Electric Vehicles

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A UK-centric Electric Vehicles community, where discussion/news of the wider European continent is welcome.

All discussion of EVs (and hybrids for the moment), charging networks, etc, welcome!

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165

Toyota to offer manual gearbox in next-generation electric cars (www.autocar.co.uk)

submitted 2 years ago by i_am_not_a_robot@feddit.uk to c/evs@feddit.uk

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I don't really see the point of this. It's just adding complexity for the sake of it. As far as I can tell when you change gear it just changes some software parameters, there are no physical gears. Yet there's a clutch and the ability to stall?

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[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago (1 children)

People in niches generally pay more. EVs are more expensive and made in smaller quantities (until production ramps up, maybe). So making EVs to appeal to a niche consumer with disposable income can be a smart move to jumpstart the EV business.

That's (one reason) why Tesla started with luxury sports cars. Car enthusiasts and other lovers of manual gear shift are another interesting segment to try and tap. I wonder what other segments they might go for? Racing? Off-road? Delivery? Taxi? Commercial transport?

It's tricky though. You don't see a lot of EV motorcycles, but I think that's because ebikes are a better power/weight ratio for the form-factor and use case. No one's getting a Harley to save the environment.

[–] misanthropy@lemm.ee 7 points 2 years ago

The biggest reasons ev bikes suck are: shitty range, weight, cost.

Bikes are small, batteries are heavy. The Harley live wire, for example, can do less than 100 miles on a charge. Second, but part of that first point, they're HEAVY. My bike weighs ~360lbs. An energica sport bike is in the high 500lbs range. Thirdly, they're obscenely expensive for worse performance, handling, weight, range. If someone could produce a 400lb bike with a ~200 mile range I might be interested.

I'm biased, but 99.99% of my riding is in the middle of nowhere in the mountains, there's no chargers out there and there won't be for decades.