I cry fowl!!!
Yes, if you use the vehicle inefficiently, you have drastically lower range.
That is EXACTLY what I said in the comment that you selectively quoted to misrepresent what I said.
But, you do you
Inefficiently, like not freezing your ass off .
Your article also was referencing performance at 20*F. Gee, does it ever get colder than that in Minnesota in the winter?
What if you don’t have a garage? How can you efficiently heat the car’s battery?
Your dishonesty through selective quoting is quite impressive.
The very next line after what you quoted:
" About two-thirds of the extra energy consumed is used to heat the cabin."
Of course, you do not seem to care about the actual facts of the situation. Just misrepresenting half data and half quotes to try to prove your opinion as a fact.
| RAV4 | ID4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Front Head Room | 39.5 in. | 41.1 in. |
| Front Hip Room | 54.3 in. | 54.4 in. |
| Front Leg Room | 41.0 in. | 41.1 in. |
| Front Shoulder Room | 57.8 in. | 57.5 in. |
| Rear Head Room | 39.5 in. | 38.4 in. |
| Rear Hip Room | 47.7 in. | 46.7 in. |
| Rear Leg Room | 37.8 in. | 37.6 in. |
| Rear Shoulder Room | 56.4 in. | 55.9 in. |
From Edmunds.com
Total Interior Volume (cubic feet)
id.4 99.9
Rav4 98.9
Pilot 153.1
Expedition 191.2
Audi E-tron has 57 cu ft behind 1st row ( I could not find that number including the front row). Compare that to the Rav4’s 69.8 cu ft behind the 1st row, and the E-tron is smaller than a rav4 or id.4
I thought y’all had car tuques up there. 
Seriously, not all places and use cases favor BEVs. Some transport cases would be better served by hydrogen powered vehicles, which could be powered by green hydrogen. But the early adopters have driven the market toward BEVs. The outlier cases unfortunately will be more costly. And the ungaraged might end up relying on public transportation more.
I don’t know anything about low temperature impact on supercapacitors. They are a dark horse in consumer EVs right now, but who knows what breakthroughs might happen.
1 Like
I think tall people tend to prefer California Kings. They’re narrower than a standard king, but longer.
Brrr, I like my cabin heater. I don’t think that’s something I’d be willing to give up… especially in Minnesota.
I have a regular king sized bed. My feet dangle off the end. It is not nearly as problematic as driving in a short car. Getting into short cars is like getting into shoes 2 sizes too small. Then I have to recline the seat and drive from a reclined position.
It definitely would be used differently in the winter than in summer months.
But, then again, we don’t drive that much in the winter anyways. Short drives and all.
It seems that we would be able to have a fully heated cabin for at least the drive away from the house, without relying on the battery at all.
Also, this ridiculous exchange started with a discussion of what might work best for my household in Minnesota. We have a garage with a subpage that can support the service needed. The car would be warm when leaving without question.
True, this option doesn’t exist for everyone, I never implied that it did.
Um, I think it’s more “challenged” than “gifted,” if the gift restricts choices.
I missed this earlier. Energy losses during charging vary by conditions as well as voltage. Here’s a link.
EPA range vs real world is a higher profile issue. It isn’t new in the sense of EPA mpg for ICE (and YMMV isn’t an acronym for nothin). But it isn’t a “no one ever hits EPA” issue. Another link.
1 Like
Since I am not in the styrofoam peanut transport business, nor interested in how many undergrads I can fit in my vehicle, Interior Volume is not a primary consideration. To be fair, I have a minivan I can use for covered hauling, and a small pickup truck for open air transport.
I am also well within the central SD on height, so I fit in most driver’s seats.
well, when you have a “fleet” then you can add cars with complementary features to extend the capabilities of the group of cars that you have.
It can make a lotta sense to then add an electric car that can be used primarily as a commute vehicle and grocery hauler.
BEVs are not at the point where they are all things for all people. There’s lots of development that is still needed. I’m gonna coin the phrase “littoral cars”. EVs have a practical limitation to stay tethered to their home by a radius of half their charge capacity. Is a road trip impossible? No, but it’s not easy. There are obstacles to overcome, and range anxiety is real.
It will really suck if the manufacturers and state legislatures prematurely decide that EVs must be all things to all people before the engineers have figured out how to do so.
2 Likes
Well said.
I agree that they aren’t all things to all people. And driving an EV on a road trip sounds like a pita. On the other hand, I don’t like road trips. I usually fly if I’d have to drive for more than 3-4 hours. Heck, I’ve flown NYC to Boston, which is only about a four hour drive.
I used to have a plug in hybrid. We got rid of it because it was a lemon, but i really miss the electric function. I replaced it with a perfectly nice ICE. But i got used to leaving the house with a full battery every morning. Now i constantly need to think about buying gas. How full is the tank? Do i need to go out of my way to fill up, or can it wait until I’ll be driving but a gas station? I just never thought about that when i was driving mostly in the battery. You don’t realize what a nuisance it is to buy gas until you get used to almost never buying gas.
Because it was only a plug in hybrid and not a full EV it had shitty range on the battery. And yet, we almost never exceeded it. For driving to the train station, picking up groceries, visiting friends… an EV is incredibly convenient.
We didn’t buy an EV because the market wasn’t quite there when we last shopped. But my next new car will be an EV. Admittedly, we have two cars, and I’ll probably stick with ICE for one, for the occasional road trip. But after we get that EV I expect that 80%-90% of the total miles we drive will be electric.
(Even with the hybrid most of our miles were electric. If only one of us was driving we always took the hybrid, and only used the gas-only car when we both needed to drive at the same time. And we always gave the hybrid to whoever had to drive farther.)
That being said…i wouldn’t consider an EV if I couldn’t charge it in my garage. It’s really easy and mindless to plug it in when you park. It’s not easy to have to go somewhere and think about charging.
3 Likes
Re energy loss at low temps: it’s not a percentage decrease, it’s kind of a flat “fee”. Or maybe it’s a cost per hour of driving rather than per mile. The extra energy cost is literally the cost of using electricity to warm the battery, and it’s not much more electricity to warm a large battery than a small one.
So if you have a car with a small range you burn a lot of the juice just warning up the battery. But if you have a car with a large range you barely notice the loss. Or so say my friends with Teslas.
1 Like
I buy gas when I’m at Costco. I’m at Costco more frequently than I need gas so it is never a nuisance, nor something I ever worry about. When I pull in to Costco I check to see if I have less than a third of a tank. If it’s under, I fill it. If not, I don’t. I check GoA during the 75 seconds it takes to fill the tank.
Before Covid I was driving a car with a smaller gas tank & similar MPGs and I was driving more. So it occasionally happened that I had to gas up somewhere else, but rarely. There’s two gas stations right near my house that I drive past every day anyway, so not a nuisance to stop there either, just slightly more expensive than Costco.
The only significant time I don’t buy gas at Costco or think about buying gas is if I’m on a road trip. And as you mentioned… EV is a PITA on a road trip. And unlike you, I like road trips. Especially in the new car.
That’s interesting; this is how my Mom & Dad did car ownership too before they got divorced. Rather than the typical his & hers arrangement, they had a station wagon, a little hatchback, and my Dad had a motorcycle. IF the weather was ok Dad took the motorcycle and Mom took the hatchback. If the weather was crummy then Dad took the hatchback and Mom took the station wagon, since Dad was commuting into the city and Mom was just driving around town. We usually took the station wagon on road trips because we wanted the space, but not always.
Other than choosing extra space for road trips their decisions were driven by saving gas, like you. They just didn’t have EVs because at that point they didn’t exist. (At least not commonly available for purchase.)
I’ve never heard of another couple sharing cars like that until today.
My car has more cargo space than hubby’s and it’s AWD and his is RWD. So if he’s picking up something large then he’ll take my car and I’ll take his. Or if he’s going somewhere in a snow storm and I’m not then he’ll take mine. So it’s not like we never switch it up. But that’s rare and only for a specific reason.
Around here the Costco line is almost always a 15+ minute commitment.
It definitely is not a convenience, even when in the area frequently.
1 Like