Another thing that critics of the electric buggies have been pointing out for years, only to be dismissed as "fake news".

My Kia (64kWh battery, 280 mile range) comes in at 1739kg (3833lbs) kerb weight, which is just over half of the vehicle headlining the article. Either weight is a problem, in which case it looks like that car shouldn't exist in either format, or it isn't.

450kg of that weight is the battery. The equivalent petrol or diesel SUV would cause far less wear on the road by not carrying all that extra weight.

How does that compare to the wear caused by the 1000+ 44,000Kg fuel tankers doing 220,000km each year carrying the 15 billion Kg of petrol and 12.5 billion Kg of diesel that were used in the UK in 2021?

Not disputing that the car weighs more and causes more wear than the equivalent petrol car, but basing the entire argument on a single metric isn't going to last very long.

Also, I go back to my original point: if weight of electric vehicles is as much of a problem as people claim then why are we permitting heavy cars of any fuel type?

Cars, as opposed to HGVs, cause hardly any road wear. I remember a model linking wear to the axle weight ^ 4!

That also explains the bus problem.

Yes, worrying about cars weighing 4000 lbs instead of 3000 or big SUVs weighing 6000 instead of 4500 misses the mark. Road damage is so overwhelmingly caused by trucks - and specifically their cargo - that the added weight of battery packs doesn't matter.

One potential benefit of electric autonomous trucks would be that we can reduce the load from 80,000 lbs to a lower figure. That would require more trips, but with autonomous trucks able to operate round the clock (assuming battery swaps instead of waiting for hours to charge) versus human drivers at the truck idle over half the time would allow halving payloads.

Presumably an autonomous truck could also avoid potholes when possible or slow down when traveling over them to reduce additional damage to already damaged areas of road.

Mine goes about 30% less distance on the tyres than I used to get with old fashioned cars, I guess due to both the weight and the torque.

The good news is that it's much easier to implement torque limits, including OTA to reduce microplastics based on government-set regulations. This could even be done in real-time when conditions are particularly bad for tyre damage.

If you will drive a performance EV then you should expect that.

I get around 30% more distance out of my tyres on my EV but that is probably because I don't drive like a loony.

My neighbour with his computer on wheels aka Tesla Model 3 Performance gets half the miles from a set of tyres that I do. He admits that he is a reformed M3 (BMW) driver only in that he's gone electric.

The exact same kind of tyres? Tread wear varies widely across tires.

So... if they weigh considerably more, that means we're using more energy to move the same sized car the same distance. But that's OK because... there's a good reason I just didn't... oh right because of regenerative braking we're generating energy in the car as well, but of course that's a lossy operation so surely we're generating more heat this way?

There's a part of me, the part that remembers some old, probably apocryphal message about "entropy increasing" and managed to get a passing grade in thermodynamics on the second try, that is still unconvinced about the net savings of electric vehicles, energy-wise, in their current form.

Mainly due to how inefficient petrol engines are. Rough Googling puts petrol at 9.7kWh/litre. Assuming 40mpg that means you're using 44kWh of power to drive 40 miles.

44kWh will get you at least 150 miles in the heavier electric car

As a counter, a petrol car carries about 40-50 litres of fuel in the tank, or about 9-10 (imperial) gallons, which gives you approximately 380-480kWh of useful energy. That easily gets you 350-400 miles on a single tank. A diesel, even the crippled "low-emission" diesels they were making in the 00s and 10s, will get you even further.

Battery-electric vehicles are efficient, yes, but that's because they have to be, in order to make use of the woeful energy density of the enormous battery. That energy density problem is not going to go away, no matter how many magical vapourware technologies are wafted about. They're already on the knife-edge of spontaneous combustion. Driving around with what amounts to an electrochemical bomb in the floor is not my idea of fun.

> That energy density problem is not going to go away, no matter how many magical vapourware technologies are wafted about.

On a long enough timeframe I suspect that's not true. In the last 20 years we've gone from the energy density of the Prius (rubbish) to modern EV cars, which are a lot more efficient. I suspect a lot of the gain comes from battery balancing tech and motor efficiencies over improvements in battery tech, but still. We're in the early stages.

Mostly, however, I'm commenting to say Four Tonnes for an EV is fucking ridiculous. Unnecessarily ridiculous - it's not like they haven't tried, they've gone out of their way to do the worst job possible.

Four Tonnes for an EV is fucking ridiculous. Unnecessarily ridiculous - it's not like they haven't tried, they've gone out of their way to do the worst job possible.

Hear hear, and welcome to the US car industry. This is why I haven't even considered buying any American designed car in the past 30 years.

> Driving around with what amounts to an electrochemical bomb in the floor is not my idea of fun

As opposed to driving with what amounts to a chemical bomb in the back?

Energy density can improve (same way that engine efficiency could probably improve) but currently my car can drive further without stopping (280 miles) than I can. Charging facilities (granted, when they work) can already add 23 miles/minute to your battery, so 5 minutes charge while you nip in for a wee gives you another 100 miles.

There are always going to be edge cases that aren't easily solvable, but the vast majority of us aren't trying to drive 350 miles in one go. I can drive back to Bradford from Oxford, plug the car in, and it's ready to go again the following morning. Doesn't suit everyone, but that doesn't mean it suits no one

I did 1000km last Tuesday across Europe - first really long trip in an EV. It's exactly as you said - I found the stops were roughly when I would have taken a break anyway. Over the 13 or so hours (including tunnel) I think I probably lost about 20 minutes where I had to wait for charging, as opposed to charging while I was stretching my legs or whatever. I've since discovered I could have even reduced that by preconditioning the car battery (by heating it) to get the maximum 230kW my car can take, instead of the roughly 120kW I averaged. Even at that rate it was far, far easier than I'd anticipated and cost was about half what it would have been in diesel.

In the UK of course, it's a bag of shite from start to finish due to charger faults and massive under-provisioning. But that's not the fault of the technology.

Not to rain on that 1000km parade but most of travelers - at least in US - would skip any but a "pit stop" breaks for such a trip. Not to mention that they'd be done within 10 hours with absolutely no speeding (obviously assuming no gridlock on the way).

And with such a low average speed i could almost make it on just one tank (obviously i drive a euro car with mass nowhere near behemot SUVs, electrics or even worse - electric SUVs).

Whereas you are not worried about 50 litres of highly flammable, toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, shuffled about at 30 m/s by people with 10 hours of training decades ago, and only kept from spilling out by 0.8 mm mild steel?

The push for EVs isn't about energy saving, it's CO2 reduction.

... which is different how, exactly?

It depends on how the energy is generated.

If you just used the same fuel in a big power station, you could run it much more efficiently and so create less CO2 per kWh than you would in the car.

At the extreme, if you generated the power from a wind/solar/hydro plant then the CO2 created would be tiny.

It does not really matter how that electricity is generated. Claiming the use of clean energy only means that others have to do with dirty sources. And all that extra power generation capacity (regardles of the type) has to be built (with signifficant release of co2 and often destruction of natural lands). This fact somehow escapes greenwashing PR).

They could of course put limits on the size of the ICE cars, but that would restrict FREEDOM!

This problem would have come about with or without EV's, its just easy to blame them

C'mon, be fair! Car size has increased a lot everywhere - even ICE cars, the city-dwelling SUVs are a pest, both in terms of danger to squishy targets (pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists) and infrastructure. Parking lots are way too narrow, and I often see SUVs reducing the number of available spots - ok, we had eejits before that managed to park a Golf II on three parking spaces, but now it becomes physically impossible (even including curvature of space due to higher mass). Road construction on the highway has to consider the ever increasing width of cars, bridges and roads have to withstand greater loads. No sense to blame that on EVs.

And then the rear windows of modern cars are shrunk down to narrow slits, so you see sweet FA.

If you need something to pull trailers, to deliver bales of hay to your horses, to ferry lots of stuff between places: sure, there are applications for big cars. It's just that usually there is just one person driving them around in them (and often over very short distances).

My first car was, I think, 850kg empty. It did fit four students for a quick holiday, or two persons on a longer camping trip. Sure, it was a gas guzzler beyond 120 km/h, but having spent a while in Switzerland this is an entirely reasonable highway speed. Yes, I am sure grateful for several things that are now standard (servo assisted steering, anti-blocking brakes), which add a couple of kg. Should not have sold it, would be able to run it as a classic car now.

It's of course true cats have got bigger and, especially, heavier. Part of it is crash safety, part "mod cons" all adding up. EV batteries make the problem a double whammy.

The only real solutions are fewer cars and better drivers. So we're fucked.

Two words: tax parking.

Everywhere in Europe people are instructed by professional licensed instructors. US: Parents, including learning their mistakes.

Driving something above 3.5 tons (7720lb) required a "small truck" license. US: 26000 pounds, over 11 tons, with a standard license.

Driving test is over an hour, usually, and the test covers many scenarios. US: Circle around the block, a small test course, parking... less than 10 Minutes in many cases.

Accidents per 100'000 people in Germany: Less than three dead, about 370 injured, in ~2600 accidents.

Accidents per 100'000 people in US: Every German number multiplied with 4 or 5.

Result: It is too easy to get a license in USA, they are not taught the right way, and their "allowed car safety" is horror. Many US cars would be taken off street right away in Germany due to being in a bad condition. Changing that would be the usual "freedom" outrage, completely ignoring that the good for the masses should outweight the personal freedom in quite some circumstances.

Never been to france, I take it.

The numbers are different, but the results are the same: heavier vehicles kill more people, cause more wear on roads, and damage bridges.

I take your point that German roads are much tigher and smaller than American roads, and that even on the Autobahns, where the death toll is much higher than city roads, it's often choked instead of open. (One of my friends complained that even after though speed was unlimited, the only time he could open it up was 2AM on Sunday). But ~2600 accidents in Germany is going to cause more than 3 and 370 if and when cars are replaced by heavy-weight vehicles.

You could not drive that car in Germany with your normal license. Getting a small truck license is tougher than the normal license.

As far as unlimited speed is concerned: It depends which Autobahn you drive, but your friend indeed describes the usual situation - except for vacation traffic, which can block even at 02:00 Sunday. I don't get why they don't say "limit to 180 km/h". Why 180? Because that is the speed which might make it to a law due to usual nonsense resistance against a speed limit. If they'd made 180 the limit 40 years ago instead of constantly insisting to 120 without the will to budge the slightest bit we would already be at 140, subtracting 10 km/h every ten years. But now, even today, they insist on "120". But there is a probability that 130 as limit might come this decade due to the traffic density.

Right into the 1950s there were steam trucks on the roads of Britain.

In many ways they were ideal for the task. But really, really heavy. Which is, of course, only really a problem when they have to start and stop.

If this is the discriminating criterion then compressed hydrogen or direct ethanol fuel cells would appear to be the answer.

-A.

Older people want heavier and heavier cars for their perceived protection in crashes. Mandating a weight limit is probably the only way to go. These same people are future "wrong pedal" drivers that are going to launch their 700HP electric mammoths into others. You can't line every sidewalk in a city with bollards.

Another problem is all the people buying Teslas believing that a future software update will turn them into limos before they kill themselves with poor driving skills. A white Tesla 3 is the new Prius - the car that you watch carefully because there's a higher probability of a confused driver. (Or worse - Autopilot is on)

Solid state batteries expected within a few years should reduce battery size and weight by 30 to 50%, which in turn means weight can be removed from the vehicle structure as well. We're in the late early adopter stage for EVs. Most of the vehicle electrical systems are quite mature, it's just the batteries that need a bit more work before mass adoption.

Like the author and the source, the core of this is just physics, and the issue is dead vehicle weight regardless of it being gas or electric. If heavy ev's are a problem, then heavy gas vehicles were already a problem. So just say we need to tighten up the weight limits right? But in a world where billions have been spent promoting dead weight slugs like the H2, Suburban, etc that are heavy beyond reason or functional purpose, the wordsmiths start playing games with phrasing to avoid the delicate sensibilities of people we shouldn't be listening to.

A 2 door econobox with a big battery isn't magically better or worse than a gas vehicle with a few big boned Americans coming back from the hardware store with the supplies to build a pizza oven. If you are going to crack down on the top GVW offenders, great, but make the manufactures deal with the dead weight in both gas and EV models. Heavy is heavy, and sadly, many of these vehicles are sporting hundreds of pounds of dead weight because the manufacturers give no shits and it's cheaper to leave a hunded dollars of steel than to design/machine it out.

Of course they have seen these rules coming, and they sold many of you the worst possible solution for your actual needs, knowing they could sell you another one if they tricked you into buying a giant tank in the 2020's. But that's only partly on them when you wrote the check or signed the loan. I have been down sizing for years now, and I never want to go back. My last station wagon towed as well as my last truck. My current passenger car can go 500 miles on a tank that is half the size, and has a 25 mile battery, so I generally only hit gas on the weekends. And it is only about 300lbs heavier than a gas ride. The "upgrade" trim ads 200lbs worth of bling and farkles i didn't need, so there is another area to target for weight savings. Another big one was the roof re-enforcements to meet current rollover standards, where instead of using a partial roll cage or bar supports, they just made the door posts so huge you can't see out of the cars, and the rear windows so small you need a backup cam even when you are driving forward. This was pure cheapskatery on the auto makers part, but it meant the least amount of retooling, even though it has killed pedestrians, bicyclists, and caused an increase in accidents and property damage due to people driving cars they can barely see out of. Aerodynamics is another one they have fought for years that has a huge impact.

These are the fights and discussions we should be having, not this EV vs gas crap.