A horse needs about 15 megacalories per day by just standing around, twice as much when working hard, for example like pulling a carriage with the speed of a jogger. The cost of required feed (roughage and concentrated feed) for two horses amounts to more than 100 EUR per day.

For comparison, on a road bike, a ride of 110 kilometers with 1100 cumulative vertical meters requires an additional 1800 kcal when riding at an average speed of 19 km/h. That amounts to the calorie count of a wheat bread that I bake myself from 500 g organic wheat flour. Cost of material: less than half an EUR.

I still maintain that Tesla will struggle once serious competition (model options, volume, etc; the technical aspects are already there) arrives. Their customer service, inability to properly update their existing models, guanopsychotic CEO, and constant delays will count heavily against them.

EVs? They’re clearly the future. Tesla, not so much.

@Stuart Lamble "Tesla will struggle once serious competition (model options, volume, etc; the technical aspects are already there) arrives."

That has already happened. However, Tesla is a status symbol and has cachet with the privileged classes and the wannabes.

To an extent. They seem to me to be hell bent on destroying that reputation; my personal experience with them says that they need to either make some serious changes to their culture, or face destroying their positive brand recognition. You can see the signs of this on sites like Ars Technica - people who viewed Tesla and Musk positively five or ten years ago now have a very different view.

Ultimately, what I think doesn’t matter that much. Time will tell. The shift to electric vehicles is now pretty much inevitable, and that’s what really matters.

horses are really big and can boomf you over. you have a better chance of dodging a boomf from an EV. so there's that.

Muse, did you read of the folk who did the Nullabor in an EV, just to see if they could? And they did 😁 i was megachuffed to read of it as the "nowhere to refuel" thing is very prevalent (lately giving way to "But what about the used batteries? How envirnmentally sound is a stack of used Tesla batteries?" i dont know why they have to be all Tesla batteries in this apocalyptic scenario but i write poems not battles. (tip o the hat to sins and tragedies)

electricity prices arent helping either.

Thankyou! 😁 the battery thing had me flummoxed - i dont own a car so car people feel very superior in knowledge about this, and i a little undereducated for lack of interest as it applies not a whit to me, other than being able to breath and the country not plunging itself into these dire weather circumstances with such exuberance and velocity, increasing species extinction (at which we already excel. some records should not be broken), desertification and flooding of our food areas (we have both - why not) and the death of the seas that surround us. So being able to whip back with a "house battery, you twerp" will be wonderful 😁

my mum also used Lithium. it wasnt ideal. ;) salt we have puhlenty of!

Lead acid batteries are very recyclable - from memory, the only thing that can't be recycled is some of the paper fibre they use.

But being able to drop our lead usage would be a very good thing indeed. Nasty stuff. Incredibly versatile, but also very nasty, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. If we can reach the point where its only commercial application is in radiation shielding (think X-ray facilities and similar), we'll be in a much better place.

@Tom Grzybow, there are signs of it. The Hyundai group vehicles (Ioniq 5, Kia EV6) are rock solid. The Cupra Born is another one that I have a very close eye on (if it comes in at the price that's been suggested, and can take my bicycles on the back, it's a virtually done deal for me).

It's now really down to supply, more than anything else - the batteries in particular.