One of 2 things needs to happen, either charging technology improves to the point where you can charge at a gas station in a span of time comparable to refueling a conventional car, or all street parking spots need to be fitted with charging ports for overnight charging.
Neither thing looks likely to happen soon.
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.
Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world")
> We don't drive especially far in a typical week
This is a good point, EV range is already long enough that many urban drivers will not need to charge every day.
> 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 point exactly: to reach close to 100% EV market penetration, so will the infrastructure need to grow to 100%. Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers (or, charging time will need to decrease).
This is still a problem if you can charge in 5 minutes.
Throw in a few fast ones for the people who need them and you are sorted. The fast chargers can be multi-head too, so even if someone finishes charging and doesn't come back someone else can still use it. Most rapid chargers are like that.
Also, if it's still a problem with a five minute charge, why doesn't it affect petrol pumps?
Or you glue on half a parking meter to turn the electricity on and off.
Do you have any numbers, or are you guessing?
An average Nissan Leaf battery is about 24kwh (although some cars have much smaller or larger batteries). So if you assume an average Leaf is totally empty, and charging to completely full, that would be a little less than $3 of electricity for roughly 84 miles of range.
To charge a car quickly takes a lot of electricity. But to trickle charge a car takes very little electricity. You can charge cars on as little as 120 volts at 8 amps -- that's less electricity than the average plug-in space heater.
A small parking lot could easily handle 20+ cars simultaneously charging overnight, with just a single standard US household circuit. (100 - 150 amps).
But why didn't you consider other costs, such as equipment installation and maintenance?
And what about the grid? Can the grid sustain the equivalent amount of energy that the nation's cars burn every day in gasoline?
When car parks need to charge hundreds of cars at a time, it will be proditable for them to they will build power providing structures.
Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capable of dealing with ICE will become more scarce and expensive, etc...
At some point, the annoyance of owning an EV for some of the extreme edge cases will be less intense than the annoyance of owning an ICE vehicle. Even without proper infrastructure, the switch to an EV will be the only sensible move, even if it requires changing your habits.
It feels like you are making them mutually exclusive, it's far more likely there will be significant overlap... Do you remember the LCD TV transition? There was a period where you could basically get TVs with huge screens for free. That period mostly passed and now LCD TVs are also more reasonably priced anyway. Something similar will no doubt happen with the EV transition, unless an outside force ban them (i.e heavy handed government regulation, like Japan's 5 year car rule or something).
For the gas stations, that infrastructure will also transition, and those huge fuel tanks sunk into the ground aren't going anywhere, i'm sure they will continue to sell petrol along side EV charging stations.
Also all those millions of mechanics with decades of experience aren't about to suddenly forget all their ICE specific knowledge. Additionally parts from breakers yards will will probably be near free.
You think I’m letting that pass without pointing out that the fuel tanks are a sunk cost? Gas stations are really convenience stores, they don’t make money on fuel. The only difference will be that we pull up in an EV to get our Big Gulp. Gas or no, that real estate will still be used to sell you chips and lottery tickets.
In the Seattle area, I know of at least three shops that specialize in VW vans, a vehicle last sold in the U. S. over 25 years ago. Three, for a vehicle that wasn’t that popular in the U. S. when you could buy them new. Yeah, yeah, hippy-wannabes and nostalgia, but the fact remains that more than one shop stays in business working on ICE vehicles that are old enough to have been doing keg stands for four years.
That is true, yet it makes no difference to my point.
All but the most poorly run will pay whatever is needed to install electric chargers and stay in the game.
For instance at the moment in the UK many supermarkets are putting mini stores in petrol stations.
However with electric charging taking longer, I can imagine that McDonalds might start buying up petrol stations.
Edit: Also this discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/5los32/can_a_t...
Sure, same as it used to be awkward to have to hunt around for a power point in a coffee shop/mall/etc or to figure out where had wifi. Now that's pretty standard fare.
Just like EV charging is today - in most countries there's quite a lot of places you can go to charge at. Soon it'll be every mall and shopping centre, because (at first) it'll be a way to attract customers, and then eventually it'll be expected.
Plus, many gas stations are like mini shopping centers now.
I'm not sure "taking over the world" is necessarily equivalent with universal adoption. Getting to a substantial majority of new car sales (currently only around 1% in the US) would qualify in my mind.
> Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers
Increased EV adoption will incentivize more investment in EV chargers. The chargers at businesses like Whole Foods are being installed with private capital because they think it makes business sense. More EVs means more demand for public chargers which will in turn justify increased investment in those chargers.
Another solution (for some) would be to have a charging port in your parking lot at work.
Is the supermarket really the only place you don't park on the street? I realize at the present moment, it might be the only lot/garage you park in with a charger, but as EV adoption increases more public chargers will sprout up.
My point is that opportunistic charging while parked places people go already can meet the needs of at least some street parkers. I don't panic if there are no charging spots available when I park somewhere, because I'm not depending on any one single parking session to charge my car. I get a little charge here and a little there and in aggregate it meets my weekly charging needs (most of the time anyway, weeks with substantially higher mileage need special handling currently).
This is not to say it will necessarily meet your needs anytime soon; however, I think we are at a point where the relative price is the biggest hurdle to adoption. There's a lot of people for whom an EV would be practical with current infrastructure that don't have one. As more of those people buy them, there will be additional incentive to invest in public charging infrastructure. The more public charging infrastructure there is, the more practical EV ownership is for people who can't easily charge at home.
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.
As for wearing out, taxi companies with leafs have over 200k on the packs and they are still good. Teslas have hit 500k miles and are still find. All that "new battery every five years" stuff turned out to be nonsense.
This is plainly wrong. Let's say it's a Tesla Model S which has a real world range of about 400 km. That is about four hours of driving. I sometimes drive 600 km easily, with one longer break to eat and maybe a few shorters breaks to pee or just get out of the car and walk around a bit.
Your other statements are also somewhat exaggerated, see for example: https://insideevs.com/exclusive-interview-with-steve-marsh-a...
> 150k miles
> 50% capacity
> not used in the cold anymore > No more regenerative braking
> 35 mile range now
> Using the QC (quick charger?) more than once a day voids battery warranty> a break or breaks totalling at least 45 minutes after no more than 4 hours 30 minutes driving
and
> 9 hours in a day - this can be extended to 10 hours twice a week
https://www.gov.uk/drivers-hours/eu-rules
The range of a 100KWh model S on the page for the UK ranges from 319 miles at 70mph (four and a half hours) to 514 miles at 45mph (eleven and a half hours). At 100KWh and 3+ miles per KWh (https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/real-world-range-new-o...) that's still 330 miles, plus.
Certainly seems like a reasonable claim that the battery can last longer than you can safely drive, particularly if you're not gunning it down a nice fast road.
Mind boggling.
range > charge times > cost. of the first two I am not sure which is easier. besides the cost difference of the power trains there is a serious weight difference as well that was no addressed
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.
Like all infrastructure projects there is an initial outlay.
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.
Lighter and higher capacity batteries would be ideal, but I'm not sure how feasible that is with current battery tech. I gathered one manufacturer was working on solid state batteries for use in cars, which should give more capacity at the same weight? not sure.
Assuming people still want to own their own cars by then.
Still only feasible if you're okay spending an extra half an hour traveling and your destination is hard to reach / expensive park at though. If that's automated it'd be neat. I mean it already sorta is if you have a good bus network, but those generally aren't door-to-door. There's also taxis, that is, if you're rich enough you can afford to take a taxi to work every day. Might even be the gig economy / uber becomes cheap enough to make it compete with public transit.
- 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.
Also battery tech doesn't follow mores law so we aint going to get an order of magnitude change in battery tech ever
A "modest" 5-10 percent improvement like we've seen historically, for another 7-10 years, and we have more or less doubled the energy density of batteries. Plenty for EVs to beat combustion engine cars.
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/08/daily-...
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-battery-energy-density...
There is no need for a nobel prize level breakthrough.
These modern technologies like photovoltaic and eletric vechiles are already viable today. They are within the same order of magnitude as the technology they are replacing and the gap is decreasing with every year.
There is a lot of useless crap out there that doesn't at all work like gravity batteries. EVs and PV are not part of that category.
In fact I thought about patenting the idea 10 years ago but I didn't have the know-how.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-shuts-down-battery-swap-prog...
https://electrek.co/2017/09/15/tesla-new-battery-swap-techno...
Here is a HN classic about "Better Place", a company that rolled out "battery swap" electric cars in Israel. https://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pl...
unless you can get all car manufacturers to agree
to a universal standard for batteries
I suppose one solution would be that cars have two batteries. One battery that is specific to the make/model of the car and one battery that is easily replaceable. So perhaps the cheap Renault basically only has the replaceable battery while the Tesla X has 70% of its battery capacity in it's super awesome main battery and only 30% in the 'crappy' replaceable battery which you only replace when you quickly need an extra 100 miles of range.
It might happen over time when infrastructure is better established.
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.
Either you are very unoptimistic about electric cars, or have an unrealistic view of what self driving is going to mean.
Electric cars are gaining traction, and by all accounts will be 10-20% of new cars by say 2023-2025. A completely driverless self driving car on the other hand is still a fantasy, despite Elon musk's constant claims.
> 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.
https://electrek.co/2017/11/14/london-electric-car-charging-...
Main barriers to self-driving will soon be juridical, not technological. This is not just random internet rambling. I'm an engineer and have been working on commercial autonomous vehicle subsystems for a while. I can with full confidence say that the technology is already there.
[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/parking-is-hell-a-new-freako...
Why?
Normal acceleration and maintaining speed is trivial to handle with simple control loops. This isn't like e.g. phase detect autofocus where you want to supply a single input at the start to get to the correct end position; accelerating a massive vehicle takes a significant amount of time, such that a control loop has to: - gradually increase the accerator input from the start point - decrease accelerator input as the desired speed is approached - maintain a constant speed
This is trivial for a control engineer.
In some ways ICEs are easier than electric motors - you get free damping on your accelerator input!
Outside of normal driving, you also have emergencies, where surely the alternatives are basically braking, steering, and hard acceleration, which respectively require engine inputs of 0 (i.e. no gas), no change (or again 0), and max. And hard acceleration is almost never the answer to emergencies anyway.
When does a self driving car need to know "provide exactly X power to the engine", where X is none of [0, a little less than currently, no change, a little more than currently, max]?
Source for control loops: On a general engineering course bachelors, our 1 days labs included one of which a part was writing speed control software for ICEs and one of which a part was writing position control software for an electric helicopter.