible 6000-7000 watts RMS if you happen to want an eMTB or eMoto that can smoke tires and throw rooster tails in sand.
There are newer Bafang mid drives like the m600 but these need special ebike frames to accept the motor, not unlike the Trek/Bosch style drives.
I don't know much about the current state of the art or what's best for hub drives, but there's some really nice ones out there.
As for cost and purchasing?
Yeah, this isn't something you really want to buy on Amazon, eBay or AliBaba, especially the battery. The battery is the most important part of any ebike system and for best life and safety you don't want to cheap out on this and you want to get it from a reputable dealer.
And there are tons and tons of sub-$500 so called "complete" ebike kits out there that are dangerous hot garbage because they're either counterfeit, use cheap batteries and cells that can't handle the peak current loads and are generally a waste of money.
And, yeah ebikes are expensive. When you see ready to ride ebikes under $1000 or even under $1500 or so, they're cutting a lot of corners, starting with the battery and all the way through to really crappy bike components, bad frames and generally selling totally shitty BSOs (bike shaped objects) with the cheapest possible ebike parts bolted on to it to get it down to that price and still make a profit.
Like you can buy whole shipping containers full of these $1000-ish BSO ebikes and probably get the per unit cost down to like $250-500ish, hire a web designer off of Fiverr and start your own dodgy ebike dealership. That's basically what RadPower did, but with some value-added customer service and brick and mortar stores.
There are now dozens/hundreds of dodgy fly by night ebike companies acting like they're domestic ebike dealers and they pop up for a while under a cool name and then vanish when the customer returns and bad reviews stack up, and then they start over with a new name and brand selling the exact same crappy ebikes with new branding stickers on them.
And the "start with a good analog bike" part here is absolutely crucial. A good bike has a frame, bottom bracket and wheel dropouts that are very precisely aligned and this means much greater real world efficiency even before you start looking at components and drivetrain stuff.
My old aluminum gravel/adventure bike that I destroyed was a decent bike, but when I moved my BBSHD over to my new Trucker the ebike drive was, surprisingly, something like 30+ percent more efficient and longer range even though it's a heavier frame, just because it wasn't so beat up and everything was lined up and set up right.
So the price ranges for a decent DIY kit with a large-ish battery range from about $700-900 for a TSDZ2 or BBS02, to about $1500-$2000 for a BBSHD, to $2000-2500 or much more for a hot-rodded Cyc Pro. These good kits and good batteries aren't cheap, but good bikes aren't cheap, either.
My Bafang BBSHD with a 17.5 aH 52V battery, some spare parts and tools was about $1500 with taxes and shipping at the start of the pandemic, and last time I price checked the same set up a few months ago it was more like $1800+ due to inflation and the increased demand for ebike batteries as the ebike world totally blew up during the pandemic.
My steel touring bike retails for about $1500-2000 new on top of that, complete and ready to ride. (It didn't actually cost this much because I built mine up from a bare frame using existing bike parts, ship of Thesus style.)
But if I wanted to build the same exact setup brand new on a brand new bike I'm looking at, oh, like $3,000 to $4,000ish, not including stuff like racks, lights, helmet and all those accessories and needful things.
Which, yeah, it's a lot if I add it all up. That's in the range of a basic Trek eMTB or comfort hybrid or something with a Bosch drive.
The difference between my ebike and a ready to ride Trek ebike is their Bosch drives are class 1/2. They're generally in the 250w to 500w range with 80-ish newton-meters of torque.
My BBSHD with the 52V instead of stock 48V battery is about 1100-1200 watts RMS and peaks out at 2000+ watts, has 160-180 nm of torque, and is somewhere in a grey area between a class 3 and x-class ebike. It'll easily do 30 MPH on the throttle alone, and I've hit 45+ on a relatively flat, straight road. Shit, I can do 25-30+ with an 80 pound load of groceries and my fat ass on it. I've had that bike up to something like a 500+ pound total weight, too. Try that on a cheap BSO ebike and it would crumple like wet cardboard.
I can buy parts and tools and reprogram the whole thing as much as I want without having to take it to an authorized Trek/Bosch service center.
Sure, I don't really get a warranty but I don't need one since the parts for Bafangs are so available you can replace everything from the casing of the mid drive unit to all of the internal gears and parts (including upgrades, like all steel pinion gears!) and programming patch cables, and even add-on features like a bluetooth compatible computer/controller that lets you reprogram the levels on the fly right on your bike without a computer or patch cable.
If I want to upgrade my controller board to a 50 amp capable board and go with a 72v battery I could do that, and I could probably go 50-60+ MPH on that setup. Not that I want to do 50-60 on a steel no-suspension touring bike, but I could. It would also tear ass right up the side of cliff because I can already climb hills so steep I can barely keep the bike from flipping over. My mostly stock BBSHD 52V setup sometimes throws rooster tails of sand and mud if I get steezy with it.
There are a number of reputable dealers for these systems, so I'll list a few here. These sites also have a ton of resources, manuals and videos about how to install them and overviews of all this stuff works or gets installed.
https://ebikes.ca/
https://bafangusadirect.com/
https://lunacycle.com/
https://em3ev.com/
https://www.electrifybike.com/
You also might want to browse Endless Sphere: https://endless-sphere.com/
posted by loquacious at 1:32 PM on June 6, 2023 [7 favorites]
Rhedyn: If you're only getting 25% of what is a really abundant generation resource that would otherwise go to waste, is that a problem?
If you pump it into the grid and charge electric cars with it then it won't go to waste.
No matter how you slice it, hydrogen is less energy efficient than electric. It has other advantages and those may be significant, but efficiency (wells-to-wheels or whatever it is called for electric) is not one of them.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you pump it into the grid and charge electric cars with it then it won't go to waste.
No matter how you slice it, hydrogen is less energy efficient than electric. It has other advantages and those may be significant, but efficiency (wells-to-wheels or whatever it is called for electric) is not one of them.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 3:13 PM on June 6, 2023 [1 favorite]
That's an amazing comment, I'm sorry you did it twice Loquacious. I actually work from home but sometimes I want to run an errand or we need like two things from the grocery store and it's silly to take a car but too far to walk. So I don't need to be hardcore about winter. The streets are clear and mostly dry most of the time.
Ditto for taking my kid to a park (especially the close one that's down a long steep hill).
A high quality bike alone will get me to use it for those things more often. Then I think the BBSHD is really the sweet spot.
Your enthusiasm for this really shines through. I think you'd be an amazing salesperson for these products if you were so inclined. The Bafang site pointed me to a couple of bike shops relatively near me (in MN) that sell these kits as well as good bikes and frames to mount them on. I hope I can run into your ebike enthusiasm and knowledge twin there.
posted by VTX at 7:41 AM on June 7, 2023
Ditto for taking my kid to a park (especially the close one that's down a long steep hill).
A high quality bike alone will get me to use it for those things more often. Then I think the BBSHD is really the sweet spot.
Your enthusiasm for this really shines through. I think you'd be an amazing salesperson for these products if you were so inclined. The Bafang site pointed me to a couple of bike shops relatively near me (in MN) that sell these kits as well as good bikes and frames to mount them on. I hope I can run into your ebike enthusiasm and knowledge twin there.
posted by VTX at 7:41 AM on June 7, 2023
Also in the Guardian - another, somewhat different view.
posted by motty at 10:04 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by motty at 10:04 AM on June 7, 2023 [2 favorites]
Petroleum-based power plants and the ICE have to go, no doubt. But, whether hydrogen, ICE, or EV, you still have to put another lane in the freeways every time another batch of high-school grads gets a new car.
The paradigm shifts ever so slowly.
posted by mule98J at 2:32 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
The paradigm shifts ever so slowly.
posted by mule98J at 2:32 PM on June 7, 2023 [1 favorite]
Your enthusiasm for this really shines through. I think you'd be an amazing salesperson for these products if you were so inclined.
Yep. I'm super stoked about ebikes and the fact that it's helping me keep riding even though my knees are shot and I'm dealing with some major health issues. I would be having a really hard time where I live without a car without one.
They really and truly are magical to me. There's a certain swoopy but also gentle and placid joy like flying that's just really tangible and good when riding a bike that is up there with the joys of surfing, skiing, hiking or many other rewarding physical or motion-based activities.
The really magical part for me about ebikes is how I can get something like 99% to more than a 100% of all that swoopy, gentle, placid joy with an ebike with like 1-10% of physical effort.
Which is totally cheating and I still have a weird guilt complex about it because it's really just that good.
I mean we're starting with one of the most enjoyable and efficient modes of transportation on the entire planet and we're adding reliable and mostly silent and unobtrusive power and bestowing bionic legs, and if you happen to like riding bicycles as something enjoyable that isn't necessarily about pain or effort - a good ebike might be one of the best things, ever.
There's like many dozens or hundreds of miles of densely forested single track trails all around me, and I have cruised through many of them as slow as possible just kicking back and making use of all the consistent and predictable torque of my BBSHD and drinking it all in and forest bathing, standing up on my pedals and out over handlebars like a dog with their nose out the window on a lazy Sunday drive through the country.
If I was younger or just not dealing with chronic long covid stuff I would definitely be very into starting some kind of full service + ebike shop or just helping people do custom conversions and tune ups. If I could afford it I'd already have a full on ebike specific shop complete with a lab and bench for building custom batteries and repairing and analyzing batteries.
I already know what this kind of shop would look like and what I would need. Start with a decent logging oscilloscope with some logic tools, transistor/mosfet response curve test functions, a way to test capacitor response (that's less complicated than the usual way, heh), a nice benchtop power supply, a battery/cell analyzer, a nice solder and reflow station and a spot welder for building/repairing custom battery packs and some of the usual hand tools.
The crazy thing is that these days I could probably get started on the battery/electronics side of all that for maaaaybe under $1k USD because you can get battery spot welders for like $50-75, a passable benchtop power supply of sufficient amps/watts for like $100, decent solder, heatgun and reflow station for like $100-200 or less, small battery analyzers in the same range (and shoot, you can get smart chargers for individual Li-Ion cells in the 18650-21700 range for well under $100) and a decent starter no-name oscilloscope and logic probe setup for under $500 and maybe have enough budget left over for a digital/video microscope and screen.
With the gear and prices you can find for gear from China these days, It's never been more affordable to start this kind of lab. The vague shopping list I'm talking about used to be more like $10-20k+ for domestic tools from the usual sources like Fluke, Tectronics and so on.
Still is, but what you're paying for is traceable calibration and certification, which is less of an issue if you just want to know how dead or alive a power MOSFET or capacitor is for an ebike. The pass/no pass for this is really low for ebikes and the parts you're testing and replacing are bog standard and dirt cheap jelly bean parts.
I have definitely thought about this a lot and I am kind of salty about the health problems I've been having because I would have business cards printed to at least do this for hire at least two years ago.
I love bikes of all kinds in general, and I'm pretty nerdy and technical and I love getting people out of cars and on bikes, so it would be a totally easy and logical fit.
A high quality bike alone will get me to use it for those things more often. Then I think the BBSHD is really the sweet spot.
Yeah, the BBSHD has some weird quirks and rough edges, but, man, it's a tough and powerful little thing, and once you get used to the quirks it's really docile, manageable, functional, reliable and useful whether you're doing a regular commute or extending your activity range.
I'm also remembering two particular quirks and rough edges I usually like to mention.
The first one is about the lack of torque sensing on the pedals and how the cadence sensing works. The stock cadence sensing setting is 3 motor poles past the Hall effect sensor in the motor core itself, which is usually about 1/4-1/2 of a full revolution of a crank arm.
So if you're in a low speed turn like doing a slower than walking speed 90 degree or 180 U-turn you really don't want the power assist to kick in while you have your handlebars crossed up. For one it will dump you on your ass, but for two even in the stock lowest PAS level it's really torque-y and could totally bend your forks or front rim in ways it's not designed for.
And if the power is cranked way up it will absolutely buck you like you just you dumped the clutch on a motorcycle.
So what I've learned to do is to use either one of my brake levers with sensors as a sort of E-clutch. Any time I don't want the power to kick in I now just automatically have a hand on one the levers to feather them enough to activate the Hall effect sensor in them.
At this point I also pretty much always feather my brakes when shifting gears, too, just like a motorcycle clutch except I can use either lever, and obviously I don't pull it all the way in like a moto clutch, I just instinctively feather it a little until I feel the motor cut out.
Related to all of that I also highly recommend the optional gear change sensor which detects movement on the derailleur cable and cuts motor power for about 0.5 seconds, which is a little short and can still make you grind gears before the chain fully wraps the next gear, but it's also certainly prevented major chain damage or full chain breaks in difficult high torque or high speed moments on my bike.
Btw, this gear change sensor can be unscrewed like a clamshell. You don't have to try to take off your derailleur cable and thread the needle with a cable. The whole thing opens up and clamps around any bare wire part of your shifter cable and there's a little pulley and cable guide in there and the pulley activates (yes, again) a Hall Effect sensor in the sealed half of the blockk, which means you can stick it on a bare cable on your frame. But I have mine installed right up against the last cable stop before the RD, and then have a custom cut full length cable housing that stops at the shift sensor block, which has the right size hole in either end to accept a cable ferrule very nicely.
Another thing related to all of this is that you really, really need to remember to turn off the drive or set the PAS to zero if you're, say, stopped and sitting on your top tube or lounging about on your bike as you do if you're stopping for a water break or a nice view.
For the first month with the ebike conversion I had a raging case of the zoomies because "holy shit a bicycle that's faster than a moped or scooter WEEE!", so there was a bunch of times where I stopped to lounge on my top tube and kick it and forget that the ebike was on at the highest power level because of course it's dead silent when it's not underway, so I would accidentally bump or goose the throttle with my hip, butt or elbow and about 5 milliseconds later there's like 3 angry horses kicking in and trying to throw me off the bike sideways.
Which actually brings us to quirk and rough edge number two: DANGER WARNING ACHTUNG
So one of the quirks of the BBSHD (and I think all of the BBS drive) is that the chainrings really, really like to drop chains even more than most analog/unpowered 1x drives and chain rings.
It's a known thing, and it only happens to me if i try to shift too many gears too quickly at high speeds or bumpy terrain.
But the danger is if you leave the power and pedal assist turned on and you try to do the usual cyclist thing of picking up the chain, getting it started and turning the cranks while walking the bike forward...
Well, yeah, the PAS turns as soon as you move the cranks far enough for it to kick in, and it's usually right at the worst time when your fingers are between the chain and chainring.
As a life long cyclist, as someone who has never even owned a powered vehicle until I built this ebike - this has been a totally weird thing for me to adapt to, but you really want to treat any ebike (especially something powerful like the BBSHD) like it's a motorcycle.
If you're going to work on it or have your hands anywhere near any moving parts, make sure it's all the way turned off.
posted by loquacious at 5:30 PM on June 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
Yep. I'm super stoked about ebikes and the fact that it's helping me keep riding even though my knees are shot and I'm dealing with some major health issues. I would be having a really hard time where I live without a car without one.
They really and truly are magical to me. There's a certain swoopy but also gentle and placid joy like flying that's just really tangible and good when riding a bike that is up there with the joys of surfing, skiing, hiking or many other rewarding physical or motion-based activities.
The really magical part for me about ebikes is how I can get something like 99% to more than a 100% of all that swoopy, gentle, placid joy with an ebike with like 1-10% of physical effort.
Which is totally cheating and I still have a weird guilt complex about it because it's really just that good.
I mean we're starting with one of the most enjoyable and efficient modes of transportation on the entire planet and we're adding reliable and mostly silent and unobtrusive power and bestowing bionic legs, and if you happen to like riding bicycles as something enjoyable that isn't necessarily about pain or effort - a good ebike might be one of the best things, ever.
There's like many dozens or hundreds of miles of densely forested single track trails all around me, and I have cruised through many of them as slow as possible just kicking back and making use of all the consistent and predictable torque of my BBSHD and drinking it all in and forest bathing, standing up on my pedals and out over handlebars like a dog with their nose out the window on a lazy Sunday drive through the country.
If I was younger or just not dealing with chronic long covid stuff I would definitely be very into starting some kind of full service + ebike shop or just helping people do custom conversions and tune ups. If I could afford it I'd already have a full on ebike specific shop complete with a lab and bench for building custom batteries and repairing and analyzing batteries.
I already know what this kind of shop would look like and what I would need. Start with a decent logging oscilloscope with some logic tools, transistor/mosfet response curve test functions, a way to test capacitor response (that's less complicated than the usual way, heh), a nice benchtop power supply, a battery/cell analyzer, a nice solder and reflow station and a spot welder for building/repairing custom battery packs and some of the usual hand tools.
The crazy thing is that these days I could probably get started on the battery/electronics side of all that for maaaaybe under $1k USD because you can get battery spot welders for like $50-75, a passable benchtop power supply of sufficient amps/watts for like $100, decent solder, heatgun and reflow station for like $100-200 or less, small battery analyzers in the same range (and shoot, you can get smart chargers for individual Li-Ion cells in the 18650-21700 range for well under $100) and a decent starter no-name oscilloscope and logic probe setup for under $500 and maybe have enough budget left over for a digital/video microscope and screen.
With the gear and prices you can find for gear from China these days, It's never been more affordable to start this kind of lab. The vague shopping list I'm talking about used to be more like $10-20k+ for domestic tools from the usual sources like Fluke, Tectronics and so on.
Still is, but what you're paying for is traceable calibration and certification, which is less of an issue if you just want to know how dead or alive a power MOSFET or capacitor is for an ebike. The pass/no pass for this is really low for ebikes and the parts you're testing and replacing are bog standard and dirt cheap jelly bean parts.
I have definitely thought about this a lot and I am kind of salty about the health problems I've been having because I would have business cards printed to at least do this for hire at least two years ago.
I love bikes of all kinds in general, and I'm pretty nerdy and technical and I love getting people out of cars and on bikes, so it would be a totally easy and logical fit.
A high quality bike alone will get me to use it for those things more often. Then I think the BBSHD is really the sweet spot.
Yeah, the BBSHD has some weird quirks and rough edges, but, man, it's a tough and powerful little thing, and once you get used to the quirks it's really docile, manageable, functional, reliable and useful whether you're doing a regular commute or extending your activity range.
I'm also remembering two particular quirks and rough edges I usually like to mention.
The first one is about the lack of torque sensing on the pedals and how the cadence sensing works. The stock cadence sensing setting is 3 motor poles past the Hall effect sensor in the motor core itself, which is usually about 1/4-1/2 of a full revolution of a crank arm.
So if you're in a low speed turn like doing a slower than walking speed 90 degree or 180 U-turn you really don't want the power assist to kick in while you have your handlebars crossed up. For one it will dump you on your ass, but for two even in the stock lowest PAS level it's really torque-y and could totally bend your forks or front rim in ways it's not designed for.
And if the power is cranked way up it will absolutely buck you like you just you dumped the clutch on a motorcycle.
So what I've learned to do is to use either one of my brake levers with sensors as a sort of E-clutch. Any time I don't want the power to kick in I now just automatically have a hand on one the levers to feather them enough to activate the Hall effect sensor in them.
At this point I also pretty much always feather my brakes when shifting gears, too, just like a motorcycle clutch except I can use either lever, and obviously I don't pull it all the way in like a moto clutch, I just instinctively feather it a little until I feel the motor cut out.
Related to all of that I also highly recommend the optional gear change sensor which detects movement on the derailleur cable and cuts motor power for about 0.5 seconds, which is a little short and can still make you grind gears before the chain fully wraps the next gear, but it's also certainly prevented major chain damage or full chain breaks in difficult high torque or high speed moments on my bike.
Btw, this gear change sensor can be unscrewed like a clamshell. You don't have to try to take off your derailleur cable and thread the needle with a cable. The whole thing opens up and clamps around any bare wire part of your shifter cable and there's a little pulley and cable guide in there and the pulley activates (yes, again) a Hall Effect sensor in the sealed half of the blockk, which means you can stick it on a bare cable on your frame. But I have mine installed right up against the last cable stop before the RD, and then have a custom cut full length cable housing that stops at the shift sensor block, which has the right size hole in either end to accept a cable ferrule very nicely.
Another thing related to all of this is that you really, really need to remember to turn off the drive or set the PAS to zero if you're, say, stopped and sitting on your top tube or lounging about on your bike as you do if you're stopping for a water break or a nice view.
For the first month with the ebike conversion I had a raging case of the zoomies because "holy shit a bicycle that's faster than a moped or scooter WEEE!", so there was a bunch of times where I stopped to lounge on my top tube and kick it and forget that the ebike was on at the highest power level because of course it's dead silent when it's not underway, so I would accidentally bump or goose the throttle with my hip, butt or elbow and about 5 milliseconds later there's like 3 angry horses kicking in and trying to throw me off the bike sideways.
Which actually brings us to quirk and rough edge number two: DANGER WARNING ACHTUNG
So one of the quirks of the BBSHD (and I think all of the BBS drive) is that the chainrings really, really like to drop chains even more than most analog/unpowered 1x drives and chain rings.
It's a known thing, and it only happens to me if i try to shift too many gears too quickly at high speeds or bumpy terrain.
But the danger is if you leave the power and pedal assist turned on and you try to do the usual cyclist thing of picking up the chain, getting it started and turning the cranks while walking the bike forward...
Well, yeah, the PAS turns as soon as you move the cranks far enough for it to kick in, and it's usually right at the worst time when your fingers are between the chain and chainring.
As a life long cyclist, as someone who has never even owned a powered vehicle until I built this ebike - this has been a totally weird thing for me to adapt to, but you really want to treat any ebike (especially something powerful like the BBSHD) like it's a motorcycle.
If you're going to work on it or have your hands anywhere near any moving parts, make sure it's all the way turned off.
posted by loquacious at 5:30 PM on June 7, 2023 [5 favorites]
The Guardian have published a follow-up article, "Fact check: why Rowan Atkinson is wrong about electric vehicles", by a reporter from the Carbon Brief organisation. Worth a read.
posted by vincebowdren at 12:42 AM on June 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by vincebowdren at 12:42 AM on June 8, 2023 [8 favorites]
(loquacious - wow. Many thanks. Particularly the ebikes.ca and other links. Eyes opened. Wrenches ready.)
posted by Artful Codger at 8:17 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Artful Codger at 8:17 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Because what I'm getting at here is that it's inevitable that no matter what kind of vehicle you might prefer, there will be an electric version of that that outperforms everything else in every way shape and form.
No, that's the point I was making. You were saying the McClaren F1 was 'special', and I specifically chose the electric truck because it beats the F1 in 2 of the most dramatic ways. It wouldn't have been fair to choose a modern Porsche that's even faster and can corner better.
Sure, it was great for it's time, maybe it has some 'soul', whatever that means, but performance wise, electric cars change the game and ice engines, other than the most bespoke, cannot compete. Once you can run an electric car for the length of a NASCAR race, they are history.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:12 AM on June 8, 2023
No, that's the point I was making. You were saying the McClaren F1 was 'special', and I specifically chose the electric truck because it beats the F1 in 2 of the most dramatic ways. It wouldn't have been fair to choose a modern Porsche that's even faster and can corner better.
Sure, it was great for it's time, maybe it has some 'soul', whatever that means, but performance wise, electric cars change the game and ice engines, other than the most bespoke, cannot compete. Once you can run an electric car for the length of a NASCAR race, they are history.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:12 AM on June 8, 2023
It's not hard to make a car be extremely good at one or two things. I could grab any number of older V8 sedans and modify it a little bit to make it blow the doors off an F1 and that truck in a 1/4 mile drag race. The first time they hit a turn the McLaren is gone.
It's very very very hard to make a car be good at almost everything. And it's not just "good" at most everything, for a LOOOOONG time it was THE BEST at everything.
So that truck will beat an F1 to the first turn but the F1 will complete at least two laps for every one the truck does.
It was never intended to go racing but, of course, they took it racing. Five of them competed in the 24hrs of Le Mans and, despite being in the "slower" sports car class one of them managed to win the whole thing outright, another car came in 3rd and the rest is too hazy. In their class they came in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Sports cars are not supposed to be able to do that against purpose built race cars. This isn't a terrifically apt comparison but it's a good view of just how much faster a car that's made to go fast will go. Also the video quality makes me feel old.
Good cars are enjoyable to drive and provoke an emotional response. That's what having "soul" means. Atkinson may not think the EVs that end up coming down the line have soul but he'll be wrong. People will buy those cars and love them passionately.
posted by VTX at 9:56 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
It's very very very hard to make a car be good at almost everything. And it's not just "good" at most everything, for a LOOOOONG time it was THE BEST at everything.
So that truck will beat an F1 to the first turn but the F1 will complete at least two laps for every one the truck does.
It was never intended to go racing but, of course, they took it racing. Five of them competed in the 24hrs of Le Mans and, despite being in the "slower" sports car class one of them managed to win the whole thing outright, another car came in 3rd and the rest is too hazy. In their class they came in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Sports cars are not supposed to be able to do that against purpose built race cars. This isn't a terrifically apt comparison but it's a good view of just how much faster a car that's made to go fast will go. Also the video quality makes me feel old.
Good cars are enjoyable to drive and provoke an emotional response. That's what having "soul" means. Atkinson may not think the EVs that end up coming down the line have soul but he'll be wrong. People will buy those cars and love them passionately.
posted by VTX at 9:56 AM on June 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
Sorry y'all, I hate to tell ya but fuelies are just impractical.
* A fuel-burning piston engine can never be more than 30% efficient.
* You have to drive to a special store to buy fuel and have it put in your car- you can't just plug it in at home or wherever there's an outlet. This means you have to burn more fuel to buy fuel!
* Fuel is crazy expensive. Even in the Benighted States, where Gas Is a God Given Right and they routinely wage wars to secure it, it's over five buckaroos per hat-tenth. It's even more in the wild hinterlands of the alleged "rest of the world".
* Fuelies have loads of extraneous parts that wear out and cost a mint.
* Regenerative braking is not a possibility with fuel-burners. The brake pads wear out at a shocking rate!
I can't afford an electric car, nor any car other than the dumb old van I have (and "live" in ( i m not alive tho rilly)) but... if I had an extra $3000 I would put an electric motor connected to the transmission tailshaft via motorcycle chain. I would use an induction motor with an industrial variable-frequency drive and probably 24 volts worth of LiFePO4 batteries, which represent about half of the 3k. The only bespoke component is the sprocket adapter for the tailshaft (it must be specially made in order to preserve the angle of the driveshaft's dangle.) Then I would be able to drive the van around at 30 kph or so for about 5km- enough to shunt around the city for basic errands (and move between parking spots ofc) and little enough to recharge via rooftop solar panels in a few days of full sun. Failing that... the existing engine and trans still work, and if they don't then I'd have the means to move the rig out of the lane without calling for a tow.
Of course i have no money and nowhere to work on the van so i will not do this, but it's nice to dream while we still can, yes?
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
* A fuel-burning piston engine can never be more than 30% efficient.
* You have to drive to a special store to buy fuel and have it put in your car- you can't just plug it in at home or wherever there's an outlet. This means you have to burn more fuel to buy fuel!
* Fuel is crazy expensive. Even in the Benighted States, where Gas Is a God Given Right and they routinely wage wars to secure it, it's over five buckaroos per hat-tenth. It's even more in the wild hinterlands of the alleged "rest of the world".
* Fuelies have loads of extraneous parts that wear out and cost a mint.
* Regenerative braking is not a possibility with fuel-burners. The brake pads wear out at a shocking rate!
I can't afford an electric car, nor any car other than the dumb old van I have (and "live" in ( i m not alive tho rilly)) but... if I had an extra $3000 I would put an electric motor connected to the transmission tailshaft via motorcycle chain. I would use an induction motor with an industrial variable-frequency drive and probably 24 volts worth of LiFePO4 batteries, which represent about half of the 3k. The only bespoke component is the sprocket adapter for the tailshaft (it must be specially made in order to preserve the angle of the driveshaft's dangle.) Then I would be able to drive the van around at 30 kph or so for about 5km- enough to shunt around the city for basic errands (and move between parking spots ofc) and little enough to recharge via rooftop solar panels in a few days of full sun. Failing that... the existing engine and trans still work, and if they don't then I'd have the means to move the rig out of the lane without calling for a tow.
Of course i have no money and nowhere to work on the van so i will not do this, but it's nice to dream while we still can, yes?
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 1:17 PM on June 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
The problem with rental ebikes and escooters even more so is that the people who rent them always leave them smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk, smack dab in the middle of both sidewalks on the corner at street intersections and smack dab in front of the sidewalk where there are steps up to our courtyards. Plus the there are the scooter riders who play chicken with pedestrians when they ride them on the sidewalk. Not to mention all the Uber, Doordash and Lyft drivers who pick up and drop off riders or deliver meals and park in Metro bus stops. None of them are exactly the most community building apps in practice.
posted by y2karl at 4:14 PM on June 8, 2023
posted by y2karl at 4:14 PM on June 8, 2023
Plus the fact that they screw said immigrants out of a fair wage, make them use their own cars and pay their own insurance. All of which comprise a form of high tech slavery to my mind.
posted by y2karl at 4:24 PM on June 8, 2023
posted by y2karl at 4:24 PM on June 8, 2023
Truthout: Fights for Climate, Labor and Indigenous Rights Converge at Auto Supply Chains
The electric vehicle supply chains are neither green nor just — but they are crucial organizing spaces, activists say
posted by y2karl at 4:52 PM on June 8, 2023
The electric vehicle supply chains are neither green nor just — but they are crucial organizing spaces, activists say
posted by y2karl at 4:52 PM on June 8, 2023
Amy Findlay point out that there is simply not enough lithium for electric cars to save us: You Will Never Own An Electric Car.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:27 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mbrubeck at 2:27 PM on June 25, 2023 [1 favorite]
Amy Findlay point out that there is simply not enough lithium for electric cars to save us: You Will Never Own An Electric Car.
Or perhaps not: there's an enormous amount of lithium in seawater, and technologists have been working hard in recent years to make extraction feasible; see e.g. https://interestingengineering.com/lithium-from-seawater
posted by vincebowdren at 12:52 AM on June 26, 2023
Or perhaps not: there's an enormous amount of lithium in seawater, and technologists have been working hard in recent years to make extraction feasible; see e.g. https://interestingengineering.com/lithium-from-seawater
posted by vincebowdren at 12:52 AM on June 26, 2023
Sodium ion batteries are also coming. And it is likely that there are other types of batteries we can use as well. And all of it is still way better than fossil fuels.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:34 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by hydropsyche at 5:34 AM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]
The You Will Never Own An Electric Car article claims that we would need thousands of times more lithium and I would like to see their math. Current hard rock mining reserves are estimated at 26 million tons, a BEV needs about 50kg LCE. That would give us about half a billion BEVs if we used it all that way. There are currently about 1.5 billion cars in world. If nothing changes we don't have enough lithium, but it's not "thousands of times" as far as I can see.
The estimated reserves have been going up a lot too as lithium becomes more precious (statistica 13 million tons in 2010 to 26 million tons in 2022). If the oil extraction history is any indication I would expect, that we keep finding more sources for a while.
Lots more I disagree with in that article, though their goal of decreasing car traffic is a noble one.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:06 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
The estimated reserves have been going up a lot too as lithium becomes more precious (statistica 13 million tons in 2010 to 26 million tons in 2022). If the oil extraction history is any indication I would expect, that we keep finding more sources for a while.
Lots more I disagree with in that article, though their goal of decreasing car traffic is a noble one.
posted by the_dreamwriter at 11:06 AM on June 26, 2023 [5 favorites]
Also the article leads off with a requirement that cars have 400 miles of range which is only sort of true because BEVs are currently luxury cars. Going forward the cars at the Geo Metro end of the market will have a lot less. When you can fill your car at home every night with 1 minute of effort practically no one needs 400 miles of range and a good chunk of the market will be represented by cars with half that or less.
posted by Mitheral at 11:14 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 11:14 AM on June 26, 2023 [2 favorites]
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