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PreciousH 2 days ago

no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet to fully replace gas powered cars?

whynotmaybe 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Everybody knows it won't fully replace it.

It's impossible to go on a long off-road travel with the EV equivalent of 50L of gas in a jerrycan.

But some are twisting the narrative to say that because of that reason EV will fail.

Millions of people could use an EV in their daily life, just like I can go without a pickup in my daily life and rent one whenever I need one.

nslsm 2 days ago | parent [-]

I’m not affluent enough to buy one car for my daily life and rent another for whenever I have to leave the city.

whynotmaybe a day ago | parent | next [-]

How often do you leave the city for more than 200km?

Each time I travel oversea, I take a "public transportation plane", not my private jet.

It's not because an EV doesn't fit for 100% of your requirements, that it doesn't fit for everyone.

No car fits for 100%.

8note a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You could alternatively just rent a car or truck when you need one, and not one a car at all?

if you arent affluent, all the costs that come with car ownership are a bit excessive.

even still you might want to go for the cheap EV, and just not do things that require a pickup, rather than paying the costs of the pickup all the time

neogodless a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Show the math.. only about 12% of buyers buy new cars. Economical, efficient EVs can be had for $20k. Renting a big truck occasionally can be as little as $20, but even at $5000 for a truck rental... most people are buying trucks that cost $10, $20, $30K more than an enconomy car.

timbit42 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Look at a hybrid.

margalabargala 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Fully

Everyone's willing to admit that.

EV tech is there to replace the vast majority of gas powered cars.

We don't need to get to "fully" to have a replacement event. Horses can travel down trails that cars cannot, that didn't save them.

jillesvangurp 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> no one is willing to admit the EV tech isn't just there yet

The easy explanation is that it's because it is there. The article is about the rapid decline of companies that believe otherwise. They aren't doing to great.

applfanboysbgon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

98% of new car sales in Norway are EV at this point. How do you admit something that is not true?

tw-20260303-001 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Yes. Five million of them does not require many cars. 180k in 2025. Compare that to 2.4 million in Germany.

quickthrowman 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A wealthy nation with a small population that has plenty of money to update their infrastructure is not comparable to upgrading the grid and converting the fleet of 250M cars in the US, which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure.

The US grid is already stressed by all these new data centers, where is the power to send 10kW of power minimum to tens to hundreds of millions of vehicles every day going to come from?

100M vehicles times 10kW divided by one million is One Million Megawatts.

One Thousand Gigawatts. That’s five hundred 2GW power plants. Four thousand solar panels make 1MW, four million solar panels make 1GW, four billion solar panels make 1000 GW.

And that’s 40% of the fleet converted to EVs, and does not account for diesel semi-tractors being converted to EV.

wasabi991011 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

> A wealthy nation with a small population that has plenty of money to update their infrastructure is not comparable to upgrading the grid and converting the fleet of 250M cars in the US, which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure.

The US is plenty wealthy per capita, around the same or more than Norway. It has plenty of money to upgrade it's infrastructure, it just chooses to spend it on other goals such as bombing Iran.

danaris 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> The US is plenty wealthy per capita

This is not a particularly useful statistic when talking about the number of cars being bought.

Almost invariably, "per capita wealth" uses mean wealth. This is dramatically different from the median wealth.

When you've got a few individual people worth upwards of $200 billion, that means that each one of them adds roughly $1000 to the "per capita wealth" number, while only ever accounting for something like a dozen cars at the outside.

applfanboysbgon 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> which is a mess of 50 states who spend varying amounts of money on their infrastructure.

That is not a tech problem, which is the claim I was replying to.

I saw your deleted comment about four charging stations costing $200,000 or so. Four petrol stations also cost that much. Nobody is saying infrastructure is free, but phasing out infrastructure is simply a matter of time and political will, not a fundamental tech problem.

quickthrowman 2 days ago | parent [-]

I agree that we’ll eventually fully convert to EVs, it’s just going to take way longer than a lot of people expect. It’s going to be tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade electrical transmission, distribution, and premises distribution.

Edit: You nailed it, it’s a political problem in the US.

applfanboysbgon 2 days ago | parent [-]

> It’s going to be tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to upgrade electrical transmission, distribution, and premises distribution.

Would certainly happen a lot faster if, for example, America spent the $200 billion the Pentagon just asked for the Iran war on infrastructure instead. It would even benefit Americans, imagine that! America is the wealthiest country in the world by far, it has the capital to facilitate the process, but taxpayers would rather blow it on bombing schools across the world.

danaris 17 hours ago | parent [-]

> taxpayers would rather

I think if you look at poll numbers, you'll find that taxpayers, on the whole, would very much rather not be bombing schools across the world.

Trump's pointless (indeed, highly counterproductive) strikes on Iran are not at all popular, and quite the opposite of the platform he campaigned on.

rjrjrjrj 16 hours ago | parent [-]

The taxpayers, on the whole, voted for a pathological liar. And that is what they got.

nullpoint420 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If they could find the power for the data centers, why can’t we find it for EVs?

tw-20260303-001 2 days ago | parent [-]

But they didn’t find power for data centres. That’s one of their problems.

nullpoint420 a day ago | parent [-]

So there's no new capacity that went online for the new build-outs? None of that could've been used for residential capacity?

danaris 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure there is. But some of the datacenters individually use as much power as an entire city.

When you're trying to build out dozens or hundreds of those across the country, there's no way we can ramp up capacity at that rate.

Forgeties79 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Norway is hardly alone. More and more countries are increasing EV purchases and decreasing ice purchases. We are clearly headed in that direction

quickthrowman 2 days ago | parent [-]

I agree, I’m just saying it’s easier for a country with a sovereign wealth fund and ridiculous oil royalties to handle upgrading their infra to handle EVs for 6M is much easier than doing it in the US which has extremely low average population density, 250M+ vehicles and 400M people, and a mess of separate but inter-tied grids and varying levels of infrastructure investment depending on which state you are in.

varjag 2 days ago | parent [-]

We have the wealth fund precisely because we don't discretionally spend oil royalties.

GenerWork 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Remove the EV subsidies and ICE taxes, and what would that number switch to?

the_why_of_y 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A big chunk of the $5 trillion yearly subsidies for fossil fuels is for ICE car fuels. See IMF Working Paper for year 2020.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...

2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
speedgoose 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

97% perhaps. EVs are nicer and more convenient there. And cheaper.

pqtyw a day ago | parent | next [-]

Entirely because of taxes. Norway and Denmark are special cases because they already had extremely high taxes on ICE vehicles.

applfanboysbgon 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you feel that externalities should not be taxed? That individuals should be able to do things that collectively cost everyone else in society money, without any expectation that they pay money into a societal fund to address the problems created by their own actions?

tw-20260303-001 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> And cheaper.

You sound like a broken record.

> Remove the EV subsidies and ICE taxes.

speedgoose 2 days ago | parent [-]

Should I include the cost of the current wars?

nxm a day ago | parent | next [-]

Or bulk of NATO's defense costs, which Europeans refuse to contribute to

8note a day ago | parent [-]

from the impacts of the straight of hormuz closing, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine - electrification and removing dependence on oil and gas is a major defense cost.

any spending on EV adoption should be considered part of the NATO commitment

tw-20260303-001 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Go on then.

speedgoose a day ago | parent [-]

Per my calculations, EVs are cheaper over the whole vehicle lifetime. I included construction costs and usage costs, in terms of money, environmental impact, and health impacts.

Of course, no cars is even better. If we could all ski, cycle, or run, it would be even cheaper and better for our health. It’s a trade of.

tw-20260303-001 a day ago | parent [-]

We could all go back to caves, too.

wodenokoto 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think 80 or 90% of new cars in northern Europe are electric.

Saying EV tech isn’t there to replace gas is like saying gas tech isn’t there to replace diesel.

Gas powered cars are niche or legacy.

SirHumphrey 2 days ago | parent [-]

In 2024[1]: - 37.2% in Sweeden - 51.6% in Denmark - 30.4% in Finland

of newly registered cars were BEV. Only Norway reaches 89% you are talking about. The total average of newly registered BEV cars in European Union was 13.6%.

The EV tech is here,but the grid in most EU countries is certainly not. The proliferation of heat pumps in the local area caused 3 blackouts caused by a failure of a local transformer - something that hasn't happened before or at least not as frequently. And in most countries you are looking at doubling the electricity consumption if all road transport was to switch to electricity.

[1]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/new-registr...

kdheiwns 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I only hear people in certain countries say this. Meanwhile many countries with rough terrain and long roads are already all in on EVs.

seabrookmx 2 days ago | parent [-]

Which ones?

rossjudson a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Gas powered cars can't fully replace EVs either.

After three years and 50k miles with a Model X, the idea of buying a non-EV seems ridiculous.

ahussain 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The EV tech seems to be good enough already in China

nxm a day ago | parent [-]

Heavily subsidized by China to undercut the international competition

rsynnott 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They just have to replace most use cases. There will come a point, not too far away, where battery progress makes them cheaper to purchase than petrol cars (for many use cases the point may already have come where TCO is lower, and Trump’s oil crisis will only speed the arrival of that point for more use cases.)

dangus 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's a strange statement considering that 20% of new vehicles sold globally are EVs. And that's not just China propping up the numbers: 20% of new vehicles sold in the EU are EVs as well.

Obviously that's not "fully replace" territory, but that is most definitely a critical mass beyond being a niche vehicle category.

The EV market globally is growing much faster than the ICE market. At the rate of technology and pricing improvement, EVs taking over the majority of sales is almost inevitable.

It's just not growing as quickly in certain markets like the USA, and many predictions were too aggressive.

Who is really going to prefer ICE vehicles when we start seeing median MSRP vehicles start to reach customers with 400-500mile+ range numbers? This isn't some crazy idea (e.g., see the 2026 BMW i3, estimated range of 440 miles in an entry level premium sedan - in 5-10 years that's the kind of spec you'll be seeing in a cheap Kia).

There just isn't that much more progress in battery technology and pricing left to achieve to make ICE fully obsolete, and that is exacerbated by oil prices that are now set to rise for years to come.

2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]
[deleted]
ceejayoz 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Strawman, basically no one argues "fully". Yet.