The Electric Car may be entering its “cell phone” period
ideas.4brad.com
ideas.4brad.com
1. The battery is where most development happens and where it's most needed. So you don't have to worry about your car getting too old too fast. Just get fresh battery.
2. Range: just swap the battery if you run out of juice. They could be rented like gas bottles are at service station.
3. Battery charge lifespan.
4. Potentially emerging fuel cells. They are just a way to burn something into electricity. Why do you care what kind of black box feeds you car some current?
How could this be done? Build robots at service stations that lift a battery pack into the bottom of the car. Good place could be where the spare wheel currently goes. Bottom of the trunk. You could steal mechanical locking from intermodal containers, just scale it down. And electric connectors could be upscale speakon connectors stolen from pro audio.
That sounded like a winner to me.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/10707858/gogoro-gocharger-o...
PG agrees that standards and platforms are not good ground for startups. But I could not find that essay now.
[0] https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/battery-swap-pilot-program
If Teslas had leased batteries it would be easier, but they do not.
Tesla has determined that Supercharging is adequate for Tesla owners, and continued uptake of the product seems to confirm that hypothesis.
It'd create a bunch more problems, just like all cellphones aren't going to use the same battery. Each car is designed around the battery since it's such a large piece of the car.
This is not exactly true. Battery is heavy piece, so it has to be low for low center of gravity. The bottom mount is going to happen anyhow. Tesla and Leaf both have their battery in the bottom.
The only real problem would be that you can't use the battery as structural element if it's easily detached. But the bottom center point is not exactly critical for structural integrity, so the result would be slightly increased weight.
Isn't the situation more like, current battery technology (lithium) has only seen small incremental improvements for a while and apart from cost reductions there isn't anything major on short-medium timescale coming up.
You can still put in a new battery around the 10-15 year mark of course even with current cars, with hopefully a fraction of today's cost.
2) Electric car perks are everywhere and rarely mentioned. Free charging, way better parking, fielding questions from curious onlookers, more cargo space, no noise, no warmup, no oil changes, etc.)
3) In the winter months in areas of the world with real seasons (read: not San Francisco area), cabin heating will detract significantly from your range on a long 20 degree F drive. Talking 25% less maximum range or so. You can mitigate it somewhat by using seat heat instead but I've found that passengers REALLY do not want to go that route (or worse, they want BOTH lol).
2/3) and severe range drop in winter, driving with minimal heat because of the range loss, and more. Unless you are driving a Tesla which has that huge range buffer its not fun if you already are near you car's max range and cold weather sets in.
Give it five years and we might be in a cell phone phone like era, but it isn't decided still that all battery is how it will pan out. Batteries still suffer a horrible weight to KwH ratio that works against auto manufacturers trying to trim weight to increase range. Finally thirty minutes to recharge is fine if your home or going to be parked, otherwise its still a major issue.
GM says it isn't a compliance car: http://www.hybridcars.com/not-a-compliance-car-gm-says-2017-....
Which to me makes sense: It's obvious that the world is going to move to electric cars. The question is only one of timing.
No surprise LEAF sales just crashed below Tesla's.
If those batteries were released commercially within the next 5 years, it would be a game-changer
Id think the insulation on electric cars could also be drastically improved. No one ever put much thought into insulating a car since there's free heat from the engine.
However, the Tesla Model S has apparently so far had lower depreciation than any other car in the UK[0], according to CAP Black Book ("the industry benchmark for used car values"[1]). Presumably this is in large part due to its relative scarcity (still a 2 month lead time for a new one, so an instantly-available second hand one becomes more attractive). Quite how long that situation holds remains to be seen.
[0] http://evobsession.com/cap-black-book-teslas-retain-value-be...
[1] http://www.cap.co.uk/en/products-and-services/black-book/
EDIT: The 20% depreciation was a rough estimate based on the Resale Value Guarantee if you buy on finance. Using figures of £64,600 cash price, £72,477 if bought on finance, and £37,584 Guaranteed Minimum Future Value after 3 years, then the actual "worst case" depreciation would be around 18% per year over 3 years.
I was going to buy it, but the technology is changing so quickly, it seems almost pointless. On the other hand, what is the minimum a low mileage four year old electric car would be worth, even if its range is not up to industry standards? It's hard to imagine it would be worth less than $6k. If it is, the electric car depreciation will drive other used car values down.
Nissan is offering lease extensions, typically the stupidest possible way to pay for driving a car, but in this case, I think it's probably a good idea. The internal pressure to innovate against GM and Tesla means they are going to be aggressively obsoleting these older cars.
But isn't that fine because you got the $7500 anyway?
So if you buy a leaf that starts at $30,000, get rebates to $20,000, you must remember that since anyone can get it new for $20,000 that's the actual "new" value to take before you apply depreciation.
In other words you're not really buying a $30k car for $20k, you're buying a $20k car.
But only if the reason why the rebate is ending is a breakthrough in technology that will cut the price of a new one by more than the rebate in 2-3 -- which is in a sense what happened with solar subsidies in a lot of places.
They could recoup the money from cheaper cars from the faster purchase cycle.
Or else move to a leasing model (this is becoming more popular with people I know in the UK, Ireland).
I think people buying new cars every 3 or 4 years is already the status quo, regardless of cost. That's the average lease/finance period (though financing duration is increasing).
Not where I come from. Most of the folks I know are sitting on 8+ year old cars.
Leasing is useless in the US at this point because you are on the hook for the full price of the car if you get in an accident and total it.
However, this doesn't seem that green. You might not be pushing clouds of particulates into the air around your home, but there is still the power consumed in manufacturing a new car for you every 2 years.
Perhaps, the Riversimple model would also work for electric cars. They sell you mobility as a service - and the motivation to keep you moving efficiently remains with them. In theory this should force them to keep the vehicle upgradable. http://riversimple.com/how-the-business-works/
The comparison with phones is interesting. We are starting to get phones with batteries that can't be changed. Do we now just plan to throw them away every 2 years, or are we actually losing interest and need to be forced to upgrade?
Electric is starting to take off because it's finally moving past that "save a little money by not buying gas" phase, and towards "this is a great car, spend some extra money on it."
I do think the author is overestimating the importance of peripheral functions of cars.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/01/Child-labour-...
- Building out these charging stations. That's a huge capital outlay for anyone.
- Standardizing batteries, tough when they're in a rapid development phase both in chemistry and form factor.
And you'd need something bigger than a gas station and way bigger than a charging station. And they would need to be everywhere to have value. Nobody wants to drive miles out of their way to swap.
If you're using cars just in the city then charging is no issue but for long distance travel it is one. Only way is to own at least two cars but this can't be the solution.
Yeah, I'm also curious how this pans out. Generally, people traveling long distances on the Tesla SC network route say, "No big deal, I stop for 20 minutes to stretch, charge, and away I go."
But what does that scenario look like when there are millions of EVs on the road? Imagine it took 20 minutes to fill up with fuel? The lines would be horrendous. Travel during prime vacation time and they already are on some routes.
States could let companies lease spots at rest stops.
None of that means that there isn't a market for pure EVs. But each limitation makes it less suitable as a truly mass-market vehicle and makes it more likely IMO that various types of hybrid designs will be more popular in the mainstream.
The average commute time in 2011 was 25.5 minutes in USA and 24.5 in Canada. In Canada 17.2% of commuters drove more than 45 minutes to get to work. Source: https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-012-x/99-0...
At least for 82.8% of people the commute as well as grocery stop can be handled with a single charge. For many their whole day of driving can be done with a single charge!
Now consider that for the people for who the daily errands are within the sweet spot they never have to waste time to stop anywhere to charge! Their charging station is at home.
Making the one you use for your daily commute an EV and the other one a gasoline engine is still a huge improvement in air quality.
The awesome thing about the Tesla is all the over the air updates. Other car makers want you to buy the new model to get the new features.
I worked in the car biz for a long time.
This is shocking to me. Are you in the US? I'm pretty sure it's more like 10 years here in the UK.
I'm about to chop my current car in after 2.
The average car on the road is over 11 years old in the US and average length of ownership for new cars is over 6 years. [1]
[1] http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/29/Here-s-Why-American...
This is an absurd statement.