It ain’t the junk in the garage, it’s the $80k and the spyware
with the used EV tax credit there are good options at ~20k.
What does spyware have to do with EVs?
Well my next car will be an EV so I’m holding on to the older car i have for now until some good option actually comes that’s reasonably priced and not spyware
If we ever see a Slate truck, that will be your best bet.
Apparently people are living double lives and are afraid their secret identity will be uncovered by checks notes corporations who already know more about us because we have a smartphone in our pocket.
Would you mind posting your phone book and a copy of all your text messages here for us all to read? Can we see your photo album, all credit card transactions, amazon purchase history, GPS location data, credit score? We promise only to sell this info to other people, use it to sell you stuff, raise your insurance rates, tell us where to focus our funding for political campaigns. Don’t worry, we’ll only save it forever and you can be assured that we’ll feed this into AI models 10 or 20 years from now, along with everyone else’s data, establishing a massive cache of information from which incredible inferences will be possible. We may or may not use this information to enrich ourselves, increase wealth inequality, influence politics. You should surely not take steps to limit the data being collected about you. Just relax your body. Let it happen.
Would you mind posting your phone book
Did you know that before cellular phones were a thing, the phone company regularly sent out books with everyone’s name, phone number, and sometimes even their address in them?
You could even find such a book in public in these little things called “Phone booths”.
And people were concerned. My grandpa only had initials published not his full name because he knew some widows [when my mom was a baby] afraid of crime who only published their initials and wanted to make things harder for those criminals who targeted on widows.
You’ve missed the point. The phone numbers are not the valuable information. What’s valuable is the list of each person’s social contacts.
You’ve missed the point.
The point is the useful trivia I just told you.
I assume that the downvotes are from you and I notice that you haven’t shared the information. I think that is a good and appropriate response. Nothing good can come you sharing this information here. Privacy is appropriate and valuable even for people who are doing nothing wrong and who aren’t even particularly interesting.
To really drive in your point, why don’t you post the names and phone numbers of the three people you contact most frequently. Don’t worry, those numbers are already in the phone book. It’s ok, you’re just sharing publicly available information.
Privacy matters.
The government and corporations abused this information by stopping protestors getting to their destination.
Protestors can atleast use faraday bags or just leave their phones at home. Now they can’t even get to important events.
Now this information is being used by ICE to arrest immigrants.
Considering how conservative views and Nazis are coming back in to fashion, this is very scary for anyone not white and male.
I have a used model 3 (I bought it before shit really started going downhill) and I’ve been contemplating disconnecting the wifi and cellular antennas. My car wouldn’t be able to send any images/video anywhere, I wouldn’t be tracked except for my location when I stop at supercharger stations, and I would never have to risk getting Grok installed in my car.
privacy matters, but data collection isn’t limited to EVs. Pretty much all new cars collect data whether EV ICE or hybrid.
Privacy matters. If it didnt, bathrooms would not have doors.
Imagine Senate passes a law to put cameras in all toilet motion sensor. People still go, “If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about. Genital recognition technology is used to identify criminals! Do you want criminals to get away?!”
You can get electric for only a slightly higher cost than gas, just not the “premium” ones. As for Spyware, that’s any modern car. It has nothing to do with being electric.
As opposed to what your comment implies, the drivetrain (EV or ICE) has nothing to do with cars spying on you. You should not blame the technology itself because shady car companies spying on your internet connected car. Most of them are well known ICE car brands that do the spying (GM, Volkswagen for instance)
Yes, most new ICE cars are Internet connected now, not just EVs.
Blame those greedy corporations, not the technology.
exactly, data collection is an issue with new cars in general. It’s not a reason to buy a new ICE car instead of a new EV.
It is a reason to not buy a new car which means people who aren’t buying new cars won’t be buying EV’s.
You could always pick up a 9-year-old Bolt
Not worth the cost of admission. The amount of money it costs to refurb that battery pack is still too high.
A bunch of the earlier ones had their batteries replaced under warranty and are effectively only a couple years old. They’re also dirt cheap and undervalued at the moment.
I would argue that even if you did get a used one with new batteries, you’d still face degradation down the line and additional problems that would or could be mitigated in older ice cars which are much more likely to have replacement parts available (even if those replacement parts don’t come from the same type or brand of vehicle). For instance. I know for a fact that there’s a trend of using Honda engines in older first Gen mini coopers. Buying a rebuilt engine has the potential to be pretty cheap.
They won’t be buying new cars in the near future, but their cars will be wearing out and spare parts for old cars always become hard to find. Either they will be spending a large part of their time maintaining the car, including making parts from scratch, or they will forced to buy a new car anyway.
The average car in the US is 12 years old. That average is higher in other countries. But regardless, that’s not because cars are unfixable. It’s because most people opt to buy a new or newer car when they feel like the vehicle they currently own is more expensive to fix than they’d like and a lot of that has nothing to do with the longevity of the vehicle and everything to do with how vehicle purchase can be financed vs how car repair can be financed.
It also has a lot to do with people who don’t or won’t fix things before they snowball, and or become astronomically expensive problems. Taking care of a vehicle is about doing regular maintenance (which most people don’t do), and getting at the very least an annual inspection (which most people also don’t do unless they’re forced to).
I won’t be buying a new car ever. I can say that with absolute certainty. I have rehabbed my current car in just about every way I can. Machined/honed block, new valves, new piston/lan rings, new head gasket, new water pump, new thermostat housing, new valve cover, new injectors, rebuilt transmission with new clutch, all new hoses, all new gaskets, new HP fuel pump. I will continue to do so because to me it’s worth it. Doner cars are readily available, but I probably won’t need one specifically because my car is considered and enthusiast car. I have walked into a dealer and ordered parts and my car is 15 years old. I also owned a 20 year old version of this car with the same ability to order parts directly from the dealer.
Most people aren’t buying used unless they have no choice. They will continue to buy new cars regardless of the controversy surrounding them.
I think it’s a bit disingenuous assume that older cars will not be available. Especially considering that the EV’s that are new right now aren’t going to survive 25 years without costly repairs of their own. I’d salvage an engine from an older car. I wouldn’t salvage a battery pack from an older car.
Our 10 year-old Highlander still drives like new. It’s our newest vehicle, and one of Toyota’s last generation of vehicles without a cellular connection.
The average car is 12 years old. Car makers start to drop support (making/stocking parts) when the car is about 10 years old. Come back and talk to me about that car when is is 25 years old and tell me how it is. I have a 26 year old truck, the bed has holes, the frame is showing signs of rot - I’m trying to decide if it is worth trying to rebuild the transmission, my mechanic isn’t intersted in part because they are not sure if they can find the parts - they will be more than $1000 in labor in before they know wihch bearing it has and thus can check if it can be had.
As a matter of fact, ICE cars were connected to the internet way before the first EV was connected to the internet.
Yup. Find me a car that respects my privacy and won’t advertise to me and I’m in.
my ford EV has no subscriptions (other than the usual sirius XM and nav subs that all cars have). There is data collection but you are able to opt out.
Also this is more of an issue with new cars in general, not a reason to choose a new ICE vehicle over a new EV.
If the car has an RF transmitter of any kind installed, it is a HARD no.
is an RF transmitter in your phone a hard no as well?
I have replaced all that junk on my phone with a clean system I trust. cars not only don’t have alternative software, but using it would be illegal too.
I reckon it soon shall be, the way such things are trending.
The point you’re trying to make is, if I willingly carry around a battery powered security hole in my pocket all the time, why should I be concerned about another one installed in my vehicle?
Well, should I decide I wish to travel without being monitored, I can leave my phone behind and still travel rapidly.
My phone does not have access to my vehicle’s CAN bus; my phone cannot disable the vehicle from afar should it detect I performed my own repairs or that I am not christian or that my skin is browner than the dictator will tolerate or whatever else the police will decide to murder me for.
How clean is your garage? Do you have one? Just curious.
I do not understand people who use their garage to store useless crap and leave their car outside. The car is more valuable than the crap.
Dump all that useless junk into a dumpster. Get a bike shed, put the mower in it too.
The garage is for cars, not bikes, mowers or trash nobody cares about.
Looking at you California.
The car is more valuable than the crap.
Only if you spend way too much money on a depreciating asset that won’t be that valuable for long. For that matter storing inside or outside makes zero difference to the value. The stuff in my garage is more valuable than my car (my car is 26 years old so this is a much lower bar than most people), is more sensitive to weather than my cars, and I enjoy it more than cars.
I don’t get this obsession people have with depreciating assets like cars. They brag about how great they are, take good care of it, and then 3 years latter trade in that piece of junk…
Besides, the worst weather for cars is bright sun, and most cars are parked outside in a parking lot (at work) when it is sunny, and only put in the garage when it is dark.
I’m not in the US, but here where we have snow and all the fun that comes with it using garage can be actually harmful to your car (and your garage) unless you spend a ton of energy to melt and dry all the snow every night. If there’s some snow or ice on somewhere it doesn’t really do anything but bring it in a lukewarm garage and then you have water (and likely road salt) all over the thing. So your car corrodes faster and there’s a ton of moisture in the garage for mold, rot and everything else prospering inside.
I’m driving old, cheap cars. Keeping them dry them every day during winter in the garage would easily cost me as much as the cars themselves in a year. So cars stay outside and garage stores my tools and other valuables in a good condition so that I can fix those old shitboxes.
Currently parked in it!
Nice
Me, who doesn’t even have a garage: Yeah… That’e what stops me from getting an EV…
lol, this totally makes sense to me. It can’t be the only reason. But my lived experience tells me it’s not insignificant.
I don’t have a driver’s license, so I don’t have to worry about that! :-)
If you’re work commuting with an EV and charging at home. What’s the hit to your electric bill?
Because that’s one of a few bottlenecks. $10 every few days for some gas is a lot easier on people than a blanket X hundreds of dollars higher light bill.
Being poor is expensive.
You’re right, being poor is expensive, but that doesn’t really apply to charging a vehicle.
The term “being poor is expensive” is generally applied to situations where you don’t have the money to pay for something upfront (a quality product, bulk purchases, preventative maintenance, preventative healthcare, down payment on a house) so you have to spend smaller amounts of money repeatedly and/or have a large unavoidable cost as a result (multiple cheap products that wear out, multiple small purchases with a higher per unit price, a blown engine, a root canal, rent), which can cost a lot more over time.
The electric bill is post-paid, not up front. Not being able to set aside the “$10 every few days” to pay the higher bill at the end of the month with money left over is just poor money management.
That being said, the higher purchase cost of electric vehicles preventing poor people from taking advantage of lower operating costs that would more than offset the higher purchase price after some number of years is an example of it being expensive to be poor.
pretty sure it’s the lack of money that’s hurting ev adoption.
There can be multiple factors.
People with garages big enough for a nice car that also have it stuffed with things probally have money too. Right?
I have a garage that could hold 4 cars if you parked 2 rows of them…
My single income household of 3 is just barely above the national poverty level.
People with garages big enough for a nice car
What the fuck? I can tell you don’t have a garage, because for 99% of them size isn’t going to impact the ‘niceness’ of the car you can have in it.
Challenge: People who lived in major cities understanding that there’s more to life than what goes on in them.
Level: Impossible.
I have a garage. And it’s one of the ones that barely fits a standard sized car.
It’s also full of stuff due to the house being super tiny too. The house has zero closets, no basement, single floor. It’s apartment sized, basically.
It’s a small town, the house is 100+ years old from what I understand.
So you’re saying for the purposes of this article that most people live outside of cities in the US? And space shouldn’t be an issue? I’m not sure what your meme is about here.
I moved in to a house with a garage and my in laws are constantly trying to give us crap to fill it up.
I don’t even know where they’re getting this stuff, they just show up and are like “oh, we’re getting rid of this dresser, we thought you’d like it” or “or, I bought this antique trunk at a yard sale, can you hold on to it”.
Same here. Luckily our basement flooded and we were like “oh well, guess it’s all ruined and has to be thrown away 🤷”
Yeah, my bfs dad is constantly filling his house, garage, and yard with a bunch of crap that he’ll never use. It just sits there and gets forgotten and deteriorates. Took us 6 years but we got like 90% of what he was storing out of our house too.
Too real
How about talking to the landlords who refuse to install EV chargers? Or maybe talk to manufacturers who won’t sell a basic EV that isn’t overpriced?
This is just “Am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong!” again.
What do landlords have to do with it? Can you not power the charger off 110V or 220V? Do you need a higher amp circuit cut in, larger than 30A? (American question obviously.)
fast charging requires a larger service connection than a wall outlet. you can slow charge from a normal wall outlet, but it will take ages to fully charge a modest battery.
generally people have it installed by an electrician, running a new conduit from the circuit breaker.
For home charging to keep up with a commute, a normal wall outlet all night long is fine. It just needs to be installed where the car is parked, and it should have some protection from weather while the car is plugged in.
…this obviously depends on how far your commute is, and how large the battery is.
https://supercarblondie.com/tesla-cybertruck-owner-regular-plug-outlet/
220V? Better than 30A? I’m asking what I would need to install in my home. I have no clue on this.
talk to an electrician after looking at the specs on the charger you want. I’m not qualified to give you electrical instructions
In the us, home chargers will typically run on 240 volts, similar to a dryer or electric stove.
The amperage can be as low as 16 amps (not common) and up to 40 amps. There are higher amperage chargers, but they’re not super common. Most homes dont have that much capacity provisioned and adding it to the breaker box means new circuits and often the power company has to provide a higher capacity meter. It gets expensive.
Since volts x amps = watts, a 240 volt charger that operates at 40 amps will charge at 9600 watts or 9.6 kilowatts (maximum).
You can charge using a standard 120v outlet, most are rated for 15 amps. However, you will get 120v x 15a = 1800 watts or 1.8 kilowatts (maximum).
Don’t forget the 80% rule! Because those ratings are made for shorter periods of time drawing electricity, and cars usually charge for hours, you need to charge at 80% of the circuit rating. So really you’ll charge at 120V x 12A =1.4kW. Not only that, but if you have anything else on that circuit you need to leave room for that too. My car defaults to 8A on level 1 unless you tell it to do 12, in which case you get just under a kilowatt.
How much do you drive in a year? What kind of car are you looking at?
For the average driver, a 120V (normal) outlet on a smaller car is actually perfectly fine most of the time. If you think you might get a bigger car, or multiple EVs, you may want to look into a level 2 setup. And while you’re at it, use thicker wires so you can run more power through it. But don’t feel like you have to go overboard. I think the sweet “buy once, cry once, hard to come up with a situation where this isn’t enough” number is a 50 amp 240V circuit running a 40A charge cord (always charge at 80% of your circuit rating, max).
But if your panel can’t take it or you want to do it cheaper or whatever, a 20A 240V circuit is on the lower end of the level 2 spectrum and it can still do a lot… Like, more than double that “average driver” amount for level 1. And here’s the fun part: everyone is so afraid of 240V and think it takes special wiring or whatever. It really doesn’t. I’ve got a 240V air compressor outlet on a 20A circuit, just like what I suggested a minute ago. It uses the exact same wiring as the 120V next to it. The only difference? It’s connected to two “opposing” hots with a double breaker (not terribly more expensive) rather than a single hot on a single breaker plus a neutral as you’d see on 120V. All you need to do is wrap the white wire (usually neutral) with a colored (not green, that’s ground) electrical tape to indicate that it carries current. Do it on both sides. Easy peasy, up to code, and uses really affordable wiring.
The work isn’t hard - I did it myself (I checked my spare parts box and discovered the only thing I was missing was the cover for the outlet, so it cost me $3). However if you don’t know what you are doing around electric I can’t train you on the internet. While you can find good instructions via a simple search you can also find instructions that are dangerous and if you don’t know what you are doing you won’t know the difference.
I rent a house. Our lease is explicit about no battery charging in the garage, including EVs. Yet they seemingly have no problem with my welder or RC cars…
Some apartment buildings are nowhere near where tenets park vehicles. Running extention cables would be a mess and dangerous
Ah! When I think “landlord”, I’m thinking of a single family home. That’s generally the context in America.
It depends. More rural areas are single family/duplex set ups. If you are more urban you’ll find complexes or even skyscrapers in large metro areas :)
Why lower your EV price when you can just block foreign competition?
you don’t even need a garage to charge your EV, just install it on the exterior.
Yeah lemme just do that on my apartment
Does your apartment have a garage? No? Then what does this add to the conversation?
They wanted to supply some negative charge.
I’m sensing a lot of resistance.
this article is about junk filled garages, so clearly not talking about apartment dwellers.
Money and options are hurting my adaption rate
We have a one-car garage and two cars. I have a table saw, therefore we have a no-car garage.
My parents have a garage full of junk. It used to drive me crazy. We have strong storms where we live and a tree/branches falling are a real possibility of damaging their cars. Plus hail storms sometimes.
It’s mainly my moms stuff. Some of it is worth money but it’s not being sold or anything.
If they used the garage as something other than storage it would be one thing. Instead it’s full of stuff for no real reason.
Some of it is worth money but it’s not being sold or anything.
My mother refuses to admit she’s a hoarder, and none of her things are really valuable. She’s clean, it’s not like she lives in filth, but she lives in 4000 square feet (main floor + basement) and has three full wall closets plus a room in the basement all filled with every item of clothing she has ever owned. I can barely fill a small closet with all my clothing. Her closets aren’t small, either. They are about 15 feet wide, each. So three 15 feet wide closets absolutely crammed with shit, and each one of them has storage space broken into three sections, about three feet tall each above each closet. Everything is crammed full. None of it is ever pulled out to be used for anything. She has all these things from her family she has kept for “memories” but 1. they mean nothing to me because I hate my extended family and 2. I won’t be able to afford to store them and won’t have reason to when she’s gone.
I don’t fucking get it, it’s a massive house, and it’s just stuffed to the fucking brim with crap crap crap!
There are lots of factors that lead to people of her generation ending up like this. It’s really common.
One factor for some people, is not wanting to face how wasteful we are. It’s putting off the reality that it’s all landfill. Just one of many reasons. And it think it might be common with people who are not exactly hoarders, but also manage to hold on to so much.
Sure, they could donate it… but the rationalization could spin up again knowing that’s just another cope, because most of it will go from the donation place to the landfill.
The big thing I see in my mom is she grew up with almost nothing, and all this stuff keeps her a little further from ever being in that situation again. I get it, but it isn’t a healthy way to deal with that fear, and you’d be better off saving the money instead. But she doesn’t trust banks, so that’s another negative. 🤷♂️
That’s irrelevant because as far as I know you don’t actually have to have the car in the garage to be able to charge it you can put the charger on the outside if you want.
Also I don’t know how it is in America but my garage is literally too small for the car, I can just about get it in there but then I’m stuck because I can’t open the door far enough to get out.
This guy knows how to do it.
Many Americans have huge garages, some with room to park 2 or even 3 vehicles with plenty of space to walk around them. But even single garages are large enough to park cars.
I’ve seen in newer slapped together constructions where yes, wide enough for two cars but they skimped on depth and the average sedan or larger won’t actually fit.
Cars are much wider now than they used to be. Garages that were built more than 50 years ago likely are thinner.
My grandparents house built just after ww2 had, what was for a long time, a standard two car garage. Enough room for two land yachts from the 70s, lawn care implements and various other stuff and you could still open the car doors all the way and walk around. My parents’ house built in the 70s was the same. It’s more recent construction in built up areas where they are shrinking. They’ve been getting smaller as developers try to cram more liveable sqft on smaller amounts of land.
Pretty sure it’s the range and charge times. Especially in the Midwest. I need a car that can take me to Florida in under 16 hours. Also I own a EV
The real problem is having to go to Florida so regularly. I feel for ya.
I know lots of people who just run the cable under the door…
