this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Give me a solid car with an electric motor, but all old-school buttons and knobs in the cabin instead of a touchscreen that will be out of date in 5 years and cost 10k to replace if the kids get their grimy hands on it.
My ideal electric car is basically an 85 GTI with an electric motor, but they’re all SUVs
And let me rent an extra battery pack for long trips. I only need 40 miles day-to-day, but I gotta go 300 for Christmas.
PHEV is the answer! Give us options, doesn't have to be one of the other; Chevy Volt had it for a bit, but it must not have been profitable because now I can't find a PHEV that gets more than 30 miles on a full charge!
I don't want to buy the oversized battery, and I don't really want to buy the on-board generator/charger of PHEV. I only want to own as much vehicle, and incur the manufacturing carbon debt, to meet 95-98% of my needs. Make it easy to rent, borrow, or share the extra capacity for the last 2%, and the world will be a lot less wasteful. I can see renting a trailer with enough generator to replace a series hybrid. I can see renting surplus battery. And those rental services can be a revenue stream to replace dealerships lost service centers.
Clearly, though, I'm a minority of consumers, and no manufacturer actually wants to cater to me and my twelve friends.
Your use case is very reasonable, and a lot of people want it. But it's a big challenge from a technical/engineering standpoint. You know how a replacement battery pack for an EV costs like $8k and has a range of 300 miles? Your rental battery would cost at least that much, plus whatever costs are involved to make it portable, and integrate it's usage into your existing EV. Then the rental places would need to have massive charging capabilities for when people stop in to swap their empty rental battery for a full one, since it still only has a range of 300 miles (4-5 hours of freeway driving)
I actually think there will be improvements on the fast charging front. You can already see this idea in other places. Many heavy duty trucks have 2 fuel tanks. You can fill them with 2 standard pumps running simultaneously, effectively giving you double the refueling speed. Some phones have dual batteries for the same reason.