21 posts were merged into an existing topic: Thread on viability of Electric Cars
All these “you will DIE if you buy an EV!” scenarios require such narrow conditions. You need a disaster bad enough that the power is out for multiple days, but not so bad that the gas stations are unavailable. The weather has to be severe enough that you have to evacuate, but not so bad that driving an ordinary car is impossible. The event has to be widespread enough that 200 miles range isn’t enough, but not so widespread that gas deliveries are a problem. And so on.
If the people spreading this oil-industry propaganda had a little imagination, they’d come up with similar scenarios with gas cars that are equally ridiculous. What if the flood waters are at exactly the point that will hydrolock a gas car but not an EV? What if you pass through a cloud of smoke that stalls your gas engine but not the EV? Blah, blah. None of this actually happens with any significant frequency. EV owners were just fine during the Texas blackouts.
Hey FordPrefect, do you know if you can turn the proximity sensors off (or the volume down)? Does your Kona beep like this one did? IIRC, it went off every time we started from a stop, but I may not be remembering that exactly precisely.
I have a 17 year old ICE car with 70,000 miles on it. It’s the only family car. I don’t drive much as you can see. We’re thinking about replacing it with an electric or hybrid. An electric would be great for 99% of our driving, 2 miles to work, 2 miles back, maybe 10 miles for a typical shopping trip. It’s about 20 miles to visit our son.
One question I have is it seems if I drive like that the gas engine might never cut in. Would I need to worry about stale gas or any damage to the engine because it never gets used except for the 1 time a year I drive 250 miles to Maine
Hi @ShadowFacts, I don’t know if that’s possible to lower the volume or disabling them. I think there is a button down on the console to disable the beeping for the current stop, but will be enabled again for the next stop.
My proximity sensors only start beeping when I am within a meter of a barrier or pedestrian. There is an indicator on the dash with which proximity sensor is triggered and if the barrier is less than 30 cm (or so) the tone turns solid and indicator turns red.
I will try to look at the menus the next time I drive the car and get back to you.
My Volt would kick on the gas engine once in awhile if it hadn’t been used for a long time (or when it was really cold out). Not sure what other plug in hybrids do. Chevy also recommended high octane fuel since it would be sitting around longer. I got gas about 4 times per year (8-9 gallons at a time).
With your habits though, you could probably go totally EV and never worry about it. Having to stop and charge once per year on a trip isn’t that big of a deal.
Ask the salesperson what it was!
I did! He had no idea - I think it may have been his first day on the job. (I exaggerate, but he was definitely new and fairly uninformed - feeling very glad that I did an immense amount of research in advance).
@ShadowFacts, I took the car for a ride today, and took a closer look at the proximity button, it does turn off front facing proximity detection, but on or off, I didn’t experience beeping like you describe. I agree with @ratatoskK, if that’s a show stopper with the Kona, the dealer should know and be able to show you how to disable that annoyance.
@Sam_Stone, it may be optimism on my part, but I do hope your pessimistic view on EV will not come to pass. I think that we will have mid-size SUVs with towing and 500-600 km range within in the next 5 years and that will be when EV will be viable for a much larger market.
The fact that commercial trucks have little to no insulation around their engine compartments and not real great mufflers is a real mystery to me. Urban/suburban noise pollution could be radically reduced by demanding proper noise treatment of commercial vehicles.
We’re always going to have selfish jerks removing the noise suppressors from their personal vehicles because they like vandalizing the neighborhood. But if proper noise suppression was required on commercial vehicles, most of it would still be installed and functioning well 20 years later.
Thanks for checking. If we decide to proceed with a Kona, I’m definitely going to check it with a knowledgeable salesperson before signing anything. I’m not surprised to hear that you don’t experience this problem - it was so annoying I can’t imagine anyone driving regularly with it.
And in related news, we’ve got an appt to drive a Nissan Leaf Plus on Saturday. So we should be able to get a good comparison while the Kona memory is fairly fresh.
Finally, there was an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday (probably paywalled) about electric car adoption in the US and what an uphill climb it is going to be. I’m sad to say it tracks closer to what Sam Stone’s predictions are.
Enforcement is difficult, I suppose. And I think it would have to be a Federal standard; CA is grandfathered into setting their own emissions standards via CAFE, but I’d guess the same doesn’t apply to noise pollution.
Another cost that existing trucks impose on the rest of us is their low performance. In particular, merging into traffic and going up grades. Increases accident rates by causing a mismatch in lane speeds, and just generally slows people down. High performance electric trucks have no problems accelerating.
Adding to the trucking discussion, from what I have read long-haul trucking is a dying business, due to the resurgence of freight railroads in the last decade or two, itself due to the rise of inter-modal shipping. Nowadays most goods only travel at most a couple hundred miles by truck – things that need to be shipped farther than that go by train. In other words, range isn’t as big a deal for an electric truck as some people might think. Trucks are only needed for the “last mile” of the shipment.
Well, I can finally answer the OP’s question definitively, as I will be getting a 2020 Hyundai Kona EV some time this coming week. We’re going for a 3-year lease, after which we will decide whether to keep going with EVs or not.
We took a test drive of a 2020 Nissan Leaf Plus this morning. It’s a decent car, the driving experience was good (though I didn’t love the brake feel). Seats were less comfortable than I’d like and it feels a little cheaply made to me, inside the car. I also didn’t like how the rear seats folded. Overall, I don’t think the Leaf is a bad car, but the Kona felt superior in just about every way.
Took another test drive of the Kona this afternoon to get a same day comparison, and it was no contest. And, perhaps most importantly, I figured out what that crazy obnoxious beeping was that drove me crazy the first time! The dealer plate was causing the trunk lid to not close completely, so it was warning us of that. Once I fixed that, we were good to go 
Many thanks to @FordPrefect for his ownership expertise and advice! I am looking forward to my new EV driving life.
You are welcome and welcome to EV ownership @ShadowFacts!
The trunk issue, funny now in retrospect, I am sure the dealer learned a lesson too!
I hope you come back to this thread in 6 months to a year out, I would like to hear about your ongoing experiences with the Kona.
Congrats!
Thanks! I’ll happily report back to this thread with how it goes, particularly since I will be one of the rare breed who will be charging at work, not home.
If I have the means when it comes out, I’d get one of these. I’ll probably be in the market for a new pickup by then. I’d still need something else to go visit my parents which is a 450 mile drive.
While that has some really cool and innovative features, it’s ugly as sin.
Wow, you ain’t kidding. I hadn’t followed @Paintcharge’s link the first time; just assumed it was to Tesla’s funky pickup truck.
Canoo sets a new world record for weirdest vehicle. The few remaining people who own Pontiac Azteks are feeling soooo relieved!