GM, Volkswagen Say Goodbye to Hybrid Vehicles
wsj.com
wsj.com
As the article says, both companies produced these as regulatory compliance vehicles. Now they're shifted that effort over to electric because the incentives are better for them.
The only companies trying to make hybrids for real are Toyota and Honda. Everyone else is just pumping out low effort compliance vehicles. It is hardly surprising that these vehicles haven't been hugely successful.
I'd love to buy an electric vehicle. Unfortunately prices remain impractical ($30K+ for a sedan) and the federal tax incentive is both expiring and regressive (the richer you are the more you'll get back up to $7.2K, after the new standard deduction ($25K) I'd need to earn near $90K with two dependants to get the full amount).
They're great for those living in California or similar. Our state offers no incentives and actually stabbed people who installed solar in the back (decreased the buy-back amount to almost nothing).
At one point I was completely fascinated with the Fiat 500e. Here was an electric car that was stylish, quirky, and could be had on the used market at a great price. But as I got further into it I realized that FCA hated producing this car. Its only reason to exist is to allow them to produce more pollutant vehicles as a regulatory balance. And if it did have a future there would be the barest minimum invested into it. So I'm back to looking at Teslas, even though I haven't liked the styling since the Lotus designed Roadster.
EDIT: Please buy that Tesla and support a company who actually cares about selling EVs.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-chrysl...
That's an interesting interpretation. FCA is buying ZEV credits in the market, of which Tesla has a large supply. Would you describe Facebook buying servers as "Facebook paying Intel billions so they can keep selling advertisements online"?
>Please buy that Tesla
Every time Tesla comes up and there's negativity, there are accusations of "paid short-sellers", which I am not. What about your disclosure? You own a Tesla, are you a shareholder? Do you have a financial interest in people buying the cars? Is it fair to be constantly flooding these forums with Tesla rumours, often from vapid fan sites, when you stand to benefit?
Why is acceptable from one side, and not the other?
They need these ZEV credits in order to sell their ICE fleet. This is also indisputable.
And absolutely, yes, Facebook pays Intel billions of dollars to power the servers they use to serve ads on the internet. Now hopefully more AMD though.
[1] - https://electrek.co/2019/05/07/tesla-tsla-2-billion-fiat-chr...
Elektrek is not a source, it's a Tesla PR mouthpiece. Here's a better one:
https://interestingengineering.com/gm-and-fiat-chrysler-unve...
Fred has an article up based on an Elon Musk tweet within half an hour, and has repeatedly printed baseless rumours.
Disclaimer: TSLA investor, Model S/X owner. If I ask you to buy a Tesla, it is not to help my stock, but to help move the world to electric transportation faster. If you find a better EV product, I encourage you to buy it regardless of manufacturer. I will hold my Tesla stock all the way to zero, and climate change keeps me up at night (seriously, it's terrifying; Rome is burning and the band plays on). Any sources I cite regarding Tesla have been and will continue to be from reputable online publications.
If you consider Teslarati, Eletrek and Cleantechnica "reputable", not sure what to tell you.
That said, I appreciate the disclosure. You may have not whined about "short-sellers", but I've got it often here. It's ridiculous, and says more about the person making the accusation than anything. Even sama and pg got on-board on Twitter. We can disagree about the prospects of Tesla without resorting to conspiracy theories.
That's a specious comparison. ZEV credits are a punitive measure designed to make automakers want to convert their fleet to electric where the market itself can't force it. Facebook buying components for their datacenter from said manufacturers of components has nothing to do with it. A more apt comparison would be Facebook being forced to pay doubleclick for each ad served on facebook.
One of these passed me on the highway the other day. I've only seen a handful of Lotus in my life and never a Tesla Roadster.. it really is a beautiful little car. Pretty small (and impractical for cargo/passengers I'd imagine) though.
The Lotus philosophy is to create small lightweighted sport cars, after all.
There is an all-new electric Fiat 500, based on a new electric-only platform, in development for a 2020 release. This will be built in much higher volumes than the old 500e, on a dedicated production line in Italy.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-...
> What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can." -- http://www.paulgraham.com/goodart.html
The original versions of the Fiat 500 itself, the Morris Mini, the Beetle, and the 2CV would disagree. Ok, you might have a point on the 2CV, but it's owners loved it.
In cars there is a lot of hidden value in buying popular models.
As an environmentalist this vehicle goes against my ethics. It exists to allow them to sell more pollutant vehicles in California. It's all sizzle and no steak. There are better EVs out there. Most car manufacturers will take customer feedback to incorporate into newer models. FCA is having none of that with the 500e. They aren't interested in customer feedback just government CAFE regs.
Lots of people want a small pickup like the Ranger (Toyota also followed along - compare sizes of the Tacoma of the 90s vs today - I suspect they all changed in size), but they can't buy one. It has something to do with CAFE rules, plus some weird calculation of area - so the larger the vehicles footprint, the more it'll pass or offset or something; I'm not sure how it works.
But something changed in the 1990s - and now we have this.
I got mine almost two months ago for 10k off msrp + state and federal.
There was a thread on Slickdeals a while back about it https://slickdeals.net/f/13163326-21-000-off-msrp-2019-volks...
Unfortunately they don't/didn't ever sell the e-Golf here. Looking at used car sites the nearest ones are in California (about a two day drive). Still might be worth the drive at those prices (although charging it to get it home might require some pre-planning).
It's regressive in the sense that you need to be buying a new car to get it. But it passes to used car owners in the form of a lower residual value for the car. A one year old plug-in hybrid lease-return can be a great deal.
The biggest cost of an electric car is the battery; and the cost of batteries is dropping very fast. Everything else is significantly cheaper in an electric vehicle except for the cost of the battery.
(Tesla used to say there's a "Moore's Law" of battery capacity, which is that every 7 years the capacity doubles for the same cost.)
Everyone (in the auto industry) knows this, it's just a matter of deciding how to plan for this. Either you can make a lot of hybrids for a decade; or you can sell EVs side-by-side with conventional cars.
When I bike around Seattle, there are a plethora of Radpower eBikes with various modifications, either for towing, or hauling kids. Cost, traffic and the convienence of parking has driven this modeswitch, as you can park near anywhere and rarely have blocking traffic like in traditional cars.
Electric Scooters are also extending the range people are willing to walk, making short trips much more convenient, and leveraging distant transit much easier.
I think a case could be made for us already being at that point, if the total lifetime cost of car ownership is factored in. ICE vehicles are obscenely mechanically complex. That complexity inevitably leads to lots of repair bills over an ICE vehicle's lifetime.
Contrast that with the average electric car, which doesn't even have a multispeed transmission, just a single-speed step-down. About the most complex mechanical systems in an electric are differentials and shocks. I'm sure someone will pitch in here with a horror story about a high repair bill on an electric, but I'd suggest that's because economies of scale on electrics' parts haven't ramped up yet, and there isn't a large corps of electric-experienced mechanics.
EVs lose out here because of battery degradation. You can quite happily buy a 10 year old ICE car and get good reliability at a good price. Trying to do the same with an EV just gets you a car with a worn out battery and low range.
The batteries for EVs need to get cheaper and more durable for the second-hand EV car market to be competitive with the second-hand ICE car market.
You're absolutely correct. That's why every Tesla with over 100,00 miles on it has been sent to the junkyard because it no longer takes a charge.
Oh, and one consequence of rapidly falling battery prices is that if at some point your battery capacity eventually does get too low, you can buy a replacement at a small fraction of what the original cost.
For how much? If your future cheap battery costs $100 per kilowatt hour at the pack level, you're spending $8,000 for an 80 kilowatt hour battery. That's a large small fraction.
An that is the basic point the OP was making. EV's are already a better deal, it's just that they are new and so most people don't realize it.
And one more point. Once the swing to EV's starts to happen in a few years, then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet, and you would lose a lot more that way if you bought one than you would pay for a replacement battery.
You've fallen victim to wishful thinking. Show me even one projection at that price point.
> then the resale value of ICE's is going to plummet
Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
Battery prices have been falling rapidly. They went down 35% in the last year alone. This is partly due to improved technology and partly to increasing economies of scale. Those two trends are predicted to continue.
>Which makes it a buyer's market which is even more reason to buy a secondhand ICE vehicle over a secondhand EV.
The problem is that if ICE resale prices drop, then the effective price of buying an ICE new goes up, which steer people toward buying an EV instead. EV prices are predicted to reach sticker price parity with ICE's around 2024. And their total lifetime ownership costs are already lower. When that happens then ICE sales are going to drop rapidly and be replaced by ICE's.
Remember, the original article is about GM and VW giving up on hybrids and switching to battery EV's. They are doing this because they are aware of what is going to happen and realize they will go bankrupt if they don't switch as fast as possible (and they make their money selling new cars, so people buying used ICE's is not going to save them).
Show me a single projection that claims $25 a kwh at the pack level in 10 years.
Can you back this up with actual data? Because this is simply not true:
https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2018/7/16/tesloops-tesla-model-...
TESLOOP’S TESLA MODEL S SURPASSES 400,000 MILES (643,737 KM)
"Battery degradation over the course of the first 194,000 miles was ~6% with multiple supercharges a day to 95-100%, instead of the recommended 90-95%. Between 194,000 and 324,000 miles Tesloop experienced battery degradation of ~22% (see below for details)."
What's important to note is that the vehicle was mainly charged using dc fast chargers (often multiple times a day). Had this not been the case, degradation would have been even lower.
Additional data: https://www.tesloop.com/blog/2019/2/6/tesloops-high-mileage-...
Tesla warrants their batteries at 70% capacity for 8 years for the Model 3. The Model S and X have an 8 year warranty with no capacity guarantee:
https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty
So that's about what you should expect from a Tesla battery.
In addition, current data indicates that for the first 50,000 miles (100,000 km), most Tesla battery packs will lose about 5% of their capacity, but after the 50,000-mile mark, the capacity levels off and it looks like it could be difficult to make a pack degrade by another 5%.
There's a ton of data and anecdotes on this subject at the https://teslamotorsclub.com forums.
3% degradation after 35k KMs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avGUGFrLrVc
Then 8% degradation 1 year later at 100k KMs and the car now has a reduced rate of charge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loulJ3ResDg
So why would I buy a 10 year old Tesla? If it requires a new battery I'd be better off just buying a different or newer car.
Most of the longer term maintenance costs of Model S's seem to be down to luxury components that aren't necessary (like air suspension, funky door handles, big touchscreen).
An EV Civic could well be bulletproof.
Maybe, but the limitations of electric vehicles still mean it is an apple and oranges comparison. Electric cars are still a long way off in terms of range, towing capacity, utility and winter performance. They might seem great in California, especially as a second car, but they are still a long long way off from replicating how many non-rich people use their vehicles.
We don't all live in SF. Personally, I'd need a stable 1000km/day range capacity, in winter/-30, in mountains, pulling several hundred pounds of people/stuff, before I'd even consider electric for my one and only car. Price is beside the point. I'm starting to think that zero net emission tech (diesel from air etc) might catch up before all-electric becomes the widespread standard.
It took approximately 12 hours in total with approx 1.5-2 hours of charging time.
"8 hours of battery logistics" is something you've just made up.
It's more like you're in range of a rapid charger and it's a non issue, or you're not in which case you cannot do more than a full charge in a day (a European 230V outlet takes more than a day for a full charge, American 110V is slower).
Granted it won't do that in winter in the mountains whilst pulling several hundreds pounds worth of stuff. That's something that, like, 0.5% of car owners actually do. The emissions from that sort of activity are probably less important than stuff like tractors.
And not everyone can afford a tesla. They are still luxury vehicles.
The same for chargers below 22kW. Only for overnight or opportunistic use.
I hope that in 10 or so years there's the equivalent of a Civic or Corolla that just keeps on going - new cars are luxury in general.
EVs are being widely adopted in Europe, with Norway (harsh winters) taking the lead. I don't get the whole "EVs are only suitable in California" narrative.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2019/07/Europe-EV-Sales-Janu...
I live near Boise Idaho (also harsh winters) and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
Around June of last year, we bought a used Model S and eventually replaced my wife's SUV with a used Model X. So far, we do not foresee going back to ICE cars. I haven't been into a gas station in forever.
They can do that today. I;m driving a car from 2010. How are the 10+yo teslas doing? And when I say 1000km/day I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
>> and I only drive to the office 3 times a week.
So you have a part-time job in an office? That's part of the California narrative. You aren't a forestry worker. You aren't a local equipment rep. You aren't a tradesperson. You are someone with a relatively short and stable commute to a fixed location around which you can plan the battery recharge cycles. That is a luxury many people cannot afford.
>> and I see 2-4 Teslas in my commute ...
So they are still the freak/edge cases then. I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas. Lots of teslas in Vancouver, but I don't live in Vancouver.
There's a second thing that most people with gas cars don't realize. EVs do REALLY well in traffic. The slower the better. Gas cars continue to burn fuel while idling. When I'm in traffic, my 300 mile tesla goes to 500+ mile range because moving an EV at 5-10mph is optimal conditions.
Unnecessarily rude, and clearly untrue considering the poster displayed an excellent understanding of the logistics of the situation. I don't think he or anyone else is opposed to the infrastructure catching up, but he's alive and working today and needs solutions that work right now.
>> I mean 1000km in perhaps eight hours of driving, not eight hours of driving plus another eight hours of battery logistics.
You are grossly underestimating the current state EV charging (you seem to be just a tad ignorant on the subject). A typical charging session on a Tesla supercharger is only 10-20 minutes.
At most, a 1017+ km road-trip would only add 40-60 minutes of combined supercharging (3 stops https://abetterrouteplanner.com/?plan_uuid=1366ac4f-d815-4e9...). I know because myself and many others have done it.
>> I saw at least a few hundred vehicles on the highway over the weekend (BC, Canada, proper mountains, sometimes 200+km between gas stations) not one seemed electric, certainly none were teslas
I can't tell if your being serious or not. ICE cars have like a 100+ year head-start, not to mention the infrastructure. Of course that would be the case, but not for long...
Google "Tesla Chargers BC". The closest one to me now is literally hundreds of kilometers away. There are places near me, places that I sometimes work, that are literally a thousand kilometers from a tesla supercharger. Please do not assume that everyone lives in teslaland.
Indeed, just came back from a two-week vacation in Northern Germany, had to drive there from the South.
Didn't drive EV, but still couldn't help but notice that at every rest stop we made at a bigger Autobahnrasttätte there was either a Tesla supercharger station or some other brand EV charger. Could probably have made the same 600 km trip with an EV.
Tesla's have also become quite a common sight on German autobahnen, don't really notice the other brand EV's because I'm not much of a car guy.
what? Electric vehicles are vastly superior in towing capacity. The Model X from tesla can TOW a boeing jet -- 230,000 pounds. Now that has some tradeoffs for range, i believe. but in terms of actual towing capacity, it's leaps and bounds ahead of any other vehicle capable of towing. if you'd said 'towing range', i might be willing to accept that.
range itself is also just not really a concern any more. 300+ miles of range on a single charge is more than enough for the vast majority of drivers.
winter performance is possibly somethign to worry about, but when you can charge overnight at your home, you can still leave every morning with a 'full tank', so it's also just not really a concern any more.
The towing capacity of a Model X is around 5k pounds. It's illegal to tow more the door sticker says on public roads in the US. For comparison, depending on what kind of Ford F-150 you get, you can tow from 5k to 8k pounds. According to some [1], you're also looking at a 45-60% decrease in range if you tow something like a camper.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122487_towing-a-camper...
Remember, an electric motor has much more torque than a gas motor. The only obstacle is battery cost.
BTW, go look up Ford's video of the F150 conversion to EV that they did. It towed a crazy amount of weight.
Say hello to 2006-2011 Honda Civic IMA with non cooled non charge balanced battery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Civic_Hybrid#Battery_lif...
It's the general high price of new EVs that kept me away from buying one when I was in the market last year, I'm also the type that likes to pay for their car in cash. But second hand EVs are definitely a very intriguing choice for a second/commute-only car. You can get $7k electric Smart for very low mileage (under 10k).
At that price point you need to be buying the car specifically because it's electric, not because it's a good value.
With my commute, suburban+urban with high traffic. Definitely not true. The bolt will be way cheaper.
It will be also quicker, even if it was not meant to be.
Nobody buys a BMW in the US for good value when you factor in maintenance costs & overall TCO. The only reason you buy one is cause you like the driving dynamics. That's a perfectly fine reason IMO.
It doesn't seem there are any limo operators who are going to operate a Bolt and rapidly drive it to 400k-500k miles to find out just how reliable it is. But I really suspect a Chevy could be less of a hassle to maintain than a Tesla.. since GM is a much more established manufacturer and has a long built out dealer/service network it's hard for me to believe it could be worse than Tesla.
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/ford-stop-making-all-...
https://www.autonews.com/sales/ford-says-fusion-output-will-...
Or look for a dealer demo car. They tend to list them for exactly $7500 under MSRP.
But yeah, never buy new if you can't claim the full amount, since the value of your car has gone down by that amount when it leaves the lot.
How does it do on potholes? And on ice?
I really wanted to love the i3, but the bicycle tires looked liked they'd be fundamentally unsafe on the ice or on any unmaintained (pothole-filled) road.
I agree the bicycle tires are terrible looking. I actually just bought a 2017 today for 22k and the salesmen mentioned one of the mechanics has an i3 and has tricked his out, including bigger rims/tires. I'm going to reach out and do the same now that I own one (had been leasing a 2017).
Why do you say that they haven't been successful? At least in CA they, especially Prius, has done very well.
As a happy Volt owner (I've yet to met one who didn't love theirs), I can't help but wonder if "expensive" is code for "lost service revenue because the thing is too dang low maintenance and reliable". ;)
In short, expensive means expensive. They cost a lot to make.
Fracking may have semi-permanently put a cap on the cost of oil, which is horrific from a global warming standpoint but does seem to have altered what cars most people purchase.
When GM started Volt development in about 2006, sedans were still popular and the Toyota Prius was selling relatively well. So I think GM just failed to anticipate the market shift.
About 20 years ago, the classic The Innovator's Dilemma came out. Included was a chapter based on a report the author had done for the auto industry back in the 1990s. On existing technology curves he found that mass market electric cars for the American model should become commercially viable around 2020, and in the next several years after that would become dominant. Until then it was a bad business to be in, and after that success was imperative for any car manufacturer that wants to remain in business.
The same author in that book and its follow-up The Innovator's Solution said that conventional car manufacturers would come up with hybrid cars first, but that route would lose to fully electric. Exactly how sailing ship companies came up with hybrid steam/sailing ships (go under steam for short trips, and you have sails if you run out of coal on a long trip), but all manufacturers who invested in that lost.
GM's actions show that they understood a lot of the message of those books. They worked on hybrid cars once that was commercially feasible, and put in the effort to figure out how to make good electric cars. They did this knowing that the technology wasn't yet commercially viable. They have declared that their future is electric only, and are explicitly avoiding committing to the tempting hybrid mistake.
That said, it remains to be seen whether they are committing another mistake pointed out in The Innovator's Solution. Which is that they are trying to make the switch without doing it as a spinoff, without separating the companies, and trying to leverage existing dealer networks. Which opens them to the problem that dealers have come to expect maintenance costs as a big part of their profit model, and therefore will try to steer customers away from electric, or will try to charge extra to stay in business. If GM can't resolve this conflict, they will fail.
GM rushed the Bolt out because also ending in 2017 were two ZEV related credit (CARB credits by another name) traits that were easily exploited, banking them for future use and double dipping by getting credit in a non CARB state for a sale there plus the CARB credit.
The key thing to note about EV sales, how to tell if a manufacturer is serious about selling them. The common figure of twenty to twenty five thousand units is bandied about as where the CARB value falls off after. As in, selling into that maximum allows GM and others to exploit the credit system to the extent it covers all possible sales for their other vehicles. This number will slowly increase but when they say "we cannot sell more because we cannot get batteries" don't believe them
[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/california-and-western...
From my perspective, energy prices and auto regulations are the biggest reasons it took that long.
If it costs $1,000,000 to design a car and I sell that car for $30,000 and I sell 33 cars, I've lost $10k. But just selling one more car will turn a profit.
On the other hand if that car costs $32,000 to make and I'm selling it for $30,000... GM has long been in the business, for whatever reason, of selling cars below cost [1]. And for the Volt, it's more like selling a $40k car that actually costs $80k to manufacture [2], not even taking engineering and marketing costs as a factor.
Selling more Bolts and Volts would hurt GM, not help.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/gm-admits-bolt-not-profitable/
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2012/09/10/stu...
It looks like engineering is included as "Development" in the original report: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-generalmotors-volt/factbo...
And there's the rub. People say they want these things, but when it comes time to open the pocketbook, their calculations change. Worst thing is that the people who can afford this stuff will instead drop more money on an ICE SUV.
:(
I think it would have sold a lot better if they had positioned it as a more upscale vehicle to match the asking price, or at least had given it some other value proposition beyond economy. I've never been able to figure out exactly who the target market for the Volt was.
> "While it was a financial loser, it did what was intended," said retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt into production. "We viewed it as a stepping stone to full electrics, which were totally out of reach due to the then-astronomical cost of lithium-ion batteries."
> GM needed to stop making it due in part to changing consumer preferences for SUVs, he said. The company also lost money on every Volt, cash that is needed for research on autonomous vehicles and more advanced electric cars, he said.
In 2019, people don't want their cars to break at all. Even a trivial matter might have you lose a customer.
Worse, when he started saying there were no local charger available he refuse to do a web search to prove his point since the last time I looked there were plenty available locally.
I just walked out, on the other hand I could have bought the car CASH if he had not lied.
The dealers are more than 50% of the problem!
There are specifications. We don't buy overkill material.
At worst, we stop tracking issues of they are too old, like after 5 years of use.
Edit, due to HN limits. The person below me doesn't understand engineering and how specs work. You make your product at specific costs and quality. Not everything can be made out of titanium.
All of these are vehicles with a focus on power and range that would benefit from the torque and simplicity of electric motors, and could easily absorb the weight penalty of a motor-generator and fuel versus more batteries. The people who buy these for functional reasons would appreciate the long range, easy refueling, and reduced maintenance costs.
It also doesn’t help that the units of “miles per gallon” are not linear with consumption. A improvement from 10 to 15 mpg doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as an improvement from 20 to 60 mpg... but unintuitively, over 20,000 miles, it’s the same amount of fuel savings.
Sure they don't need spark plugs and oil changes and they don't break down often, but when they do apparently it's hard to find non-dealership technicians who can repair/replace parts.
The public charging infrastructure outside of California cities is weak. There are very few fast chargers, and the electric vehicles charge slow unless they're a Tesla.
The Chevy Bolt from GM? The fast charger is optional and is only 50kW. This means about 50 miles every 17 minutes. That's over an hour to refill the tank.
The rebuttal to how slow the public charging charging is is always "top off at home" and the rebuttal to no at home charging is always "public fast charging". Yet we see neither is doing well.
It's not hard to imagine that if the number of EVs goes to a very sizable share of all vehicles, instead of the low single digits that it is now, that the number of charging stations would explode.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System#Versi...
Until then, I hope that hybrids will be an option.
Don't know about you, but I usually have at least 8 hours every night available for this purpose.
In terms of time at the pump for a gas vehicle that gets 25 miles per gallon, and time on the charger at the newest Supercharger that Tesla announced a few months ago for an EV, to add enough gas or add enough charge, respectively, for a given number of miles, it takes about 15 times as long on the EV.
That's assuming a gas pump that can pump 10 gallons per minute, which is the fastest rate allowed by law in the US. A lot of pumps aren't that fast, so in practice the gas car might only "charge" 5 to 10 times faster than the fastest charging EV.
If someone goes in every 250 miles, then we are talking a minute at the gas pump best case (for a 25 mpg car), and 15 minutes for an EV, best case. With the gas car, that's fast enough that many people don't even have to think about it--they just go about their business and whenever the see that it is low, stop and get gas. You only need a little slack in your schedule to add an impromptu fill up. With the EV, you'll have to plan more, allowing for the longer charge breaks in your schedule (or stopping more often for shorter range changes).
I think the answer for dealing with EVs for people who do not a way to charge at home will not be the electric gas station model (unless charging can get an order of magnitude faster). Those stations will be for people passing through. For people who aren't just passing through, I think the answer will be to build charging stations at key places that people already visit regularly for 15 minutes or more at a time. Supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and places like that.
With the 150kW spreading all over, and already some 350kw [1] superchargers you are already just 10ish minutes to fully charge from empty. The 1.2mW [2] chargers seem insane, but over time they will get more and more capacity. As long as the cars keep up / catches up!
I agree though that gas/petrol stations will be a thing of the past. As you say charge in normal parking lots, or at home.
I expect restaurants, especially fast-food joints will be the charging places of the future.
[1] https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/first-350kw-chargi...
[2] https://insideevs.com/news/347476/350-kw-12-mw-fast-charging...
Saves you the trip to the gas pump!
(BTW, the Whole Foods closest to me has a CCS charger.)
Either that or cities are going to have to deal with a bunch of really long extension cords all over the street!
I suppose another option is that you'll see an AirBnB type thing for garages with chargers, or small "charge garages" opening near places with only street parking.
Reading a lot of these replies makes me think that Austin must be ahead of the game. I can't think of the last time I went to a grocery store that they didn't have a charging station available.
Perhaps an arrangement like that will come around again in dense areas.
Amortize the cost of installation against the savings they'll have by spending 1/3 of the amount that they currently spend for gasoline.
Second, having a cord across the sidewalk is a tripping hazard and illegal:
* https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/09/01/toronto-electric...
* https://archive.is/29o0a (in case)
Third: street parking is common, so even if the above two items were not a problem, there is no guarantee that there would be a space in front of their place.
There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Typical sidewalk in older parts of the city (use Street View):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Westminster+Ave,+Toront...
Even if one lived on the "parking-side" of such a street (which my parents do not), there's no way installing a charge point without messing up the sidewalk. And there's no way people would agree to messing up the clear sidewalks we have on the residential streets. The busier commercial streets are another matter; around the corner in the same neighbourhood:
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/385+Roncesvalles+Ave,+Toro...
> There's no reason they couldn't spring for a PHEV though and opportunistically charge where they can while out shopping or whatever. Every little bit helps.
Yes, but the originating article was about the elimination of hybrids by GM and VW: this is a non-starter for some folks.
People are buying pure electrics betting on charging at home, but some of them are going to be screwed when they move.
I don't have "range anxiety", I have "range requirements"; no way I'm going on an 8 hour drive to go skiing in the Adirondacks or in Vermont with a pure electric.
A pure BEV won't meet my needs.
I assume the Volt requires at least an oil change every year?
I've had my Volt for 2.5 years, almost 70,000km. Have done one oil change. Only one visit to dealer, which was oil change and some cleaning of the brakes since they barely get used.
Fast DC chargers are going to be everywhere in the near future. They're already on every major highway except i94.
I'm a big fan of the EV movement, I'll own a BEV someday, but I feel that GM and EV-boosters in general have thrown the Volt-type range extended EVs under the bus. It is an amazing technical achievement and with the right marketing and product development could take the market by storm.
(I don't consider the Volt a PHEV, btw, but a range extended electric vehicle. It is the only "plugin hybrid" on the market that can operate purely electric without using the gas engine. And even when the gas engine kicks in, it performs like an EV.)
Not true at all: Prius prime, Pacifica Hybrid can all run on the battery without the engine.
I can get 30 miles on my Pacifica hybrid without the engine turning on, I even drive it at highway speeds without the engine turning on.
The Volt is designed explicitly so that the gas engine is never necessary. Top speed, hardest acceleration, etc. all is the same experience as a 100% pure battery electric vehicle. Until you run out of battery. And then it meets all the same performance characteristics, but with the ICE involved.
I constantly drive 75mph without ever using the engine. I even merge on extremely steep inclines without ever using the engine.
Yes, it turns on for hard acceleration, but that's not the kind of thing you need to do in day-to-day driving.
BTW, if you can do a minivan, my other car is a Pacifica plugin hybrid. It has some problems charging off of 240 volts, but it does about 30 miles on a charge. I almost never use gas.
At the same time it is good to see more companies jumping into full EV designs, so the future is, IMO, bright, but it may be harder to sell this in the short term.
With Tesla, you are showing off that you bought a luxury vehicle.
It's surveying a different question.
About 7 years ago, EV charging points essentially did not exist.
Right now we have rapid chargers that allow you to drive across Western Europe with 30 minute stops.
In about another 7 years the chargers will be a complete non issue. Certainly in a place like the UK that has very few real "rural" areas.
It may be the case that for that short period it made sense to produce hybrids. We'll still look back on it as a transition period.
But if you live in Newcastle, say in Jesmond, fancy terraced house with no private parking space - where are you going to charge your car? In one of the 2 public spaces that are nearby? Drive few miles out to a quick charger near the motorway? At one of the public car parks where the charging time is limited? Like, I can't see any way to do that that wouldn't be a massive inconvenience every few days.
Right now it might be inconvenient, sure. Owning a Tesla was a few years back before superchargers existed.
I've moved out now but I didn't find it an issue to charge in London in a suburban apartment, and I deliberately went out of my way to only ever use free chargers. If I'd used the pay ones it really would have been trivial.
If Newcastle doesn't have that now, it will soon.
Prii didn't get their reputation for reliability by being unnecessarily complicated. Of course EVs are obviously simpler, but I'm not sure I'd say a Prius is more complicated than many ICE vehicles of today. Twin turbos and 10 speed autos aren't something exotic anymore -- those are available on the base trim of the F150.
You can simplify those cars significantly due to them being an hybrid.
Again, I'm not very knowledgeable here, I just have intuition to go on and familiarity with the fact hybrids are definitely viewed as more complex to develop and race, in motorsports. I'd love to be more informed if I'm missing some major factors
Look at Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. It is rather beautiful in its simplicity, and bypasses the need for a traditional automatic transmission — a part so complicated the big auto makers have mostly given up on designing in-house. Toyota’s HSD scales from the tiny Prius to Hylander, something a CVT can’t do reliably.
Hondas’s hybrids are also mechanically simpler by bypassing a transmission as well, and the ICE motor driving the wheels directly at highway speeds.
Failing transmissions are often the cause of a totaled older car, because it is an extremely complex and expensive part to replace.
Basically they are talking about a tipping point where BEVs are flat out cheaper and more cost effective for everyone. They are not talking about decades but the next few years. Right now it's a luxury thing for early adopters. A few years from now, it will be the obvious cost effective choice across all price rangers and vehicle types.
The WSJ article seems to suggest that battery vehicles are not profitable currently. I'd argue that's probably not true. At least Tesla is apparently enjoying pretty decent margins on their cars; even before you consider tax advantages.
I would be fine with an all electric SUV with a decent range, but those don't exist either. The model X is not sufficient, and is also terrible for everyone who isn't the driver (and also costs way too much for what you get).
Hopefully this change means that in a few years I'll be able to find what I want.
What I want: A hybrid electric with ~40 miles of battery and a 300mi gas tank for longer trips
What Auto Manufacturers assume (I'm guessing): 2 car households where one is 100% electric and the other 100% gas.
Seems to me like the plug in hybrid is the best of all worlds. Everyone can use battery for all the short trips we do and we don't make any compromises for our long distance needs.
A Toyota Prius Prime will do 25 miles of EV range and 640 miles total range: https://www.toyota.com/priusprime/
A Honda Clarity plug-in hybrid will do 47 miles EV range and 340 miles total range: https://automobiles.honda.com/clarity-plug-in-hybrid
The truth is where I live I'm just too far to have single car. Most of the time we only need one car, but we have just enough cases of my wife and I needing to go two different places that it doesn't make sense to rent or Uber/Lyft. And maybe that's why they don't cater to that segment. There just isn't enough people who want one car.
My ideal would be a plug in hybrid van. Our van gets the most use because I often have to drive around my in-laws, so I need the six seats. But almost all of our trips are within 20 miles round trip. But sometimes we go 400 miles to LA. I'd love it if I had a van that could do that.
If Honda made an all-electric or hybrid Odyssey, I'd buy it the day it came out, pretty much regardless of price. It would be the perfect car for us.
Also, the entertainment system is glitchy. Yesterday I had to do a magic dance of turning the car off and on and opening and closing the screens to get them to turn on.
(For me, I needed 3 rows, so we just went with the Pacifica Hybrid. Handles well in snow even though it's just a front wheel drive minivan.)
Hadn't heard about it until today. :)
Maybe this will kill GM. Good riddance.
Seems to me a quite substantial improvement.
Furthermore, you need a bit of a safety buffer, because you shouldn't plan to drive an EV to 0% everyday, so if you plan on driving in cold weather, you should have about 240 miles of range.
FWIW: My wife and I had some very close calls in our 2014 Leaf. (EPA rated for 80ish miles) One 40 mile round trip on a 10 degree New Years Eve nearly left us with a dead battery.
I’d love to own a suburban but I’d never consider paying that much in gas. Maybe I’m not a typical customer?