I think it’s debatable. Is it really good if all the energy that went into making the vehicle goes to waste because it only lasts 50k miles? At that point you’re basically building disposable vehicles.
I think the sweet spot for this period is in hybrids that allow people to run on electricity around town but also have the ICE as a fallback for long/extended trips. The main hesitancy with EVs is range anxiety (ignoring high prices) and hybrids solve that issue while still retaining a lot of the benefits of an EV.
The problem with that is that phevs are surprising expensive/heavy/complicated. It’s why Chevy discontinued the volt over the bolt. And why chevy had to cut a lot of costs on the volt to get it down to a semi-acceptable price (the volt didn’t even have power seats except on the Premier, and only on the drivers side).
Honestly, I prefer not to have power seats. It’s faster to adjust manual seats in my experience and there’s both fewer things to break and less weight.
Agreed. Although having seat settings linked to individual fobs is nice. If you share a vehicle you don’t have to mess around with all the settings every time. Moot point though.
A huge amount of the overall CO2 output of EVs is from the manufacturing process though. It doesn’t matter if you can recycle the aluminum, for example, bc you still need to heat it to be recast and we’re not exactly using nuclear or solar to power our forges.
Mining is responsible for more CO2 than the rest of manufacturing. We also do use renewables for aluminum - there is enough energy required that energy cost is a big deal and so production is done in areas where energy is cheap - generally meaning geothermo.
I think it’s debatable. Is it really good if all the energy that went into making the vehicle goes to waste because it only lasts 50k miles? At that point you’re basically building disposable vehicles.
I think the sweet spot for this period is in hybrids that allow people to run on electricity around town but also have the ICE as a fallback for long/extended trips. The main hesitancy with EVs is range anxiety (ignoring high prices) and hybrids solve that issue while still retaining a lot of the benefits of an EV.
The problem with that is that phevs are surprising expensive/heavy/complicated. It’s why Chevy discontinued the volt over the bolt. And why chevy had to cut a lot of costs on the volt to get it down to a semi-acceptable price (the volt didn’t even have power seats except on the Premier, and only on the drivers side).
Honestly, I prefer not to have power seats. It’s faster to adjust manual seats in my experience and there’s both fewer things to break and less weight.
Agreed. Although having seat settings linked to individual fobs is nice. If you share a vehicle you don’t have to mess around with all the settings every time. Moot point though.
I’ve found I can never get a manual seat just right myself, they’re either slightly too far forward, or slightly too far back.
Electric let’s you get it just right
Does that midpoint between 2 steps really make such a difference? 🧐
Yes, yes it does.
A large port of cars are recycled, so I’m not sure the energy costs are a big deal.
A huge amount of the overall CO2 output of EVs is from the manufacturing process though. It doesn’t matter if you can recycle the aluminum, for example, bc you still need to heat it to be recast and we’re not exactly using nuclear or solar to power our forges.
Mining is responsible for more CO2 than the rest of manufacturing. We also do use renewables for aluminum - there is enough energy required that energy cost is a big deal and so production is done in areas where energy is cheap - generally meaning geothermo.