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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

While I'd love this to be the case, I suspect we'll hit limitations in our energy infrastructure that prevent this from happening quite as soon as the article suggests.

Energy use for cars is substantial, a significant percentage of the energy usage of homes. If that energy use shifts from fossil fuels to home electricity supplies we'll need to substantially increase the energy delivery possible to homes.

The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries – I believe these are at least in the same ballpark. But "last mile" electricity delivery is not capable of supporting an electric car in every household (or even half of households) in many areas of the world.

It will be interesting to see what the solutions to this are. Smart grids where cars cooperate to ensure they don't all charge at the same time, and increased use of public fast charging infrastructure (at sites with better grid connectivity) are the most likely I suspect.

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In aggregate total energy generation needs to increase, but last mile delivery simply isn’t a major issue. EV’s don’t need that much energy daily and they can charge at night when residential use is low. Assuming ~100% home charging, 1kW per car * 10 hours ~= 40 miles per day ~= 15,000 miles per year.

Drop that to 80% home charging and you’re at 8 hours x 1kW per car.

However, even if car sales go 100% electric it would take ~15 years before 99% of cars in use are electric. That’s a lot of time to ramp up a measly 1-2 kW of load at most houses.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, but I tried to look up some numbers and couldn't find any for the capacity planning of last mile delivery. 10 kWH per day is about the average electricity use per home in the Netherlands, so the aggregated impact will definitely be huge. Especially as more an more homes are switching to electric heating and cooking (until recently pretty much all homes here used natural gas). So household electricity consumption will take a huge leap in the coming decade(s), and I would think this will also affect last mile.

Also take into account standard home chargers here are 16A@230V=3.7kW, but 3 phase chargers that can do 3x16A, 10kW are gaining popularity. Only if the chargers remain 'dumb' and all start pulling max current when everyone gets home at dinner time that will be an issue here for sure

On the other hand, solar panels on the roof are also taking off. That's probably not enough for heating, but might be for everything else.

Daily electricity is highly correlated. Consider, people rarely microwave anything at 3AM. This also means houses get wired to allow multiple loads at the same time as you might only turn on the Microwave for 5 minutes a day so that’s adding 0.083kWh to your daily total, but you don’t turn off the lights just because you want to use 1.2kW heat up some leftovers.

Further, several people in a neighborhood might all microwave something during the same commercial break. Unlike most things the grid is built for peak instantaneous demand. As such distribution needs to account for huge local demand spikes. EV’s increased demand will result in some new distribution infrastructure, but it’s mostly regional not last mile.

If people get obscene bills for charging their cars during peak hours or find themselves having to adjust plans around charging that will stunt EV adoption.

This assumes that if you have driven 160 miles, it will take 40 hours to get the full charge. It does not look like a good selling point for home charging.

To feel at ease, an electric car owner should have a fast charger at home or very nearby. A Tesla supercharger is 72 kW, which is 2-3 times more a detached house can normally receive from the grid.

The grid is also built on the assumption that maybe one in five ovens are likely to be turned on at the same time, that doesn’t mean each oven can only be used at one fifth power.

In the Netherlands the average car drives 32 kilometres per day. You can easily charge that much at home.

On average, it's like 800W. My current home charger and cars support up to 7.7 kW. It's something like 4 hours to go from near empty to full for one, and about twice that for the other one (very different sized batteries). But what that really means is that the charger will click on for a relatively short time, then sit idle for the rest of the day. It's likely that most home chargers won't exceed 40A for a while, as past that needs hard wiring. Though I suspect V2H capable chargers will all be hard wired.

The point is things average out over even hundreds of homes. A single home might be charging at 7.7kW all night long after a long trip to refill a 100kWh battery. However, everyone in the country doesn’t suddenly show up with an empty battery every Friday and then need to fully charge that night.

Which means even if people are installing 5+kW charging stations it’s little different than when everyone started installing AC.

You assume that a car needs to be fully charged each morning. If you for whatever reason drive 160 miles each day, but may only recuperate about 40 miles (in rough worst case of say ten hours at a home Level 1 [standard US electrical outlet] charge over night), you still need only need a "full charge" on a 300 mile battery every two days or so.

The economics shift even more the closer you get to the mean daily commute of 32 miles roundtrip. For instance if you travel 45 miles daily and only charge 40 each night you'd need nearly two full weeks before your range dipped below 200 miles. At that rate you'd need a full charge maybe once every month and a half (assuming of course that you have no other sources of topping up your miles in a month in a half, such as convenience chargers while shopping or work sponsored chargers during the work day).

So if the French population switched to electric, we would need 38m x 800W = 30 gigawatts. We have 58 nuclear cores of ~1GW each as a comparison (80% of our energy) - with the upside that nuclear plants produce by night as much as by day, which causes a lot of issues, therefore 800W between 10pm and 6am might allow a much more efficient (and ecological) use of our nuclear energy.

Yes, this should mean much more efficient use of both the grid and nuclear power, both can provide continuous fixed supply for 24 hours but have had to be overbuilt to match up with the demand curve, which up to now has been extremely uneven.

Market-based pricing for electricity is a big thing for people who have electric cars. It'll become even bigger when vehicle-to-grid/house becomes viable in a large scale (The Ford F-150 Lightning has this feature).

Basically you can program your charger to charge the car when the electricity price is the cheapest and feed the energy back to your house (or the grid) when the price is high.

> Basically you can program your charger to charge the car when the electricity price is the cheapest and feed the energy back to your house (or the grid) when the price is high.

Taking the cost of battery wear into account, I'm not sure that would turn out profitable.

This is the exact place where used EV batteries will find a second life.

A 40kW car battery with 80% SoH might not be viable for EV use, but it's perfect as a battery for a solar cell system. Either at home or at a public charging station.

> The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries – I believe these are at least in the same ballpark.

I wouldn't be so sure. Back of the napkin estimate: for every 2M electric cars, you need 1 more nuclear power plant.

  - approx. 18 kWh per 100 km for a Tesla
  - let's say 15000 km per year (close to the average in France for example)
  - total consumption over a year for 1M cars is roughly 2.5 TWh
  - total production of a nuclear power plant varies, but is roughly 5-7 TWh per year on average

That's a lot of extra power if you want to replace all the cars. For example in France, that'd be the equivalent of 20 extra nuclear power plants, or the equivalent in nuclear + solar + wind + coal/gas/...

Those numbers are why I’ve always thought cleaner fuel options were the real future here (like natural gas and hydrogen).

Natural gas is significantly dirtier than nuclear, and hydrogen (in terms of how we use it) is a component of an energy storage technology and not a fuel source.

But significantly cleaner than oil and abundant enough to make an impact much sooner.

Impact in what? It still releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Way less carbon dioxide per joule produced, also, no sulfuric dioxide.

Reducing and replacing gasoline/diesel usage.

LNG powered cars have been available for a long time. They never caught on (speaking from a Swiss perspective). Whatever the reasons may be: Less dynamic driving experience, not enough LNG gas stations, expensive to retrofit, no cool new cars, no that much cheaper compared to gasoline - the consumer apparently just doesn't want them.

Natural gas isn't much better than gasoline, biogas is a good option but the production capacity is limited at best.

Hydrogen won't be viable for consumer vehicles unless we get a Hydrogen Elon Musk who optimises the production efficiency by 500%. (It takes around 55kW of electricity to produce the hydrogen needed to get 11kW of energy from a fuel cell vehicle).

Sweet. Maybe we invest in travelling wave reactors or electromagnetic rod / saltwater harness designs.

Or we just start building more nuclear infrastructure on less safe designs (although not sure why we should do that when we have safer designs available), given that the consequences of not pushing nuclear immediately vastly outweighs the consequences of pretending it's less safe than the status quo.

Or we don't change all thermal cars with electric cars. It's time we realize that moving a 1+ ton vehicle for 80kg of people on average is a folly. We need alternative ways of transportation, more efficient, less polluting

In France that's a fact of life and significant improvements are underway. Public transit is very good in most bigger cities, bike lanes are plentiful, high speed rail is available for most intercity travel, and all of those are actively being improved.

So the math is for an already decently non-car centric country.

As someone who doesn't want to own a car I am biased, but to me there are still a few usecases where a car still makes sense:

- If you don't live in a big city, public transportation is far from enough

- When you want to go on vacation you not only want to travel from A to B, you also want to be able to transport all your stuff and not be bound by infrequent scheduling, and you want some kind of mobility freedom at your destination

- For your bi-weekly grocery shopping you need to be able to haul a few dozens of kg of stuff that takes something like half a m^3

For all of those, there's no easy alternative, and I understand why people used to this way of life don't really want to change. Bikes can replace some of it, electric bikes even more, and why not electric cargo bikes. But it's still very expensive, especially when you can't totally replace your car. I think the intermediate solution will be some carsharing solution, where 1 car is not owned by 1 person or 1 family but shared on average with a few families, accross a whole city.

Public Transport outside of big cities: a problem that shows that we have to look far beyond the question electric vs ICE cars. Back when nobody owned a car, even small villages had their own schools, shops, government offices. When everybody got a car, those were considered ineffective and consolidated in bigger cities. The long term solution is a return to decentralized structures.

Vacation: hobbies that require hauling a lot of gear to remote areas only became feasible with a car and might become a thing of the past, like hunting from horseback. Maybe you can rent a SUV only for those time you need it instead of using it for bringing kids to school.

Bi-weekly shopping: before corona, I walked to the nearby shops every 3 days or so. To limit exposure to mask-less shoppers I am now using a hand cart for bi weekly shopping. If you live farther away from shops, a cargo bike might be an alternative.

You're touching on the hidden part of the iceberg indeed: transportation doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's both a cause and a consequence of the organization of our cities, our shops, our jobs, and all of those: since we'll need to reduce the quantity of energy we use, we'll also need to redefine how our cities are organized

That's only possible if you change zoning and people are against changes in zoning to increase affordability. They won't change their mind for something "optional" like walkability.

They are building their very own doom.

Public transit is for dense cities. Works brilliantly on Manhattan; can't be made reasonable in Houston.

Western Europe is densely populated and has passenger railways since 19th century. Bus service (of sorts) started in Paris in mid-17th century.

That isn't true. Houston has okay transit, and could have much better with some small investment. It won't be ask brilliant as Manhattan, but it can be a lot better. And Houston unlike most cities will allow you to build transit friendly (though they do need to get rid of their excessive parking requirement to really make transit useful)

Talk is cheap. Most people talking though don't actually believe that as we can tell by their actions: they support politicians who don't do anything about the bad state of alternative means of transportation. In fact many of the politicians they support are doing more harm to alternative transport than those politicians who honestly believe alternative transport is a bad idea and oppose it.

This too. What you're suggesting requires completely changing our way of life from how we gather food to how we design housing and communities.

I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just going to be nearly impossible to convince people when lunking masses of steal around for no good reason is such a large part of their life.

Interesting calculation! But the point of shifting electricity usage from refineries to car batteries still stands: Apparently it's 1.5 kwh per liter of gasoline [Edit: this might not be accurate, or might be mainly related to drilling, see comments below]. At 7-8 liters/100km we've already covered 11 kwh.

Edit: And 7-8 liters/100km for a Tesla seems optimistically low. But maybe 18kwh is also optimistic.

I think you should cite a source for that 1.5 kWh/litre number. It seems there are a lot of varying claims here [0].

Looking at the US statistics for 2019, it seems refineries used 47 140 million kWh of electricity [1], and produced 3 199 032 thousand barrels of Finished Motor Gasoline [2], plus a lot of other products. That makes 0.093 kWh per litre, for the package of a litre of gasoline plus a bundle of other products. If gasoline is half of the output of refineries, then the rate is more like 0.05 kWh per litre.

This is just for refining, and doesn't include the energy cost of drilling, transport, etc. But 0.05 is a long way from 1.5.

[0] https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasol...

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_capfuel_dcu_nus_a.htm

[2] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm

Yes you are correct, that's an important thing to look at. Apparently the main energy usage which causes the 1.5kwh number is drilling, I'll see whether I can find some sources.

If it's actually drilling that makes a big difference because drilling might not be done where the oil is raffined

I can't edit my own post anymore, but I've looked into it more. Total average production should not be an issue, at least in Europe. However peak power could be and will require some care.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27361065

> Energy use for cars is substantial, a significant percentage of the energy usage of homes. If that energy use shifts from fossil fuels to home electricity supplies we'll need to substantially increase the energy delivery possible to homes.

Will it, though?

Earlier this year I had 12kW of PVC installed for about A$7k. That nets me, this time of year (3 weeks away from the winter solstice in AU) about 35kWh a day. In summer I expect an average of 50kWh / day.

A Tesla 3 standard has a 50kWh battery - providing 350 km driving range. The 75kWh long range version provides 500km range.

So worst case (winter) A$7k of residential grade panels can provide charge for 200km / day - and that's on a Tesla, which is definitely a premium EV in this part of the world. (A vanilla model 3 is A$63k - the long range version A$78k.) Add in off-peak grid charging (say A$0.10 / kW) and we're really knocking ICE out of the game.

For a lot of people, not just in the same part of the world I'm in, factoring in some panels on the roof would be a proportionally small capex delta, but make the TCO hugely more compelling.

The grid is sized to handle peak loads in the early evening. Electric cars tend to be driven during peak hours and charge at night so while total energy used (kWh) will go up substantially, the grid itself does not need to handle substantially more power (kW) than it currently does.

Car charging can also be scheduled to happen off peak if possible.

> suspect we'll hit limitations in our energy infrastructure that prevent this from happening. Energy use for cars is substantial, a significant percentage of the energy usage of homes.

I'm not sure this is true. I've been driving a electric car in the US for multiple years now (approximately 50 miles of driving daily), it's only added about ~15% to my electric bill, if that.

Charging the car only requires ~800 to ~1400 watts, is done for about 10 to 12 hours all overnight, and can be done on any regular household AC outlet. If your home has the electricity for a Desktop Gaming PC, or any Window Air Conditioner, then it already has enough electricity for a EV car. Similarly, if plugging in a new Window AC doesn't bring your grid service down today, a new EV shouldn't either.

Obviously in aggregate, utilities will need more capacity. But it's not that much more, it should only be an issue in places where the grid is already unregulated, broken, underserviced and/or under-maintained today -- only an issue in places where brownouts/blackouts already regularly happen (places like Texas, California, maybe NYC).

Last mile infrastructure can be upgraded incrementally. It doesn't have to be upgraded immediately. The cost won't be unmanageable when it does get upgraded.

In addition, solar panels are localizing production and already taking load off the grid. Smart charging is already here and can be adjusted to charge when the sun is shining and wind is blowing hardest.

The future is here already it's just not widely distributed, but the capital to do all of these things is cheap and readily available.

I don't see any insurmountable challenges here.

> and readily available.

Capital is readily available for the middle-class people living in middle-to-high-income countries (most of those people also happen to be white), the rest of the world (mostly non-white people) don't have easy access to capital in order to improve their electric grid.

I'm not sure exactly where you are referring to with your ominous vague racially charged allusions, but if it's Africa or Asia then China is already supplying capital, know how, materiel and building out infrastructure.

China is not supplying capital for the suburbs of Kinshasa to upgrade their electrical grid the same way as a Tesla-loving white suburb from the Valley can get easy money by just issuing some muni bonds. I’m not insinuating, I’m telling it as is easy, this is a regressive policy that hurts the poor more and helps those that already have (money and political influence). It so happens that the latter cohort is mostly white while the first isn’t.

What if it pulls poor countries out of the dutch disease trap?

shrug they're very much out there financing and building power infrastructure and roads and selling electric bikes to the locals in Kinshasa.

China wants access to their cobalt of course.

Capital is perhaps not quite as easily available as it is in the valley and theyre not buying Teslas on credit but they're still transitioning to electric vehicles.

Those are the same people that will be getting electric cars in the next 10 years. The "rest of the world" buys the used cars the rich people are done with, so they won't be seeing electric cars for 15 years or so.

Parts of the "rest of the world" skipped a lot of intermediate bootstrap steps and have jumped straight to "broadband internet" (fiber) because it is a far cheaper path to connectivity than bootstrapping from copper wiring or similar intermediate steps that richer countries saw due to fewer sunk costs and entrenched interests. Chinese manufacturers suggest (in their projects and investments) that there may be a similar step change around the corner (if not already here) where most of the "rest of the world" are going to find buying new EVs cheaper than most existing used (ICE) cars that the "rich people are done with".

True, but I don't think that applies to cars. Cars are too personally expensive and don't last long enough for outside investment. Investing in fiber is cheaper than copper if you don't have anything in the ground anyway, and either way your investment should last 50 years or so which is a lot of time to pay it off. A car can last 50 years, but only with a lot of expensive maintenance.

Also those poor countries benefit from richer countries giving up on otherwise good cars because they are not new anymore. If you are going to buy a new car, EV is the way to go, but if you can accept a used car ICEs will still be the way to go for a bit longer.

Of course this assumes average person in whichever country. the rich will do what they want, and EVs are cheap enough that they won't really care if it makes economic sense if they want one.

Some of these countries have barely functional gasoline infrastructure, but valid (and getting better) electric grids. EVs jump them out of an ugly decades old trough of bad infrastructure (and good money chasing bad).

Chinese manufacturers already have found ways to produce sub-USD$1000 EVs. They barely meet US "standards", of course, as they aren't massive beasts of steel for a family of four girthy people, intended for a daily commute across the Ozarks, and cargo/towing capacity for thousands of pounds. But, they are a game changer for small, poorer families already in China and places that can easily import from China. As economies of scale continue to increase and Chinese car exports increase at world scale, there's in theory going to be an incredible step change just based on cars already available on Alibaba and before considering the effects that will have on car manufacturing competition.

Those are good points. How good is something that I don't know - and I don't think you do either.

It is better to have a new sub $1000 car, or the very used car with a lot more luxury features (you know at purchase time if they work). That isn't a clear cut choice. Also we don't know how long those cheap new cars will last - it could be a lot more expensive than buying the used car with a good supply chain of parts and a proven history of being maintainable (remember that in these countries people are more likely to be willing to do the work), the new EV could well be a lot more expensive in the long run depending if it isn't well built.

One of the Jalopnik authors managed to get one of the $900 cars imported to the US and the series of articles on it are fascinating.

There are fewer moving parts in most EV designs, so my impression is that a "good supply chain" of ICE parts is still a "great supply chain" of EV parts. Most electric motors are expected to outlast the cars they are inside and rarely/never need direct maintenance. The biggest unknown in long term maintenance of EVs is batteries, and right now in general modern EV batteries are exceeding expectations which is why it is still such a long term "unknown" because overall statistically batteries are lasting 15+ years in cars and it might not be surprising if they last longer than that we're only just now getting to cars old enough to start to see real world age on the batteries.

> The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries

Don't forget about the taxation aspect - as the sales of petrol and diesel fall, so does the tax revenue.

In many countries tax represents over half of the end-user price of petrol and diesel. How will governments replace this as the revenue drops away?

Tax on electricity?

It exists in Germany and it drives electricity price to the top. Current price for private households is around 0.4 Euro per kilowatt hour (0.5 US Dollars). Large part of it are taxes.

Household electricity prices in 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...

The chart you linked shows $0.36 per kWh.

Add VAT to it as well.

Taxing electricity will hit households first (electric heating + AC) before it makes a significant dent on EV costs.

Increase road tax on currently subsidised cars and invest in public transport infra?

They could start actually taxing companies.

In the Netherlands, extra taxes (on top of VAT) levied on fuel and vices like tobacco and alcohol put about 11 billion euros a year into the state coffers. Meanwhile, big tech companies funnel money through the country to tax havens. Uber had 50 shell companies in the Netherlands to dodge taxes on 6 billion in revenue (https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-tax-avoidance-50-dutch-...).

I always wondered why human people have an alternative minimum tax (AMT), yet corporate people don't.

Because all businesses will just leave to those countries where it isn't the case. Such policies should be subtle and introduced gradually.

But the businesses will still need a presence in the countries in which they want to do business (or at least it is easier to do so -- that is how US companies get caught up in needing to comply with things like GDPR or whatnot). So the AMT can be legislated for any company that has a presence in a particular country.

Regarding tax revenue. In many states in the U.S. they “simply” nail you on your yearly registration fee. It’s an awful system as it’s punitive at the moment. I now pay over $200 a year on that fee due to it being an electric vehicle. My car is 2 years old with < 12k miles on it. I pay way more in taxes than I would with a petroleum fueled car.

Just to play devil's advocate, why shouldn't you pay? Fuel taxes mostly go to road maintenance. You're using the roads so higher registration fees seem like a good way for you to help fund those roads.

Also $200 is a pretty good deal, I pay way more than that in gas taxes each year.

By taxing electric cars. (Back to) taxing per KW/HP or just raising the other taxes, I guess. Why would they give up that income?

In the US today usage based taxes such as gas fund only half the money spent on roads. They should probably add in some sort of usage tax based on weight/size/emissions/noise that will apply to all vehicles.

"Don't forget about the taxation aspect - as the sales of petrol and diesel fall, so does the tax revenue."

I'm amazed this myth persists for those in floating currency areas.

Money doesn't stop at its first use. Instead the money is spent on something else, which is taxed.

For every $100 a government spends it will get $100 back for any positive tax rate. It's a simple geometric progression, and looks just like a stone skipping across a pond.

Do the maths and you'll see what I mean.

What stops that tax turning up instantly is that it takes time to spend the money - sometimes a long time. Which is what we generally call 'savings'.

None of that matters though in a sovereign currency area. Savings are functionally voluntary taxation - which from the other side of the balance sheet are called 'borrowing'.

Once you have the causality straight in your mind fearing running out of tax revenue is like fearing you're running out of water in the hot tub just because you've turned the pump on.

> Don't forget about the taxation aspect - as the sales of petrol and diesel fall, so does the tax revenue.

That depends on whether people put the money they save in a savings account, or actually spend them on other taxable goods and services. And it depends on the tax rate on fuel and electricity in that country. Fun fact, the consumer tax on electricity is much higher than that on fuel in Norway (and the fuel tax is pretty steep already here). But electricity is so cheap that it's still extremely affordable. And obviously, an EV will spend much less money on electricity, so yes, the revenue from tax on electricity will be lower.

But there's another side of the equation. Norway recently found out they could save millions on reduced ventilation requirements when building a new tunnel. It's also likely that health care costs will be reduced, although that's harder to measure.

IMO, governments should just increase other taxes if they have budget troubles due to the shift to EVs. Preferably higher taxes on the wealthy. Then we can slowly work on finding ways to tax according to actual road use. Maybe more toll roads, or maybe a tamper-proof device that measures and reports miles driven.

> That depends on whether people put the money they save [..]

Talking about the money people will save could be termed somewhat off-message given that it appears EVs cost significantly more up-front than the ICE equivalent...

"Switching to an electric vehicle still has many barriers, including high upfront costs"[0]

"Expensive prices for electric cars could hold back the UK’s transition from fossil fuel vehicles, the industry has warned, amid signs that demand for electric vehicles (EVs) is waning"[1]

Over the entire lifetime of the vehicle it may be a completely different story, but how many vehicle purchasers are really planning five to ten years ahead?

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56441639 [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/higher-p...

Where I live it's unlikely that the next car won't be an electric. Everyone I know who bought a car the last year bought an electric. My only concern is that I need a practical car, not something like a Tesla. I need ground clearance, for example (lots of snow here). It looks like that won't be a real problem, or at least it's getting there. At worst it would be a chargeable hybrid.

Charging won't be much of a problem. Chargers everywhere, it seems (last summer's holiday was a long car trip through half the country, due to Covid), and I have 400V 3-phase at home (as most do in this town) so I can get a fast charging station.

And we have charging stations at work already.

I imagine the situation is different in the US, longer distances, for example.

That new electric F150 looks pretty good for that use case.

It sounds like he lives in Europe, so the F-150 isn't an option. I don't think it's available, and it would be way too large for any use outside the very rural cases.

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV might suit you. It's a 4WD SUV. You get 50km of battery range before the petrol motor kicks in, so it has a lot of the advantages of electric without paying all that much more for it.

does that mean maintenance costs of both the ICE and electrical parts?

The ID.4 has 8 inches of ground clearance.

Ford has an all-electric SUV now.

Hyundai Kona EV is a good choice, as is the VW ID.4.

There's snow here too and I do just fine with a Hyundai Ioniq.

Also: fast charging at home is completely useless. A 22kW AC charger (which is around 7-11kW actual for most EVs) will charge pretty much any car from 0-100 overnight.

Just a normal plug with 2kW is enough unless you come home with an empty battery every day.

A HVDC cable from Sahara to America would loose 50% of power, but still would charge your car overnight. As solar install itself is around 50% of it's cost, it's probably cheaper to do so in a dessert than over your house.

HVDC is expensive, solar panels are cheap, so it's usually cheaper to keep the solar panels local even if they're much less efficient than they are elsewhere.

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/the-future-of-...

HVDC saves on overnight batteries and is a hedge against weather and other factors.

This is one of the places where hydrogen might actually be viable.

Use a huge excess of solar power to generate hydrogen, transport hydrogen via oceans to ports, store it and convert it back to electricity locally when needed.

Ammonia is probably better. Easier to liquify, and much more dense, even if not as much energy per kg. It's admittedly somewhat toxic, but hydrogen is also somewhat explosive when mixed with air.

Hydrogen is viable anytime you need (or want) a chemical fuel.

This more than anything else is why I am anticipating a lot of electric cars being tiled in PV.

Putting the cells on the cars is absolutely not going to fully charge them in most cases, and the same logic that leads to comparative advantage says to do this after better locations already have PV, but such cells will get 50-90% of the average daily requirements of the typical driver depending on location, season, and car size, which in turn will reduce infrastructure needs elsewhere.

In any case, getting 5-10 extra miles just by parking your car under sunlight while you are shopping would be nice!

The question is the cost.

It would be 5-10 miles parked outside for the day, not just while you were shopping.

18 kWh per 100 km means about 1.8 kWh per 10 km, so about 1.5 kWh for 5 miles.

With 4 sq m of solar cells, 1 kW / sq m of sunshine at high noon, and 20% of conversion efficiency, it's 800 W. So it's about 2 hours to gain 5 miles under ideal conditions. Think really big shopping :)

The amount of panels you can put on a normal car is around 1-2 square meters max. That's not enough to give any kind of measurable range advantage.

The thing they're good for is running AC in the car when it's parked, without affecting the range. (Prius does this, I think the new Ioniq 5 has this)

Ground area of a Tesla model 3 is ~8.5 square meters, so I think you’re underestimating.

> The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries – I believe these are at least in the same ballpark.

That would interesting to figure out. How can we do that?

Not all refineries will cease production. How many?

Swappable batteries. If the industry creates a standard you could swap full battery packs in seconds at existing gas stations.

I was about to say that I don't see this happening due to the way batteries are being built into the chassis.

Then I looked it up and it's being done right now with the Nio with a 3 minute battery swap in China. https://youtu.be/hTsrDpsYHrw?t=382

580km / 360 miles range. I'm very impressed!

Trust is the issue that needs to be resolved with swapping batteries. I'd compare it to a parachute, would you use a parachute packed by some rando you met on the street?

If I go in to swap a battery, what guarantee do I have that the previous user didn't drive it into a rock and puncture a cell? Can I be sure they didn't leave malware in the battery's software?

If all these checks are being done at the swap station, will it still be cost-effective?

Also: Modern EVs use chargers up to 350kW and have 400-500km range. A 15-20 minute break every 500km shouldn't be a dealbreaker for anyone.

> The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries

So you'll have to build and bring online a whole new set of power plants in place of all those refineries then.

I think this is definitely a very large issue and no trivial undertaking.

We've got a good 15-20 years before EV density becomes an issue in most countries.

Japan, with their 1-phase 110V network won't be converting to EVs soon.

But here in the Nordics pretty much every house has 3-phase 230V and already wired for electric saunas and multi-kilowatt heaters. Adding a plug to charge an EV is a non-issue.

To be precise, most houses in Japan pull 3 power lines (-100V, 0V, 100V) so they also supports 1-phase 200V by using -100V, 100V pair.

Another problem is electric company offers only 6kVA max for normal family plan. If I need more capacity, monthly bill isn't getting much higher, but selectable plan is limited and I should pay replacement cost at once.

Several years ago there were already more electric charging stations in Japan than there were gasoline pumps (of which there are many!). When I heard that I was very surprised because I hadn't noticed any. So I started looking, and yes they're there - just not so easy to spot. For some reason the ones in my own country are very visible, they are flashy and with lots of lights and big signs. The 100V (not 110V) network in Japan is indeed a lot of trouble for a lot of things, but it doesn't seem to be a hindrance for EV. It's just that it may not be as many home chargers there as in e.g. the Nordic countries.

In NL, they are hard at work upgrading the energy network everywhere; newly built neighbourhoods already have 4x the electricity capacity they would previously have. This is in part down to the shift to electric vehicles, in part due to the reduction or removal of dependency on natural gas (for both climate and political reasons, we get ours from Russia), and in part due to people generating their own power via solar panels. A report is at [1], tl;dr they need and probably will invest billions in the power grid to be nationally carbon neutral by 2050.

I mean the nihilist in me says it'll be far too late by then and we'll be well into a cataclysmic chain reaction and consequent extreme climate shift, but hey.

https://www.netbeheernederland.nl/_upload/Files/Samenvatting...

> It will be interesting to see what the solutions to this are.

I imagine that battery prices are going to be driven down by the cars, and come into their own in terms of supporting old grids

A solar farm is capable of producing 350 Mwh per year/per acre and it takes 18 kwh to power a Tesla for a 100km ride [1], so a single acre of solar power can produce enough energy for 19,000 of those rides, or power 190 cars (10.000 km per year) just by putting a bit more than the roof of their parking lots in solar cells!

Maybe you don't need that much of a grid update at all, and even maybe quite the opposite if you consider that you car could power your house indirectly using solar power. Best case, you'd be actually the grid even less than you do with out an electric battery in your garage...

> Maybe you don't need that much of a grid update at all

Besides the tons of batteries that are needed?

> if you consider that you car could power your house indirectly using solar power

Well besides the times where you drive your car. Also the car's batteries wouldn't last very long due to constantly being cycled.

>Besides the tons of batteries that are needed?

They are inside the car and that is pretty much the point.

>Well besides the times where you drive your car. Also the car's batteries wouldn't last very long due to constantly being cycled.

If there are people that want a 200 mile range car, then there are people that want a 600 mile range car with 66% degradation.

Where are you finding that an acre of solar will generate 350 Mwh of power?

My local solar power plant is nowhere near that kind of output.

http://newsroom.fpl.com/2019-03-28-FPL-announces-plan-to-bui...

Compare "megawatt-hours generated per year" to "megawatts of installed capacity". Very different measurements.

The linked article says 900 MWh from a 40 acre installation.

...of a storage unit.

That's storage capacity, not annual generation. Again note the units: MWh, compared to MWh/year.

"When it comes to solar energy per acre, a photovoltaic solar plant which on average produces 1 GWh per year, will require around 2.8 acres of land. Therefore, we can say that for every acre, the plant produces an average of 0.357 GWh or 357 MWh of energy per year." [1]

[1] https://greencoast.org/solar-farm-land-requirements/

This misses the point. The issue isn’t the generation, it’s the last mile grid infrastructure to the huge portion of homes/apartments where solar isn’t feasible.

Again, you are discarding a change of paradigm.

Local sourced generation using a rooftop solar panel means you don't need the grid as much as you'd think. Because the energy source is next to your car and your neighbours who could also provide it.

You didn’t even make it through my whole comment before you commented. Rooftop solar is not an option for a huge chunk of the population.

Agree, sorry I didn't read the last part.

Combined with the increase of conditioning power consumption it might happen sooner than later.

> they don't all charge at the same time,

Battery swaps

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