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xkcd #2948: Electric vs Gas (xkcd.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Alt text:

An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

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[+] [email protected] -6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Are those two things actually important?

yes, they are. they make difference between actually usable technology and engineer's dream.

Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.

i doubt we even have enough rare metals for 8 or 16 billion batteries. most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.

efficiency matters, it is not a question of how good single battery is.

As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.

oh good. YOU have it solved, so the rest of the world does not matter, i assume...? fuck all these people, right?

https://i.imgur.com/krFICor.png

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hey mate I'm just here for some friendly discussion, I'm not here to argue until I'm blue in the face.

There is a difference between your above points and the original claim.

Fuel density doesn't matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.

Charge time doesn't matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.

For your new point of rare earth materials, this isn't related to the original energy density or charge time points, but high density batteries that don't use rare earth metals already exist, the problem is cost. That will change over time.

Also you're ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Fuel density doesn’t matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.

Charge time doesn’t matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.

they matter for the reason i explained. you are acting like we can simply build as much batteries as we want, which is not true
and change them as conveniently as filling up the gas tank, which is also not true.
and the whole "just swap the battery" concept leads to need of more batteries -> go to (1)

Also you’re ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground

i am not, i am not defending fossil fuel, i am just pointing out that the ev concept has problems that are not widely talked about.

just because some other strategy has problems doesn't mean your strategy is problem free.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.

Has that ever stopped everyone, though?