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Comment by babuskov | Hacker News Reader

> But consumers are already making this investment by switching en masse to EVs

"En masse"? Maybe if you live in Norway or something like that.

According to the data I was able to find online, only about 2% of the new cars sold worldwide in 2018. are EVs. If we take the number of all cars currently on the roads worldwide, it's around 0.25%.

As for the "Vehicle-to-grid" thing in the United States, the Wikipedia page lists 3 experiments which are in progress and 2 claims with "citation needed" flag:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid

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I might be saying "en masse" 18 months prematurely. But at the speed utilities move, that's a blink of an eye.

I'm often reminded of Steve Balmer in 2007 laughing at the iPhone: "it's $500 and it doesn't even have a keyboard!?"

Less than 10 years later smartphones are ubiquitous. Not popular--ubiquitous.

That's where EVs are right now: "they cost more and they can't even go 250 miles!?"

EVs will be cheaper than gas cars by 2022, and a few years after that nobody will buy another gas car.

$500 smartphones are only ubiquitous in the most wealthy parts of the most wealthy countries in the world.

Smartphones are ubiquitous, not high-end iPhones.

EVs will be ubiquitous, not Tesla Model S.

Agreed

I know we're thinking focused on cars, but fwiw: "China has 99% of the world’s 250 million electric two-wheelers."

I'm not sure that I'd say "en masse" either, but the current numbers to understate the phenomenon by quite a bit. Just a year or two ago it was <1%, and I'd expect it to hit >4% by the end of next year with a continuing high growth rate for at least another couple of years after that.

I do not think it is at all obvious what will happen afterwards, but its going to start looking really rapid to people in another year or two.

Most homes have multiple cars.

A single high-end car could support multiple homes without the grid for over 24 hours.

So I think even at adoption rates under 5% you would see enough capacity to shave those peaks and make it easier to respond to changes in demand.

See Australia's tests with grid-smoothing batteries. Immensely successful and it has paid for itself.

https://www.sciencealert.com/remember-the-giant-tesla-batter...

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