I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improved enough for it to be good enough for happy-snaps. The serious photographers then moved the goalposts to "proper photographers" won't use them because of reason X. From that point the transition was very rapid.
I see the same arguments being made about electric cars. "The batteries are no good in really cold climates", "They'll not a good replacement as I cannot drive 1000 km in one stetch", "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street".
There are so many obvious benefits of electric cars, as soon as they are close to cost competitive, I bet the transition for new car sales will happen much quicker than many people realize and the infrastructure will quickly follow once the market has spoken.
> "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street"
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.
That's pretty cool, but even if we converted every single one we'd still be lacking. My street has a car to streetlight ratio of 10 or 15 to 1. Even if the cars only needed to be charged once a week, and everyone was very good at coordinating to allow cars needing charged to be parked next to the streetlight, that would still only work for half the cars parked. There's vast swathes of UK cities - especially the highest density most polluted ones - which have the same problem.
> I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.
You're thinking about this from the wrong way around. The people who buy the first electric cars mainly don't live in places they can't charge them, they live in single family homes where they can install a charging port.
That allows enough electric cars to accumulate that the lobby for installing charging ports on city streets can form and get a few of them installed. But with more charging ports you get more people buying electric cars and so the lobby for installing even more charging ports grows, until they're all over the place.
Just the garage. If you don't have a garage, you have to buy one apart which is about €20,000. Then you always have a trip to the car and there might still be issues with installing the EVSE.
It's been quite a while since I visited NYC so forgive me if my memories are outdated, but when I was there, parking meters were commonplace along the roads. Would it not at least make sense to slowly replace those with combination parking meter + charging station, which might be easier for the city to monetize in the long run? I realize this doesn't solve the home-side storage problem, but it might be one way the infrastructure could move forward in common hubs.
They’ve replaced the meter-per-space with a single digital meter per block. And that’s also only there in particularly commercially oriented areas, not in residential areas. Though I personally agree with the argument that we should be charging for parking on public property everywhere in the city.
So my local council doesn't even have the money to stay on top of fixing potholes and uneven streets , but will somehow find the money and will to put electric charging points everywhere? Yeah, I don't see that happening.
they put in parking meters to collect money. Are you sure they wouldn't put in charging meters with the equivalent price of gas? That's worth maybe 15k mi/yr / 30mpg * $3 = $1500/yr for the average user (assuming they use it regularly.. which apartment users would). That seems like a pretty decent incentive.
I bought a used C-MAX plug-in hybrid and was told that with the EV plan offered by PG&E, I'd save money versus gas. Only after I purchased did I learn that the EV plan gives you cheaper charging at night only if you're willing to stomach very high rates during the day. Since I work from home a lot and have a toddler, this is a non-starter for my family.
So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as for gas — and I'm in CA, where gas is expensive. We do save a tiny bit when we get to charge for free or at a subsidized rate somewhere. But I think most of the savings comes from not wearing down our brake pads on the hills in our neighborhood, and not having so many moving parts to wear out. These savings are not huge when amortized over the number of miles driven.
That actually made me laugh. It might cost more than in other US states, but is almost free comparing to most of Europe [1]. Average size of cars and engines, larger car with larger engine use more gas, also tell a lot of price compared to income, and it you compare traffic in Europe and America you will also see that Americans pay way to little for gas
I'm in MA (home of $0.20/kWh electricity) and my LEAF gets about 21 miles per dollar of energy. A comparable gas car would get ~13 miles per dollar of gasoline.
I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.
We pay a bit more than this for electricity, on the margin (they give you low rates on the first chunk but then it goes up from there).
But most of the difference is that our vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as yours. The 9kW/h battery only goes about 18-20 miles on a charge, and it costs more than the $1 that you pay to get that many miles.
I don't understand this calculation. Does your toddler use a excessive amount of electricity? Do you work at home running an aluminum smelter?
Snark aside, when we got our Chevy Spark EV in 2013, we switched to the EV rate plan and it has saved us a lot. I work at home too, and but the peak hour use on the EV plan is quite small, so the higher rate is balanced out by having the car automatically charge during off-peak.
It means I have to run the AC in summer and heat in winter for much of the day. The age of my child is relevant because older kids are in school during the day.
I'm on the peninsula. This summer has been very mild so we've gotten off easy, but I certainly can't count on that most years. Since you can't switch plans frequently, I didn't want to take the risk of switching.
How much use do you get out of the pure electric range on the C-MAX? I have a Chevy Spark EV and can make almost all trips I need. My longest is Oakland to San Jose and back. It has only 18kWh battery, but in warm weather we see 4.8 avg miles per kWh.
Perhaps solar would help solve your daytime rate problem? Or a car with more battery?
It would in all likelihood still be cheaper than gas, but even if it weren't, electric cars are just that much better all around. After you've driven one for a while, you realize what a smelly complicated Rube Goldberg mess the internal combustion engine is.
To each their own, but I work for a service provider tangential to the auto industry, so I've had the chance to drive a lot of different cars, and I'm pretty ambivalent about electric vs ICE cars. None of the engineering complexity of an ICE (and associated components) is particularly relevant to me as a car owner, and we've been building them for long enough that despite their complexity, they're extremely reliable.
Yes, to each his own. Even with reliability, I find several aspects of ICE undesirable: Slower start time, vibration, noise, inconsistent acceleration, the smell of gas at the pump and exhaust from the tailpipe, the pollution, the maintenance schedule, less cargo space, and the greater decrease in reliability with time.
Why? If they care about the environment. If they don't like wasting time at the gas station every week or more. If they don't like to deal with the horrible maintenance schedule of traditional engines vs having an oil change every 2 years.
Sadly not true - father was a civil engineer in council highways dept before he retired. For years he had been saying that funding was so small they were having to patch roads where they should have been renewing the road bed. Now they can't even afford to do all roads. It might be a problem of funding allocation of course - but it wasn't a lack of desire.
I think there is a "physical" reason, or to be exact, a concrete logical reason why it will be difficult. We have X number of gas pumps. If it takes Y times the amount of time to charge a car as pumping fuel, then we need X*Y chargers for everyone to go electric. It's not just a matter of what's convenient, but of multiplying the infrastructure.
Yes, but the power grid is already in place (although it'll probably need upgrading, piecemeal, to handle the additional load). You couldn't run a gas pipeline to every kerbside parking spot but you could put a paid charge point there and it would pay for itself in no time.
Conveniently cities have already done a huge amount of the legwork for enabling charging at street parking thanks to street lights. It will be expensive no doubt, but so was converting gas street lights to light bulbs.
It's better to have a car partly charged vs not charged at all during the night. On my morning walks in Brooklyn I noticed many cars didn't move an inch for days.
Range will solve this issue. For 18 months I charged my Tesla at Whole Foods, Target, etc, at a paltry 20mph charge rate. When my commute was 40+ miles round trip, that meant I had to charge a couple of times a week for multiple hours. Very frustrating. But when I got my weekly miles under my max range (180 miles) and started using a near-ish high-speed charger, I'd just catch a movie once a week, and my car would be fully charged for the week by the time I was through. A high-speed charger is enough to put 300-400 miles on an EV while you watch an average movie, if they have that capacity.
My Camry Hybrid can have 500+ miles of range recharged in a few minutes. That's the "killer app" that electric has to beat, one way or another. Spending multiple hours recharging is like driving 30mph on the freeway.
The killer app of EVs with access to home chargers (even slow ones) is that going somewhere else to fill up the car will be a rare occurrence. UK stats show EVs only charge outside home or work ~7% of the time. For a minority of people, regular fast charging will be a must but vast majority of people will just stop going else where to fill up their cars.
Once it becomes easy to charge your car overnight, e.g. because every street lamp is a charging station, I don't think the charging time matters very much anymore.
A gas car refills to max range almost instantly. It just so happens this Camry example has particularly good range on one tank of gas by virtue of being a hybrid, but the point is no more diminished with any other ICE car. Many non-hybrid models will also comfortably manage 500+ miles on a single tank.
All that said, I suspect there is a “good enough” tipping point for EVs, especially now that we are seeing some manage ~300 miles on one charge, which is more than enough for many commutes/weekly shopping trips etc.
Uh, OK, I thought it was, but you're free to disagree.
I do agree that there's a ton of evidence that Tesla's S/X have plenty of range for most people to not be bothered by it. And it doesn't appear to matter to these folks that a hybrid would fill up faster, which brings us back to hybrids.
Maybe everywhere in urban areas in certain US cities. I live in a mid-size EU city(<500k people) and there's just few charging points around me, which are pretty much permanent occupied.
Things are much different in the bay area at least. My employer has a whole bunch of of plugs in our parking garage, and I charge for free every day. My commute cost is almost negligible because of it. I can totally see a future where it just becomes standard for every parking lot to be powered with at least a few plugs. When you're plugging in everywhere you go, there's no need for overnight charging.
NYC seems like a good place to have autonomous electric taxis. No ownership, no streetside storage. When battery drops, it goes home and swaps with a charged-up car.
> I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside
Consumer/taxpayer demand for a solution, like most problems in a capitalist democracy.
I imagine streets where every nth parking spot has something that looks like a beefy parking meter, but will allow thick-ish extension cords to run from a car to it. Turn it on with an RFID tied to which house you belong to on the street (ensures only locals can use it, charges the electrical costs to the right house).
It's technically doable with the technology in our hands today and not very complicated to install. Give in 10 more years, there'll be even smarter ideas.
In most urban areas hooking up new electrical service does not usually mean breaking concrete. I think you'll be amazed how quickly cities deploy charging infrastructure once they realize the premium they can charge for the same parking spot.
What's the "premium" that a typical consumer would pay?
Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas.
At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of their charging in that space or network of spaces.
That premium/willingness-to-pay won't even cover the all-in cost of installing a single EVSE in the first year.
Any infrastructure spend that paid for itself in a year would be like winning the lottery. Infrastructure investment is evaluated on a timescale more akin with geology.
Agreed with the first sentence, but I still don't think the math pencils out. I'm not going to pay City X $750 (on top of the existing parking charge and electricity) so I can use their charging network. The figure I'm willing to pay specifically for the EVSE access is probably more like $100.
Barring significant over-subscription, that's still a ~10 year payback. With massive over-subscription, it doesn't become a reliable charging source. (My prior post, which I'll leave unedited, was unclear/insufficient in stating it was longer than a one-year payback.)
The one thing that is really different is that digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. That’s unfortunately where you’re analogy breaks down
Lack of infrastructure didn't stop the adoption of internal combustion engine vehicles. The infrastructure was built as demand for it increased.
Anyway we have most of the infrastructure we need for electric vehicles already, it's called the grid. All that is missing is the connection points. And for many people that is also not a problem because we can plug the car in at home. So electric vehicles have a massive advantage at this stage of the process compared to what ICE vehicles had at the beginning of their adoption.
There was a demand for the internal combustion engine because it was a massive step-change from horses. Electric vehicles represent a marginal gain for people who aren't primarily concerned about the environment.
To be clear, I would like an electric vehicle, but I lack off-road parking so I don't see myself getting one for a decade.
I happen to have a number of gas station owners cousins. Their sentiment is, if there is demand for something, they’ll supply it. Charging stations, replaceable batteries, whatever. If there is profit to be made, they’ll do it.
The original cars were electric and gas won out as a better solution because it was more portable and less dangerous in the event of an accident. Those things are still true today.
Edit: why the downvote? Sources cited below. HN, you judge too fast.
On May 1, 1899, La Jamais Contente was the first car to break the 100kph barrier. It was an electric car. Competition was fierce to gain the Paris market which was fond of electric cars due to their numerous advantages. This was a tipping point though, and gasoline won during the early 20th century because road infrastructure allowed for long haul trips and electric cars couldn't make it, as well as the ease of operation, reliability, general comfort (vibrations, noise, fumes) and cost of ICE cars significantly improving.
"In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built the first practical production electric car in London in 1884, using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries."
> I don't know much about the state of rechargeable battery technology in the late-1800's
This link has some info about rechargeable batteries in the context of electric vehicles. Basically in 1881 key improvements to the original 1859 lead-acid design made batteries practical on board a vehicle at an industrial scale.
> Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886.
The above link reiterates the date of 1884 for a production vehicle by Thomas Parker, two years before the Benz patent.
Also, earlier than that, a tricycle was successfully demoed along a Paris street in April 1881, following a 1867 two-wheeled prototype that did work but wasn't quite drivable for production use.
EVs got a slight head start to ICEs but they subsequently developed alongside each other from the late 19th to early 20th.
>> Credit to that .. Carl Benz, .. patent in 1886.
> date of 1884 for a production .. two years before the Benz patent.
The car was produced in 1885, the patent was granted in 1886.
The way I understood the OP's "The original cars were electric..." comment was that these electric cars (plural!) were dominant for some time until they were replaced quite some time later ("over 20 years before the Ford Model T") by cars with internal combustion engines.
As far as I know, that didn't happen. Electric cars and cars with internal combustion engines happened essentially simultaneously, with steam a century earlier (1769). From the Wikipedia article the OP quoted (section Golden age):
"In the United States by the turn of the century, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. "
So even during the "golden age", >60% of cars were not electric. I have to admit I was surprised that steam-powered cars were that widespread.
> digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed.
Yes, of course they do. What are you going to do with some .jpegs without the internet? Literally a huge network, and it was rolled out around the same time.
Point taken but since they rolled out around the same time, they did re-enforce each other. More pictures lead to more demand for internet, lead to internet being faster and more widely available, which lead to more pictures. Digital photographs were not the only driver of the internet's rollout, but I'm sure that they contributed.
Yes, then the question remains when an analogy loses its value. In this case I‘d say it’s a big stretch. I’m all for electric vehicles, I just don’t buy the analogy
Although electricity is already everywhere, it’s still not going to be an easy transition. Globally, electricity production in 2012 was somewhere around 20 PWh/year, while transport used around 30 PWh/years.
I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial.
This article disagrees with the factoid that it takes 6.5 kWh of electric power to refine a gallon of gas. It says it's a few tenths of a kWh of electric power.
1) Non-car storage (including but not limited to immobile batteries, pumped hydro, and hydrogen electrolysis)
2) Non-solar renewables (including but not limited to wind, geothermal, and tidal)
3) Inter-time-zone power grids (because PV is getting so cheap that 67% losses, 1000 watts at source being 330 watts at the plug, isn’t totally insane).
Electric vehicles use roughly a third of the energy so that 30 PWh only needs to be an extra 10 PWh for the grid. We need to increase overall capcity by 50%.
I doubt that; PV is cheap compared to storage, so it makes more sense to install twice as much PV as needed and include the charging plugs in existing car parks (and waste some power during commuting and lunch breaks), than to add enough immobile storage to allow most car charging to happen at night.
Only when the power doesn’t come from PV. If it does, you need (three?) times as much battery capacity: the car’s battery, the immobile battery that the car charges from, and the battery which powers your houses (and some industry and commerce) overnight. If you charge your cars during the day, you can use some of the battery capacity in the electric cars, partially discharging some of them overnight to supply your nighttime needs.
Chances are the network isn’t used at full capacity, so if people are willing to charge their cars outside peak hours (e.g, between midnight 7 AM, we wouldn’t need 50% more, network wise.
It may be different but it doesn't mean that it's impossible to achieve. Building the EV infrastruture is relatively cheap (compared to say building a gas-powered or hydrogen infrastructure). Tesla has already built its own (not perfect, but "good enough"), and the other car makers have joined alliances to build their own. Also new companies have appeared whose sole reason to exist is to build such infrastructures. Plus, power companies are getting in on the action, too, finally realizing that this could be big business for them in the future.
The EV infrastructure should be mostly complete by 2025. Most car makers won't start invading the market with EVs until 2023, or so anyway.
Digital cameras required a huge network - electricity. It's easy to forget, but for most of the history of photography, electricity was not everywhere a camera could go.
And before the digital camera, came the Internet which made it possible for you to show someone the pictures.
Imagine digital cameras of the specs of the first popular wave, but without Internet. Many downsides! The images would be low quality, you'd have to charge the camera, to show someone the images you'd still have to go to the lab for printed pictures.
No, I firmly believe electrical vehicles is about to crush the competition.
Most of Norway is much warmer than you'd think. The Gulf Stream hits Norway head on, making it much warmer than similar latitudes on the other side of the Atlantic. In Oslo, temperatures very rarely go below -10C.
To expand on that, electric cars in Norway has so extreme incentives...
That price-wise Tesla Model S is not competing with Ferrari, Lambourghini, BMW M3, Mercedes Amg’s or anything like that.
It’s competing with a mid range Audi A4.
Basically, regular petrol cars are so heavily taxed that EVs (which are exempt from all these taxes), can be a luxury car in any country on earth and still come out relatively cheap in Norway.
"I live in an apartment, I can't charge one on the street."
The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be at every on-street location; it can be centralized to parking lots or garages on a neighborhood basis.
That's either a very pessimistic view of electric car progress or a very optimistic view of self-driving capabilities.
I think electric car revolution will be at least two decades earlier than self-driving.
As far as electric goes we are starting to reap benefits of vast investment in better tech, manufacturing and vehicles purpose built for it.
Self-driving is very far away and the best publicly available systems only do slightly more than lane-assist, the by far simplest part of self-driving.
The earliest electric cars I noticed on the streets were glorified golf carts. They were ideal for very short distances, like getting to work & running errands.
Couldn't self driving cars in the very near future follow this same path? Find a very densely populated area. Get self driving cars to work very well in that area for short trips. Slowly expand to similar areas?
I haven't followed either of these very closely, so please correct me where I'm wrong.
That's kind of where self driving busses go. The first prototypes run short routes on aiports or something like that. But I don't think that short routes on normal streets are significantly easier than long routes on normal streets.
You're coupling a very complex solution (self driving) to a much simpler one (electric vehicles) in order to solve a niche problem (urban dwellers without garage parking) who could either be served with other potential solutions, like charging at workplace, or might simply become even less likely to own a car than they already are.
You arguably don't even need full self-driving for that.
A special "autonomous park/return mode", say, capped to 10kph, only following a single preprogrammed route, with a complete lead foot on the brake. Nobody would want to ride in an everyday self-drive that had those restrictions, but it's perfectly acceptable for an empty trip to a central parking structure.
it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button
The roads around where I live are /already/ at nose to tail capacity at the times I might actually want such a service. What do you think is going to happen when you add electric cars travelling from wherever they're being stored to the customer?
> There are so many obvious benefits of electric cars, as soon as they are close to cost competitive.
Like what exactly? You will have to assume that I am a modern man who don't give two shits about the environment, when deciding to buy a car. So can you give me one significant advantage that an electric car will give me over an ICE car, right now?
Cost of fueling - electricity is cheaper than gas.
Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
Better performance - Electronically-controlled electric motors have much better, more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE. Not just a matter of "accelerates faster", but more torque available at nearly every speed/driving condition.
> Cost of fueling - electricity is cheaper than gas.
Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
> Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough. Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car? I am not sure how reliable this is, but [1]
> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
>> Cost of fueling - electricity is cheaper than gas.
>Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
> We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
You're really shifting the goalposts. It is much cheaper to drive electric if you can charge at home. It's true a significant number of people can't charge at home, but if they can, it's usually 25-35% of the cost of a gasoline car. I've owned BEVs for 6 years and have probably charged away from home 10 times or less and mostly it was just to get a better parking spot.
>> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
If you've already decided there are no benefits to BEVs for you personally, then it doesn't matter what others say because it doesn't benefit you. Why bother asking for the benefits?
Not really. Its just that I (and most people today) see a car as something that can take them mostly anywhere, across the country. If you see or limit the definition of a car as something that takes you anywhere within a very limited fixed radius (the range of your car on a single recharge), then your argument is fine. With a car, If you have to think of "Can I refuel where I want to go", then that car is lost the race against ICE's by a long mile.
>So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
Who said I am speaking for everyone here? I was only speaking of my case.
> Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce
No, a related disadvantage doesn't nullify the fact of an advantage. Yes, charging stations are scarce and it takes longer to charge. It still costs less to fuel the car.
> I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough.
Well, good, I guess? Your opinion on how reliable cars ought to be isn't the subject of discussion. For what it's worth, I agree that you think ICE cars are reliable enough.
> Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car?
Probably not; in general a (far) less complex mechanism is going to be more reliable. Electric cars are new and doubtless suffer from the growing pains of a new technology. Teslas in particular are full of little fit and finish issues that result in a lot of warranty work. But hey, I'll give you this one. Improved electric car reliability is not a proven fact at this point. I can't see any way a mechanism with orders of magnitude fewer moving parts won't be more reliable once it matures, but maybe there's some sort of terrible unforeseen issue. Who knows?
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
I agree that you hold this opinion. Others do not. Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
I'm not really interested in discussing this further; I suspect you're going to keep moving the goalposts. You should purchase the type of car that most closely fits your needs and wants.
> No, a related disadvantage doesn't nullify the fact of an advantage.
Sure it does in some cases. Having a lot of gold is an advantage. Having to keep from being stolen is a disadvantage. That disadvantage does not nullify the advantage of having it. But if no one wants gold anymore, then that nullify the advantage of possessing it.
>Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
Maybe, but I think it is an advantage very few real world car users care..
> I'm not really interested in discussing this further;
Charge at home if you live in a house. Sadly, for people with apartments, electric cars are super impractical, until most residential streets include charging stations.
The opposite will actually happen. The rise of renewable energies will decrease energy cost dramatically. In some countries solar generation is already cheaper .
energy is highly regulated market, so I dunno, but in general, increased demand increases price, unless supply grows to meet demand (and there is a competitive market to drive down prices). So more EVs, more demand for electricity, and less demand for gasoline, so former might become more expensive, and the latter cheaper. what actually will happen is going to depend on long term investment decisions, changes in tech, and the specifics of industry regulation (which I'm mostly ignorant of)
I could see that viewpoint if you've never driven electric, but I think ultimately it's just a better product. Quiet, quick acceleration, never visiting a stinky gas station (charging at home is so liberating), much cheaper and easier maintenance, etc. The counter points are quickly eroding and falling.
Nissan did a great commercial at the launch of the Leaf [1] showing a world where a lot of our electric appliances were powered by gas. It's obviously absurd, but that's part of the point. I think we'll look back on this period 30-50 years from now and wonder in amazement that we drove such obviously inferior polluting dinosaurs for so long.
On the maintenance point: I bought an electric lawnmower a few years ago not because of any environmental concerns but because I was tired of having to make a special trip to the gas station to fill gas cans, then keep special oil on hand, and then replace spark plugs, and then the head gasket cracked and I just threw it out. My electric mower needs to be plugged in, but there's no exhaust, no fumes, no oil or gas to worry about, fewer moving parts, easier to start, very light. It's just a ton more convenient.
While I don't own an electric car, any argument that there's no consumer benefit to electric car is just silly on its face. ICE engines need just so much maintenance in comparison.
I agree, I think they should have taken the high road and tried to build the whole market of any vehicle with a plug instead of the underhanded jab against the volt. There are so many other cars they could have put in that spot. Maybe a Hummer?
They are also a much better driving experience. Once you get used to one pedal driving and instant silent thrust, gas cars seem unresponsive and clumsy. Not going to gas stations is great too.
I mean that regenerative braking when you lift the accelerator slows the car sufficiently that it is rarely necessary to touch the brake pedal. So most driving is done just by modulating the accelerator.
I think they will start around cities and dense suburbs, partly because of the reduced mileage demands and benefits of regenerative braking in stop start traffic, and partly because of democratic intervention to lower air pollution.
That will concentrate demand and seed the building out of infrastructure, which can then migrate outwards. The more rural you, the longer the switch will take, and some areas may not switch for decades.
Weird, I want to get one since I am adding solar panels (already bought them) to my tiny house and thus I can charge the car for free. Why pay for gas at $1.26 CND a liter?
They are much more comfortable to drive. Electric cars kind og just floats where fossil fuel cars struggles at first. If you have charging at home or at work you never need to go to a gas station, you always simply get in to the car (not turning on the enginge) and go where you want. I think those are the biggest two, but I guess it is one of those things you need to try to understand. There are tons more benefits though, like they are less noisy, the lack of a big engine makes the interior of the car more flexible design wise, the acceleration increases the fun factor even at low speeds, easier repairs, they just feel more modern.
Right-now benefits: Dirt cheap to charge (especially in countries where fossil fuel isn't subsidised). Cheaper taxes in several countries. Not contributing tons of CO2 and various toxins to the environment every year. Less dependency on a secondary energy distribution network.
Possible benefits: Simpler engines should lead to lower production costs, more reliability and simpler, cheaper repairs.
Lower maintenance costs, less mechanical parts, more safe because there are more crumpling zones, less noise and cleaner because there are no emissions.
None now, but I can envision that vehicle simplicity relative to the gas powered one (simpler engine and no transmission) will eventually mean lower price and lower repair costs.
In the case of digital cameras, the driving forces were varied, from governments wanting better means to spy and drop bombs, the film industry looking for a replacement tech, dedicated hobbyists seeing the benefits and getting on board. I can think of two parallels in electric vehicles, namely high performance applications which love the insane torque, low center of gravity, and diminished complexity compared to something like a twin-charged ICE. The other is long haul trucking, which would love to stop paying for diesel. In the former case its still incredibly expensive and often matched with an ICE, and the latter requires much more range and a lower price per unit.
Hopefully you’re right, and those driving forces will parallel the adoption of digital cameras. If so however, it’s going to be gradual barring some kind of miracle breakthrough battery tech.
Another driving force, perhaps the biggest driving force, is ecological. A very significant fraction of people today would, all else equal, choose electric cars over gasoline for the benefit to the environment. And all else is gradually becoming more equal. As you implied, the biggest remaining hurdle is the battery size. But for many people, it’s already good enough, and for many of the rest it will probably be shortly.
We’re not in this position because most people give a real crap about the ecological impact of their actions. They want to make a difference only when it doesn’t entail giving anything up. If you think that enough people will buy into electric cars for high minded reasons to make a difference, just how do you think we got into this situation to begin with? Do you really think the average American, Russian, Chinese or African person cares more about their environmental impact, or a cheap, fast, car? The evidence strongly points one way. People won’t even stop flushing wet wipes because it’s mildly inconvent for fuck’s sake.
Until the average electric car is at least as useful and no more expensive than the average ICE car there is no contest. That might be a good argument for imposing the cost of the externalities of ICE on people, but without that, dream on. “Good enough” isn’t what a “significant” fraction of people today give a shit about, unless they’re paying less for it.
i would consider buying an electric car if it were as fast as my hot hatch, had comparable range, and weighed less than 3000 lbs. i doubt that will happen for quite some time.
Not prior poster, but mass is detrimental to almost every aspect of the driving experience. Heavy cars accelerate slower, brake longer, turn worse, and wear tires more quickly than an equivalent car that's lighter.
no, a base 911 is about $30,000 cheaper than the fastest model s and will easily wreck it on a track. the tesla can certainly beat it in a drag race, though.
massive acceleration in a straight line gets old really fast, and you can't legally enjoy such a car on public roads. any performance oriented car over $25k already has too much power to fully appreciate this way. once a car is "fast enough", weight is the single most important factor for real world driving enjoyment.
Scooters, e-bikes, and electric cargo bikes (not to mention the human-powered versions!) will soak up an enormous portion of the current automobile demand, and leave us with massively positive outcomes in terms of congestion, pollution, road safety and community cohesion.
I agree, I we may be at a point in time analogous to people in the early 2000's discussing the next revolution in PCs... and not really appreciating that the next revolution was going to be mobile.
I think transportation is a lot more interesting than just cars - electric (and non-electric) cars will probably be part of the equation forever, but I suspect we're past peak car.
People have been saying that for a very long time, and every decade or two someone bets real money and loses horribly. I think the last time was Kamen thinking the Segway would change human transportation forever. Such visionaries tend to conveniently forget people who have families with kids, the price, and the fact that if their device can’t totally replace a car then it’s just an added expense many can’t afford.
Out where I live, the electric bike is as common as a regular bike.
When I first saw one, people said it was a useless half measure - if you don't want to peddle, you would take the car. The has proven wrong, and as time goes by, the reverse happens - it replaces the car.
You should realize that many people who buy these scooters and electric bikes are doing so to replace the bike, not the car. But then over time it replaces the car for 90% of the trips.
Electric bikes are a huge improvement over standard bikes, and no improvement at all over a car for a significant number of use cases. They’re also no more useful than a bike in places where roads are poorly maintained, rain and snow are frequent, or no bike lanes exist. They’re not useful for taking kids to school, or doing significant errands. They are amazing for a single person to get around cheaply without killing themselves on every hill, and probably a godsend in SV. Most of the world doesn’t have SV’s weather though, and a lot of people have kids.
Electric bikes and scooters are very cool, but they’re no more a solution to the car in most cases than a motorcycle or Segway. They do nothing for people with long commutes, or who live in spread-out suburbs. No one is trading in their minivan for a moped.
Where I live a few hundred thousand kids are taken to school by bike every day. All the way up to age 10 or so it's pretty common to see parents with kids on the back (and sometimes on the front or both) of their bikes.
No sane person would do so in any country that doesn't have the bicycle infrastructure we have in the Netherlands. I live in Australia and/or New Zealand a few months out of the year, and I've taken my kids to school there - it's insane to do so on a bike. And this was in places that actually have bike infrastructure and bike activism! Dutch people need to try cycling somewhere else before claiming that bikes are a car replacement somewhere else (they could be everywhere, given the right infrastructure and culture, but they're currently not, that's my point)
My parents must not have been sane! London doesn't have the best bicycle infrastructure (it certainly didn't when I was a kid) but you still see parents riding with their kids. Although nowadays you tend to see parents on kick scooters hurtling down the pavement.
During the summer, Iwould take my three kids to the daycare/summer program by bike. Two would sit in the Burley Bee bike trailer and the third would sit in the Thule Yepp maxi bike seat. It's a 3 mile trip one way and would take me about 20 minutes. I would then ride back to work.
I also would do some grocery shopping with the trailer used as storage. I didn't get rid of the minivan, but I didn't drive it more than a few times a month.
This is why any half-measure is kinda a waste. The overhead to "rent something for the occasional need" is far more of a real-world hassle than people are willing to put up with.
Also, having kids dramatically changes what you need in a vehicle, in ways that make any ride-sharing or rental option a significantly greater pain than it would otherwise be.
You mean the rich, temperate parts of Western Europe, most of which could fit inside Texas? Sure. If you’re being more honest it’s the urban areas of the richer, temperate parts of Weatern Europe, which is an even smaller geographic area with a total population that’s less than the US, or about 1/5th of China or India.
I love cycling in Paris and Amsterdam, not so much in New York City in the winter. I also wouldn’t love to do weekly shopping for a family of 4+ using a Segway and public transportation.
Edit: I’m curious if those downvotes represent disagreement, or just distaste.
I live in Norway, in a city of 180-200k people. Folks use public transportation or walking all the time. With children. For everyday food shopping.
You don't need to shop only once a week - 2-3 times makes carrying your goods easier. You can dress for the weather. It isn't all that big of a deal. Children in strollers have warm stuff around them. They sell bikes with studded tires for use on snow. It was tiring when I first moved here, but you get used to it and it isn't a big deal. Kids get used to walking and will sometimes even help carry things back.
I'd more argue that the real reason it doesn't work so well in much of the states is because the public transportation sucks. Walkways suck most places - half the towns I lived in didn't even make sure you could walk to the stores on sidewalks. More people were expected to work 50-60 hours a week on top of this. Poor folks sometimes work two jobs. Many employers don't have secure places to put your stuff while you are at work (no bike racks, no locker to put your winter gear or umbrella in). Fixing these problems help greatly.
I said You mean the rich, temperate parts of Western Europe, most of which could fit inside Texas? Sure.
You said I live in Norway, in a city of 180-200k people. Folks use public transportation or walking all the time. With children. For everyday food shopping.
Is Norway not one of the richest WE countries? (Not temperate though, fair enough.)
The country has a very high standard of living compared with other European countries...
According to United Nations data for 2016, Norway together with Luxembourg and Switzerland are the only three countries in the world with a GDP per capita above US$70,000 that are not island nations nor microstates.[18]
Yes... yes it is. It also has a bit over 5 million people, with about a million Living in Oslo, or 1.5 million if you go for the whole metro area. That’s great, but doesn’t have much to do with most other cities on Earth in terms of population density, population as a fraction of the country’s total population, and wealth. For example NYC has a population density of about 27,000 per square mile, and Oslo has about 8500. How does street crime compare between a major American city and Oslo?
Sadly, the diversity of cultures, politics, and incomes which define a city like NYC also make it hard to just say “let’s have a better environment for bikes!” I’m. It sure how you’d go about changing that, but I’m pretty sure articles like this and comments about Norway may not inckude realistic solutions. If I lived in Oslo, I’d bike a lot too, but if I lived in NYC I wouldn’t because I like living. Public transportation in the states varies massively, but either way simply saying “fix it” without a concrete way to make it happen in the real world of vested interests, cultures, and politics is sort of pointless.
They aren't poor, no, but it isn't temperate and that was the point I was getting at. Cold doesn't make things impossible by any means even if folks in the states act like it does, at least where I was.
I've never lived in NYC. I spent the first 35 years of life in Indiana, though, in towns smaller than this. The crime wasn't bad. One place even happened to have bus service. Indiana has about the same population as Norway over less land area, though admittedly it likely isn't as rich. Indianapolis is probably the only place comparable to Oslo as I can't remember how big Ft Wayne is.
Large cities aside, it doesn't take much to make a city walkable. Put sidewalks in, zone correctly, and put up areas to lock up bikes. If we can require places to have a minimum amount of parking spaces, what is so difficult to require a place to park bicycles? If you can zone for different things, wouldn't it be possible to zone for grocery stores near neighborhoods and give tax breaks to those chains instead of large box stores?
Concrete "fixing" does require some regional specialization, and I'm sure one solution isn't going to work for everywhere. Most cities aren't NYC, though.
Edit: I should also mention that part of the trend here is to make it more inconvenient to drive in town. They are actively taking away driving lanes to encourage walking and public transport. Most of the smaller cities in Indiana could do some of this as well.
I've been to Ft.Wayne. It's about 250,000. They actually had a bus (i rode it), it didn't come very often, and wasn't at all wheelchair accessible. I live in a similar size city in Canada. Bus system is miles better, and it still doesn't compare to the infrastructure they have in place in Europe, even for smaller cities in Northern climates like Helsinki.
Don't know why that person was going on about it only being temperate places, then comparing to New York, which has to be one of the richest places on earth.
Its because things are built in a manner optimized for automobile transportation. Fixing sidewalks isn't going to fix mega grocery stores miles and miles apart. Places where people walk/bike tend to have a business infrastructure built to support it.
That is part of it as well in some areas. That doesn't really answer why public transportation sucks, though - busses are large automobiles and use the same network.
But it doesn't matter how far you live either. I've often lived within a mile of grocery stores, but the infrastructure isn't there. There isn't always even a sidewalk to get to bus stops. Sometimes the bus stop is just a sign, no sidewalk. Busses rarely go inter-city and often don't go to workplaces on the outskirts of town (at least not in many smallish cities). They aren't efficient.
Why would anywhere build smaller stores similar to walkable places when the infrastructure isn't there, anyway?
Did not downvote - but your arguments about geographic size ring really hollow given the NHTS stats I shared originally which show that 60% of car trips are 5 miles or less.
Then you’ll add that you can’t cycle in the winter in New York because Western European has more moderate weather. But I’ll point out that many of the Western Europe capitals have a colder winter than NYC.
But then if you accept that, you’ll move on to claims about how you can’t go shopping for a 4 person family using a bike. Then I’ll share stats that the average US family size is 2.58, and that all kinds of stores offer home delivery.
The point is that people come up with a litany of rationalizations for the status quo, but it ends up sounding like apology for car culture when even heavy drivers would complain about all the negatives (congestion, parking, pollution, shitty drivers) in other forums.
I’m guessing some of that is behind the downvotes.
Probably because you talk about size of population on the level of countries/continents which is clearly irrelevant to the question here (where population of an individual city is what matters, at best).
So not distaste or disagreement, but irrelevance.
If you think "Europe has a smaller population than US" is relevant to whether using public transport where the infrastructure exists is possible for families then you need to state why more clearly.
America is not the Bay Area. Those short trips are across town to pick up the kids at school or take them to sports or go grocery shopping or other errands. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.
Nobody is going to use a scooter or an e-bike for that. If someone made an electric minivan, sure, that might soak up most of those trips, but for some reason nobody makes one.
It would be progress if the kids could get their own electric scooter to go to school or soccer training. It would increase their social skills, it can't be good to be dependent on the parents for everything when cooped up in an exurban paradise.
California just passed a bill that won't allow high school or middle school to start earlier than 8:30am because there is reams of research showing that early starts cause worse learning and development outcomes.
Lots of people are up in arms because they need their kids' schedule to fit around their work schedule so they can drive them everywhere.
Somehow it's just too hard for them to envision setting things up so the kids are safe with a greater level of autonomy and can maybe get themselves to school.
Suburbs used to be higher density, but in any sprawling development that went up in the last 15 years nothing is within cycling distance any longer. The vain hope is that easier transportation fixes that issue.
The Model X is sort of an electric minivan, though an expensive one. Cheaper ones are coming. The Pacifica hybrid can get 30 or 40 miles on pure electric.
Clearly your opinion about people's travel has a lot more validity than the research conducted by the American (err, United States) Federal Highway Administration.
What if three of that’s on the highway? Is that little electric scooter going to do 70 safely with all the SUVs around weaving in and out? Without me getting squashed?
And when it’s snowing heavily? And maybe there’s already a foot on the ground, plus a whole bunch of ice? You think a lot of people are going to want to do their 5 miles then?
Being on a motorcycle is pretty dangerous because cars don’t watch out for you. Being on a bicycle is far worse. Being on a little electric scooter on “real“ roads sounds like a death trap (again, saying nothing of large roads/highways).
Don’t say scooter lanes. That doesn’t seem to protect bicyclists.
Yes, all this can change. But right now it’s a BIG issue for small transportation replacing cars.
I’ve seen one or two people in the suburbs around me using tiny segues or high quality hoverboards. I just can’t see that catching on for any realistically sized group of the population the way everything works right now.
Not if the car lobby can help it. Think of the jobs!
Case in point: E-Bikes in Germany. You can either buy an e-assist bike that is allowed on bike paths and doesn't cost tax. Those are limited to 200W and 25km/h. That means you still impede traffic in 30km/h zones where people typically drive 35-40. Or you can spend more and get an S-Pedelec. That costs tax, isn't allowed on bike paths, and needs a driver's license. It can go 45km/h, meaning that you still impede traffic on normal 50km/h streets where people usually drive 55-60. All other electric vehicles, scooters, longboards and the like are either illegal or limited to slow speeds (12km/h I think?).
To me it seems fairly obvious to me that these regulations were made to prevent competition with cars. The rules for S-Pedelecs are the same as for small motorcycles, the previous big competitor to cars in cities.
The EU-wide 25km/h limit is extremely frustrating. It makes it so that you can't "take the lane" on the very common 30km/h roads without impeding traffic, and subjectively it's just the wrong speed. A huge number of cyclists on non-E-bikes easily bike at 25-30 km/h, whereas 30-35 km/h is way less common.
I support it for lanes with a mixture of walking and biking (which at least in Norway is almost all the bike lanes). There is a huge difference in outcome in colliding with pedestrians in 25 km/h vs 30 km/h. Non-e-bikers that hit 30 km/h necessarily have a certain amount of training to keep those speeds consistently, while e-bikes give people on their first bike trip the same speed.
Well it's a good thing that your disagreement with me isn't going to translate into any votes on the matter, since Norway just adopts EU policy, and doesn't vote on it :)
More seriously, I can see that point, you can come up with good reasons either way. But I think the actual reason is just arbitrary.
I'm not aware of any trial program where they tried different speeds, tried to gather statistics on safety etc. This 25 km/h number was just arbitrarily chosen by some bureaucrat, likewise for 20 mph.
Whether something is an overall win for safety is a much more complex question than about the physics of colliding with a pedestrian at either 25 km/h or 30 km/h. If it was 30 perhaps you'd get more people to ride bikes, and then you'd be in the worst case colliding with a cyclist instead of that same person going 50-80 km/h in a car.
Pedestrians don't have mirrors to see what's going in behind them. They don't typically stay to one side (especially when walking in groups), and they don't signal their intention to change direction. All of these make riding at higher speeds impracticable when among pedestrians. Not being able to ride at higher speeds makes (e-)bikes less useful from a transportation point of view.
I’m starting a new job, my cycle commute will increase from just 6 km to 18 km (and a few more as we’re going to buy a home). This is on the edge of my fatigue anxiety so I’m considering an e-bike.
Not only is it considerably cheaper than a beater car due to tax and insurance costs it’s faster overall even with the European 25 km/h speed limit. The bus of course takes twice as long and costs around €1500 per year.
Talking to various dealers and reading online it’s crazy how many new models there are this year. Giant alone have 38 new models.
I never thought of that. Are there the same moves in tiny electric hatchbacks (eg kei sized, not Leafs), scooters, mopeds, etc as there is currently in fullsize cars? I'd love a high quality electric moped to run down the shops and pick up milk and bread, or pick something up from the post office. All I've seen is those cheap plastic electric mopeds that people get from eBay/Aliexpress or Costco. I don't remember seeing anything of the big-name quality.
Electric cars tend to use lots of light plastic because there's less need to dampen noise and vibrations, due to the lack of a combustion engine. Plastic is lighter. I suppose bikes are the same.
I think the good-looking, premium electric motorbikes will come. Their limiting factor has been battery density (which makes it difficult to build a bike with good range), and weight distribution (you cannot put the battery too high or the bike will be very unstable).
It's a good point that design and manufacturing quality are an important component here.
I know the e-scooters used by Lime and Bird have seen a pretty quick iteration, and the models they have on the streets now are a lot better than the ones they had when they launched in my city just a few months ago.
In terms of in-between vehicles, I haven't seen too much yet. Our current street designs (at least in most of the US) make it really hard to operate a vehicle that is too small/slow to share the big & high speed lanes and intersections, but too large to move onto sidewalks or pedestrian spaces when you need to fill the gaps between safer/slower infrastructure.
You could look at what they drive around the retirement communities, seems to be a lot of designs that use a golf cart as a starting point.
Yeah I'd absolutely love to use a golf cart or similar, but I need something street registerable (I live in an inner city high-rise in Australia).
Our local councils get these awesome little electric golf-cart things to roam around servicing things, but they're not legal for us to own, which is a real shame.
Something the size of a golf cart, so it can be tucked away in a corner somewhere, or parked sideways with tail to curb and be no longer than the standard width of a parking spot, would be absolutely incredible. It would only need ~20-30km range, seat 2, and have a small area for storage, and I truly think it would be pretty popular for inner city dwellers. Most people just keep a cheap car tucked away in a back street nearby, or use Vespa-style scooters.
It's a ~$50 Gumtree special 2nd hand steel-framed mountain bike, with ~$150 worth of AliExpress Chinese electric bike conversion parts, and a ~$60 battery (You'd need another ~$50 for a charger - I use one of my quadcopter lipo chargers. That battery was originally a big quad one too, so my total outlay was only ~$200.) It gets ~25km on a charge with no pedalling at all (I use it for my ~16km round trip commute and it rarely uses more than 50% of it's capacity, even when I consciously avoid pedalling...) It's _technically_ illegal - it'll put out ~450W going uphill when fresh off the charger, and it's configured with a twist throttle like a motorcycle. To be street legal it'd need to be limited to 200W with the throttle, or 250W as a "pedalo" (where the pedals need to be turning to activate the motor). I've left the controller settings to top it out at 25kmh though (it'll do over 40 if I remove the software limit), so it's not tempting me into going so fast it'll attract attention from the cops... So long as my legs are moving enough when they see me I don't behave in an illegal fashion...
Totally agree. I just ordered an e-bike a few days ago because a lightweight, flexible vehicle that can travel with ease in a bike lane or on a sidewalk is much more appealing to me than investing in another car and everything that comes along with it (insurance, registration, inspections, etc.).
It seems wasteful to use cars for short travel, esp for a single person or two persons. In third world people would use the motorcycle for such short travel, even if they had a car. And you can buy motor cycles that can go nearly 100kms on a litre of petrol.
The reason why it's not more popular in the 1st world countries is that a motorcycle/moped is yet another vehicle that you need to tax and pay insurance on, while you are already paying not a small amount of money for a perfectly usable car - why double your expenses? Not to mention that in a lot of climates riding a bike/moped is a really bad idea in winter without significant skill and gear.
Yeah - given all the data we have showing that SUV design is basically set up to kill pedestrians, I have to wonder when Ralph Nader is going to come out with “Unsafe at Any Speed 2”.
I don't think so. A car is the most outwardly visible status/everything symbol you have. This is important, especially for men without a family. They're not going to want to be seen in a Renault Zoe or a scooter.
I remember back in 2007 when I would try to talk to people about this badass upcoming Tesla Roadster that could smoke supercars. A very common thing I heard was: "Yea that's interesting, but I mean, a silent car is just not cool like a screaming V12."
Times change.
Outward status also comes from travel, clothing, food, lifestyle, and housing choices.
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The flip side of the equation is that cars (even electric ones) have enormous externalized costs that are not paid by the owner/driver of the car.
As those costs are accounted, the balance will continue to tilt away from cars where they can be avoided. (Particulate pollution from tires, brakes and road surface wear has an enormous public health cost, congestion & long commutes have enormous productivity and health costs, parking and sprawling development have enormous unaccounted infrastructure costs.)
My big issue is that in the places that electric cars make the most sense (cities) it’s hardest to own them. What am I going to do, run a really long extension cord from my condo to the random parking spot I found around the block?
You won't like this idea but in Japan you're required to show you have a place to park your car before you're allowed to buy one. If there was a market for parking spaces with power it seems like they'd start showing up pretty quickly.
I love this idea. With one problem. It doesn’t capture the externalities of living in the sub/ex urbs correctly. Precisely where it’s hard to park is where people are living most environmentally friendly (density).
Paired with a dramatic energy tax I’m good with it.
It captures the spatial externalities, as opposed to the US system of minimum parking requirements and on-street parking, which sets aside valuable urban space that could be used for more housing (or stores or whatever) and wastes considerable amounts of capital (underground garages are very expensive) on making it easier to drive and not actually produce the environmental benefits of living in a city.
Well the obvious answer is parking spots will need to get electrified. Most new condos where I live already come with enough electrical provision pre-planned to electrify parking spots if needed and old ones are considering adding provisions.
Household wiring will anyway not have enough current capacity to support charging, so smart plug based billing will likely be the way these things will go. Since electric cars ARE becoming cheaper economically for city use, this likely WILL happen. Accelerating the trend will be the fact that property prices will go up/down depending on availability of electric charging - so big property owners will start making these investments since there's no lack of capital among them.
Basically, these tipping point things don't necessarily happen because of "activism" but happen when economics cause a runaway effect (think spread of mobile connectivity for another example) - so to that extent Tesla is pushing in the right direction by trying to get economics right.
Old homes would benefit from better load management technology. I want to clip something like this (http://www.theenergydetective.com/homemtuct200.html) to my main feed, and have it send power measurements to an EV charger, which automatically adjusts to fill all remaining capacity.
This wouldn't require any Internet access, just data sent over the power line, to a charger that's able to listen.
Existing home wiring could also be repurposed to carry HVDC, and therefore more power (12A * 600V = 7.2kW)... but I'm not sure if HVDC cars are designed with low current in mind.
ClipperCreek sells EV chargers with a UART interface to set the charging rate (in 25% increments), so it should be relatively straightforward to stuff a Raspberry Pi or something in there.
But that option costs an extra $184, and the UART protocol is only available under NDA, which probably makes it difficult to open source.
The J1772 spec is well documented and supports the "advertisement" of maximum charging current. You could add the capability to something like OpenEVSE. https://www.openevse.com/
At the moment, I'm pretty sure I have enough panel capacity for a plain old EVSE, but if I do need something controllable, then OpenEVSE looks really interesting. Thanks.
Here's an example of OpenEVSE tracking solar capacity, which is basically equivalent to panel load management:
No need, because it is simply untrue: Electric vehicles can charge on anything from 1-ph 8A 240V, to 3-ph 32A 400V, all of which can easily be provided by common urban household wiring.
Or even less. I tell my Model S to charge at 5A when I am at home (230 V single phase). Gets me 5 km per hour, 60 km from 18:00 to 06:00 which is fine because I average about 20000 km a year which is less than 60 km a day. On road trips I use the superchargers.
Annecdata: all the houses I personally know of in the south bay (North California, USA) area have three phase power, and the oldest was built in the 1940es.
Charging a Model S from a 110V 20A outlet is very slow and probably not a very useful option (but I have done it on a visit to LA).
Most home electricity installations have circuit breakers @ 15 Amps where I live. Wiring typically rated to a max 20 Amps draw before overheating. At a below 15 Amps current draw levels, you'll required an inordinate number of hours of charging for getting mileage on the battery and it's just not practical.
When we first got our electric car we used a cord strung out the window, 12 amps at 120 volts. Not a problem, plug in when you get home, unless you need more than 60 miles this will be fine.
How many km do you drive in a year? My 20k km is about 55 km per day which is easily supplied by 5A 230 V to my Tesla S in 12 hours, say from 18:00 to 06:00.
Perhaps he's referring to the recommendations that Tesla has: "We recommend installing the Wall Connector with a power output to match the on-board charger of the vehicle, typically a 40, 60 or 90 amp circuit breaker."
Our house has a 30A dryer outlet on the second floor. The house is maxed out on a 100A main line. To get another 40A or 50A breaker permitted, and installed would mean new main line, new meter, new main breaker, new breaker box. Bids have come in between $7,000 to $9,000. New homes with 200A service will mostly be ok, but older homes are often underserved electrically.
Interestingly, I went to a Nissan dealer in Japan (where I live) to ask the exact same question. They have a deal where you can spend the equivalent of about $30 per month and you can go to the dealer to charge your car (unlimited charging). It takes about half an hour and they have a waiting room with free coffee and a TV.
Although I'm worried that they don't have anywhere near the capacity to handle the volume if it gets popular (imagine waiting for 2 or 3 people ahead of you...), for the moment it seems doable. As my wife can't live without her car (I don't drive), we're seriously thinking about it.
Although this thread is about the common person, for me the numbers actually work out relatively well. The new Leaf has about a 400 km range. My wife drives just under 40 km a day (I wish I could convince her to get an electric scooter instead :-P). You don't want to drive it down to empty, so I guess we could get away with charging it once a week. At least in our household, that would be easy to fit in.
My wife currently spends about $30 a week on gasoline (it requires high octane and it burns stupid amounts of fuel and gasoline in Japan is stupidly expensive). That's $120 per month, so she would be saving $90 per month on their charging scheme. In exchange she has to wait 2 hours a month (and organise refuelling the vehicle about 1.5 times more than she does currently). So, let's say $45 an hour post taxes (I think her marginal tax rate including health and pension is about 24%).
So it's a good deal if she's able to avoid waiting for other people too much... And assuming Nissan continues their deal for the life of the car (seems unlikely, but by that point hopefully we'll be able to plug in at home).
The main thing that bugs me is spending $30-40K to drive 20 km out and back every day. It's complete insanity, and you can talk all you want about driving a "green car", the earth is not going to take back the carbon required to build that car any time soon :-( Unfortunately my wife (who is pretty normal in this respect) can not quite grasp that logic.
At my previous job, my boss was an EV enthusiast and installed four chargers (at a time where only one person had an EV). I charged for free for six years and when I left there were ~ 8 EVs competing for the spots. I know for a fact that our chargers was a factor in purchase of some of those.
Doesn't seem all that hard to solve. My city, Los Angeles, reserves some street parking spots for electric vehicles and has installed outlets on the curb for those spaces.
Also, if you live in a city, unless you "reverse commute" to the suburbs, you probably won't drive enough miles regularly that you'd need to charge every night anyway. Give it a fast charge every few days in a commercial garage while you run errands.
Who pays for the power? What % of spots are electrified? If we hit an inflection point how fast can they change that % and how does the answer to the question about payment change?
If you have a car in the city, you should park in your building's parking garage, not in the street. The problem is that residential street parking is overused.
100$ a month is probably on the low end. A parking spot is at least eight square meters, probably more like nine. Rent here in Berlin is about 10€/m^2/month (so pretty cheap as far as big cities go). Typical houses have three to four stories, so that parking spot could be 24-36m^2 of housing.
My apartment building has a central garage with a place you can charge your car (probably) for free. Unfortunately someone (out of a few hundred) is already using it.
They make a lot of sense for shared ownership. In my city, there's a cooperative running a fleet of cars, similar to bike sharing programs, with dedicated parking spots that have electricity.
As soon as there is a critical mass of electric cars, that the first citys can dare to declare the (inner) city to be gasoline free - then I think the turning point is reached.
Can't wait for it. I just returned from the wilderness to the city ... what a huge improvement of city life it would be if the noise and smell of cars would be gone ...
I'm currently attempting to install an EV charger in my condo carport. The first step was to exchange parking spaces with another owner, in order to get physically close enough to run conduit from my panel.
However, I found the property laws surrounding the modification of assigned parking spaces to be pretty murky. It'd be nice if there were a state/nation-wide effort to clarify this sort of transaction, because lots of maps and HOA documents were written decades ago, with zero thought given to electrical access.
There will always be some homes where EV charging is infeasible, but map reordering could fix a lot of the marginal cases.
I'm on my third EV (Leaf, S, M3). Never going back. Since the Model 3 is so well built (after some startup hickups), I can recommend it on that alone. Tesla is very vertically integrated now (they make their own seats) and so the Model 3 is profitable for Tesla although the capital investment was quite high.
Also, it's fun to drive next to a Viper and throw shade.
It's fun that EVs are going to be the "sleeper" in transforming the energy grid; California needs tons of energy storage in order to transition entirely to renewables, and those EVs everyone is buying are a perfect compliment. A million Teslas on the road in California would be over 10GW of controllable charging load (roughly 10 stationary storage facilities PG&E is currently building with Tesla), and a more optimal destination for excessive renewable energy instead of being forced to pay a neighboring state's grid to take that excessive clean energy. A million EVs a year sold in California is 10GW of additional energy storage per year.
My "ask" is that if you own an EV, and your employer isn't progressive about charging stations, politely prod them (there are usually incentives, find these!). My employer has an environmental progress initiative, and it only took a few emails for them to install a few Tesla and Clipper (non-manufacturer specific) chargers in our parking garage.
Maybe. The battery chemistry for a car vs stationary storage differs greatly. Stationary storage they optimised for ability to hold charge for long periods of time, and not loose capacity over time. Car batteries optimised for weight and charging speed. If you cycled your car battery every night with the grid it wouldn't last all that long. Maybe it won't make a difference in the long run with how many EVs we have though.
Most EVs charge daily. The idea is that you can update charging rate/time to match e.g. wind power output, which tends to peak late night/early morning. Dispatchable load is nearly as useful as dispatchable supply for balancing the grid. Discharging the battery to power the household would be a bad idea outside of emergencies, due to the capacity loss you note.
Was talking to staff at the rental counter in Phoenix. They said that they stopped buying hybrids when gas dropped back down and the fact that they were costly to maintain... (More moving parts).
Fleet sales were a big driver when gas prices were higher
Plus, hybrids are a gutless jack of all trades and master of none
Depends a lot on the hybrid. Prius is the most reliable car you can buy. When I sold mine at 130k miles, it still had the original brake pads. You are right about the jack of all trades, and IMHO that's a good thing.
The hybrid transaxle on the Prius is a technological marvel.
While the transaxle and battery pack add their own significant costs, complexity, and failure modes, they also eliminate a lot of the components on a conventional gas engine vehicle.
In my area, it is common to see a lot of hybrids used as taxis. Some of the older ones I see likely have 500k miles.
Same here, I thought hybrids were a lot bigger market. I'm surprised that ~90% of cars sold are still non-hybrid ICE cars. (I don't live in California, but I assume their numbers are fairly representative of the rest of the US.)
The Model 3 has, or may have, become profitable for Tesla since the average selling price has gone from the $34K initially advertised to (last I checked) $59K. Good deal - if you're Tesla.
>>> I'm on my third EV (Leaf, S, M3). Never going back.
In how many years? Tossing cars on the junk pile every few years is an environmental nightmare. Who is taking these cars off your hands? I buy cars to keep. I demand that any car last at least 10 years, preferable 15+ without major work. My current Honda is nine years old. My last car ('92 BMW 325is) lasted twenty years. So I am very skeptical about advice regarding cars that have yet to prove their longevity. They are all great when brand new. How are they after the first hundred thousand miles/kilometers?
EV car batteries last at least 7 years, in theory and in the 2010 cars still on the road. After 7 years, they need a battery replacement (similar to how an ICE car needs engine work, just a one-shot replacement instead of lots of minor maintenance and repairs), and the old batteries are easily refurbished into other kinds of batteries (like home backup batteries) where charge-per-unit-weight-and-volume is less critical than in a car.
The average car in the US is said to be older than 7 years, and ICE powered cars do not normally need a new engine at that point. Cars are usually scrapped at 14 years or more, I believe.
Anecdotally, a valve cover gasket, oil pan gasket, brake discs are going to be recommended on many cars after 7 years.
There is already datab out there from high class rental companies that reduced maintenance from oil changes, brakes, and major repairs easily leaves room for new batteries.
Valve cover or oil pan gaskets are replaced when needed, not because some time has passed. Besides that they are a minor job both in cost and invasiveness compared to replacing a battery pack, this is very much comparing apples to oranges.
Typically ICE cars do not require engine work at 7 years of age.
I held my previous car for ~ ten years (Subaru WRX) and intended to hold the Model S that replaced it for 15. Alas, when the option of all-wheel (dual motor) became available I did sell it to a friend and upgraded. Based on the data from the Tesla Roadsters, they hold up fairly well after years (mechanically impeccable due to few moving parts). Early data from the now ~ 7 year old Model S suggests that it's even better. I known nothing about non-Teslas, but IMhO, Tesla sets the standard that all EVs should aspire to.
>Since the Model 3 is so well built (after some startup hickups)
>and so the Model 3 is profitable for Tesla
It's hard to imagine someone stating these things seriously. So well built? Go to the Tesla Forums; buyers are being recommended to bring a checklist of defects to look for before you agree to take ownership, and are routinely rejecting delivery. That is unfathomable in the auto industry, unless you're talking about Soviet Russia. "Improving"? Maybe. But "so well built"? That's a stretch. But don't take my word for it, go and see for yourself.
And profitable? By what metric? Again; maybe. That is their intention, but there is zero evidence of that, and in fact evidence to the contrary.
It constantly amazes me how Tesla fans seem so oblivious to the realities of the struggles the company is facing. Yes, the EV revolution is coming, but there is no guarantee Tesla will lead the way.
>Also, it's fun to drive next to a Viper and throw shade.
Oh, you mean the Viper, that is a full second faster than Performance Model 3 0-60, brakes 50% faster 60-0 and runs the quarter mile 2 seconds faster? What shade are you throwing, exactly?
> Viper, that is a full second faster than Performance Model 3 0-60
According to [0] the Viper is pretty much dead even with the Model 3 Performance. Where did you find "a full second"? Also, please provide a source for the "brakes 50% faster 60-0" as this is difficult to believe.
Seems just as likely that the correct interpretation is that exponential growth is difficult to appreciate when starting from a small base. The “inflection point” cited in the article could easily be a continuation of the exact growth rate present for the previous 10 years.
The prices have to come down too. the Electric cars are 5-6 times more expensive than the normal cars. By cheap normal cars i meant Hyundai Accent which costs $14,995, Or Toyota Yaris $16000 or Chevrolet Sonic $20K or a ford fiesta $14K.
They will come down when more people buy them. Manufacturing efficiencies aren't magic. There are tens of billions of dollars of R&D and capex that need to be amortized.
Also, while an EVs upfront costs are higher, the total cost of ownership is lower, as an EV costs about half as much (per mile) [1] as an internal combustion vehicle to operate.
If you're a lifelong buyer of used cars, the perception matches pretty closely. I've never bought a car for more than $4000 (and FWIW the used buys I've made have had a minimum reliable life of 5 years, and max repair costs before abandonment of another $4k).
I don't know what the used EV market is like right now. I don't remember seeing any. Then again, EVs are relatively new and rarer than ICEVs so I wouldn't expect them to have a big profile in used vehicle listings.
(If I were guessing, I'd speculate the economy choice for EVs right now might be some kind of conversion of a failed/old ICEV, but that's uninformed speculation...)
Look for a used Chevy Volt, you should be able to get it around 10K USD (2012-2014 models). I am not fan of Nissan Leaf earlier models given the range anxiety and their battery being air-cooled, which you can find for almost rock bottom prices.
Plug-in hybrids like Chevy Volt, Prius Prime and Pacifica PHEV are in my opinion real sleepers that do not get media love.
Any advice on models or tactics for buying a used car? I have been struggling to find something for nearly 2 months now. All I really need is inexpensive.
FWIW ~2 months has sometimes been time it's taken me to find the used car deals I was looking for. Once I've been immensely lucky and stumbled on an incredible deal quickly. More often it's in between.
I'm not an expert, but my tips: figure out your budget (mine is usually $2-4k). Then cast a broad net for cars that have less than 120k miles. Many cars made in the last 20 years have upwards of 150-200k in them. So starting here is going to give you potential for ~50k at the cost of a down payment. It can help if you have a few models in mind that you know tend to have particularly long lives or tend to be undervalued (my favorite for a while was the Geo Prizm, which is a rebadged and therefore discounted Corolla, I've also had two Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras that went into the 200k range... but these were both discontinued 15-20 years ago and good ones are getting rare). Do your own filtering on the health of the car. I'm not even an amateur auto mechanic but I have a few heuristics: is the temperature stable over a range of driving conditions from idling to hill loads or freeway? What kind of oil leaks do I see? Also I like visible brake & gas pedal wear as a proxy for general vehicle wear. If a car doesn't have any obvious problems on these points, fits my cost/miles profile, and I like it, then I take it to a professional mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection and follow their advice. If the mechanic notes some needed non-powertrain repairs that fit inside the budget, I'll usually buy, perhaps after some negotiation.
There's a downside to this approach: it can be time-intensive. If you're well-compensated with your job (or you're doing a startup, or you're a new parent, or you have some other time-intensive thing going on in your life), your time may more valuable than the economizing this approach can yield. It goes faster if you let out the parameters a bit (bump up the budget and take down the mileage). In most sufficiently large cities there's probably a <$10k Toyota with less than 70k miles on it out there that you can find within a week that will give you trouble-free driving for years.
If you want more tips, Google Greg Macke, who seems to have some sensible advice about evaluating cars and has some recommended/lemon lists.
That's just not true. You can buy the Hyunday Ioniq for €32k, €38k for the maxed up model, Kona Electric for €40k with 500km range, soon the Kia Niro EV for €38k. These prices are only 20-30% higher than their ICE versions, and there are _many_ normal cars that go beyond this in the same categories.
Plus you have to look at the total operating cost. Electric cars need basically no maintenance while ICEs you have oil changes and brake changes plus a more complicated engine.
Yep. The iPhone was only released in 2007, in reality the first mass-market touch "smartphone".
Now only 11 years later a friend was almost denied entry to the US because the border officials refused to believe she didn't have a smartphone she could use to show them her bank account. She asked to use wifi and use her laptop, but no, they demanded she use her (non-existent) smartphone.
In only 11 years the product has gone from not existing to being essentially mandatory.
Yeah wireless internet and mobile devices were talked about for a long time, then suddenly wifi/wireless networks and mobile devices appeared quickly and took over in a flash. Same with flat panel screens/tvs etc.
At some point a killer implementation of the technology and costs come together making new innovation possible and market ready, and it is such a benefit that going back is nearly impossible or at least more problematic and costly.
Even now, wired internet will go the way of the phone line when 5G or beyond are here, ISPs milking it until then.
With cars, electric will take over quickly when costs come down, non electric cars will be around for a long time but they will be more and more costly.
The change also creates such a growth market that it attracts tons of money/investment/marketing and it is a mad dash to get everyone using the new innovation, once it is business and market ready.
I won't buy another car that isn't an electric car. Even if I have to wait years. I am so sick of the idiocy that is current gas cars. The complexity is insane. You guys whine so much about repairability in tech gadgets and shit, but cars? ho. lee. shit. Modern cars are insane. Well, modern gas cars.
I am never spending another $2000 on "labor" to change a gasket. Power sources, being electric are cool, and I definitely appreciate the long term benefits to the environment and all that shit. But honestly.
The real reason for electric cars is that they are simple. The drive train is a few pieces requiring minimal management and maintenance. It's time for cars to stop being a huge pain in the ass.
Tesla may be loved, hated, what3ever. but they proved cars don't have to be huge garbage piles destroying the world and making our lives worse with stupid maintenance costs that don't need to exist. Whether they live or die is up to markets, sadly,. but it's up to us to make the world of personal conveyance a thousand times better than it is now by choosing electric.
I am completely with you, but would like to mention that batteries are also produced somewhere and the process and required resources are anything but environmentally friendly.
This is not to say that EVs are a gigantic improvement. Returning to them will improve many things.
I have read there will be two stages here. First the cars will get cheap enough, and there will be enough charger stations, so they start to get bought in mass.
And when this goes far enough, it will send the ICE into a death spiral due to things like gas stations closing and fixed production costs per car getting too high because they are spread over too few sold cars. Also people will be won't be willing to spend as much for a given ICE model because they see the future trends and know it will not bring as much when later sold used.
I think the first major tipping point is going to be electric buses. They run relatively short, well-known routes, they have lots of space for batteries as a replacement for the big diesel engine, they can have a charging pantograph on the roof without seeming ugly (unlike on a passenger car), and they can trickle charge for 5-10 minutes at either end of their route, keeping them topped up enough to last a full day of driving.
In addition, they're also quieter, have less vibration and don't produce local pollution in the form of diesel exhaust, which modern buses have lots of costly systems installed in order to mitigate.
All public transit should be electrified, to set a good example.
I wholeheartedly believe, in order for electric vehicles to survive in the US, we will need government intervention not just simply in car subsidy. We will need some sort of infrastructure subsidy to make this happen. Either give incentive to gas station or even corporate buildings. Companies that provide more charging stations for employees to charge their cars during work gets bigger tax cuts. Also, the US will need to get rid of the gas tax and implement some sort of per mileage tax. Without these, I find it hard for electric cars to survive without destroying our current infrastructure.
I'd expect the utility/power companies to be on top of this, lobbying for it, already. Their centralized generation approach stands to gain as gasoline and the billion distributed combustion engines approach loses. It'd be in their self-interest to try to use their lobbying capabilities to accelerate that future.
It would be better to put the gasoline replacement tax on the utility companies and let them raise rates slightly to adjust for it. That's not only easier to do than building out a system for tracking & taxing all mileage in the US, it's also dramatically better for privacy reasons (as opposed to opening up another avenue for the government to invade our privacy by getting automated, mandated mileage tracking & reporting put into our electric vehicles). The US has relatively inexpensive energy prices, we can afford the slight increase in tax there, which would be offset by the erasure of the money spent on gasoline. The downside is, some will argue it's not fair to those not using electric vehicles on roads to be paying the tax increase (and that's correct, it's not a perfect tax distribution; it's an 85% good enough solution, that is a magnitude easier to implement and better for privacy).
Hmm, I have I only heard about statewide efforts. Even statewide, only a couple of states are investing in this technology (CA, NY, and TX). Are there federal incentives that I overlooked?
I didn't. That's why I asked if there was in order to clairfy any points I might of misunderstood. Unfortunately, the biggest transportation changes are done through a federal level particularly through the NHSTA. For instance, the highways system wash deemed foolish by many but we manage to make it a reality through the cooperation in a federal and state level.
Ah. That kind of fake "reply" really wrecks conversation -- you left me wondering if you had misunderstood, when instead you were just grinding your axe.
Huh, not sure how and what I am grinding my axe for? I was genuinely curious if there is a federal incentives provided that I don't know about which is very possible. For instance, for the 3D printing industry there are specific grants (free money essentially) to help small companies federally and state wide. Not sure why you find my intent replusive or with a hidden purpose.
As I said before, I don't have any information about new federal incentives -- I have owned an EV for 5.5 years and know about state and local incentives for everything you brought up... which is why I said "parts of the US".
Meanwhile, you made it clear in the other thread that you're mainly interested in federal incentives, which is what I was referring to as your axe. Nothing repulsive, just something unlikely to generate good conversation with people who have nothing to say about federal incentives.
There's about 10K supercharging stations in the US. There's amount 168K gas stations. The amount of super chargers is probably about the same as the measurement error for the 168K estimate.
I except that a significant portion of drivers will be able to drive at home. You don’t need as many gas stations in a world where over half the owners charge at home (or work)
Sorry, what's the purpose of this comment? Tesla has < 1% market share today, so it's hard to imagine why there would be a large number of superchargers today relative to gas stations.
Because the electric car market share will remain as it is without the intervention of the government (in the US). There is no way a single private company can overwhelm the whole gas car industry in its current state. The point of my comment is that the supercharger network is not adequate for the mass adoption of electric cars. The government will need to do more to incentive the growth of the infrastructure.
It is already coming suddenly in China. Beijing has a lottery for new car license plates for ICE cars, and the quota goes down each year. Not for electrics. More than half of new cars in Beijing are electric. Next, Guangzhou. Shenzhen is already all electric buses.
Apparently the chart shows only the number of permits handed out, not the number of cars actually admitted. (After you get the permit, you have a period during which you actually need to buy a car, if I read it correctly)
I don't expect everyone to run out and buy brand new cars off the showroom floor en-masse the instant the economics favor the newly available flavor of shiny.
Cars are big ticket items often involving financing, they're sticky. This is why it's pretty damn urgent that we get the competitive EVs on the market ASAP. Every new ICE vehicle we add will be on the roads for quite some time, especially with how mature/reliable they are today. My 94 Japanese econobox has nearly 300,000 miles and still runs great.
The other issue is as increasing numbers of ICE vehicles get replaced by EVs, the gasoline demand drops, and the prices may correspondingly drop. In the words of a friend of mine: "All the oil in the world will be burned."
What'll really kill gas cars is when gas stations start becoming scarce. It'll be a vicious (virtuous?) cycle as that'll cause more gas stations to shut down.
I don’t see EVs taking off for average Americans until there’s an exponential increase in charging infrastructure. I live in a place where it would make great sense to have an EV (only commute 12 miles each day), but I can’t charge at home (townhouse) and I’m not aware of any chargers in my immediate area. There’s also the issue of travel, meaning an EV can’t really be your only car or else you need to be prepared to rent any time you go on a trip.
I think you're underestimating the Tesla supercharger network. It basically solves both of those problems (if you have a Tesla) and live in the vicinity of one - if you don't live near one then it still solves the second issue.
The infrastructure is expanding rapidly, so your "unless" is a fairly safe bet.
What do you do if you don’t have a Tesla? They’re not exactly a mass produced value car. And that’s what you need for real penetration to the car market.
Well, all the other manufacturers are trying to match what Tesla has (and is still working on). Tesla's also going to bring a value-ish car in a couple of years.
I've been hearing promises of the $35K Model 3 for 2.5 years now. I'm still taking the "over" on early next year for broad availability of a $35K Model 3.
According to Tesla's map there are only 12 supercharger stations in my state. That seems be a pretty typical number for most of the US outside of Southern California and a handful of other major areas. That might be enough to support a handful of enthusiasts and early adopters, but it's a drop in the bucket when your goal is to have millions of people using EVs as their primary vehicle.
That day will only come if they produce a cheaper car, just like Android ecosystem with Samsung makes cheap phones. TESLA cant do it, because their per unit car profits are too high. We need a new car manufacturer that keeps its per car sale margins low and rely of volume.
This is what I see the as greatest value that Tesla brings to the world. Not their cars themselves, but the fact that they made the incumbents get off their lazy asses and actually innovate, after many years of wasting time perfecting the cars' cup holders.
It all boils down to battery cost, and from what I have seen (in presentation), the battery costs have a Moore’s law type type reduction. In the next few years, the EV cost will be below ICE.
Actually Nissan or GM actually are well equipped to build cars, their production pipeline is time tested, you must have heard that TESLA was finding it difficult to assemble a efficient assembly line to meet the demand. It still is way behind on its schedule for delivery and unable to meet the demand. If only GM or Nissan actually produce a compelling enough car i am sure they can beat TESLA on prices, simply because they have yrs on investment already paid off on their assembly lines. TESLA would take many many yrs to get paid on the new assembly line they are putting in place that too with the inflation of 2018.
If we can get a sedan (e.g. camry) that does 400-500 mpc, charges in ~5mins, does well in cold weather also, and costs ~15k for a slightly used model, gas will be dead for cars.
The only thing holding back EVs are/were batteries/charging times. Aside from that they're easier to maintain and perform better — on paper they're loads more practical.
And an electric car owner won't experience being low on charge and filling up in less than one minute, unless battery swapping schemes come to fruition. Dealbreaker to me being stuck charging for hours (or even overnight if I only have 110) if the batteries are low.
The feeling is called "range anxiety" and is a very common and well understood phenomenon with people who don't actually own an EV or have just had it for a short time. In reality it's almost a non-issue, especially if you have a car with a battery large enough.
In ~ 6 years, I've only had one incident that comes close (a road was closed and I didn't have the range for the detour, so I had to drive to a super charger).
The truth is that, yes, you have to plan slightly more perhaps, but I'll happily pay for all the other benefits (not least is never having to go to a sketchy gas station).
but long trips are so rare in most people's lives. perhaps we will start renting gas cars for long trips. similarly, most people own small-ish cars and rent a u-haul when they need to carry big objects.
For the majority of people, a car is a utility item; car buyers tend to price in the worst case scenario when buying a new vehicle. Statistical arguments don't really work in these cases, because even if an EV covers 90% of your use case, if the 10% is critical, the EV isn't an option.
As an example, a tradie who runs their own business might very well rack up enough hours driving that an EV just wouldn't work for them (not to mention the likelihood of carrying tools or towing trailers). Or what happens if you get home late and the street charger is taken?
EVs seem great on the surface, but are they necessarily practical for the average person? I mean, they could be an iPhone moment, but they could also be an Amazon delivery drone moment, too.
"because even if an EV covers 90% of your use case, if the 10% is critical, the EV isn't an option."
If we did the sensible thing and taxed energy until people chose the efficient option, I believe plug-in hybrids would take over.
Electric car enthusiasts are instinctively against the added complexity of a gas engine, but it's countered by the substantially reduced amount of battery capacity needed and the fact that now 100% of the use cases are covered.
I believe that a large carbon or energy tax combined with otherwise laissez faire policy would have the major benefit of getting people to do the efficient thing rather than the ideological or emotional thing.
I'm not sure if I've ever filled up in a minute, including paying.
All this stuff takes is a change of schedule if you cannot charge at home. Instead of eating breakfast and reading the paper at home in the mornings, you go out and do it at the charging station. You aren't generally stuck for hours at these places. Or you do it on your way home. Workplaces here are offering power to folks and many parking garages/city parking spaces do as well. This takes care of being out in the world.
I don't see how overnight is an issue if you are at home. You aren't using the car when you sleep.
Long distance travel? Don't they recommend you stop and stretch every few hours anyway? This is built in. Or you can take public transport.
Try 40mins, although honestly I've never needed more than 30 minutes in my 80,000 miles I've put on the car including one weekly trip that required charging on the go.
That's fascinating. Curious how the gas is stored. I remember for a while there was talk of fuel cells based on hydrogen, but safely storing the gas was problematic.
In the house you just run your natural gas line into a small compressor.. no storing it, just turn it on when you need it. It takes several hours to fill with this setup, but it's not a big inconvenience.
In the car the gas is just stored compressed/liquified in a tank. It takes up a lot of space, so you end up sacrificing some trunk space. Again, just another tradeoff.
I don’t want a GM. I don’t like the way they look anyway. The offerings from Honda or Toyota or often limited to certain states and I was unavailable in less I want to go through the giant hassle of purchasing it somewhere else and then getting it shipped here (so I don’t get stuck charging it on a very long journey over and over and over again).
I’m not aware of Ford having one. I know BMW does, I saw one the other day (not a big fan of the looks), but that’s way out of what I would want to spend anyway. Mercedes would be the same issue if they have one. The leaf has a small range if I remember correctly. The bolt is a hybrid, and isn’t the volt as well?
Honestly, I don’t know of any all electric cars made by non-luxury brands except for the Leaf, Clarity and all electric Prius.
Just having one decent all electric car available from each of the major brands in the majority of markets would be a big step forward in allowing the transition to happen. If you don’t want to pay luxury prices you have a very limited selection. And it’s worse if you don’t live in California or a handful of other places.
I did look at the data. I really wanted to buy a Nissan Leaf but it just didn't make sense with having to deal with battery replacement headaches. If I could afford buying a new car every 4-5 years like a different commenter in this thread it would be a different story.
How about c'mon and read your own article. Your "data" is an article centered around one specific EV that achieved 400K miles, which btw went through two battery pack replacements:
> A lot of people are probably interested to know how the battery pack held up, but unfortunately, it didn’t. It was replaced twice during the vehicle’s 400,000 miles.
Womp womp. Have fun with that when you're outside of Tesla's warranty.
The fleet-level data is interesting but not terribly relevant to compare the driving habits of an in-city luxury taxi service to the typical American, who will be making longer range trips. It's also skewed to be comparing the maintenance cost of luxury cars (Lincoln Town Car and Mercedes GLS) - the comparison should be a Nissan Leaf to a Honda Civic or an Accord.
It's already under $6K for a LEAF battery replacement. ICE drivers have to drop at least ~8K every 6 years for gasoline and engine maintenance and repair.
And "severely degraded" is -30% capacity, not really severe except in the older lowest-capacity batteries.
Except along with that -30% capacity drop, there is also increased internal resistance in the battery that is also going to affect range (lower miles/kWh). It's not just -30% capacity = -30% range. E.g. this Leaf owner who, after 5 years, had -37% capacity but -50% effective range: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-life-expectancy-of-a-Nissa...
I won't dispute the $8K/6 years for ICE vehicles (although I am curious if that's legit) but if you look at the savings rate of the average American I think you'll see ICEs' steady expense rate of gas fillups, oil change, etc. suit it better than EVs' lower day-to-day but eventual massive hit.
Wake me up when I can get an electric two-seater like this [1] or this [2] for under ten grand. No A/C, no windows, no nothing, just a cool buggy to run errands and cruise all day in sunny Florida.
He showed a picture of two very small cars, and you offered an electric quad with a body kit. It has a 61mi range, and a top speed (which it struggles to reach) of 50mph. He also mentioned Florida, where other people will be driving giant SUV’s that wouldn’t even notice if they ran that thing over. From a practical, safety, aesthetic, and functional perspective I don’t think that fits, especially when $10k can buy a lot of used car, including a Nissan Leaf.
I would have bought an electric car when I needed a new car, but there are not enough charging stations. I need to occasionally drive 400 mi, and it's just not feasible.
I predict any large shift in the EV market will be tempered by the growth of the electric grid as a whole.
The grid is already strained. It can barely handle new AC units in the summer. The large 500KV lines that connect cities to plants are near or over capacity already. Upgrading is a delicate balance of income vs cost. Upgrade or run them hotter.
They won't upgrade the backbone due to cost, now imagine the cost of trying to upgrade the substations and last mile connections. We seriously need better power distribution for EV to take over the market. Not everybody in the neighborhood can upgrade their meter to 300A+ without upgrading the network too.
Try to sell a 5 year old vehicle of let’s say 35k original price when it needs an $10k repair to get a new battery and dump the half tone of environmentally friendly junk.
More importantly, convince the truck drivers with 150k miles per year that they will have to dispose their truck ever 2-3 years (1000 charges).
Electric vehicles will take over when a battery breakthrough occurs, one that affects recharge time, weight and longevity.
They do buy them back, but the new one isn't peanuts [EDIT: I don't exactly know the current cost of a new battery]. Also: it's not a sudden cliff, but a gradual degradation and 10 years is very conservative.
BTW: I have read that there is a big demand for used Tesla batteries from a sizable DIY powerwall crowd.
I think once we get hot-swappable batteries then it'll really kick start the industry. The only problem is Li-Ion isn't recyclable or easily disposable.
Yes I really wonder why Tesla did not pitch this, specially for their truck offering. I think it would be technically feasible to replace the battery within 5’ if the drivetrain was designed from the ground up having this in mind. The “charging” facilities would be more expensive than the superchargers, but still...
Because they actually tried it and the demand was not there. They had a battery swap station in LA.
I posit that the people enthusiastic about battery swaps aren't EV owners [yet]. There are too many practical issues with battery swaps, and larger batteries and superchargers are simply better answers.
Battery swaps will never be a thing.
EDIT: Better Place(TM) were pushing this very concept and had a LARGE presence in pilot countries, including Denmark. They flopped.
Most importantly it transfers the liability for the battery health from the user to the manufacturer which would be a huge pro-ev argument for commercial purpose vehicles.
Renault and Nissan offer to rent the batteries while buying the car at a reduced price. The rental batteries will get changed at the cost for the manufacturer, if they are out of spec.
I see the same arguments being made about electric cars. "The batteries are no good in really cold climates", "They'll not a good replacement as I cannot drive 1000 km in one stetch", "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street".
There are so many obvious benefits of electric cars, as soon as they are close to cost competitive, I bet the transition for new car sales will happen much quicker than many people realize and the infrastructure will quickly follow once the market has spoken.