Because an off the shelf standard Model 3 is 3-4x faster 0-60 than almost any other car in its price range.

The difference between standard and performance model is nowhere near the same leap in speed.

Dude I have a Ford Focus EV and I can go toe to toe with anything short of a muscle car. It's almost even better than a Tesla because it's a sleeper.

A standard Tesla accelerates about 2x as fast as my econobox.

You sure? The standard Tesla models are quite fast for price point. the standard hyundai, kia, ford, vw crossover EVs are slower, but faster than their ICE counterparts

I've actually seen a good amount of them in/around the bay area.

You can make the car engine more efficient by making it be a small generator that is working at optimal RPMs rather than the variable RPMs driving the car itself.

Consider some of the various hybrid approaches.

Honda has the IMA. The insight is an ICE car with an "underpowered" gas motor that has an electric motor to assist it. If it runs out of gas, it's out of gas and doesn't move.

Toyota's Prius is an electric car with a gas motor that switches on when optimal. If you run out of gas in the Prius, the car will go for some further distance until the battery goes dead.

The Chevy volt is an electric car with a gas generator (and a trick that can shunt some power from the gas generator to driving the car). https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/chevy-volts-engine-more-t...

> When the battery is depleted, the range extender engine kicks in to generate electricity for the motor, as GM noted in its press materials. But when the battery is depleted and the car is running at 70 mph or above, the planetary gearset transmits additional motive force directly from the engine to the wheels.

... however, this also should take into account the efficiency of the power grid too.

https://www.epa.gov/egrid/power-profiler#/

A hybrid car in part of the grid that is heavily coal can be efficient in terms of CO2 than an electric car because it is burning gas more cleanly than the grid is burning coal.

This is an excellent question but a massive one to answer. Probably the length of a scientific paper. It'd involve thermo, engineering economics, etc.

To keep it short, yes there is a return to scale, but it's a diminishing one. Gas turbines run at about 55% thermal efficiency. Large of small it matters little, that limit is set by the blade materials' melting temperature (which sets longevity).

Your car typically runs at about 30%, its efficiency partially offset by heat losses to the cylinder walls (ie the larger the better), but is mostly set by engineering decisions other than fuel efficiency (one big cylinder has less surface heat loss than four little guys but would be unbalanced)

But there are so many legacy design decisions in an ICE that no longer apply if we have hybrid drivetrains and ammonia/urea injection (to mitigate NOx from high compression).

The Prius challenged a lot (but not all) of these decisions and remains, in my opinion, the most revolutionary car of the past 50 years.

I really believe that an fossil fuel car engine can get an efficiency within the transmission losses of the best gas power plant. But even if ICE development were frozen, hybrids still make more sense, from a CO2 POV, than EVs

I drove a Tesla for the first time thinking I was going to like the driver assist and tech the most. The only thing my friends and I could talk about afterwards was how fucking fast the thing was.

Haha you clearly don't understand American car culture.

For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDpQpcPpuc

7M views in 3 months. Americans LOVE seeing which car is faster.

Look at how many people at unenthused with EVs because they don't make loud noises. If they couldn't at least also go faster...

Pace of growth is what's important now. I'll look for the numbers but I would guess that Ford is reaching early milestones quicker than Tesla. Not a knock on Tesla, just that it's a different market now.

> We are simply putting fantasy before reality. Reality means that power generation expansion must come first and cars follow based on quotas established to maintain generation/grid integrity.

None of the players are willing to expand power generation for some future possibility, we have to scale up demand before they're willing to invest in that.

It also ignores that the biggest problem currently isn't generation but is scheduling, if more utilities had the capability to help homeowners schedule charging based on system demand we'd barely need any increase in generation to begin with as we don't have much trouble generating the needed power over the scale of a night, but if everyone tries to pull an 11kwh charge at the same time (similar to California having issues in the evening as everyone turns up the AC when people arive home) we do have a problem. Even california with all it's problem has enough capacity if there was better scheduling available to help flatten the curve.

EV rebates got bundled into the Inflation Reduction Act and passed last year. The Act of Congress has already happened.

Further encouragements to go electric will happen through the EPA who already have the congressional authority to regulate tailpipes. Anything they do will be challenged in court, but if they can get it through the courts they can do a lot without an Act of Congress.

> The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) amended the Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit (IRC 30D), now known as the Clean Vehicle Credit, and added a new requirement for final assembly in North America that took effect on August 17, 2022. For new electric, fuel cell electric, and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles acquired, delivered, and placed in service after August 16, 2022, this final assembly requirement applies. For vehicles placed in service on or after January 1, 2023, the Clean Vehicle Credit provisions are subject to updated guidance from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. [1]

[1] https://afdc.energy.gov/laws/electric-vehicles-for-tax-credi...

The IRA was a bipartisan law passed by Congress. Part of it renewed a credit of up to $7500 per purchase of an EV that underwent final assembly in North America.

Additionally, California (which by all accounts sets national car standards) has passed updated regulations to phase-out the sale of ICE cars within the next 10 years. This is also a very important piece of legislation that will help the Ford decision.

This is technically true but they sort won in a prisoners dilemma type situation. Had no auto makers been bailed out, the shared suppliers may have all folded causing Ford to go under. So while they didn't take any direct money, the bailouts kept their upstream suppliers afloat. Ford also benefits from high import tariffs on foreign built trucks, a tariff basically designed to protect the F-150. If you check subsidy tracker[1], you're see that Ford is an enormous recipient of corporate welfare. They've received $5 billion from Michigan alone since just 2010.

[1] https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/ford-motor

> The grid has more than enough capacity for the needed watt hours needed in any given day

Just want to make sure I am clear on what you are saying:

Are you saying that's the case for the cars and loads we have today? Or, are you saying we have enough for a full transition to EV's?

> Also sorry if I came off as dick-ish, I don't disagree that we should be expanding energy production

No worries. Thanks for the gesture. It indicates a desire to have a conversation, rather than wanting to throw fecal matter at each other, which, sadly, can happen even on HN with some people.

I am simply trying to understand the reality of this energy transition, rather than the many fantasies out there. When politicians make claims nobody asks the hard questions. Well, OK, I understand that most reporters don't have a clue. Most politicians don't have a clue. Which means we end-up with uncontested statements that, if repeated enough time, tend to become reality in the minds of people who will ultimately vote for this stuff in one way or another. We have to be careful that we don't make massive bets on flawed "religious" assumptions.

    Red lines indicate areas where the grid cannot
    accommodate additional load without any thermal or
    voltage violations. Grey hatched areas indicate regions
    where gaps in utility grid data exist. Colored lines,
    keyed in the legend, indicate the available circuit
    capacity in megawatts

> Then why maintain a tariff from 1964 designed by the Johnson administration?

No clue, but seems pretty bipartisan. Maybe “National Security” or whatever excuse .gov comes up with…

If you think even about the etymology of "hand-out", it is not in fact the government handing out money — the company is handing less money to the government.

When the federal government gives a tax credit for installing residential solar panels, it is not a "consumer bailout" or "welfare".

We have a perfectly good term for this, which is "tax credit", because that is what it is.

There is zero chance the manufacturing environment can move that fast. I know I work in it.

The government can place all the magic words on the page they want, there are structural limits to how fast mines, plants, and other things can be built, even if Ford, GM, VW etc can switch their factories to EV's there is an entire supply chain that can not spin up that fast. Copper and Lithium production alone would need to increase by like 900%, that is not happening in just a few years time.

Thanks for the detailed response! Will definitely give that IEEE pdf a read.

> First, the most fundamental problem: Home electrical systems and the distribution grid are not ready for this.

I'm not as familiar with code for new buildings in CA, I know that they require solar on them do they not do solar to grid as part of that? That wasn't something I'd really thought of, I'd assumed most of the cost for that usually comes from retrofitting more so than if it's during the initial setup but haven't actually looked to verify that.

> First: Battery packs have limited charge/discharge cycles. If you use your car for V2G, your battery will fail much earlier than if you just use it to drive. Why pays for that? The warranty will not cover it, I can assure you of that. Also, think of the waste and recycling load that would impose.

It depends pretty heavily on the manufacturer, but newer batteries on higher end cars have pretty amazing cycle lifetimes, watching car enthusiests on youtube it's not uncommon for people to buy used tesla batteries from totaled cars for custom conversions or custom home battery systems.

> Second: I just spent money to fill-up my battery. And now I am going to let the grid drain it? Are they going to pay me? OK. They have to pay me enough for me to recoup my investment and more than justify having to spend tens of thousands of dollars when the battery fails. That power will be insanely expensive. Who is going to buy it? Energy rates are already ridiculously high. This makes no sense to me.

I'd fully expect to be getting that cost back + some small amount for the inconvenience back as credits on my bill. (I would mostly be expecting this for handling particularly bad peaks and not so much an everyday thing)

> Third: Range anxiety with electrics is a thing today and will be a thing in the future. Why drain your battery to the grid? This makes no sense from that perspective. It's like saying to your neighbors "Hey, I just filled-up my gasoline tank. While my car is parked, feel free to siphon off up to 50% of my tank.". Nobody is going to do that.

I'm not sure if you have an EV but for me range anxiety went away pretty quickly after buying mine, it's pretty much only for long range road trips that I have to pay any attention to range at all, though convincing people of that before they own an EV is pretty tricky (and there are people who need to drive hundreds of miles a day that don't work great with current EVs)

> My take on this is that people will do what they have to do given their circumstances. People have very random daily schedules. Some work at night, some have work and college, others might have a couple of jobs, after school activities, etc. There's a lot of variability built into behavior. It's like herding cats. In the end, I don't think behavior will make a significant impact.

Those people that have different daily schedules probably actually help as they're less likely to be charging during those peak evening hours.

From what I've seen the systems are pretty automated and there's a lot less for people to manage than you might think, it's more like setting up a thermostat where there's some initial work to setup a schedule but then it's just plug your car in when you get home and leave it plugged in and they can schedule the load so it's ready when you plan to leave and then if you have need to leave earlier than usual it's not hard to override it (though I do wish more EVSEs had direct buttons on them to control that type of thing).

> There are two types of F-150 buyers

The F-series isn't the most popular vehicle in America because there are only two types of buyers. Roughly, the answer to "who is a truck person?" is "everyone."

The only people driving F-150s around job sites are management with a stipend. Half ton trucks are a lot less capable then most people think, and are primarily targeted to the former of the two groups you mention

Look, what follows is my opinion and why Im against EVs for the short to mid term future. Im not a domain expert, but I am a physicist and an engineer whose worked in energy and for the DOE on sustainable energy sources. Again, Im not a car engineer.

Carbon emissions is why we're transitioning. Its why EVs are made mandatory. Its the premise that the EV has to fulfill. Thousands of little ICE parts have little consequence since cars, typically, die for every other reason except engine failure. This has been the case since widespread adoption of automatic transmissions and fuel injection.

The math of EVs is pretty daunting too. Take an EV and ignore its greater sin of creation (ie resources to make one vs an ICE car). Now pretend it runs on pixie dust (ie actually zero emissions).

Now compare that to taking that EV's (electrically) massive battery and, instead hybridizing N number of vehicles. Ive run the numbers, and the EV has (much) greater CO2 emissions.

If you use regulatory power to funnel those batteries to preferentially hybridize contractors' vans and trucks (ie the F-250 and 350, not the wanna be cowboys' 150) the comparison sucks even more.

Note that this analysis uses efficiency numbers from current widespread ICE engines, not rather niche (for the West) CNG cars that can run at very high compression ratios (methane has an octane rating of about 120) and have much higher energy content per gram of CO2.

And you know what the funniest part of all of this is? We could slash transportation CO2 overnight by lowering and imposing lower speed limits.

But again, this is what Ive come to believe with car manufacturer and EPA data in excel. YMMV

This is the primary reason I wouldn't go back to combustion. The running costs of electric vehicles are absurdly low at times.

You can put 50k-100k miles on most EVs on sale today having only bought cabin air filters, tires and wiper blades in addition to the cost of the electricity - thats largely it!

I hope people realize that fuel cell cars are also EVs, and have only a handful more moving parts to deal with. People have mislead themselves into thinking the BEV is synonymous with all EVs. This type of thinking could easily lead people into making serious mistakes.

Not only that but all the innovations that we see in batteries can trickle down to all kinds of consumer devices.

That’s ok, the US is only the biggest economy in the world. Of course we can’t do it on our own but we can lead the way - or we can get lapped by China who has already begun and made significant progress in all the areas we should also be doing: solar installments, EVs, fast mass transit.

It’s no surprise the rest of the world is starting to look to China for leadership instead of us.

The thing city denizens seem to not understand is that this fair-weather truck user is exactly who the F-150 was designed for. It was designed to be unladen 95% of the time. All the werk-truck wonk is just marketing to make sales. Ford knows who buys their products

I know you’re joking, but given consumer indifference to mpg but laser focus on range, I wouldn’t be surprised if weight-reduction-at-all-costs took a front row seat for EVs.

Auto engineers work first for the marketing department. And range sells.

Few buyers run a “10 year TCO and then residual value” calculation.

> ICE car maintenance at this stage in an ICE car's lifecycle.

What become the big ICE maintenance issues at this point? I know spark plugs can be a royal pain on some vehicles but at least iridium plugs last a very long time.

(I’ll admit, I’m starting to deal with more seal leaks at 15 years. Need to track it down to avoid adding ~2L oil between my 10k mile oil change. And I’ve been neglecting trans/diff flushes)

My biggest groan over the next few years will be suspension parts and not just the struts. All them “sealed” “forever” control arms and such without grease points, ugh.

I am specifically talking about your urban/suburbanites that commute daily in their trucks, and use the bed once or twice a year for small home projects.

The rest of the year, a car or SUV would be more than sufficient. The point isn't that these people should not have a truck, the point is they do not need a truck and therefore the factors that influence their purchase are different than professionals that use the truck and bed often.

It's the same with anything - take kitchen knives for example. A professional is going to be looking for something very different than an amateur home cook.

The F-150 Lightning was billed as a jobsite, professional's truck. However, it's much better suited for the other type of truck buyer in the US.

> says my next-door neighbor, who operates a small construction company

He's probably not driving 2+ hours to a worksite out in the middle of no where, hoping there's a charging station in the next-door field.

The Lightning only gets a claimed 230 miles range after all... 320 with the extended battery with an unloaded bed. Your average F-150 boasts 700+ miles range, for comparison.

Glad it works for him - but the Lightning really isn't suited for that type of work.

> You do realize that BEVs predate internal combustion cars? You could've said the same thing about all EVs just a few years ago.

Toyota and others have tried and failed for decades, yes. The order of events is irrelevant to the discussion.

BEV sales managed to reach profitability at scale in less than a decade.

BEVs also have benefit of sharing technologies with many other devices, in a way fuel cell does not - its not surprising to me at all BEV is winning, and by a huge margin.

Supplying and pumping compressed hydrogen at temperatures well below freezing (the typical solution) at the pump is also not all that simple compared to an EV plug or even good ole' gas, and the range offered by the compressed tank is not all that amazing either.

Fuel cell tech will find uses I'm sure, but its not going to be affordable personal transport.

Doesn't it make more sense to put the wear on your (cheap, easily replaceable) brakes than the (expensive, harder to replace) clutch though?

And over a billion ICE cars...

Not to mention that if you go back a handful of years, BEVs were in the same boat as FCEVs. Like I said, all of this is selective reasoning and doesn't prove anything. And you're still ignoring my point about the resource problem. We could be forced to suddenly change our minds by reality no matter what.

Worth noting that something similar undermined all of the biofuel strategies of the past. Once people realized that biofuels simply couldn't scale, they had to abandon the idea, even though they also got plenty of government support.