A majority of auto executives still think battery electric cars will fail
electrek.co
electrek.co
Recharge time, range anxiety and the like are irrelevant when you pay for the ride, not the equipment.
Four months ago I got rid of my three cars, replacing them with a flat-rate Uber pass and the occasional rental. Life has been easier and cheaper — and I don’t live in a city.
The car companies themselves are screwed unless they switch, long term, to selling rides as a service themselves. Nobody wants to be a seller of commodity product to a monopsony.
Not being sarcastic: genuinely curious. I hate driving And can’t wait for cars that really can drive themselves (even though my cars were manual mission — go figure). I also want everyone else’s car to drive itself too as that way they can drink and/or use their phones without risking my life.
And owning a big chunk of m talk like that is a waste of money.
As for why it's dystopian. I'm now supposed to be entirely dependent on the whims of a third party private service for how I move around day to day. That sounds horrible.
This is why sometimes you just have to "reboot" an industry or other system and replace its institutions. IMHO the next industry that deserves a full reboot is Hollywood.
* The practical range of an electric car isn't great. There's no foreseeable story for a <5 minute charge.
* (Compared to fuel cells) Banks of batteries are dangerous in a crash.
I think the Electrek authors are wrong in their take on the situation. Distribution of the hydrogen will have razor thin margins just like gas stations. They're right that the current process for hydrogen isn't exactly efficient today, but that doesn't really sink the tech.
It might not be full fuel cell but a hybrid fuel cell battery car might end up being the best of both worlds.
There are 39 hydrogen fueling stations in the entire US [3]. There are 8500 Tesla Superchargers alone [4] (not to mention destination chargers, as well as non-Tesla charging stations [5]).
[1] https://electrek.co/2017/01/30/electric-vehicle-battery-cost...
[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2564
[3] https://www.afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html
Just because you can almost drop those directly into the infrastructure used for gasoline. Hydrogen also sucks to store.
Electricity is the way forward.
Electricity is probably cleaner.
That doesn't mean that battery cars won't have a lasting place in the market: pure commuting cars that can afford long recharge times are likely to be a major chunk of the market. But they are unlikely to be the whole of the market, ever.
80% in 30 minutes, which gets you to the next Supercharger. You don't want to fuel to 100% whenever possible, as its slower than pouring electrons into an empty battery.
Which is still much longer than 100% fill on a fuel cell (or gas vehicle.)
Yes, that's why I said that cars optimized for different roles are likely to survive in the market rather than only one surviving.
The range of electric cars already meets the weekly average car usage (most people drive ~230 miles in an average week). You don't need <5 minute charge if you only need to charge once per week.
Yes, long trips are a thing, but they are exception, not the rule. Even if they weren't an exception, ~230 miles is nearly four hours of non-stop driving. A ~30 minute break every four hours isn't going to kill anyone, and may even save lives in reduced road rage alone.
> (Compared to fuel cells) Banks of batteries are dangerous in a crash.
Compared to banks of batteries, gasoline is dangerous in a crash (by a huge margin).
Also, while the fuel cells themselves are safer, you still have a risk of hydrogen explosions carting around a hydrogen tank, or refueling at hydrogen stations. Batteries at this point aren't so much more prone to explosion when charging by comparison.
That's why Toyota hasn't entirely fallen behind in the Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicle, despite investing far too much in Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles. The PHEV for them is a side-game that benefits directly from a lot of the money they are throwing trying to make HFCV work, simply because they can use the same electric engines, regen breaks, etc, despite many of their executives apparently still thinking that batteries are a fad waiting for Fuel Cell infrastructure.
No, the reason is that they also invested heavily in plug-in hybrids directly, even while working on Fuel Cells, having at one point announced a plan to make their whole line plug-in hybrids (but sales arc for their existing hybrid lines, including plug-in a, fell off what they expected when they made that announcement, so it fell by the wayside.)
> The PHEV for them is a side-game that benefits directly from a lot of the money they are throwing trying to make HFCV work
Hybrids (including plugins) are more like the Polaris while they work on Poseidon than a side-game. They have parallel short-term and long-term strategies.
The use of the term side-game has nothing to do with how heavily they are investing in parallel strategies, but an implication in how their executives see those strategies. To them PHEVs [and hybrids in general to them] are still a "side-game" because they are making (very) good short-term profit, but the executives still seem to be playing as if they expect to lose that game in the long run, are ready to "fold" that work at any moment, and that Hydrogen is the game they expect to win.
Batteries have come a long way, making electronic expensive but workable, but even then 30 minute fast charge times are a bottleneck for general acceptance as is the range they can put in a sub-$30K vehicle.
And even the above might not be a hunderance if hybrids didn't exist. Problem is that electronic is competing in a marketplace with hybrids able to be "recharged" at the pump in minutes, with superior range, lower prices ($23K start for a Prius), and even the ability to be plug-in for all electric short journeys (e.g. Prius Prime).
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want a Model 3, but they're still right overall.
The Bolt, Model 3, and Nissan Leaf 2.0 are all very well on the way to setting "cheap" high-range battery electric cars.
"Edge" charging (home, office park, grocery/mall shopping) is a game changer that isn't being marketed very well to the general public (and yes, has issues for non-homeowners in the short/immediate term, but that's a separate discussion) yet. On average, a car sits more than it is driven, and all that time is a charging opportunity. The electric distribution industry doesn't need to compete with the gas supply chain here: gas needs to compete with electricity.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells replace one terribly over-complicated supply chain for an even more terribly over-complicated supply chain, and again, it can't compete in the long term with the commodity electricity infrastructure already in place.
A 30-minute stop every ~250+ miles isn't a big bottleneck. Single trips of that length or more are almost entirely in the long tail of car trips, beyond the median, mean, and mode. American car culture is uniquely steeped in some macho idea of driving halfway across an entire continent just for a weekend getaway, and that's not going to be stymied by a few extra 30 minute breaks (and might be better for it, with a few more drivers a little less road hangry or exhausted).
I have driven electric cars for 4+ years. I have charged in public ONCE -- and that was mostly for entertainment value. I didn't bother with a fast charger at home, either, I just plug it into a regular outlet.
Whenever the car is home, it's plugged in. It trickle charges overnight. So typically, it's almost always at 100% or close enough when my wife or I leave the house. Anyone with a parking spot _at home_ with access to a power outlet can do the same. Public charging stations just don't matter in this usage pattern. Home charging capabilities matter way, way more.
Now, this is for a city car -- and we've had electric cars with limited range (100 miles). But you quickly find that it's very rare to have a reason to drive more than 100 miles in a city in a day.
In cases of a super-long commute, or a driving-heavy job, things are different, but in those circumstances, gas cars or longer range electrics would win out anyway.
But the 80/20 case for most people who live in cities is the city car pattern, and for that pattern, electrics with home charging work fine.
(All the above only applies for the next 5-10 years while cars can't drive themselves. After that, none of this matters, and apparently most auto execs still don't see that either.)
Its like candlemakers got to see the worlds first lightbulb for the first time, and are going "well, the glass is really fragile. And the electricity still has to come from somewhere". That's not wrong, those are all true points. But it seems crystal clear that despite the early shortcomings this technology will lead the future.
Electric Cars seem the same way. There are edge cases they don't handle today, this is true. But electrics can already handle 80%+ of all driving needs today, and those remaining edge cases are being solved at a fairly rapid pace.
In just the last few years, we've already seen the range rise substantially and the prices drop slightly. (Compare the 2011 Leaf with ~84 mile battery had a base MSRP of $34k (inflation adjusted to $38k in 2017 dollars), to the current 2017 Bolt with ~238 mile battery at a base MSRP of $36k). And of course, used vehicles are bringing the TCO down, so much so that even middle class people can easily afford electric cars. Older used Nissan Leaf cars often sell for as low as $9k.
It seems obvious to me that this technology will continue to improve so that for those people who can't switch to electric today, they will certainly be able to in the near future.
Regarding climate change and CO2 emissions, electric cars fail too : making the car AND producing the electricity to run it still produces way to much CO2. (most electricity still comes from coal)
If I had to make a bold prediction : in the future, individual cars (running on gas or electricity) will be rare !
However, energy density is a legitimate complain about batteries, but it’s unreasonable to compare to gasoline.
Highly dependent on location. At the end of 2016, CA was is less than 5% usage and 0.2% production of coal powered electricity. Many other places are following as well.
Fossil fuels (coal, gas - on which CA depends for more than half its electricity production BTW) represent more than 60% of electricity produced worldwide.
This is not true anywhere in the US, and use of coal is in decline everywhere.
Still, when you look at the picture at the 'planet' level, taking into account the big 'giants' whose consumption per capita has yet to reach our western standards - say China, India - Coal is STILL the 1st source for electricity worldwide (source : http://www.tsp-data-portal.org/Breakdown-of-Electricity-Gene...)
It's consumption is deacreasing worldwide, sure...Maybe because resources of coal are in decline ? It's still the 1st resource to produce electricity, with 40% of electricity produced. (electricity is only one part of the energy we consume...)
I don't see it as depressing that they think this.
It's depressing that they could be right.
> “more than half (54%) of global auto executives say they believe these vehicles will fail commercially due to infrastructure challenges while 60 percent say excessive recharging times will do them in.”
Sounds like valid arguments.
> According to the survey, which polled nearly 1,000 executives (including 90 in the United States), more than three-quarters of executives think that fuel cell hydrogen vehicles will be the future.
So not depressing at all. They think the alternative fuel of the future will be different, but still off of fossil fuels. That sounds fine.
This "article" is terrible.