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Is that accounting for manufacture emissions as well?

I agree with you though, but what if we could sell fully electric vehicles with only ~100km range? I would buy it if I was really saving the cost and weight of a whole engine block. Useless for road trips, but most people don't need to be taking road trips every day.



An engine block (including transmission) is light compared to batteries. Maybe a small car with a very limited range is lighter, but not for something useful. Electric cars are typically significantly heavier than their ICE counterparts.

100km is not a useful range. Remember that for best battery life you really need to only charge to 80%, and and never let the battery get below 20%. Now cut that entire range in half for cold weather. You are now down to 30km range that you really can use. That is round trip range unless you really have chargers everywhere you might go.

The average US commute is 40 miles or 65km. Though given you are using km you probably have a shorter distance, but even still your 100km car is cutting range too close for comfort for most people. (and you probably have better access to transit, why not get rid of that 100km car completely)

I don't know how to compare manufacture emissions. I do know that metal shaping has been optimized a lot, while I would assume as new technology modern batteries still have a lot of room for improvement (the older batteries probably not), so I wouldn't trust a comparison if you had data.


I can't imagine that we can go to zero emissions globally, and still have the same commute distances.


> Remember that for best battery life you really need to only charge to 80%, and and never let the battery get below 20%

This depends on the cell chemistry. LFP cells don't have this restriction (which is what many low performance EVs use, especially those coming out of China)


The average US person commutes 40 miles?!? That's like 45 minutes to an hour a day!


I'm not sure where the 40 miles number comes from, but the Census Bureau put the one-way commute time at 28 minutes on average as of 2019, with 10% above 1 hour: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...


It’s pretty harsh but my commute is 2 stair cases. As a virtual worker I come in to the office 2-5 times a month max.

The company I work for’s office is 13 miles away, 35 mins max. The in town office is 19 miles. You could grab a train about 12 miles away and add another 30 minutes to your commute but most people would drive 7 more miles and get there quicker.

Living in town is expensive, schools are terrible, and the homes/properties are small.


It varies pretty extensively. I've had commutes in the ranges of

- 0 minutes (working from home)

- 30-60 minutes each way

- 1.5-2.5 hours each way (I only went into the office 2-3 days per week at this one)


GP was recommending hybrid rather than full EV. For trips that fall into the plug-in range, great. If not, you’re using a small, efficient ICE to make use of the battery without destroying it via over-cycling.


> Useless for road trips, but most people don't need to be taking road trips every day.

One of the primary benefits of owning things, as opposed to being a rentoid, is over-allocation to seamlessly handle peak/long-tail demand scenarios. Yes, a lot of people could save money by only riding bikes or taking taxis or whatever, but the extreme inconvenience associated with getting caught in a demand surge makes ownership worth it a lot more than first-order average-oriented thinking would suggest.

Having to get a rental car every time you want to drive more than 100km sucks.


> we could sell fully electric vehicles with only ~100km range

E-Bikes exist. But it isn't quite that simple, infrastructure and culture are harder to change than products.




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