The Electric-Car Boom Is Real | Hacker News Reader

The Electric-Car Boom Is Real

bloomberg.com

201 pointsprostoalex262 comments

More interestingly is that the EV does not help solve congestion. They take up the same space as an ICEV.

Raleigh now sell more electric bikes than normal bikes. That's where the real 'revolution' is occurring.

If you live in a city and your commute is in the 0-5miles range, they are simply the fastest way of getting to work during rush hour. You might not like the idea of a hot sweaty cycle ride to work. Neither did I.

Seriously pop to your local bike shop that sells these things and try one. In my case, I've stopped using buses and taxis, sold one car, and gone down to a one car family. It's saving me a fortune.

Would definitely recommend the mid-drive over hub-drive eBikes. They produce more torque. If you live in a hilly area, try and get a bike with at least 60nm of torque. Some top out at 90nm. Just means you can cycle up those 1 in 2 hills one handed.

> You might not like the idea of a hot sweaty cycle ride to work.

You don't have to exert yourself until you start sweating. Cycling at around 10 mph is equivalent to walking at a brisk pace (3.5-4 mph) [1]. On really hot days you'll be less sweaty cycling because of the breeze (except if you're wearing a backpack). If you live in a really hilly area, you might break a sweat on the uphills.

[1] http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicine/sportsme...

They might be comparing cycling in a hot humid place with driving inside an air-conditioned car. In that case, you are going to sweat more outside than inside.

In that case, an E-bike is little help.

"...except if you're wearing a backpack..."

Tangential, but as a long-distance touring cyclist, it always saddens me to see riders with large backpacks, especially in hot weather. I know that a rack and a pannier did not come standard with the bike, but those riders would have a much better experience if they used panniers!

It allows more airflow, but more importantly, it takes the weight off your body and puts it on the bike.

I agree with this. I live in a very hot place (summer highs typically around 100F), and I don't sweat on my morning bike commute unless I want to. On the way home, it can't be helped, but at that point I'm going home and it doesn't matter.

Everybody is different, some people sweat a lot more than I do, for sure.

The numbers in that study make absolutely no sense as anyone who has exercised will tell you.

Bicycling at 12-13mph same level of energy expenditure as push-ups? Nope.

Running at 9 min/mile more exertion than push-ups? Nope.

> The numbers in that study make absolutely no sense as anyone who has exercised will tell you.

I've exercised, they make sense to me.

> Bicycling at 12-13mph same level of energy expenditure as push-ups? Nope. > Running at 9 min/mile more exertion than push-ups? Nope.

I agree that to me bicycling at 12-13mph or running at 9 min/mile sounds easier than push-ups. But that is because push-ups exercise a much smaller muscle group, that is much easier exhausted (and that is much less trained in my case). I can run at 9 min/mile for hours, but will exhaust my chest muscles before 50 push-ups. That doesn't mean that energy wise one is harder than the other. My heart rate during push-ups or pull-ups doesn't surpass 140 bpm, which is about the same as when running 9 min/mile.

If you look at the physics: your center of gravity moves about 20cm up and down during a push-up (in 1 second). During running your center of gravity moves up and down 10 cm twice-thrice a second.

Indeed, EVs don't solve congestion. But they solve a lot of problems associated with congestion, as in toxic exhausts and noise. Self-driving electrical vehicles could greatly reduce congestion, as the throughput of roads could be improved (less distance between cars, optimal driving without human errors).

For sure we should strongly look into alternative approaches which would reduce or eliminate congestion, but until they are deployed, people are going to be dependent on cars - we should make those cars as environmental friendly as possible.

> Self-driving electrical vehicles could greatly reduce congestion

They could. But they could also greatly increase congestion because travelling with car will be a lot more convenient. Especially if the car can drop you of at your location and find a parking spot itself.

I think the only way self-driving cars will reduce congestion is if the cars are shared both per ride and over the day.

Given the phrase "rush hour" exists in the English language, I think they can only reduce congestion by sharing over the whole day if workplaces are successfully encouraged to shift their starting hours away from the usual 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as it seems to be). This will, of course, also work for human-driven cars.

>workplaces are successfully encouraged to shift their starting hours away from the usual 9-5 (or 9-5:30 as it seems to be).

This could only possibly work for internationally-focused firms, firms that operate around-the-clock, or firms that do not need contact with other firms and contact customers outside business hours. That is a very small subset.

Business hours are excellent for everyone involved in terms of work-life balance and coordinating business. They are not a good thing to sacrifice and it would only be a stopgap measure anyway. If you need to move a ton of people all at once, you need public transportation. BUILD MORE TRAINS

/swiss

Work life balance is an interesting point I had not considered.

Mainly I was trying to make the point that self-driving cars won't make much difference to this specific problem, but I don't seem to have communicated that very well given the replies.

This is why I think a shift to remote work culture is more likely to be a major reduction of congestion than self-driving vehicles ever could. It's just too bad a remote work culture seems less likely, because it isn't a technical problem but a political/social problem.

Almost all the incentives are for the status quo. I don't see anything which will radically change this.

Pollution in the UK is measured using NOx, PPM10, and PPM2.5

Pollution from brake and tyre particles is something that will not be tackled.

I do think the key is lack of choice. People feel, given the design of our roads, that they have no choice but to get into a steel box and drive around.

Better (automated) driving could actually reduce wear too, especially with some regenerative braking in the mix.

Oh, but we very much do have a choice - you can also get into an aluminum box and drive around.

Do they actually help noise of busy roads much? The impression I got was that the constant white noise living near a busy road was mainly tyre and air, not engines.

Buses would get a lot quieter though.

Yes. My house has a minimal setback. Noisiest vehicles are motorcycles, heavier trucks, and modded cars.

Normal cars are fairly silent, and HEV/EVs are almost completely silent.

The proposed? Legislation to have noise emitters on EVs might change this.

They probably wouldn't reduce the white noise from highways much, but they'd certainly have an impact on the break-through noise from rapid acceleration, loud exhaust, etc.

Most toxic emissions form todays cars are not from the tailpipe. Most of it is brake pad dust. Electric cars dont help that.

I'm not sure if that's true, but if it is then electric cars will definitely reduce the problem. They use regenerative braking for a large percentage of their braking power, which means that the brake pads are used much less.

NOx completely comes from combustion, fine particles both from combustion and brake pad dust and tires. The fine particle load is greatly reduced by going electric, one has also to take into respect, that the fine particles from combustion are much smaller and consequently more dangerous than brake and tire dust.

Are the cars made to be the same size as the gasoline cars more environmental friendly at all, once we consider all the environmental effects of producing them, providing the energy, and finally handling the waste at the end? Has anybody performed a whole honest evaluation?

> producing them, providing the energy, and finally handling the waste at the end

All of those produce environmental effects that for EVs are now:

    - local instead of spread out
    - largely decoupled from the vehicle

This is a huge architectural change because we're factoring environmental effects out of the vehicle, which allows for accelerated improvements without changing the car itself as well as economies of scale resulting in better environmental efficiency. Switch from coal to nuke and all currently running EVs stop emitting a lot of CO2 at once. Switch to wind+solar and they're suddenly all nuke-waste-free too. The same car could change to more recyclable battery tech (swappable batteries, battery rental...) over the course of its life and become progressively cleaner. So even if it provides an increase right now (which it doesn't, plus we're just living on a huge carbon credit card anyway) it certainly won't on the medium to long term.

Electric vehicles has to be the best example of why you should keep your objects loosely coupled :)

If you don't believe this to be true, just state it honestly and people can correct your claims.

Don't "just ask questions" and then when someone wastes their time responding as if you were genuine, claim that you already know that people have done research but you don't believe it.

Yes - Elon Musk has quoted quite a few times that even if all electricity is generated via Coal then a Tesla still produces less CO2 than a Prius.

Plus things are improving all the time with electric. That's one of the wonderful things - decoupling of energy usage from generation. You can switch the coal to solar, you can't just switch the diesel for something else that doesn't pollute.

Plus with the Gigafactory they can start doing very efficient battery recycling because they built the batteries (there was a quote somewhere in the speeches given at the Gigafactory opening)

Obviously Tesla is biased, this Green Car Report article [0] (probably still biased, but seems pretty acurate) reckons on 292 g/mi of CO2 for a Tesla:

> We've arrived at a number for the real-world effective CO2 emissions of a Model S of 292 g/mi. Admittedly, that's lot higher than Tesla claims on its website.

> But worse than a Grand Cherokee? Hardly.

> The V-6 Grand Cherokee's official EPA CO2 number is 479 g/mi when fitted with the smallest engine offered, a 3.6-liter V-6. The more powerful V-8 model logs in at a whopping 592 g/mi.

You then have a separate wired article raising most of the questions you're asking [1]

As far as I see it though, all of the aspects of electric cars can be improved from mining of the minerals to recycling - but you can't recycle oil and there's very few improvements that you can make.

[0]: http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1084440_does-the-tesla-m...

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2016/03/teslas-electric-cars-might-not...

I think it's also worth mentioning that the EPA rating of the Tesla is 0.

So the 479 g/mi for the Cherokee is just the emissions.

- Model S CO2 = 0 (EPA) + 292 (other factors)

- Cherokee CO2 = 479 (EPA) + ? (other factors)

Those other factors aren't going to be zero for the Cherokee

How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated. I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown. That wasn't honest at all.

I also can't take Musk's claims for even being close to honest.

The environmental effects of producing such small devices as cellphones is known to be significant. With the cars it's completely new orders of magnitude, which can result in non-linear responses, even if we know the good estimates for the smaller batteries. Do we?

>How are the environmental effects ofthe production of the huge batteries, their disposal or recycling evaluated.

Very easily. Batteries are very simple and have about a dozen input materials, usually from single sources. They are some of the most easily analyzed products in the world. There's a steel jacket with a plastic gasket, a cathode material (in Teslas this comprises lithium, nickel, cobalt and aluminum), an electrolyte mixture (common, safe liquids like ethylene carbonate or dimethyl carbonate), a separator (one of many common plastics), and an anode mixture (around 55%/45% natural and synthetic graphite, possibly with a few percent silicon). Every one of those materials is extremely common, readily available, and highly recycled or recyclable. Almost all steel and aluminum is recycled, and plastic can easily be recycled. The electrolytes are just small carbonates, used in a ton of industries. Nickel is the biggest threat by far- per pound cobalt is slightly worse, but there is 5.3x[1] as much nickel in a battery.

If we switched to 100% electric cars using Tesla sized batteries, they still wouldn't use as much nickel as the stainless steel industry does. There is no comparing the byproduct during manufacture. Lithium battery production is just great.

For recycling the worry is solely that the nickel and cobalt will leech from broken batteries into the water supply. This doesn't happen with stainless steel because well, it's stainless. Luckily nickel and cobalt are also the most valuable part of the battery, and are quite valuable to recover through shredding and incineration. The scrap value of nickel alone in the battery is more than the scrap value of steel in the car, so recycling is virtually guaranteed.

>I've seen only some very dishonest ones like "once the batteries are not usable in cars we'll sell them" where the worth of the used batteries was immensely overblown.

Are you sure you have your facts right? A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. It continues working long after and can even degrade slower. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more, for well kept batteries- recycling wouldn't even be an issue in that case. At that price buying used batteries would be almost as cheap as buying gasoline for generators.

[1]: http://neicorporation.com/specs/NANOMYTE_BE-45_NCA_Spec_Shee...

> A battery is "used" when it's maximum capacity is 80% of it's original capacity. The only problem is that it's much heavier for it's capacity- 25-50% heavier. For permanent storage that isn't a problem. Their value could easily be 50% of the original price or more

The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase. That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects.

Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced.

And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries?

Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/1430161-in-summary-the-tesl...

My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

>Also in 2013 Musk's company claimed the Model S makes 176g CO2 per mile, controlling their claim gives "346g per mile - more than the 312g per mile the EPA says the Toyota Highlander emits."

The EPA mileage calculation is based on a set ratio of city/highway miles (35/65 IIRC). Obviously that does not reflect reality perfectly. It is also a description of ideal driving habits, which of course people do not follow.

That link is wholly ridiculous. Its rejecting the EPA data as over-optimistic and then comparing it to... EPA data. I'm gonna go ahead and say that those ratings are also optimistic.

Your quote appears nowhere in the article, which says that the Model S emits 228g per mile, just shy of two hybrids.

The grid will continue to add renewables. Hybrids will be very quickly left behind. Plus, this is a massive luxury car- the model 3 will have much lower consumption, being a smaller car.

>My main argument stays -- there's no reason to believe Musk, and every for an independent careful control of his claims.

That's not an argument- it's a character attack. That's not a counterpoint to actual information.

> Your quote appears nowhere in the article

Oh, yes it does. You obviously haven't read it.

> That's not an argument

Of course it is, because even the value which you quote is not what Musk claimed, the whole text behind the link is exactly about how.

That is: Musk provably cooks what he shows in order to sell it in more ways, some of which I've mentioned too, and the different values were proven by the actual users of the car, even by the author who wanted to defend Musk.

>The above claim is exactly what made me skeptical: the greater availability of something reduces its price, so 50% of the price of a new one just doesn't sound right, unless there's some identified other immense need for them: the number of "used" batteries available to the market would be huge if the number of the buyers of the electric cars would significantly increase.

On the one hand there is something to your intuition: 50% is a near-maximum price that basically assumes people will be buying batteries for the grid/home. This could be for solar, or people could want stationary batteries at home to keep a quick top-up charge for their car. Alternately companies could buy extra batteries to top up their electric fleet, or to supplement solar, or to take advantage of off-peak demand.

On the other hand the actual resale price is basically irrelevant. The scrap price of a car is a few hundred dollars, so a battery would have to fall to like 5% of it's own value to not be worth recycling. At that price you wouldn't be able to sell the things fast enough.

The volume isn't a real problem. There's a 20+ year lag time before enough cars are being recycled to make this an issue. IF used battery supply ever exceeds demand -very unlikely, given the always falling cost of solar- there is pleeeeeenty of time for recycling to start. The short and long term problems are very different. The absorption mechanisms that seem insufficient at high volume are a bridge to the recycling that seems immature.

>That can only pull down the price of the used ones and increase the price of the new ones. The real question is where the ultimate prices would be, considering these effects.

It would pull down the price of used and other secondary batteries. Normally this would increase the price of a new commodity, but batteries are supply-constrained and their price is set by the number we can make. It would also pull down the price of new batteries, since they would have fewer buyers at the higher price point. More likely the lower demand would have no effect at all.

>Also, Tesla claims that their lithium batteries last extremely long, that is so if the battery's not completely discharged, but every lithium battery in every notebook I have had was the first to die or degrade very fast, even if I surely never "deep" discharged it. And it's so small compared to the ones in the car. So there is some significant difference somewhere between what's claimed and what I've personally experienced.

I dearly love this stuff, and explaining it (I'm an electrical engineer). There are a bunch of reasons for the difference! The biggest one is actually heat- your laptop gets super hot in use and uses the batteries as a heat sink, but an electric car very carefully cools its battery (unless it's a Leaf). A battery at 60C can drop to 60% of its original capacity after just 3 months. This kills laptops dead after just a few years even if you keep them plugged in every second you own them.

The second biggest is depth of charge. The average daily drive is around 30 miles, or 10-20% of an electric car's battery. Most trips are just short errands or commutes, not long drives. You may not deep discharge your laptop, but a battery will do 5,000 cycles if you discharge it to 85%, and 1,000 if you discharge it to 50%. The best results are with normal discharges under 20%, which nobody does with a laptop but almost every single electric car does. A <10% DoD will last for tens of thousands of cycles.

I really can't overstate how dramatic the difference is. Batteries as we currently use them are very badly mistreated, and when they are kept in <90 F conditions they last 2-3 times longer. When used lightly they last 3-4x longer. Both situations happen naturally in a car. Even in very hot climates the hot days never get anywhere near to the temperatures in a laptop or phone.

>And what's the market for the used up consumer electronics lithium batteries?

Currently more lithium is used to make ceramic glazes than batteries. Collecting and reselling the hundreds of different kinds of batteries from junked laptops is a healthy, profitable business in Asian countries. There simply aren't enough batteries to warrant real recycling though.

Not sure if you mean the CO2 claim or the battery recycling claim.

CO2 claim is open to argument I guess, but the battery recycling is pretty certain. They will definitely have battery recycling at the Gigafactory and it makes perfect sense to be able to recycle their own batteries better. They've got all the schematics of how they were built and so can more easily pull them apart.

Something probably produces a similar amount of CO2 indirectly if the same mass is produced/moved. The only benefit of electric is the 80% efficiency of the motor. Wind and solar is not producing more energy than it requires to be built. If you sum up all the energy required to build and power a tesla, from the fuel of the mining equipment for lithium, aluminium and steel etc, to the person driving the drills cats food, everything is net negative. The only energy added to the planet is sun rays, the only way this energy is stored is through photosynthesis, we have consumed millions of years of sunshine in 200 years. At the current rate we only have 50 years of fission material left. The only viable solution is to lower your standard of living willingly, before you are forced to. In this case that means buying a bike (non-electric if you live in the city) and working from home. Both of these are actually improvements of standards, but you could also live smaller and eat less.

Yes tremendously. Even if we just burn gasoline at power plants they are still much more efficient. When you start to add in renewables as a source of power for EVs the environmental impact is tremendous. Buy an EV for your next car if you can.

Definitely thinking of an EV but they are for the rich folks atm. I'll wait for a sub 30k self driving Tesla.

The average price for a new car is 34k nowadays. A used Model S is at least 40k[1]. Tesla has a pre-owned up for 50k. The cheapest new Model S, with all rebates + estimated gas savings, is 56k.

If Tesla really pulls off the Model 3, it's a game changer. It'll start the clock ticking until everyone can afford a (used) electric car.

[1]: https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-Tesla-Model-S-d2039#lis...

[2] 85kWh, no less: https://www.tesla.com/preowned/5YJSA1DN1DFP16592

Averages can be misleading in highly skewed distributions...

The 2017 Bolt is competitively priced: $37k MSRP. Still qualifies for ~$7k tax refund. Could potentially negotiate the price down a tad at a local dealership.

Unfortunately, the average American commute is 15 miles one way, and American corporate offices tend to be located in areas where bike/pedestrian friendliness is barely a consideration. I love biking and would be happy to bike for an hour each way, but every time I've mapped out a commute, there's been a stretch or too that's too dangerous.

These days, straight roads scare me more than intersections. With the amount of distracted drivers out there, I'm not biking on any road without a spacious shoulder or a sidewalk.

I've noticed that in my neighborhood in Austin, most of the cyclists ride on the sidewalks. I've been thinking about getting a bicycle but this fact doesn't inspire confidence.

Unless there's a dedicated bike lane, it makes more sense to cycle on the sidewalks than the road (if the road speed limit is 35mph+)

A cyclist has the same protection from injury in an accident with a car as a pedestrian, but the pedestrian is far less likely to be injured by a bike than a car (if there is an accident)

Studies have shown that riding on the sidewalk is considerably less safe than riding on the street (due to link rot, I can't find the studies I'd read, but google brings up plenty). Cars do not expect bicycles to be crossing intersections from the sidewalk, so your risk of being hit by a car goes up considerably unless you come to a complete stop at each intersection you cross. I've never met a bicyclist that does this as it will break your momentum considerably. Whats more, pedestrians and dogs often walk into the way of sidewalk operating bicyclist. Please don't do this.

My experience confirms that. I've done a lot of riding on the road with cars but the only time I was hit by a car was when I was riding on the sidewalk and crossing the road.

Bikes/electric bikes seem like a good idea until sadly, one bad incident with a reckless driver. I'd absolutely bike/ebike in SF if not for the continuous stories of friends and friends of friends getting hit, getting run off the road, or having close calls.

Bay Area drivers are much more agrressive and hurried and distracted than a decade ago and I am concerned for my fellow cyclists and pedestrians. (My friend almost got hit last week in downtown MV in the crosswalk when a car ran a red. In downtown! And we were at the other side of the intersection)

Vote for bike lanes, traffic calming, traffic violation enforcement, and cities built for humans instead of cars, whenever you can.

as a working bike messenger, there's so much i could say about this, but i'll keep it to one thing.

PROCEED AS THOUGH YOU ARE INVISIBLE TO CARS, AND YOU'LL BE FINE.

postscript:

IF YOU MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THE CAR DRIVER, THEY'LL RECOGNIZE YOUR HUMANITY, AND WILL BE LESS LIKELY TO KILL YOU.

As a motorcyclist, listen to this guy... and I'll add one more:

If you are wondering if the motorist you are observing is dumb enough to do that thing you suspect they may do in the face of logic and physics, they are. Assume the worst, always have a path out.

And smile. Its worth the extra dilligence to have fun with it.

I prefer Neal Stephenson's advice in Zodiac: proceed as though all drivers can see you AND ARE TRYING TO KILL YOU.

That's the best advice for both bicyclists and motorcyclists. As for regular motorcycle commuter, "the next driver is a psycho who's trying to kill you" attitude along with "stay out of the blind spots"[0] saved me more than once (or more likely, does few times a week).

0. http://www.bike.bikegremlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/c...

> Make eye contact with the car driver

Yes, definitely, I did this at every traffic light I came to in London after someone told me this.

I don't know about 'recognizing my humanity' but making eye contact with other drivers is a very good way to verify that they have seen you. I cross a mini-roundabout on my commute to work, and it is surprising the number of drivers who have not seen me because I am obscured by the strut at the corner of their windscreen, or they are looking elsewhere.

I don't ride in front of a vehicle until I think they have seen me.

At least on the South Bay, I think that drivers are more impatient because the cities have failed to do anything real to improve traffic. They focus on highly visible things, like a new overpass or adding a lane to an onramp, or something of this nature.

Then they'll spend something like $1 billion on a new library or town hall or $100 million on a rec center or whatever.

Meanwhile, the actual road infrastructure cannot support the incredible increase on net new job creation. This makes for traffic jams, everywhere, so people become impatient and increases the number of irrational decisions they make.

I live in the hills, several miles down a very narrow, curvy country road. Nobody goes less than 10 mph above the speed limit, which is genuinely unsafe on this road. They do it because traffic is much lighter than the rest of their commute, and they just want to get home. Of course, they're only shaving somewhere around 28 seconds of travel time off of their total commute while increasing the probability of a deadly encounter with a hapless bicyclist who ignorantly thinks they are riding on a quiet, back-country road.

I am quite certain that the cost of adding a separate bicycle/pedestrian path is quite high, as it would require bulldozing parts of moderate sized hills, and compared with the fanfare of a new police station or city hall, a new bicycle lane for some back road just doesn't compare.

However, knowing the residents of this back road and the town in general, I'm quite certain such a path would generate a lot of real use and potentially save lives. But I'm quite certain this kind of project will not hapen in my lifetime.

You honestly have more power to make this happen than you think you do. Write a petition, see whether you can find any people who think it's a good idea, go to a town hall with your evidence, call a contracting company to ask how much the path would cost/how long it would take, and try to get it into the next municipal budget. You CAN do it. It's been done.

I've never seen specific enforcement of crosswalk rights-of-way in the Bay Area, despite it being such a target-rich environment. The crosswalks across Castro (Mountain View's "Main St.") are generally observed, probably because they are numerous. In contrast, crosswalks across El Camino not at traffic lights are death traps (like just West of Halford, where there was a fatality a month or two ago).

I had no idea non traffic light cross walks even existed on el Camino! (I generally consider el camino to be a death trap overall)

And you might get "doored" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12674533

You're completely right about the Bay Area.

1. We need more bike lanes. Sensible lanes. They don't need to be huge.

2. We need to allow bikes on the shoulders of highways. (Got a ticket as a kid)

3. Personally, although I hate regulations, I would like to see all public buildings, and any new, or remodeled commercial buildings be required to provide showers for all employees whom bike to work. They would get an extra 10 minutes before clocking in.

4. Ride a mountian bike in the city. Don't ride a road bike, unless you're very skilled. I've seen so many guys go down. Bike messengers never seem to get hit, or have much trouble, but they are professional bikers--sorry, but they are, and I know some drive crazy.

5. Give a state credit to all employees whom bike to work. (I don't know how you could verify it.)

6. I put my bike in my truck, and drive to San Fransisco daily. I try to park for free, and bike from there. I only use old bikes. The nice ones are stolen. It's not great, but you get used to the routine. Oh yea, since there a huge problem with cvechicles break-ins, take every thing of value out of the vechicle. Open the glove compartment. Put a kill switch in vechicle. And pray your vechicle is there when you get back. I sometimes leave the door open--just too many broken windows for a radio.

What's the reasoning on riding a mountain bike in your point number 4?

Any bike with wide tires is a good idea for urban riding, which fortunately includes many road bikes (or so-called 'gravel bikes') these days.

i think people know what you are talking about, but in case anyone is confused by the units of torque: you mean Nm rather than nm.

nm = nanometers

Nm = Newton-meters

I've been thinking of electric bikes recently. The problem is, I would like to have some extra speed (thus range) with less sweat, in exchange for the price & weight & need to charge batteries. In fact, it sounds just amazing. But in Finland, electric assist is legally limited to operate at no more than 25 km/h. That's slower than my normal cycling pace. What a way to ruin a great idea.

S pedelecs are limited to assisting up to 45km/h https://www.emotion-technologies.de/e-bike-typen/s-pedelec/ but fall within 'light moped' categories and as such cannot officially be used on cycle paths in the UK (but can be in Netherlands although there are moves afoot to remove them due to the speed differentials).

Another 'dodgy' option is to 'chip' your ebike and this will usually enable a assist limited 25km/h bike help you up to 45km/h.

What you do find is that people that are regular cyclists find eBikes too slow however on flat roads. Get a hill, and suddenly they come into their own. If you live in a hilly city/town, they really come into their own.

Prior to owning an eBike I would consider avoiding the most direct routes seeking out the flatter shallower gradient routes or finding myself pushing the bike up the steeper direct routes. These days I get to where I'm going at 25km/h and saves me a lot of time.

I still go out on my cyclocross bike when I want to really enjoy a long leisure ride. Ebikes are very boring as leisure rides.

Most of Finland is pretty flat, and the fastest & most direct routes often involve cycle paths already (although in the less well planned cities you might have to randomly move from one side of the road to the other because).

If your bicycle turns into a moped because it has a motor that isn't artificially restricted to operating at under 25 kph, you'll end up having to take the long way and ride among the cars in heavy traffic. My experience is that Finnish drivers are not particularly used to cyclists on these larger roads, because we have shared cycle & pedestrian paths everywhere. These facts would pretty much encourage me to go by car instead.

I think banning an entire category of vehicles because it "can go fast" is the wrong approach, and horribly inconsistent. I mean I can sprint at 45 kph on a cycle path on meat power if I want to, as long as I do not endanger anybody. And we don't ban cars on small city streets even if they can break 200 kph. Why not, say, speed limits?

Not quite. The 25 km/h limit is just for the bike's classification as a "bicycle"; electric bikes that go faster than that just need to get registered and are effectively treated as mopeds under traffic laws.

Yes, and that's bad. Suddenly you're bound by a lot more regulations, and access to many a path is cut off. It's not a great trade off.

If you're going a speeds significantly above what most cyclists are doing you should be bound by more regulations than cyclists and you probably should stick to the roads and not be allowed to use bike paths.

Why?

We already have large speed differences on (bidirectional!) shared paths and it works out just fine. We have kids and elderly walking at 5 kph, same kids and elderly cycling at 15 kph, and more fit adult cyclists going anywhere between that and >30 kph. Other people stand still. Dogs can be problematic but overall I think it really does work just fine, and I don't think anybody needs to fear for their life. We can adjust our speed.

If anything, forcing cyclists on the roads results in even larger differences in speed. But also mass, and awareness.

Doesn't the assist just cut off at that speed? So you can cycle it like a regular bike faster. So what's the problem? Wouldn't it be stupid to have "bikes" which can go eg. 100km/h?

Yes it cuts off, so it doesn't make me faster, except in the few seconds I take to accelerate (or climb uphill, which is not often). So it's really just dead weight.

> Wouldn't it be stupid to have "bikes" which can go eg. 100km/h?

No, why? If I could, I would.

I love the idea of eBikes. I bike commute on a conventional city bike, 5mi each way, every day. I wouldn't mind a boost when there's a headwind or I'm tired. And I would like the help to make a 10 mile trip more practical.

But the price! I looked at some eBikes, and they were often around 4k. That's almost twice as much as a good quality gasoline moped/scooter like the Honda Metropolitan. So it's a tough value proposition to make.

That's probably true, from a "bang per buck" perspective. But a scooter needs insurance, plates, gas, oil, costs tax and at the end of the day they are lawnmowers on wheels, so if something goes wrong with the motor, and it will regularly, you probably can't fix it on your own and are stranded. Even if your battery fails or the boost you would likely still have a fully functional bike, just some extra resistance on the pedals.

And legally of course, a scooter restricts you to streets that cars can go on. That might not mean much in an American suburb but even here in a bike backwards German town we have pedestrian zones where bikes are explicitly allowed, one way streets with exemptions for bikes.. being able to use bike-legal paths can make for a more direct, faster route.

I take your points. One quibble here is that in my state, motor scooters do not need insurance, plates, or tax as long as the engine volume and top speed are below certain values.

you can DIY one using a kit for under $2k total ($500 bike + $1500ish kit)

That's still far too expensive compared to a motorcycle, that you also don't have to assemble yourself.

I built one a couple of months ago, it is very practical and huge fun as well. I'm not sure I sweat less as I tend to ride it flat out everywhere.

We have also gone down to one car.

That's why I would like to see a hybrid of a electric van and Uber as a new city bus. The bus should have 6 doors and separated passenger space. So each passenger would have its own private space. Travel time should be much shorter due to using fast lanes and low number of bus stops. During rush hours the bus should take 5 passengers (6 with self-driving technology). Because of small size it should economic enough to use the bus only for one passenger, even in suburbs. Uber like software should be used for costs optimization, for example you could wait for the bus in front of your house or walk 500 meters closer to the main road to save $5. All needed technology already exists. No need to dig tunnels.

PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

PS2. I don't want to discuss how many days per year someone can ride an e-bike to work. Some sort of public / car transport is and will be needed. There is no much innovation in public bus transport therefore I described the idea about electric van / Uber hybrid.

> PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I lived in southern Sweden and while bike ridership did go down in winter, it was still very high. My city even prioritized snow-clearing/sanding of bike paths (they have special mini bulldozers).

edit: the numbers I found were that in Sweden 30-40% of trips on a bicycle were done in the winter half of the year, so about 30% lower ridership than in the summer[0]

[0] http://www.trafa.se/globalassets/rapporter/rapport-2015_14-c...

I live in the south of Germany (that's central Europe) and cycle to work year-round. Cycle paths are cleared of snow just like roads. All you need is a winter jacket, a beanie that goes beneath your helmet, and a pair of (leather) gloves against the wind. That's just standard winter gear, nothing specific to cycling. Rain pants are a good idea when it's snowing or as an extra layer of insulation, and every serious cycle commuter has a pair anyway.

In Central and Northern Europe bikes are only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in southern Sweden and not only is April-October (7 month) perfectly bikable for everybody, a whole lot of people happily bike year round. In areas that get more snow/ice people can get studded tired for their bikes.

> 6 doors and separated passenger space

> small size

These are conflicting requirements. The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van, only a little smaller than a normal bus.

I'd love to see someone try the commuter multi-drop-mini-bus system; it's implemented informally in various ways already that don't have multinational branding. Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace, but potentially useful in other places.

> The minimum size for 6 doors is probably about the size of a long-wheelbase Transit van

Depends on the mini-bus layout. 7-seater VW Touran (4527 mm long) has 5 doors. So maybe it possible to build 5 m long van with 6 doors, with 2 on the back.

> Won't help in really dense cities like London where traffic is at walking pace

Dedicated lanes and some regulations will be needed. For example mini-bus shouldn't be allowed to enter crowded routes unless it has 3 passengers. So two people would have to wait 5 min for the third passenger and so on. Or it can be used to transport people from suburbs to subway stations in cities like London.

    PS. In Central and Northern Europe bikes are 
    only useful for 4 months a year.

I live in Berlin and you definitely see lots of people on bikes between march and october (8 months of the year). Not much different in Amsterdam or Copenhagen I believe (quite possibly better).

Maybe such service is possible, surely ridewithvia and ford's chariot are doing something similar, and it looks successful, altough it may take a long time to scale.

But

1. How do you solve the personal space problem of a vehicle(a cost effective) and convince a big car company to make you vehicles ? that's not an easy problem.

2. I haven't yet seen such shuttle powered by electricity - not sure the tradeoffs(charge time, ride time, vehicle cost) are attractive enough for shuttle drivers.

They have special machines in Belgium that clean the snow off all of the bike paths - and yes, then people do cycle.

I cycle to work in New York, colder than much of Central and Northern Europe, year-round. The main issue is that the city doesn't do a great job of clearing its many new bike lanes of snow.

I would totally ride a bike as part of my commute except for one small problem: I have to cross Lake Washington eastbound to go to work and westbound to come home and at odd hours. Transit service drops to hourly after 8:30pm and the bus only carries three bikes at a time. So far, I've noticed that 1/3rd of the time, in nice weather, I'd be fine and could load my bike on the bus; another 1/3rd, I'd be at the 10:30pm trip and it would be full so I'm waiting for the 11:30pm trip that isn't full; and the last 1/3rd, the 11:30pm trip is full so I'm stuck either leaving my bike or not getting home. (I see these because I still take Transit to work by using two buses each way. I'd rather ride my bike for one of them...)

Maybe this just means that I should work on getting in shape so I can just ride a route that takes me across the lake...

Do the buses let you take fold-ups on to them? Can easily get mine onto buses and trains in the UK.

Could you rather make the commute easier for yourself, by moving or changing where you work?

Congestion can be addressed by privatizing bus services. No, seriously.

Every country and city seems to love to nationalize something. In the U.S. every city has done that with bus services. But if you look around the world you'll find places like Buenos Aires that have not done this and have a thriving bus industry that can get you from very close to point A to very close to point B in much less time than buses in the U.S. and with fewer transfers.

But now consider something like Uber/Lyft for _small_ buses: routes need not be set in stone. You pre-arrange every day where and when to get picked up and dropped off. This can probably get much closer to the travel times that private cars can deliver.

Bikes are not the answer, incidentally. Only a small proportion of the population in the U.S. will use them, and only a small proportion of the population in American cities lives 0-5mi from work. We don't build high pop. density cities in the U.S. anymore. The re-zoning plans in Austin (to give one example) call for adding in the next decade just one third of the housing Austin needs, thus increasing sprawl -- this happens because of NIMBYism, and the story is the same just about everywhere that isn't already a high pop. density city. Besides, bikes are scary and dangerous to a very large number of people.

EVs solve part of the problem. Self driving taxi (SDT) fleets solve a large part of the rest. Things you don't need in a SDT world include store parking lots, personal garages and driveways, commuter parking in the daytime, and one car per person.

EV+SDT gets you a world where enormous amounts of space can be released for either urban development or rewilding, and where you can breathe the air. It also gives you, conveniently, a world where it's much safer to cycle. SDTs will not drive dangerously, and they don't have blind spots.

Energetically, eBikes also uses the least amount of energy to get somewhere.

I have a car mostly for a handful of 60km ride each year. It is well within range of what eBikes do now (you can check trips with ebikemaps http://ebikemaps.com/). My current car may well be my last one.

Or you can get a scooter/motorcycle and not be limited by range or speed while still having the mobility and still save a ton of money compared to a car. This is even more of a niche (lower range and utility, the only upside is that you can store it indoors - but parking a motorcycle isn't as hard as parking a car).

They may not solve congestion, but they should lower it, even it it's by a tiny amount. The reason is simple - electric cars don't have to visit gas stations which sometimes adds few miles to the miles traveled every month. i.e on my way to work I have just one gas station. When I have to fuel my car, (usually once a week) I have to take a different route that's about 1/2 mile longer than my usual route. That's about 25 miles /year. If we multiply this by 260mln passenger cars on the roads we get 6.5 billion miles. Let's go little further with this.. if set avg fuel economy for all of these cars at 20 mpg we get 325000000 gallons of fuel saved each year when all of the cars are electric. Funny how small little thing can have big impact.

Of course this is just a guesstimate.

To me, bicycles have all the downsides of a motorcycle except for cost and reliance on fossil fuels. Motorcycles are in my opinion safer in a city setting IF you ride with self control and vigilance (motorcyclists seem to self-select for unnecessarily-risk-taking types of people, but you don't need to be among them), due to the convention of wearing more protection Most bicyclists wear just a half helmet, if that. A loud exhaust can also make you more noticeable to cars, I'm not going to say loud pipes save lives but in close proximity an exhaust can be the difference between a car noticing you and not. Not to mention you get to wherever you're going much faster since you can ride at car speeds and still lane split.

To be fair, the speed plays an important factor during an accident, as accidents at higher speeds tend to have dramatically more severe consequences. The bicycles rarely reach normal motorcycle operation speed, and while motorcyclists tend to use better helmet, not that many of them actually follow ATGATT religiously (mostly those that have been in accidents themselves).

Generally though I'll agree with you that motorcycles are safer in cities than bicycles, but for a different reason -- motorcycles, unlike bicycles, generally ride along with car traffic on roads, and so car operators are more likely to see them, as they only appear where car drivers expect other cars. Many bicyclists have an unfortunate habit of riding on a sidewalk, which is very, very dangerous. Having brighter head and tail lights on a motorcycle, and blinking indicators definitely helps too.

It's a bit of a second order effect but EV buses are more pleasant to ride than the ICE equivalent, and share much of the same tech as the EV cars, so they share e.g. battery cost reductions.

This has been the wettest 7 months in ages here in the pacific northwest. There are a few die-hard cyclists out though.

I've often thought about something like this for my around town type errands.

Amsterdam is as rainy a city as any (though not too many torrential downpours) and people bike around through the weather. With the proper attire it's easy to bike through it. You'll sometimes see bikers with an umbrella, though I don't know if that would work at e-bike speeds

People are also extremely crafty about carrying all sorts of improbable objects (I saw a dining table once!) in a way that wouldn't be out of place in Indonesia. It's very refreshing to see some 3rd world ingenuity in the 1st world.

I hope that as e-bikes become more popular people keep the speeds low; otherwise it will become unsafe.

For reasonable speeds, like that of a city bike in high gear, an aerodynamic umbrella works plenty well:

https://www.senz.com/en/

That's pretty clever. I wonder how much of a difference it makes.

They work great. I cycled regularly with one in Amsterdam. It's like a sail - it stabilizes itself in the correct vertical position as you ride. Holding one gets pretty effortless.

I just bought one. Looks perfect.

> People are also extremely crafty about carrying all sorts of improbable objects (I saw a dining table once!) in a way that wouldn't be out of place in Indonesia.

I find it easier to carry heavy objects while cycling than while walking, because the upper body can be much more stable, less bobbing. The speed difference is negligible though, because you really don't want to outrun your severely encumbered braking.

I've always thought there is no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothes ;)

In all seriousness, an eBike lets me get anywhere I need to in 20 minutes or so. As long as I wear a rain coat, only the front of my trousers get wet.

My bike has mudguards and panniers. I've gone with the Ortlieb classic panniers as they 'roll' at the top. Between two I can get one layer of a large supermarket trolleys worth of goods into them. Although the last minute pack of 9 loo rolls was more of a challenge but because the tops unroll you can just wedge them in.

It's very 'sensible' practical bike aimed squarely at the function of 'living without a car in a city'.

> I've always thought there is no such thing as the wrong weather, just the wrong clothes ;)

So you're saying you're Norwegian?

Could be Swedish too, that's very close to an idiomatic expression in Swedish: "there is no bad weather, only bad clothes" ("det finns inget dåligt väder, bara dåliga kläder", it even rhymes in Swedish).

Unfortunately, while this works for too cold- it does not for too hot.

I agree but only partially. I noticed most people who complain about hot weather dress very badly.

The trick is ample light colored linen clothing that covers as much skin as possible. It might seem counter intuitive to cover your whole arms and legs, but linen is actually very good at evaporating your sweat and keeping you cool while protecting you from the sun.

I wonder if a special outfit could work for that? Shade the head and shoulders, ventilate maximally otherwise. The airflow is useful for cooling, though stops working after a certain point, then you need evaporation.

I've contemplated buying a moped that counts as an e-bike where I live, because it can only go 25 kph. Do you see any downsides to such an e-Moped vs buying a classic e-bike? (Besides the fact that I can't tread if the battery is empty)

It's probably less appropriate to ride it while drunk. Cyclists don't seem to like them, as they're bigger and tend to be driven without much consideration.

I live in Copenhagen.

(I haven't seen any e-mopeds here, only petrol ones.)

As a cyclist I'd personally ask you to go with an ebike rather than a moped, just because they take up less space on the path. With enough mopeds, the bike roads can be almost as scary as the car roads.

In the UK you can drink and ride an eBike ;)

However the key is that cycle paths are legally off limits to mopeds (in the UK).

You'll also find parking a lot easier with a eBike.

Belgium allows mopeds and small engined motor cycles on cycle paths and I think it makes sense to do so.

It doesn't really increase the likelihood of killing cyclists but it does lower the likelihood of killing moped riders who are typically younger people

The benefits of exercise are pretty significant. Even assisted biking is still more biking than none.

True, I'm still considering an e-bike for this very reason.

If you want a real workout (and I do this on my way home from work sometimes) I turn down/off the assist and you're suddenly cycling a 20+kg bike up a hill.

What I truly hate about the bicycle push is that some of us cannot ride bicycles for very legitimate reasons including medical problems or a job that requires a vehicle.

If 50% of the people driving cars switch to (e-)bikes that will be better for everyone. Including those still using cars.

The issue in my area is that the "push" is coming through social engineering tactics, such as reducing road capacity and granting special privilege on existing roads to bicyclists.

If the change in road infrastructure were to occur after the bicycles became a more popular mode of transportation, that would be fine, but doing it before makes the whole situation miserable, especially for those of us who simply do not have the option of switching.

The other thing I hate about the bicycle push is the self-righteousness of many involved and the complete lack of consideration for people who cannot ride bicycles for various legitimate reasons, plus they are down-voting cowards.

Lack of consideration? I don't know what consideration you want but the roads are completely car dominated so there's no consideration necessary in my opinion.

I usually ride to work 4 days a week, and drive 1 day, depending on weather. I'm a driver but I still want proper separated bike paths. And I can't be the only one. People are scared to ride and I don't blame them. It's scary riding on a road with so many tired/oblivious/terrible/selfish drivers who actually don't follow the road rules even while driving a deadly weapon.

I can't understand why it's so difficult to provide facilities actually. Bike paths don't have heavy vehicles ruining them so need way less maintenance than normal roads.

A bike path for 2 way traffic only takes the width of a single car lane. You could just make one road per suburb one way, and there you go. I'm oversimplifying but I'm not a town planner, I'm just a dumb commuter.

At least where I live, it's laughable that you'd be complaining about a "bike push", as there are no real facilities for bikes at all. Just crappy unconnected paths that never get you to anywhere useful. You always have to go on a road with cars to get anywhere.

I remember during the 2004 presidential election I was was on some political forums arguing how EV would reach tipping point in sales and technology within about 10 years. All these people would go on and on about how batteries will always be expensive, the laws of physics state EV will never truly be viable, EVs are slow, batteries are undependable, EVs pollute more, etc, etc.

One by one all those reasons have be discredited. The EV was and is inevitable.

The important thing to take away from that experience is that the detractors were all correct, as far as any extrapolation of then current technology into the future could take them.

I've experienced that cycle several times where I thought "oh this will be big in 10-20 years" and had people say "No, reason x, y, and z all mean it won't happen." and then some discovery or change in the situation made x, y, and z irrelevant.

As a result I've trained my self to look at it "in reverse" as it were, which is to say "currently x, y, and z makes it impossible, what would have to change to make x, y, and z irrelevant?" and then look for changes in the margins. Things like "making oil from corn" is impractical when oil is $35 a barrel but quite reasonable when oil is $150 a barrel. Or 'cracking hydrogen and oxygen' with electrolysis takes more energy than you get back, so how can you exploit 'wasted' energy like sunlight to help it along? etc.

The important thing is to avoid trapping yourself into believing nothing will change that isn't already known. People I've met seem to do this all the time.

I think you're right. But I also think this is a fundamental limit of human thinking, to some extent.

If you consider the space of all possible imaginable futures, there are parts of this space that are easily accessible to us, and there are parts that just don't seem to be accessible at all. For example, people were able to foresee the technical development of the internet decades ago, but we're not able to foresee how internet culture will develop with any accuracy at all.

It's like the philosophical idea that you can't accurately imagine what it's like to be a genius, because if you could, then you could become a genius yourself, just by imagining what a genius would do in each situation. If we could accurately imagine the future, then the future would already be here, to some extent. E.g. if I could predict what the next hit smartphone app would be, then I could just build the app myself and get rich.

I disagree that it is a 'fundamental' limit, I think you can practice holding "impossible" things in your head so that you can work out where the places are where the "possible" things are at the edge. Using your example, you can't accurately imagine what it's like to be a genius but you can "pretend" you're a genius, and imagine that if you were a genius you would know lots of stuff about a lot of different things, and from there recognize you would need to learn about lots of different things. And from there recognize that you'd need to know how to learn quickly so that you could know lots of different things. And from there find techniques for learning things quickly and start trying different ones to see if any work for you.

That is the 'walking it in reverse' idea, if you start with this impossible idea (your own or someone else has presented it to you) and you want to figure out sort of that impossible idea might come to be real.

Just to continue this tangent: The skill you mention (holding impossible things in your head) is closely related to debugging. You observe "impossible" things (returned signal power is negative, etc.), and accept them, and work backwards to how it could happen.

How many times have you had a junior person come to you with a bug, and you ask, did you check A, B, and C? And they will say, "I checked everything and it's all OK." It's hard to kick their brain out of the rut of thinking that everything is nominal. They make no progress because they're wasting all their mental energy arguing that everything is, in fact, OK.

Thats one if the best comments ive ever read here

This heavily applies to software development too.

In the inverse, people for some reason with software like to assume the natural state of code is to work. If you assume it doesn't and look for spots where it could fail then, you find the problems.

It's amazing what a state of mind can do.

Many years ago my lecturer used to hammer this point home (he wrote telecoms systems back in the 'old days' (80's/early 90's).

Good guy, bit odd but a hell of a programmer.

It is amazing to watch Wright's Law in action as volumes grow to saturation, pulling down the price, to drive saturation. It will be interesting to see if batteries are like processing with self-generating demand, or if it is like prior industrial technologies that seem to hit ceiling based on some sort of inherent demand limit. It is hard to imagine wanting 3 electric cars...

So the analysis focuses on a single variable: cost, specifically the inflation-adjusted price of one “unit.” (A “unit” is itself sometimes a fluid concept in a rapidly changing field. Consider what “one transistor” meant in 1969, and what it meant in 2005.) So, for example, recasting Moore’s Law to translate computing power into unit cost morphed the familiar “computing power doubles every 18 months” into “transistor costs drop by 50 percent every 1.4 years.”

(Wright's Law is surprisingly hard to google)

source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and-measurem...

That article has really good examples of the problems of overfitting. Better than the standard abstract data science stuff I've seen anyway.

I think there'll be an economic incentive for at least miniaturizing battery cells, while keeping capacity. Even if there is a limit to EV range, where consumers simply won't be interested in cars that go much further, reducing the weight of the battery itself, will be a direct economic boon for the consumer. There might also be some unforeseen boons to cheaper and lighter batteries, kind of how the personal drone market sprung out of the advances made in lithium-ion batteries for Smartphones/Laptops.

> It is hard to imagine wanting 3 electric cars

It's no more difficult than wanting 3 internal combustion engine cars - one for husband, one for wife, one for driving age children.

Or the weekend sportscar/roadster, or the "classic" car (though I wonder if any modern electric will ever achieve classic/collectable status).

As Jay Leno happily points out, some of the oldest and coolest "classic" cars are turn of the last century electric cars. [1]

Whether a current electric car may ever turn heads or have gearhead fans a century from now, you never know, retro fashions are inscrutable from this distance.

[1] An example: https://transportevolved.com/2015/12/29/jay-leno-prepares-to...

EV West seems to be doing a good job of building up a catalog of conversion kits. Model S running gear in a tri-5 Chevy won't be as efficient as the original package, but it is good enough (except for that V8 rumble)

If technology gets good enough batteries become attractive for a wide variety of engines that currently require either electric cords or fossil fuels. Think drones, bicycles, lawn appliances, vacuum cleaners, home UPS, solar energy storage, automated greenhouses, etc. It also could have knock-on effects on the type of powered appliances possible, eg. perhaps you'd want your toaster & cabinet to be mobile so you could have breakfast in bed, but this is impractical with electric cords. I wouldn't worry too much about demand for batteries.

Certainly replacing helicopters with drones seems a pretty obvious step [0].

[0]: http://time.com/4171329/drone-helicopter-ehang-184-ces/

The EV is still "evitable" while it's dependent on subsidy and favourable tax treatment, unfortunately.

It's the ICE cars that are subsidy dependent, people just have real problems accepting that because they've been subsidised for so long and in such pervasive ways that even the death tolls just seems like statistics to be waved away.

I've been amazed that the Chevy volt isn't selling more units.

You get 53 miles electric and 42 mpg. Unlike the i3 with rex you can go full speed on gas. And unlike the Toyota Prius plugin, the gas engine is purely an electric generator.

The car after incentives and dealer rebates is 20k. GM also offers 0 down 0% financing over 60 months.

It's a great commuter car as the 53 miles is more than enough to get to work. at work you charge up and you've got enough to go home. If you want to go on a road trip you still have the gas engine.

I've been looking at plugin hybrids recently and the Prius Prime looks to me like an interesting competitor to the Volt (and it's a very different beast from the old Prius plugin). It has half the electric range of the Volt, but it's more efficient and (something that matters to me because we like car camping) has more cargo room. The Prius Prime gets a full charge in 5.5 hours on 120v.

Regardless, these both seem like awesome cars and I'm excited that there are cars that give you both electric drive every day and the ability to go as far as you want using gasoline.

I can't imagine buying something for 20k that has that little versatility compared to a gas powered car. I drive 40 miles round trip everyday, but beyond that it would be a hunk of metal that I have no use for.

I think these estimates are very conservative, try to imagine what the sales curve for "cars burning unleaded gasoline" would look like. Once the technology becomes comparable, including infrastructure for battery swaps, regulation will take over.

I imagine large cities will just say "no fossil fuel burning vehicles in the downtown core" and "taxis must all be electric" and those numbers will change dramatically. Fossil fuel cars will simply be banned in many (most?) countries.

That's not even accounting for the role self-driving vehicles will play, which will kick in long before 2040. There is no need for a full level 4 vehicle to ever be fossil fuel powered.

There's one thing I've been thinking about that I don't see anyone else talking about, which is the role of hybrids in the decline of the ICE.

I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that most cars sold in 5 or 10 years will be at least hybrid electric. As battery prices continue to fall, it will make sense to include some electric capacity in addition to an ICE. So let's imagine a future where most new cars have a relatively modest 20 kWh battery with a range of more than 100 Km:

Most people, most of the time, drive short distances that will seldom require the use of the combustion engine and its fuel (many hybrids today come with special fuel tanks to prevent the fuel from "going bad"). Buying fuel will become an increasingly rare thing, and people will start to think of it as an expensive inconvenience. The current ICE fleet is reliant on a large, complex and expensive infrastructure to provide this fuel, and as people buy less and less of it, maintaining it will become less and less sustainable. As fueling stations start closing and the fuel prices go up (will they? I'm not sure about this point), it will become even more costly and inconvenient to fuel a hybrid, perpetuating the cycle.

At some point, the idea of a noisy, dirty ICE running on expensive, hard-to-get fuel will become so unattractive that it's no longer a viable option for most people. While this decline is happening, the cost, range and performance of all-electric will improve to the point where there really is no other reasonable choice.

My 2017 Volt is amazing for these reasons and more: best car I've ever owned.

It's also completely gameified me reducing my carbon footprint: I do everything I possibly can to avoid letting the gas engine kick in, mostly just because it makes me happy to win that game.

Good point. Especially the cost part. If you commute less than 100KM and plugin at work ... you could go months without buying gas and paying about 25% of the price of gas for power. So you would really feel the pinch when you needed to buy gasoline.

There are a lot of similar "long tail" reasons that explain why once cost of electric cars is on par with ice's electrification will speed up. To add to your "gas station" example, most of these stations make profit not from gasoline but from other stuff they sell like cigarettes, sodas, chips etc. Once the traffic decreases, the profitability will drop substantially so their demise will be faster than if you only consider gasoline sales.

My predictions: - once electric school buses are available parents will push for their quicker adoption so their kids don't have to breath in the diesel and its waste products.

- since electric cars require less maintenance automotive parts stores and car service centers will be hit. No need to change oil every few k miles. No need change your muffler, transmission fluid etc. This will make ice parts availability to drop and price to increase.

- if Tesla is successful with its direct sales other manufacturers will eventually follow. Number of dealerships will drop

- some stores like Costco offer gas discounts for their customers. If they see that number of electric cars is increasing they will replace that with free charging spots for the best customers.

- electric cars will (presumably) not be required to do emission testing, which in turn will require states to lower number of emission testing centers. After a while it's possible that these emission centers will be few and far between, an emission testing will become even bigger annoyance that it already is.

- Once number of gas stations starts dropping all of the trucking companies that deliver gas will have harder time making profits. After few of them go bankrupt, gasoline deliver will be more expensive.

- Once sales of gasoline substantially decrease, refineries will have more trouble selling their products, so new refineries will not be build. This will again increase price of gasoline but also the price of heating oil.

- After electric cars hit 10% of the market, ICEs will be considered a "new smoking". Peer pressure will keep growing, having an ICE will be uncool.

- once oil companies stop being as profitable people on the stock market will start moving their money to other stocks. This will force these companies to stop their dividends, which in turn will make them even less attractive.

- states will have to increase taxes on gasoline to make up for the lost revenue. Eventually electric cars will be taxed in some way but before that happens gasoline will become even more expensive.

- once oil production is in decline because of decreased demand, countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia will have to deal with huge economic problems that could lead to crash of their economies. This will make access to oil even harder raising the price of gas even more.

- electric cars will lower cost of batteries, which in turn will make them a better solution for power tools, lawn mowers etc.

«To add to your "gas station" example, most of these stations make profit not from gasoline but from other stuff they sell like cigarettes, sodas, chips etc.»

I think this is why the Convenience stores may (again) out last the pumps outside them. On long road trips, bathroom breaks and snacks/food will still be useful, even in an electric future.

As you also note, the new convenience store is the supermarket and the supermarkets are also best setup to electrify large parking grids as the transition happens.

> "taxis must all be electric"

Interesting! So say we convinced the taxi lobby to demand that all ridesharing vehicles were electric as a nakedly protectionist measure, then a year later convinced citizens to pass an "even playing field rule," we might dramatically accelerate electric car adoption.

I think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not 100% sure...

No need ever? Taking a 350 mile trip to grandma's with the spouse, an infant (and all the infant paraphernalia), a toddler, and dog is still best done with a fossil fuel vehicle today. (The dog precludes practical use of the airlines. The infant and associated crap comes close as well for such a short trip.)

Tesla's top models currently have a range of about 300 miles on the highway. So today you are only 50 miles from your point being strongly debatable. Why do you think 350 or more miles will not be achievable before Level 4 self-driving cars?

Battery swap, rather than super-charging, would also solve this problem.

Yes, and Tesla's top models cost what again? What percentage of families starting out with two young kids are able to buy Tesla's top models?

I get that the prices will come down, but they're not likely to undercut the Honda Accord/Toyota Camry level (which are themselves not even the bottom-of-the-line cars) and certainly not going to undercut the 6-year old ICE commuter car.

> I get that the prices will come down, but they're not likely to undercut the Honda Accord/Toyota Camry level

A used Chevy Volt can be had for about ~$12k (depending on the market), and will cover most common trips with electricity only. But still let you burn gas to get to Grandma's if needed. Minivans are coming out this year that do the same -- in four years, those will be around ~$15k.

That's what folks are talking about. In the future, every car will be either fully electric (Tesla, Bolt) or fully electric with an extra gas-engine backup just for long road trips (Volt, BMW i3).

There probably won't ever be a conventional gas-only level 4 vehicle, because by the time level 4 becomes common, few people will want a conventional gas-only car at all.

That's a pretty smoking deal on the used Volts. I hadn't considered a Volt (or other hybrid) as not "ever be fossil fuel powered", but if you read that as "exclusively ICE" instead of "sometimes ICE", then it certainly qualifies.

I commute in a LEAF and love it and would absolutely consider a plug-in hybrid as a next car (or another LEAF).

> Yes, and Tesla's top models cost what again? What percentage of families starting out with two young kids are able to buy Tesla's top models?

Model 3 (or Chevy Bolt) price sticker is reasonably within the range of currently best-selling sedans (Toyota Camry, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic). If the electricity costs are $0 (public infrastructure and Tesla supercharger network), the 5-year total cost of ownership figures start adding up in favor of electric vehicles. Another variable is service costs - those oil changes can add up, whereas an electric vehicle can reasonably go without a service center visit for a year or more (Tesla's 12-month service consists of washer fluid top-off, wiper replacement and battery replacement for key fob http://www.teslarati.com/what-goes-into-tesla-model-s-annual... )

So while the initial price sticker might be higher, TCO figures favor electric for most people.

I'm confused. Why do you think Honda and Toyota won't be making electric cars? Why do you think electric cars are always going to have premium pricing?

You are strangely focused on the NOW when we are talking about 2040 ... which is 23 years from now.

What seems to be particularly interesting about this is the response from the incumbent automakers. It seemed like they were dragging their feet (they were), but more likely they were waiting for the technology to be affordable for the mass market.

The much fabled EV1 apparently cost GM around 250K apiece [1]. So while it's easy to criticise them and other big automakers for resisting electrification, the tech really wasn't ready until very recently. They basically sat back and left someone else take the risk before jumping in. And now their electrification goals seem pretty aggressive considering the infrastructure.

[1] https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2013/06/27/cars-of-futures-pas...

Get real. The auto makers aren't passive players who "have things happen to them." No, they are active participants who "make things happen." Of course the technology wasn't ready--they didn't build it!

What they should have done is to say, "This is the technology we have to work with today. How can we build a compelling vehicle with it?" That is, in fact, exactly what Tesla did (and continue to iterate).

That's why Tesla started with a $200k+ boutique vehicle and have started to work their way down market. And it might have something to do with the relative market cap of Tesla and GM.

GM did not sit back and let someone else take the risk. They pioneered in this space. The Volt, Spark EV, and now the Bolt are all extremely well engineered cars that are ahead of everyone else in the industry except Tesla. And in one way, ahead of Tesla in bringing such products to a regular mass market consumer. And it is one thing to burn through VC building unprofitable products like Tesla did -- GM brought EVs to market as an established long term corporation that had to drive revenue and profits.

EDIT: in some ways it is precisely _Tesla_ that has let someone else (their investors) take the risk.

Everyone else dabbled in EV. GM actually made seriously good products. Their dealers are shitty at selling them, and the volume of production is low -- but that is for concrete reasons: battery supply, cost of production, lack of demand.

I have a Volt on order. It is a seriously amazing machine. Very few compromises, very much like a best-of-both-worlds scenario. Tesla-fans and EV purists diss it, but it is in many ways the perfection of the hybrid concept and leaning towards EV. I'd love to go pure EV but there isn't a product out there for me yet.

Luckily GM of all companies has something to sell me.

This seems very high, maybe they included research and infrastructure cost in this 250k/unit estimation?

This "NRE" should always be included in the cost of manufactured goods. It's why things like the B2 and F35 are so expensive.

GM only made just over 1,000 EV1s, they were practically hand-built. Such a small run gives them the same kind of cost structure as boutique sports cars.

I'm an EV customer, in a cold climate, far from the Tesla factory and the smooth roads of the Bay Area in California USA. So I've had some experience of the reality of working with this new tech.

Let's do the future-perfect exercise. Let's imagine looking backward from a point in history when 90% of new vehicle sales (by unit) are EVs.

What happened in those years? 1) power cells (the component parts of batteries) became genuine microelectronic parts with fine structure in their insides -- deep submillimeter gaps between anodes and cathodes. That understanding about their manufacture put their cost-per-watt on a Moore's Law kind of curve about nine years ago.

2) vehicles routinely get field upgrades to their battery packs.

3) there's major competition between battery remanufacturing plants and stationary power storage makers for the used battery packs, complete with spam and robocalls begging for the old batteries.

4) the power grid companies, in every US state except Wyoming, have now integrated their distribution systems so there's distributed control over time-shiftable load. In other words, EVs have grid smarts in them and charge when the spot price per kWh is lowest in their neighborhood. It's an auctioning service.

5) in Wyoming there's a pirate electricity auctioning service available via encrypted wireless and Tor to work around the pro-coal lobby's laws.

6) truck stops, everywhere except Wyoming, now have megawatt-level charging facilities. Trucks don't use I-80 to get across the Continental Divide any more.

7) Public housing projects have been compellled to offer EV charging. Apartments without EV charging facilities are now considered substandard. Their slumlords have to discount them at least $200 per month (in 2017) dollars to find tenants.

8) An open standard -- called "STREETNET" -- for vehicle-to-vehicle communication has developed with multiple communication channels. An important channel is modulation in brake-light and running-light intensity. That means a vehicle can announce its status to the vehicle behind it.

9) STREETNET has virtually eliminated compression-wave congestion on limited access highways, by helping drivers and autodrive systems see the big picture and synchronize their speeds and acceleration.

10) Commuter rail is all electric and autodriving, and has been for five years.

Love the brake light idea, simple solution. A radio signal would be one of many, the one directly in front of you needing to be differentiated from the one behind or to the side or on a side street requiring a much more complicated system and protocol that might never be agreed upon and be expensive to implement for retrofitting legacy cars. It makes up for in simplicity what it lacks in features and that could really drive adoption.

Yeah, combined with short range radio you could get a useful system. The lights would announce the sender's vehicle ID (new random number each trip for privacy) and speed / acceleration / whatever from three or four vehicles up front. The radio could announce more detailed vehicle-id-tagged information. A car's receiver can easily filter out unknown vehicle ids.

Random vehicle IDs are probably vital to acceptance.

Anyone who doubts this should go test drive a Tesla.

Smooth, controllable, quiet, but surprisingly-strong acceleration, coupled with the fact that you never have to go to the gas station, make an EV with >200 miles of range a better driving experience than a gas/diesel vehicle, regardless of eco-benefit.

A corollary of this is that residential solar will also become much more attractive. An EV adds maybe $50 per month to your electricity bill; that additional demand makes the math for a solar installation really obvious (particularly with net metering).

I looked at a Tesla. I was a bit disappointed about the quality of it considering the price.

So until it becomes a true luxury car, I will stick with petrol engine luxury cars.

Tesla is still just a "tech demo. " Like you pay a lot to try out a prototype kind of thing.

Kind of how buying a Hololense dev kit is expensive. It's not the quality of the lense that makes it expensive but rather the new tech.

I wonder if Model 3 will change this.

Outside of Tesla there are plenty of options in electric luxury cars. GM has a Cadillac relative of the Volt. BMW has several electric/hybrid-electric options.

I agree. I haven't been looking in a while.

Quality? You mean interior finish? Elon is about mass drivers, the guts are what you pay for.

$90'000 is not mass drivers. That should be the top-of-the-line cast-in-gold interior.

~$70k cash price for the base 75 kWh. ~$90k is for the fully spec'ed 75 kWh version. Of course, it doesn't change your point: $70k is still not for everyone, but $20k certainly makes a big difference.

Mass drivers in physics sense = things which move mass. Car, rocket, orbital rail gun, etc.

I agree but would say a 300 mile range is where the tipping point will be for most people, unless we have a much more dense supercharger network. I haven't been driving anywhere near 300 miles in a single day in the last year and I wouldn't expect to do it without one stop at a gas station, restaurant or rest area. But 200 miles is well within what one does in a strech without stopping, and I've probably done 200 miles in a single day 10 times in the last year.

I wouldn't mind having to recharge frequently. I mind the anxiety about whether I'll even be able to recharge, and how much of my day I'm going to lose waiting for access to a charger.

The 1-2 EV stations in modern garages might cut it while there's hardly ever even one EV parked there, but if adoption outpaces charger installation, they're in for a rough time.

If just three people are in line for a public charger, each needing 30 minutes with it, that's a 90 minute wait.

It's a 90 minute wait iff people execute the handoff like passing a baton in an Olympic relay race. In reality, driver 2 is going to wander off to run a quick errand or get some food (because they can't be sure driver 1 will be ready to drive off at 30m00s000ms), and there will be significant "slippage" in the queue draining.

I've had to wait as long as 15 minutes for a supercharger -- do you have a different experience?

I agree. I think all EVs will ideally have at least a 100 kWh battery pack, which is what will give that 300-350 mile range. Higher-end cars should be switching to 150-200 kWh by 2025.

This is also why I think nobody should bother building EV chargers anymore unless they are at least 350 kW (the latest standard for CCS). Because once they are built, they'll probably stay the same for at least 15 years. 50 or 100 kW chargers will seem useless in 15 years.

A 50kW charger may sound useless, but in just a short 10 minute break (use the restroom, have a coffee, pay and get back in the car) it gives you 8.3 kWh - which on a model S, whose efficiency I find rated between 3 and 3.8 miles/kWh, means from 25 to 31 miles of range. It might easily be the topping off you need to comfortably reach your destination (or a fast charger!) And if we're talking about a fast charger, that can mean 62 miles added in 10 minutes - we're quickly getting into not-at-all-useless ranges.

Agreed it kind of sucks for a full recharge though. On the other hand I already see people fueling the bare minimum to reach another gas station for brand loyalty/affiliate program rewards.

Plenty of Tesla owners don't agree with you, but that's OK: 100% of drivers don't have to agree for it to be a tipping point.

They don't agree because Tesla drivers are those who weren't concerned by that in the first place.

I have a friend who's super-nervous about his laptop battery. The concept that sold him on owning a Tesla was that if he was home, his car would start with a full battery every morning. He only has to think about refueling on long trips, and then he supercharges.

That's why EV adoption will begin with suburbian families, where garages and 2 vehicles will preclude the EV usage simply for commutes.

I calculated and hardly ever broke 90mi on a commute day. For non-commute days, I can do 300mi on a trip (150 roundtrip), but we have our minivan for that - and it's rare.

I would easily buy a 125mi range vehicle (Bolt, Ioniq, eGolf).

And that's the thing; if the EV doesn't have a range of around 300miles you would think of it as a second car, a city car, only suitable for commutes and shopping trips. Plenty of people have a second car, but I suspect many second cars were bought as a primary cars and then downgraded to second car once the family got a newer car. Not many people buy a $35,000 second car.

Are you kidding? The kind of people who can afford a decent second car and the kind who like the idea of an electric are a large and growing population.

The "2nd car only for commute" is a big ripe target market, and most folks have a < 100mi daily commute range.

I think most folks have figured out that hybrid/electrics are simply lower maintenance. The battery failure/replacement fears have essentially been debunked, and the lack of transmissions/clutches/differentials mean less stressful trips to the mechanic.

You are obviously quite young, I'll make three stops on the 210 mile journey I'm making in a couple of weeks.

I don't think the quality of a product itself says anything about its current or projected uptake. There are great products that don't do well.

(Just to be clear, I'm not making any claim here about their level of uptake)

I'm sure it's lovely, but it's about 10 times my car budget?

> Smooth, controllable, quiet, but surprisingly-strong acceleration

To be fair, that's what you get with every EV without any engineering effort (a very, very early prototype of the eSmart I was driving, i3).

I recently watched two episodes of 'Fully Charged' on YouTube that featured real motoring journalists singing the praises of electric to the extent that I don't think that they are really interested in old fashioned cars in quite the same way. One of the guest journalists was Rory Reid of Top Gear fame and I have since warmed to the guy and rate him (rather than think he is some Top Gear sad petrol head person). The other was the guy from the UK Channel 5 motoring show - Johnny Smith - and, again, he knows his electrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDoItji6Gdo

These people are important influencers and they are not making the sad 'Top Gear' jokes about electric cars. Check out how the Renault electric sports car is 'sold' in the above video, why would you buy a conventional hot hatch when you can have something with serious performance that is pretty handy for getting the child seat and baby gear around? These motor journalists also seem pretty pleased with the quiet, the 'brrm brrm' noises are not important unless that is all a car really does, along with lame power slides around a deserted level airfield.

My favourite phrase learned from electric car journalism is the 'guessometer' the range the car apparently says it has.

Electric cars are great however I think that autonomous and electric cars will make roads safe again, so pedestrians and cyclists can use the road without fear of instant death. We will be able to lower the arms race of driving around in tanks, therefore electric bikes will make a lot of sense as will pure pedal bikes. My estimate is that the liner for the front 'trunk' on a Tesla weighs as much as my bicycle so there is a long way to go before I upgrade to a fancy electric car to 'go greener than I am'.

> (rather than think he is some Top Gear sad petrol head person)

For what it's worth, even they are slowly coming around to electrics.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/james-may/james-may-his-new...

You should check out China. The speed they are electryfing their land transport makes breakneck looks like a crawl. It is full with electric bikes, mopeds, small cars, large cars, busses...

Not sure if party decree or self driven but very impressive.

you need very expensive license plate and driving permit to drive car or motorbike, most of Chinese have neither of these, thus popularity of ebikes (no driving permit, no license plate) especially since most of Chinese are stuck all year in megacity they live in and go outside maybe twice a year (spring holiday to see parents, national CCP holiday to travel abroad or around China), electric cars in China are even bigger niche than in West, since even car ownership is extremely low and undercapacitated infrastructure can't deal already even with low car ownership

Likely a decree as they've invested heavily in high-speed rail as well - this isn't a "self driven" thing either.

Small incentives like congestion charges can greatly impact public behavior.

The winner in this may turn out to be GM. Chevy Volt sales are doing well, and Chevy Bolt sales are starting to climb.[1] Some months, GM outsells Tesla in electrics.

[1] http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The article is about a major tipping point in the industry. There probably won't be a single winner - all of the major auto manufacturers already offer, or are developing, EVs. Drivers are expected to choose those electric models in increasing numbers.

From my perspective, a big loser would be Toyota. They seem to have invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cells, which appears to be the wrong technology for a number of reasons, and squandered the significant lead they had with the Prius. It's too bad; they were among the first to mass produce automotive battery packs. A plug-in hybrid Lexus RX would compete directly with Tesla...

As a Prius owner, I'm really dissatisfied with Toyota over the past decade. I thought for sure they'd beat others (perhaps even including Tesla to a workable EV or at least a PHEV with decent range).

The current Prius is a much better car, but marginally more efficient than evan a Gen2. They sold a hybrid minivan in Japan a decade ago, but still hadn't brought it to the states (we got the Prius V instead).

Hell even the Chrysler beat them to a usable hybrid minivan (Pacifica PHEV even with a better EV range than a Prius Prime).

Why would I choose a Prius when I could choose a Bolt, Ioniq, eGolf or others - all of which could support my 70+ mi commute easily with overnight charging.

Toyota, based on how much they continue to invest in the Mirai, looks like they are almost permanently stuck inside the Hydrogen Fuel Cell rabbit hole and it does make you wonder if they dig themselves out.

(To be fair, it's amazing that GM managed to dig out of that rabbit hole, as that was most of their "lost 90s" in R&D, but maybe not surprising it took near bankruptcy to do that.)

US sales of the Toyota Mirai: 1106 units in 18 months.[1]

[1] http://carsalesbase.com/us-car-sales-data/toyota/toyota-mira...

...and? Yes, it's fascinating the Mirai actually hit the market and has managed to sell even that many units, given practically zero Hydrogen Fuel Cell infrastructure. The Mirai alone won't make Hydrogen Fuel Cells actually happen and every major sign (including Science) seems to be pointing to "major investment Hydrogen Fuel Cell infrastructure won't ever happen, and may have too many problems with Hydrogen evaporation even if it did" and "Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars are just okay electric cars with strange batteries you have to refuel using weird infrastructure that doesn't currently exist and might never exist".

I would lump Honda in with the losers too -- they have also invested in hydrogen cars, and I think the only electric car they've ever made is an EV version of the Fit, which you may see driven by the maintenance staff at a college campus near you.

I might also lump Nissan in with the losers -- what have they done since the Leaf, which is now totally outclassed in terms of range?

I'm actually more optimistic about Ford and GM, which are investing heavily in electric cars and self-driving cars, than I am about the Japanese brands.

I say this as a happy Toyota Prius owner. I like my car, but I think electric self-driving cars are where the money is going to be in the future, and I wish Toyota would make a better effort in that area.

I don't think it will take Toyota and Honda long to get on the bandwagon. While they did take a wrong turn with hydrogen (and that's blatantly obvious in Japan where the Nissan Leaf is starting to become popular), they have invested really heavily in electric drive train cars. It's not like they have to start from scratch.

The really big loser among the big boys in Japan is Mazda. They are reportedly just getting into hybrid vehicles in 2019 and while they are also planning a "bespoke" electric vehicle, I really don't think they are taking it seriously (could be wrong).

Mitsubishi has a production electric vehicle that I've seen from time to time in Japan. Again, the Leaf dwarfs it in terms of popularity (at least out where I live), and I'm still not sure what to make of it. I've never seen one when casually looking into a Mitsubishi showroom, and I don't think they really see it as mainstream. If you go to a Nissan showroom, though, the Leaf is front and centre.

It will be interesting to see where it goes. I personally predict that Japan, as a nation, will go electric far before the US does. The distances that people drive here are typically quite short because the speed limits are very low. A lot of people would consider 100km to be quite a long drive. I've also seen charging infrastructure pop up here (mostly in luxury hotels, but also in many businesses and apartment buildings -- alas not the one I live in).

I just got back home to San Jose after a few weeks in Japan, and I see far, far, far more hybrid and electric vehicles on the streets here than I saw in Japan.

Part of the problem is that few Japanese homes have garages (I mostly saw carports, if anything), and few Japanese apartments have any kind of guaranteed parking.

Where are you going to put the charger in Japan? Are you going to install it outside where it will be rained on? If you live in an apartment, are you going to buy a huge extension cord and drag it out to where you parked your car a few blocks away? I suppose the main advantage in Japan is that the charger is very unlikely to be stolen, but still.

The chargers I've seen are actually built into the parking log. [0] Image of ones similar to the ones I've seen. People who have an electric vehicles at home do, indeed, have a large cable similar to what you see on that image. It's better than it looks, because it retracts into the wall. I've never had a close look at ti, but I assume the coupling is protected from water somehow.

Keep in mind that I live in the countryside. Large cities have serious parking challenges. I'm not surprised that San Jose has lots of electric vehicles on the streets (more than Japan), but that is hardly typical of the US. Overall, both countries have very little penetration at this point.

As for hybrids, the top 2 selling cars in Japan last year were essentially the Prius with over 300k vehicles [1]. Admittedly, there isn't anything else making a big impact, but that's still quite a large percentage of the overall market.

[0] http://electriccarsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/cha...

[1] http://www.best-selling-cars.com/japan/2016-full-year-japan-...

Leaf driver (bought second hand), and DIY electric motorbike builder here.

The commercial chargers are all waterproof, with connectors rated IP67 or similar, usually with a drain outlet for any water that does somehow manage to get in the connector. The cables are similarly rated.

The lowest rated cable I own is the "home charge" kit, which takes a normal (UK) 3 pin wall socket and imitates a "proper" EVSE charger for the car with a J1772 connector at the car end. The wall plug bit I currently solved by fitting a waterproof outdoor socket and use that when I need to charge at home.

At some point I should take advantage of the government grants for fitting a proper home charger akin to the commercial ones...

> I just got back home to San Jose after a few weeks in Japan, and I see far, far, far more hybrid and electric vehicles on the streets here than I saw in Japan.

One thing to keep in mind is that in Japan the average age of vehicles is very low, so things could change almost overnight. Japan can be slow to adopt some things but once they do they do it en-mass.

The Japanese real-estate market is also very different, houses depreciate in value and are generally not seen as an investment. A 15-year old house is likely to be bulldozed and rebuilt from the group up by a new owner [0]. This also means the housing stock has rapid turnover and newer models can accommodate EV charging much quicker than in the US.

[0] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-are-japanese-homes-dispo...

In Oslo, Norway, people mostly park on the street as well, and there are a lot of EVs. The municipality provides charging stations around the city, so being outside on a street is not a problem at all. Also, most public parking lots and garages have charging stations as well.

At least in the short term, having a few charging spots here and there (similar to parking spots for handicapped people) might be enough. Make them free to use for overnight parking/charging, and people won't need a garage. Of course you have to plan to scale up the infrastructure in time (which is hard because a parking lot full of chargers can drink electricity in the megawatts), and sooner or later it won't be free anymore, but it's a start.

Japan's public transportation is great, most people don't even need cars there.

The public transportation is great here, but where I live most families still have cars. Not all of Japan is Tokyo.

Japan has a vehicle per capita of 591 cars per 1000 ppl vs the US 797/1000, which is a lot lower but also far far from "nobody has a car".

But tons of people have cars, even in Tokyo where they are more a luxury than a necessity.

I wouldn't count Nissan as a loser, they are very closely linked to Renault who do have more current EV models. Both typically rebadge each other's vehicles for different markets.

Then why hasn't Nissan rebadged some electric Renault vehicles? I suspect Nissan has not seriously considered doing so.

I wish they would. I would love to own the EV version of the Kangoo here in the states.

I suspect that Nissan USA management remembers the outcome from the last time a Renault vehicles were imported into the US [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Medallion

Also, Nissan in Japan and Europe have almost entirely divorced SUV and Truck sales, banishing them to doomed new brands, but Nissan USA doesn't seem to have the guts to do that when they still rely so heavily on those sales for gross margin. Every time I see a Titan ad I wonder if there is a Japanese executive in Nissan cringing.

Tesla doesn't announce monthly sales numbers, and Bolt sales are basically terrible.

Real auto sales numbers don't come from manufacturers. They come from state DMV registrations.

Source? The usual websites seem to quote monthly manufacturer numbers for all companies that provide them, which doesn't include Tesla (quarterly only). Meanwhile, Bolt sales are still terrible.

They only expect to produce 30,000 bolts this first year of production, but sales of the Bolt+Volt YTD are not far behind sales of the S+X:

http://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

The Bolt is a great car, I wished it were more available. The last number I saw was, that they were delivering about 1200 per month - Tesla is at over 2000 cars per week, and that is before the launch of the Model 3.

My local dealership in California was packed more Bolts than they know what to do with, so it sounds more like they just aren't being distributed well yet.

One other consideration to make, once EVs dominate the road space, in many countries, significant levels of tax revenue are generated through petrol receipts. This will no longer be the case and will probably require a move to road pricing.

This will probably be more than outweighed by the savings in public health due to less pollution. Air pollution kills and harms so many people every year.

Sure, but I have zero confidence that policymakers will look at it this way. We all know that budgets are largely non-transferable between departments, so just because we are spending less money on health issues I can guarantee no one will transfer this money over road maintenance. That's not how it works.

Nor should it work that way automatically, IMO. We need a certain amount to spend on X and an amount to spend on Y.

If X becomes cheaper, the right thing to do (IMO) is to return the savings to the people, not to spend the surplus on Y or find a new Z to spend it on. If the people want to choose to spend more on Y or Z now that they've seen the savings on X returned to them, that's perfectly rational possibility, but shouldn't be automatic.

If policy makers cared about health issues due to pollution, smoking would have been outright banned 10 years ago.

There is a difference between polluting your longs, or the entire city. (Although health-care is still costly to others.)

> health-care is still costly to others

That's exactly the point I was making.

In the UK fuel duties are about £27 billion, a big number but out of a total tax take of £745 billion it's not hugely significant.

And we'll certainly save a chunk of that in air pollution medical cases avoided.

~3.6% of total tax revenue is nothing to scoff at.

No but it wouldn't be hard to make up elsewhere and it isn't as if it's going to disapear overnight.

I have a Leaf and while my next car will have longer range, it will be electric.

"EVs will make up 15 percent to 30 percent of new vehicles by 2030, after which fuel “demand will flatten out,” Couse said. “Maybe even decline.”"

Not exactly amazing.

Great news. Beyond the direct savings in CO2, and of course zero emissions inside cities, electrical cars play an important role in shifting towards renewable energy. Electrical cars do not only add their own storage capacity to the grid, mass production of electrical cars is going to push battery prices further down. For switching to an all-electric car market, battery production has to increase about 100x, with the corresponding consequences on the prices.

There will be an interesting point in time, when electrical cars are just a fraction of the market, but prominent enough, that they are considered desirable by a large part of the buyers. Once this point is reached, there will be strong pressure on combustion engined vehicles, as they might still sell based on peoples needs (mostly price, range) but no longer the fancy desired technology which causes people to buy the more expensive and fancy models.

  Electrical cars do not only add their own storage capacity to the grid

I was not aware that this is happening in the USA now.

Their collective capacity is to low (as there are to few electrical cars) to appear on the radar of the utility companies yet, but as their numbers increase, they become important parts of managing the grid. Just controlling the charge time and speed of a million electric cars gives easily a gigawatt of regulation power.

No, I meant in terms of autonomously directing chargers to pull power out of vehicles and back into the grid, as the comment implied.

I think 30% by 2030 is overly pessimistic. I'm simply guessing but since average age of the car on the road in the US is about 10 years, cars bought today will be off the roads by 2027. In ten years it's reasonable to expect that every car manufacturer will have an electric car in every category for a price comparable to regular ICE. Considering environmental and health benefits of electric cars, together with factors like prices of gas, increase in power produced by solar panels etc it does not make sense to think that most people would decide to get the worse option (ICE). I think by 2030 90% cars sold will be electric.

Annoyingly fallacious headline. Illustrative example: The Rapture Is So Real Even Non-Christians Say It's Coming.

Bad habit to evaluate the reality of a thing by how many & what kinds of people say it's "coming."

And this basic skepticism is well-deserved here, because there's no way hauling around your own 2-ton machine to get places, is ever going to be sustainable, no matter how it's powered.

One of the bigger delays to adoption in higher-density areas will be the problem of retrofitting residential parking with charging stations. Condo associations and rental companies won't spend money to install them until their residents are all but begging for them. Adoption in suburbia is relatively straightforward in comparison.

That's what laws are for.

This Tesla Sweden post [0] was doing the rounds a couple of years ago, on the novelties of driving a petrol car when all you've ever driven is an electric one.

[0]: http://teslaclubsweden.se/test-drive-of-a-petrol-car/

Thats pretty ham fisted.

Is there any sort of powerful electric truck in the works? With real towing power?

http://bollingermotors.com/

The model S is the quickest, safest production car ever made. It's even adding to its safety lead, getting safer over time. It may soon be able to make you money ride sharing while you're not using it.

Include things like, no oil to change, cheaper to fuel up, awesome giant touchscreen for nav and control, great all wheel drive option, extra trunk space in the front, low center of gravity, it really all starts to add up to awesome.

Yes, unfortunately privacy doesn't appear to be an option.

Your cell phone, license plate readers, the black box recorded data in event of crash... In the future, other peoples in car camera systems narcing on you. I'm not sure how much longer one will be able to remain private, whether you drive an electric car or not. That being said, it would be great to have an option to drive one's vehicle privately.

Pointing out other issues does not make this one less valid. I am sorry you gave up, others have not.

> The model S is the [] safest production car ever made.

It was the safest car in its class when it came out but I thought cars in other classes were safer, and even there other cars had surpassed it now? E.g. it doesn't have stuff like external airbags for pedestrians like Volvo does.

> It may soon be able to make you money ride sharing while you're not using it.

Soon? You mean, possibly, in the next 10 years soon.

You could allow ridesharing without automated driving, however, the person you were lending your car would have to get to it first. In this case the tesla would be using lots of its automated features, but not the autopilot. It would also suck trying to get back to your car, hehe.

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