What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

The vast majority of people will usually charge overnight and don't need to regularly charge at peak times. Through intelligent charger management, you can distribute the load of charging across the entire off-peak period. The UX for this can be fairly straightforward - by default you charge at the cheapest rate, or you can press a button to get the quickest possible charge.

The real dividend comes from bidirectional charging, using the collective resources of plugged-in cars as a load balancing reservoir. In exchange for a discount on your electricity, the grid can take a small percentage of your EV's battery capacity when needed. A typical mid-range electric car has a 40kWh battery, which represents about four days of electricity consumption for a typical European household.

Nissan and the British utility regulator ran a two-year trial to examine the long-term impact of EVs on local grid infrastructure. The trial used intelligently-managed unidirectional charging. They concluded that about 32% of local electricity circuits will need to be upgraded by the time that EVs represent a majority of vehicles on the road. This figure could potentially be lowered further by bidirectional charging technology.

http://myelectricavenue.info/

America still has huge potential for efficiency savings, because of the immensely high average household electricity consumption. The average American household uses nearly three times as much electricity as the average European household. Air conditioning is only a small part of this disparity, representing about 18% of the electricity consumption of American households according to the Energy Information Administration.

The electrical grid is already sized for peak usage, not average usage. Supercharger stations are also being sized for peak usage, and most of the stalls usually remain empty. Incorporating stationary storage cuts down on the costs incurred by both of these inefficiencies.

However, in regards to cities, you are presenting a situation where the charging station comes to the parked car, rather than the car going to the charging station. While that would be quite convenient, if the charging times are rapidly decreased, there’s no reason car owners in cities would not be able to drive to stations to charge up, as drivers do with gas stations today.

They then had to issue a second report pointing out that their first report said it wasn't going to be a big deal.

http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.p...

The USA spends $500Billion on cars and $400 Billion on gasoline every year. A onetime $trillon upgrade isn't an outsize amount.

Second, cars that are being used will generally spend a fair bit of time parked places other than home. For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at facilities with public chargers to meet their weekly charging needs. This subset will grow as electric charging infrastructure expands to more places.

My wife and I actually own a Chevy Bolt as our only car and park on the street. We don't drive especially far in a typical week (I take mass transit to work and she works from home), but we generally are able to get all our charging in from our parking when we're out and about. And that's just using Level 2 AC chargers. If we drove further each week (or parked in places with chargers less often) we could easily get enough charging in by shifting some of our grocery shopping to Whole Foods so we can use the DC fast charger there while shopping.

Now this is in a city with pretty decent public charging infrastructure (Berkeley, CA) and obviously even within my city this approach won't work well for everyone. Still, I think it shows a possible way forward that could potentially work for a lot of people without necessarily having to have chargers at every street parking space.

You don't need to get the time down to the same as it would take to refuel a conventional car, because unlike filling an ICE with gasoline, you can walk away from a charging BEV.

As BEV become popular, you won't see gas stations that offer fast charging. You'll see supermarkets, shopping malls, stores etc. Places that want to attract customers that have 10-30 minutes to kill. You already see this at places where the infrastructure is ahead, like here in Norway.

For most drivers, this is a win. Although charging takes longer, you're usually wasting less time.

Street parking is not much more of a challenge than any other infrastructure improvement. Does your street have light poles? Adding a charging pole isn't that much more difficult. The two can even be combined. Again, you can look to Oslo, Norway. There are street-side charging poles all over the place.

I get that the US is a bit more challenged when it comes to infrastructure. The governments isn't very effective these days it seems. But it's not impossible.

With all that said. The first people who adopt BEVs, will be people with a garage. Of course the people who have the easiest time adopting a new tech, will be the first to adopt it. But once the BEV+PHEV market hits a critical threshold, you'll see the infrastructure bloom.

It's a pretty simple business model: there will be companies that offer to install chargers for free, on the street side, in shared garages, at shopping locations, etc. In return they'll charge a small fee on top of the electricity. Who wouldn't want a free improvements for their citizens, shoppers, apartment tenants, etc?

Once investors realize that these companies will essentially grab most of the revenue of gas stations in a relatively short span of time, getting investments for this business model will not be an issue.

Having to have the car tied up to a charging station for long periods of time just to do normal kinds of around-the-town kinds of trips - also a non-starter.

Can you imagine a hurricane evac with primarily electric cars? Well, kids, we only made it 50 miles because daddy didn't have hours to charge the car after he got back from work...

Currently gas powered cars have a common fuel and storage that does not "wear out" or become obsolete (a tank). Battery powered cars are not quite that way. Kind of in the same way that battery powered tools all have different, incompatible batteries. Those battery powered tools become obsolete all the time when you can no longer find the batteries, or if you can, its cheaper to buy a new tool. So, until they get interchangeable batteries with compatible interfaces, there's significant risk of premature obsolescence, which could significantly inflate the cost. What are you going to do with a 5 year old car in this situation? That same situation is highly unlikely with gas powered cars.

To be honest, though, electrifying public parking isn't that outlandish either. Fairbanks, Alaska has done it for a while to power engine block heaters.

People who drive a lot will typically visit fast charging stations when they cover longer distances anyway and also usually own a garage.

So, this is a non-issue. Enough peak (fast) charging capacity (when millions of Germans drive to their holidays in Italy e.g.) is a real problem.

Assuming people still want to own their own cars by then.

- drastically reduce air pollution

- make more money selling electricity than just charging for parking

they will quickly start installing plugs everywhere.

Battery range is already at around 500 km for Tesla model S and X and the long range version of model 3, and close to 1,000 km for the new roadster. With the current incremental improvements, in 4-5 years battery range for ordinary medium priced EVs will go beyond 7-800 km on a single charge, super chargers and other chargers will be abundant, and charging will become a non-issue. Within 8-10 years, even the lowest priced EVs will have a range beyond that of combustion engine cars (6-800 km), unless innovation mysteriously were to end.

In fact I thought about patenting the idea 10 years ago but I didn't have the know-how.

That's when this becomes possible: Your car will drop you off, go get charged, and come back if you want it to, or just park off-site and pick you up in the morning.

But now think about zip cars and Uber/Lyft. The price of point to point transit will fall from human wage level to robot wage level.

Imagine those services at a fraction of the cost. And more rides would be available also without the need for paid drivers. They'd also deliver mail and food.

Of course... all this was also omitted by the article. But this does appear to be the consensus regarding where this is all headed.

> PARKING: Slightly more than nine in ten American households (91 percent) have at least one car, van, or light truck at home for personal use.

> Because 71 percent of homeowners and 35 percent of renters have more than one vehicle, parking space can be a real concern. Garages or carports are common for households living in single-detached units–just over three in four of these homes (76 percent) have a covered shelter for vehicles. Townhouses or row houses, on the other hand, include a garage or carport less than half the time (46 percent). In both mobile homes and units in multi-unit buildings, the proportion is 26 percent.

> At homes without a garage or carport available, vehicles may be left either on the street or in a driveway, parking lot, or other off-street space. For homes without a garage or carport, some kind of off-street space is available at 87 percent of the detached units, at about 75 percent of both the single attached units and units in multi-unit structures, and at 90 percent of the mobile homes.

> All this leaves about 7.8 million households who must rely on street parking. Of course, not all of those households have vehicles. Four in ten households who report no offstreet or garage parking also have no vehicles.

That suggests there are roughly 4.7 million of 100 million households that park on the street. That's small enough that electric vehicles could 'take over' even if those people were holdouts.

[1]: https://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/ahb-9901.pdf

https://electrek.co/2017/11/14/london-electric-car-charging-...

Governments and corporations are making plans based on those assumptions. I've not heard anyone credibly argue against it, though there may be quibbles about the exact timing. (And of course, there's geographical variation based on gas prices, government policy, average driving distance etc. so some areas will get there first).

Price deflation of new cars should force the prices on second hard cars down too.

So any argument about EVs being expensive or elitist or whatever is wrong in the medium term.

Musk realized the economics and decided (best underpants plan ever) to start at the enthusiast-luxury end with the sports car.

But, his crucial point was that for people already in the luxury market, he'd be able to quickly drop the enthusiast requirement. The cost of batteries that compete with a fuel tank on range does not scale with the rest of the car. Tesla now competes on a side-by-side basis, price considered. They are only in the higher price segments still, but have definitely reached the tall part of the curve with the 3s. He also predicted that the luxury threshold^ above which an EV competitive, would gradually fall.

So, so far he's been right (tsla as an investment... separate discussion. The other stuff ...charging stations, used car markets, etc.. those are are effects, not causes.

I do think the last leg of the price game will be tricky though. Subsidies don't make sense anymore. The innovation has been stimulated already. The volume is going up and keeping up subsidies will be expensive. People will also eventually kick up a fuss about subsidizing some yuppie lawyers nice new car. Cleaning these up is a process because they're a mess. Manufacturer subsidies, buyer subsidies. Lower car tax, which is now a carbon tax.

The biggest subsidy is probably fuel. 40l of petrol (about 500km) costs €50-€55. Half of that is tax. VAT & excise. EVs are exempt by default. These are serious, budget busting taxes. My guess is that EVs will eventually need to pay these, one way or another. They still need roads and such.

Long road until you can pick up a 7 years old Tesla for €5k, but we seem to be on it. The destination will be inevitable long before we reach it.

^The price category.

Maybe that's why we have more EVs per capita than anywhere else, and are still investing heavily in improving public transportation. You can do both.

You can even do electric buses. Oslo just got deliveries of its first ones.

I think we'll start to see many smaller self-driving buses, and that more people will prefer these over driving. I know I would. The only reason I prefer driving to work right now is that I have to switch from bus to train when doing public transportation. I don't get enough time in one vehicle to calm down and read something. If it was more or less direct, I'd prefer it, even if I had to walk a bit longer (I consider that a benefit actually). Buses have dedicated lanes here, so it shouldn't take much more time even with a couple of stops along the way.

But that's the future. There are still millions of personal cars sold, and will be for a long time forward. These needs to be EV. Besides, EVs technology will facilitate the development of these self-driving buses. It's easier and safer for a bus to charge itself, than to fuel itself. It's also easier to test self-driving tech in a large fleet of smaller cars.

The other problem in my country is that the public transit networks are already at maximum capacity - train network in particular is struggling. There's pushes to spread people out more, away from rush hour, but employers and the people themselves have to be okay with that too. But yeah, public transit has a maximum capacity, just like roads do.

And of course in the US, the public transit network is substandard, and getting it up to par will take a huge investment - cities will need to be uplifted, etc. But in the US the problem is more political - there's no business that wants to invest billions in a public transit network. And if a government sets it up people will complain that their tax dollars (all three of them) go to things they don't make use of. It's a cultural issue there. The US - and SF in particular - could be in the forefront of public transit for everyone, but nope, muh government.

Full rant mode engaged: The US is the richest country in the world with some of the richest people in the world, but it's not being invested in basics like access to transportation, health care and education to make quality of life for its inhabitants better.

that escalated, sorry.

Everywhere in the world I have traveled, I have noticed that usually 1) public transportation is limited only to a town/city, and 2) private buses to move between cities/provinces are limited by market forces, and thus put a penalty on people living farther from economic drivers. Which forces people in remote areas, who on average make less money, to own cars to get to jobs [which robs them of time and money they could be investing in their future etc].

The only way to change the inequality of people getting to jobs/goods/services is to remove private car ownership and institute nation-wide public transportation, and subsidize the more expensive parts of the network. Not only would this be cheaper overall and more efficient overall, it would raise the GDP, reduce pollution, reduce debt, reduce traffic fatalities, and increase upward mobility.

People think cars give them freedom, but they never think about the societal cost.

Virtually everyone would dash off their shitty trains and busses in a moment and hop into cars. Even if you told them it would lead to mass congestion they'd point to people whose job it is to stuff people onto trains when they get too full. If you told them it would lead to pollution they might be swayed, but then if you told them electric cars were basically right on the horizon that would seem like an acceptable trade off.

You are arguing for a world that for most of the US would be considered objectively, demonstrably worse than the status quo. Just because you and your personal social circle lives in urban areas and doesn't need or want cars is virtually irrelevant to the national conversation because you are a tiny fraction of a minority that is not going to get any traction as self-driving and electric vehicles become the norm.

Public transportation in the US has already hit its apogee. Nobody wants it outside of dense urban cores, and the nation is largely not urban cores, nor will it be just because you wish it was.

Or else small portable batteries need to become more common.

Or I could envision a service where, if you run out of electrons, you tap a button and a drone is dispatched with a portable battery to your location. Or maybe the car itself could place the call automatically.

Not always the case. There's plenty of petrol powered cars that have horrible range. Thing with electric cars is they'd be plugged in when parked (ie overnight). ~300 miles on electric might not sound like much, but do normal people drive 300 miles every day? nope. If their car is fully charged every morning they should never run out of battery power. Long trips, yeah it's a problem that'll need to be fixed but really not all that different from being stranded in the middle of no where miles from the nearest station. Likely roadside assistance will have portable chargers or just simply tow you to the nearest charger.

For example GM’s list price for the Bolt battery is $15,734. Now this is the replacement cost Bolt owners pay for a new battery not the actual cost, but it gives an indication of their cost.

https://electrek.co/2017/06/12/gm-bolt-ev-battery-pack-price...

Mind you I wonder if electric cars can get a million miles out of them, like well maintained conventional cars can do.

But modern high-end automatics are in fact smoother than most humans. Racecar drivers might be smoother still but even they use flappypadle automatic sequential gearboxes at the very top end of racing because even the best trained humans are just too slow.

Curiously, racing electric cars use gearboxes too.

The sound can be pleasing, but the smell? I always thought gasoline smells and exhaust fumes smell awful. Maybe it's because I never owned an ICE vehicle myself.

Fueling a car is a very unpleasant experience to me.

It's part of the reason why, after my last road-trip, my wife and I decided we would rather wait for the EV to charge (and grab some food, stretch legs, maybe even a short hike etc.) than to borrow or rent an ICE. To be fair though, the other reason is the ICE we usually borrow is stick shift, so the difference in comfort when driving is huge, especially on curvy roads (In addition to no gear shifting, EVs usually do a lot of regenerative breaking when releasing the gas pedal, so you don't have to use the break pedal as much. I really missed that).

Some here have commented that the sound can be a safety feature. A lot of EVs/hybrids already have added that, but generally only at low speeds. Sometime it can be turned off, so if don't want to disrupt the neighbors, like late at night, you can turn disable it (since it's on by default, I'd think people would drive extra carefully if they turn it off).

I don't know about the smell, but once people realize how dangerous is a car you can't hear coming, they will start adding some sound, and what's better than a traditional car sound? The sound will be easily faked using samples from well known engines played according to the current speed by transducers under the car. There will be probably a market for such addons and traditional auto makers could even patent their sound once they realize there is a market for their recordings. Allowing paid download in realtime of "today's hottest car sound" in seconds when you start the car in the morning could become a business, so that news like someone arrested for pirating the sound of a 911 Carrera could even become the norm one day:)

This was achieved with CVT (Continous Variable Transmission). I did not like to drive one, but it already exists.

Also I currently have a car with 7 gear automatic transmission and the acceleration is pretty smooth.

>lurchy, awkward automatic transmissions fade into distant memory.

Again, newer automatic transmission aren't bad anymore.

I'll get an electric car like everyone else. But I dream about having a '68 Mustang :-)

I'm fairly confident that point of no return has already been passed. Permafrost has stared to melt a while ago, causing bacteria to take hold of things they couldn't for x amount of years, catching up on releasing co2 and such that would otherwise have been in the atmosphere a long time ago already.

Depends; in my country there were / are significant cost / tax benefits for getting hybrid and fully electric cars (for lease cars, and there's quite a lot of those here). If driving an electric car is cheaper then people will go for that too. Does Tesla still do free usage of the supercharger network for the Model S? That's another incentive, given the cost of electricity over time.

Safety is not easy.

When electric drivetrains become the standard, nothing will be different. These automakers will still have these advantages over upstarts.

On the other hand, there will be cars charging at daytime (either at fast chargers, or while the owner is at work); and there are some power stations that can only work during the day. I don't know which of these two factors is bigger.

I wonder if fusion power will become viable within the next 50 years, and whether it gives us fuck-you amounts of power at low cost. Probably not, nuclear power is far from free too.

That decreases the number of needed cars by an order of magnitude.

From another NYT article -- https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/business/automakers-prepa...

Also, Google lists the size of the US auto loan industry (i.e. money owed by buyers) as $1.1 trillion. Since auto loans average around 5 years, that would mean that the US alone spends at least $200 billion per year on automobiles (more probably, since that wouldn't count people who buy their cars outright or pay their loans off early), and we're nowhere near half the world market. IIRC, our auto market is only slightly larger than Europe's.

Toyota alone reported $43 billion gross profit on $247 billion revenue.

There'd be less gridlock if people did more carpooling, buses, or drove more on motorcycles.

Once you realise this, you can see electric cars for what they are: An improvement to personal safety (not explosive, no human exposure to toxic fluids, bigger crumble zone).

Riding sharing is about utilizing a vehicle in a temporally more efficient way, but it does little to improve spacial efficiency during peak times.

The commuter rails, subway, and buses are far more dense than a fleet of self driving cars with one to two people in each can possible be. Even with the increased density that might plausible come from better driving and so more tightly spacing, it would simply be impossible to get everyone into and out of their offices across Manhattan during the communing windows without the density of mass transit vehicles and the utilization of underground space.

That's just incredibly dumb. If you do this, you have misunderstood the entire point of EVs.

An EV could be fuelled by coal today, and wind/solar tomorrow. They are extremely flexible and becomes greener as the grid does.

If you're concerned about the environment and green technology, you're obviously going to fight for both EVs and a cleaner grid. Both those solutions are absolutely necessary to solve the problems.

Meanwhile, an ICE is just not part of any viable solution at all.

The only time perspective that matters for the environment, is the long term. It doesn't matter what 100'000 EVs emit today. What matters is where we are in 20 years: hopefully with 100s of millions of EVs charged by a mostly clean grid.

This "EV fuelled by coal" talking point is primarily pushed by the fossil fuel industry btw. They are not concerned about the environment. They're just interested in protecting their industry. I haven't heard anyone who actually cares about the environment focus on this, because if you do care, you know better.

That being said, coal has to go anyway. I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.

https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasol...

Ontario's power generation is primarily nuclear, then hydro, then wind, with a small percentage being gas turbines. https://cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectrici...

I can charge my electric car here and comfortably assume that it is clean energy.

Where I live (NY), coal is either gone or on the way out. Electricity comes from hydro, gas and nuclear. Coal is getting killed by natural gas.