Gonna sneak in here and mention that the real trick to EVs is to make them smaller. It’s fucked up that we’re building EVs to make more efficient SUVs. It’s not hard to improve on the fuel economy of an SUV, and it really just kicks the can down the road. EV SUVs get like 93MPGe, and we really need smaller, more efficient cars that get in the 150-200 range.
Though many of those “SUVS” we would have used to call “wagons”, before SUV was ‘cool’. The battery weight (sadly worse with LFP) is the enemy, being most of the weight to carry.
So you can have yourself a Mini Cooper SE, with “only” 400 pounds more weight than the gas counterpart, but you only have 115 miles of range, and your MPGe is only 10 more than the typical ‘SUV’ electric.
The most problematic facets of traditional SUVs are (so far), not common in EVs:
High center of gravity - Thanks to batteries, generally an EV SUV has a lower center of mass than even a lot of sedans
Absurd nose limiting front visibilty. Thus far most EV SUVs have pretty car-like noses. To get those vaguely decent range figures, they can’t afford the stupidity of cosplaying as semi trucks like the ‘big ol SUVs’ like to do.
If hoping that smaller cars will pave the way to reduced kWh for good range, unfortunately the battery packs themselves are the biggest problem with weight. So you’d be really looking toward a breakthrough in energy density before you could have, say, a little Miata to toss around cheaply and lightly wear a cheaper battery with lower capacity and still get at least 100 miles of range.
Gonna sneak in here and mention that the real trick to EVs is to make them smaller. It’s fucked up that we’re building EVs to make more efficient SUVs. It’s not hard to improve on the fuel economy of an SUV, and it really just kicks the can down the road. EV SUVs get like 93MPGe, and we really need smaller, more efficient cars that get in the 150-200 range.
Though many of those “SUVS” we would have used to call “wagons”, before SUV was ‘cool’. The battery weight (sadly worse with LFP) is the enemy, being most of the weight to carry.
So you can have yourself a Mini Cooper SE, with “only” 400 pounds more weight than the gas counterpart, but you only have 115 miles of range, and your MPGe is only 10 more than the typical ‘SUV’ electric.
The most problematic facets of traditional SUVs are (so far), not common in EVs:
If hoping that smaller cars will pave the way to reduced kWh for good range, unfortunately the battery packs themselves are the biggest problem with weight. So you’d be really looking toward a breakthrough in energy density before you could have, say, a little Miata to toss around cheaply and lightly wear a cheaper battery with lower capacity and still get at least 100 miles of range.