The US could end up running on gasoline forever | Hacker News Reader

The US could end up running on gasoline forever

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20 pointsimartin2k28 comments

At $100/kWh, a 200kwh battery pack is just $20k. I expect the motor is approximately $5k. An F150 runs anywhere from $28k-$70k. Which means that the base F150 without gas engine is around $23k. Add in the electric, and you’re up to $48k - still well in the middle of the F150 price range. The electric version would have incredible torque and reasonable range.

Even if the gas version gets 20mpg @ $3/gal, over 200k miles, you’re spending $30k on gas. Electric is likely 1/3 the cost, saving $20k over the lifetime. This puts the electric truck on par with the lowest end F150 for TCO.

We are at the inflection point for battery prices driving TCO wins across major new sectors. The conversion rate to EV will accelerate.

A brand new combustion engine can be bought from JEGS or Summit Racing for less than $4,000 USD.

A used engine can be had for less than $1,000, and it often comes attached to a car if you are not interested in adding it to a different vehicle.

Electric cars are really cool, but I don't think hundreds of millions of Americans will be running out to switch until maybe 11 years from now, which is how long it took the USA to go from "nobody has a smart phone" to "everyone has a smart phone".

Smart phones had to wait for better wireless connection tech, electric vehicles have to similarly wait for infrastructure improvements. Once that happens, it’ll be just as overnight as it felt with phones.

That's a good point- the revolution could have happened in 1980 if the tech was there.

I think it still is much longer away before mass adoption happens

If politicians have have their way, business will be driven out of the US because of over taxation and we will never get to this point.

Ok, a combustion engine for an F150 plus transmission is $3k? I’m off by $2k? That doesn’t really change the overall equation much.

Just pointing out that an electric pickup is viable with today’s battery prices. The inflection point for major changes is just around the corner, and if batteries ever hit $50/kWh, the equation will be even more compelling.

Pickup trucks are sold to consumers, but the business economics drive the design. The F150 is the lightest version on a platform that scales up to crewcabbed 350 diesel dualies sold by the fleetload out in the Permian Basin. Sold by the dozens to utility companies. Into the timber industry. Here and there cattle ranchers, feedlots, farmers. Building contractors.

The cost of fuel? There's markup passed along to customers with the risk of higher fuel prices eating into profits under an existing contract. The cost of electricity? Planning overhead and the risk of failure to meet contract terms. In business, non-performance can evaporate the $20k lifetime savings in a year, or a month, or even a day.

If US attempts to run on gasoline forever it will simply not survive.

When the economy is fully electrified, at scale, the operational cost of energy becomes practically zero (no extraction, refinement, delivery, spill cleanup). Economies that run on fossil fuels will simply become too expensive and hence uncompetitive. If US doesn't shake off the grip of the fossil industry, it's not too hard to imagine the sunset of the American empire.

> When the economy is fully electrified, at scale, the operational cost of energy becomes practically zero (no extraction, refinement, delivery, spill cleanup).

This doesn't make any sense. How do you suppose that electricity is to be generated?

> How do you suppose that electricity is to be generated?

Without use of oil, which would make that electricity cheaper. Wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal...

Not sure why you think those sources have anywhere near "an operational cost close to zero", given that most of them are currently far more expensive than fossil fuels. Even in cases where some of them beat fossil fuels, that doesn't mean that cost benefit will scale, and you also have the significant, unsolved problem of energy storage required with some of those sources.

What are the operational costs of wind and solar sources?

I wouldn't say energy storage problem is "significant" in this context, though for different people, who see this subject differently, glass can be half-full or half-empty. Yes, there is a problem but not forbidding extension of deployment now.

> That could be a bummer. But I might just have to live with it.

We have no choice but to move away from gasoline. Global warming is set to make this planet uninhabitable. The world is estimated to be on a course to 3-4C by 2100 which can only support $1 billion people (and note temperature doesn't stop increasing at 2100).

Sorry, we won't be running on gasoline forever, one way or another.

Please. Hyperbole that we'll be over capacity by 7 billion people due to climate change is irresponsible and deflects from changes that are actually achievable. Fear-mongering will do more damage to solving the problem then being rational.

At least the "Hyperbole" as you put it is based on scientific studies about the carrying capacity of the earth. It appears to me a perfectly rational position. In fact isn't it irrational to ignore these kinds of studies?

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warmi...

Seems it is the economists who are the optimists, and we know how well economists are at forcasting anything...

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/cwire/2009/03/13...

What I've seen in my neighborhood (Colorado) is the 1 gas, 1 EV car household. EV for grocery store and work commuting, gas car for camping, skiing, and longer trips. If the US started moving this route it would be a big deal, even if it's not 100% electric.

Exactly what we did, and it's been great. And, in my city, an added (not insignificant) benefit is you can use the HOV lanes with an EV, which saves my wife around 20 to 30 minutes per day on her commute.

Deleted comment

flawed city planning

I am not denying the problems of automobile centric US cities. But city planning isn't enough. Most of the US is rural. West of Dallas, Fort Smith, and Minniapolis the US is mostly very rural mountains and deserts. The American vastness requires different approaches. Different solutions. Because problems in the American vastness are at different scales of distance. Different scales of density. Different extremes of geography.

Between Philadelphia and Boston, better city planning solves a lot of problems. Albuquerque to Flagstaff is entirely different, Similar distance. Only Gallup, Holbrook, and Winslow between.

My suspicion is very rural drivers will be out of luck in any mass shift to electric vehicles. Even though they could keep using the internal combustion engine prices will increase substantially if the majority has moved to EV’s.

In the US, each rural driver has two senators.

This is yet another discussion about nuclear energy to power the grid... with everyone 'delicately' and dubiously avoiding discussing nuclear energy to power the grid. Such things used to have popcorn value but now they are just annoying.

There's a lot of handwringing over how long gas will stay relevant, but I really believe that adoption of electric vehicles is going to follow a S curve. I know that when I look for my next car in 2 to 3 years, I'm definitely taking electric vehicles into account, especially if the charging times continue to decrease and the range continues to increase.

My wife loves her Volt. It’s at 50k miles now. Here’s what a typical month looks like:

Fuel Economy: 250+ mpg

Electric Consumption: 31 kW-hr/100 miles

Electric Miles: 1,538

Gas Miles: 244

Total Miles: 1,781 mi

Percentage on Electric: 86 %

Estimated Gallons of Fuel Saved: 71 gal

Most around town driving is 100% electric but she can also take out of town road trips without worrying about finding a charger.

There’s a lot more Teslas around here (Raleigh NC) than there used to be but I still wonder how viable they are for road trips.

One of the things that motivated the Volt purchase is the susceptibility of this area’s gasoline supply which relies on a single pipeline that had multiple outages a few years ago[1]. On the other side, I know CA Tesla owners were not having fun during the PG&E blackouts. (Then again, without electricity, gas station pumps don’t work either.)

Anyway, the flexibility of dual energy choices has been great for us. I’m sad GM canceled the vehicle and that it and other similar range plug-in hybrids aren’t more popular.

1. E.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hurricane-harvey/critical-...

I have driven my Model S about 20k miles in the last year back and forth across the US. No issues, charging only from Superchargers and at home. Happy to share my lifetime drive map from TeslaFi privately if desired, total electrical costs are under $500 for those 20k miles (and I drive "spirited").

I would never purchase an internal combustion vehicle again, and everyone I have loaned my S to had ended up buying a Tesla of some sort (S, X, 3). n=1

https://supercharge.info/map

How long was your average charge time on the Superchargers?

15-20 minutes.

Yes Model 3's are everywhere here it Raleigh NC now.

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