Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I see the same arguments being made about electric cars. "The batteries are no good in really cold climates", "They'll not a good replacement as I cannot drive 1000 km in one stetch", "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street".
There are so many obvious benefits of electric cars, as soon as they are close to cost competitive, I bet the transition for new car sales will happen much quicker than many people realize and the infrastructure will quickly follow once the market has spoken.
Hopefully you’re right, and those driving forces will parallel the adoption of digital cameras. If so however, it’s going to be gradual barring some kind of miracle breakthrough battery tech.
Did you consider that your experience with ICE cars does not apply directly to BEV cars?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-Tesla-perform-on-a-track
https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurbu...
http://www.thedrive.com/news/5207/this-video-reminds-us-that...
To be clear: I think the Model S is a fine, if overpriced, road car. I daily a LEAF and like it; I am no electric hater.
However, performance of all-battery cars is compromised as compared to lighter cars; it's that pesky physics thing...
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-p85d-drag-race...
A plain Jane 911 is neither $200K nor a purpose-built track car.
Until the average electric car is at least as useful and no more expensive than the average ICE car there is no contest. That might be a good argument for imposing the cost of the externalities of ICE on people, but without that, dream on. “Good enough” isn’t what a “significant” fraction of people today give a shit about, unless they’re paying less for it.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.
Consumer/taxpayer demand for a solution, like most problems in a capitalist democracy.
I imagine streets where every nth parking spot has something that looks like a beefy parking meter, but will allow thick-ish extension cords to run from a car to it. Turn it on with an RFID tied to which house you belong to on the street (ensures only locals can use it, charges the electrical costs to the right house).
It's technically doable with the technology in our hands today and not very complicated to install. Give in 10 more years, there'll be even smarter ideas.
Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas.
At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of their charging in that space or network of spaces.
That premium/willingness-to-pay won't even cover the all-in cost of installing a single EVSE in the first year.
Barring significant over-subscription, that's still a ~10 year payback. With massive over-subscription, it doesn't become a reliable charging source. (My prior post, which I'll leave unedited, was unclear/insufficient in stating it was longer than a one-year payback.)
But I do think between now and then we need more infrastructure for tenants to charge at home.
There just needs to be a demand for the initial infrastructure to be built.
Not necessarily, see this document from the UK National Grid which discusses the options: https://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/articles/electric-dreams-fut...
The batteries are likely to survive 500k miles and there's a lot less moving parts so less things to go wrong.
So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as for gas — and I'm in CA, where gas is expensive. We do save a tiny bit when we get to charge for free or at a subsidized rate somewhere. But I think most of the savings comes from not wearing down our brake pads on the hills in our neighborhood, and not having so many moving parts to wear out. These savings are not huge when amortized over the number of miles driven.
That actually made me laugh. It might cost more than in other US states, but is almost free comparing to most of Europe [1]. Average size of cars and engines, larger car with larger engine use more gas, also tell a lot of price compared to income, and it you compare traffic in Europe and America you will also see that Americans pay way to little for gas
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/221368/gas-prices-around...
I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.
But most of the difference is that our vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as yours. The 9kW/h battery only goes about 18-20 miles on a charge, and it costs more than the $1 that you pay to get that many miles.
Snark aside, when we got our Chevy Spark EV in 2013, we switched to the EV rate plan and it has saved us a lot. I work at home too, and but the peak hour use on the EV plan is quite small, so the higher rate is balanced out by having the car automatically charge during off-peak.
Perhaps solar would help solve your daytime rate problem? Or a car with more battery?
Not that the people working in infrastructure maintenance waste the money.
An employer with a parking garage. That's a very funny concept.
A gas car refills to max range almost instantly. It just so happens this Camry example has particularly good range on one tank of gas by virtue of being a hybrid, but the point is no more diminished with any other ICE car. Many non-hybrid models will also comfortably manage 500+ miles on a single tank.
All that said, I suspect there is a “good enough” tipping point for EVs, especially now that we are seeing some manage ~300 miles on one charge, which is more than enough for many commutes/weekly shopping trips etc.
I do agree that there's a ton of evidence that Tesla's S/X have plenty of range for most people to not be bothered by it. And it doesn't appear to matter to these folks that a hybrid would fill up faster, which brings us back to hybrids.
https://andrew.london/2018/01/solving-the-electric-car-on-st...
You're thinking about this from the wrong way around. The people who buy the first electric cars mainly don't live in places they can't charge them, they live in single family homes where they can install a charging port.
That allows enough electric cars to accumulate that the lobby for installing charging ports on city streets can form and get a few of them installed. But with more charging ports you get more people buying electric cars and so the lobby for installing even more charging ports grows, until they're all over the place.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/07/08/every-new-ho...
I can just think of insane acceleration (which is irrelevant for actual use).
Possible benefits: Simpler engines should lead to lower production costs, more reliability and simpler, cheaper repairs.
Plus all the "nice" features of EVs like rapid acceleration, no noise, feeling super-modern/futuristic, etc.
* No local emissions from burning fuel.
* Noise greatly reduced.
* Much less energy consumed (and CO2 generated) per mile overall.
* The car is always topped up when I leave to work in the morning.
* Great driving experience; instant silent torque is very convenient, and hard to give up once you've gotten used to it.
* More space left for cargo.
* Middle seat in the back has actual leg room.
* potentially better all-wheel drive
* better crash-security (no massive engine crushing your legs or flying around)
The EV infrastructure should be mostly complete by 2025. Most car makers won't start invading the market with EVs until 2023, or so anyway.
All the people witgout off-road parking will have charging points outside their house?
I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial.
Yes, this is still an improvement; yes it should be done; it’s just not trivial.
Seems possible
2) Non-solar renewables (including but not limited to wind, geothermal, and tidal)
3) Inter-time-zone power grids (because PV is getting so cheap that 67% losses, 1000 watts at source being 330 watts at the plug, isn’t totally insane).
Basically, if you stop refining gas you'll have pretty much enough power for all EVs.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-m...
Anyway we have most of the infrastructure we need for electric vehicles already, it's called the grid. All that is missing is the connection points. And for many people that is also not a problem because we can plug the car in at home. So electric vehicles have a massive advantage at this stage of the process compared to what ICE vehicles had at the beginning of their adoption.
To be clear, I would like an electric vehicle, but I lack off-road parking so I don't see myself getting one for a decade.
Edit: why the downvote? Sources cited below. HN, you judge too fast.
There were earlier self-propelled vehicles.
This link has some info about rechargeable batteries in the context of electric vehicles. Basically in 1881 key improvements to the original 1859 lead-acid design made batteries practical on board a vehicle at an industrial scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
> Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886.
The above link reiterates the date of 1884 for a production vehicle by Thomas Parker, two years before the Benz patent.
Also, earlier than that, a tricycle was successfully demoed along a Paris street in April 1881, following a 1867 two-wheeled prototype that did work but wasn't quite drivable for production use.
EVs got a slight head start to ICEs but they subsequently developed alongside each other from the late 19th to early 20th.
> date of 1884 for a production .. two years before the Benz patent.
The car was produced in 1885, the patent was granted in 1886.
The way I understood the OP's "The original cars were electric..." comment was that these electric cars (plural!) were dominant for some time until they were replaced quite some time later ("over 20 years before the Ford Model T") by cars with internal combustion engines.
As far as I know, that didn't happen. Electric cars and cars with internal combustion engines happened essentially simultaneously, with steam a century earlier (1769). From the Wikipedia article the OP quoted (section Golden age):
"In the United States by the turn of the century, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. "
So even during the "golden age", >60% of cars were not electric. I have to admit I was surprised that steam-powered cars were that widespread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
And before the digital camera, came the Internet which made it possible for you to show someone the pictures.
Imagine digital cameras of the specs of the first popular wave, but without Internet. Many downsides! The images would be low quality, you'd have to charge the camera, to show someone the images you'd still have to go to the lab for printed pictures.
No, I firmly believe electrical vehicles is about to crush the competition.
Yes, of course they do. What are you going to do with some .jpegs without the internet? Literally a huge network, and it was rolled out around the same time.
Since the environment is a collective problem rather than an individual problem, the transition wouldn't ever happen without government intervention.
Hence, I think the moment of inflection is entirely down to government policies, and very little down to consumer desires.
I think they will start around cities and dense suburbs, partly because of the reduced mileage demands and benefits of regenerative braking in stop start traffic, and partly because of democratic intervention to lower air pollution.
That will concentrate demand and seed the building out of infrastructure, which can then migrate outwards. The more rural you, the longer the switch will take, and some areas may not switch for decades.
Nissan did a great commercial at the launch of the Leaf [1] showing a world where a lot of our electric appliances were powered by gas. It's obviously absurd, but that's part of the point. I think we'll look back on this period 30-50 years from now and wonder in amazement that we drove such obviously inferior polluting dinosaurs for so long.
While I don't own an electric car, any argument that there's no consumer benefit to electric car is just silly on its face. ICE engines need just so much maintenance in comparison.
1.26*3.8=$4.788/1.30=$3.68 a gallon in the US.
The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be at every on-street location; it can be centralized to parking lots or garages on a neighborhood basis.
I think electric car revolution will be at least two decades earlier than self-driving.
As far as electric goes we are starting to reap benefits of vast investment in better tech, manufacturing and vehicles purpose built for it.
Self-driving is very far away and the best publicly available systems only do slightly more than lane-assist, the by far simplest part of self-driving.
Couldn't self driving cars in the very near future follow this same path? Find a very densely populated area. Get self driving cars to work very well in that area for short trips. Slowly expand to similar areas?
I haven't followed either of these very closely, so please correct me where I'm wrong.
The roads around where I live are /already/ at nose to tail capacity at the times I might actually want such a service. What do you think is going to happen when you add electric cars travelling from wherever they're being stored to the customer?
A special "autonomous park/return mode", say, capped to 10kph, only following a single preprogrammed route, with a complete lead foot on the brake. Nobody would want to ride in an everyday self-drive that had those restrictions, but it's perfectly acceptable for an empty trip to a central parking structure.
Like what exactly? You will have to assume that I am a modern man who don't give two shits about the environment, when deciding to buy a car. So can you give me one significant advantage that an electric car will give me over an ICE car, right now?
Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
Better performance - Electronically-controlled electric motors have much better, more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE. Not just a matter of "accelerates faster", but more torque available at nearly every speed/driving condition.
That's just a few off the top of my head.
Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
> Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough. Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car? I am not sure how reliable this is, but [1]
> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
[1] https://www.policygenius.com/blog/how-much-does-it-actually-...
>Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
> We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
You're really shifting the goalposts. It is much cheaper to drive electric if you can charge at home. It's true a significant number of people can't charge at home, but if they can, it's usually 25-35% of the cost of a gasoline car. I've owned BEVs for 6 years and have probably charged away from home 10 times or less and mostly it was just to get a better parking spot.
>> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
If you've already decided there are no benefits to BEVs for you personally, then it doesn't matter what others say because it doesn't benefit you. Why bother asking for the benefits?
Not really. Its just that I (and most people today) see a car as something that can take them mostly anywhere, across the country. If you see or limit the definition of a car as something that takes you anywhere within a very limited fixed radius (the range of your car on a single recharge), then your argument is fine. With a car, If you have to think of "Can I refuel where I want to go", then that car is lost the race against ICE's by a long mile.
>So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
Who said I am speaking for everyone here? I was only speaking of my case.
No, a related disadvantage doesn't nullify the fact of an advantage. Yes, charging stations are scarce and it takes longer to charge. It still costs less to fuel the car.
> I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough.
Well, good, I guess? Your opinion on how reliable cars ought to be isn't the subject of discussion. For what it's worth, I agree that you think ICE cars are reliable enough.
> Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car?
Probably not; in general a (far) less complex mechanism is going to be more reliable. Electric cars are new and doubtless suffer from the growing pains of a new technology. Teslas in particular are full of little fit and finish issues that result in a lot of warranty work. But hey, I'll give you this one. Improved electric car reliability is not a proven fact at this point. I can't see any way a mechanism with orders of magnitude fewer moving parts won't be more reliable once it matures, but maybe there's some sort of terrible unforeseen issue. Who knows?
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
I agree that you hold this opinion. Others do not. Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
I'm not really interested in discussing this further; I suspect you're going to keep moving the goalposts. You should purchase the type of car that most closely fits your needs and wants.
Sure it does in some cases. Having a lot of gold is an advantage. Having to keep from being stolen is a disadvantage. That disadvantage does not nullify the advantage of having it. But if no one wants gold anymore, then that nullify the advantage of possessing it.
>Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
Maybe, but I think it is an advantage very few real world car users care..
> I'm not really interested in discussing this further;
Cool. I hope you don't mind my reply though.
* No gears - acceleration is linear
* No chance of diesel fumes in your cabin (like with my VW Sharan)
* Lots of tax rebates, subsidies, depending on where you live
* Charge at home
* More room! (No bulky drivetrain)
* Less maintenance, less things to go wrong
* Lower fuel costs
* Simpler to own and drive
If that's true of EVs (I have no idea, but it is/was true of the batteries in digital cameras), then it's very odd that EVs are so popular in Norway.
Incentives can only get you so far if the product doesn't work well in local conditions.
To expand on that, electric cars in Norway has so extreme incentives...
That price-wise Tesla Model S is not competing with Ferrari, Lambourghini, BMW M3, Mercedes Amg’s or anything like that.
It’s competing with a mid range Audi A4.
Basically, regular petrol cars are so heavily taxed that EVs (which are exempt from all these taxes), can be a luxury car in any country on earth and still come out relatively cheap in Norway.
I was spotting Teslas in Oslo in mid 2018, and it was +28C.
But seriously, -10C on a winter night is what I expected, and is cold enough to seriously affect camera batteries.
Almost 60% of US car trips are 5 miles or shorter. (2017 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/ae/work/Job63697.html, 2009 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html)
Scooters, e-bikes, and electric cargo bikes (not to mention the human-powered versions!) will soak up an enormous portion of the current automobile demand, and leave us with massively positive outcomes in terms of congestion, pollution, road safety and community cohesion.
I think transportation is a lot more interesting than just cars - electric (and non-electric) cars will probably be part of the equation forever, but I suspect we're past peak car.
Also, having kids dramatically changes what you need in a vehicle, in ways that make any ride-sharing or rental option a significantly greater pain than it would otherwise be.
I love cycling in Paris and Amsterdam, not so much in New York City in the winter. I also wouldn’t love to do weekly shopping for a family of 4+ using a Segway and public transportation.
Edit: I’m curious if those downvotes represent disagreement, or just distaste.
So not distaste or disagreement, but irrelevance.
If you think "Europe has a smaller population than US" is relevant to whether using public transport where the infrastructure exists is possible for families then you need to state why more clearly.
You don't need to shop only once a week - 2-3 times makes carrying your goods easier. You can dress for the weather. It isn't all that big of a deal. Children in strollers have warm stuff around them. They sell bikes with studded tires for use on snow. It was tiring when I first moved here, but you get used to it and it isn't a big deal. Kids get used to walking and will sometimes even help carry things back.
I'd more argue that the real reason it doesn't work so well in much of the states is because the public transportation sucks. Walkways suck most places - half the towns I lived in didn't even make sure you could walk to the stores on sidewalks. More people were expected to work 50-60 hours a week on top of this. Poor folks sometimes work two jobs. Many employers don't have secure places to put your stuff while you are at work (no bike racks, no locker to put your winter gear or umbrella in). Fixing these problems help greatly.
Its because things are built in a manner optimized for automobile transportation. Fixing sidewalks isn't going to fix mega grocery stores miles and miles apart. Places where people walk/bike tend to have a business infrastructure built to support it.
But it doesn't matter how far you live either. I've often lived within a mile of grocery stores, but the infrastructure isn't there. There isn't always even a sidewalk to get to bus stops. Sometimes the bus stop is just a sign, no sidewalk. Busses rarely go inter-city and often don't go to workplaces on the outskirts of town (at least not in many smallish cities). They aren't efficient.
Why would anywhere build smaller stores similar to walkable places when the infrastructure isn't there, anyway?
You said I live in Norway, in a city of 180-200k people. Folks use public transportation or walking all the time. With children. For everyday food shopping.
Is Norway not one of the richest WE countries? (Not temperate though, fair enough.)
The country has a very high standard of living compared with other European countries...
According to United Nations data for 2016, Norway together with Luxembourg and Switzerland are the only three countries in the world with a GDP per capita above US$70,000 that are not island nations nor microstates.[18]
Yes... yes it is. It also has a bit over 5 million people, with about a million Living in Oslo, or 1.5 million if you go for the whole metro area. That’s great, but doesn’t have much to do with most other cities on Earth in terms of population density, population as a fraction of the country’s total population, and wealth. For example NYC has a population density of about 27,000 per square mile, and Oslo has about 8500. How does street crime compare between a major American city and Oslo?
Sadly, the diversity of cultures, politics, and incomes which define a city like NYC also make it hard to just say “let’s have a better environment for bikes!” I’m. It sure how you’d go about changing that, but I’m pretty sure articles like this and comments about Norway may not inckude realistic solutions. If I lived in Oslo, I’d bike a lot too, but if I lived in NYC I wouldn’t because I like living. Public transportation in the states varies massively, but either way simply saying “fix it” without a concrete way to make it happen in the real world of vested interests, cultures, and politics is sort of pointless.
I've never lived in NYC. I spent the first 35 years of life in Indiana, though, in towns smaller than this. The crime wasn't bad. One place even happened to have bus service. Indiana has about the same population as Norway over less land area, though admittedly it likely isn't as rich. Indianapolis is probably the only place comparable to Oslo as I can't remember how big Ft Wayne is.
Large cities aside, it doesn't take much to make a city walkable. Put sidewalks in, zone correctly, and put up areas to lock up bikes. If we can require places to have a minimum amount of parking spaces, what is so difficult to require a place to park bicycles? If you can zone for different things, wouldn't it be possible to zone for grocery stores near neighborhoods and give tax breaks to those chains instead of large box stores?
Concrete "fixing" does require some regional specialization, and I'm sure one solution isn't going to work for everywhere. Most cities aren't NYC, though.
Edit: I should also mention that part of the trend here is to make it more inconvenient to drive in town. They are actively taking away driving lanes to encourage walking and public transport. Most of the smaller cities in Indiana could do some of this as well.
Don't know why that person was going on about it only being temperate places, then comparing to New York, which has to be one of the richest places on earth.
Then you’ll add that you can’t cycle in the winter in New York because Western European has more moderate weather. But I’ll point out that many of the Western Europe capitals have a colder winter than NYC.
But then if you accept that, you’ll move on to claims about how you can’t go shopping for a 4 person family using a bike. Then I’ll share stats that the average US family size is 2.58, and that all kinds of stores offer home delivery.
The point is that people come up with a litany of rationalizations for the status quo, but it ends up sounding like apology for car culture when even heavy drivers would complain about all the negatives (congestion, parking, pollution, shitty drivers) in other forums.
I’m guessing some of that is behind the downvotes.
When I first saw one, people said it was a useless half measure - if you don't want to peddle, you would take the car. The has proven wrong, and as time goes by, the reverse happens - it replaces the car.
You should realize that many people who buy these scooters and electric bikes are doing so to replace the bike, not the car. But then over time it replaces the car for 90% of the trips.
Electric bikes and scooters are very cool, but they’re no more a solution to the car in most cases than a motorcycle or Segway. They do nothing for people with long commutes, or who live in spread-out suburbs. No one is trading in their minivan for a moped.
Where I live a few hundred thousand kids are taken to school by bike every day. All the way up to age 10 or so it's pretty common to see parents with kids on the back (and sometimes on the front or both) of their bikes.
https://www.24baby.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mamafiets.j...
Totally agreed, but bike infrastructure is something that you can actually decide to implement.
During the summer, Iwould take my three kids to the daycare/summer program by bike. Two would sit in the Burley Bee bike trailer and the third would sit in the Thule Yepp maxi bike seat. It's a 3 mile trip one way and would take me about 20 minutes. I would then ride back to work.
I also would do some grocery shopping with the trailer used as storage. I didn't get rid of the minivan, but I didn't drive it more than a few times a month.
Times change.
Outward status also comes from travel, clothing, food, lifestyle, and housing choices.
--
The flip side of the equation is that cars (even electric ones) have enormous externalized costs that are not paid by the owner/driver of the car.
As those costs are accounted, the balance will continue to tilt away from cars where they can be avoided. (Particulate pollution from tires, brakes and road surface wear has an enormous public health cost, congestion & long commutes have enormous productivity and health costs, parking and sprawling development have enormous unaccounted infrastructure costs.)
Oops.
Nobody is going to use a scooter or an e-bike for that. If someone made an electric minivan, sure, that might soak up most of those trips, but for some reason nobody makes one.
Clearly your opinion about people's travel has a lot more validity than the research conducted by the American (err, United States) Federal Highway Administration.
What if three of that’s on the highway? Is that little electric scooter going to do 70 safely with all the SUVs around weaving in and out? Without me getting squashed?
And when it’s snowing heavily? And maybe there’s already a foot on the ground, plus a whole bunch of ice? You think a lot of people are going to want to do their 5 miles then?
Being on a motorcycle is pretty dangerous because cars don’t watch out for you. Being on a bicycle is far worse. Being on a little electric scooter on “real“ roads sounds like a death trap (again, saying nothing of large roads/highways).
Don’t say scooter lanes. That doesn’t seem to protect bicyclists.
Yes, all this can change. But right now it’s a BIG issue for small transportation replacing cars.
I’ve seen one or two people in the suburbs around me using tiny segues or high quality hoverboards. I just can’t see that catching on for any realistically sized group of the population the way everything works right now.
California just passed a bill that won't allow high school or middle school to start earlier than 8:30am because there is reams of research showing that early starts cause worse learning and development outcomes.
Lots of people are up in arms because they need their kids' schedule to fit around their work schedule so they can drive them everywhere.
Somehow it's just too hard for them to envision setting things up so the kids are safe with a greater level of autonomy and can maybe get themselves to school.
A kid under the age of 8 (half the population of children) isn't going to be taking solo trips.
I know the e-scooters used by Lime and Bird have seen a pretty quick iteration, and the models they have on the streets now are a lot better than the ones they had when they launched in my city just a few months ago.
In terms of in-between vehicles, I haven't seen too much yet. Our current street designs (at least in most of the US) make it really hard to operate a vehicle that is too small/slow to share the big & high speed lanes and intersections, but too large to move onto sidewalks or pedestrian spaces when you need to fill the gaps between safer/slower infrastructure.
You could look at what they drive around the retirement communities, seems to be a lot of designs that use a golf cart as a starting point.
Our local councils get these awesome little electric golf-cart things to roam around servicing things, but they're not legal for us to own, which is a real shame.
Something the size of a golf cart, so it can be tucked away in a corner somewhere, or parked sideways with tail to curb and be no longer than the standard width of a parking spot, would be absolutely incredible. It would only need ~20-30km range, seat 2, and have a small area for storage, and I truly think it would be pretty popular for inner city dwellers. Most people just keep a cheap car tucked away in a back street nearby, or use Vespa-style scooters.
[0] https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/twizy.html
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nu2q0srtj62w3gl/cheater-bike.JPG?d...
It's a ~$50 Gumtree special 2nd hand steel-framed mountain bike, with ~$150 worth of AliExpress Chinese electric bike conversion parts, and a ~$60 battery (You'd need another ~$50 for a charger - I use one of my quadcopter lipo chargers. That battery was originally a big quad one too, so my total outlay was only ~$200.) It gets ~25km on a charge with no pedalling at all (I use it for my ~16km round trip commute and it rarely uses more than 50% of it's capacity, even when I consciously avoid pedalling...) It's _technically_ illegal - it'll put out ~450W going uphill when fresh off the charger, and it's configured with a twist throttle like a motorcycle. To be street legal it'd need to be limited to 200W with the throttle, or 250W as a "pedalo" (where the pedals need to be turning to activate the motor). I've left the controller settings to top it out at 25kmh though (it'll do over 40 if I remove the software limit), so it's not tempting me into going so fast it'll attract attention from the cops... So long as my legs are moving enough when they see me I don't behave in an illegal fashion...
I think the good-looking, premium electric motorbikes will come. Their limiting factor has been battery density (which makes it difficult to build a bike with good range), and weight distribution (you cannot put the battery too high or the bike will be very unstable).
Case in point: E-Bikes in Germany. You can either buy an e-assist bike that is allowed on bike paths and doesn't cost tax. Those are limited to 200W and 25km/h. That means you still impede traffic in 30km/h zones where people typically drive 35-40. Or you can spend more and get an S-Pedelec. That costs tax, isn't allowed on bike paths, and needs a driver's license. It can go 45km/h, meaning that you still impede traffic on normal 50km/h streets where people usually drive 55-60. All other electric vehicles, scooters, longboards and the like are either illegal or limited to slow speeds (12km/h I think?).
To me it seems fairly obvious to me that these regulations were made to prevent competition with cars. The rules for S-Pedelecs are the same as for small motorcycles, the previous big competitor to cars in cities.
More seriously, I can see that point, you can come up with good reasons either way. But I think the actual reason is just arbitrary.
I'm not aware of any trial program where they tried different speeds, tried to gather statistics on safety etc. This 25 km/h number was just arbitrarily chosen by some bureaucrat, likewise for 20 mph.
Whether something is an overall win for safety is a much more complex question than about the physics of colliding with a pedestrian at either 25 km/h or 30 km/h. If it was 30 perhaps you'd get more people to ride bikes, and then you'd be in the worst case colliding with a cyclist instead of that same person going 50-80 km/h in a car.
Not only is it considerably cheaper than a beater car due to tax and insurance costs it’s faster overall even with the European 25 km/h speed limit. The bus of course takes twice as long and costs around €1500 per year.
Talking to various dealers and reading online it’s crazy how many new models there are this year. Giant alone have 38 new models.
Also, if you live in a city, unless you "reverse commute" to the suburbs, you probably won't drive enough miles regularly that you'd need to charge every night anyway. Give it a fast charge every few days in a commercial garage while you run errands.
Although I'm worried that they don't have anywhere near the capacity to handle the volume if it gets popular (imagine waiting for 2 or 3 people ahead of you...), for the moment it seems doable. As my wife can't live without her car (I don't drive), we're seriously thinking about it.
Although this thread is about the common person, for me the numbers actually work out relatively well. The new Leaf has about a 400 km range. My wife drives just under 40 km a day (I wish I could convince her to get an electric scooter instead :-P). You don't want to drive it down to empty, so I guess we could get away with charging it once a week. At least in our household, that would be easy to fit in.
My wife currently spends about $30 a week on gasoline (it requires high octane and it burns stupid amounts of fuel and gasoline in Japan is stupidly expensive). That's $120 per month, so she would be saving $90 per month on their charging scheme. In exchange she has to wait 2 hours a month (and organise refuelling the vehicle about 1.5 times more than she does currently). So, let's say $45 an hour post taxes (I think her marginal tax rate including health and pension is about 24%).
So it's a good deal if she's able to avoid waiting for other people too much... And assuming Nissan continues their deal for the life of the car (seems unlikely, but by that point hopefully we'll be able to plug in at home).
The main thing that bugs me is spending $30-40K to drive 20 km out and back every day. It's complete insanity, and you can talk all you want about driving a "green car", the earth is not going to take back the carbon required to build that car any time soon :-( Unfortunately my wife (who is pretty normal in this respect) can not quite grasp that logic.
Paired with a dramatic energy tax I’m good with it.
Household wiring will anyway not have enough current capacity to support charging, so smart plug based billing will likely be the way these things will go. Since electric cars ARE becoming cheaper economically for city use, this likely WILL happen. Accelerating the trend will be the fact that property prices will go up/down depending on availability of electric charging - so big property owners will start making these investments since there's no lack of capital among them.
Basically, these tipping point things don't necessarily happen because of "activism" but happen when economics cause a runaway effect (think spread of mobile connectivity for another example) - so to that extent Tesla is pushing in the right direction by trying to get economics right.
citation needed
Charging a Model S from a 110V 20A outlet is very slow and probably not a very useful option (but I have done it on a visit to LA).
The latter is extremely common/the standard residential service. The former is extremely uncommon residentially.
https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation#wal...
For comparison, the average home circuit is rated for 15 amps.
https://www.tesla.com/support/home-charging-installation#out...
Most home electricity installations have circuit breakers @ 15 Amps where I live. Wiring typically rated to a max 20 Amps draw before overheating. At a below 15 Amps current draw levels, you'll required an inordinate number of hours of charging for getting mileage on the battery and it's just not practical.
This wouldn't require any Internet access, just data sent over the power line, to a charger that's able to listen.
Existing home wiring could also be repurposed to carry HVDC, and therefore more power (12A * 600V = 7.2kW)... but I'm not sure if HVDC cars are designed with low current in mind.
But that option costs an extra $184, and the UART protocol is only available under NDA, which probably makes it difficult to open source.
Here's an example of OpenEVSE tracking solar capacity, which is basically equivalent to panel load management:
https://github.com/OpenEVSE/ESP8266_WiFi_v2.x#solar-pv-diver...
- traffic is bursty - why would car makers incentivise this?
> why would car makers incentivise this
The cooperative just bought vehicles. What can car makers do about it?
In the street, you charge at a meter, the same place you put in your payment. http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/product/EV-Charging-Str...
Let them eat cake, in other words?
Can't wait for it. I just returned from the wilderness to the city ... what a huge improvement of city life it would be if the noise and smell of cars would be gone ...
However, I found the property laws surrounding the modification of assigned parking spaces to be pretty murky. It'd be nice if there were a state/nation-wide effort to clarify this sort of transaction, because lots of maps and HOA documents were written decades ago, with zero thought given to electrical access.
There will always be some homes where EV charging is infeasible, but map reordering could fix a lot of the marginal cases.
There are already 100 million (!) electro scooters in use in China: https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-2010/electric-two-wheele... . This mega trend went pretty unnoticed in the West.
"Having lived in China for the last year it’s pretty much 99.8% ebikes. Petrol motorbikes don’t make an appearance except in very poor areas."
Also, it's fun to drive next to a Viper and throw shade.
My "ask" is that if you own an EV, and your employer isn't progressive about charging stations, politely prod them (there are usually incentives, find these!). My employer has an environmental progress initiative, and it only took a few emails for them to install a few Tesla and Clipper (non-manufacturer specific) chargers in our parking garage.
https://electrek.co/2017/02/03/tesla-controllable-charge-loa...
In the article, I’m surprised the EVs are about the same sales as hybrids. I figured there would still be more hybrid sales.
Fleet sales were a big driver when gas prices were higher
Plus, hybrids are a gutless jack of all trades and master of none
While the transaxle and battery pack add their own significant costs, complexity, and failure modes, they also eliminate a lot of the components on a conventional gas engine vehicle.
In my area, it is common to see a lot of hybrids used as taxis. Some of the older ones I see likely have 500k miles.
In how many years? Tossing cars on the junk pile every few years is an environmental nightmare. Who is taking these cars off your hands? I buy cars to keep. I demand that any car last at least 10 years, preferable 15+ without major work. My current Honda is nine years old. My last car ('92 BMW 325is) lasted twenty years. So I am very skeptical about advice regarding cars that have yet to prove their longevity. They are all great when brand new. How are they after the first hundred thousand miles/kilometers?
EV car batteries last at least 7 years, in theory and in the 2010 cars still on the road. After 7 years, they need a battery replacement (similar to how an ICE car needs engine work, just a one-shot replacement instead of lots of minor maintenance and repairs), and the old batteries are easily refurbished into other kinds of batteries (like home backup batteries) where charge-per-unit-weight-and-volume is less critical than in a car.
There is already datab out there from high class rental companies that reduced maintenance from oil changes, brakes, and major repairs easily leaves room for new batteries.
Typically ICE cars do not require engine work at 7 years of age.
It's hard to imagine someone stating these things seriously. So well built? Go to the Tesla Forums; buyers are being recommended to bring a checklist of defects to look for before you agree to take ownership, and are routinely rejecting delivery. That is unfathomable in the auto industry, unless you're talking about Soviet Russia. "Improving"? Maybe. But "so well built"? That's a stretch. But don't take my word for it, go and see for yourself.
And profitable? By what metric? Again; maybe. That is their intention, but there is zero evidence of that, and in fact evidence to the contrary.
It constantly amazes me how Tesla fans seem so oblivious to the realities of the struggles the company is facing. Yes, the EV revolution is coming, but there is no guarantee Tesla will lead the way.
>Also, it's fun to drive next to a Viper and throw shade.
Oh, you mean the Viper, that is a full second faster than Performance Model 3 0-60, brakes 50% faster 60-0 and runs the quarter mile 2 seconds faster? What shade are you throwing, exactly?
According to [0] the Viper is pretty much dead even with the Model 3 Performance. Where did you find "a full second"? Also, please provide a source for the "brakes 50% faster 60-0" as this is difficult to believe.
Also, while an EVs upfront costs are higher, the total cost of ownership is lower, as an EV costs about half as much (per mile) [1] as an internal combustion vehicle to operate.
[1] https://avt.inl.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/fsev/costs.pdf (Obligatory PDF warning)
I don't know what the used EV market is like right now. I don't remember seeing any. Then again, EVs are relatively new and rarer than ICEVs so I wouldn't expect them to have a big profile in used vehicle listings.
(If I were guessing, I'd speculate the economy choice for EVs right now might be some kind of conversion of a failed/old ICEV, but that's uninformed speculation...)
I'm not an expert, but my tips: figure out your budget (mine is usually $2-4k). Then cast a broad net for cars that have less than 120k miles. Many cars made in the last 20 years have upwards of 150-200k in them. So starting here is going to give you potential for ~50k at the cost of a down payment. It can help if you have a few models in mind that you know tend to have particularly long lives or tend to be undervalued (my favorite for a while was the Geo Prizm, which is a rebadged and therefore discounted Corolla, I've also had two Oldsmobile Cutlass Cieras that went into the 200k range... but these were both discontinued 15-20 years ago and good ones are getting rare). Do your own filtering on the health of the car. I'm not even an amateur auto mechanic but I have a few heuristics: is the temperature stable over a range of driving conditions from idling to hill loads or freeway? What kind of oil leaks do I see? Also I like visible brake & gas pedal wear as a proxy for general vehicle wear. If a car doesn't have any obvious problems on these points, fits my cost/miles profile, and I like it, then I take it to a professional mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection and follow their advice. If the mechanic notes some needed non-powertrain repairs that fit inside the budget, I'll usually buy, perhaps after some negotiation.
There's a downside to this approach: it can be time-intensive. If you're well-compensated with your job (or you're doing a startup, or you're a new parent, or you have some other time-intensive thing going on in your life), your time may more valuable than the economizing this approach can yield. It goes faster if you let out the parameters a bit (bump up the budget and take down the mileage). In most sufficiently large cities there's probably a <$10k Toyota with less than 70k miles on it out there that you can find within a week that will give you trouble-free driving for years.
If you want more tips, Google Greg Macke, who seems to have some sensible advice about evaluating cars and has some recommended/lemon lists.
Plug-in hybrids like Chevy Volt, Prius Prime and Pacifica PHEV are in my opinion real sleepers that do not get media love.
No they're not. More like 25%-50% more expensive, and the difference keeps narrowing.
At some point a killer implementation of the technology and costs come together making new innovation possible and market ready, and it is such a benefit that going back is nearly impossible or at least more problematic and costly.
Even now, wired internet will go the way of the phone line when 5G or beyond are here, ISPs milking it until then.
With cars, electric will take over quickly when costs come down, non electric cars will be around for a long time but they will be more and more costly.
The change also creates such a growth market that it attracts tons of money/investment/marketing and it is a mad dash to get everyone using the new innovation, once it is business and market ready.
Now only 11 years later a friend was almost denied entry to the US because the border officials refused to believe she didn't have a smartphone she could use to show them her bank account. She asked to use wifi and use her laptop, but no, they demanded she use her (non-existent) smartphone.
In only 11 years the product has gone from not existing to being essentially mandatory.
I am never spending another $2000 on "labor" to change a gasket. Power sources, being electric are cool, and I definitely appreciate the long term benefits to the environment and all that shit. But honestly.
The real reason for electric cars is that they are simple. The drive train is a few pieces requiring minimal management and maintenance. It's time for cars to stop being a huge pain in the ass.
Tesla may be loved, hated, what3ever. but they proved cars don't have to be huge garbage piles destroying the world and making our lives worse with stupid maintenance costs that don't need to exist. Whether they live or die is up to markets, sadly,. but it's up to us to make the world of personal conveyance a thousand times better than it is now by choosing electric.
Never buy a gas car. Ever. Again.
This is not to say that EVs are a gigantic improvement. Returning to them will improve many things.
And when this goes far enough, it will send the ICE into a death spiral due to things like gas stations closing and fixed production costs per car getting too high because they are spread over too few sold cars. Also people will be won't be willing to spend as much for a given ICE model because they see the future trends and know it will not bring as much when later sold used.
In addition, they're also quieter, have less vibration and don't produce local pollution in the form of diesel exhaust, which modern buses have lots of costly systems installed in order to mitigate.
All public transit should be electrified, to set a good example.
It would be better to put the gasoline replacement tax on the utility companies and let them raise rates slightly to adjust for it. That's not only easier to do than building out a system for tracking & taxing all mileage in the US, it's also dramatically better for privacy reasons (as opposed to opening up another avenue for the government to invade our privacy by getting automated, mandated mileage tracking & reporting put into our electric vehicles). The US has relatively inexpensive energy prices, we can afford the slight increase in tax there, which would be offset by the erasure of the money spent on gasoline. The downside is, some will argue it's not fair to those not using electric vehicles on roads to be paying the tax increase (and that's correct, it's not a perfect tax distribution; it's an 85% good enough solution, that is a magnitude easier to implement and better for privacy).
Meanwhile, you made it clear in the other thread that you're mainly interested in federal incentives, which is what I was referring to as your axe. Nothing repulsive, just something unlikely to generate good conversation with people who have nothing to say about federal incentives.
Do you have a link for that?
Apparently the chart shows only the number of permits handed out, not the number of cars actually admitted. (After you get the permit, you have a period during which you actually need to buy a car, if I read it correctly)
I don't expect everyone to run out and buy brand new cars off the showroom floor en-masse the instant the economics favor the newly available flavor of shiny.
Cars are big ticket items often involving financing, they're sticky. This is why it's pretty damn urgent that we get the competitive EVs on the market ASAP. Every new ICE vehicle we add will be on the roads for quite some time, especially with how mature/reliable they are today. My 94 Japanese econobox has nearly 300,000 miles and still runs great.
The other issue is as increasing numbers of ICE vehicles get replaced by EVs, the gasoline demand drops, and the prices may correspondingly drop. In the words of a friend of mine: "All the oil in the world will be burned."
The infrastructure is expanding rapidly, so your "unless" is a fairly safe bet.
With EVs (and if you have a charger) waking up with a 'full tank' is pretty amazing... something ICE auto can never experience.
Try 40mins, although honestly I've never needed more than 30 minutes in my 80,000 miles I've put on the car including one weekly trip that required charging on the go.
As an example, a tradie who runs their own business might very well rack up enough hours driving that an EV just wouldn't work for them (not to mention the likelihood of carrying tools or towing trailers). Or what happens if you get home late and the street charger is taken?
EVs seem great on the surface, but are they necessarily practical for the average person? I mean, they could be an iPhone moment, but they could also be an Amazon delivery drone moment, too.
If we did the sensible thing and taxed energy until people chose the efficient option, I believe plug-in hybrids would take over.
Electric car enthusiasts are instinctively against the added complexity of a gas engine, but it's countered by the substantially reduced amount of battery capacity needed and the fact that now 100% of the use cases are covered.
I believe that a large carbon or energy tax combined with otherwise laissez faire policy would have the major benefit of getting people to do the efficient thing rather than the ideological or emotional thing.
In ~ 6 years, I've only had one incident that comes close (a road was closed and I didn't have the range for the detour, so I had to drive to a super charger).
The truth is that, yes, you have to plan slightly more perhaps, but I'll happily pay for all the other benefits (not least is never having to go to a sketchy gas station).
All this stuff takes is a change of schedule if you cannot charge at home. Instead of eating breakfast and reading the paper at home in the mornings, you go out and do it at the charging station. You aren't generally stuck for hours at these places. Or you do it on your way home. Workplaces here are offering power to folks and many parking garages/city parking spaces do as well. This takes care of being out in the world.
I don't see how overnight is an issue if you are at home. You aren't using the car when you sleep.
Long distance travel? Don't they recommend you stop and stretch every few hours anyway? This is built in. Or you can take public transport.
I owned a natural gas combustion engine Honda Civic for a decade and refueled at home.
In the car the gas is just stored compressed/liquified in a tank. It takes up a lot of space, so you end up sacrificing some trunk space. Again, just another tradeoff.
I think battery tech has to improve quite a bit before EVs can truly overcome ICE vehicles in the mainstream.
https://electrek.co/2018/03/26/nissan-leaf-battery-pack-repl...
I won't dispute the $8K/6 years for ICE vehicles (although I am curious if that's legit) but if you look at the savings rate of the average American I think you'll see ICEs' steady expense rate of gas fillups, oil change, etc. suit it better than EVs' lower day-to-day but eventual massive hit.
https://electrek.co/2018/07/17/tesla-model-s-holds-up-400000...
How about c'mon and read your own article. Your "data" is an article centered around one specific EV that achieved 400K miles, which btw went through two battery pack replacements:
> A lot of people are probably interested to know how the battery pack held up, but unfortunately, it didn’t. It was replaced twice during the vehicle’s 400,000 miles.
Womp womp. Have fun with that when you're outside of Tesla's warranty.
The fleet-level data is interesting but not terribly relevant to compare the driving habits of an in-city luxury taxi service to the typical American, who will be making longer range trips. It's also skewed to be comparing the maintenance cost of luxury cars (Lincoln Town Car and Mercedes GLS) - the comparison should be a Nissan Leaf to a Honda Civic or an Accord.
I don’t want a GM. I don’t like the way they look anyway. The offerings from Honda or Toyota or often limited to certain states and I was unavailable in less I want to go through the giant hassle of purchasing it somewhere else and then getting it shipped here (so I don’t get stuck charging it on a very long journey over and over and over again).
I’m not aware of Ford having one. I know BMW does, I saw one the other day (not a big fan of the looks), but that’s way out of what I would want to spend anyway. Mercedes would be the same issue if they have one. The leaf has a small range if I remember correctly. The bolt is a hybrid, and isn’t the volt as well?
Honestly, I don’t know of any all electric cars made by non-luxury brands except for the Leaf, Clarity and all electric Prius.
Just having one decent all electric car available from each of the major brands in the majority of markets would be a big step forward in allowing the transition to happen. If you don’t want to pay luxury prices you have a very limited selection. And it’s worse if you don’t live in California or a handful of other places.
He showed a picture of two very small cars, and you offered an electric quad with a body kit. It has a 61mi range, and a top speed (which it struggles to reach) of 50mph. He also mentioned Florida, where other people will be driving giant SUV’s that wouldn’t even notice if they ran that thing over. From a practical, safety, aesthetic, and functional perspective I don’t think that fits, especially when $10k can buy a lot of used car, including a Nissan Leaf.
The grid is already strained. It can barely handle new AC units in the summer. The large 500KV lines that connect cities to plants are near or over capacity already. Upgrading is a delicate balance of income vs cost. Upgrade or run them hotter.
They won't upgrade the backbone due to cost, now imagine the cost of trying to upgrade the substations and last mile connections. We seriously need better power distribution for EV to take over the market. Not everybody in the neighborhood can upgrade their meter to 300A+ without upgrading the network too.
Regarding charging points, there's no need to have a quick charge point for personal use. An electric car can be charged overnight.
More importantly, convince the truck drivers with 150k miles per year that they will have to dispose their truck ever 2-3 years (1000 charges).
Electric vehicles will take over when a battery breakthrough occurs, one that affects recharge time, weight and longevity.
I posit that the people enthusiastic about battery swaps aren't EV owners [yet]. There are too many practical issues with battery swaps, and larger batteries and superchargers are simply better answers.
Battery swaps will never be a thing.
EDIT: Better Place(TM) were pushing this very concept and had a LARGE presence in pilot countries, including Denmark. They flopped.
Car batteries aren't phone batteries :)
https://electrek.co/2018/07/17/tesla-model-s-holds-up-400000...