Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands
cleantechnica.com
cleantechnica.com
Just walking up to my local grocery story in Oslo, I may see 6-7 Tesla's on that short walk. I only realize how abnormal that is when it is when I travel abroad. Spent several days in London and didn't see a single Tesla.
Spent a week in Spain and didn't even see an electric car at all. In Norway there are Leafs, BMW i3, e-Golf, Teslas, Ionic, you name it going around all the time.
What is interesting to observe is how it just accelerates. The more normal it gets to drive electric the more people jump onboard. A lot of people are reluctant to try something entirely different. But then they drive in their friends electric car or sit in an electric cab etc and it all starts to look really normal.
If your goal is to upgrade your country’s vehicle fleet to electric, then Norway is a good example that with enough government spending it can happen. Don’t mistake it for “normal people jumping onboard electric train”, though, they are jumping onboard tax incentives train.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/06/tesla-model-3-6th-best-...
https://www.marklines.com/en/statistics/flash_sales/salesfig...
I was under the impression children per woman correlates pretty well to economic development.
In Canada [1] -- looks like about 3 out of the top 10 models are "passenger cars".
In Australia [2] - it's the same thing. 3 out of 10 are passenger cars (and both have a top 2 being a pickup - although the .au spread isn't as wide as .ca)
For Australia the same figure was 2.4 times ( https://www.caradvice.com.au/797477/vfacts-september-2019/ ) and 2.1 times in August - though this is only a recent change in the Australian market (passenger car sales being down considerably in 2019 versus 2018).
But yeah, the difference isn't as much as I thought it was, primarily because I didn't realise until looking into it now that crossover SUVs like RAV4s and CX-5s are considered 'light trucks' in those US figures.
Trucks have taken over US passenger vehicles. With consequence for pedestrian safety, parking spaces, space between vehicles on the road, and fuel consumption.
Tesla offers one. Of course its per-model numbers are going to be higher, compared to its marketshare.
2. Other manufacturers have multiple mid-range sedan models. Honda has the Civic, the Insight, the Accord, the Clarity, and the Fit hatchback. Their sales are being split across five different low-mid-range models. Tesla has one. Toyota has the Yaris, the Corolla, the Prius, the Camry, the Avalon, and if you're some kind of lunatic, who for some insane reason wants a hydrogen fuel cell car, the Mirai. Again, for other auto manufacturers, sales in the same price/specs/form factor are split across five different models.
3. There's no reason to believe that five different Tesla sedan models are going to lead to anywhere close to 5x the demand. I mean, maybe if 4 of them are ICEs...
If you're in the USA and fill your tank once a week, you probably spend ~$2000/yr in gas. And that's how much you'd save in gas if you went electric.
In areas with higher fuel prices, the incentive is proportionally larger.
(That's ignoring the cost of paying your electric bill, not sure if that changes the math much..)
The electric bill makes a big difference, because you're really looking at the relative cost of two different forms of energy -- electrical and chemical (fuel). The last time I calculated it, the cost of running an ICE was around 20% more expensive (in my area) than a BEV, but a PHEV was within a percent or so of owning a BEV.
I'm curious to know what percentage of EV owners in Norway have a second car. I'd imagine the uptake rate for families that can afford to own more than one vehicle is significantly higher than for those that can't, but I've never seen any stats on the matter. The reality is that for most people, a car is the second largest purchase they'll ever make (if not the largest), so utility has to be high on the list of priorities. I'm not entirely convinced EVs have the utility to overtake ICE vehicles just yet, especially when incentives are removed.
It is almost impossible to repair the damage that CO2 emissions cause. You need an even bigger clean energy source to reverse the damage so it is always more efficient to use that energy to never cause emissions in the first place. EVs are a way to reduce emissions at the cost of waiting for them to charge during road trips. But for some stupid inexplicable reason no one actually wants that trade off.
Market forces ensure that charging spots will be located in spots where people want to stop and spend money on food, drinks, bathroom breaks. This is what already happens with Tesla's charging network.
These habits will change once people organically get to experience the better driving experience that a properly engineered EV gives.
I probably spend around $1500/year on gas with my 17-25mpg Jeep.
Honestly, Tesla really still can’t compete with the fact I have to haul stuff and drive a few hundred miles. so not an option for me anyway.
[1] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Norway/gasoline_prices/
I've noticed reverse anecdotal evidence when I saw cars with ridiculous 6.5l engines in the US and Canada. It's amazing to me with my western European background how energy inefficient the US and Canada are per USD of GDP.[0][1]
It must be so much harder as an individual to make energy saving choices in an environment where those are an afterthought.
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.KD.GD [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...
If we ignore the cost of gas, it'll also change the math...
Needless to say, need to include all costs for a fair comparison. A few years ago when my wife had a Fiat 500e and I was commuting on a 1988 Honda CRX (~40 mpg). The energy cost was higher for the Fiat than the Honda at the time. (Electricity is very expensive in CA). Gas has gone up lately (but then, so has PG&E), I haven't run the numbers in recent years. Might be a wash now.
Gas an electricity prices vary widely so do the math for your area, but don't ignore any costs.
It could be different for other vehicles that are more efficient (don’t have ICE components to lug around), or for people with their own solar charging.
In the future you will only get 8 cents per kWh for what your solar panels generate and put back into the grid. At that point charging your car will be a very good proposition, because you are practically filling it with 8 cents per kWh.
And as more people shift from ICE-powered vehicles to electric ones, it seems likely that some of the taxes currently imposed on gasoline may end up applying to electric charging as well, as governments will need to maintain the revenue somehow.
If solar energy that would otherwise go to waste can be stored in cars, then that reduces the chance the car will need charged at another time and save the utility money.
I can imagine plugs that you connect to for free when parked, that only give you as much power as they want but that will also let you buy express power when absolutely required via an app.
For "superchargers" and other fast charging, I agree.
But slower L2 entry-level chargers are so cheap, and electricity so cheap, I don't see free charging going away entirely. Already in Michigan, it's cheaper to just give away free L2 charging to anyone who wants it, than it costs to keep the lot clear of snow in the winter.
I suspect slow charging will become similar to Salt / Sugar packets in restaurants. Free basically anywhere that abuse or insane land costs aren't a problem (so free basically everywhere except major cities)
If I could seemlessly pay about 120% of my residential rate to slow charge, I would for convenience sake alone. But no one has really figured this out, yet.
Yeah, I get the impression a lot of people don't really know what electricity costs. Like, they know what their monthly utility bill is, but they probably don't know what that bill was really for, in any measurable units.
If someone (for example), charges at a L2 charger @ 3.3kw at a restaurant for an hour, in the state of Michigan, they've used up about 53 cents worth of electricity. That's all the restaurant paid for that electricity. For that 53 cents, their car probably got an extra 10 to 13 miles of range.
My city initially gave away free charging to lower air pollution, which wasn't on your list of reasons. 6 years after that start, they've started charging.
City: 20 miles per gallon ($2.75/gal) or 0.13 per mile Highway: 30mpg or 0.09c. Hybrid: 40mpg or 0.07c.
Tesla is too expensive for a very little benefit, smaller EVs have tiny range. Hybrids would be cheaper than a Tesla.
The same prices for dino juice in my quite efficient toyota avensis and current fuel prices was about 0.7-0.8 NOK/km. That car is now sold and will never be missed.
The savings are huge, especially if you drive a lot.
Is that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
There are TOU rates, but there are from 8am to midnight.
Part of that is that there's a lot more hybrid competition for the Prius than there used to be.
I've seen estimates that over its lifetime an EV purchased in America saves society about $20,000. Though at least one component of that will be higher in Norway as their grid is so clean that it'll be even better on health impacts.
I'm not sure that a society continuously voting for sane, reality-based economic policies over a few decades is different from "normal people jumping on board the electric train" if that's where they end up. Who else should they "blame" for this sensible and rational policy if not themselves?
Every poll I've seen across a range of countries shows strong interest in and support for the transtion to EVs. Sometimes the national governments ignore this support (e.g. in my own country of Australia) but I'm not aware of any country where the government is ahead of interest and support from 'normal people', including Norway.
A new Ford Focus with all taxes and fees will cost you around $50,000, the base model without fees alone starts at around $35,000 (320,000 NOK).
That’s a $12-13K car in the US, a Tesla on the otherhand might cost you even lower than the US sticker price under some circumstances, especially on the officially refurbished ones.
Add other benefits on top of that and the fact that petrol in Norway costs $7 per gallon, money is the pretty much the only reason why people buy Tesla’s and other EVs at such high rates in Norway.
Car prices in Norway are crazy high.
So price does indeed become an issue because they're different buying segments. People shopping for the larger vehicles tend to be buying them because of greater usability and comfort for driver and passengers.
The Model 3 sits firmly in the compact sedan segment, something entirely different. The people buying those are either looking for pure economy while not having the issues of a used car (in which case starting price is around $20,000), or they're buying in the luxury car segment which is where the M3 is, meaning it's no different then buying an Audi A3.
For me it’s the utility factor. I can get a well equipped, 4 door Tacoma for $32k. That’s a hell of a lot more useful to me than a $40k Tesla. Perhaps if Tesla had a small sized pickup for less than $45k I’d give it a look, but their lower-end options just aren’t that attractive.
When you’re looking at a vehicle that’s the size of a civic, that isn’t a fun sports car, I just don’t see how the average American can justify it. I’m not exactly sure who Tesla Model 3 is supposed to be competing with. It’s not cheap enough to compete with Honda, Toyota, etc. and it’s not expensive enough to compete with luxury brands like Mercedes, Lexus, etc.
I expect Tesla sales to increase further with the introduction of the Y crossover built on the 3 platform.
That said, never saw a Telsa in snow.
Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also don't actively decrease our dependency on fossil fuel.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#Coal_power
You'd have to have a very dirty grid and keep it dirty for decades for it to be a bad idea, and in that case you have bigger problems and it's not the EVs at fault.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles
> Even when the electricity comes from the dirtiest coal-dominated grid, electric vehicles (EVs) still produce less global warming pollution than their conventional counterparts, and with fewer tailpipe emissions (or none at all).
That quote is based on US grids but the general point holds worldwide.
Despite there being 7 billion of us, we seem to struggle with paying attention to more than one problem at a time.
Compared to those two, though, coal power plants are dirty as hell, and I’d take equivalent amount of car emissions to generate the same power over coal any day.
Not to mention that coal plants and gas power plants can be changed to burn biomass or do gasification of biomass. That allows us to avoid fossil fuels entirely. You cannot easily run an internal combustion engine on biomass.
Sure you can produce ethanol or biodiesel from plants, but that is not as attractive as gasifying wood pellet. In particular because the latter does not compete with agricultural land.
It’s not that clear-cut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_energy_efficiency:
”Taking the conversion factor of 2.58 in France into account (see Embodied energy#Electricity), we would find an efficiency of about 0.5/2.58 or 19 %, which corresponds to the order of magnitude of the balance of the combustion vehicles, according to the diagram of the Department of energy (where the efficiency of combustion vehicles is less than 20%). By the way, according to the French energy agency (ADEME), the primary energy consumption of electric vehicles and combustion-powered ones would be approximately equivalent”
I think that even ignores the higher weight of electric cars. Because of that, I think it’s better for the world to buy a small ICE than to buy a Tesla (for the local environment, things are different)
But (I suspect) it's still better to burn gasoline than coal.
I live in a densely populated country. Even a relatively minor accident at a nuclear facility would trigger a huge evacuation (I've seen the disaster control plans), causing major economic harm. Also my country does not have any viable means to store nuclear waste responsibly. Nuclear does not look like the sane option here.
So you’d agree with doing them in parallel?
Do you think car manufacturers should wait to make electric cars until all power plants have a timeline to convert? Or that power plants should wait until all car manufacturers are switching? Or that they should both act without waiting for the other?
A typical EV in Germany has a carbon footprint of a vehicle burning anywhere in the range of 2-5l/100km(including manufacturing).
EVs in Germany are consistently less carbon intensive than ICE cars - especially in the city.
Coal plants stopped being a good option economically decades ago and we are now getting to the point where keeping the existing plants going is also no longer economical. Gas plants are following pretty soon as well.
Many powerplants run thought the night because they cannot be turned on and off. The most polluting time to use the grid is during peak demand in the evening, when every powerplant has to be brought online, even the most polluting ones.
Northern Europe relies on Wind, not Solar for renewable energy. Yes, we are integratingg powergrid, but you can't pull 100 GW from Spain to UK. Yhat would require absolutely monstrous infrastructure.
What your assertion for night time charging based on?
So, if you are planning a gas plant that needs to be operational for decades, the economic outlook is pretty grim. That's why lots of plans for new gas plans are getting shelved.
Existing plants run quite economically. But when cheaper clean energy becomes available at scale, it becomes more expensive to operate them. Selling expensive energy during low demand is not going to be an option because cheaper energy will be preferred. Spinning plants up during peak demand takes time and battery + solar is already cheaper and faster for that as well. A gas plant that isn't running part of the time is going to be more expensive. That's why a lot of them will be taken out long before their planned end of life.
Currently people are shutting down the most expensive plants first (nuclear & coal) but once that is gone, gas will be next.
Solar/wind + massive energy storage is what competes with gas. And in that category it’s not even close to competitive because batteries are still way too expensive.
So, you need batteries locally for fluctuations and you can cross connect sites with wires so you can import excess energy from elsewhere. Conveniently when it is cloudy, it's usually also pretty windy. Global warming is oddly helping here by creating even more wind.
So, a combination of a some over capacity, some wires for moving energy around, and some battery for short term fluctuations would be all you need. If it's not enough on the worst days, just add more windmills/solar/batteries. At the rate prices are dropping installing 2-3x the needed capacity would still be cheaper than keeping gas plants around. Those prices are projected to continue to drop of course making the whole thing only even more affordable.
What would be the reason for people to oppose developing the grid, especially as NIMBY? Other than the obvious cost issue, is it the disruption caused by works?
The electricity provider normally sells the charger with installation for ~2500E. But that is assuming the end-to-end wiring already supports this. With dozens of chargers to install in the same parking the chances that the rest of the network was already so overspeced and up to the task are slim.
The manpower to dig a trench, replace cables and transformers is more or less the same whether you do do it for 10 parking spots or 100. So there's probably a sweet spot between having enough demand to split this between more people but not that much that you need the next level in transformers.
I live in Finland, where it is typical that blocks of flats as well as terraced and single-family houses have parking lots where there already is an electric supply to each car (for the purpose of heating the enging before winter morning starts). Even here it's not directly suitable for charging, because the feeding capacity is OK for warming cars, but not for quick charging. Fuse boxes and feeding cables have to be replaced, at a substantial cost.
Some people are afraid of adverse health effects of power lines (claiming cancer issues etc, which are fake news), but often it may also be just that powerlines are considered ugly, and seeing them from your window brings down your property value.
Later edit. Ok, that makes sense. For some reason I read it as "upgrading the residential grid to support the extra load of EV charging". There are already HV power distribution lines spanning the country. I understand building new transmission towers would be a NIMBY topic but is it a given that they can't be upgraded to expand the capacity over the same towers?
Likewise for Sweden: there is hydro and other capacity in north, but power grid cannot transfer enough power to users in Skåne (Malmö) so that industrial projects are cancelled.
The critical goal is to further develop electric cars so they become the obvious choice for consumers.
As we go from a few million EVs to tens of millions, it is of course important to move towards cleaner electricity.
should be
The critical goal is to further reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
Thus if you want to ever get to zero, you need to electrify the transport.
We can produce synthetic fuel, but it will be very hard to reach the kind of volumes we have for fossil fuels, hence synthetic fuels should only be used for long range trucks, airplanes etc.
All transport that can be electric should be electric. Transportation make up the bulk of CO2 emissions, so if you don't turn most of it electric, there is no way to get down to zero CO2 emissions.
You can bring the net environmental impact of CO2 to zero by using a fuel with a carbon neutral cycle, such as biofuels; if you are regrowing as much source material as you are consuming, there is no net emission.
> Thus if you want to ever get to zero, you need to electrify the transport.
Individually, no, but practically, for most transport in use, probably.
necessary, but not sufficient.
There is absolutely no conflict of goals here. The faster we can transition the better.
So, while not reaching the optimal numbers right now, any electric car bought today will still drive when the coal usage for the grid will be greatly reduced if not completely stopped. Any combustion engined car bought today isn't only worse in emissions already, it won't change, while the electric car gets "cleaner". Also, one should not underestimate the positive effect have on the rollout of reneweables as they can be charged at different times of the day, depending in the supply of reneweable energy.
This can get more complicated if you have excess renewable energy generation at times, where the use is essentially free. Not to mention demand dispatch to smooth intermittent renewables.
I'm a big EV fan, but it's important to get the math right, because overstating the impact does disservice to other options. Especially in Germany. When I lived in Berlin for two years, not in the loop, I just used public transport. Most of my friends rode to work.
In fact there is an even bigger benefits to BEVs: New BEVs are being made to allow sending current the opposite direction. Hence the BEV fleet can be used as a large battery for storing renewable in times of overproduction and selling it back when it is needed.
In other words adopting renewable energy REQUIRES BEVs.
This is simply not true. You are tying them together incorrectly. BEVs cause growth in electricity demand, which keeps carbon sources around for longer. Renewable growth displaces carbon sources. The sum may be in the right direction, but it doesn't mean it wouldn't go faster if electricity consumption were lowered.
It's also a bit beside the point, as BEVs are more environmentally friendly even when powered by coal plants. My argument is not at all anti BEV or pro ICE.
> In other words adopting renewable energy REQUIRES BEVs.
Yes, when renewables hit a point where you can't build more for reliability concerns, BEVs performing demand dispatch and even V2G will provide a ton of storage. This is the biggest reason I'm a BEV fan (although PHEVs can also provide much the same role), as dual use of batteries is the only real way to get remotely the storage we're going to need.
But my point is that BEVs, while better than an ICE, shouldn't be thought of as equivalently clean to riding or taking public transport. This isn't a radical position, it's math.
Of course, there are plenty of better alternatives to cars in many places, especially city centers. But as long as there is a genuine need for cars, they better be electric than combustion engined.
Using the current mix of renewables is a form of double counting. No more renewable energy is being fed in to the grid, however more is coming from dirty sources.
Reductio ad absurdum, what happens if all of Germany's cars were BEV overnight? I've seen estimates that the load on the grid would be increased by 20%. Surely you'd agree that using the current mix of renewables would no longer make sense calculating their environmental impact. So why does that change at the margins?
The answer is that it doesn't. The math is the same. With the exceptions we've both pointed out.
Also it is not always the worse carbonated source that is added when demand surge, for example coal is rather slow to increase, so the grid operator probably kept some hydro power to the rescue, nuclear can ramp up rather quickly too.
If you are really interested in minimizing the carbon intensity of the charge, you can use the api of ElectricityMap that gives you those numbers, and automatically charge your car based on a maximum carbon intensity and some fancy heuristics.
They also have a good article on the marginal electricity of European countries : https://www.tmrow.com/blog/marginal-carbon-intensity-of-elec...
Also here is an article on the subject (in french) translated here : https://www.i-care-consult.com/opinions/contenu-co2-de-lelec...
The so-called "average emission factor" method. This method is the existing and historical "default" method currently made available by ADEME: it consists in using a national average emission factor for electricity (this "average" factor also exists by use). This method makes it possible to "attribute" to each French actor its "share" of national emissions and to carry out a balance sheet (this is why it is the method used for regulatory GHG balances). However, this method is not suitable for properly assessing the impact of an action plan: it does not take into account the fact that changing the consumption curve or the production fleet modifies the structure of the energy mix itself, and therefore the average CO2 content per kWh.
The so-called "marginal" method: this method was published in 2007 by ADEME-RTE but is no longer institutionally relevant, although it is still used by some independent actors. This method is based on the principles of optimizing the electricity production fleet (merit order principles): at each moment, an upward (or downward) change in consumption leads to an increase (decrease) in production from the so-called "marginal" means, i.e. from the means available at lower cost at that moment: the means of production can thus be classified from the least expensive to the most expensive (variable production cost), this is what is called the "merit order". If we consider the emission factor of the marginal means of production, we are talking about the marginal CO2 content of electricity. In 2007, RTE and ADEME reported marginal values ranging from 450 g CO2/kWh (for base uses) to 700g CO2/kWh (for peak uses). This method is adapted to the consequential reasoning of modifying production or consumption, and therefore to the evaluation of the impact of actions on the electricity system, but this reasoning is valid at the margin: actions that would have a very significant impact (e. g. significant modification of the nuclear fleet, new use such as the electric vehicle), and that would significantly modify the stack of means of production cannot be evaluated with this method.
The so-called "incremental" method: this method has not been officially published by ADEME but has been the subject of various proposals from energy companies and professional associations. It is based on the idea that for some structuring actions, a "marginal" reasoning (mathematical notion of a value derived from the CO2 content of a kWh) is no longer valid, and that in this case it is necessary to use the comparison of 2 supply/demand balance scenarios (the no-action scenario and the action scenario) and to compare the GHG emissions associated with these 2 scenarios. The resulting value of this method depends on the extent of the system modification (upward or downward, in energy and power). This method, which is the most complex but also the most theoretically accurate, should therefore be used when the marginal method is outside its field of validity.
This is true in general - if I buy a TV, and my neighbor already has one, should my TV be counted under marginal excess consumption and therefore more dirty than his? I would personally say absolutely not, but I've read (and disagreed with) analogous arguments to the contrary.
But if you're deciding between the relative merits of building a BEV or ICE, that's not really the same situation. The marginal load on the grid is entirely optional - you can just skip it and build a petrol car instead. It's not a philosophical question of whether your neighbour's TV set should be accounted for under a different energy mix than your Tesla just because it was there first.
It's a pragmatic question. We do A, X is the marginal impact. We do B, Y is the marginal impact. As a society, subsidize X proportional to the extent that X < Y.
Now there's no wiggle room in this argument that leaves BEVs worse off. The studies that have argued that made laughable assumptions.
> Most studies on the subject of the full cycle of CO2 emission of EV tend to use average carbon intensity of the electricity. The few studies that use marginal carbon intensity are from mostly biased anti EV, pro fossil fuel sources.
This doesn't surprise me at all. But I don't think it's quite proof that the average carbon intensity is the correct method - I think there's a strong bias for people in the field, whether unconscious or not, to encourage BEV adoption and not provide ammunition to the many groups that irrationally or for vested interests oppose it. Wherever there are decisions to be made in methodology that are both justifiable, even the most reasoned researcher will reach for the one that aligns with their beliefs.
Not to mention the potential backlash. I've made here quite reasoned arguments (of course there's room for disagreement), am in favor of BEVs and each of my posts have been downvoted more than once. There's significant social pressure among crowds like this to not be seen in any way anti environmental, even if it means erasing some of the finer points running contrary to what is still an obvious conclusion.
And it is an obvious conclusion. BEVs are the future that can't come soon enough.
Thank you very much for the detail and links.
* per amount of energy, batteries are heavier than gasoline tanks so accelerating needs more energy
* charging batteries is not 100% efficient
Is that all balanced by the generator operating at optimal conditions?
The weight of an electric car usually is a minor component in the consumption, most is the aerodynamic drag. On top of that, electric cars can get about 60% of their kinetic energy back by using their motor as a generator.
Also, all electric vehicles use regenerative braking, recapturing the kinetic energy that is lost with ICEs.
Of course, but it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. The sooner we switch to electric cars, the earlier the right incentives and levels of demand are in place to upgrade our electricity generation and grid.
Since the decision to close nuclear plants was taken the proportion of German electrical generation supplied by coal has been cut in half. So, no, it didn't increase demand for coal.
We know and can build secure nuclear power plants - we made great progress there. They will help Germany to shut coal plants faster and buy time to research and develop alternatives, maybe we will get to fusion power plants in our lifetime.
Also, there is a problem that there are no serious healthy discussions about it now in Germany: loud voices prevail, the moderate people are afraid to share different opinions; a single large party in conservative opposition, AfD, does deny human impact on the climate change, so they cannot be a moderate voice of sanity.
May it be that investing in renewables is not a good focus for Germany now, are there better areas that we should focus on to save the planet?
Wind does not take up much space. You can place them in agricultural areas, at seas or even in mountain highlands.
Solar placed on roofs or over parking spaces does not compete with anything for space either. Even installing it on grasslands is less terrible than it seems, it does not create deserts because enough sunlight gets through between the panels to let planets grow in the shade.
With nuclear you spend such an enormous amount of money building it, that there is not going back on the decision afterwards. Nuclear power plants are having enormous cost overruns and they keep the project going because they don't want tens of billions of euros to be for nothing.
I'd say build gas power plants to buy some time to get the grid working better. Some coal plants can be converted to biomass plants.
As France is no longer building many reacteors - I think they have one in construction, quite over budget - they will face the same decisions as Germany did.
There is also plenty of street charging stations in Oslo, I have many friends there without a garage that has electric cars. It's just a matter of putting up the infrastructure. It's a policy issue not a practical one.
[1] https://www.electrive.com/2019/08/18/on-street-chargers-to-p...
One charging point — or even a thousand — across a country with >30 million cars does qualify as nigh on non existent.
> It's just a matter of putting up the infrastructure. It's a policy issue not a practical one.
It's both. When the charging infrastructure is not in place, it's impractical for many people to buy an EV.
This can be solved with a law in a heartbeat. Installations etc take their time but the state itself subsidizes them--if they want to drive adoption rate up. So like they have parking meters they can put charging stations everywhere in the streets.
People are so worried about looking “poor” that they waste electricity on the dryer rather than using the sun to dry their clothes. I mentioned using a clothesline once to someone else in the USA, who was shocked and responded they weren’t poor and wouldn’t want their neighbors to be scandalized by drying clothes in the sun.
There at least are 19 states in the USA that have passed laws outlawing solar drying bans, unfortunately I think most of these laws only apply to homeowners and not to rented apartments.
> So to satisfy some idiotic idea of aesthetics, we're going to burn electricity instead of just using the sun?
Yep, common condo / HOA issue.
https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/traffic-transport/map-charging-s...
The install itself isn't too hard usually. There is an opportunity to set up a business to do cooperative charging where the chargers limit themselves to a total max power. Otherwise garages will need large upgrades in total peak power capability. None of these issues are all that hard to surpass though. The power grid is pretty good already and most needed charging is only in the <10kW range which most places can manage easily.
I'm not saying it's a non-issue, but it is possible for a lot of people, and it is getting better, even for people who currently do not have chargers at work, things are changing rapidly.
For many people, an electric vehicle can be fueled at work or home eliminating most fueling stops. A few exceptions are not a deal breaker.
If you're just looking for excuses to say no, of course, just stick with the ICE for now.
I went to a pit stop in the middle of nowhere in a third world country, on my way to another province. In between miles and miles of dry land, there it was, an entire electric car charging station. There's more of these things than you think.
Model 3 sales in NL will drop tremendously in 2020.
The only think to remark is that ?two? years ago the same situation occurred with the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV, thousands were ordered and the end of the year was approaching. A couple of people worked around the clock to register them all before the 1st of January to ensure the tax benefits (At least that is what I heard at that time).
I recently saw a post on social media where someone couldn't go to the dentist because the car was updating software.
From the discussion I understand there is a "grace period" of 2 weeks before automatic updates, and that the software is needed for advanced features.
It was also mentioned that basic braking and steering functionality were also dependent on updatable software, making it unsafe to use it as a regular car when a software update is occurring.
Does anyone have more information on this?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_facilities_in_Tilburg
Also, braking and steering should be dependent on software. This is the case in most modern cars, though those don't always have OTA updates. It means these can be changed and improved over time.
I can definitely see someone who had auto-update not realizing their car will start the update before they need it, but I think they've chosen a decent balance between keeping users up-to-date and making sure your car is available when you need it.
If you need the car now, and it's updating, it should be trivial to halt the update and operate the car on its previous software version.
Storage is cheap nowadays, there's no reason to not have versioned copies of every operational software version across the vehicle.
That's an opinion and that's fine, but I was wondering if it was the case, i.e., they are dependent on software.
> This is the case in most modern cars
By `this' you mean "basic steering and braking functionality depending on upgradable software", right?
Yeah, sorry, this is definitely an opinion and I don't think I actually agree with that in general. I meant that in the case of a Tesla or many modern cars with autonomous emergency braking or lane-drift avoidance or similar, braking and/or steering is generally software-controlled, often without a mechanical default, so given features like Autopilot it "should" be software-dependent.
> By `this' you mean "basic steering and braking functionality depending on upgradable software", right?
Yes, but just to reiterate, most manufacturers don't use OTAs and some models never receive an update, but it's not uncommon for an update to change steering and/or braking response and feel.
They are making a much simpler electric car with the ethos that anyone can fix it, with readily available parts and manuals/blueprints for every part of the car.
I am excited by it having solar panels as my average daily drive is probably in the region of 10 miles.
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/29729/the-worlds-most-importan...
tested it and it's truly a marvel.
On the other side, considering how many videos I see on youTube about people using batteries and electric motors from salvaged Teslas to build their own electric cars/conversions to electric, the technology seems to be quite hackable. In the end, an electric motor is easy to control and a battery is just a battery. So even a homegrown controller should be quite feasible, compared to managing ignition on a modern combustion engine.
I think the electric cars are rather going to trigger a wave of new small car companies emerging, as most of the required technology is quite commonplace. Which also should make maintenance and repair easier.
You might be interested in: http://store.evtv.me/proddetail.php?prod=gevcu6
Source code: https://github.com/collin80/GEVCU
Waiting for the ferry across the Niger at Timbuctoo was a long line of Land Cruisers and a single Hilux. Along the way (not really a way, actually, but everybody was going roughly the same route) we encountered tons more Land Cruisers. Only a single Mitsubishi 4WD, which had broken down.
Rumour had it that if your Land Cruiser broke down in the desert, you could probably buy parts from a guy on a camel. But that's not going to be much use if they're getting harder to repair.
Once the update it downloaded, it will notify you on the in car display and on your phone an update is ready to install.
You can then either schedule a time when it should be installed in the future (e.g. middle of the night), click to start the install immediately, or ignore the update for as long as you want.
When you click to install, it begins a 2:00 minute countdown timer which allows you to cancel before the install starts. It says very clearly how long the update will take and that it can’t be canceled while it’s installing. You cannot drive the car while the update is running.
If someone missed their dentist appointment because of a software update, it’s because they intentionally ran the update just before needing to use the car.
It's five years old; hardly warrants "finally". It is also not used for this purpose (assembly to avoid tariffs) with the more mass-market Model 3.
> I recently saw a post on social media where someone couldn't go to the dentist because the car was updating software.
A moron or liar. The software doesn't update on its own, requires explicit action by the user - and warns you how long it's going to take to do the update.
> It was also mentioned that basic braking and steering functionality were also dependent on updatable software
As in pretty much any modern car…
> making it unsafe to use it as a regular car when a software update is occurring.
It is impossible to install updates while driving. A bit of common sense, please - _no_ car manufacturer is incompetent enough to update the software while the vehicle is in use.
Nice. I wish the only cost of getting a free upgrade to my vehicle was that I'd have to take a taxi every now and then.
It's lunacy to do OTA updates for cars, but here we are. And other manufacturers are following.
Cars always used to be the pinnacle of thought out design. And Tesla is supposed to be catering the more stylish crowd I think.
I wonder how they decided to place a standard screen to the right of the driver.
It will be interesting to see if other car manufacturers will adopt this design decision. Then it would be a bit like in the smartphone world, where ugly camera bumps on the back are the norm now.
There are almost no physical products that you can not get in a nice design these days. Everything seems to exist in perfectly designed versions. Headphones, tables, knifes, socks, glasses, lamps, bed sheets ... It's fascinating that phones are the one type of product that fell off a cliff. Will cars be next?
There are now dozens of features in my car which didn’t even exist when I bought it. UI refinements actually improve my driving experience one month to the next. This is a level of service which is impossible to provide with a hard-wired UI.
It’s also crucially important to acknowledge that all the main driving interfaces are tactile buttons immediately within reach. Steering, blinkers, wipers, high beams, gear select, AutoPilot, cruise speed, volume, track selection, follow distance, windows, and hazard lights are all perfectly positioned physical controls.
There is only a single control which might require a time sensitive activation which is on the screen, and that is the defog.
Tesla also does a remarkable job automating away the need for many tasks which in other cars might have you reaching for a knob or switch of some kind.
The lack of tactile controls for things like climate controls, sound system, etc., is very frustrating. I find myself having to mess around with the touchscreen much more than I'd like while driving. You get used to the central screen in lieu of a traditional dashboard pretty quickly, but I'd prefer more traditional dashboard functions to be aligned to display(s) on the driver's side.
I despise the lack of a traditional keyfob or non-phone means of locking/unlocking the car other than the awkward keycard (only useful through the driver's side).
It represents an extremely opinionated way of doing things. If you love life with your iPhone and Apple's extremely opinionated way about how it should work and how you should work with it, the Model 3 gives you something approaching that. Smartphones have their utility, but I'm not the kind of person that lives my digital life through one. I therefore have no love for the idea of my car as a roadgoing smartphone. I also couldn't possibly give less of a shit over Autopilot as we are so far away from that technology being rigorous.
Interior materials, particularly the carpet, are cheap.
There are also significant privacy implications associated with the connectivity, which Tesla does not do enough to address.
Things I do enjoy: the refreshing minimalism, the styling (though body panel alignment still has room to improve), and the energy & drivetrain technology. It is definitely enjoyable to drive. Driving our other combustion engine hybrid is a steep step backward into a cruder era.
Bottom line: Tesla's energy & drivetrain technology are years ahead of other manufacturers; if that matters to you, there is no current package like Tesla's. I look forward to the time when more traditional auto manufacturers catch up and I have well-engineered choices that don't require me to live with Tesla/Elon's opinions on how an EV should work.
https://shop.tesla.com/product/model-3-key-fob
Personally, I am sticking with the phone, and I think that’s true for most people.
The I realized, not having that glowing screen behind the wheel (which also means the wheel itself is smaller than a typical wheel) grants you a much better view of the road and noticeably better night vision.
I’ve never had an app where I can grant access to the car to someone from my phone, and even let them drive. I’ve used it a couple times and it’s been very helpful. I routinely unlock the car from my phone well out of Bluetooth range to let someone in to grab something, or to let my son get in ahead of a trip so he can play the arcade. We have an Xbox controller connected so he can play from the backseat.
Remote climate control is used extensively during the winter and summer to get the cabin ready for humans. Remotely controlling the seat heaters even, my wife particularly appreciates that.
A lot of this is made possible, or made significantly easier, because there are no physical buttons/knobs/switches which would need to maintain state with the software being remotely controlled. I know some types of physical buttons can be “soft-buttons” where the state can be changed remotely, but having it all on screen makes these features a lot less expensive, and easy to add in a software update instead of needing it all planned from the beginning.
The screen most of all avoids lock-in and future proofs the car for all the cool features they’ve been adding and will continue to add. There is nothing else on the market like it.
So bottom line, I’m not saying that somethings are not minutely more difficult, like adjusting cabin temp or turning on the rear seat heaters. But that only by committing fully the vision is truly realized. And the vision is absolutely grand.
Lastly, to your example with the sound system. Of course we have volume and skip-track controls on the wheel. The more advanced input and track selection is touch. Personally I would find it mind-numbing to try to do that with physical buttons. I mean, they didn’t even have Spötify last month and now they do, so I order to have buttons for inputs, it would need to be a scroll thingy highlighting a selection in a screen, or a push-to-cycle-through thingy which frankly those are both awful and not less distracting that directly tapping what you want.
Inside individual sources you have things like custom channels in Slacker/Spotify, podcasts, playlists, even now Caraoke. None of that would be manageable with physical buttons in any reasonable sense. It’s all made possible by the touch screen and software stack.
You say you like it, but when Ford or similar does it, it's annoying.
It's not that Tesla quality is good either.
It's one of those things that we tell ourselves we like.
I believe there isn't a correct answer, but rather our psychology decides what we like rather than true performance
But on many objective measures Tesla’s touchscreen is worlds apart from any of car touchscreen. It is iPad-like responsiveness as far as touch recognition and refresh rate.
I always said I would never want a GPS/Nav system in a car, because what would be the point?! Low quality maps, no decent POI, no decent user input for querying POI, bad routing, no pinch-to-zoom in a complicated intersection, slow to load, etc.
My wife’s Mercedes has Nav and we used it exactly once.
By contrast I always use Nav in the Tesla because I can map to Work or Home in two taps in 1 second, boom, the map routes and zooms to show the overview and I have a traffic aware route with an accurate ETA.
The live traffic lets me see if traffic is slowing ahead on the highway. Often times I will slow down to the speed limit when approaching a red zone ahead on the highway. Someone behind will swerve around me and accelerate hard just to come to a screeching halt around the bend. Craziness.
I think “build quality” and “materials quality” is way more subjective and harder to quantify. But the screen interface is on a different level.
Not really. The robustness of the screens in Teslas is particularly poor:
https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...
Tesla didn't go with automotive grade screens which is why the screen failure rate is so high.
My understanding is all the new screens are tested to Grade 2 instead of Grade 4 like the original screens from Innolux.
[1] - https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows...
I will be the first (or I guess second) to admit that some controls should be hard buttons for ease of use while looking at the road. This is something that I hope they improve on, though the steering wheel scroll wheels are already often geared for the appropriate context-dependent function.
However, Tesla manages to hide nearly all of the other car's functions behind fewer layers of menus than in modern BMWs or similar, in my experience, making it far easier to access the more arcane items. For example, adjusting the auto high-beam sensitivity or detailed HVAC preferences seem a lot easier on a touchscreen where buttons are laid out logically enough.
Some are intentionally moving in the opposite direction. Using touch screens apparently distracts from driving, as you need to watch them to see what you're doing. Simply tactile controls are more intuitive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell#Everythi...
Both of those controls belong to the central console as it's useful for the passenger to manipulate them.
The giant screen could be taken further, e.g. a generic USB3 tablet that just runs the Tesla app. You could then take the screen out of the car with you or, if you lose it, just get any old tablet and shove it in there.
The tactile controls have nothing to do with ICE (none of them even deals with ICE itself) and everything to do with human behaviour and basic safety, namely the need for fixed positioning, direct interaction, and feedback to enable manipulation of those controls while attention remains on the road.
I was extremely impressed by how the government create a solid infrastructure for electric car owners to charge their car batteries.
The Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in the world so any kind of construction work generally involves permits and negotiations with governments about how and what. Permits come with strings attached and this is how governments can nudge the private sector the way it wants to go. EVs and clean energy are popular topics for planning bodies. It makes everybody look good.
When something new gets planned, questions need to be answered about this (and a lot of other topics) and having solutions in your plan generally helps getting those plans approved and probably also unlocks some nice subsidies. So, a real estate developer planning some new housing, roadwork, industrial estate, or whatever is going to have a big incentive to have some charging infrastructure built into the plans from day one.
For the same reasons the Netherlands is one of the safest places to ride a bike because any roadworks in the last 50 years had some explicit planning for improving bike safety. There's not a single road that gets built without that being a topic of attention and scrutiny.
If you buy an EV you can ask the municipality to install more of these parking spots, and depending on existing saturation they will.
You get an RFID card that you hold up to the charging station to activate it, and you're then charged for its use.
Here's more details: https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/parking/electric-charging/
Details (in dutch) https://www.eindhoven.nl/stad-en-wonen/stad/parkeren/oplaadp...
An overview, together with if they're currently occupied: https://oplaadpalen.nl/
I think this is a good illustration how forward thinking government policies (incentivise electric car use) can drive new business in a country or state.
Why not? Governments take care of a lot of public infrastructure, either directly through public workers or by paying private companies to do the work for them
It's not my car... I had humble bikes :)
In addition, perhaps it's time to shed that miopic view on life that leads you to wrongly interpret anything that you believe benefits someone else as an attack on your personal interests.
> Of all countries, the Netherlands would have an especially large incentive to combat climate change
OTOH they are the best in the world in dealing with sea levels. They 're already up to 6-7m below sea level. The worst predictions for rising sea levels are within average 2m. The Dutch are so good at it that countries employ them to build their artificial islands.
There are a lot of them on the market now sub 20K and they are effectively EVs in most use cases.
This is the stated goal of Tesla. Make people buy electric cars because they're better, not because of the environment. Then the environmental stuff will follow but you can never convince the general population to give up comfort for the greater good.
That's the underlying reality that drives both the sales, the incentives and Tesla's pricing and product decisions.
This probably has something to do with the fact the discounted additional tax liability for leased Teslas will go away soon and everybody planning to lease a Tesla from that moment will need to pay more taxes.
So everybody who wants a Tesla is signing leasing contracts for them like crazy right now.
And it is interpreted by some ( me too ) as a tax relief for rich people.
The problem is profitability and, at present levels of profitability, the current stock price is not at all justified.
Norway was an early adopter of large subsidies/driving perks for EVs. It looks like other countries are following suit.
This obviously bodes well for Tesla—-I wonder if anybody has insight about what this could mean for Chinese EVs if they make it to Europe.
Some municipals have free public charging stations but that's up to the locals to decide.
In the other they do not collect tax on something. The argument that the "could have had" the money is moot because they never had it in the first place like with subsidies.
It's like saying the US government is subsidising iphones since they could have had 100% sales tax on them but do not.
And lastly, the tax they collect on the ICE cars is a pollution and/or CO2 tax so it is not applicable to EVs anyway as they do not have an indirect cost to society in form of pollution. I think they should tax ICE cars even more and same with petrol and CO2 release in general.
Actually, a major reason for the spike is that the incentives are about to be dialed back in the new year.
Some people may jump on you about the fire-safety of Tesla cars (or BEVs in general), but I want to get ahead of that with a link to the Highway Loss Data Institute's December 2018 report for 2016-2018 motor vehicles, where the Tesla Model X had a RCF (Relative Claim Frequency) of 192, the second-worse score for vehicles in its class, and the Tesla Model S had a RCF of 140, the worst in its class.
Because the report covers model years 2016-2018, the Model 3 wasn't included in the analysis. Regardless, the point about the relative aptitude of Tesla-manufactured BEVs to catch fire in non-crash scenarios is well made by that report.
https://www.iihs.org/media/c93b98d8-6a7d-44a1-810e-4468ec539...
Yes, Model X (at 192) is second highest in its class.
It's also better than any passenger car in top 10 (lowest at 204) and better than any pickup truck in top 10 (lowest at 205).
So if we care about fire safety, we should replace every passenger car and pick up with the "terrible" Model X.
Also worth noting that, to my knowledge, there wasn't a single non-crash fire in Model 3, which points to a dramatic improvement in battery safety from Model S/X to Model 3, even from the baseline of "much better than most passenger cars and pick up trucks".
Before the HLDI report came out, were you aware that there were 20 insurance claims for non-crash fires between the Model S and the Model X over 2 years of time?
Not everybody goes running to social media when their car catches on fire. Perhaps we should wait until the next HLDI report comes out for 2019-2020 before we make presumptions about how often the Model 3 catches fire.