It’s like the digital TV transition: they decided to let industry decide. When they transitioned to ATSC the format allowed something stupid like 14 different resolutions and frame rates. In practice this meant Fox and ABC went with 720p60 while CBS and NBC went with 1080i30, but then their local affiliates could then choose what they wanted to do.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) developed the J-1772 plug and then the CCS-1 standard to add support for DC fast charging. Tesla decided to make their own plug that is smaller because it can run AC or DC over the same pins, but it does use the same communication protocol as the SAE standard so they can use an adapter and also access CCS chargers. Tesla’s chargers integrated billing directly from the vehicle so its users would have the experience of just plugging in and leaving, then getting the bill later. Tesla has always offered access to its charging standard to other automakers, but it came with the poison pill of requiring them to agree to not sue each other for patent violations. Legacy automakers had a lot more patents to give up this way, so the offer was a non-starter with any manufacturer that mattered.

As part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the U.S. government was giving away grants to support construction of a lot more DC fast chargers, but specified that the chargers should allow credit card payments and support access for multiple brands of cars. While Tesla already had by far the largest charging network and its exclusive access was a selling point for their cars, they weren’t about to pass up free money to make it bigger. Suddenly they started adding credit card terminals to their new charger models and unveiled a “Magic Dock” version that could convert to CCS. At the same time they released a version of their charging format to become what they called the “North American Charging Standard” (which rankled some members of the SAE) and started negotiating with automakers to use their standard, presumably without the patent requirement. Eventually all the automakers signed on, the early adopters to give their customers access to the largest charging network, the late adopters because they were about to be left behind.

In the end, industry did coalesce on a single standard, but only because government funding was at stake. Meanwhile most cars produced before the 2025 model year suddenly had an outdated plug (including cars being built right now). The automakers that have adopted the NACS plug are making an adapter available for their older cars, but it sounded like some of the oldest models might be left behind. Also, anything that uses the Japanese CHAdeMO standard can’t be adapted, so cars like the Nissan Leaf are being left out.

That’s a rather old hypothesis that hasn’t been found to be true. The discussion on climate impact hadn’t been so easily measured, but recent studies have caught up.

It depends on the new EV you’re speaking about and how old and dirty your present diesel is. Some cars are produced as “carbon-neutral”, like the VWs ID.3 & ID.4 (and I think Kia maybe?).

Whereas recent diesels have been found out to be up to 3x more polluting 4-times more polluting than originally thought, and older ICE cars have been found to increase their pollution output as they age.

Remember the Daily Mail’s repeated rage articles about EVs being dirtier if charged with coal-fired electric sources? That’s been disproven again and again.

If you’re looking at climate impact beyond production, especially over the long term, EVs quickly surpass ICE vehicles in clean operation (production and usage) in less than 2 years (some cars, just months).

Many EV also use battery packs that are recyclable and can be repaired; Ford, VW, NIssan, Kia/Hyundai and others use a pack in a pack approach, where a bad groups of cells can be swapped out while keeping the main battery. Some like Tesla tends to glue them together, which means the whole pack needs to be replaced, but it’s still rare to have cells fail unless there’s a manufacturing problem like GM had with Hyundai cells (again, old manufacturing methods - modern EVs do it differently now).

From cradle to grave, modern EVs are overall far less polluting than gas or diesel cars.

Edit: Updated with links.

Where you getting that from? Engineering explained I think calculated getting an EV is better CO2 wise after about 2 years with US average power generation. It’ll take longer than that to break even though if you have a dirty grid, or you get an EV with an enormous battery.

https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM

That’s one of the factors that keeps me from getting an EV. It’ll always be worse for the environment if I get a new car - EV or not - rather than continue keeping this old diesel in good working condition and driving it until it dies, because its manufacturing carbon cost is already spent. So the more I drive it, the more I dilute it.

But really, the real reason is because modern cars are friggin’ spying devices. And that too goes for EVs and not EVs. That’s really the biggest turnoff for me. I swear to God, when this car dies, I’m seriously considering going carless again, because I just don’t want a car that’s connected to the internet 24/7, spying on me and pulling software updates without my knowledge or my consent.

The problem with all of these analyses is nobody can agree where to draw the system boundaries. I prefer to draw very large system boundaries (societal level), e.g. your car will enter the secondary market when you sell it and someone else will typically drive it somewhere approaching the end of useful life. So to me, any ICE (or EV) has sort of a “fixed” carbon cost consisting of production, fueling, maintenance, etc. over its lifetime. At this point, what matters is that as many new new cars as posible are EV so that they can enter the secondary market and replace the fleet. Amortizing or sunk cost fallacying the use of ICE doesn’t make sense because reality doesn’t care about amortization, it just counts the carbon dioxide ppm in the atmosphere as it occurs. The secondary and tertiary markets are driven by economics, so we need a combination of (a) wealthy people eating the depreciation as soon as possible and (b) much cheaper new EVs. Our goal should be to eliminate the production of ICE. Applying to an individual level, if you sell your older ICE truck to someone that was about to buy a new gas F150, and you buy an EV, that’s a win and you shouldn’t do some weird math that results in you burning a bunch of gasoline to get to some amortized level for that vehicle before moving on.

a big selling feature for me was that I could save about $1.5k a year in gas with my commute distance.

Yeah but how much did you have to pay to get that saving in gasoline, after you were done sold you previous car and buying the new one?

I too could save a bunch of money running an electric car, and even more so because my company has free chargers on the parking lot and I drive so little that I would essentially never have to pay to charge up. But any savings I could get with an EV would be totally negated for many, many years just because of the cost of buying a new car.

Financially, it makes more sense to keep my old car. It costs more to run, but it’s paid for. Ultimately, if I ever get an EV, it’ll probably a gift I’ll give to myself because it won’t make much sense, financially or ecologically.