Kandi K27 electric car available in California for $7,999 after rebates | Hacker News Reader

Kandi K27 electric car available in California for $7,999 after rebates

singularityhub.com

86 pointsevo_9162 comments

> the order was met with mixed reactions; a senior economist at the Institute for Energy Research pointed out that “Electric cars might not have emissions at a tailpipe, but they do have emissions at the power plant.”

> IER is often described as a "front" for the fossil fuel industry; it was initially formed by Charles Koch, receives donations from many large companies like Exxon, and publishes a stream of reports and position papers opposing any efforts to control greenhouse gasses. Thomas Pyle, president of the IER and its offshoot American Energy Alliance (AEA), was appointed to the US Department of Energy's transition team after the 2016 United States elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

Yeah, no kidding. My first reaction was, "Has this guy not heard about solar and wind energy?"

I guess so.

Or hydro. Or nuclear. It's not like it's a new thing.

But they have emissions at the mfg plant, says the same folks.

> but they do have emissions at the power plant

While objectively true and ignoring the fact of renewable energies that a sibling comment pointed out... power plants are cleaner than cars, even when one were to burn the same fuel - simply because modern power plants have enormously powerful particulate filters and other exhaust post-processing: fine-particulate removal using high voltage, "gas washing" to get rid of sulphur, afterburning to get rid of dioxines and other nasty compounds...

This is something that the EPA has been trying to get people to believe since at least the 80's. It's called "point source pollution."

Instead of having a million lawn mowers each belching out pollution, you use electric mowers and have all the filth at the power plant, where it can be cleaned and scrubbed better. And when new technology comes along to clean better or shift to a new form of energy production, you only have to upgrade one power plant instead of making a million people buy new mowers.

Somehow it never caught on. I don't know why.

The lawn mower example is really good. Lawn mowers and leaf blowers have horrible pollution issues - until 2016 they were entirely unregulated in the European Union.

To make it worse, people are directly near the exhausts of these machines which means that this is way, way more harmful than whatever a car manages to emit.

Because battery powered mowers and blowers aren't good. They require impractically large battery mass.

A laptop runs at 20W. A lawnmower runs at 1200W.

or, using an economic argument: if it was better to have a generator in your house or apartment than to use the grid for getting electricity, everybody would have one.

Hell even if power plants were on the whole worse? Air pollution is a huge health and human development issue* being able to move the source of emissions from high population areas to the middle of fucking nowhere is still a win

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution Outdoor air pollution alone causes 2.1[4][5] to 4.21 million deaths annually.[1][6] Overall, air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and is the world's largest single environmental health risk.[1][7][8]

Productivity losses and degraded quality of life caused by air pollution are estimated to cost the world economy $5 trillion per year.[9][10][11] Various pollution control technologies and strategies are available to reduce air pollution.[12][13]

Power plants are also more efficient than cars/lawnmowers/etc. e.g. a combined cycle power plant can be ~64% [1], compared to ~40% for car engines [2].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle_power_plant [2] - https://www.sae.org/news/2018/04/toyota-unveils-more-new-gas...

Both-sidesism at its finest. For every environmental announcement, got to find somebody who disagrees with it, and the people paid to say the earth is flat are right there to provide you with the quote you need.

https://www.desmogblog.com/david-kreutzer : "According to a report Kreutzer co-wrote at The Heritage Foundation: “No consensus exists that man-made emissions are the primary driver of global warming or, more importantly, that global warming is accelerating and dangerous.” "

* even when accounting for losses, the CO2 output of ICE is worse (today)

* electric cars allow us to tap into "free" energy (i.e. base load we can not turn off at night)

* we can innovate much more on electric (generation, transmission, storage) than we can on ICE (gains are largely realised)

* centralised emissions are easier to manage than decentralised emissions

Does electric pollute? Yes. Should we stick to ICE? Hell no.

So, it's $4,200 in China, but the base price in the US is $17,499, before rebates. That's a pretty big difference; is it because of design changes required to be legal to drive in the U.S., or largely just shipping and tariffs?

On their website, they list the bigger K23's battery type as "Ternary lithium" whatever that means. They describe the K27 battery just as "lithium". I wonder what they actually use; is it lithium iron phosphate? Or "regular" NMC lithium-ion? It would be interesting if they use different batteries for the US version and that's a big part of the price difference.

Most goods sold around the world aren't priced in relation to what it costs to make them, they're priced based on what a given market will pay for them.

There's a reason it's cheaper to fly from Australia to NYC for a weekend to buy a MBP and fly back than it is to just buy one in Australia.

Same reason the top of the line Johnny Walker Whatever label is 1/4 the price in South Africa.

I wonder if there's any sites that makes these comparisons e.g. I specify my home country then it lists popular products I can cheaper from elsewhere including cost of travel

Customs duty is a thing in most countries. You're only getting it for cheaper by breaking the law (gray area that it may be for some)

I thought it was more expensive in Australia because they have really good consumer protection laws so Apple just includes AppleCare in the cost of all their laptops

> Most goods sold around the world aren't priced in relation to what it costs to make them, they're priced based on what a given market will pay for them.

Is there some reason this isn't a large arbitrage opportunity? Why isn't Walmart buying Macbooks by the pallet in NYC to sell in Australia?

You have to pay customs duties when you import goods. Compliance with this is very high.

Technically, when you buy a product out of state you are expected to pay use tax when you come home. Compliance with this is very low.

So, for a business, there is no arbitrage opportunity.

What duties would Walmart be paying that Apple wouldn’t?

Based on my extensive 5 minutes of googling... There are many methods used to evaluate the value of goods used to determine customs duties. There are rules around which methods you are allowed to use. Presumably Apple is able to pay duties on the cost they pay to Foxconn which is substantially lower than the retail price. If Walmart had to instead pay duties on their actual cost i.e. US retail, that would be substantially higher. It appears that some methods (Transaction Value Of Identical Goods, Transaction Value Of Similar Goods, Computed Method Of Valuation) could allow Walmart to pay lower duties than their cost of goods, but I'm not a customs attorney so I don't know if they are applicable.

They would pay the same duties, which is why there wouldn't be an arbitrage opportunity

Because we don't have Walmart in Australia :^)

Some people did this for textbooks importing from asian countries like india where a book was sold for $5 compared to $100+ in the US. They were sued by the us publishers irc

Err, I'd like to factcheck that. How much is the new Mac Book Pro 13 in the US? If I visit the US website it says its $1299 USD.

In Australia it's about $1400 USD ex GST.

You can't fly to the US for $100 USD

I'm pretty sure when people make these comparisons they assume you'll illegally not declare the GST (tax)...

Well... I just checked and a fully decked mini here in Ireland is about US$600 more expensive than in the US. Import tax evasion ignored, it's possible to visit the US for US$600.

If you go for a top 16" MBP it'll be about US$3000.

Well as another example, it's generally more expensive to buy a new macbook in China than it is in the US, despite the fact that's where it's made.

You Australia example is invalid though (the Australian Consumer Law is a very strict law which leans heavily to consumers' rights and because of that most goods are priced higher relative to other markets).

i always thought everything being more expensive in australia (i'm most familiar with game licenses) is just tradition, i.e. nobody really knows why but they're buying anyway, so there's no incentive to actually lower prices.

> I wonder what they actually use; is it lithium iron phosphate?

Very likely that the cheaper option is.

Isn't LiFePO4 quite a bit more expensive per kW?

I'm actually not sure about that. I was under the impression they were supposed to be cheaper (no cobalt, easier to manufacture, etc..), but if as a regular person you try to buy some from a reputable American distributor of a respectable brand they're pretty expensive. I don't know if the price of, say, Calb cells from EVWest is anywhere close to what an auto manufacturer would pay for something equivalent, but they do seem awfully spendy on the retail market.

Supposedly Tesla is going to use LiFePO4 in all their cars sold in China. It has less energy density, so I wouldn't expect them to do that unless it was actually cheaper. Or if they were somehow forced into it (e.g. government mandate to use locally-made or cobalt-free batteries, or inadequate supply of their regular 18650-cell batteries).

(I recently bought about 450 pounds of LiFeP04 cells for an electric car conversion, and it's the most expensive part of the project. About $6,000 iirc. That was buying from a local guy who has a huge stash of them from a cancelled industrial power supply project, and they were cheaper than anything I could find online, with the possible exception of some shady-looking aliexpress vendors. Not having to deal with hazmat shipping was a big plus, too.)

Hmm, last I checked on Alibaba LiFePO4 was a bit more expensive.

Maybe they are using LiFePO4 for longevity and reliability despite less total capacity?

I hear goals of 100-150$/kwh (not retail) as being already reached by Tesla and Chinese automakers. However the cheapest retail LiFePO4 build for energy storage (done by individuals after importing the lifepo4 cells from China and assembling all the items) is barely touching 300$/kwh.

I suspect there is a demand supply mismatch with demand far outstripping supply and not enough overproduction for retail discounts.

> Isn't LiFePO4 quite a bit more expensive per kW?

No, LFP costs less wholesale, definitely less. I myself saw prices less than $100/kw at least 2 years ago. The thing is, small wholesale, and retail distribution get prices up to %100 more than what big buyers can get.

And there is a speculation that battery makers are actively trying to keep prices high for small wholesale.

Per kW - not sure, because power density is pretty low in this chemistry.

Per kWh it definitely is much cheaper.

FWIW I believe China has laxer car safety regulations than the US.

US NCAP seems to be more comprehensive than C-NCAP.

The US government invented NCAP, and their crash structure standards in particular have always been the strictest in the world. Also, IIHS testing in the US further pushes up the structural standards for mainstream models due to testing at even higher speeds and with harder tests, even though it isn't a regulatory requirement.

The original US NCAP tests from 1979 were performed at higher speeds than Euro NCAP today. (which is the standard most other NCAPs borrow their tests from)

Euro NCAP does place some higher standards for pedestrian safety and active safety features, though. I don't think C-NCAP recognizes these, though.

I imagine setting up an automotive company in the US is not inexpensive.

There is a lot of regulation involved, and then on top of that you need to price warranty repair and things like that into the cost, or they would go bankrupt immediately.

And Non Tarif Barrier's like the chicken tax

I don't think any of that explains why something would be four times the price.

The $4,200 and $17,499 are different car models from different manufacturers.

$4,200: WuLing Hong Guang Mini EV

$17,499: Kandi K27

Worth noting that it's a promo price only for the first 1000 purchased

Top speed of 68mph (EDIT: might actually be 63mph?). Basically a fast golf cart as far as the US is concerned. Who buys cars like this in the US? Is there a sizable market for cars that can’t even drive on the freeway?

Yeah. In Europe they have "city cars" with different standards for impact safety, so they can be smaller and lighter. In America, we mostly have full-on regulations for even the smallest cars, and then a category of vehicles limited to 25 MPH, which are hardly regulated at all.

I never heard of this, where in Europe?

I know in the Netherlands they have these little 'cars', that are essentially mopeds with a roof slapped onto them. They are speed-limited to 30mph and crash safety is on par with what you'd expect from a moped. You can drive these with a moped license (easy and early to get). You can only drive on roads limited to 50mph (most state roads and inner city roads).

I'm not sure why this is allowed as these things are noisy, unsafe, and hold up all other traffic. And they are not limited to disabled people either, anyone can drive these.

They used to look terrible and nobody wanted to drive them, but since they don't require a full driver's license and are not taxed annually, they have become more popular, and now look mostly like regular cars.

Search for 'brommobiel' or 'mini car' to get some examples.

What the law intended: https://alleverzekeringenopeenrij.nl/wp-content/uploads/brom...

What you can actually buy: https://media2.autokopen.nl/auto/brommobiel-aixam-crossline-...

That last 'car' has a whopping 8 hp.

I saw a lot of these in Paris. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15345640/an-aixam-to-grin... This is not the same as the "A-segment" cars that are usually called "city cars", so I probably got some terms confused.

In California, where this targeted, the maximum legal speed even on a freeway is 70mph.

That may be true, but the minimum speed before you are honked at from the car behind is about 60. That also matters.

Only if you're in the left lane, which you shouldn't be unless you're, you know, actually passing someone.

Basically, just pretend you're driving a really tiny semi and you're good to go.

Just for fun I've driven at 55 for a few weeks when I was trying to see how high I can get my mpg number. Every car was passing me, including semis. Even when driving purely in the right lane.

And yet at 70mph on California highways, most traffic will be zooming past you...

Only a few hours a day. The rest everyone is snarled in bumper to bumper traffic.

It hasn't been that way for the past 8 months.

I know nothing about this car but my intuition is to try to avoid consistently operating something at the extreme end of its capabilities.

For all we know there is a software limiter meaning its top speed is well within the safe range. It would be pretty poor to sell a car that would fail quickly under normal usage.

Going that slow on, say, 101 south of San Jose w/no traffic would get you honked at, flipped the bird, or worse.

If the road is wide open, and I'm in the right lane minding the speed limit, anyone that gets mad at my speed clearly deserves it.

Sometimes they end up passing the pain on to the law abiding driver: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1326755485610020864 .

I feel like that example could have hit someone going 90 just as easily.

Top speed might not be a relevant concern here. How long does it take to get to 60mph with 27 horsepower, and/or is it even possible on a grade?

This power is on par with a riding mower at Home Depot.

Must be quite fast, as for any electric motor.

From the manufacturer website the car is listed as 45 kW, which is 60 horsepower, not 27.

Looking at the power-to-weight ratio, it's on par with the cheapest version of the Renault Zoe, so it should actually be fairly useable on highways. The Zoe does 0-60 in 13 seconds, which is definitely not fast, but it's not unusably slow either.

Probably the collision safety would be what stopped me from taking this thing on the highway.

Hmm. They list that as the motors “rated” power which seems to beg the question of why that qualification is merited. Is the battery and motor controller capable of delivering the 45kw the motor is rated for?

Motortrend says “less than 30hp” and CNN says 27.

https://www.motortrend.com/news/2021-kandi-model-k27-k23-ev-...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/26/success/kandi-10000-electric-...

I couldn’t find any other citations of output power.

data point: i've been in a zoe on a highway and it didn't have any issue getting to 140km/h (~86mph).

Electric horsepower curves are different from ICE horsepower. [1] ICE engines typically only put out peak horsepower at higher RPMs. A Honda Fit has a peak horsepower of 128. However at 2000 RPM the Fit only has 27HP, like this Kandi K27. [2]

At similar gross weights the Kandi with the pedal to the metal will accelerate like a Honda Fit driven casually or a truck with a trailer. Enough for 55 mph highways, city streets, or the slow lane of a 65 mph Freeway.

[1] https://auto.howstuffworks.com/how-does-horsepower-figure-in....

[2] https://www.automobile-catalog.com/curve/2018/2566010/honda_...

I own a Fit. The only time you're at or below 2000 RPM in a Fit is during cruise, deceleration, or creeping along at 15mph in school zones on flat ground. Just going up my quiet residential street with a slight grade at 20mph, I'll run it out to ~3500rpm.

Also, that torque curve isn't as relevant as it used to be -- a new Fit has a CVT, so the engine will continually operate at that peak power RPM when at WOT.

Operating on a grade will have a significant impact on that top speed. You can probably do a 65mph highway in the slow lane as long as the road doesn't have a grade and there is significant merge area.

The first gen Prius actually had this problem in San Fran. In reverse, they only use the electric motor, and it was not strong enough to go in reverse up some hills. It had a 40hp electric motor.

Even though the max speed is 70, I feel like 75 is the average traffic flow speed.

That would cover about 99% of what I use a car for. Worst case I just rent for the other 1%.

It would also cover 100% of legal speeds in my state. More than good enough for me and pretty much everyone assuming it works well at its top speed.

Yeah, I live in a small town in the far northwest of the country. Nearest true freeway is either 100 miles or a ferry ride away. A surprising number people in town drive things like this.

My dad had a VW camper bus with a top speed of 65. It took a while to get there. I learned to drive with it.

It was quite a challenge to pass other cars on a 2 lane blacktop. The trick was to back off about a quarter mile, then floor it. By the time you reached the passee, you hit 65 and could swerve into the left lane then back again.

If you were unfortunate enough to get an oncoming car in the meantime, you stomped on the brake, slid back the quarter mile, and tried again.

The bus was also highly susceptible to crosswinds. Going in and out of cuts in a crosswind could blow you into the other lane. Had to anticipate that with the steering wheel.

Eventually my dad decided to sell it, and I took care of that for him. He asked me if I missed the bus, and I said no, I thought it was a minor miracle we never died in a crash in it. I understand the nostalgia for those cars, but they belong in a museum, not on the road.

A neighbor drives a "smart car" for errands around Washington, DC. I'm sure that isn't what she takes to New York City or Virginia Beach. I don't know how fast it is, but I would be uncomfortable in a car that size on the interstate.

People pay $3K for electric bikes that clearly never enter a freeway.

So I would say yes.

It also has a 17 kWh battery, so the range is limited to something like 80 miles. This is a city car.

Who buys cars like this in the US?

Retirees. People who don't ever drive on a highway. It's perfect for a second car, or a commuter car.

Is there a sizable market for cars that can’t even drive on the freeway?

Yes. In fact, there's even a huge market for luxury golf carts that people drive around retirement villages.

Most people don't realize that some retirement villages are larger and have more people than many cities. There was a pretty good article about it in the New York Times not too long ago. Some place in Florida that was profiled had some crazy number of residents like 50,000 or some similarly surprising number.

They'd also be good for fleet operations. How fast does an urban delivery vehicle need to go? Or a water company fleet? Or any number of maids, plumbers, HVAC guys, or other service industries?

You can buy a used Nissan Leaf for a lot less and arguably a lot better too...

This is their real competition in the US -- the Leaf (and it's secondary market) is what I consider my defacto city-and-the-burbs choice.

With the new models' ranges it makes quite a dent in the interstate travel band -- the state I was thinking of is Texas -- smaller states even easier)band.

There is no way you're going to find a Nissan Leaf without major problems for $8k, let alone a lot less than that.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/cta?query=nissan+leaf&so...

I don't know. Seems like there's a lot available for under $8,000. It can't be that all of them are garbage, can it?

Are you really going to trust the battery on a 7-10 year old model?

When buying a Leaf, you can install LeafSpy on your phone and bring a Bluetooth ODB dongle and check the battery pack health.

If you are less technical, you can count some bars on the dashboard. It's less precise but it gives an idea.

I wouldn't mind buying a 7-10 years old Leaf, the battery is not new but it is good enough for short distances.

I trust one every time I get in our Leaf.

But your comments in this thread indicate that you'll just find another objection to keep that narrative supported. Fact is, you actually can buy a Leaf that doesn't have "major problems" for < $8K.

Wow, that’s astonishingly cheap. What’s wrong with these? How is the range? Can they drive at highway speeds?

Yes, the original leaf has 110hp, does 0-60 in 9.9 and tops out at 93mph. It is similar in performance to other entry-level cars in the US, like a Yaris, Fit, etc.

They are cheap because they are similar in performance to other entry level economy cars, and the warranty for the battery is up. If the battery fails you’re in the ballpark of 6 or 7 thousand dollar repair.

Dunno about the Leaf but at least with the Prius the battery is composed of individual cells that fit on a rail, so a lot of failures can be corrected by testing cell voltages and figuring out which one has failed and only replacing that one single one, which is usually substantially cheaper than a full rebuild.

From what I've read, it's harder to fix the Li-ion packs, and in an electric car that relies entirely on the pack, degradation affects the driving experience more than a hybrid where you'd see it manifest itself as an MPG decrease.

The combination of information and parts available to fix Toyota NiMH packs is a big factor in why I own a vehicle with one :)

In practice you just trade in your old pack for a new one and let a professional deal with refurbishing or upcycling it into a wall battery.

Why not? We bought our first leaf, a 2011 model, for $4,900 last year.

the range is down "2 bars", so it's legit only a ~70 mile car, but it absorbed a ton of our city trips and did great.

Then Oregon passed a $2,500 incentive on used cars, so we sold it for $7,500 and moved up to an i3.

Our local EV used car dealer, Platt Auto in Portland, has a few 2016+ leafs for $8900, so I bet his two older ones listed at $Call could be had sub-8K.

Well I'd personally consider a 70 mile range to be a deal breaker.

Well then you're going to be even less happy with the Kandi's 59 mile range (new) and are still better off with the Leaf.

If it's not your main car it would rarely be a problem for me. I have a Prius Prime with 29 miles of electric range. I've only out gas in it once since Covid started. With 70 I would not have needed gas this year.

how often do you drive more than 50 miles in a day? If it's rare enough there's a point where it's financially worth driving electric daily and then renting an SUV or whatever for your camping trips.

The cost of renting a small car (SUVs are double the cost) with more range (including the ability to refuel quickly anywhere) is more than expensive enough to make buying a gas car/SUV for everything if you do it even once a month.

A second electric car makes sense if you normally travel 50-100 miles a day. In this case you are leaving the other car/suv home while you go to work. Of course with this range it is starting to become reasonable to just use the electric car for everything. (When I did the math several years ago Tesla was taking about how great superchargers would be once they rolled them out)

Not true (source: I recently did a bunch of car buying research and a used Leaf was my number 2 choice; ended up not getting it).

These are electric drivetrains (simpler transmission, etc.) so there are fewer things that can go wrong relative to an ICE car. Obv range is limited with a used Leaf but that's not a problem for most city trips.

Got a 2013 leaf for 6500 cash. Insurance is $20/month. Gets about 80 miles of range.

They really are that cheap.

I won't be buying a Chinese car, regardless of power source.

Separately Governor Newsom's autocratic proclamations about what he wants to happen in 2035 carry no weight - the next governor may change that edict as has happened many times before.

California (where I live) needs to get serious about its electricity grid, which is currently 3rd world quality, so those that want to run electric powered vehicles can do so safely.

Right now if there is a strong wind the grid is turned off in case the power lines blow over and start a fire in all the dry vegetation that is no longer managed by the state, exacerbated by tree disease.

We can't currently escape from those fires in electric vehicles. I'd like to see a massive investment in roads (tires and road degradation create enormous pollution) and the electricity grid, especially given that natural gas is now banned in all new houses, restaurants and businesses.

I predicted based on what people are throwing away that cars will become disposable and landfills will fill up with them https://joshuaspodek.com/prediction-cars-will-become-disposa....

We keep not thinking of the unintended side effects so I hope we consider the end of life for these things. I suspect plenty of externalities aren't factored into the cost that the public will have to bare.

"bans the sale of new gas cars and trucks by 2035"

I still do not see how they can role out charging infrastructure in just 15 years. Not everyone lives in a house.

I was in San Luis Obispo last December and the backup on I5 forced cars off the road. The wait at the Tesla charging station was 4-6 hours.

Getting back to the article. I'm liking the car. I would look into getting one if I owned a place where I could charge it.

It’ll get repealed. All bans like that either have large cutouts or easy ways to get out of them. It’s posturing.

It's a lot easier to roll out charging stations than gas stations, and it's already fairly well established in the urban areas where people don't live in homes. I think it's entirely realistic to have more charging ports in California than gas nozzles by 2030 if not 2025.

Why gas stations vs any other commerical location? Chargers are more popular and useful in parking spots.

Electricity is everywhere. Deployment of charging infrastructure is going to be trivial, especially in parking lots with existing light poles.

That's not to say there won't be growing pains, but we will deploy. Over the course of 2015 I went from always being able to find a charger to not being able to ever find one, and then since 2017 I haven't had a single problem because more chargers were added. For a couple years, I lived in an apartment where the landlord was a dock and wouldn't let me install a charger at the car port, and I had to charge at public chargers. It worked out, even though it wasn't ideal. And when the laws finally reign in the rapacious landlords, we will have plenty of charging at apartments too.

> It worked out, even though it wasn't ideal. And when the laws finally reign in the rapacious landlords, we will have plenty of charging at apartments too.

That's cool if you live in apartment buildings with designated parking.

I don't. I live in a place with only street parking (don't give me the "charge at work" thing - street parking there too). As evident by how many cars are on the street at any given time, you can bet that that population is very sizeable.

Chargers can be installed on the street, much like parking meters.

> Chargers can be installed on the street, much like parking meters.

Yes, because they're going to install chargers where parking meters never existed. As if.

They're installed for entirely different reasons, so I'm not sure why you'd use the nonexistence of one to argue they wouldn't install the other.

> They're installed for entirely different reasons, so I'm not sure why you'd use the nonexistence of one to argue they wouldn't install the other.

Do you expect chargers to be all over the sidewalks in residential neighborhoods? That's where a lot of people park and I don't see it happening. It'd be such an eyesore.

In dense areas where people have to park on the street? Yeah, it would make sense. And compared to the huge cars all over, I expect it'll look fine.

Just curious - where would chargers go on a street like this where I live? https://goo.gl/maps/SUkDqmrUrDnVWVuXA

I don't see it happening. The sidewalks are too narrow. It would require a massive investment.

Okay, those particular sidewalks would be a problem... in your shot jam-packed full of garages? Even if your particular situation is only street parking, that doesn't look like the norm. So that's fine. If most but not all places can have a charger, and not every person needs a home charger, then it just becomes one factor out of many for choosing a place to live.

> It would require a massive investment.

Compared to the cost of all the cars people buy every decade it's not terribly much.

There are driveways everywhere there. People will put them accessible to the driveways, from the garage. In normal parts of the world, people would actually be parking inside of their garages rather than using them as storage space or living space, as happens in the Bay Area.

But as somebody who also lives in a Bay Area suburban hell that is trying desperately to pretend it can get by with bad planning of suburban sprawl, this are is not a problem at all. People in my neighborhood work around that just fine! I see many electric cars on my street, mostly charging close to the house. Some people run wires to the sidewalk for curbside charging, but not many.

The harder areas are places like SF where there's even more limited driveway access. That's where streetlights come in.

If your neighborhood isn't dense enough to have streetlight, no problem.

Edit: one key piece to charging from a garage 220V outlet is that you don't need to charge every single day. Charging every other day or every four days is just fine. So if you have 4 single people living in a 4 bedroom house, each with cars, that's just enough to get by in one charger.

It would go in the street, right at the power pole.

It really isn't trivial and having light does not mean you can support EV charging. You are going to want a ~1MW supply to a parking lot with even 30 or so chargers.

That's not a trivial thing to suddenly install. Often will require significant new ducting and cabling to be ran from far away.

Even before EV rollout getting a 1MW supply can take years from the power company.

You also have another problem that cities do not have enough transmission capacity from the main grid to them to handle 2xing power supply.

It's definitely doable but really is going to be similar to building today's power grid out all over again. Everything needs doubled.

As long as everyone in the city isn't charging at peak time, the capacity issue can be handled. The grid is sized for peak loads - that moment between 5 and 7 when everyone in the city gets home, turns the heating on and starts cooking.

That means rolling out demand response charging - not technically hard, but absolutely necessary before electric cars are too ubiquitous. We'll probably also find that in normal use most cars don't drive much on a given day, so they're not needing to draw full power all night to charge.

The charging infrastructure for those without a driveway is still a big question (one to which the answer isn't lampposts - there's at least a 7:1 ratio of cars to lampposts where I live).

I'm not sure about that. People expect electricity to just work. People also are likely to plug their cars in at peak time after they get home from work and may want them somewhat charged before going out again in the evening.

I think demand response can help, but there is the fundamental issue that transportation uses as much as all electrical consumption currently, so there will be twice as much kWh needed.

That 7:1 ratio looks actually a lot worse in power terms. A streetlight consumes maybe 100W, 7 EVs could soak up 350kW for a period of time.

This is made much worse in N America with 110V everywhere.

You’re assuming your light pole cables were designed for 100-1000kw loads, not for 50w LED’s. But I generally agree.

Typically light poles are designed for pre-LED lighting, which consume 0.25kW-1kW, not 50W. And the design would usually accommodate a bit more than that.

Overnight light pole charging won't be delivering 100kW fast charging to a car, it will be for longer term parking, like overnight.

Averaging 12 hours at 1kW delivers enough charge to cover the average distance driven in the US. Non-average driving days will require using a fast charger or work place charging or charging at any number of other places.

Charging will be as ubiquitous as the rest of our car infrastructure. Personally, I'd rather we get rid of so much car infrastructure and devote it to transit and parks and bikes and walking, but I'm far outside the Overton window when it comes to that. However, being outside the Overton window also lets me see how we spare no expense when it comes to creating car infrastructure, and how charging infrastructure is a tiny tiny fraction of the massive amount of spend on the rest of car infrastructure.

Here's an example of the light pole chargers that are being installed in residential areas in London:

https://www.ubitricity.co.uk/b2b-local-authorities/

They deliver 5.5 kW, which is fine for overnight charging.

They are also installing a few 43kw charging points for faster top-ups.

Well, luckily when you ban the sale of new things, it doesn't instantly take off the planet every used version of that thing. The average age of cars on the road is 11 years, meaning we have at least a quarter century from now to get our act together. The world looked a lot different in 1995, a quarter century before today.

I don't understand how we can afford to wait this long. If we keep emitting like this we are doomed, if we aren't already. To have a chance, we need to ban gasoline cars much sooner.

What I find amazing is one way or another, over the next 50 years, all the gas stations you see now are going to be gone or transformed, but mostly gone.

Have you ever noticed how many gas stations there are?

Years from now they'll look at the 150 years from the Model T's introduction to the final gas station closing and just shake their head at us.

Horses were around for millennia. ICE vehicles are going to seen as a barbaric blip that our forebears will be amazed at. Like leaching or witchcraft. Or life before smartphones.

I wonder if the deployment of EV charging infrastructure is how society starts recognizing the costs of free parking.

Not really: most people will not be charging on the streets, they will charge at home. Unless you street charger is the same price as charging at home, but then it is free parking.

Note that electric is often cheaper at night. Most free parking spots are empty at night: the cars are at home. Thus same price charging on the street as at home should be looked at as subsidized parking!

Don't get me wrong, it makes sense to have some on-street charging. However people won't normally use it. Most will charge at home for the cheaper rates. What is left is those who can't make it home on the current charge. This is a small minority of all who park even in an all electric car world.

> I still do not see how they can role out charging infrastructure in just 15 years. Not everyone lives in a house.

We rolled out gas stations faster than that. Gas stations went from something you had to worry about on long trips in 1975 to every corner convenience store by 1990.

And charging stations have none of the downside of gas stations (toxic leakage, theft, licensing, etc.). You can install charging stations at very small shops without worry.

I'm personally surprised that Target and Lowe's haven't rolled out charging stations in their parking lots. Once that happens, it's pretty much game over as everybody will have to roll out parking lot charging or lose business.

A few grocery stores around me have done it (Iowa!). Those spots are typically empty - or if close to the door filled by a gas car (ignoring the electric car only sign). Most people with an electric car don't need to top off their car when they are shopping - they just charge at home. The only people who need to charge someplace other than home are on a long trip and that is less than 5% of all driving. This puts a ceiling on demand for chargers.

Even ignoring the above, state laws often give the local utility has a legal monopoly on selling electricity. Stores that have a charger are giving away the power to whoever uses the charger. Until the law allows some sort of profit from having a charger it doesn't make sense to have one.

> I'm personally surprised that Target and Lowe's haven't rolled out charging stations in their parking lots

Where people have EVs, they do.

I always found this argument quite funny. Do you have a gas station at home or what? A single charge of an electric car can last you many days in the city. You go to a charging station once a week, have some time for a coffee or some reading, you come back and it is charged.

Gas cars have to go to the gas station also, sometimes once a week too, and people do not complain that much about it. I think it has to do with how used we are to it that electric charging we tend to think it should be at home.

A gas fillup is 5min not 200+m. Sitting for 3 hrs while your car charges not at home is not a practical weekly routine. But that's fine because people will charge at work.

What keeps a freeway-adjacent homeowner from installing a charger and renting the use of it to travellers?

"it takes a little longer to charge and gets fewer miles per gallon"

I didn't know electrons were measured by the gallon.

I always make sure to fill my bathtub before a hurricane in case our power goes out.

Same here, I love my bathtub turbine!

How affordable are we talking, you ask? The listed price of the model K27 is $17,499. But once you take into account California’s $2,000 electric vehicle incentive credit and a federal tax credit of $7,500, that leaves you at a total cost of $7,999 (if you live in California).

Wow! This kind of deal would be a no-brainer here in my European country as a second car!

I wonder if it's cost effective to import the motor or equivalent electric motor and battery packs from China through something like AliExpress and build a DIY electric car for fun. I am thinking some donor car like an old E30 and not something new, as then I bet it can get quite complicated quick. Anyone on HN doing an EV conversion?

There are many conversion kits you can fit in a car in the place of an internal combustion engine.

I haven't seen any that gets rid of all the transmission, however. It's a sad thing to have an electric motor saddled by a gearbox and even worse when it's a manual gearbox.

> saddled by a gearbox and even worse when it's a manual gearbox

Couldn't you just leave it in like 3rd gear all the time or something?

Not sure 3rd would be able to take the full torque.

What manual transmission are you thinking of that can't take a few hundred foot pounds of torque?

You are right. They can all take the maximum torque of the ICE.

I think EV West has a BMW M3 E36 with a Tesla motor in it, also manual I bet, but of course that would already have been a beefy manual gearbox. Expensive donor cars to find.

I think with an automatic you will need to always keep the electric motor running in order to keep the hydraulic fluids pumping. So to me it seems that the worst is an automatic transmission. With a manual, you get a way to play around with torque levels which I suppose can be fun, as another commenter here mentioned you can probably just take off in 3rd and leave it there.

59 miles range? That's not going to cut it for most commuters in California.

It won't cut it for the average commuter, but it'd cut it for the median commuter. Really it only needs to cut it for, say, the 10th percentile commuter to have a really big market.

I’ve changed jobs four times since moving to the bay area in 2006, and none has ever been within thirty miles of the next. If people bet on always having a short commute, I think a lot of them will be sad.

One of my complaints is California's housing market and zoning makes it difficult for people to relocate close to work. And work to locate close to workers. So instead we have people wasting vast amounts of time and resources commuting.

I've probably spent 5000 hours and $100,000 on commuting over the last 30 years. It's all been fundamentally a waste.

You must have very different preferences than what I have. I live about 5 miles from my (former) office in SF, and it was also one of the cheaper options to do so.

I had a commute like that (from the Mission to Market St.) but they slowly went under and my next job was in the South Bay. I wouldn’t want to hesitate about career opportunities due to the range of my car, after relocating 800 miles from Seattle for my career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_electric_cars_currentl...

The Most and Least Expensive Cars to Maintain https://archive.is/kNxEm

I thought the federal tax credit expired in 2020?

it will be reduced in 2021 but won't expire completely.

I wouldn't be surprised if Biden got it continued. Though if he is serious about his build rail talk he won't. Time will tell.

A Chinese car being street legal in North America seems like a landmark moment.

Or am I confusing "legal" with "safe"?

You really need to buy a large vehicle to avoid being mince meat.

Depends. My commute was all city streets - max 30mph. much less dangerous. (or course I walked to took the bus, but this would be an option if I needed to avoid the disadvantages of those)

Still too expensive and too wimpy looking. Make it look like a death machine with razor bladed spinning rotors ready for civil war. And burgers would buy.

The K23 looks a bit better in my opinion. It's not like something you'd expect to see in a Mad Max movie, but at least I think it looks cooler than the first-generation Leaf that it's competing with.

> Its electric motor manages only 27 horsepower and the car's top speed is just 63 miles an hour.

> K27 takes a while to reach that top speed, Kandi America chief executive Johnny Tai admitted. [...] The K27 is intended to be an urban errand runner, essentially a step or two up from an electric motorbike, he said.

> "I don't think that we want to compete with Tesla or anyone,"

Even the company selling it doesn’t consider this a serious car.

The car has not been tested under any US safety tests or EPA range tests. The company claims it has been safety tested in China but wouldn’t provide any documentation.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/26/success/kandi-10000-electric-...

This is simply an example of extreme corner cutting.

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