How will EVs or vehicles running on alternate fuel sources work in areas where there is no fuel distribution system to support them?
It's very likely that combustion cars will still exist in some form in 200 years for niche use, but for most other things things will be changed to accommodate EVs, just like they now accommodate combustion cars.
It’s about to get a whole lot worse.
I grew up outside of a city, with a garage, and electric.
It isn't the 1890s. Cities are less equipped for self-owned EVs than the rural.
Here's my heuristic. What are the places your car usually spends parked at, and do these places have at least a power outlet you can plug into(a proper charging stations is better of course)? For most city-dwellers, that's either their home, their workplace, or any other place they spend some time on (supermarkets?). Do any of these places, or places nearby, provide a way for you to charge? If yes, you should be fine.
Failing that, it starts to become less practical, as you'll have to rely on quick-charging (if it is even available).
Honestly, this isn't much of a concern medium term. Yes, it's problem now. But, as the EV fleet increases, so will the market pressures for a proper charging infrastructure. It costs much less than creating a gas infrastructure. Most places have electricity, they may require some upgrades, but that's relatively cheap (compare that to adding more gas stations).
And old lady that drives 1500 miles a year to go shopping might well find all of her charging needs are satisfied by plugging the car in while shopping Petco and Walmart. Because at that rate she only needs the car plugged in for an hour a week.
1500miles/52weeks -> 30 miles/week / 30 miles range per charging hour -> 1hr/week.
What city do you live in where EVs are impractical?
Even the small cities where I live are starting to make ICE vehicles feel a bit less convenient. Right now it's barely noticeable, but you can certainly see where it's headed.
Just as an example, things like going to the city for groceries, pulling into a parking space, and realizing that it is for EVs only. That was last year. This year, at the good grocery store anyway, a second bank of spaces were made EV only.
Point is, I can kind of see where this is all going. So if even small cities here in bass ackwards Wisconsin are doing this kind of thing, I'd have thought it would be rampant in the large cities?
And parking meters don't even exist in most of Brooklyn and Queens (or even a huge amount of Manhattan). That's a massive amount of infrastructure.
(Don't interpret this as an anti-electric-car argument, I just personally think it's better and maybe more likely that personally-owned-cars in general are what fade from NYC)
It is expected that some places are better positioned for an EV switch than others. That's ok.
One thing of note: dense cities like NYC are less amenable to cars in general. And at the same time, driving distances tend to be less, and there is congestion, all of which benefit EVs(engine is not turning if you are not moving, draw from other systems is negligible). If you don't drive as much as someone commuting in the bay area, then you might be able to get away with topping off whenever you go to a mall or something like that. Chargers are appearing at public parking buildings too. Also do you park you car in the street at your workplace? If they have their own parking, that could also eventually be a charging location (as it is in many workplaces elsewhere).
As we speak, my car is charging at my employer's parking garage (it's actually shared between several buildings, but you get the picture). By the time I end my shift I'll just disconnect and go home. I haven't charged at home in more than one year(although I have the ability). In fact, Chargepoint tells me it's already charged.
This means that I don't have to take time off my schedule to go to a gas station, all because of my employer. Given the proximity, I only have to charge once a week or less.
If you also have to park in the street at your workplace, then it won't be as convenient. But then again, I think finding a parking spot should already be stressful enough as it is :)
Hold on for a while. Cities will adapt, they will have no choice.
It's certainly not enough to rely on to charge a personal car, but it's increasing. I usually see the pay-per-minute rental cars parked in the spaces.
It might help that 220-240V is the standard voltage, it's a bit more worthwhile than 115V would be, but for more than a couple of points the existing wiring (streetlights etc) probably needs to be upgraded anyway.
https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/electric-cars-charging-londo... (in case it's not clear, this is a street in London with a pavement/"sidewalk". The block paving is probably an attempt to make the area look more appealing.)
I think of NYC as being more like Paris in that regard than Houston or Minneapolis. If you want to own any car in the future, I think living in NYC is not the place for you. I really do believe they are out to reduce the number of cars in NYC. (Or more precisely, I believe they are out to reduce the number of personally owned vehicles.) So it's not surprising to me that you don't see this sort of infrastructure in NYC.
There is one gas station in his town, the gas is way overpriced so everyone fills up during their weekly shopping trip and then drives back home. That puts a constraint on them. It's 70 miles home. Then a week later another 70 miles to get to the cheap gas station in the city. So 140 miles out of 300-350 on a tank of gas. Thus the local gas station is sort of immaterial to them since they don't use it if they can help it.
I asked him if he could deal with an electric car with 150 miles of range and he said, oh god yes. He knows that he's spending $300/month just to drive to go shopping. And with an electric he can start his shopping trip with a full charge. Come back and plug the car in and have full range again the next day.
What I want to understand is, how does the price of gas play out with EVs - in ten years time, is gas literally going to be unaffordable for most people? Will gas stations start drying up?
I guess either people bring along what they need or they don‘t work. However I don‘t think EVs will fail because of a lack of gas stations. Obviously owners will invest in the future and also provide charging for EVs.
So there is a fuel distribution system, it's just very small-scale, or informal.
This probably already happens for remote farms etc — it's cheaper to have a large fuel tank, and pay for fuel to be delivered to it, rather than trying to drive tractors and other equipment for hours to the nearest town.
"VW will continue to modify its combustion engine technology after the new platform is introduced next decade. After 2050, there may still be some gasoline and diesel models in regions where there is insufficient charging infrastructure, according to Jost"
It's not even in the same ballpark. Why are you trying to optimize for the very rare use-case?
You can keep using your trucks in the Sahara desert for as long as there is gasoline being made and replacement parts. Not sure what you are worried about.
That was an extreme example, I agree, not one of the best, just wanted to point out that using gasoline/diesel for vehicle transportation is a lot more failure-resistant compared to a power network.
And you said nothing about my point about the entire continent of Africa and about post-disaster interventions in the rest of the world. The last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you and your family because the power network is down so that they cannot move their vehicles. And such events (I mean, major natural disasters followed by extensive power-cuts) do indeed happen pretty often even in developed countries.
It really isn't. It all depends on which kind of disaster we are talking about. In many cases you can't get a tanker where you need to, you have to rely on whatever fuel stockpiles you have. If you have a fuel stockpile, guess what you do? You run a generator. Generator produces electricity, you charge from that. Not ideal, but it's an emergency anyway. This is disregarding other forms of local generation, such as solar.
> And you said nothing about my point about the entire continent of Africa
The entire continent of africa is bigger than the areas of the United States, India, China and some of Europe combined. I can't meaningfully comment on that large an area. Some places have cities and electricity just fine. Some do not. The places that do not, I have some difficulty accepting that they will also have easy and cheap access to fuel. But assuming it is a problem, then fine. They will take longer to switch.
> last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you and your family because the power network is down so that they cannot move their vehicles
This is such an enormous strawman! Have you EVER seen an electric fire truck? I haven't(let alone made by VW). But assume there are electric first responders only. You know one thing electric vehicles don't care? It's where their electricity come from.
Let's take an example from hospitals. In emergency situations, what do they do? They can't be without power during a surgery. So they have battery banks, backed up by a generator. I guess first responders would do similarly. And guess what, many already have power generators. Even AAA has generator trucks to rescue EVs.
If you have electricity you use that(even with no fuel). If you have fuel, you use that – and you can also use electricity. How convenient.
Last I read stuff on the matter the country of South Africa had huge problems with keeping the power on 24/7, and we're talking about the most developed country on that continent.
> And guess what, many already have power generators. Even AAA has generator trucks to rescue EVs.
Power generators that use diesel/gasoline, you're supporting my point, which is that we'll never get over our reliance on this stuff.
> You know one thing electric vehicles don't care? It's where their electricity come from.
Until your electricity just stops coming from anywhere, at which point they do start to care. You seem to never have been in a situation where electricity is not a constant 24/7 "resource", so to speak. I did live at a time and in a place where that was not the case (meaning constant power cuts even in the middle of winter) and as such I've learned how "brittle" and fragile the power network is.
Anyway, I'll leave this discussion as it is right now, I should have learned my lesson a long time ago never to enter into any discussion about EV on HN.
The point is, which you keep missing, is that EVs can run on electricity in whatever form. Have diesel available, but your car runs on gasoline only? Tough luck. Have "coal" electricity? It is as good as solar from the car's point of view. It's not the same for the environment, but neither are ICE cars.
You are trying to argue about a hypothetical situation where there is fuel readily available, but for some reason, somehow, electricity cannot be produced from it. And there is also no electricity. In this hypothetical world, have generators ever been invented? Or solar panels? Also, if resources are so constrained, why are we even worrying about cars? There are more pressing concerns.
Why do you keep ignoring solar? Wind? Have you seen any projects that bring power to poor communities in Africa? And have you seen how they DON'T rely on fuel tankers? It's all about microgrids! If they don't have sustainable power, they will NOT have refineries, or reliable fuel delivery.
Last, why are we even arguing about places in Africa with no power? They are in no condition of importing the latest generation vehicles anyway! Heck, most people in the developed world are not even driving current generation vehicles (myself included). So even if all manufacturers stopped producing internal combustion engines today, it doesn't matter. There is a sizable fleet that's not going away any time soon.
This is why this discussion is not productive. Can we focus in places where internal combustion engines are so ubiquitous that the are actually causing problems? Like India. Or China. Or the US. Not on some hypothetical gas station in the Sahara.
On roads we currently can do 3021 km averaging 81.2 km/h 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. : https://www.worldsolarchallenge.org/event-information/route_.... For past times https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Solar_Challenge
PS: You convert a model 3 to Solar electric + battery and get ~30 miles of range for free every day. That’s very significant in most disaster situations, and much better than gas in a post apocalyptic world.
> PS: You convert a model 3 to Solar electric + battery and get ~30 miles of range for free every day
Do you have more details? Last time I made a back of the napkin calculation its area wasn't enough for more than a couple of miles a day (assuming 4 miles per KWh).
This is assuming high end 44% solar panels and optimal parking as ‘possible’. Basicly 185″ L x 73″ W = 8.7 m^2 in high end panels - windshield but covering sun roof. Then gaining back by covering sides and having a little overhang on sides. Then you’re talking closer to 8m2 * .44 * 8 = 28 kWh per day, or half that at a more reasonable 22% efficient.
PS: Redoing my calculations and yea ~30 miles with 22% panels depending on how mad max the setup vs something more legal.
In 20 years major natural disasters (which presumably will get more frequent) will blow away your solar panels together with your house, the same as they do right now. Take Puerto Rico after the last hurricane, for example. Had it not been for diesel gas and its use for power generators a pretty dire situation would have become even more dire. It's pretty easy to transport diesel gas even to a island affected by a major hurricane. In contrast had the buildings been fitted with solar panels they would have very probably get blown away, and it would have been at least an order of magnitude more difficult to install them back (you would need technicians to install them on place, it's more difficult to transport a large quantity of solar panels over sea compared to just diesel or gasoline).
Commercial battery tech is going to have to improve a lot before this qualifier begins to hold.
As to post disaster recovery, solar is actually very energy dense assuming your talking weeks of recovery. A gallon of gasoline is only 33kWh before generator effecency drops you to say 11kWh per pound. That’s great if your talking a 24 hour safty net, but sucks if it takes 3+ weeks to bring the grid back online. (33kWh / 7 / 3 / 6.3 pounds = 1/4kw per per day per pound at say 33% effecency that drops to 1/12kWh per day per pound. Need that for 24 h a day and your talking 1/288 kw per pound of fuel. And at the end of 3 weeks you need even more fuel.
On the other hand a pallet of solar panels in a field or parking lot can be setup with some boards and not much else. You will need an inverter, but with just that you drastically reduce the need for fuel even without batteries.
I volunteer for a disaster relief organisation and have a background in logistics - I went to the Caribbean in response to Irma. I was on Antigua when Maria came through having just sent a shipment of aid forward to BVI.
I met the Dominican President the day after and had a team on the island within 14 hours (via sail boat believe it or not). Then I moved on to BVI a week or so later.
I saw first had what occurred in the direct aftermath of the disaster and I can say with confidence that shipping in and distributing replacement solid state (and reasonably lightweight) solar cells by air is immensely more simple and can be done much more quickly than getting fuel or oils in by sea. Palletised air freight is almost perfect for bringing in reasonably dense but reasonably lightweight panels like solar cells. And onward movement by underslung load on helicopter/chinnock or carried by aircraft like the C130/A400M with ability to land/take off on unprepared runways can carry in these loads easily. Further movement by hand is also relatively simple. All those things happened/aircraft were used (and many many more smaller ones) in the Caribbean response that I participated in.
We actually had the problem that too much materiel was coming in by air (particularly building supplies and plywood panelling) and had difficulty getting it stored and processed.
Meanwhile sea shipping was in a poor state.
Getting anything in by ship is chaos in the aftermath of hurricanes as ships and cargo are out of position all over the place as they avoid the storm. Ports are also often damaged as waves, storm surges and steep terrain can cause huge flash flooding and remove vast swaths of forest/buildings along the coast that floats out onto the sea and causes hazards to shipping, having trashed the port on its way through. This was particularly problematic in Dominica.
There can also be large lead times in getting bulk loads bought and shipped in which further complicates the disaster response.
Not only that, distribution of fuels in location is most often centralised through fuel stations, so damage to fuelling stations and pipe infrastructure meant that when fuel did arrive it was very difficult to get hold of and time consuming to obtain when it did arrive.
Meanwhile, we struggled through immense heat and bright sun 12 hours or so a day, perfect for solar power. On a small scale, people actually did use solar power to charge small electronics like phones and tablets. Phones, incidentally, which connected to cell towers often powered by diesel generators that struggled for fuel and could have benefited from augmented supply from PV.
And lets not forget, we don't necessarily need to set up multi kW PV systems in all homes, or large scale power plant scale solar farms. We need emergency distributed power generation, shelter and clean water. Next comes food and medicines. What you can get in quickly and is effective in the first 21 days is vital, and power and water often go hand in hand as we need power to run the purification pumps. I look forward to a time where shipping in solar panels are as cheap as shipping in plywood for temporary roof/building repair.
But all the above is not to say PV are the best or only solution. A mix of power generation is best and in any case the effectiveness of one or other method would depend on the disaster, geography and scale or response needed. But, it's important to think creatively and be open minded about technical solutions that are 'good enough' to preserve life and fill the gap between disaster and recovery. Cheap PV certainly has a place in that tool kit.
It depends on the disaster. Some disasters favor electric vehicles. Like charging your car from solar panels.
Also, petrol's only advantages are energy density and quick refueling. Once those issues are surmounted, petrol will be worse on nearly every front.
> The last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you
So keep those emergency vehicles petrol powered. They are a drop in the bucket of fuel consumption vs cars and semi trucks. Progress in the latter needn't be held back by the former.
Somewhat counterintuitively, that might be a good thing for the Africans. There was never a wired telephone network in many populated areas, for example, so they were able to migrate to wireless very quickly with no intervening transition. They never had coal/hydro/nuke plants, but not only will that not stop them from benefiting from cheap solar power, it will accelerate adoption.
If they don't have electricity at all, it's a bigger problem.
You won't try to cross a desert on a whim, without enough fuel(including jerry cans) or without a scheduled refuel stop. EV changes nothing in that regard. It will either be feasible or it will not. If it is not, then an alternate form of transportation is required.
If we are talking about deserts, we still favor EVs. You can have automated, solar-powered charging stations which require minimal logistics (unlike a gas station in the middle of nowhere which requires a truck visit every so often).
I expect a few internal combustion engine vehicles will be in use in some very remote areas for quite some time. Also in the hands of some enthusiasts.
So my best option is to charge at work. Luckily for me, I my work is forward thinking enough to have a few places to plug-in! Expect my office has more than a few people, thousands more than a few people. What do I do?
Honest question. I always think about going electric but can't fathom a situation that doesn't bite me more than it helps. And I'm guessing I'm not alone, think of my coworkers, how 'bout anyone working downtown? What about Intel or Nike or any other large campus? It just doesn't seem like we live in a world where owning an electric car doesn't presuppose owning a home with a garage.
Well, maybe not Nissan... the Leaf is still the main chademo holdout in the US.