How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
rameznaam.com
rameznaam.com
When you factor purchase price into the equation gas vehicles win by a long ways since you need X years of EV economy cars on the market before you can get an X year old used EV. EV's will need to fill the same market segment as today's Chevy Aveos and Toyota Yarii (plural of Yaris?) for a decade or more before they're competitive in price at the bottom chunk of the used car market. E.g. if a 2030 Civic EV is price competitive with a 2030 Civic gasoline then it'll be 2045 or later before they're both competing for the "cheapest cost per mile." Theoretically, the EV wins that hands down because when purchase price is so small the operating cost dominates the cost per mile (less maintenance, cheaper gas). The problem with that is that with current tech you won't be able to find a 15yo EV without trashed batteries, so the hypothetical $2k 2030 gas civic vs $2k 2030 EV civic comparison goes out the window because the EV needs batteries replaced or will need them replaced soon and you can't exactly buy used batteries at the junkyard (they wear out) so you'll need to shell out big bucks for that new replacement battery, and I'd bet that whatever a new battery costs in 2045 will still buy a heck of a lot of gas and maintenince...
"But storage tech will improve and batteries will be able to withstand a bajillion cycles without replacement" Sure, but why would the OEMs put a big battery that's good to 1,000,000mi in a car when they can get away with one that's good to half that, reduce cost, weight, etc
TD;DR, EVs will be cheaper soon the same way cars will all be driving themselves next year.
No, it isn't going to be overnight, but like most transitions, it's going to happen far more quickly than you think. In 1905 people thought that most people would still be using horses in a century, that cars were just too expensive and niche, that horses were good enough. Horses were obsolete within 15 years of private automobiles being a thing - by 1920 more freight was hauled and more passenger-miles were travelled by internal combustion than horse, in the US.
EVs have been around for seven years, in a "real" form, give or take, their adoption rate is similar to that of the original gasoline automobiles when compared to horses.
I give it seven more years before they're dominant.
I'm also putting my money where my mouth is, and I've been buying up nice dirt cheap houses on busy, noisy, polluted roads. They'll be nice, not so cheap houses on less busy, quiet, clean roads in fifteen years.
Do you really believe that in a short period of time gasoline is going to cost a few orders of magnitude more... that's 1,000x the current cost?
Post-fracking that's unlikely to happen. Prices may return to previous levels, but they won't move much more than that. Alternative energy will reduce demand for oil and therefor depress the price of oil, not the other way around.
As to fracking - the wheels have already fallen off, low oil prices forced a production hiatus, stop/start is inefficient and costly, and you need only look at the headlong rush in the UK that kinda petered out to get an idea of where fracking is going - nowhere.
The fossil sector is in big, big trouble - this chaotic oscillator will not stop until the market decouples from energy. The only question is whether they'll be allowed to collapse, or if we'll see state bailouts that keep them limping along.
As to reduced demand - that's also part of the problem. Oil prices are not purely demand driven, they have costs to meet, shareholders to appease, and massive capital investment needs that will not be met with a suppressed price, which will feed the death spiral they've been in for some five years now.
That's "order" of magnitude, not "orders."
In base 2, 2x = 1 order of magnitude 8x = 3 orders of magnitude. Worse both informal definitions are in common usage.
If the price goes up that much, fracking is viable and will happen. The only way fracking is out of the equation if when low prices keep it from being profitable. Fracking presently functions as a cap on the price.
If prices vary wildly, then there are strategies to deal with that, and the variation needs to be explained. How does it come down so rapidly? Assuming healthy economics, probably because of fracking.
It doesn't make sense to say that market prices aren't demand driven just because other costs and factors exist. If suppliers will lose money at a given low price because of costs, eventually supply decreases and prices rise, etc.
Re the demand driven bit - I explained that poorly. Oil is a very "special" commodity, in that it has spectacular investment costs, incredible levels of state funding (and debt), and a price determined by anticipated demand more than anything else I'm aware of - you need only look at the volume curve across futures to see this - and the fact that we are still in a contango market. This adds up to the price of oil being driven by overall economic growth forecasts, which are theoretically demand, but aren't. This results in expenditure (exploration and exploitation), which has a several year time lag. Fracking has been oh-jesus expensive and may never turn a profit. Investors (states) are getting shy.
I'm still explaining this poorly - I'd need to write an essay to convey what I'm trying to get at - there are a few dynamics at play and I will be amazed if we don't start seeing even more instability.
Confidence in the market is very, very low. Talk to traders, not what the press says. Of course the press says it's rosy - nobody wants a premature sell-off, even if there could be some tasty dead cats in it for the vultures. We still need oil for energy for the time being.
I used to deal with a guy in the oil business. Reselling valves pumps and misc plumbing. Nothing in that business is cheap. Just remembered, Shell? did a drilling project few years ago in northern Canada. Spent $2 billion to drill deep wells into what looked like a large reservoir of oil and it was dry. And that wasn't $2 billion in paper funny money, that was $2 billion spent on stuff.
Or not:
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/29/there_will_be_pandemonium_pa...
I also expect that a lot of pumps will be closed in cities because of pollution, smells and other factors.
Once autonomous vehicles become prevalent, traffic volume should drop, as we'll see less car ownership and more car use, meaning fewer cars parking, better traffic flow, etc. I believe the future of road transport is going to be something very like uber, just with no human drivers, and cars that only ever stop to recharge and to let passengers in and out.
The latter part of the equation (autonomy and associated behavioural changes) will take longer than the transition to EVs, and will happen, barring legislation fighting it.
As to the eyesore bit - I should clarify - I've been buying property on polluted, busy, pretty roads. Think A-roads in town centres, with houses on one side and a park on the other.
That's simply not true; not only will SDCs create 'empty miles' of 0-passenger cars, but they will make people more comfortable with longer commutes (you can sleep on the way to work now), and with average commute getting longer we'll get more passenger-miles.
Sharing won't really pick up (except on the low end, displacing public transport) because SDCs are pretty cheap as is, and people generally prefer their personal space unmolested by others.
Re: the personal space bit... Not so sure. Many of the "younger" generation spurn car ownership so have no sunk costs, no personal space to lose. For the rest, it's going to be a question of marginal utility - and the fact that many car owners will get a train preferably where possible suggests that there is a case for non-ownership.
I mean, ten years ago your man on the street would have found it inconceivable that they would own no movies, no albums, that they'd just rent them - yet here we are.
Behaviour changes quickly when it starts, but slowly enough that you don't notice the change until after the event.
The other point is that American society is pretty well-segregated, and personal cars and suburbs ensure there's minimal contact between the classes. Unless your shared car service has tiers that allow that segregation to continue, a significant amount of people won't use it. Physical security is a part of the equation - you're probably not getting sexually assaulted or burgled in a personal SDC.
On renting vs owning: again, it doesn't matter - if the cars are not shared, this doesn't really affect the traffic volume (driving between drop-off and the next pick-up are empty miles, but that's hopefully insignificant).
No, the main reason is government policy, most obviously in town planning. There's simply no place to park, and enough traffic that the journey is neither fast nor relaxing. The result is that people who could easily afford to (e.g. my friends working at Google or Facebook, or in finance) don't own cars, and use public transport to get to and from work.
Walk round the suburbs of European cities on a weekday, and you'll see lots of parked cars, in rich and poor areas. People own them, but don't find them the best way to get to work. They use them at the weekend.
As to your point about sharing, at some point if you want to be in the car by yourself it will cost extra. Again, economics...
Where are those houses so cheap that it becomes profitable to bet on the emergence of autonomous EV's only? Cheap houses are cheap in most places because they're in undesirable locations. I can imagine houses in commuting distance of major job centers becoming more attractive with autonomous vehicles (I mean, the commuting distance will become larger, i.e. the 'ring' expanding) but that expansion won't be hundreds of miles. And houses within this distance aren't that much cheaper that it becomes feasible to buy in bulk and hoard (well maybe you're spending hundreds of millions, I don't know).
No, hardly a squillionaire, just mortgaged up to my eyeballs and have three so far, eyeing up number four. Live in one of them. They're my hedge against the apocalypse not happening.
> Horses were obsolete within 15 years of private automobiles being a thing - by 1920 more freight was hauled and more passenger-miles were travelled by internal combustion than horse, in the US.
I'm not quite sure the analogy fits exactly. This is because the production (breeding?) of horses wasn't the most profitable industry man has every created. Remember still some of the most profitable companies in the world are fossil fuel companies. Exxon is still #2 and Chevron is #5. Also, unlike a company like Apple, they have been this way for decades. Brutal dictators are propped from oil. Entire countries rely on oil for their very existence. Due the the shear amount of money involved I do not see fossil fuels going quietly into the night based on market forces alone. As long as they are cheaper and more convenient for humanity we will use them. What we really need, in my opinion, is to #1 end the ridiculous subsidies that fossil fuel companies get and #2 enact a carbon tax where we give the proceeds of this tax to fund renewable energy research and to help out the millions of workers who will loss their jobs from the transition off of fossil fuels.
Here's another way of looking at it. In the 90s we had the big tobacco thing. 7 of these executives lied under oath that tobacco wasn't addictive. After countless hearings, lawsuits with rewards of the billions of $$$, high use taxes around the world, some of these companies are still around. People still use their products. They are expanding into emerging countries, vaping and maybe even weed. They are using trade protections to expand into those emerging markets.
Now take an industry, make it more profitable and give it millions of federal tax breaks and subsidies. Oh and instead of an economy of say Virginia or North Carolina based off of it have economies like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Nigeria owe their development from it.
I'm not saying we can't migrate off of fossil fuels. It needs to happen, and happen very quickly. However, its important to understand the shear size of the problem at hand.
In short, I think uncertainty and credit risk will cause the oil market to collapse rather sooner than most anticipate. Read up on the current contango oil market - it's unnerving stuff.
I could see gas jumping to $20/gal pretty quickly if things go wrong in the right way.
If anything the move towards electric car adoption will make gasoline less expensive. Oil isn't running out anytime soon. We already have the distribution and refinement infrastructure. Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries will want to sell the oil they have before the market disappears.
Maybe in 100 years when gas cars go extinct, gasoline would be expensive. But for the time being, it's not going to massively jump in price.
You were saying?
Sorry, that isn't likely. We have basically "infinite" (50+ years worth) of Oil @ $100 [1] [2] [3] a barrel which is why all those shale wells came online when oil was priced higher. We've already been ~$100 for years at a time. Similarly, the shift to greener technologies is going to put downward pressure on it once it is back to the ~$100 baseline from years past.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/texas-toug...
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/02/29/the-break-eve...
[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/20/us-crude-oils-break-even-cost...
One of the things I like about my current car is that it can't be remotely bricked by the manufacturer, it doesn't have any built-in location tracking hardware, there's no way to wirelessly access any of the critical electronic components, and no need to apply security patches.
It's hard to think of modern cars as anything other than a rolling malware vector. Some of these cars will be on the road for thirty or forty years. What happens when the manufacturer stops patching their bugs after three or ten or twenty years?
Costs almost nothing
Bit rubbish though
A used Nissan Leaf can had TODAY for around $10K in the USA. You can have a used Mistu imiev for as little as $7K. Yes there are limitations of range - but if some one is looking for a standard commuter, these fit the bill.
My household has a 190K mile, 2005 Honda CR-V and a 6K mile 2015 LEAF. That Honda is likely to be viable beyond when the LEAF is viable. (Assuming no accidents, rust will eventually get the Honda and battery capacity will get the LEAF.)
Prompted by this article I finally investigated and found them at http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-eec-l7e-80-elect... They're quoted with a maximum price of $8000.
They're definitely made for driving inside a city. Not very good suspensions (don't drive too fast on cobble stones) but good torque (easily beats a gas car out of a green light). 120 km of autonomy, which is good enough in the typical European city center, apparently 80 km/h max speed, which again is more than enough there. Very easy to park.
More important matters:
Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny...
How long to recharge?
Operating costs? I'm paying 19 Eurocents per minute, all included.
Do they compete with gas cars? The other two car sharing companies in Milan have gas cars and cost 25 and 29 cents per minute. I prefer the electric one: it's a shakier ride but cheaper and more fun because of the torque.
Isn't the real test how likely you are to be injured/killed per mile driven? Larger vehicles like SUVs might be safer if you are in an accident but that could be offset if they are more likely to actually be in an accident.
NB I have no idea what the answer is and I've driven everything from large(ish) SUVs to the old style minis.
Only some of these effects, e.g. less deaths from air pollution, apply to EVs though.
If your family is T-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver who ran a red light, are you going to say, "Well, at least the odds of that happening were very small, since she rarely drives!"
No, you're going to be dealing with serious injuries or possibly deaths and you're going to be saying, "I wish they'd been in a larger vehicle that was more survivable."
Also, the probability I'm interested in is not the survivability in an accident, it is the total survivability over my lifetime, discounted by some percentage for cost etcetera. In your argumentation, everybody should drive around in tanks on the off chance that somebody else might get drunk. In reality, nobody does that and tradeoffs are made. Have you ever tried driving in an old European city in an average (American) SUV? You literally would not fit in most parking spaces, let alone fit in some of the smaller streets.
It was quite a fun experience, but in the future I'll rent a smaller vehicle.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates
Compare the death rates of small, tiny, and midsize sedans (2011 data is the latest).
Then look at large SUVs. Huge difference. "All vehicles" = 28. Most of the large SUVs are single digits, most of the smaller cars are well above 28.
Curiously, Ford Expedition 2WD is above average and is an exception. I would love to understand why because it's a huge vehicle. The Ford Expedition 4WD is way at the other end, 5 deaths. Perhaps it has something to do with how people drive, or some flaw in how it handles.
Most trucks are pretty safe, but the Ford F-150 4WD has above average death rates, and is the most popular single model of pickup truck. I wonder if this is because lots of people buy this truck who don't really know how to drive a truck.
Anyway, some interesting data to explore there. Although as I pointed out, there are some outliers, in general the data lines up with the contention that larger vehicles are safer.
No, it's probably because it's a truck with a body-on-frame chassis instead of a unibody chassis like any modern vehicle, and was designed for towing and load-hauling rather than crash protection. If you want crash protection, you need to buy a vehicle with a modern chassis that was expressly designed for it. Same goes for the Expedition. And yes, handling could be a factor too: these vehicles have horrible handling and can't avoid accidents the way a good-handling vehicle can, and will frequently roll over.
And just try doing a panic turn (to avoid something) in a tall SUV and see what happens.
You can't just ignore the laws of physics. Center-of-gravity is an important thing.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/02/rollover-101/inde...
Or you'll be the one running over a child (possibly your own) and you'll be wishing that your car was smaller or had better visibility as you reversed.
Making up unpleasant stories is fine, but at some point actual numbers and statistics are required, and everyone getting larger and larger cars in some kind of arms race seems to have obvious downsides.
Could anyone imagine a a smart camera, with a display. The camera/computer would assist the driver in seeing better at night. Would calculate the odds of a police cruiser behind you. Would warn of potential danger, like an animal on the side of the road. Would warn you if you are being followed. Would be so well designed, you still used your rear view, but kicked in at the needed times? Would map out likely spots police hide? Could even be tied into physiological body sensors? "Today is not a good day to drive? Watch out for ice. Watch you temper?"
The camera/sensors would have to be easily installed, like a stereo?
I would buy one if programmed right, and the cost was justifiable.
Then again there's someting beautiful about a simple chrome rear view mirror. A driver knowing they need to drive with all senses fully engaged, with no assistance other than experience, and good coordination.
I was driving a Toyota Camry. If I'd been driving a large truck, I probably couldn't have avoided the crash.
When I buy a car, I want to know both how likely it is that I can avoid a crash (manueverability, stopping distance, ABS, etc) and how likely it is that I can survive one if it happens. Both are relevant.
Consumer Reports' 2016 Automotive Edition had a lot of discussion about car safety. Most of it was centered on technology that helps to prevent accidents or make them less severe. Eg, if your car detects that you're about to hit something (Forward Collision Warning) and has Automatic Emergency Braking, you might not hit it, or hit it at 30mph instead of 60mph.
That could save your life. To say that the weight of your car is a safety factor but stopping distance isn't is just silly.
I'd sooner be in the light car with a chassis that doesn't get crushed into the cabin than a heavy car which does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck I know which one Id like to be in..
Size is not the same things a weight. Crumple zones are what size buys you in modern vehicle design, and you don't have to have a heavy car to have nice big cushy crumple zones.
This discussion started about size, not weight.
Maybe you have extraordinary reflexes and could have accelerated out of the way, or slammed on the brakes, but the average driver? I think not. I'd like to have some serious steel and crumple zone between me and that motorist under those circumstances, and the tiny little electric buggy is probably not going to have the same amount of protection as a large SUV.
A small car can be designed to prevent intrusion into the passenger compartment, but it can't do anything about the g-forces of the collision (which can seriously ruin your day...).
Not the only thing. Recall your high school physics. Crank through the basic motion equations for inelastic equations. The more massive object experiences less change in momentum. All things being equal, passengers of the more massive vehicle are going to experience lower g-forces.
Also, a little talked about statistic is that most vehicle fatalities occur in single car accidents. Turns out, even a big ol' SUV is more forgiving than a telephone pole.
Well done, Superman, you just broke your girlfriend into three pieces with your arms.
Superman is supposed to be able to do that; that's one of the benefits of being beyond human is (for him). A literal reality distortion field is actually the best explanation for all of the exceptions to physics that happen around him; Lois passing in to that bubble while being saved is just one more thing on the list.
They put in a tridion protection cell[0] and moved the engine to the back to offer SOME crumple at the front. The Euro NCAP rated it 4/5, IIHS rated it "good" but it later failed the partial frontal collision test ("poor").
A Smart Car likely would do alright in most collisions. Although it somewhat benefits from the large crumple zones of every other vehicle has on the road. If two Smart Cars collided head on, the results might be worse than if a Smart Car collided with any other vehicle type.
That all being said, just because Smart managed it, doesn't mean every small car is equally safe. Without the tridion cell and SOME crumple zone, it would be a much less safe vehicle.
I drive a relatively small car for the US, and it's about the minimum I would consider safe at 70MPH. But, if you are spending 98% of your time in the city then simply renting a larger car becomes very viable. You can rent a mid size SUV at ~600$ per week and for a longer vacation you can upsize for minimal cost. Further, if your flying somewhere your car becomes meaningless anyway.
PS: Remember a tiny electric could end up saving you 250+$ / month.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...
In Rural areas the opposite is true. High speed car vs car and car vs tree accidents are most common.
Though bigger doesn't equal safer. I remember someone else pointing out that large vehicles don't increase safety overall, they decrease it. If you consider two large trucks hitting each other is typically worse than two smaller passenger vehicles doing the same. It's only large truck vs small car that is slightly safer. Less than one might think because large vehicles tend to roll over more often.
In its class (which only had 3 cars), the Mini was safer than the Smart but the Hyundai Accent was much much worse.
But there were lots of bigger cars that were at the same rating or worse:
* Buick Lacrosse 2WD
* Cadillac DTS
* Cadillac Escalade 4WD
* Chevrolet Camaro
* Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Ext 4WD
* Chevrolet Silverado 1500 Crew 4WD
* Chevrolet Suburban 1500 2WD
* Ford Expedition 2WD
* Ford F-150 Super 4WD 39
* Mercury Grand Marquis
* Toyota Avalon
* Toyota Tundra Crew Max 2WD
[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/Driver_DeathRates_sr5001_e...
The driver sadly died while the passenger went unscathed.
The next day, my Dad sold my sister's tiny, low-riding Saturn and got her a higher-riding CRV. I don't blame him, and now riding in low-sitting cars frightens me a tiny bit on the highways.
BTW, just a reminder that pickup trucks are body-on-frame structure which is design for more towing capacity. Unibody structure on most modern cars and SUV's are safer in general. If you check this list http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List you'll see pickup is worse than even compact cars in crash test.
http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
It seems like if you are in an accident, an SUV as a class is indeed safer (but not necessarily the largest SUV interestingly enough). But the other thing that this data doesn't seem to say is if one class of vehicle has a higher accident rate than another. Without that it's difficult to say for sure if one is safer driving around one type of vehicle or another.
IIRC The smart car beats the Hummer in crash test ratings....
Depends on the engineering I suppose. The Smartcar which is just as tiny has a very high score in test crashes. Of course its twice the price of the car you quote and owned by Mercedes and gets all of Mercedes safety know-how. Until that Chinese car gets proper accident testing, I guess we won't know, but I think its safe to assume China's cheaper/faster/copy culture doesn't lead to safer products.
EVs are simpler devices than gasoline-powered vehicles. They have a smaller number of parts, making them easier to assemble. At similar scale to gas vehicles, electric vehicles should indeed be lower cost to built.
In addition, EVs have many fewer moving parts (in the engine and drivetrain in particular) than internal combustion vehicles. That further means lower construction cost for the most complex and costly part of a vehicle, and far lower maintenance cost.
While it is true, the engine and drive train has fewer parts, when I reduce it to motor and battery. But in fact every EV has a gear, including the Tesla. Yes, this gear is much simpler, but it is there and even runs with oil that has to be replaced every 100.000 miles like in every other car. The battery is as complex as an engine itself. Because you need to measure lots of sensors values and to control that it will not explode and not wear down to fast. Every battery, including the one in the Tesla, has a dedicated heating and cooling system just for the battery within the battery.
Then also lots of parts in car are the very same like brakes, steering, air condition, windows, and so. Remember that a current car is about 30% software and will be more in future. But there is only 1 engine control unit. The most of the parts are other things to control safety or personal comfort.
Electric vehicles, today, have lower total costs per mile than equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles, due to lower energy costs of electricity and the lower maintenance costs.
That neglects the fact, that most of the maintenance costs are not engine related. Like the brakes have to be regularly checked. It neglects the fact, that a battery will wear out sometimes between 3 to 6 years and has to be replaced, which is a huge cost related issue. The guarantee Tesla has, does not help, because you will pay for that guarantee otherwise.
Based on 84 data points from the 85-kWh version of the Model S and six from 60-kWh cars, the study concludes that the Model S will retain about 94 percent of its capacity after 50,000 miles, with losses thereafter shrinking to about 1 percent per 30,000 miles.
That means that after 100,000 miles, the typical Model S is projected to retain about 92 percent of its battery capacity and range.
So what "fact" you are relying on stating the battery will have to be replaced between 3 and 6 years is probably not very factual. Other, simpler EVs, lacking the rather sophisticated battery management system of the Model S might degrade quicker - especially in warmer climates, but nowhere near as fast as you state.
Other than that, you're right in that most EVs are almost as complex as a modern ICE. They need to be checked regularly and will need repairs.
You should probably link to the study.
>3 and 6 years is probably not very factual.
3 years might be early, but I have a hard time believing that Tesla has hit on some magic as far as batteries are concerned. The drain on anything I have at home is far more than what you state; my phone battery certainly isn't much good after 6 years.. But I have no idea. I guess we'll see as the current Teslas age.
https://steinbuch.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/tesla-model-s-bat... [A blogpost about the study]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/t024bMoRiDPIDialGnuKP... [The study/survey]
http://www.daglievemensen.nl/tesla/maxrange.htm [Interactive graph]
And as bonus a link to the Tesla Roadster battery study: http://www.groen7.nl/images/wp2013/divers/PIA-Roadster-Batte...
What kills lithium batteries is time, cycle count, heat, and extreme states of charge. A Tesla battery has a massive advantage on three out of those four compared to consumer electronics, which is why comparing to your phone or laptop isn't very informative.
Also, batteries lose capacity with time as well as use.
It probably doesn't. Already today operators of taxi and bus fleets are doing the sums on full electric vehicles and deciding to spend more up front to save over the long term. Generally lower fuel and maintenance costs are cited as why they can afford to spend more on the vehicle. Possibly these multi-million dollar deals are signed without sufficient due-diligince by people who run vehicle fleets as a full-time job, but it seem more likely they know what they're doing.
My Volt has 54K miles yet my brake pads look practically new.
Also, my Volt has only had its oil replaced once (because of how often the engine runs.) When I get my Tesla 3, I'll obviously never change my oil.
Or your transmission fluid, or your spark plugs, or your muffler / exhaust pipe, or your catalytic converters, or your oxygen sensors, or about 100 other parts unique to ICE engines.. Many of which I've recently repaired on my 160k-mile car.
https://www.teslamotors.com/support/service-plans
You will change your battery oil.
In fact, this article is so preconcieved reading it's last sentence felt like: 'scrolling, scrolling to continue reading after the ads... aaaand... where is the reasoning-part and the criterion-part of this piece?'
Considering the article's lack of substance and the subsequent unquestioning cheering here on HN, this article delivers less enlightenment on the future of EV than it is a statement about the bias on HN towards EV. And probably about the bias in the valley as well.
It seems like the battery management of Tesla is pretty good. I'd imagine 10-year to 15-year replacement of battery packs... which is still far more expensive and costly than a transmission rework (ie: a 150k to 200k Camry).
... and I read once that Elon Musk talked about it, though I can't find a link.
- Nearly all cars will be electric.
- Nearly all cars will be self driving.
- Nearly all cars will be Uber, or something like it.
- Exceptions to the above will be owned by the same sort of people who currently own Ford model Ts. They will be lovingly maintained, proudly exhibited, and illegal to drive on the public highway.
Model T's are not illegal to drive today... And you've got a lot more public sentiment to overcome and a LOT more cars to replace than you think if you believe all of this will happen in the next 50 years.
I expect that taxis and trucks will be mandated self-driving before cars will, because the safety upside will be obvious and huge, and the government is used to meddling in those industries. Seeing the results of that, there will be a sustained public pressure to mandate it for cars, with each accident splashed on the news and reporters saying "if only". As above, they'll first become rare and then banned.
Highly unlikely in the US. States will gladly take your money in the form of registration and consumption taxes associated with driving old cars. They've already paid for all the infrastructure, so they might as well maximize their returns.
Though, some European nations might. Not the UK or Germany, but Denmark/Belgium could.
I'm not entirely convinced this will happen. Certainly owning a car will be a luxury, but it will be an affordable one (since we can clearly already afford it). I think there are enough advantages to car ownership, like instant availability, and personalised space, that mean many people will still choose to own a car instead of taking taxis.
http://martin.drashkov.com/2015/09/how-cheap-can-autonomous-...
Paying 15-20 cents per kilometre to ride in an autonomous taxi seems achievable. This means that public transit could become slightly cheaper and self-sustaining. At this rate, it also means people will likely be travelling a lot more, so maybe the price will go up again because of congestion charges.
The Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, originally cost about $1500. But Tata discovered that the versions with more features sold better. It also flunked even basic crash tests.
BMW did show the direction the market will go to overcome that weight, composites for the rest of the car. Aluminum was good when it came about but composites are the only future.
I do think the 100 mile range city car is a good opportunity to exploit provided they get it to city car sizes (read: Smart) and make it cheap that its such a viable alternative you cannot say no. In the US this would be 10k to 12k new pricing but specifically they would always be leased which would further increase affordability. The key to acceptance is getting people to accept a smaller package single purpose vehicle
A house in the suburbs with a garage that I could do electrical work on would account for the vast majority of the cost if I wanted an EV.
Obviously this won't happen everywhere, so some cities will be much better places to have an EV than others.
Don't forget that as EVs become more popular, landlords who are EV-friendly will do better than those who aren't.
With more cities rolling out ebike stations things are looking good.
> Bereisa based his analysis on the base Model 3 being offered with a 60 kWh battery, like the Bolt, and on Tesla achieving a cost of ~$190/kWh. He estimates that Tesla’s current battery pack cost (cells, casing, cooling and entire pack) is at $260/kWh, while GM’s is at $215/kWh. GM’s cells and battery pack are manufactured by its partner LG Chem.
On Elektrek.co
Let's say you need a 50 kWh battery to have a usable range, and it costs $ 190/kWh, then the battery will cost $ 9,500 dollar.
And that is within the next 2 years. So.. it's going down extremely fast.
Batteries are the single most expensive parts of electric cars for now.
It was recently revealed that Tesla's Model 3 batteries will cost Tesla around $11,400 ($190/kwh * 60kwh) to make. This is likely much cheaper than current, as they expect the Gigafactory to bring their unit costs down.
I agree that this is most likely the single most expensive part of the car, and more expensive than many combustion engines.
http://electrek.co/2016/04/26/tesla-model-3-battery-pack-cos...
100.
If you ask me, it has reached the point of diminishing returns too (with respect to gains achieved vs added complexity).
Take direct injection for example. It provides marginal gains in efficiency, but with that comes a ton of added complexity and side effects.
Now you have to get your intake vales cleaned every 60k because there's no fuel spraying on them like with a normal port injection system.
Now you have a high pressure fuel pump that is a common failure point on many cars. In fact, I'm surprised they even last as long as they do considering the pressures they run at (I think like 3000 psi under heavy load). Just look at the BMW N54 as an example...
Also, the injectors are much more money to replace because of the pressures that they have to deal with (and they are known to go bad more frequently than port injectors).
There are a bunch of other complicated things manufacturers are doing as well. BMW Valvetronic essentially uses the lift of the intake cam as a way of throttling the engine. I'm not sure on the reasoning, but it's probably an efficiency thing. However, this is also another failure point.
Electric cars are much simpler mechanically. Sure, they may have more software and electronic complexity, but in reality, those types of failures are easier to deal with.
Sure, a failure of some expensive piece of electronic equipment will be expensive, but I feel that those failures will be way less frequent and probably limited to manufacturing issues.
Now, software on the other hand...
Some automakers claim 15% increased efficiency and 50% increased low end torque. That is not marginal.
The efficiency improvements are possible, mainly due to the better atomization of the fuel, but 15% seems pretty generous if we're talking about improvements from DI alone. Keep in mind that many manufacturers are adopting multiple new technologies at the same time they're switching to DI. Newer engines with DI also tend to come with wideband o2 sensors and more modern ECUs, both of which can lead to improvements in efficiency which makes it harder to determine the true contribution of DI.
There's only one possible explanation for the 50% torque improvement claim:
Many cars are switching from larger naturally aspirated port-injected engines to smaller turbocharged direct-injected engines. Maybe that's what they were talking about.
Going from a naturally aspirated port-injected 3.8 liter V6 that makes 300HP and 280 TQ to a turbocharged direct-injected 1.8 liter 4 cylinder that makes 300HP and 350 TQ could very well explain those figures, but it's the turbocharger and smaller engine that are really the key here.
But even if we're "only" gaining 5% efficiency from DI, it's a pretty big deal. I'm fairly sure a GP3 or GP2 engine supplier have stated that DI provides better mileage, power, and torque, especially with an FI engine, compared to MPI.
So one can expect EVs to be able to compete fully with ICE cars in just a few years.
I'm not sure I agree. Unlike private cars, shared cars are in use many more hours per day and charging time versus gasoline refill time should be considered.
The Roadster's battery pack costs $28,000. The Tesla Model S's battery pack is expected to cost $10,000+ AFTER the efficiency of the Gigafactory in 2020.
Swapping out a $10,000+ part and sharing it between cars is going to be a major, MAJOR business / economic question. How do you do it fairly? How do you ensure that the quality of the battery remains the same? Can people cheat the system?
So, depending on usage patterns, that's a recharge over 30 minute lunch break - and maybe a short top-up every time they go to the loo.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10...
It's a bit like equating "Digital Camera" with "DSLR", and ignoring camera phones as a source of disruption.
An electric car shares most of its parts with a gas one, so you can't expect any savings from economies of scale there. Going back to the Model T for the cost curve is just laughable.
Also the battery in an EV is a massive amount of the cost, and will be dropping on its own curve.
I've been reading this guy for years, and complaints like yours are typical, but Naam has been far more right than his critics in the time I've been watching. If he feels this is a conservative estimate then I believe him. He didn't show his full work on why that's reasonable, but I believe it would stand up to scrutiny.
If he's publishing some silly analogy instead of his actual reasoning, then he should expect it to be dismissed out of hand.
Definitely depends on how you qualify 'most'. An electric car has nearly none of the mechanical complexity of an ICE car. Look at the engine bay and undercarriage of a typical internal combustion car:
http://i.imgur.com/uDxSsR2.jpg
Gas tank, fuel lines, transmission, engine, drive shaft, spark plugs / distributor cap, muffler, exhaust system, fuel pump, engine, air intake, turbo/super chargers if necessary, oil pumps / reservoirs, etc. -- many hundreds of parts can be shaved off of full electric cars.
I'm firmly in the camp that Tesla is going to have a much more difficult time that people predict in shipping a mass-market car, but that doesn't change the fact that it's much easier to build an electric car than an ICE one.
Battery software, Battery management, Battery coolant. Electric Drivetrain.
The Drivetrain in particular seems to be rather complicated. Consider that Edmunds was forced to replace their Drivetrain FOUR times in two years: http://www.edmunds.com/tesla/model-s/2013/long-term-road-tes...
Note that modern engines have a lot of parts because we KNOW which parts wear out over time. Spark Plugs for example wear out, and its very simple to replace spark plugs to recondition an ICE engine.
What wears out in an electric vehicle? Do the permanent magnets in the induction motor require replacement in 10 years? Nobody knows! Probably not, but there's probably something in there that needs replacement (due to rust or whatnot).
Eventually, electric motors will grow to have more parts. Not because they NEED more parts, but because we will learn what parts SHOULD have replacing.
Replacing a $4000 drivetrain whenever "something" is wrong? That's a problem. Replacing the $1000 permanent magnet in the induction motor? Well, that will be a better problem, but will require long-term testing before Tesla is able to discover (let alone solve) those problems.
Consider this: Hard Drives have more moving parts than Solid State Drives, as do Tape Drives. Yet we place more trust in them than SSDs because we really don't know the failure modes of SSDs.
Which makes the current market-winning electric cars, which are generally both more expensive and better than gasoline cars, not disruptive: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/12/11394260/tesla-not-disruptive
The package is then financed or leased with incentive financing and the sights are set on getting you to replace it after 2-4 years whether it needs to be replaced or not.
I think a 6 passenger mini-van could be manufactured for the US market (electric or gasoline) for under $8K if all the frills were removed.
This would entail simple, rubber bench seats, no radio (just a plastic bracket to snap in a smart-phone, which would also be used as a speedometer, and the smallest allowable engine.
I'd like to see an open hardware platform for car chassis, perhaps modeled after a successful platform like some of the 1980s Toyota trucks, designed to use abundantly available OEM and 3rd party parts.
Of course, self-driving electric cars might leap into reality before any of this is relevant, but once we stop owning our own vehicle, firms can focus on cost cutting for their fleets in ways that will usher in similar platform-style improvements that are difficult when people pick cars for aesthetic and emotional reasons.
Things like crumple zones and steel reinforced panels are cheap, things like AWD traction control are somewhat more expensive.
In terms of overall platform cost, though, I'd expect it to be possible to design a very safe car without increasing the price significantly, perhaps somewhat at the expense of aesthetics.
You could use a standardised software like with a raspberry pi to provide entertainment and more: http://imgur.com/a/9Xpil
With Chinese sourcing, it could be possible to drive down the components cost even more (e.g. http://www.aliexpress.com/category/34/automobiles-motorcycle...). Obviously you need to be careful about quality, but bulk buying for a reliable supplier would really help drive down costs. You won't get the fanciest latest-gen stuff, but it would get the job done for simpler components like knobs and switches.
The reason I know this is because the VW Minibus, which was engineered in the 40s has been sold in Brazil from 1953-2013 with very little change. Want to know how much a brand new van designed 60 years ago would cost you? $18,000 USD.
That's a vehicle whose engineering and equipment was paid for decades ago, that received numerous exemptions to tightening safety and emission standards and could be produced in a region with cheap labor. It was also the cheapest vehicle of its kind on the Brazilian market.
Super cheap cars like the Versa are really only possible because Nissan figured out how to build value without making money. The $11k stripper model is a good for marketing (i.e., inflated fuel economy #; generates interest in the low price, even if they aren't viable), money can be made on the back-end (financing), lowers lease residuals, it can be used to keep factories at full capacity, and helps negotiate lower prices with suppliers.
The Renault Lodgy is more a more appropriate comparison and it starts around 9 lakh ($13500/12000€)in India. Which is still substantially more than our $8k target price.
Sure, things like crumple zones are cheap because they're just metal and space, but regulation never stops. Mandatory tire pressure monitors, mandatory backup cameras (and no, your smartphone screen won't suffice for that requirement, must be fixed in the cockpit), mandatory LATCH, mandatory airbags, ABS, etc etc etc.
And that's just the list of things that have to be in a car today or in the near future. Regulations never shrink, so expect collision warning, lane departure warning, collision avoidance, etc to all be mandatory in vehicles in the span of time it would take you to develop one or two generations of your minivan...