EVs have a HEAVY problem

electric cars have plenty of hurdles on their way to almost certain widespread acceptance you know most of them charge time range places to charge cost of the vehicle but there's another one that a lot of people don't think so much about but which the auto industry is thinking about a little bit more lately wait here's why the heaviness of an electric car is not trivial electric cars simply weigh notably more than a combustion engine car of similar type a tesla model 3 performance with all-wheel drive weighs about 4 065 pounds around 380 more than a similar bmw 330i x drive that comes in at 36.86 a tesla model s long range weighs about 4 560 pounds nearly 500 more than a bmw 540 x drive which is comparable and that's no light weight at 4050. and a chevy bolt weighs an astonishing 3 560 pounds over 800 more than a similarly sized nissan kicks at 2730. and all of those weights can contribute to greater tire wear greater road wear greater road noise and a big difference in collisions [Music] the insurance institute for highway safety makes one thing very clear a lighter vehicle will always be at a disadvantage in a collision with a heavier vehicle it's logical the heavier cars got more oomph to keep moving the other car and therefore the heavier car will decelerate less and less radically in a collision where the light car basically gets pushed around therefore the people inside those cars will either benefit or suffer from those same differences in dynamics bottom line if things are equal and you have two cars of roughly the same volume you want to be in the heavier one you're going to come out better by all indications that makes for an unfair situation on the road depending on which car you're in in a collision between a combustion and electric powered car put it another way you do not want to get hit by a 9 000 pound hummer ev [Music] or look how the d.o.t states it in a report from 2012 to lightweight lighter cars in pursuit of better fuel economy would create a greater risk of public health and fatalities on the road whereas to lightweight heavier cars would reduce the risk of public injury and fatality on the road [Music] now since evs way more if they go down the road they're putting more force weight and wear on that road surface that we all share gas engine cars whatever they weigh tend to pay their way because they pay such high gas taxes every time you fill them up electric cars don't pay any gas taxes and fuel taxes are generally earmarked toward road maintenance and repair though not totally now electric cars do pay taxes or i should say their owners do there's the sales tax which tends to be pretty high on evs because their sales price tends to be higher there's also licensing fees on them there is also a special fee in some states like here in california you pay a special annual fee that very slightly offsets the lack of gas taxes that you are not having to pay and of course there's taxes on electricity in most places but that doesn't go toward road maintenance bottom line is evs are still a small portion of the automotive populace but as they become more common we're going to have to deal with the fact that we're running heavier machines on the roadway and not necessarily getting them to pay their fair share of that wear [Music] then there's the noise of these heavy machines you may say wait a minute electric cars are supposed to be nearly silent their power trains are but their tires being forced down the road with a lot of weight on them are anything but researchers judy rochat and darlene ryder estimate that 45 million of us in the u.s either live work or go to school within 300 feet of a highway or a freeway and that the sound of cars going down those roads at those speeds are the largest single source of noise not engine noise not aerodynamic noise not idiots blowing their horn all the time so this is a major deal and when you also realize that many but not all electric cars tend to use pretty good large sized tires with a big contact patch you can see where that big weight times a lot of rubber tread on the road grinding and interacting with the asphalt is a noisy proposition the idea that an electric future is a quiet future is oversold at least when it comes to being adjacent to freeways finally there's towing and payload you may have heard about some of these coming electric pickup trucks and they are all the rage with incredible towing payload and performance numbers all true but there's an undercurrent there that's also a little troubling to truck people and that they are starting out the day before they even hitch up a trailer with more of a load the battery can be seen as payload on a ford f-150 lightning for example the vehicle has an 1800 pound battery and even though it gets rid of its engine and transmission entirely it still ends up weighing a thousand pounds more than a similarly engined combustion f-150 so you start the day off in the morning with a payload of a net thousand pounds and that payload that battery unlike gasoline is not a trivial weight a full tank of gas weighs almost nothing compared to electric battery and as that battery depletes and becomes less and less valuable as you're on your drive the weight doesn't change unlike a gas tank that gets lighter as you do work and use up the fuel so there's an interesting other angle here to the whole payload calculation and the ability to pull something like a trailer which has lousy aerodynamics with an electric vehicle whose weight is not going to make that proposition any better bottom line when you hear about energy density improvements on batteries or light weighting electric cars in general all of those lead to the same place trying to achieve parity in the weight of electric cars compared to the state of the art with combustion cars it is not trivial and it should be a factor that helps inform your decision whether to buy an ev and which one

Channel: CNET Cars

Views: 17,189

Keywords: electric vehicles, electric cars, electric vehicle, electric car, electric vehicles in india, electric bikes, electric vehicles 2022, 2022 electric vehicles, electric vehicles 2021, electric vehicles sales, electric vehicles future, new electric vehicles 2023, types of electric vehicles, ev, ev weight problem, electric vehicle weight problem, ev issues, electric vehicle issues, cybertruck, tesla, porsche taycan, nissan leaf, audi e-tron, silverado ev, f-150 lightning

Id: aFIzPDo5Jos

Length: 6min 33sec (393 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 28 2022