Talk:Electric car/Archive 7

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Archive 1 Archive 5 Archive 6 Archive 7 Archive 8 Archive 9

Lead picture

One more time, I want to propose two options to substitute the image in the lead of the article. As argued before, using photos of small city cars does not represent the current reality of most of the all-electric models available in the market. These two options shown below more modern electric cars (BMW i3 and Tesla Model S), and also the charging cords, which previously has been the prevailing criteria, an image that screams electric car. My favorite is the BMW i3, please express your opinion below. Thx. --Mariordo (talk) 01:53, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

BMW i3 charging on street in Amsterdam
Tesla Model S (left) and Smart ED (right) charging on street in Amsterdam
Electric cars compilation draft
2013 Tesla Model S (11322176214) croppedMitsubishi i-MiEV
DCA 06 2012 Chevy Volt 4035BMW i3 01
2011 Nissan Leaf SL -- 10-28-20112013 Smart Fortwo Electric Drive -- 2012 NYIAS
2012 Ford Focus Electric 2011 LA Auto ShowBYD Electric Taxi
  • Top: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce et blandit mauris. Nulla congue ante placerat vestibulum volutpat
  • Middle: Suspendisse posuere nisl non lorem semper cursus. Morbi sed sem purus.
  • Bottom: Ut orci dolor, posuere vel lectus quis, lobortis ultricies ipsum. Ut tristique porta orci nec pulvinar.
I was actually coming here to suggest the same thing! The current picture is a fugly, bad angle image with poor lighting on a cloudy day. Not good as the opening image. I was actually going to suggest that a Leaf picture get used, but I kinda like that Tesla/Smart image. It really captures the full range of what's currently available, from top end to bottom end. Great find! Too bad it isn't a better quality image, but even so, I like the concept of it. — Gopher65talk 19:33, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
I support the photo of the Tesla and Smart ED together. I have stated here on this page for a long time that the lead photo needs to include an EV that does not look like a glorified golf cart. Here at last, we see both types of electric vehicles charging, both clearly EV's. The photo is reasonable, and long overdue.
Jusdafax 20:56, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
Having the Tesla Model S and the Smart ED together is a good idea. I'm not overly impressed with the photo on aesthetic grounds but the idea is fine. The photo appears to show the ED being charged through its very obvious nice bright coiled electric cable and some other large car parked next to it doing nothing much. You only see the dull green cord drooping down from the Tesla if you go looking for it and the car can easily be mistaken as not being electric. Whereas the older image (see right) is very obviously electric cars and has a certain aesthetic quality of repeating into the distance. The older image's main drawback is that Americans hate small cars that aren't American - bluntly put but still a real drawback. Anyway, I prefer the older image but I am not sufficiently against the new one to block it.  Stepho  talk  04:22, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
I agree that the new image isn't perfectly composed. I encourage everyone to take pictures whenever they see a good scene like this, especially if they have a real camera. But if all you have with you is a crappy cell phone camera (even the best ones truly suck), use that. Who knows, it might turn out ok. Eventually one of us will take a great picture if we just keep at it! (My perfect image would be a low, medium, high end series of cars all charging right next to each other. In bright sunlight. Clear blue sky. Charging cables easily seen. White balance done properly. In focus:P. I hope someone manages to take such a picture and upload it.)
My issue with the original picture (beyond the poor composition) is that Smart EVs aren't representative of the average electric car any more than a Model S is. Either one by itself is a bad choice, because that isn't what most of us would choose if we were buying a car. Smart because they are objectively bad cars compared to their competition, and Model S because it's too expensive. The lede image needs to either show a range of possibilities, or show a single vehicle that is representative of the market.
In a few years when there are more choices on the market in the mid-range (Leaf v2, Bolt, Model 3), we should revisit this and try and find a good picture with some or all of those in it. — Gopher65talk 18:13, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
Agreed.  Stepho  talk  00:55, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Why not use a compilation? I don't think there will ever be a single image that fulfills all the requirements mentioned above. In addition, images of a compilation can easily be replaced one by one when a better version or a new model requires an update. An example is posted above. Rfassbind – talk 12:27, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

A compilation image is a good idea. However, I think you have missed the point of the lede image. It must be representative of the topic. Therefore it must give the following impression to the reader at a glance:
  1. this is something to do with cars,
  2. this is something to do with electricity.
If you follow this and previous discussions, I have been repeating these criteria over and over. Your compilation image is full of cars. But where is the electricity aspect? The point is not to show examples of electric cars. The point is to scream "car" and "electric" so that the average reader will get both points without having to squint at little details in the image.
Some possible ways to do this are:
  1. A photo of an electric engine in the car. But not many people look under the bonnet/hood nowadays, so this could be mistaken for an electric engine in another circumstance, so the car aspect is weak.
  2. A photo of an electric battery in the car. Suffers even worse than the previous point.
  3. A photo of a car charging. Most charging cables look similar to petrol hoses, so the electric aspect is weak in many pictures. Brightly coloured coiled cables help here. Most arguments against it so far have been about how much Americans hate micro cars - which a compilation image would help.
  4. A drawing showing a car with a lightning bolt inside it and a coiled cable going to some long distance power lines.  Stepho  talk  04:17, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Sure, the image-compilation is just a (partial) example that focused on the issue of the different models. Close-up images related to charging (cable, socket), electric motors, and batteries would of course also be part of a compilation. In addition, a historic model should also be included, as this would be representative of the topic as well. Since there are so many specific ideas of how the lead-image has to look like, and a fully fleshed-out compilation takes hours of evaluating images, this is the best I can do to convey the concept of a compilation. It was never meant to be a final version. Everybody is invited to add, remove and replace images in the above example. Use colspan=2 | [[File:... if you want to display a larger image across the whole width of the box. Rfassbind – talk 13:48, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

This isn't too bad:

Tesla Roadster recharging from a conventional outlet.

GliderMaven (talk) 13:04, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for changing the pic. Previous one was really bad to portray electric cars. Even better would be a Leaf and a Tesla. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:28, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
GM, apologies for my tendency to rant.  Stepho  talk  06:36, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Dealer reluctance

Thought these might useful references for established dealers not wanting to sell you an electric car:

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/science/electric-car-auto-dealers.html?_r=0
  2. http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/big-problem-electric-cars-theyre-too-reliable
  3. http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1090281_many-car-dealers-dont-want-to-sell-electric-cars-heres-why  Stepho  talk  06:55, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Done! In order to avoid just one source, I went to the two studies (ITS-Davis & Consumer Reports) cited by the NYTimes, the original source of the reports by other media listed above. I am not sure I located the new content in the right place, but since loss of revenue and commisions is a key reason for the dealers reluctance to sell plug-ins, I though the "Economics" sections might be the best place. Please feel free to sugest other location.--Mariordo (talk) 03:38, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Looks good. Many thanks.  Stepho  talk  12:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Would this tool be helpful?

Hi - This is an organizational account for the Union of Concerned Scientists, a science and advocacy group that works on various issues, including vehicle electrification. We recently released an online tool that looks at the CO2e emissions from specific EV models in specific ZIP codes (the ZIP codes are tied to electric regions, using the most recent data from EPA's eGrid). It's drawing from a robust dataset, including information on each vehicle's efficiency and, for plug-in hybrids, the percentage of miles driven on electricity vs gasoline. The C02e of a given fuel includes life cycle emissions (aka, extracting, refining, and transporting oil for gasoline, and all the emissions associated with electricity production).

Anyhow, we thought this information may be of utility for Wikipedia users, but obviously won't add it to the article's text ourselves. Have a look, and thanks. Scientificsolutions (talk) 17:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip. Since this is a non-commercial app it is not be considered spam. However, because it is U.S. specific, I added a link in the article Plug-in electric vehicles in the United States, in the section external links, so the tool is available ther for Wikipedia readers, and most likely, to American readers. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 23:16, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! Scientificsolutions (talk) 20:42, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

solar car

A car which can run with electric . The engien which work with the help of electric.It can run in 80 (km/h). In this Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).</ref>car will need more energy so we can use wind energy as a source . With the help of turbine fixed in the place of engina . when the car get started by solar energy then the car will run then the wind energy will start working. So, the car can run fast and he will get power from both the sides . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.49.17.37 (talk) 02:50, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Doesn't work, typically. While you can have a wind powered car, using the forward velocity of the car to turn a windmill will slow the car down more than the electricity you generate will speed it up. Greglocock (talk) 03:21, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

BAHAHAHA now youre talking about solar cars?!? lol, there is no way you people can get away from the ac current is there? The electric car industry is far behind and hasnt even grasped wat electro-magnetism can do. It can at least triple the mileage of a conventional electric lead acid.

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"kW-hrs" versus "kWh"

For various reasons, the US government has decided that a "kWh", as used on everyone's electricity bills and many gas bills, in America and in the rest of the world, shouldn't apply to electric cars in the United States, and they claim to have done a survey proving that Americans find it 'less confusing' to use kW-hrs, and the official U.S. mpg-e stickers use that convention.

So at the moment, the figures for electric cars follow that, and use kW-hrs on electric car related pages, and this is fairly consistent.

Some people tried to change it inconsistently on some pages, but it would need changing on the convert pages as well as in some templates and so forth to be fully consistent. So I've been reverting it back so that car usage as kW-hrs is used.

If we have consensus to continue with the US government's de facto standard, fine, but do people want to change it to simply kWh? What should Wikipedia do? GliderMaven (talk) 22:32, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I suspect the wiki way is to use kW-hrs when reporting USAn numbers, but use kWh elsewhere. I'd fully support just using kWh. Presumably the other alternative has been dismissed as too ridiculous Greglocock (talk) 01:16, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Doing the first suggestion probably means that some tables would have to have mixtures of kW-hrs and kWh, even though they're the same thing. I'm thinking we should probably go with kWh too. I've kept it so far because that was the initial position- for consistency. But we should see if anyone defends keeping kW-hrs in articles like this one.GliderMaven (talk) 04:05, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
That is not a standard. kWh is an SI-unit and international standard! Thats what Wikipedia should use (...like the rest of the world does). Hadhuey (talk) 13:44, 22 January 2016 (UTC) P.S. This is the english speaking Wikipedia, not the U.S. Wikipedia. People from all over the world are using this and they should see international standard units.
It is a standard of the US government. There's also the 'mpg-e' standard, which explicitly refers the energy efficiency, but (only) versus US gallons.GliderMaven (talk) 22:04, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
kilowatt hour says it is an abbrevation that is used by a US authority. A abbrevation is not a standard given by an standard organisation, and its not internationally accepted standard. Why should a different spelling be used for the amount of energy especiqally for electric cars? Its still electricity and still counted in kilowatt hours. The only reason is to try to make it more comfortable for people who dont have a big technical background, but using different abrrevationts for the same thing makes more problems in the end. Hadhuey (talk) 22:20, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Abbreviations are used all the time, even in standards. Anyway, what I'm going to do, is leave it another week or two, and if we don't get any support for kW-hrs, then I'll start actioning the change, leaving just a mention of it in kWh and mpg-e, and I might consider dropping something in WP:MOS somewhere, but probably not.GliderMaven (talk) 23:12, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
One the one hand we have the internationally agreed form of kWh and on the other hand we have the US government's form of kW-hrs. I can think of 3 reasons for this:
  • The US government is smarter than the rest of the world and specifically, it is smarter than the entire SI body. Can't really see any evidence for this.
  • The US people are dumber than the rest of the world and need more help than the rest of us. Tempting to go Yank bashing but I can't really see evidence of this either.
  • The US doesn't like to follow other countries standards and would rather strike out on its own. Unfortunately I have seen way too many US examples of "Does not play well with the other kids".
This is a case of one department of one country deciding to take an established, well accepted standard and distort it. Much better to stick to the internationally agreed SI units.  Stepho  talk  01:59, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Well, yeah, but the units used are in fact "kW-hrs/100 miles", so don't bet on this magically becoming SI derived units any time soon, ;) At least not for U.S. car figures.GliderMaven (talk) 03:48, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
OK, so I'll action it.GliderMaven (talk) 01:10, 16 February 2016 (UTC)
Done.GliderMaven (talk) 19:54, 15 March 2016 (UTC)
Thank you, I think that is an improvement. Btw, contrary to what is noted above, the SI-unit for energy is Joule not kWh (nor Wh with other prefixes). But kWh is clearly the accepted unit and notation for energy in the form of electricity. Further, I believe the use of kW-hrs instead of kWh betrays a lack of understanding of the notation of a physical unit as a product of a prefix and basic unit(s) (i.e. an algebraic entity), as opposed to just an abbreviation of a (pluralized) word. Lklundin (talk) 21:42, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
I also added kWh/100 km to the conversions for European readers, I supposed I could have used MJ/km or something, it can be fairly easily changed if we can show that MJ/km or MJ/100 km is more widely quoted.GliderMaven (talk) 00:37, 24 March 2016 (UTC)
kWh/100 km is commonly used in Europe also as energy consumption unit out of the statutory NEFZ-designation. I agree that Joule is the SI-base unit, but that is not used in any customer related energy issues. Thank you. Hadhuey (talk) 21:01, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

Article prose size 99kB, recommended size 50kB or less

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size Quote: A page of about 30 kB to 50 kB of readable prose, which roughly corresponds to 4,000 to 10,000 words, takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is right on the limit of the average concentration span of 40 to 50 minutes. At 50 kB and above it may be beneficial to move some sections to other articles and replace them with summaries per Wikipedia:Summary style – see A rule of thumb below.

Size guideline

Some useful rules of thumb for splitting articles, and combining small pages:

Readable prose size What to do
> 100 kB Almost certainly should be divided
> 60 kB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading material)
> 50 kB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size)
< 40 kB Length alone does not justify division
< 1 kB If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, the article could be expanded, see Wikipedia:Stub.

What process should we use to trim the article? Discuss each section by section? Be bold? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:48, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

If you use the provided tool in the main page, the result is: Prose size (text only): 99 kB (16045 words) "readable prose size" not 177k as you said in the edit summary. Too many tables and pictures I guess, but still within acceptable limits. So IMHO we should try to avoid the article to continue growing, some minor trimming may be justified, particularly in several sections that already have a main article. --Mariordo (talk) 19:18, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
My bad. Yes 99kB. That is in the category: probaby should be divided up. Do you disagree with this wikipedia guideline? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:59, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

The easy thing to do would be to make any section that refers to a main article just a summery, rather than vomiting forth of the same stuff that is in that main article. Greglocock (talk) 22:50, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

+1. For example the history section is way too long. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 22:56, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
I agree. Cutting the history down to a few paragraphs would help tremendously - the linked article covers it fine. The main purpose of links is so that we don't have to say it twice or more times (as pointed out). 'Economics' can be cut out into its own article. 'Environmental aspects' can be cut into its own article. 'Batteries' and 'Infrastructure' can be cut out into a combined article (the two go hand in hand). 'Currently available electric cars' can be replaced with its link. The table in 'Select historical production vehicles' can be relegated to one of the links.  Stepho  talk  23:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
Since editors are proposing significant trimming, I proposed trimming almost completely the section "Electric cars by country". All of the country sections can be linked to their corresponding main article, and besides, the current content is dated to 2013 (because of stats are usually reported for combined sales of BEVs and PHEVs it is difficult to find figures just for the all-electric cars). Also the Plug-in electric vehicle has a section, "Sales and main markets," with almost the same content but updated @ Dec 2015. If I were to left some text, I would import a summary of the outlook section of the Electric car use by country article.--Mariordo (talk) 00:44, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Agree. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 00:47, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Since there is consensus on this one, I will do the trimming of the section about countries.--Mariordo (talk) 15:21, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
PS: the full trim reduced the prose size (text only) to 81 kB (13,014 words). The summary will eat some of this gain. So, more trimming is required.--Mariordo (talk) 15:33, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Less is more, thanks! Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:45, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
You're welcome. With the first trimming completed, these are the results: prose size (text only): 86 kB (13886 words) "readable prose size" - Net gain about 13KB of text and over 2,150 words. I think other sections should be trimmed to achived the desired article size, but feel free to trim some more in the "by country" section if you believe the summary is still too long. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 16:49, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
In general, the article is far too specific; it's specific to particular models, particular countries (particularly America) and a lot of it reads like an article in a car magazine. Encyclopedia articles are supposed to summarise material, rather than contain complete listings.GliderMaven (talk) 17:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
GlidenMarven, I disagree with your POV, I don't think we have a problem of WP:WORLDVIEW. It just happens that the recent past (5 years) and current market for pure electric cars is essentially limited to four markets: the United States (North America if we add Canada), China, Japan, Western European countries (with only six countries having significant sales so far - over 20K). Also, electric car manufacturing is limited to these countries or regions plus South Korea (though not relevant in terms of sales). As a result, it is inevitable that content related to models and top selling countries falls within the domain of these countries, which are the notable ones. The worldwide view is presented in the electric car use by country article. If there are markets/countries misrepresented are China and Japan, but information in the public domain for both is scarce, and Chinese info is very unreliable, so this fact is just the result of lack of content to include in the article. As per some technical facts, such as fuel economy or all-electric ranges, the U.S. EPA is known to estimate the closer results to real life driving conditions, plus most of its results are in the public domain. The Japanese JC08 tests and the New European Driving Cycle tests overestimate by a wide margin (in part due to cheating as it is now well known due to the VW scandal), and actually are in the process of review and updating. Furthermore, ratings for all models are not available in the public domain, unlike EPA's. Finally, the U.S. might have more content because it is still the largest country market in terms of cum sales (soon to be surpassed by China), and more research is published, particularly regarding emissions, lifecycle, environmental impacts, etc. And just in case, I am Costa Rican, so I do not have a personal bias to favor U.S. content. Finally, I do believe that material regarding which are the top selling electric cars, sales in the top countries and at the global level is notable and relevant for the article. Daniel just proposed to have the annual sales table in the lead! --Mariordo (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Very true. If there is enough content there could be an article created for electric cars in America. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 17:58, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
FYI, there is already an article about plug-in electric vehicles in the United States. I don't think there is need for an article just about all-electric cars in the U.S. The existing article covers both pure electric cars and plug-in hybrids.--Mariordo (talk) 23:03, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

What do you think of moving the electric car running costs table to its own article? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I think that as number of cars has increased, it makes sense to move the list to an appendix or list. It should be fairly easy to do since it is already a template. I do think however, that keeping a short list based on an agreed criteria could be helpfull to the readers to know a bit about the range and costs of models in the market. Finding a criteria could be difficult through, i.e., only top selling models, or selected cars by range (long, mid, short, only the most recent models, etc.)--Mariordo (talk) 23:08, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Suggest for criteria use the top two or three selling vehicles in the previous year. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:42, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Nikola Motors

Does anybody know much about Nikola Motors, who are manufacturing an electric heavy duty truck?
http://electrek.co/2016/06/13/nikola-motor-pre-orders-worth-2-billion-electric-truck/
https://nikolamotor.com/pdfs/Nikola_Pre-Sale_June13_FINAL.pdf
I can't seem to find a WP article on them.  Stepho  talk  07:32, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Small tweak - it's technically not a pure electric truck. It's a plugin hybrid with a gas-turbine, large batteries and 6 electric motors. But it can run in pure electric mode for 100-200 miles after charging at a station.  Stepho  talk  09:00, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
It's not even a plugin hybrid. It can't charge up. The gas turbine provides all of the energy. The electric drivetrain is there to provide a tremendous amount of low speed torque (~double what the largest ICE on the market can deliver!), as well as to provide a buffer for the turbine. The 320kWh buffer battery allows the turbine to run at optimal speed all the time, greatly increasing its fuel efficiency. When more energy is required than the turbine can provide, the battery runs down. When less energy is required than the turbine can provide, the battery charges up.
It's quite a good system, IMO. This should be how *all* trucks are in a few years. It's far more fuel and cost efficient than current diesel trucks, and it should cut maintenance costs somewhat as well. — Gopher65talk 01:11, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
At https://nikolamotor.com/one#faqs it says "The Nikola One also has a charging port to help top off the batteries whenever you are resting."  Stepho  talk  03:20, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

Lead Image

Global plug-in annual sales 2011-2015[1]

Per wp:lead the lead should contain a summary of the information that is most important. Showing how electric car sales are rising makes the subject very interesting. I propose we add or change the lead image to include this chart. What do you think? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

  1. ^ Argonne National Laboratory, United States Department of Energy (2016-03-28). "Fact #918: March 28, 2016 - Global Plug-in Light Vehicles Sales Increased By About 80% in 2015". Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. Retrieved 2016-03-29.
Disagree. (1) This article is about "electric cars" (also called all-electric or pure electric cars, or battery electric cars), not plug-in electric cars, a more general category that includes plug-in hybrids, like the Volt, PiP, Mitsu Outlander PHEV which retain an internal combustion engine (to work in series or paralell with the electric motors). The Argonne graph is about light-duty "plug-in electric vehicles" (so plug-in hybrids are included in the count), not quite exactly the topic of this article. (2) As per all the previous discussions we have had about the image in the lead, there was consensus that the lead image should scream electric car, show the plug, show the car charging, and that is why it was so difficult to find a suitable one. I do still agree with the consensus. (3) Finally, I don't think that sales of PEVs in the most important fact of the article. The lead already includes a brief summary of the most notable facts about sales (cum total, top countries and models).--Mariordo (talk) 23:00, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

One more time

As agreed in previous discussions, the image in the lead should be agreed upon by consensus here. I just removed the pic below (as per MoS there should be just one except in special cases and the editor ignore the hidden message about seeking consensus here), but I believe it is a good candidate, really screaming electric car. The quality is not that great, but to be fair, let's hear what other editors have to say.--Mariordo (talk) 02:41, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

File:Elektro-Autos in Rom (24200438882).jpg
Electric car and charger in the street of Rome, Italy

Supprot as lead image. I also believe that it will be a good picture for the lead as it is showing both car and charger very clearly. The previous one was taken from very far distance. - Mar11 (talk) 02:56, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Support - I've got no major problems with the suggested Rome image. And I like the perspective going into the distance.  Stepho  talk  03:50, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Support - Finally an image that really screams electric car!--Mariordo (talk) 04:06, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

A week has passed, so, by consensus, I will change the lead picture.--Mariordo (talk) 01:48, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

World's fastest electric car

Thought this was interesting. The world's fastest electric car (as of July 2016) is a heavily customised Enfield 8000 from the 1970s. http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/07/the-flux-capacitor-is-now-the-worlds-fastest-street-legal-electric-car/  Stepho  talk  03:53, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Electrified Roads to recharge maybe power EVS?E >R<A< Founded 2016

Perhaps(as is already in use in the nation of South Korea Several miles devoted to Eletricrified Roads recharging Electric vehichles since 2013!) Several mile sof Freeway/turnpike could be devoted to recharging EVS as they run on same? This would certainly improve range of a Electric Vehicle! The E>R>A founded this year 2016 to promote eletrified roads globally! Thanks1 Dr. Edson Andre' Johnson D,D.ULC Founder,E>R>A>ELECTRIFIED ROAD ASSOCIATION. And Founder of the Global Energy Indeppendence Day(Movement Since 2005 Held every Jul.10th Birhdate of the Great Energy pioneer/inventor Nikola tesla(1856-1943)104.34.181.144 (talk) 21:01, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Even though Electric cars create less air pollution while driving, what about the creation of the battery in the car? Is the creation of the battery bad for the environment? --Aaronmonoogan (talk) 08:24, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Charging stations may not be efficient 24/7 because their are peak hours for charging at certain hours of the day can be more costly. --Aaronmonoogan (talk) 08:24, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure if you are making suggestions to be used in the real world or making suggestions to improve the article. The first (real world) is strictly outside of the purpose of Wikipedia (we only report facts, see WP:NOT). The second (improving the article) is what this talk page is for.  Stepho  talk  04:23, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

SI units and global view

The use of symbols from the Systeme International (SI) is advised where applicable, also by US government, see the NIST advice on units: http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/ http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/international.html http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/Legacy/SP/nistspecialpublication330e2001.pdf and of course also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#Printing_SI_symbols This means for example that in this Electric car entry kW.h is to be replaced by kWh. The base data are to be metric, with in brackets local units where relevant.

Interest in this Electric car subject is global, so local references should be avoided where possible. Value measures are in local currencies unavoidably, with the US dollar as global reference (with currency rate as link to local currencies). Where more currencies are relevant the reference should as much as possible to main currencies involved. For electric cars this would be US Dollars; Euros; Chinese Yuan (CNY, Renminbi), and maybe Japanese Yen. Norwegian Krone (highest EV density), Russian Rubles, UK Pounds and Turkish Lira would come in only in special cases, not in the Electric car entry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.51.91.62 (talk) 09:50, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

History trimmed

History was trimmed. I think more should be trimmed. Let us know if you think notable information should be added or feel free to trim further. What do you think? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 18:27, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

After trimming the history section, the article size results are: prose size (text only): 79 kB (12800 words) of readable prose size. I don't think more trimming is necessary here, but rather other sections should be trimmed. In fact, I proposed that at least two notable/relevant facts of the modern era are restored: (1) the launch of the Mitsu i-MiEV, the first series production electric car of the modern era (the Tesla Roadster was a limited prodcution run (~2,500) based on Lotus gliders) which, with its variants already sold about 40K units, and (2) the launch of the Nissan Leaf, the first series production EV available in the global market, and now the world's top selling pure electric car in history. To mention just the Tesla Roadster it not NPOV. Finally, Daniel, did you check that all the content you removed is presented in the main history article?--Mariordo (talk) 23:19, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
Flocken Elektrowagen, 1888 (reconstruction, 2011)

German inventor Andreas Flocken should be mentioned in History of electric car. LarasTasche (talk) 15:47, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


History jumps from 1888 to the 1990s? Was there NOTHING notable in between? What about GM's electric car that caused all that drama? And why would anyone consider an 1888 car to be the first "real" electric car if there was a practical production model in 1884? Steve8394 (talk) 17:04, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

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Environmental aspects section is long and boorish

What do you think about creating a separate article with that info and just keeping the highlights? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 13:50, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Excellent idea.  Stepho  talk  10:07, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
Done, thanks for the support. Feel free to improve. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 02:54, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Trim "Electric cars by country" to one paragraph and one chart

Cumulative light-duty plug-in electric vehicle sales in the world's top-selling countries and regional markets as of December 2016. China has the largest plug-in car stock, followed by Europe and the U.S.

"Electric cars by country" section is long. What do you think of trimming it down to one paragraph and one chart at left? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 16:44, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Global_plug-in_car_sales_since_2011.png
Since it both duplicates and points to the main article Electric car use by country, your idea makes perfect sense. Although I would prefer the image at left.  Stepho  talk  22:01, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Done, thanks, Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:20, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The table at "Running costs" is too cluttered

I think we should condense the different battery options of the same models into one entry and just use the range from the most basic to the most advanced option. Right now we have 2 entries about the BMW i3, 2 about the Fiat 500e, 2 about the Nissan Leaf, 7(!) about the Tesla Model S, and 2 about the Tesla Model X.

With all the new EV models and versions being released within the next year, listing every single option for every single model will make the table become extremely cluttered.

My proposal is to condense the table like this (using the example of the BMW i3):

|- style="text-align:center;" | style="text-align:left;" |BMW i3 (60 A·h)[1][2] to (94 A·h)[1] || 2014/15/16/17 ||124 mpg-e (60A)
(27 kW·h/100 mi
16.9 kW⋅h/100 km) to 118 mpg-e (94A)
(29 kW·h/100 mi
17.7 kW⋅h/100 km) || 137 mpg-e (60A)
(25 kW·h/100 mi
15.3 kW⋅h/100 km) to 129 mpg-e (90A)
(16.2 kW⋅h/100 km) ||111 mpg-e (60A)
(30 kW·h/100 mi
18.9 kW⋅h/100 km) to 106 mpg-e (90A)
(19.8 kW⋅h/100 km) || $0.88 (60A) - $0.94 (90A) || $550 || style="text-align:left;" | (1) (3) (4) (5)

That would shrink the list from 31 to 16 entries. Over the next 1-2 years, there will be at least 30 new models released. Listing every option for every model would mean the list will grow to over 100 entries very quickly, and I find it too cluttered as it is already. I'll also post this suggestion over to the template talk page, but even if it wouldn't be changed there, I feel like it should be condensed here at least.

Sarrotrkux (talk) 22:49, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Template:Comparison electric car efficiency deletion discussion

Please see Templates for Deletion discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2017 July 5#Template:Comparison electric car efficiency. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:42, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion for shortening this article significantly

This article has a pattern of giving excessive detail about the sources cited, and repetitively referring to the source in the text. WP:INTEXT citations are appropriate primarily when citing opinions or controversial ideas. Most of this article is citing reputable studies (and if they're not so reputable, delete them), which merely need to be footnoted without going on and on about who the source is. Constantly inserting "According to the findings..." and other such tics only pad the word count. Example:

A study conducted at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS), at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) published in 2014 found that many car dealers are less than enthusiastic about plug-in vehicles. ITS conducted 43 interviews with six automakers and 20 new car dealers selling plug-in vehicles in California's major metro markets. The study also analyzed national and state-level J.D. Power 2013 Sales Satisfaction Index (SSI) study data on customer satisfaction with new car dealerships and Tesla retail stores. The researchers found that buyers of plug-in electric vehicles were significantly less satisfied and rated the dealer purchase experience much lower than buyers of non-premium conventional cars. According to the findings, plug-in buyers expect more from dealers than conventional buyers, including product knowledge and support that extends beyond traditional offerings.[3][4]

This only needs to say:

A 2014 study found many car dealers are not enthusiastic about selling plug-in vehicles.[3][4] Surveys of buyers of plug-in electric vehicles showed they were significantly less satisfied and rated the dealer purchase experience much lower than buyers of non-premium conventional cars. Plug-in buyers expect more from dealers than conventional buyers, including product knowledge and support that extends beyond traditional offerings.[3][4]

By my count there are at least 9 instances of this, each running one or two long paragraphs that could have their word count easily cut in half. In many of them, it isn't even necessary to say "A study found..." at all, but only to state the facts and footnote it. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:20, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, it's just an appeal to authority. I haven't waded through this hodgepodge of opinion ,rumors and exaggerations for a while, I may give it a go laterGreglocock (talk) 00:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
It could be appeal to authority, but I think it's just a writing style, probably from an academic setting, that some editors have been taught. It's fine, but it really ups the word count, and in general Wikipedia's style is to try to be more terse. It's hardly much to complain about -- given a choice I'd much prefer an early draft of an article look like this, with excessive mention of the sources, than one that doesn't tell you at all where the information is coming from. This is much easier to fix than that. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 00:56, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

References

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Environmental Impact Possibilities

Improvement Idea: Talk about how electric cars entire economic impact could be worse for the environment as a whole because of the mining of lithium and pollution associated with creating batteries and other components in said car. TacoEditSquad (talk) 01:46, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Non-marginal magical thinking

When recharged by low-emission electrical power sources, electric vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to IC engines.

No working economist with a brain believes this statement, as written.

The Canadian government used to assure Canadians that none of our Candu tritium was exported to the U.S. nuclear program. Sort of. It worked like this: the Americans supplied all their non-nuclear needs with Canadian tritium, and then diverted almost the whole of their own tritium production into their nuclear weapons stockpile.

No enablement here. What a crock. But of course, these assurances were an entirely bogus enterprise to begin with. It's just not possible to draw these kinds of lines in a complex, fungible economy.

There's a similar fallacy at the poker table. Some players look at the pot and say "I've got ten of my chips in there, I've got to win them back." Wrong. The pot has 30 chips, and if you think you can invest 10 more chips to win the pot (now 40 chips large) with 25% odds (or better) you should consider doing so. The history of the chips already in the pot has no mathematical relevance, it's just weird magical thinking (which, unhappily, tends to correlate with losing your shirt).

If aggregate electric car demand triggers an increased marginal investment into renewal generation infrastructure then and only then do electric cars displace emissions.

Everything else about this story is a form of greenwashing (with clean Canadian tritium, and not that dirty American stuff).

I'm not going to change this myself, because I'm hot under the collar. Please consider this my nomination for the next editor to wade in. — MaxEnt 16:20, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

And yet that statement is 100% correct. And I draw your attention to Norway. Norway gets its electricity almost 98% from hydroelectricity, but its cars have been heretofore mostly powered by fossil fuels. What do you think will happen to emissions when they replace their cars as they wear out with electric cars? Hint: they will not turn their fossil plants up significantly more and their overall emissions will not stay the same or go up. Another less extreme example is the UK. The UK has lower CO2 emissions per kWh than the USA, since it has reduced its dependence on coal, and uses large amounts of natural gas, which, because natural gas is hydrogen rich, gives 30% reduction in CO2 for the same energy output over carbon-rich coal. In that case, simply switching to electric cars gives much lower emissions than petroleum cars. And no, they wouldn't even need to build any more powerplants, since there's slack demand at night, and price incentives for the car owners to recharge then, and it turns out that electricity has lower carbon intensity also at night. Similar things happen in America as well; by no means is all the electricity generated there all generated from coal. Additionally what do you think will happen to emissions globally from electric cars, considering that the percentage of low carbon electricity generated is currently growing exponentially? In short, you are incorrect both in detail and in general, and in the short run as well as the long run; so well done you! p.s. you get extra troll points for a statement of the form "no <X> anywhere thinks that..." since that requires telepathy to verify. GliderMaven (talk) 17:40, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
There is too much special pleading necessary to make these optimistic claims about electric cars. It pushes aside the contribution of mining the rare earths for the batteries, the considerable resources of all kinds needed to even make electric cars and build the infrastructure to charge them, and glosses over the fact that hardly anybody can simply assume their electric power source is low emissions. It glosses over the larger question of whether electric cars are simply a green-seeming way of perpetuating car culture without facing up to the massive level of consumption that is required to maintain an car-centric society.

Worse, nearly every electric car, motorcycle, or other new green technology company is built on a confidence model. They routinely ask for customers to put down thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in deposits for vaporware vehicles, often years ahead of time. That requires maintaining a near-religious level of enthusiasm among electric car optimists. There is a great deal of money at stake in servicing this particular point of view, while letting people off the hook for seriously thinking about changing their lifestyle.

So this should be written in a way that attributes these claims more directly to the advocates and marketing for electric cars, and acknowledges that there is an industry with a product to sell and a lot of capital at risk if it doesn't sell. When you bring up Norway or whatever, you have to make clear how difficult it would be to scale that up to the rest of the world, particularly the US, which is orders of magnitude more car-centric than the UK or Norway, and has cities that are orders of magnitude less dense than anywhere in Europe. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:20, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Can I remind people that Wikipedia is not a forum that includes talk pages. Wikipedia articles must be based on reliable source and the unsourced points of views of editor carry no weight.
The article has two sources for claims about its efficiency. [1][2] And the topic is covered at length in Environmental aspects of the electric car.--Salix alba (talk): 21:54, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Sperling, Daniel; Gordon, Deborah (2009). Two billion cars: driving toward sustainability. Oxford University Press. pp. 22–26. ISBN 978-0-19-537664-7.
  2. ^ David B. Sandalow, ed. (2009). Plug-In Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington? (1st. ed.). The Brookings Institution. pp. 1–6. ISBN 978-0-8157-0305-1.

Removal of info about sales

Please seek consensus here for removing almost all content regarding sales of electric cars. Since this tecnology is in the early stages of adoption, I believe the stats are relevant and deserve to be included in the article, this is NOT promotional as you claim. BEV prices are still higher than ICE vehicles, this is why price and sales are relevant now.--Mariordo (talk) 04:37, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

You have been adding very large quantities of text and tables with street prices, sales records, and lots of promotional superaltives about electric or alternative energy vehicles. There have been several discussions about removing this type of content. For example, do you remember the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2017 July 21#Template:Comparison electric car efficiency? Or the Good Articles that were delisted for precisely this kind of bloat? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:42, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
Bratland, I did improve most of those articles to GA (check the GA reviews), and it was not only me adding new content. I agree that some trimming was required, but not simply chopping the content, as it was badly done with electric car use by country, even with technical errors in the definitions and leaving some irrelevant content. As for the main argument, I do not think that sales figures for vehicles with a technology in its early adoption phase has promotional purposes, instead it just showing how penetration is advancing or slowing down (and any superlatives are not mine). I would like to hear what other editors have to say before detailing more arguments. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk)
PS: And by the way, this article in particular has already been trimmed, did you check that its prose size (text only) is now 53 kB (8602 words) considered "readable prose size" - so there is no bloating anymore.--Mariordo (talk) 04:55, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
There are two basic problems:
  1. Redundancy: we have many article sections that are near-complete copies of other articles. Electric car and Electric vehicle have vast swaths that are identical or nearly identical. Electric vehicle#Charging and Electric_car#Charging both duplicate much of Charging station. They should summarize Charging station, not repeat the exact same details. This problem spans many, many articles.
  2. Prices. WP:NOTCATALOG puts it simply: "Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products". Nearly every electric related article includes a section which is written directly to address the needs of a consumer or shopper who wants to know which car to buy, or whether or not switching to electric is economical. Articles should give general summaries of the economic situation with a given technology, not break down specific dollar values for specific markets. The constant comparisons of battery life and range are also clearly written as shopping guides.
This really has to stop. Can you explain how you interpret the policy you read at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a directory? Do you think it's saying something other than what I'm describing here? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 21:33, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
The two basic problems you just pointed have nothing to do with you removing the entire "Currently available electric cars" sections with its two subsections: "Highway capable" and "Electric cars by country" which by the way are short because there were trimmed recently. Anyway I will reply to both issues you raised (since you are repeating these arguments elsewhere in articles regarding plug-in vehicles), and then I will justified why there is no merit for the removal of those two sub-sections:
#Prices. WP:NOTCATALOG

It seems you missed the part of WP:NOCATALOG that I transcribed as follows in bold: An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention...

(i) All content is supported by reliable sources, as requested by WP policy (no single source or catalog, nor this is useful pricing for shopping). As required, there is encyclopedic significance because these sources are raising the issues of barriers to adoption, pricing is one (see next bullet) and sales volumes, as a measure of market penetration of any new technology, no matter if it is a success or a failure, this is how you measure it.
(ii) Even though there is no pricing in the sections you removed, pricing is a key issue in all green car technologies, because there is a premium you pay for the new technologies in the early phases of adoption (just remember the price of PCs and cell phones). So hybrids are more expensive than ICE-powered vehicles; plug-in electric cars are even more expensive, because of the battery (critical for all-electrics because the battery is bigger); and hydrogen vehicless are way up more expensive.
(iii) The existence of public policies, more specifically, of direct purchase subsidies or tax credits or tax exemptions is a reflection of the concern of more than a couple dozen governments around the world for this price premium, and these temporary policies were issued as a financial incentives to promote the adoption of specific green cars in their countries. So the relevance of pricing/sales volumes stats is justified in this article, and all others related, by no means is marketing.
(iv) There are plenty of Wikipedia articles dealing with these subjects, perfectly within the limits of Wikipedia policy, you are just objecting the ones related with plug-in electric vehicles. Just some examples, the list is huge:
(v) Also let's be clear, for the same reason that purchase price, or more specifically, the price premium is relevant (as supported by the reliable sources provided and already explained above), the introduction of operating costs and energy efficiency (or fuel economy) is relevant in all articles regarding green cars, these ARE NOT prices as you have claimed in some of those articles and manage to remove. Indeed, if you take your time and check the WP:Good Article reviews of the green car articles have have or had it, none of the reviewers (neutral, not related to Wikiproject Automobile) questioned the introduction of pricing, operating costs nor energy efficiency.
(vi) Finally, all these issues are relevant and encyclopedic, because the modern analysis of any technology IS NOT how the technology works. Engineering since the late seventies became more comprehensive, in addition to the technology (engine, brakes, transmission, etc.) also looks at the economical, social and environmental aspects of those technologies. It seems you want to cleanse the green car articles of those topics, but to comply with WP:NPOV editors should present in their articles all these issues, pros and cons, benefits and negative consequences.
  1. Redundancy:
(i) Specifically, electric vehicle and electric car DO NOT HAVE swarms of content identical or nearly identical as you claimed. The Electric vehicle article covers all kinds of vehicles (land, rail, see, air, etc), not just electric cars or plug-in electric cars. The section about plug-in vehicles is just three paragraphs long, and the overlap with electric car is minimal. There are link to the full articles plug-in electric vehicles, electric car and plug-in hybrid as corresponds.
(ii) Yes, there is some redundancy in some of the articles, but this is NO justification to delete entire sections, and not precisely in the articles that better cover the subject. This is chopping the content without any justification, just for the sake of size? Electric car use by country is good example of this non-technical chopping you are promoting. Trimming is normal, but with criteria, not reducing content arbitrarily just for the sake of size (by the way, this article was shrunken with a lot of technical mistakes, without regard of the proper technical definitions as reflected by the corresponding Wikipedia articles - for example, EV is NOT the same as plug-in electric car, figures, sales or stats in general have to be related to dates [when?]! - I already did some fixing but there is still a lot to do).
(iii) The correct way to do trimming is by removing dated content (there is plenty, ie, old or partial sales figures), by splitting the article, just look at how many new articles were created in plug-in electric vehicle (I will split the section about Europe soon) and electric car use by country (check the talk page of those articles). Also, since many editors introduce content, some include irrelevant facts with no notability that can be removed (as explained in detail above, pricing and sales figures do not classify in this category as you argue).

Finally, for your information, I did improve and expand (or was the main editor) to a total of 12 articles and went through their review to achieve Good Article rating, most related to green cars and sustainable mobility, with no questioning of any of the reviewers of your issues/concerns about pricing and sales stats, much less your narrow interpretation of WP:NOTCATALOG (see the reviews for Congestion pricing, Flexible-fuel vehicle, Plug-in electric vehicle, Ethanol fuel in Brazil, Indirect land use change impacts of biofuels, History of ethanol fuel in Brazil, Flexible-fuel vehicles in Brazil, Mitsubishi i MiEV, Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Volt, Electric vehicle warning sounds, and Capital Bikeshare.) Inevitably as time goes by, the quality of some of these articles has deteriorated, particularly when there is a lot of traffic/editors or as material gets dated. But your approach of deleting content is not constructive, for a good reason most of these articles have kept their GA ratings. And please, do not start multiple discussions as your are doing now with Nissan Leaf (you already got it demoted of its GA status instead of trying to fix it). Let's finish the discussion here first, and above all, let's here what other editors have to say and reach consensus. I did not address your systematic tagging of these issues (regardlesss of me being the main contributor) because I am here to add content, to add value, not to waste my time arguing, but your complete removal of the above mentioned section was too much, as well as the poor state in which the electric car use by country was left. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 05:12, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

PS: I will not engage in edit war in the Nissan Leaf article, but at least be civilized and rmv the tags regarding WP:NOTCATALOG until this discussion is closed. Or do you want to have parallel discussion over the same issue? (and by the way, the title change you made is completely wrong, did you read the section content?)--Mariordo (talk) 05:19, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

TLDR the main problem with the EV articles is WP:OWN by Mariordo. Specifically in this case it seems odd to have exhaustive lists of specific vehicles which could be handled by a category. Unless that list is complete then how do you decide which vehicles are on it? You'd have to have an RS for the selection criteria. As to prices themselves, they vary by market and with the amount of subsidy. So you'd need to include the selling price in each market. Which is starting to sound very absurd. Perhaps split sales and prices off into a new article? Greglocock (talk) 19:55, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Greglocock, the electric car article DOES NOT have any prices related to specific cars, or lists of cars, please show me where. Second, the cars mentioned in the market section are the top selling models, as supported by the accompanying reliable sources (I did not chose the sales ranking). And finally, I did not participate in any of Dennis Bratland's discussion precisely to be tagged as WP:OWN. As you claimed TLDR, then you did not address the main issue, the arguments regarding the interpretation of WP:NOTCATALOG. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 21:00, 29 January 2018 (UTC)
We have gone through this in other electric car discussions, such as the TfD discussion on the price and range comparison template. There is consencus across several discussions that it's obvious these comparison tables and these rundowns of ranges, battery prices, rebate dollar amounts, pump prices of gasoline and electricity rates, are written as shopping guides. WP:NOTCATALOG doesn't hinge on whether you cite a reliable source. It's about the result: are you writing an encyclopedia article, or a shopping guide. I get the sense we are going to have to have yet another RfC where yet again we can demonstrate that there is consensus here, but I'd like Mariordo to step back and realize that the kind of content that has bloated so many EV articles goes against policy and consensus. I know I've posted links for Mariordo before of these discussions. Do I need to go back and find them again? It's not the sources, it's not that you can never put a price or a vehicle performance stat like battery range in an article. It's about what you do with that stuff. Ignore the needs of a buyer wondering which car to buy, or wondering if they should go electric. Focus on a general encyclopedia reader.

WP:OWN is a problem. I hate to delete such large quantities of writing that Mariordo has done. It's not a good thing to delete so much of anyone's work. But it doesn't belong to Mariordo, and it never should have been written at such length in the first place. The redundancy across articles is far out of bounds. WP:Summary style encourages some repetition, to give readers the gist of the main article, but not repeat paragraph after paragraph of the same excruciating detail. And the fact that we have these EV articles that are two, three, four, even five times longer than articles about the Ford Model T, or Mustang, or Chevrolet Corvette, or Jeep CJ or Volkswagen Beetle. Highly significant car lines that were in production for decades, yet an EV that has been made for only a copule years is FIVE times longer? Something is wrong there. Right? Can you not see that? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:59, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see a link to previous rfc on this topic. Don't agree it is a shopping guide and price is important encyclopedic information. For example what made the model-t take off was price. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 00:02, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
I also agree that citing price information is relevant in the case of EVs. It is constantly and prominently cited by relevant sources, so it deserves to be mentioned on Wikipedia. On the other hand, I also agree that many articles about electric vehicles should be trimmed. However, trimming does not mean just cutting content. There should be some effort to actually summarize the content already present, which is relevant in my opinion. --Ita140188 (talk) 02:00, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
Keep in mind that a news article about any product, toothpaste or stereo speakers, or electric cars, is going to give prominent attention to that product's price. The reason we have a policy saying Wikipedia is not a price comparison service is precisely because it's easy to think that we should give as much attention to retail prices when writing about speakers as magazine and newspaper articles about speakers. We need to step back and generalize more: we can describe prices in broad terms, where they stand relative to similar products, whether they have increased or decreased significantly compared to similar products in the past. But not give exact retail prices of things in the US market, along with every other global market and currency.

Once you get into the weeds of the price of a gallon fuel and a kwh of electricity in the US and the UK and France and Sweden you've gone down the wrong rabbit hole. Broad generalities. Not specifics, unless a specific price is exceptional, such a record high or record low. The rapidly falling price of the Model T is a great example: when the price dropped below the average price of a motorcycle, the US motorcycle industry contracted. That's a far cry from the precise cost of ownership of a Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf and Tesla Model S. History might judge that one of these price points was historically significant, as with the Model T, but in the present day, all we have is a pile of raw data and a lot of salesmen trying to move cars. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:38, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Dennis, I did read your opinion, very carefully, but you are muddling the discussion by bringing your general criticism about EV articles with the specific issues about this article. So, I suggest to focus on your objections to this article as it is today. You removed this entire section claiming (as per the edit summary: "...After one paragraph, it shifts into several paragraphs of promotional stuff about sales records" and I reverted your deletion and open this discussion because of this edit. You also said above the "comparison tables and these rundowns of ranges, battery prices, rebate dollar amounts, pump prices of gasoline and electricity rates, are written as shopping guides." However, this section does not mention anything about prices, ranges, nor comparisons of any kind, therefore your argument of WP:NOTCATALOG does not applies to this section. The only content in this section is a summary (it was trimmed significantly several months ago - so there is no bloating now) about historical sales stats showing market penetration, global and the key markets, and also the top selling models (all supported by reliable sources and no cherry picking here). My recent edits here and elsewhere have been to update stats from 2016 to 2017, and trimming whenever possible. You can check here how this section looked before the major trimming, so I believe there is no merit for the total deletion of those two sub-sections, instead I agree that a change in the section name is required. As I said above, there is indeed redundancy in some of the articles, but this is NO justification to delete entire sections, and not precisely in the articles that better cover the subject (such as plug-in electric car, electric car and plug-in hybrid - as explained above electric vehicle is not, covers too many modes and only has a summary about sales of PEVs). Or do you think this article should not have any sales/registration figures at all? The main electric car article with no info about sales because you think it is promotional? What content in the two sub-section you proposed to remove? So please address this specific point to move forward this discussion.--Mariordo (talk) 03:08, 30 January 2018 (UTC)
It's weird how every single EV's pricing structure is as historically significant as the Ford Model T. I guess every single electric and hybrid car is single-highhandedly disrupting the entire industry? Somehow? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 16:42, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
Well Dennis, not all will survive, as it happens back in the early 1900 (among those not making it were all-electric cars, which were at some point, the majority of horseless carriages!). But more to the point, Tesla is a good example. The Model S is a luxury car, priced between $70K and $100K, and has sold just over 200K since 2012, but look at the 500K reservations for the Model 3, priced at about 30K after the federal tax credit, why, because of Tesla's cars reputation and the Model 3 is affordable for the middle class, price matters. And nobody is sure Tesla will survive! The Fisker Karma already went belly, others were discontinued. You have to consider that plug-ins are at the early stage of adoption, and as such, the panorama is evolving constantly, so a lot of content in EV articles gets dated, and with several editors adding pieces, some articles get disorganized, duplicated content, and with excess details. After seven years of the introduction of series production EVs is about time to do a rational trimming - not brute chopping (as an example I am trying to trim the main PEV article - It will take some time to finish, which by the way, already had several splits, just as electric car use by country). But within context, pricing info following WP guidelines is relevant now. Finally, if you look at all the articles and sections about PEV models, only the most notable (top selling usually) are the ones with more content about sales stats, right in accordance with WP:Notability, and in addition to sales volume, it is the press coverage is what determines what is notable. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 03:11, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
There is pretty consistent agreement on this: no shopping guides, no price comparison services. Prices are not strictly forbidden, operating costs or efficiency performance is not strictly forbidden, but it should never be written as a blatant shopping guide, and exact prices or similar consumer data is included as the exception, not the rule. We include it when secondary sources give us good reason for it in special cases, not across every article. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 19:54, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Fuel cells

Hello, the article did not mention fuel cell vehicles at all. I added a short text on the introduction, but the rest of the article describes exclusively battery electric cars. Can you help to fix this? --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:49, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

This article is intended to be about pure battery EVs. Do you recommend a title rename? Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 01:31, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
This should be the main article for any and all cars that are driven by electric motors only, regardless of power source. Things like pure battery EVs are a sub-type of electric car. Cars with no internal combustion engine connected to the drive train have fundamental characteristics in common that make them a coherent topic. Sub-types of electric cars can be those using lithium or lead-acid batteries (with our without battery charging from solar, auxiliary gas or diesel motor, human pedal or hamster wheel generators, etc), fuel cells, and even external sources of electric power: overhead power-lines, slot cars, beams of focused microwave energy and other kinds of wireless power transfer. Whatever. The wheels are turned by electric motors, so it's an electric car. Cousins of electric cars, but not electric cars strictly speaking, include hybrids, powered by either/both electric motors and a combustion engine that is actually driving the wheels, rather than merely recharge the batteries.

The reason for all this is WP:Summary style. Articles should be structured in a hierarchy of topic and sub-topic. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:00, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

This article is not written as a generic electric powertrain article. 99% is focused on pure battery EVs, and would be easy to delete the other 1%. Perhaps someone should create a separate article for "electric car generic", which describes hybrids, plug-ins, etc... Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 03:47, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
Electric car generic? Never heard of an article title like that. If you really want, you could take the 99% you say is only about pure battery cars and move it to Battery electric car. It's obvious that the title Electric car should be all about electric cars. All kinds of electric cars. It's weird to say, oh, it's called electric car, but it's really only about a certain kind of electric car. All the other kinds are off somewhere else! Surprise! If it's going to be only about one kind of electric car, it should say so in the title, unless saying so requires a 20 word title. A three word title is not at all excessively long. Summary style doesn't have titles like 'electric car generic' at the top level, and sub-articles like 'electric car' (surprise! battery only!) under it.

I don't dispute that all of the EV and alt-fuel vehicle article are kind of a dumpster fire of poor organization and rampant redundancy, and they will take years to sort out. But the first step is to make it more rational, not to cling to the irrational structure to the bitter end. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:13, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree this article should mention (and preferably ridicule) fuel cell cars. BEVs have their own article. If a fuel cell car does not meet some definition of an electric car then that definition is wrong. Greglocock (talk) 19:00, 9 March 2018 (UTC)
The arguments ignore that this article is about Battery Electric Car (BEC) and not about cars with electric motors. We could vote what people feel is the more appropriate terminology. I'm o.k. with renaming this BEC and creating an article about cars with electric motors powered by gas engines, fuel cells, poop, fly wheel, etc... Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 19:56, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Why not figure out the hierarchy of the articles required and then fill in that structure.? Who says that the article Electric Car is only about battery electric cars, apart from you? . Greglocock (talk) 20:19, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
Look at the beginning of the article before wp:lead. I see the following:
This article is about battery electric cars. For the more general category of electric drive for all type of vehicles, see electric vehicle. For cars with electric motors and internal combustion engines, see hybrid electric vehicle.
And no, I didn't add that text. Daniel.Cardenas (talk) 20:59, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I agree with Daniel, whose case is direct and convincing. Jusdafax (talk) 22:19, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
What are you agreeing with? The logical thing to do is to change the name of the article to BEC. The sensible thing to do would be to sort out the hodgepodge of articles Salix alba listed below into a hierarchy. The stupid thing to do is to restrict an article called Electric cars to Battery electric cars. So, are you going to be logical, sensible or stupid? Greglocock (talk) 23:37, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
I'm quite happy with a move to Battery electric car. The question is what should happen to the title Electric car? Should it be a redirect, some sort of dab page or a new article? There is a need for a car focused article which briefly outlines the main types. However this has the danger of replication and in growing to another large messy article.--Salix alba (talk): 09:08, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

Lets look at the current articles on the subject

There is a lot of duplication and the whole topic could do with a clean up. --Salix alba (talk): 23:13, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

There is also an article incorrectly named Electric car use by country, because it covers both kinds of plug-ins (BEVs and PHEVs) it should be correctly named Plug-in electric car use by country or more general Plug-in electric vehicle use by country, or even better, Plug-in electric vehicle adoption by country.
Also, in reaching a consensus for the naming of this article please remember that legally and technically (common names like EVs just add to the confusion) PEVs = BEVs + PHEVs. Also that Zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) = BEVs + FCEVs (with hydrogen fuel or any other fuel). If this article is to be kept for only BEV cars and not about ZEV cars (as it is now), then a more appropriate name will be All-electric car or Pure electric car. Cheers.--Mariordo (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

It’s easy to get overwhelmed trying to fix everything at once. Remember that perfection is not required, and it’s ok if the process gets messy. I’d suggest:

  1. Move Electric car to Battery electric car
  2. Make Electric car a dab page to be expanded later
  3. Expand Electric car to be the main umbrella article. Consider merging in some, possibly all, of Electric vehicle to reduce redundancy. We don’t have to say “All” or “Pure” in the title; it’s pedantic to overdetermine the scope that way.
  4. Consider merging in some, possibly all, of Battery electric vehicle to Battery electric car
  5. Begin sorting out articles for plugins and hybrids along similar lines, reducing redundancy.

It’s a lot to do so try to focus and not worry about the big picture too much.Dennis Bratland (talk) 17:15, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

I support Dennis' proposal. --NaBUru38 (talk) 10:29, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, the electric ones were less fast

"Unlike gasoline-powered vehicles, the electric ones were less fast"

This is not correct.

In 1898 the world speed record for a car was in an electric car that went 65.79 mph (105.88 km/h). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.81.121.12 (talk) 14:31, 10 May 2018 (UTC)