this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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xkcd

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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that's the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Extremely rare XKCD L

Edit: downvote me all you want, it won't make electric cars charge any faster, have any more range, be any more affordable, work any better in the cold, or be any more fixable by their owners.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

i think you may have missed the joke if you read it too fast

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

No I get it. Electric cars are definitely cool and have advantages, but also have some disadvantages that this just kind of ignores to make a gotcha moment

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Where is the xkcd talking about cars?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What else would it be referring to lmao

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

An electric motor and gas engine. It's the first line.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And what are the most common applications for those? People don't just have motors sitting around attached to nothing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Generators, fans, boats, planes, lawnmowers (sit on and push), strimmers, powered dumpers, diggers etc etc. if you Google it you'll probably find more.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you expecting a joke to actually discuss both sides of a topic?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I suppose that's a good point. I just feel like XKCD is usually a bit more nuanced than this

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The price of electric cars are rapidly falling down to ICE levels in many parts of the world tho

I live in Malaysia a third world country and recently there is a noticeable growth in EV sales over here

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I hope the prices keep falling here in the US as well. Right now they're pretty much all as expensive as more luxurious cars, and the ones that are affordable kinda suck.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

one of the major reasons is that new cheap evs cant compete with used premium ones, hence the desire to develop a cheap EV, at least in the states, is economically prohibitive.

basically because of how picky people are, especially with budget cars, the risk of devlopment on them are extremely high. Make the wrong cut and youre suddenly a bankrupt company

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Just did a quick eBay check. The cheapest 350hp ICE I could find was a rebuilt $3,000 Chevy engine. A new one is more like $6-8k. An equally powerful, brand new Siemens motor was $1,500.

This makes sense when you think about it though. An electric motor is basically just steel with a bunch of coiled wire with some control electronics. An ICE is hundreds of pounds of precision cast and machined metal. The cost driver in electric vehicles is not the motor, it's the batteries.