This is what we call vehicle weight inflation. As cars get heavier and heavier, the roads get increasingly more dangerous for smaller cars, which causes everyone to get bigger cars. And the loop continues.
And you'll pay a lot more in taxes to maintain the roads: "an increase in axle weight from 18,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds causes 50 percent more damage to the pavement."
I also think as heavier electric cars become more ubiquitous, they will impose a threat on structures like multi level garages that weren’t designed to take this amount of weight.
If the world did work that way it would be nice, lol. I imagine such a proposal in the US would be met with "we're trying to destroy the EV industry!!!!"
Bikes get out of harms way faster and in a much mire agile fashion compared to cars and the money you save by buying a bike instead of a car can be used to safely practice at a track that is optimized for safety and to make you learn the feedback system of your bike
Everyone gets bigger cars because bigger cars have more room inside so they're really comfortable and practical.
Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol. This is the consequence of you asking them to get rid of combustion.
I actually really hate bike lanes. I feel like they are far more dangerous. What I really want are bike freeways and multi use paths because sidewalks are dumb
If you've ever been in the cab of a recent F-150, you'd know that they don't have more interior space than a VW Golf. More practical, sure, but only if the one time per year you haul your boat out to a desert reservoir is worth the countless attempts at parking.
Secondly, battery + motor is actually more efficient than ICE. You might be thinking of power density, which is significantly lower on an EV.
Thirdly, I don't love the pro-car company attitude: people don't have to compromise on low emissions vs. safety vs. practicality. Car companies have forced the choice upon us from a century and billions of dollars of marketing and lobbying.
I have to call BS on the F-150 to Golf comparison. My 2018 Golf has nowhere near the interior space of an F-150. The Golf is (fairly) comfortable, but as a taller person, an F-150 is absolutely luxurious in leg/knee/head room compared to the Golf. It is like riding on a couch vs. being strapped into a race car. Not to mention that there is just about zero rear seat leg room in the Golf when adjusted to my driving position, while an F-150 my 90lb dog can stand on the floor of the vehicle back there.
They're not "inefficient", they're less power-dense in terms of mass. There's many types of efficiencies and where a car is involved, EVs are largely more efficient in those measures than ICE cars.
Everyone gets bigger cars because bigger cars have more room inside so they're really comfortable and practical.
People in the US get bigger pickup trucks, because of market distortions causing manufacturers to stop making the small ones, not because there's no demand for small trucks. This is why importing K trucks is a thing.
Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol.
Teslas and EVs in general are way more efficient in terms of energy used per mile. By well over a factor of 2 in most cases. According to Google: "The various versions of the Model 3 are rated between 113 MPGe and 141 MPGe by the EPA."
> Teslas are heavier because they have to use batteries and batteries are incredibly inefficient compared to petrol
That's not anywhere near correct.
With an ICE about 80% of the energy from the gasoline is lost, mostly due to heat.
With an EV about 30-35% of the energy from the battery is lost if there is no regenerative braking. With regenerative braking EVs only lose about 11% of the energy from the battery.
Here's an article with some nice diagrams of the losses in both [1].
Efficiency in cars is usually meant to be energy efficiency, energy out over energy in. And electric cars are usually more efficient by most metrics, even if you count the amount of gas an internal combustion engine uses vs the amount it takes an oil fired plant to charge an electric car that drives the same distance (well-to-wheels efficiency).
Is zeroing in on one single word from a parent post and "but actually..."ing it really a worthwhile use of your time? Pickup trucks are obviously practical vehicles for a whole range of uses. They don't make Technicals out of Corollas.
That would be true only if the use cases were the same. The US is very different in terms of both geography and infrastructure than most of the developed world.
How many European farmers are pulling a trailer 150 miles each way to pick up a load of hay? That's a relatively regular occurrence for my family. That sort of thing isn't at all uncommon in the US.
Streets are narrower in many parts of Europe as well, which means a larger truck isn't practical as a sole vehicle.
Crumple zones exist in cars because it’s better that the car absorbs (and deforms in the process) the kinetic energy of a crash than you the passenger inside.
Depends on the situation. I don't think the race to the top here is a good idea. You definitely do not want tanks on the highway. That would be insane.
