BTW, I loved Denmark :)
Saying the current infrastructure is inadequate for a new mode of transport is a truism. Infrastructure takes decades to build out, of course EV's will not be expected to have huge charging infrastructures while less than 1% of cars are EV.
Long term, It'll be just as easy, if not easier, to get around in the future. Consider all the new transport tech that's emerging: electric bikes, scooters, fully self-driving vehicles, drones which can carry people, VTOL aircraft, hyperloop, etc. They are all more interesting and promising than the current noxious fume spewing transport. I'm excited for even 1/3 of those options to come to fruition :)
But I do wonder how we're gonna cover that last mile. Adding hundreds of miles of range to an ICE car is hilariously simple, just a couple of plastic containers in the trunk and you're good to go.
Can't add extra batteries like that. Energy density is not a truism.
Maybe portable ICE generators, sort of like hybrid addons for full EVs.
I really liked the hybrid tech. I don't know why its not dominating.
Because it isn't especially efficient.
Skagen (Northernmost tip) to Flensburg in Germany is ~402km. Skagen to Copenhagen (East) is 410km. The longest reasonable point to point journey in Denmark is in the 550km or so range (e.g. Skagen to Lolland), though you can certainly end up with longer journeys if you pick more convoluted routes for sight-seeing and end up having to charge, this will not be a typical journey for most people. And most of the population is located within a much smaller part of the country.
And this is with 12 years to expand charging networks and for vehicles to increase range before a ban on new petrol/diesel car sales, and in other words many more years before everyone will be forced to use an electric.
You're not wrong. I was just wondering how people would get around.
Factors that made me wonder included:
- when you're sightseeing, it's faster to buy gas (in today's era) than to charge to full battery - the place I parked my car each night was not near a charging station and/or outlet - having infrastructure in place to drive all over makes means there's less friction to go to remote places, and if there's less demand for remote places in the future, there may be less infrastructure near those places
I'm not trying to make argue any specific point here. I was just wondering. And even though Denmark is a tiny country, many other are damn huge!
That means that investment can take place in setting up charging infrastructure around the country. Now businesses can invest in charging networks, safe in the knowledge that the demand will come. It's not here yet but it will be there.
Separately Norway is one of the richest countries on the planet thanks to its offshore oil. Their sovereign fund dwarfs Saudi Arabia in comparison so maybe they currently can cannibalize that revenue to build a supergrid.
China is building an ultra high voltage direct current supergrid to accommodate future EV needs (using primarily coal as a power source). I don't see this happening anywhere else?
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2171432...
Here's a map of the high voltage power grid. I don't think anywhere is more than 50km from a transmission line.
https://en.energinet.dk/-/media/9160AAB5C484432399767220B78D...
The increase will be gradual, and no doubt the power grid company is already planning for it.
If they have 240v outlets, that's half the battle. That is around 31 miles per hour of charge, from a standard outlet (although you have to make sure your wiring is good) without any extra infrastructure.
This may not be sufficient for a cross-country drive across the continental US, but for most european countries? You can drive 300 miles and charge overnight even with no fast charging at all.
Compare this with setting up gas stations (digging underground to install the tanks, logistics to keep them topped off, etc) and gasoline starts to look quite insane. It's just that we have this existing infrastructure built over a century that we take for granted.
If people purchase EV _en masse_, they'll have charging stations everywhere. There's no egg/chicken problem here.
I’m not saying we can’t upgrade production (I’m actually significantly more optimistic than the best case IAE estimates), but it’s not as trivial as just installing some new wires and transformers.
So if you have 400MW of ICE cars you don't need 400MW of electricity to replace that, something more like 80-100MW is more like it IIRC. The infrastructure build cost isn't zero, but it's much less than this 150% metric suggests.
No, they're not. They're, as implemented in a car, a ludicrous example of engineering compromises.
Put a hybrid drive methane spark-ignition high compression engine and you'll have similar CO2 emissions from a e-car powered by a thermal plant (the vast majority of our power). It'll cost as much as a Tesla too.
However, my point is only that we will need non trivial increases in electricity production, rather than any specific number. That point still stands.
Like I said in my original comment: I’m optimistic, I just don’t think it’s trivial.
To put it another way, I think it’s something that requires a government rather than being achievable purely with the private sector. That might mean just incentives and template plans, or it might require government to commission things, but it’s that sort of scale.
Probably you're never far from a high voltage transmission line.
Map: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=tesla+s...
I.e. commercial operators who want to sell you coffee/snacks/flowers/other high-markup items as well as fuel/energy. Added bonus for EV: longer dwell time while waiting for a fast-charge means more likely to spend spend spend (perhaps)
That would be me, and I don't want to foot that bill, because at a gas station I can fill up the tank in under five minutes, and at a recharging station I'd have to wait a minimum of half an hour, so I wouldn't be getting the same level of service as I do today. As far as my wallet and especially my time (which is far more expensive) are concerned: no!
P.S. 350kw fast chargers are typically being advertised as zero to 80% charge in 15 minutes - cars that can accept these chargers are due in the next couple of years from Audi, Ford, BMW et al so mainstream "ordinary" cars as well as exotica like Porsche. I cant find any stats online, but I have read that the average time someone spends filling up with fossil fuels is 7 minutes, so an extra 8 minutes is not that outrageous and even that is zero to 80% - if you had say 20% remaining I'd imagine that the time would be in the order 10-12 minutes (guesstimate)
A bus also needs diesel (:-D)
My car is old enough that I could make my own biodiesel with the electricity from solar panels and run on it, so when the rest are stuck, I'll always have fuel. Even if nuclear war hits.
Diesel buses are still the majority, but they are slowly being phased out.
Good luck making your own fuel (N.B. in a lot of places it is illegal or in dubious grey-areas, plus there are the obvious environmental and safety implications which might prevent you from doing it one way or another). Why not just use that electricity from the solar panels to charge an EV's batteries?
Biodiesel has lower emissions of both NOx and CO2. By the time we're in such an apocalyptic scenario where internal combustion engines are a thing of the post, nobody will be giving a damn about some guy driving such an anachronism. And show me where it's illegal to produce one's own fuel.
"Why not just use that electricity from the solar panels to charge an EV's batteries?"
(Car guy here! I just came back from Hockenheim with my racing license not too long ago!)
Because with my diesel, I have a range of at least 1000 km, ~1300 km if I hypermile. Batteries lose capacity. Electric cars have no clutch pedal nor a manual transmission (they don't need it), so for a car guy like me, that sucks serious ass. Acceleration isn't everything: electric vehicles sap all the enjoyment out of driving. If there were electric cars with a clutch pedal and a manual transmission, I'd be willing to trade the range and make a compromise, but there aren't so there is no incentive for me to do so.
I've heard such rhetoric before; it did not end well.
Can you build a gas station with 50k? How much is just the labor to bury the underground tank?
And that's a quick charger, which you would use mostly for trips. For most purposes you only need easily accessible power outlets (although the level 2 stations are far more convenient). Most cars are sitting in parking lots most of the time anyway.
BEVs are likely to match pure ICEVs (I.e. not counting hybrids) in range in the not too distant future. Yeah you could theoretically put in a bigger fuel tank, or bring extra gasoline. But I mean a standard light vehicle that doesn't sacrifice storage space.
Meanwhile, if you get enough EVs on the road, you'll soon have charging stations everywhere. We already see it here in Norway. Almost every roadside McDonalds have rapid chargers. There are a couple of supermarket chains that have gotten pretty good at having chargers in many of their supermarkets.
Not where I am. I've recently driven several times from Drammen to Trondheim and never seen a charger at any of the supermarkets I passed on the way. I don't mean they don't exist, just that I didn't see them, can you list a few of them?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/how-much...
and two maps of the network in 2016 and 2018, showing the effort (by Tesla owners club!) in building out the network:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/12/how-much...
Yep they're not all superchargers, many are just EV friendly 240v hookups. But as the lady in the first article said "the reality is that if you can see the lights on, or that the kettle works, then you can charge".
Got me thinking about my next car. Or campervan. We often camp in caravan parks - with a 15 amp hookup plugged into the vehicle...
Not gasoline...
Regardless, if we force the market, electric cars will catch up. But bans probably won't do the trick, I bet it'll take incentives in terms of higher taxes on gasoline and lower on electric cars.
https://i.imgur.com/dd9Jdzf.png (Orange are high power chargers, green are lower power chargers, source is plugshare.com)
My employer installed several stations as well at my request when Tesla was still offering equipment for free (equal parts Tesla specific chargers and generic EV chargers), which I plug into when at the office, but only to stay topped up while my vehicle actively keeps itself cool in the Florida sun.