EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them

boem@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 655 points –
EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them
theatlantic.com
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“Unlike gas-powered engines—which are made up of thousands of parts that shift against one other—a typical EV has only a few dozen moving parts. That means lessdamage and maintenance, making it easier and cheaper to keep a car on the road well past the approximately 200,000-mile average lifespan of a gas-powered vehicle. And EVs are only getting better. “There are certain technologies that are coming down the pipeline that will get us toward that million-mile EV,” Scott Moura, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley, told me. That many miles would cover the average American driver for 74 years. The first EV you buy could be the last car you ever need to purchase.“

No way a car would last me and my family 74 years. First year I owned my car I put on almost 35k. Was driving 100 miles back and forth to work at that time. We typically take a road trip from colorado to near Vermont every year for a vacation.

A lot of midwesterns will drive 14 hours to get some where

At best case 60 miles an hour... Your commute was more than 90 mins? Ugh. That's awful.

You weren't clear if that was round trip or not, so possibly more than 180 mins? How did you find time to sleep!?

In the San Francisco Bay Area, it's not uncommon for people that work here but can't afford to live here to have commutes of over an hour with good traffic (2+ hours with heavy traffic) each way. That's the case in a few major metro areas in countries like the USA and Australia.

Yeah Bay Area and LA traffic is next level. My condolences to those souls who make that drive every day

My commute in the Bay Area is 15-20 mins without traffic, but it can be 50 minutes if there's some incident on the 101 or if I accidentally try to commute during the highest peak period.

I'd love to take a train to work, and I used to take Caltrain every day, but it's just not feasible where I live now.

I think LA is even worse than the Bay.

Round trip was 100 miles every day. This was rural Ohio driving to Columbus so it was not to bad 2 and 4 lane roads till you hit the city most of them time. If we got a lot of snowfall it could super suck but I was from NE Ohio so most of the time it was not that much white knuckle driving. You just listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts or call some friends on your hour or so drive home

Sure, there's always going to be outliers. Most people live and work in the same metropolitan area though - they're not driving 50,000km+ a year. Besides, having a vehicle with 5 times the effective lifetime is going to be a big win regardless of how much you drive it.

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