Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

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> over the next 7-12 years there will be countries banning petrol/diesel cars

I do not think so. At most, in that timeframe we will see countries starting to ban sales of new cars which are not plug-in hybrids or better. And then remember the average lifespan of a car today is ~20 years, you will still see old pure petrol cars on the roads in 2050 is my bet. Just like you still see old cars on the road today without any catalytic converters.

If you look at the electric car market today, you have lots of small cars with reasonable-ish range, one sedan with good range and two pretend-SUVs (Model X and I-pace) with good range.

No manufacturer anywhere makes a pure electric estate car (station wagon); this is the most popular type of car in Europe. Nobody makes an electric pickup; this is the most popular type of car in the US. Nobody makes an actual SUV, Ford Expedition/Toyota LandCruiser/etc. style that can fit four mountain bikes in the trunk and tow a 9000 lbs trailer. Nobody makes an electric commercial vehicles of the type electricians, plumbers etc. drive.

What do all these have in common? Inherently terrible aerodynamics / poor mileage and a relatively frequent need to go long distance trips. If you take current battery tech and do some optimistic extrapolation of future developments, you still end up with battery packs costing $50k+ and weighing several thousand pounds. Which isn't going to work anywhere, nobody is going to buy an $80k+ electric pickup when a diesel F150 starts below $30k.

But I do think we will see reasonable plug-in hybrid versions of these car types. And Tesla will never be building cars with internal combustion engines, so they're effectively locked out of what I believe will be the biggest part of the market.

Sales of new cars it is, so a decade after said countries will be largely free of fossil fuel cars.

The love affair with the SUV and Stations will have to end unless technology improves greatly. It sucks but it's the price we have to pay.

Norway's ban starts in 2025:

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/nor...

The Netherlands in 2030:

https://electrek.co/2017/10/10/netherlands-dutch-ban-petrol-...

France a decade later in 2040:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/06/france-ban-...

Did Norway actually pass a ban with a date of 2025? Your linked article is from 2016 and says, "Yet there is some denial from other right-wing representatives that the move has been confirmed."

No, there is no ban passed, it was only sensationalist reporting. Here is a follow-up official press release from the ruling Conservative party which explicitly denies that there is a ban, and states there is only agreement between the parties that this is the goal. (Google Translate is pretty crappy at Norwegian.)

https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...

I will make you a long bet of $100 that no country bans the sale of new diesel or petrol cars by the end of 2025.

That could be more of a problem for ICE car manufactures than a solution. Regulations are the only thing that will force these people to innovate out of their current existence. With that gone, its basically EV departments have to navigate through powerful political cartels within the company running the existing product cash cows. In short it won't happen.

There is a reason why Microsoft cannot product a good mobile OS to date. It requires sidelining their biggest cash cow, their desktop OS.

Station wagons have better aerodynamics than sedans. They are worse on weight distribution (more hanging mass, higher center of gravity) and chassis rigidity (which means they can't be as sporty). It's a shame no one makes an electric wagon, but SUVs are in fashion. In addition, SUVs make for easy battery placement: just take a standard chassis, raise it 10-15 cm, and put the batteries on the bottom.

You're right that pickups and commercial vehicles are the hardest markets for electric cars. Conquering those segments means the rest of the mass market would be completely dominated by electric cars. The United States will also be one of the last markets to be dominated by electric cars, because of its characteristics (long commutes, big distances, heavy car usage).

Germany considers to ban diesel cars from cities to meet polution requirenments of EU.

I consider to buy a new car at the moment. My favorites are electirc or petrol. I don't even consider hybrids. I see no benefits. They have no upsides of an electic car (quit, no exhaust, clean, simple). They are basically more expensive/complex petrols with a slightly lower consumption.

I did the math on this a while ago and calculated I could travel my normal commute back and forth on the battery of a plug-in hybrid. I would only need the petrol engine on longer trips. I'd probably spend 80% of the driving in electric mode and 20% in gas mode. I wouldn't really say that's just a slightly lower consumption.

Not exactly. What you are describing is correct for things like a Prius, with dual drivetrains. It is certainly not correct for cars like the Chevy Volt (or the BMW i3), with the main engine being the electric one, and a gasoline generator. This combination is less complex than a normal car – for one, you can remove basically the entire transmission and hook up the eletric engine directly (with maybe a reduction gear like a Leaf). The gasoline engine can be much smaller and simpler as it is only driving a generator (and maybe not even running all the time, depending on battery and workload).

Such a design is not as clean as a pure EV, but it is definitely better than what we currently have.

The Chevy Volt is not a serial hybrid like the I3. It has a very complex transmission system to blend the gasoline engine and electric motor power. A nice car, but not at all simple.

Keep in mind, the EU pushed heavily for Diesel in 1998 to meet the requirements of Kyoto. It is very ironic that now their most powerful member, Germany, is going against them.

It was supposed to be cleaner...but it generates nitrogen oxide (instead of CO2). Maybe nitrogen oxide is safer than, but I doubt at 40x the levels that most of the diesel manufacturers actually made their cars run at.

You've got it backwards. Germany pushed heavily for Diesel. The EU is pushing back by insisting on clean air in cities which Diesels have a hard time with. German politics is trying absolutely everything to avoid having to introduce driving bans.

That's kind of a glass-half-empty way to look at it, which is true for conventional hybrids. But real range-extended EVs also have the upsides of both cars:

- Quiet, no exhaust, clean, and simple when driving on electric (which is most of the time)

- Most (but not all) of the reliability of a real EV. (You can go almost a whole year on a single oil change, since you aren't using the gas engine much. You can go forever on a single break pad set, since you regen most of the time)

- The full range + refill speed of any gas vehicle (for roadtrips or other instances you needed it)

There's also some fun minor efficiencies in there too. Batteries in EREVs are smaller and weigh a lot less when they only have to carry you 50 miles instead of 250. Gas is a lot more convenient when you really do want to roadtrip across the whole USA as quickly as possible, (no hunting for charging ports, which might be broken or offline. No waiting for recharge)

I don't have the figures right here, but I believe it worked out that you could eliminate ~75% of all personal automobile tailpipe emissions in the entire USA today, if you put a Chevy Volt drivetrain into every single vehicle, and convinced just the people who park a car at a single family residence, to plug in their car at night. (even ignoring all apartment/condo/street-parking folks who cant charge)

> Nobody makes an electric commercial vehicles of the type electricians, plumbers etc. drive.

Maybe not exactly a copy of that type of car, but because none of the big car companies wanted to build one DHL started their own electric car for this use case: https://www.streetscooter.eu/

> Nobody makes an electric commercial vehicles of the type electricians, plumbers etc. drive.

How about Nissan e-nv200?

https://www.nissan.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/e-nv200.html

It's the closest one gets to an electric work van, for sure, but it's pretty small. It's more comparable to e.g. a Fiat Doblo (sold as the strangely named Dodge Ram ProMaster City in the US).

Next to a proper work van like a VW Transporter or Toyota ProAce, you're looking at less than half the load volume (~4.2 m^3 versus ~9.5m^3).

The Model X isn’t an estate car? Actually the S has more storage than the estate car I used to own.

I once sold a four seater IKEA sleeper sofa to a lady who came to pick it up in an Audi A6 estate. We managed to fit the entire thing inside her car (with the rear seats down) and close the trunk. That is an estate car.

The volume in liters may be comparable between a Model X and (say) the Audi A6, but most large objects one needs to transport (furniture etc.) tend to be relatively cubic in shape.

If there wasn't a need for having big boxy trunks, surely we would all have transitioned to the (undeniably cooler) fastback-esque shape of a Model X / Mercedes CLS / BMW GT-series long before electric cars became a thing.

Volvo Estate owner here. Not only can I confirm that it carries things that there is NO way would fit in a large sedan, there are even some things (like sofas!!!) that fit in the estate but won't fit in an SUV with comparable storage volume.

I'm sure the reverse may be true for some SUVs, perhaps there's some large wardrobe box that firs in an SUV that won't fit in the estate.

But wow, estates are sooooooo convenient.

Audi A6 estate has 60 cubic feet of space with the seats down

Model X has 88 cubic feet with the seats down (if you have the bench-seat option)

Its a very big car.

https://electrek.co/2016/12/03/tesla-model-x-5-seat-configur...

>>nobody is going to buy an $80k+ electric pickup when a diesel F150 starts below $30k.

This is the same as saying nobody will buy a $600 iPhone. Only to realize in months that component prices have fallen by 50% and its not that expensive after all.

I think oil-to-electric conversions may be a thing once electric is mainstream

That's not exactly cheap or feasible for most cars.

What makes you say that? I've seen plenty of conversion kits that are adaptable to most cars. I've priced it out to build a fun project car and the only reason not to do it is the currently high price of batteries. So I expect volume to solve that and make electric conversions just easy. "Electric classics" are already a thing and look fun:

https://youtu.be/AJLdzRJdKrs

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