EVs are quieter due to lack of engine noise. This is especially noticeable when paused at intersections. EVs don't "idle." There's also no engine shake, something which never bothered me in ICE cars until I started going back and forth between an EV and an ICE car. (Most) EVs have a single gear, which means you always have power when you want it, like when you want to overtake someone heading up a hill. You don't have to wait for your car to find a lower gear when you mash the accelerator. EVs don't have exhaust. Mostly not an issue for the driver but still nice. If you have a home charger, EVs start every day with a full "tank." EVs are typically have cheaper maintenance and fuel costs, which, in some cases, offsets the higher upfront cost. There are downsides too, of course, the biggest being charging times (if no home charger or road trips), range (if you travel a lot) and upfront cost, but if you can sort those, they are huge improvement. I'll never own an ICE car again.
> Do American power points not charge an EV? It’s come up repeatedly on this thread that you need a home charger.
Standard outlets (like what you plug your phone/computer charger into) in the US are 120V and 5-20A.
US homes sometimes also have outlets that are 240V/20-40A traditionally used for electric clothes dryers, and those are what home Level 2 EVSEs (not technically chargers) are usually plugged into, or sometimes a dedicated 240V/40A RV plug is installed for EV charging.
That said, if you don't need to charge fast, or don't drive more than 30 miles a day, a 120V outlet can more than suffice for daily charging needs.
100% to the GP on the smoothness/silence, and also regen braking as you said. I just love the torque; you can accelerate hard, an ICEV would be broadcasting the same level of acceleration with at least a 1km radius of noise yet here we are in complete silence.
Please add remote/scheduled control of AC/heater, remote unlock to the list. These are seriously awesome.
On my 244v, the Tesla mobile charger that came with my 3 is plenty good enough. I try to charge from the PV, so an 8A cap from that isn't terrible.
I'm not a one-pedal driver, but I do love regenerative braking.
danans is right about charging at 120v. It's doable for some, depending on their needs (at a charging speed of 3-5 mph). But I live in a townhouse, and my parking spot is far enough from my electrical panel that I'd have to run a cord past my neighbor's unit. I had to have a trench dug and conduit laid to bring power out to my spot, and at that point it just makes sense to go for a charger with 240v (which charges at 30-50 mph).
Many hybrids are also quiet and fixed gear ratio. I won’t switch back to gasoline-only cars for many of the same reasons of comfort. I’d love an EV but I still have to drive long distances regularly, and hybrid range is often even better than most gasoline cars.
The Prius architecture is always terribly described, but it's effectively a differential. Always in mesh, no gears to shift. The speed of the wheels is varied relative to the speed of the ICE by shifting power between generators and motors.
So, to the driver it feels like a CVT with very fast ratio adaptation, but mechanically there's no ratio being varied. It's all fixed gearing, and the variation is done with motor RPMs and torque.
Most all hybrids that operate in series mode, or primarily in series mode.
The Chevy Volt and all current Honda hybrids work this way. The main motor spins the wheels directly at a fixed ratio. The engine primarily operates as a generator. Then they do have a lock up clutch to connect the engine to the wheels when their speeds align at cruise and there is an efficiency gain to be had from eliminating conversion losses. https://youtu.be/QLUIExAnNcE
Also, technically most Toyota hybrids are also fixed ratio, most of them use planetary gears with two electric motors to simulate gear ratios with respect to the engine. It is somewhat confusingly called an eCVT, although the variable part isn’t the gearing, it’s the speed of the motors connected to the gearing. What changes is the relative speeds of MG1/MG2. It’s like a differential in a car, but backwards.
Parallel hybrids are the ones that drive like regular cars. Like Honda IMA, Hyundai’s hybrids, anything labelled “mild” hybrid —- those all have old school transmissions.
I used to love driving my wife's sporty little Carolla. Felt kind of like a go-kart compared to my Tacoma. Now I have a Chevy Bolt and I'm so spoiled by the quiet, the lack of engine shake, very smooth acceleration curve, rarely moving my foot onto the break. It handles better, it accelerates faster, it feels better in normal traffic conditions, and it feels MUCH better in heavy traffic because I have so much more control. I like it better in pretty much every way.
>like when you want to overtake someone heading up a hill. You don't have to wait for your car to find a lower gear when you mash the accelerator.
I believe whilst this has shifted over the years manual shifting is still more common than automatic.
>EVs are typically have cheaper maintenance and fuel costs
Depends on where you live. Much of Europe has seen a spike in electricity prices. Bit more bearable when you have solar panels but those don't help in the evenings/night when most of the charging happens.
I recently bought an electric car and it is an enjoyable experience. It makes no noise, there is loads of space everywhere. I don't visit gas stations anymore, I have less stress in traffic situations; the car handles all the workload of heavy traffic. I rarely use the brakes and mostly drive using one pedal. It is by far the most comfortable car I have ever driven.
The cheery on top is its performance. It feels awesome to have a supercar available at a moments notice if you want too, although it gets normal and boring very fast. Also, it is scary to have loads of torque and you have to respect that.
Overall, electric cars offer a very good bang for the buck.
In the end, mechanically, the cars are very simple and you feel that simplicity. They feel polished and well engineered
I get a Renault Zoë occasionally through our car sharing. It's my favourite of the cars available for all but very long trips. But I agree that you have to respect the torque, even in a minor car like the Zoë. I find myself sometimes accelerating dangerously just because it's so much fun!
Try it in very slow and in particular stop-and-go traffic. The acceleration curve is very smooth and predictable and makes these conditions a lot less stressful.
If you have a garage, by far the biggest benefit is charging overnight, starting the day with a full charge, and never having to go to a gas station. If you don't have convenient home charging, I'm not sure I'd recommend an EV just yet.
We got ours in December, and the most unexpected benefit for me is sitting at stop lights, in traffic, or in a drive through. When the car is stopped, it's essentially off. No engine idling vibrations, no noise, no emissions. It's kind of peaceful. I hadn't really realized how much idling in a gas car bothered me before.
I in general don't like driving, and I don't understand how anyone who's ever owned an EV could ever want to go back to an ICE vehicle:
1. As others have pointed out, the maintenance is much less. Not to mention, of course, the electricity costs much less than equivalent gas.
2. The cars are just so much cleaner for an individual. No gas smell, no oil changes, etc.
3. They are much quieter.
4. Even if you drive a lot more slowly, the smooth acceleration is much more pleasurable. Plus, the quick acceleration does come in handy when you want to get out of uncomfortable situations.
I compared costs to drive a Tesla model y for 1000 miles and a Toyota Camry hybrid for 1000 miles when buying a car recently.
With my electrical costs in SF Bay Area, that cost was $94 per 1000 miles on a Tesla and $100 per 1000 miles on a Camry hybrid.
However Tesla was $20,000 more than a Camry and Camry had wider, more comfortable seats.
We went with a Camry and judging by its reliability record I would probably not have to worry about anything other than a fluid change for a decade or two
> With my electrical costs in SF Bay Area, that cost was $94 per 1000 miles on a Tesla
With the EV2-A rate plan [1] (which you should definitely use if you drive an EV any significant amount), the 1000 miles cost much less if you limit charging to the off peak times.
The Model Y gets 3.3-3.8 miles/kWh. Let's say 3.6 miles/kWh average.
The savings in operational energy cost for the Tesla will never pay for the difference in price, but the Model Y and Camry are fundamentally different cars in performance and functionality, so it's not really an apples to apples comparison.
A more sensible comparison would be between a top-trim Camry XLE ($35000) and an entry-level trim VW ID.4 ($40000 - $7500 tax credit = $32500).
But you have a point that there are very few inexpensive midsize EV sedans on the market right now.
EV-A rate is a non-starter because it pushes your electrical costs to between $0.46 and 0.57 per kWh between the hours of 3pm and midnight.
Sure you can try to shift your laundry to the morning, but I suspect there would still be higher overall energy costs with EV-A especially if you have a family.
The only way electric car would make sense with my rates is if I paid few thousands to install a second meter or paid tens of thousands to install solar.
I bought a used low mileage 2020 Camry hybrid LE with 47+ mpg and front hip room(ie seat width) 4 inches wider than that of model y for $26000.
Comparable mileage wise teslas model ys were being sold for about $47000.
I searched through MYLR forums and Facebook groups and landed on reported 0.27-0.265 kWh/mi which is pretty close to your estimate of kWh per 1000mi.
The biggest challenge for me was that I would not be able to arrive at $0.26 per kWh without further investments into my electrical infrastructure which would further reduce the cost savings from going electric.
Tesla MYLR while being better at acceleration is ultimately not a model s - it’s a family car like a Camry. There are some benefits to it being electric or a hatchback but they did not justify an upfront cost and a fairly negligible cost of driving reduction.
Note: this could be a CA issue as I’m aware that our energy costs are easily 3 times of some other states
PS I was specifically seeking out LE trims on Camry because they offer 5mpg advantage over more expensive trims
Yes, California has some of the worst electricity prices in the country, something like 3 times the national average.
OTOH, I pay 4 cents per kWh to charge my EV after 10pm. I pay about as much in electricity costs per year as I was paying for gasoline per month on the last car.
Great acceleration helps make being a terrible driver that doesn't know how to merge less uncomfortable for you at the expense of whoever is behind you.
You can roll through the ramp doing your best impression of a semi truck at 20mph and then when you realize you're about to have 500ft to merge into traffic that's going 60-70mph you can mat it and be going traffic speed in that time.
And the best part is that everyone will think the work van behind you that wanted to carry 40mph through the ramp but couldn't because you were in their way is the one who's doesn't know how to merge when they can barely do 45 by the end of the ramp.
Having a zero pollution power source lets the car do things that would be unsafe in a normal vehicle. Preheating, or precooling is safe in an electric car but can cause dangerous accumulation of carbon monoxide if running a fossil fuel engine.
That’s just a random example.
Generally EVs are cheaper to operate, are quieter, have a lower centre of gravity, and are more spacious.
In theory they could be cheaper and more reliable, but currently Tesla makes mostly luxury models and has poor quality control. That’s just them, and isn’t anything to do with EV technology.
Other manufacturers will eventually make a cheap EV with better reliability than a Toyota.
> Having a zero pollution power source lets the car do things that would be unsafe in a normal vehicle. Preheating, or precooling is safe in an electric car but can cause dangerous accumulation of carbon monoxide if running a fossil fuel engine.
Which is like, relevant inside a building only, at which point preheating and cooling isn't that useful
If you're going to preheat your car in the garage in the winter, you're probably better off installing a heat pump to heat the whole garage. Heating the car itself with its resistive heating is going to be very wasteful.
With EVs you need to heat the batteries, not just the cabin, so that's a huge amount of mass that needs to be heated up. If you try to run the batteries cold on an EV it's going to kill the range because current battery chemistry is not optimized for low temperatures.
Which would be great for heating up the cabin but I think too small to heat up the whole mass of the car including the batteries, especially if the temperature is below-freezing!
my model 3 with a heat pump does just fine for both cabin and battery in Canadian winter. My uninsulated, detached garaged built in the 1920s would be astronomically expensive and irresponsible to heat. Instead I spend about 10-20 cents worth of hydro to heat the car before I go somewhere through an app. By the time I get my coat and boots on the car is nice and warm.
There is also more than enough heat to get the battery into the right thermal conditions for optimal DC Fast charging on road trips when it's well below freezing. I have seen exactly the same charge curve in both summer and winter, peaking at 170 kW (max for Model 3 SR+) and slowly tapering.
OP was clearly talking about pollution at point of use. But even so, having a choice of your source of energy is important. Creating and maintaining the infrastructure for gas also pollutes, beyond the usage.
Number one thing I love about mine, when I press the 'go' button, it goes.
They have a lot of power and because you don't have to bring an engine up to RPM and shift, and bring up to RPM, and shift.. and on..
That power is also instantaneous. However far down I push on the pedal, I'm at that speed basically right away.
Another huge thing, is that they are quiet. There is still a bit of road noise from wind and the physical contact of the wheels with the road. But compared with almost any typical car, its basically silent.
Also, they don't stink. You might not notice it, but your car smells. It gets on you and the people around you. My car doesn't smell like gas or exhaust or anything.
Oh and not to mention, basically nothing ever goes wrong. There is so much less to go wrong on an EV. We don't have a bunch of coolant and pumps sloshing around effectively trying to cool a giant, shaking, moving lump of iron. With out all that rattling, things just don't need as much maintenence.
> We don't have a bunch of coolant and pumps sloshing around
I thought all mainstream EVs were liquid-cooled? I'm sure the motor and battery still need cooling, though perhaps less than exploding dino juice engines. If this weren't true, Tesla wouldn't sell branded jugs of coolant ;-)
Cooling systems for regular ICE cars need to dissipate around 1/3 of the nominal engine power. So if you have a modest 150hp car (112kW), the cooling system needs to be able to dissipate around 40kW of power. In reality it's even more, because you need to have some safety margin.
The cooling system in an EV are much, much smaller. You're looking at maybe about 20kW for a Tesla Model 3 with 450hp motors, and this includes heat rejection from the air conditioner.
(on the other hand, the air conditioner on EVs is a _critical_ component, because the main battery can't tolerate being heated to more than +90C like regular ICE engines)
Yup. The "1/3-rd of mechanical power" is an empirical rule.
However, it seems reasonable once you think about it.
The mechanical power of a car is about 25-30% of the total heat generated. So a 150hp car actually generates about 450hp of heat energy. Most of that power is indeed lost in exhaust. The 1/3 of 150hp is 50hp, around 10% of the total.
I suppose you must be right but I've never even touched or had to think about that. My technician hasn't mentioned anything either. I suppose maybe because there isn't a big oily thing the coolant is moving through it isnt a bother?
* they are quieter.
* they are smoother.
* you may not care about performance but lots of people do like it.
* they require less maintenance (which is a cost saving, sure, but also a convenience issue)
* if you can charge at home you don’t have to take time to visit the gas station.
Considering my wife got her wallet stolen at a gas station (thief came right in the unlocked passenger door and swiped it from the center compartment), this is a huge perk for us. Gas stations are also all environmental disasters.
I rented a Tesla 3 the last time we took a trip. It has some fundamental flaws (shitty rear window visibility) that have nothing to do with it being an EV, but it fully convinced me that my next car will be electric.
It's quiet
It's fast -- you say you know, but it's not about the acceleration as much as it is the immediate response: put the pedal down, and you're accelerating. Doesn't matter if you're stopped, going 30, or going 60 -- you have speed on demand, and it changes how you drive.
I guess some people don't like it, but one pedal driving (letting the regen do the braking just by letting off the accelerator) was awesome for me: I used the brake pedal less than ten times over a week, and my gas car seems tedious to pedal now.
Not sure how to describe the rest, but it was just better. I like my gas car much less now.
All those oil changes PLUS changing the engine and/or transmission in 10 years (for me that’s about 150k miles). I drive a hybrid, which has some of the advantages and some of the disadvantages of both. I need to be able to do cross-country trips, but EV’s appeal to me on their lower long term costs and all the advantages others have mentioned.
I bought a plug-in hybrid several years ago, Prius Prime with 25 mile battery range. It is a good transition, as I wasn't ready go go all electric at the time. My next vehicle will be an EV.
Since we are no longer commuting, we rarely need to buy gas. It is essentially an EV, that has the convenience of gas power when going on long trips.
Buy a $200 inverter and you can have basic power (lights/router/modem, aquariums) in the case of a power outage. I've had to do this two weeks in a row in our third-world-power Silicon Valley.
I like it because an EV is a gas vehicle. It's also propane powered vehicle. It's also a diesel. It's also solar powered. It's also natural gas. It's whatever generator you can find to plug it into at that moment in time.
In the event of economic uncertainty, the gas stations are the first to run out and begin rationing resulting in miles long lines. An EV has many, many options to keep you operating in a disaster scenario.
Plus, unlike gas cars, my EV is always fully charged ready to go every morning. How many people have a 1/4 or even an 1/8 of a gas tank sitting in their driveway right now?
If you enjoy having to change your oil every 3-6 months , then EVs might be disappointing because there's no oil to change. There are no transmissions, no gears (for most EVs at least), the cars are mostly silent, can't asphyxiate you in your garage, don't have to be jumped if you left the lights on all night, and you should be able to get many hundreds of thousands of miles where the car will drive mostly the same in ten years as when it was new (save for battery life decrease). Dealing with gas pumps and trying not to get gasoline drips on your shoes is a thing of the past.
I'm not aware of any EV that requires/recommends differential oil change schedules. Pretty much all fluids in EVs are 'lifetime' because there's no chance of fouling caused by engine blowby, unlike gas cars.
Even gas cars typically have 'lifetime' differential oil fills these days. With no chance of contamination from blowby, there's not really any other mechanism for degradation besides oil just degrading over time from heating/cooling.
- An order of magnitude safer in terms of fires per mile
- Much quieter ride
- Much less maintainence, less moving parts, brake pads almost never need to be replaced, no transmission, no oil changes
- Internet-connectivity-related features, generally much nicer user experience
- You can use them as a mobile office, they can be camped in with the heating on overnight, there's no concept of idling and no carbon monoxide issues with sitting in an EV with the car on as long as you want
- If either your home or office has charging, you basically leave full every time
One other thing not mentioned - they brake faster. Like hybrids, EVs have dual brake systems - regenerative + brake pads. On an EV, the regen can be much more powerful than a hybrid since the motor/batter are larger.
One other thing not mentioned - they brake faster.
No, they do not. Any car has brakes that can overcome its tires. All that is added by regenerative braking is the ability to lock the wheels more quickly.
Tires and weight (which EVs have a lot more of) are the larger factors in stopping distance.
One thing I like about strong regenerative braking is how quickly it responds. If some kid darts out in front of me, there's a fraction of a second while I get my foot onto the brake pedal before the car starts to slow meaningfully. But with regenerative braking, the car is already slowing down significantly just by me lifting my foot. Just a little extra built-in margin, which is nice.
> No, they do not. Any car has brakes that can overcome its tires.
Well yeah, that's why we have ABS right?
But there's more to it than that... having a good way to engine brake (and in this case regen) keeps your brakes cool and prevents them from overheating. Regardless of stopping power in ideal conditions, overheated brakes are not safe.
Have you ever overheated your brakes? I’ve managed to do it twice. It took a $25 dollar set of brake pads about 8 laps on a race track. It takes multiple repeated hard stops of >~50mph delta to overheat even crappy bargain basement brakes on an economy car.
Brake discs on modern cars are vented and work like a centrifugal fan to cool them actively. They continually shed heat, so even dragging a brake pedal the entire way down a long mountain, as many drivers will do, is well within safety margins. So to overheat them, you have to get the heat in fast. Like 0-100-0-100-0-100-0 fast.
On the road, the only vehicles that experience brake fade are loaded trucks descending a grade, or suspects in a police pursuit.
I don’t think overheating brakes is that common of a problem either outside of a sports car on a race track or a truck going down a mountain. The real advantage of regen brakes is way longer between pad changes and less accompanying dust.
I'm not sure this is true. They're a lot heavier and on most cars the brakes should be powerful enough to lock the wheels which is the max braking power you're going to get.
To compare a car which is available in both ICE and EV, a 2018 Fiat 500e (electric, with a tiny battery bank good for only ~90 miles) weighs almost 3000 pounds, whereas the same car with ICE is ~2400lb.
> The 500E is a retrofit of an ICE, not a ground-up EV. All you can derive from that comparison is that retrofitting is inefficient.
That's all true, but I'm uncertain how much difference it can make. The bulk of the weight difference comes from the batteries, which will be there whether a retrofit or new design. Everything related to the ICE systems was removed, so it's not like there was any leftover weight from the conversion.
Weight distribution can likely be better in a chassis designed solely for EV, but total weight seems likely to be about the same either way.
The only thing I know about is their acceleration but that isn’t important to me personally as I prefer to drive slowly.