EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted
recurrentauto.com
recurrentauto.com
That being said I wish someone would make an enclosed bicycle/motorcycle that costs less than $2000. Something like that which can go 30mph and had space for 2 days of groceries would be enough for me to eliminate my car all together.
I'm cobbling something similar now with a Class 3 cargo ebike, but rain sucks =/
The idealist in me says that electric ebikes could eliminate most of Americas problems in one swoop:
- Pedal assisted ebikes result in exercise. America is up there in obesity.
- America is also up there in cardiovascular unhealthiness.
- Americans have an average distance of 15 miles to work. 30mph + 60 mile range would allow you to comfortably get to work in approximately 30 minutes and give you enough juice to do it round trip, twice.
- Lower speeds result in fewer accident fatalities. America is up there in the number of road deaths. Lower speeds and smaller vehicles would lower this.
- Bike infrastructure can be used for walking. Walking is good. This promotes accessibility for a large range of people, notably children and elders.
- Bikes require less space to park, a lot less. This extra space can be used to build more housing. This additional housing will increase density, making bikes only more viable (compared to being in traffic in a car).
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EVs are better than ICE, certainly. But I fear it will exacerbate some of our problems.
- The CapEx for EVs will discourage walking infrastructure.
- EVs can accelerate faster, much faster. I fear this will result in more accidents.
- EVs are much heavier than their equivalent ICE vehicles. Hopefully this doesn't result in EV accidents being more likely to have a fatality.
Ideally we'd just begin to phase out cars ideally, as opposed to transition to EVs from ICE, but I suppose baby steps are warranted here.
I don't do all of that but I could easily do it. I'm at the stage of my life where owning a small truck like a Tacoma or Maverick makes a lot of sense due to the utility. You have a lot of good ideas. On your negatives for EVs, I'd say walking infrastructure can't really occur without living in a dense city. Pipedream otherwise. Acceleration is less of a problem rather than people not paying attention at all, smartphones. As far as the weight, that will go down over time as solid state batteries come around.
I wouldn't trade my motorcycle for an EV motorcycle without significant advances, I also don't see interstate towing being overtaken by EVs anytime soon. You just can't beat a diesel for that whether it be in a pickup, van, or semi, and it will be tough to do so. Yet EVs in general are definitely inevitable as they are already better for countywide travel.
Water and slopes are not a good combination for road safety even for four-wheelers.
If you want to know the alternative, cross reference the Denny regrade (for historical precedent of making the hills safer to scale) and the West Seattle Bridge (for current frame of reference of how a relatively small infrastructure project has a huge impact). Nearly all of the roads heading east out of downtown have a high grade somewhere uphill that drivers struggle with even on dry days. Gratefully most of the worst car routes aren’t major bike routes.
Basically EVs are just kicking the can down the road a little bit, within the confines of our culture and infrastructure, but do not solve our structural problems.
This all being said, the average American city and suburb suck and totally need to be reorganized around literally anything except the automobile. Visiting the Netherlands just made me sad...thinking this is how nice cities can be. I imagine the mental health benefits of such city planning could even outweigh the environmental ones.
Please, no more of this. Bicycles should be on their own dedicated right of way, mixing them with cars is dangerous for cyclists, but mixing bikes with pedestrians is dangerous for pedestrians.
Multi-use paths are fine for recreation, but they are not transit infrastructure and should not be treated as such.
I don’t feel as strongly about separated bike infrastructure, mainly because my experience with it is that it’s more dangerous than riding in auto lanes, and that it creates an illusion of separation that both heightens that danger and heightens the dangerous attitudes of drivers trying to navigate it. I’m sure it’s better where the infrastructure is better, but where I live I choose to ride my bike away from those accommodations and right in traffic with the cars and drivers who flow together with me.
> drivers trying to navigate it
Well, there's your problem - it's not actually separated.
And the best places for cycle commuting have high density - meaning more T junctions per mile.
'Truly separated' bike infrastructure isn't easy.
That's why I specifically said "dedicated infrastructure", painted bicycle gutters are NOT proper bicycle infrastructure either. Bicycles should be at grade with pedestrians, but on dedicated cycling pathways so there's no conflict between the medium-speed traffic from bikes and the low-speed pedestrian traffic (even though they may often run parallel with each other).
Ultimately I call it "bike infrastructure", but really it's better to think about it this way - we have three different speed classes that need dedicated rights of way to make sure everyone is safe.
High speed / automobiles - It's not just cars and trucks, motorcycles and high end electric scooters belong here as well (I don't share space with bikes when I'm going 40MPH on my eScooter, it's unsafe for cyclists and dangerous for me as well - so I take normal travel lanes because I'm going the speed of traffic anyway).
Medium speed / bikes / eBikes / lower end electric scooters / EUCs / etc - Things that have a top speed of 20-30MPH generally speaking. Doesn't need wide lanes, and ideally should have more direct routes with fewer stops to conserve momentum.
Low speed / pedestrians / mobility scooters / etc - Obvious, you're going 5-6MPH max here even if you're out taking a run.
To be clear, where I live there are recently installed “dedicated” bike routes which are separated from car traffic by concrete barriers and curbs, and also separated from pedestrian traffic by curbs and intermittent heavy ceramic planters. The problem is that the separations are interrupted to allow turns and deliveries. All of the separation is partial. I feel a ton safer in a painted gutter, and much safer still in the middle of a car-wide lane.
To make matters worse, the particular “dedicated” infrastructure I’m thinking of is on the left side of a one-way street and introduced complicated signal timings that surprise even regular riders and drivers. I’ve posted this before here and elsewhere: when I have to go somewhere in that part of the city and have to brave even a stretch of the route, I deliberately choose to be in car traffic even with drivers irrationally yelling at me to get in the bike lane and trying to run me off the road with their cars, because it feels safer than being in the bike space.
The theory of dedicated bike infrastructure is interesting to me, but what I’ve seen in practice where I live mostly motivates me to ride on roads with sharrows right in the middle of the road clearly indicating that I’m allowed to be there even if every single driver forgot their driving instruction.
We'll get there someday, every great journey begins with the first step, so until we catch up I wouldn't fault you for continuing to take a travel lane.
No, we’ve been through those growing pains. Riding almost anywhere in the city is delightful and I have no issues with drivers or pedestrians. Walking is only an issue when cyclists take the sidewalk to avoid construction.
Literally the only place I fear for my safety riding in Seattle is in or beside the “dedicated” bike lanes which are poorly designed and dangerous. Several steps were taken before I could say this, I’m sure you’re correct that other places need to take them too. But in my city the steps which they took to make shared traffic routes safer have been much more effective at least for my own sense of safety than the hazardous steps they’ve taken getting dedicated infrastructure wrong.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-needs-follow-dutch...
I’d love to avoid cutting into the bike lane (required for right turns in most of the US), but some of those intersections are massive and the rest (1:18 in the video) replace the sidewalk with a bike lane. I don’t think either of those will be popular in American cities.
You are absolutely right. As a cyclist there isn’t really any good way to reliably avoid startling a pedestrian in a mixed environment. Even if you do the even more conscientious thing and you slow all the way down to match speed with them, and then “walk” with their speed for seconds and softly anounce your presence with an “excuse me” there are still some who get startled. I have had people act after all of that as if I tried to murder them. And I totally understand them! From their perspective they were all alone and “all of a sudden” a cyclist poped into existence behind them. And in their subjective reality they have just avoided a collision by jumping out of the way of some “crazy speeding biker”, but that biker only exists in their imagination. An outside observer would see a bike slowly catching up and matching speed with them, with zero chance of collision no matter what they might do, but that is not what they seem to experience.
A loud freewheel is probably as close as it gets. I'd guess a loud freehub could work too, but I like my bikes old, so no freehubs. Maybe some sort of jetsons noise generator.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&channel=iphone_b...
Possibly some kind of laser beam thing that sweeps the ground in front of you might work?
That's what the TFL bikes in London do[0]:
"The Blaze Laserlight is fixed to the cycle frame and projects a green cycle-shaped image onto the ground around 6 metres ahead of the cycle."
[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/santander-cycles/blaze-lase...
Before I did my licence I was a firm believer in "no earbuds on the road", but after a few driving lessons I got so used to taking in the traffic situation with eyes only that I quickly converted to an earbuds all the time cyclist. A few years later I stopped driving so much and my cycling reverted to ears-always-open without me even noticing.
There are cheap bells that you mount on the handlebar but they tend to break easily (and don't produce much sound; typically just one ting). Decent bikes have a more sturdy design, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_bicycle#/media/File:Du... (it's on the left, wrapped around the handlebar next to your hand). These tend to produce more sound.
https://granite-design.com/products/cricket-bell
I use this when i ride along a shared-use path.
It makes no difference. Either people are walking in a group and talking, so they don't hear it, or they have earphones in, so they don't hear it.
In my experience, though, the worst sidewalk speeders are on skateboards or scooters. (I'm not saying you shouldn't skate; rather, when there was a close call or a collision, that's what they were barreling by on.)
I rarely try to overtake pedestrians directly when off marked multiuse paths. Instead I stop pedaling and walk the bike while saying nothing. The persistent tick-tick noise activates their awareness after a few seconds, but I have to wait for a sign, and sometimes none appears so I will walk the whole block and overtake at the intersection. Regardless, they like that noise much more than a voice or a bell, because it's a bike that isn't imminently bearing down on them, so it primes their expectations.
This is facilitated by defaulting to the lowest gear, setting the saddle position low, and letting yourself cruise slow most of the time. Everyone, whether car, bike, or pedestrian, wants to default to "never stop, always be moving". But sometimes you have to explicitly yield and the adjustments away from efficient road cycling help with doing so.
Why couldn't you just ask (or require) bicyclists to use bells or horns of some sort? Pedestrians would get used to the noise after a while.
My usual approach sequence is bell first (very early/far, only to soothe my nerves when the walker later starts that "should have used a bell!" tirade - sometimes a dog hears and understands that early bell and notifies its human) then generous freehub noise (first stage of "notice on their own"), then more bell and when I'm close, already effectively at walking speed, a short burst of blocking the rear brake. Unsurprisingly, people who appeared completely deaf to the bell right behind them a second earlier seem to hear even the tiniest scratch of a tire loud and clear...
Faster vehicles exist, but they are no longer considered bicycles. In Copenhagen these vehicles (petrol or electric) are forbidden from the more pedestrian-proximate paths, like those going through parks.
There are higher ebike classes, but many countries sit on that legislation.
It's a bit crazy that in many places the electric scooters may go faster than ebikes, despite having worse brakes.
Inside cities and villages, I don't think I've seen roads with a bike path, but without a pedestrian path. Maybe I've seen one in an industrial park or so.
I see this situation all the time. Does every single bicycle underpass under the motorway have a full sidewalk alongside it? I can point to many situations in the Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam where the bicycle path is the only option for pedestrians getting from point to point. I also know of tunnels that have bicycle paths but no pedestrian path. The only way to get across as a pedestrian is to use the bicycle path.
It happens I agree, but as far as I can tell there are few places in the Netherlands where more than the occasional pedestrian need to walk on the bike path for more than a few meters.
You can already get exactly that kind of vehicle for relatively cheap, though not as cheap as you're proposing... it's called an electric golf cart or, for the upscale versions, an "electrified low-speed vehicle". They start at about $5,000 from US manufacturers, but you can cut that down to around $3,500-$4,000 (including shipping) if you're willing to order off Aliexpress.
Mostly delivery people use those. The lanes are narrow, so if there's oncoming they would likely crash...
But 30mph is too much for dedicated bike infrastructure and is just turning them into roads (although I support LEVs and LEV only zones, they're still not bicycles). 15-20mph is a human scaled speed limit where interactions are far less likely to cause accidents and impact energy is low enough to rarely cause major injury. It also makes enough battery for range trivial and makes the vehicles that become status quo far lighter and less dangerous.
We live between 2 minor state highways (4, 6 lanes) but the grocery is the in-between for us where roads have speed bumps to discourage through use.
We can go grocery shopping at 2 different grocery stores, we're a quick bike away from a light rail station.
We don't ride on sidewalks.
We live near Atlanta, in an area where 8/10 would say it's too dangerous to bike.
I don't love EVs yet, but I would love a reasonably priced electric motorcycle. I'm not even sure if overall they are greener with the current grid.
With the way cars and SUVs are growing though I feel like more mass and crumple zones are necessary for a safe driving experience though
The problem is 60 miles range @ 30 mph needs a lot of battery. You can't really pedal fast enough to add a meaningful amount of leg power here, and even if you could, the extra wind resistance compared to tucking your legs in is a wash at best.
There's certainly room for efficiency improvements on my bike, but either way, enough battery to do 60 miles at 30mph SHOULD cost at least $1200-1500. Now if you want to go 20 mph that's a different story.
Aero drag really kicks in at 20+ mph so I would have thought it would be doable.
Plus capable of 30mph and actually doing that all the time are 2 separate things. There's still going to be the slow pootling. So you can still peddle then. Plus you could hear it to actually pedal at 30mph
This isn't a matter of hope.
Heavier things traveling the same speed have more momentum..
Momentum kills
I'd say it's somewhere in between momentum and energy. A motorbike doing 300km/h is more dangerous than a car doing 35km/h or a concrete truck at walking pace.
I otherwise agree that American cities and suburbs need a healthy injection of bicycling adoption, infrastructure and design.
Wikipedia says that the i3 had at best a 42 kWh battery pack. The smallest battery that Tesla will ship you inside a car these days is 60 kWh (Model 3 Standard Range).
The flip side is the smallest Tesla is 3700 lbs or so, vs i3 is a hair under 3000
Technologies evolve, though, so I feel like the next (potential) revolution is to use a light CFRP chassis like the i3 w/ next gen batteries.
When the i3 first came out, I would be inclined to agree with you - it's the opposite of the E9 or the E46. But the late-generation models have been growing on me, once the context for which they were designed became more clear.
The i3 interior is fantastic, though
I've been trying to find tiny electric two seater cars, but I've been disappointed in the lack of anything in the US, they're more available in europe and Japan.
Actually now that I typed this comment out I think I understand the trend of heftier ebikes, it's a way to skirt the regulations around making a "street legal" vehicle, which is what prevents any innovation in the <$10k tiny car segment.
Yeah. American regulations call monster trucks cars, they don't have cars and they call LEVs bicycles.
- It's bigger (seats two tall people very comfortably. Or one plus your shopping.)
- It's half the price (12K€ for the Twizy vs 7K€ for the Ami)
- It has windows :P
- There's a "cargo" version (it substitutes the second seat for a cargo space).
This is not true. The Tesla Model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 3 series (~3,600-4,100lbs depending on trim level). Yes EVs carry a half ton of batteries, but they get rid of the engine block, transmission, starter motor, fuel tank, alternator, exhaust system, and many other parts. Also many combustion vehicles made today are hybrids, meaning they also carry batteries and large electric motors (though not as large as a pure EV).
I admit it seems more sensible to charge it direct from the battery pack, but then it seems more sensible to me to do away with the 12v battery all together. So if you're going to have a 12v battery it may aswell be completely independent of the main battery pack.
Why would you need high crank for an ev???
No, it's generally directly from main battery pack when the car is turned on, or when the car is charging. I would guses some models can also charge it now and then when the car is off, since some models are always connected to a cellular network.
> but then it seems more sensible to me to do away with the 12v battery all together.
No, no, no.. You need 12V when the car is off (for talking to key fob at the very least), but you probably don't want a DC-DC converter running from the main battery all the time. If you have trouble getting power from the main battery, it'll be hard to diagnose when none of the electronics work anymore. Having a redundant battery is a very good idea.
It's also a redundancy in case of emergency (some cars have buttons you can press to call emergency services).
I seem to remember Elon talking about removing it (of course), but they haven't yet, and I doubt they ever will.
I don't get this. If the converter stops working the 12v battery dies and your car stops working. I don't get why it would be easier to diagnose if it only charges when on. I assume you're talking about the converter charging the 12v battery? Even if you aren't it would still be simple enough to have some 12v points to supply external power.
Further is it redundancy or doubling the chances of failure? You now have a 12v charger that could stop working, and a 12v battery that could stop working. Both of those break the car. If the main battery goes that's basically bricking the car and you aren't going anywhere anyway
Why not compare the 3 series (1800kg) with the electric 3 series (2200kg)? Or compare the Corsa (1094kg) with the electric Corsa-e (1455kg)
Nissan Juke - 3000 lbs
Honda Civic - 3000 lbs
Nissan Leaf - 3300-3400 lbs
Honda e - 3400 lbs
Chevy Bolt - 3600 lbs
Volkswagen ID.3 - 4000+ lbsIt will also increase the tax revenue per infrastructure spend ratio, since denser areas have more tax revenue generated from multiple households and businesses, for nearly the same amount of sewage, roads, electricity etc.
But cycling is great, more people should do it. And this is why I like the idea of 'gas tax' being replaced with something that accounts for all the remaining externalities of urban driving.
This kind of thing already exists outside the USA. Here's a $1200 "car" you can order off Alibaba: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBz9zLFEa70
And some people are trying to make more stylish "apple-esque" versions to appeal to Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpiH-Y-HOvE
I likely cycled more km, than I drove by car and I do not intend to change that, but for long distance trips with the whole family, a car is hard to beat or replace.
Moving to electrified cars is an enormous step. It might look babyish now it's happening, but it wasn't even on the table 15 years ago.
Also vehicles that are easier to stop are far better for small business owners and local economies.
Also keep in mind traffic speed is usually somewhere south of 20mph. You can get places quicker at 18mph non stop than you can at 30 or 50 with congestion caused by traffic control that has lower throughput on a 4 lane each way intersection than a single bike lane with no control.
30mph vehicles are LEVs not bicycles and should be treated as motorscooters or whichever similar law framework is available and not allowed on bike paths or shared paths. That said, I fully support LEV only zones possibly where bicycles are allowed in a similar vein to how they are allowed on roads and possibly before bike only zones in less urban areas)
Won't happen, if anything we'll have more cars due to the rebound effect.
It was a major chance to restructure everything and downscale our vehicles and associated infrastructures, we did the exact opposite, they're bigger, heavier, faster, harder to fix/work on, &c.
I really just want an enclosed electric bike/motorcycle with climate control. I liked Arcimoto for a while until they stopped focusing on the full climate control and decided to charge $18k and above.
So yes, please, an electric bicycle with climate control.
Both are currently out of production for engineering improvements with plans for assembly lines to reduce the cost and prices.
Organic Transit channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/OTvehicles
BetterBike channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59bSWio0f0eSPd5MPpEPAg
It's shocking to me that someone would expect an enclosed battery-electric vehicle to cost anywhere close to $2k unless their mental image is a cheap electric bike with a rain cape or something?
The ELF and PEBL start(ed) at $10k and while I could imagine that coming down a couple thousand dollars at high volumes I have trouble imagining what corners you could cut to hit a $2k or even $4k price point.
Cities like Columbus Ohio are just terrible places to live unless you live car culture.
Outside if big cities this is not even a remote possibility, most people there travel big distances in various weather conditions on a daily basis.
Even in big cities this seems unrealistic. Thinking for example of NYC, many folks travel fir work from the outer boroughs to Manhattan, from areas where public transit isn't readily available, and just taking the bike is not even realistic.
A lot of electric ones have been popping up, although many of them are closer to the $5000-9000 price point.
Extra:
- more tire and road particulates pollution
- more road wear (someone said something like road wear is the power of 4 of the weight of the vehicle, which makes extra weight particularly awful), ergo higher infra expenses
Sometimes it feels like there is a group of EV elites out there that are predicting the complete demise of ICEs while conveniently downplaying the problem of charging access. I live on the outskirts of a major metro area. I've looked at the charging maps, and there just aren't good chargers available right now. I really hope that chargers will become ubiquitous in my area in the future, but until that happens, I don't have a great choice.
And so, my next car is going to just be a standard ICE hybrid. I hope that will be the last ICE I have to buy, but for right now, an EV seems like it is just not quite practical for me.
I've lived in two apartment buildings that had electric car chargers. In both buildings, the chargers were constantly engaged.
Hopefully some of that electric infrastructure money ends up putting chargers in private and public parking garages. I think that would give people more confidence that they could switch.
Related question: Once you charge an electric car, how long can it sit before it discharges on its own? Like how if you charge your cell phone, but even if you don't use your phone, eventually the batteries will still run out.
I don't drive much, so I wonder if it is practical for me to charge an EV in an apartment garage, then move it to another space and leave it for a week or two or three and it still be full?
I think EVs mostly make sense for certain types of commuters or those with private garages/home chargers. You can certainly get by with a charger at work(i did) or use public chargers but it will depend on your area and your tolerance level. Public chargers can often cause headaches. Broken or busy chargers... Requirements to move your vehicle quickly after charging.. Commuting to a local charger.. the system needs work.
I'm about to give up my EV. I think I owned it during a sweet spot(lots of chargers, less competing EVs, and high gas prices). I'm happy going back to gas for a while. I don't see an advantage to buying an EV right now for me. EVs will still be there in a few years and I can always switch back.
When the issue is framed at all, it's usually boiled down to "landlords won't want to install chargers in the apartment garages" with the possible counterpoint of "demand will force them to" or there will be subsidies or etc etc.
But there are vast, vast numbers of people whose permanent parking situation is literally "on the street in front of my building"... or down the block... or around the corner... or wherever there's a spot free. This poses two tremendous difficulties for EV adoption. First, now we're talking not just about upgrading an electrical supply and mounting a new outlet; to bring overnight charging to street parking we'd need to dig up and re-lay concrete and asphalt. Second, people already grumble about "someone took my spot" and get a lot louder about it when there's something dedicated about the spot (google "Chicago dibs" for some serious rage on this topic) and if some-but-not-all of the street spots have charging stations, you better believe the fights over them will be epic, neighbourhood-destroying affairs.
Street parking is a central problem for anyone pushing widespread EV adoption. It can't be driven purely from consumer demand.
ETA: Can someone who spends a lot of time in California tell me if there's a lot of overnight street parking there? Because I've suspected that there isn't and that that's why this gets overlooked, but there might be some other reason.
However, this is a reasonable rare circumstance, and it's only getting easier to charge.
And cities, creating places for cars to park and forcing them to pay for that, either charging the car owner directly at the time or through taxes? I just can't imagine that.
We have too many cars filling in sidewalks, narrow city roads reducing them to single-lane, and so on. That's a problem in itself, and while it was only about people's convenience, harsh measures were hard to justify - but now we can frame it as "it's either that or Putin is coming for you" - and it becomes easier.
At the same time, there fast chargers eeeeeverywhere now. Supermarket, gyms, shopping mall, hardware store, etc. I would be fine just charging whenever I shop for food. Most of them were built in like the last 5-7 years.
There's legislation that encourages or forces apartment buildings with garages to install charging points.
There's really no significant technical barrier that hasn't been already solved in Norway. So it's down to cost and political will. I'm optimistic that even in the US this will solve itself in the coming years.
I am a bit worried about the adoption of PHEVs though, as those tend to charge much more slowly and need to be recharged much more often than a full EV. I think it should be discouraged to get a PHEV if you do not have private charging infrastructure.
(Not saying we don't need charging close to appartments at all, but workplace charging can alleviate some of it.)
I don't charge at home, but do most of my charging in the parking garage at work. This is not a fast charger (~2kW), but is wholly sufficient because I just plug it in in the morning. Alternatively, you could charge at home and not having access to any other charging would also be fine. The home charger doesn't even need to be good, because you can just leave it in overnight and even for a slow charge this will fill up aroun d 200km. The only time I actually use a "supercharger" location is for road trips.
The two most common qualms I hear from prospective EV buyers is range anxiety and time to charge. None of these are real issues for me. A full battery anyway lasts for around 400km, which is either 2 weeks of driving to work for me, or ~4 hours of roadtrip driving. After 4 hours of driving on the highway, I have no problems waiting 20min at a supercharger while I get food. Usually, the charger is actually too fast for me in this case.
I see the opposite. Every single discussion of EVs, people come out of the woodwork with all the edgecases/usecaes where current EVs don't fare so favourably to ICEs.
Guess what! EVs don't have to be perfect in every scenario to be better for a growing number of people. The cars and infrastructure continue to improve, and the number of edgecase are slowly falling like dominos.
Range not suitable for people that are regularly driving 1000km commutes? Lots of people have driving habits where a > 200km trip is a rarity. And available range keeps increasing as the tech improves.
Battery charging not so great in places with subzero temperatures have the year? Lots of people live in warmer climates. No doubt, someone is looking at improved battery chemistries or thermal regulation to help here.
Can't charge at home because you live in a studio apartment with no off street parking? There a lot of people that own their own homes, or have apartments with off-street parking. Meanwhile more charging stations are being installed at shopping centres, businesses, in reserved on street parking.
Why do people think EVs have to serve every single person perfectly before we'll see adoption? Why do they think the cars and infrastructure is going to remain static going forward? This transition is going to happen over a 10-20 year period as EVs improve, and old ICE cars are retired. It's not all happening next year.
Personally, I will buy one as soon as I have determined they make the most sense for me, just like everyone will. For some, that will be now, for others it will be five years from now, for some it will be 20 years from now.
The current market for EVs seems to be middle to upper class city-dwellers who own their own homes and commute less than an hour each day. That is certainly a sizable market that will scale to a point, but what about after that point? What about rural folks who have no need for an EV and are perfectly content to drive ICE vehicles the rest of their lives? What about people who refuse to buy EVs for ideological reasons? What about car enthusiasts who love the roar of a V8? What about people who can't afford to spend 35k+ USD on a new (and base) model EV? What about people who need heavy duty trucks? What about people who have large families and need something with generous seating capacity and the ability to tow the occasional boat or RV for family trips?
Point being, there are large parts of the market that are either underserved because there isn't an EV that matches their needs, or they have no desire to be served at all.
Yes there are some people that love the roar of a v7, some people think the choice is political. But the vast majority don't give a shit. It will come down to function and economics. Eventually EVs will beat out ICEs in more an more usecases per $ spent, and then many of the people holding out for ideological reasons will switch because they're friends and family are all driving them.
There will eventually be a tipping point where gas stations start shutting down because of EV becoming a significant part of the market, which I think will start a feedback loop. Gas stations that survive on slim margins will be uneconomical with 20% EV adoption, will either shut down or raise prices. This will make it worse to own an ICE for more people, that will switch to EVs. Then more stations are out under pressure, rinse and repeat.
If EV adoption is low in your metro area, then EVs may only be convenient for home owners and folks who live near charging stations until more people get EVs.
Once there is a critical mass of EVs in your area (or even just passing through), then stations will pop up everywhere.
I live in a non-urban coastal area of California, and there are multiple EV stations at almost every mall and every Target within an hour drive of where I live (probably wider than that, but I haven’t really checked).
So instead we're putting ourselves on the waiting list for a RAV4 Prime. We'll still reap most of the benefits of plugging in, but the price is much more palatable for what you get.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/wheels/news/federal-ev-tax-credits-en...
- keep the Bolt and buy it for $24k + tax. Car is barely worth that and the subsidized chargers I've been using at work are starting to fill up, causing hassles. Current CA grid insufficiency is also not encouraging.
- get a new BEV or PHEV. I don't drive enough to make either of these make economic sense. I can pick up a newer, pre-owned ICE vehicle and save a ton over non-ICE and never spend anywhere close to the difference on gas.
EV drivetrains are fun and I love them but I can't justify the luxury at this point.
I wonder if we will ever get back low-margin cars. Auto companies are getting addicted to high margins and post-purchase charges. The CEO of Stellantis is explicit about this.
The end result may be BYD replacing Chevrolet or Toyota.[1]
A 2 person apartment where I live will consume ~400kWh of power in a typical month. Charging a 100kWh battery twice a month per person would double the power usage. We don't have the power generation, nor power delivery for that, nor will we have it for some time.
Edit: Average car age is < 12 in the US, not 15.
The main thing about the electricity grid isn't so much that we need new capacity (that we actually have the production capacity to deal with), but that it changes the load distribution of the grid. And we have no (effective) way to communicate the load condition. If we could dynamically increase and decrease the consumption, then we could deal with building less excess capacity.
At least here in Germany, if you look outside you'll see nearly every new house having a complete array of solar panels and all of the currently added installations come with the option to redirect the power into local storage. This isn't widely deployed yet as battery capacity is still too expensive, but within the next couple of years this will be fixed and all of these buildings will "disappear" from the electric grid. They will (largely [2]) feed themselves and all remaining demand will be time-insensitive due to the available local storage. These houses (and the associated EVs) will not put additional strain on the grid. And, if we manage to sort out the regulatory things and implement a reasonable user-interface, they may even take strain from the grid.
This is a rather long story for saying this: Don't equate "capacity added" with "production increase" with "actual amount of electric energy generated and consumed". The first to numbers differ by a load factor and the last one will (increasingly) diverge, due to net-metering and friends.
[1] assuming that all cars large the same time and none get "lost" by being in accidents or exported you'd get to 24 years if the half-life is 12, in practice I would assume a certain heavy-tailness and a peak somewhere around 20
[2] most houses will be _heavily_ oversupplied on a year-long basis, but will be consumers to the grid for shorter periods.
Some places let you invest in solar farm that you then use power at all your abodes and at municipal chargers.
FWIW we should have waaay more incentives towards adding rooftop solar + batteries than towards EVs.
However, charging what the market will bear in a tight market is not the thing that will doom them. Artificially limiting their production of EVs, through internal strife or plain bad planning will hurt them though.
He thinks most manufacturers will go LFP, and increasing scale of LFP cell production plus the low material cost will crater the price of the battery pack. He also wants to go to direct online sales, and cut advertising:
>Ford, like Tesla, may not have to buy advertising to sell EVs, which now amounts to $500 to $600 per vehicle, Farley said.
Terrifically bad news for legacy TV, if true. It would certainly blow a hole in the NFL's budget.
Like BYD' CEO, Ford top management sees lithium iron phosphate as the battery technology for low end vehicles. It's both cheaper and far less prone to battery fires. That chemistry does not have the thermal runaway problem.
Also an EV has more battery capacity than my house so it'd be pretty hard to charge a car in the winter when I can barely keep my house batteries running my house.
https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui...
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/19/a-recent-aptera-video-g...
They also get significantly more miles/kWh than most electrics, so the charging problem's easier.
In other words: not a car. No crash protection. Three-wheeled "cars" are simply an excuse to avoid various safety rules. They are essentially enclosed motorcycles, to the extent that in some jurisdictions you may need a motorcycle license/helmet to drive them.
Back in the 90s I drove a '73 Beetle and a '74 Pinto, and I'm sure it's safer than those. Maybe Aptera's customers will be some of today's 20-somethings.
Not sure if you're just talking about something specific to your house, or making a broader point.
Once EVs are widespread, they can add a huge amount of storage capacity to the grid. Not hard to imagine utility and government incentives that encourage car owners to make some of their battery power available at peak load times.
I absolutely would, in fact it's a major reason I am not getting a Tesla and am instead opting for an EV that emphasizes its vehicle-to-home power capabilities (e.g. F150 Lightning and Lucid). I also know a ton of other Texans who feel the same way I do given our (deserved) lack of faith in our electric grid.
Also, saying it's "feeding power back to the grid", while technically accurate, isn't necessarily how I think this will be messaged. Instead, I think it will be messaged that, in times of high demand, your house alone will be powered by your car battery and taken "off grid".
Right now, some of the biggest issues with renewables is just timing during the day (e.g. late afternoon/early evening power needs peak right as the sun is setting). Telling people they'll get a substantially discounted rate if they allow their house to be "disconnected" from the grid for a few hours (because they have a car battery that can power their house) would be a big incentive to a lot of people.
And yes, V2H power can increase wear on the battery, but my understanding is that large strides have been made (and certainly will be made) in reducing the wear impact on the battery.
A few kWh from the middle of the charge range has about zero cost to battery life, and the owner has to pay the carrying costs of a car anyway, so their costs will be less than the cost of dedicated grid storage for those few kWh.
Damn, this sounds weird coming from a first world country.
To be sure, in the U.S., you would probably still need a car in winter, rain...
To that end, the wife and I are down to a single car we share between the two of us. (Seems like such a radical thing to do in the U.S. for some reason.)
(Here is a link if anyone wants to confirm my story, but be warned. You cannot unread this. It was a horrible accident.) https://www.aldergrovestar.com/news/fatal-semi-truck-collisi...
EVs need to win by being better without more risk, not by trying to ban people currently using ICEs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Fort_McMurray_wildfire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E_OLgC4nV0
88,000 people in perhaps 50,000 vehicles all taking the ONE road out of town. Some kind companies setup fuel trucks by the roadside to top up tanks. Gas delivery can be scaled up and even made portable in an emergency. Had those 50,000 vehicles all been EVs, tens of thousands of people would have been stuck beside the road hoping the fire picked a different direction.
If people want to live in remote areas and pollute a ton, that's just fine as long as they pay to clean up the mess they make for everyone else. Direct carbon capture from the air is about $500/ton right now, which is only about $5/gallon of gas.
Well... if you want lumber, minerals, metals, petrochemicals and food, then you too will need people living "in remote areas".
But people need to pay for the damage they inflict on the world. Nobody is so "special" or snowflake that they get exempted. Farmers are adults, they can be treated like any other adult in our society.
Sure, I suppose that could be priced into what they charge for their products. That may be a nontrivial challenge to work out, though, and it's possible they'll no longer be able to make a sustainable product after doing so.
Life is complicated and easy answers are often wrong.
Seems more like this kind of take is an attempt to canonize them.
They're economic actors. Their work is very important, but that's why they, you know, take money in exchange for their output.
Excusing externalities is how we get corporate structures where officers and shareholders are richly rewarded and tax payers get to pay for (and often live in) the SuperFund site after the company leaves.
I'm generally anti-carbon tax because it's the solution to the problem that is obvious, simple, and wrong. But when there are no other solutions, charging for cleanup is the way to go.
Farmers and miners pay for their costs. They can continue to do so and pass their costs on. Some farmers, at least in the US, we massively subsidize to a ridiculous extent in a make-work program for massive amounts of soy and corn. But this is an economic choice that is relatively recent in the history of the US, and we can decide at any moment to improve the efficiency of the economy by making externalized costs internal.
So a carbon tax on electricity generation sources works ok to incentivize a switch and internalize the externalities, but it's pretty equivalent to the general ITC/PTC subsidies that have recently been passed, with the exception that they are sector specific.
An economy wide carbon tax does almost nothing to incentivize decarbonization of steel or concrete, as the tech isn't there, nobody has spare money to invest in a solution, and the tax wouldn't necessarily increase the price of end products much. They need very specific industrial policy in these sectors to develop alternatives and put them into production.
Finally a carbon tax creates an entirely unified political coalition, across many sectors of the economy, to oppose the tax. So setting the tax at a level that is right to incentivize change is guaranteed to be nearly impossible, because od the breadth and political strength of the opposition to it. Specific carrots and sticks for each sector are what can drive real change in each sector.
If it was 1980, I'd be supporting a carbon tax. But we need to move far more quickly now to change our economic production systems than a carbon tax could ever conceivably achieve.
I can't think of a case where exempting some group from a carbon tax would be good policy. There is a pretty good argument though that a carbon tax would be regressive, and probably should be compensated for in some way so that poor people don't come out worse off, such as by reducing income tax in the lower brackets.
I think the hardest sector to decarbonize is going to be the military (with the exception of some small percentage of navy ships that are nuclear powered). I could see plug-in hybrid army vehicles eventually being a thing, though. Being able to run off of either diesel or electricity provides a lot of logistical flexibility. You can save the petroleum for when you really need to move long distances.
This is an easily solved problem. Just stop eating. Once you stop eating, then we don't have to have farmers and their remotely-located support communities growing food for you.
For bonus points, stop using computers. Electronics are made up of all kinds of metals that are mined in remote locations. So, stop using electricity at all, if you're really concerned about this.
And while you're at it, give up toilet paper. It comes from trees that are waaaay out in the forest. If you stop wiping, then we don't have to truck trees to paper mills to make toilet paper for people in the city to use.
Do your part.
Sometimes population density is the defining concern,
in other cases it is geographic isolation. Small population
size typically characterizes a rural place, but how small is
rural? Population thresholds used to differentiate rural and
urban communities range from 2,500 up to 50,000, depending on
the definition.
Temperature change needed for complete loss of Greenland ice sheet: between 1 and 4 °C. (That's a change by, not a change to).
Effect of complete loss of Greenland ice sheet: 7.2 meter sea level rise.
Your attempt at nit picking, if it were valid, would actually makes it much worse: a temperature increase sufficient to turn "-22c" into "we don't need to worry about cold batteries" requires close to double the difference between today and the highest estimated average global temperature ever in the biological history of the planet, and that temperature happened before trees had evolved.
For example, naïvely adding 22 C (22.5 says Wiki) to the average so that the coldest was no longer below freezing, your Fort McMurray would have a new July average high of 46.2 C, which is above the current average of Death Valley 10 months of the year and pretty close the other two.
I don't know if battery heaters are a common feature on current EVs. I'd think it would be particularly useful for LFP cells, which can be damaged if you try to charge them when they're below freezing. They can be discharged safely (if not efficiently) at much lower temperatures, which means you could "bootstrap" the car in cold weather by using the battery to heat itself until it gets warm enough to charge (without which you can't use regenerative braking).
It wouldn't be that far-fetched to imagine a battery cell with a built-in heating element (e.g. an internal 1 ohm resistor across the battery terminals) that, when activated, keeps the cell at at least room temperature and shuts off when the battery gets up to temperature. Normally you'd only activate the heater when charging or driving.
Although maybe that's not right... if a large amount of energy is "lost" when the battery is too cold, that energy has to go somewhere. If it ends up as heat anyways, maybe it's really functionally equivalent to having a heating element in the cell. In which case the solution is probably just to insulate the batteries better.
That's an interesting point.
We see this a couple of times a year in the United States — tens, or even hundreds of thousands of people evacuating because of an approaching hurricane.
It takes hours and hours and hours to go not very far. And when you finally get someplace with an open hotel room, it's hundreds of miles away.
Although I believe they are close, I'm not sure EVs are ready for that challenge yet. Especially since a gas station half-way to safety can fill up hundreds of cars faster than a dozen EVs can charge.
Can more chargers solve this problem? Better chargers? Both? Something else?
Having wireless tech that can charge that fast would be even better. Maybe get on a little conveyer belt similar to an automated carwash and by the time you exit, you have 50 more miles than before. Hell, imagine these things running parallel to a road like a pit lane on a racetrack. Move on the track for 5 minutes, then they turn around and grab cars going the opposite direction.
Seems pretty inefficient and probably a logistical nightmare, but it would be cool to see it work!
Now doing this in a portable way is the difficult part. There are a few trucks now that can do 7-10 kW output to charge cars, but that's only about 30-40 miles of range per hour, which is still quite slow. But it might be enough to top you up for 15-20 mins to get you 10-15 miles down the road to a charger. I imagine this will improve though quite a bit as more EVs are adopted. I think if we can get to 50 kW chargers from service vehicles that's good enough. On a 50 kW charger 15 minutes of charging will give you 50 miles of range on a Tesla, and on less efficient cars it will still give you at 30+ miles.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/12/worlds-f...
There's basically three options: overhead lines, which are cheap but kind of ugly and don't really work for passenger cars (they'd need a really tall pantograph to reach as high as a truck), rails embedded in the road surface which can be used by cars and trucks but are more expensive than overhead lines, and wireless charging which is much more expensive than rails and the amount of power you can reasonably transfer is pretty limited.
I'm in favor of the rail approach, like they're testing in Sweden. If some billionaire with money burning a hole in your pocket is reading this, might I suggest buying a stretch of land parallel to a busy highway and constructing a parallel road with rail-style charging, and establish an in-motion charging standard. Let people charge for free and see what comes of it.
In the long run I hope all the major highways get electrified this way. It's disappointing that Congress isn't already working on this.
Logistics. A petrol station can fill up any single isolated car or truck really fast, but when the local supply is gone, it can only be returned via a delivery truck (unless I'm very wrong and they have pipes direct to refineries?)
An electric charger can recharge one car battery much slower than a tank can be refilled, but the grid can be approximated as "not running out" over that kind of timescale.
I'm not sure which would be better for mass evacuations in practice, especially given traffic jams are where EVs excel.
I don't have a Tesla, but maybe someone here does and can chime in.
If you want EVs to take over, get feature parity with the current technology.
[1] https://www.autotrader.ca/editorial/20190201/how-long-can-yo...
Realistically, that's an extreme case and some ICE vehicles might break down too for whatever reason. In that situation if there's no other option you'd probably just ditch your car and get a ride from someone else.
There are very very very few places without electricity in the world.
Are there some places where emergency conditions make travel inconvenient or uncertain? Sure, but these rare situations are narrowing daily.
If that was the only Tesla you saw that day, there's a good reason for it. Fortunately those sorts of rare areas have nearly zero population, and account for nearly zero of the miles we need to switch from gas to EVs, so if they stay gasoline powered for a few more years, it's not a big obstacle to overcome.
Today. Right now. This is happening. Not Africa or Antarctica. In Canada. In a national park during a busy long weekend.
https://edmonton.ctvnews.ca/be-prepared-officials-warn-of-po...
" Should the situation worsen, Richard Ireland, Jasper's mayor, recommended residents and visitors to the park ensure their essential electric devices remain fully charged and that their vehicles have full tanks of gas — since gas stations rely on electricity.
"We are already prepared to move to generated power for our own critical infrastructure, but that does not power lights in a residential home or your fridge or anything else," Ireland said. "So be prepared.""
And I would note that it's far easier to keep a full charge when you do your charging at home than it is when you need to leave the house to prepare and fill up on gas.
> Jasper's mayor, recommended residents and visitors to the park ensure their essential electric devices remain fully charged and that their vehicles have full tanks of gas — since gas stations rely on electricity.
I think there's a huge logical gap that people have when it comes to EVs.
The number of places with functioning gas pumps but no electricity is a rounding error.
This is a legitimate use, but for a vanishingly small number of people. Back when LED lights were first being pushed, we saw a lot of the same resistance to a new product that was superior for nearly every single use case, except a vanishingly small number of use cases. EVs are really similar. In 10 years we will look back on the resistance to EVs and find it a bit silly and overly fearful.
It seems to me that EV advocates aren’t very similar to what we see with LED bulbs. EV advocates refuse to even acknowledge that EVs are not for everyone. Instead they want to ban alternatives. At least I can still buy compact fluorescent bulbs.
It’s as if laptop computer advocates wanted to ban desktops. Surely the laptop is all anyone needs.
But my comment was: "This is a legitimate use, but for a vanishingly small number of people."
For people in a city who never leave it? EVs are great. Everyone else not so much. Personally I think plug in hybrids are the future because they overcome this but seems everyone just wants to push pure evs.
They could also advise that "your EV batteries remain fully charged since EV charging stations rely on electricity."
There are still isolated places where this is useful. I've done it when offroading.
In the first world. Billions live in places with no or unreliable electricity.
In these places, EVs will be far superior to gas vehicles because they will require less infrastructure and the EVs supplement the micro grid are an asset for it.
In areas where heating buildings interiors is a significant energy need, and has week long cold snaps, then there's extremely cheap storage in the form of therma storage, which combines very nicely with heat pumps, and it exists today. Bury insulated thermal sinks underground and a ton of summertime energy can be stored up seasonally.
However I'm not aware of any large populations of people that live in colder climates that do not yet have electricity and are looking to change their living standards in the coming decades.
We don't use sea planes much anymore, because aircraft now have their own dedicated airports.
I think of giant batteries on electric vehicles as being basically the same thing as a giant pontoon on an airplane: it's there because the infrastructure isn't good enough that we can leave it behind. In the case of EVs, I think what we need in the long run is electrified roads so that range becomes a non-issue for almost everyone, and we can use batteries that are half the size or less.
And ya, when you are at some place like Crater Lake National Park, you don't really think too deeply about how the next gas station might be 100 miles out.
If I was going into the Australian outback, preparations are necessary, but running out of gas due to poor planning or unexpected situations is at least as common as running out of battery due to similar poor planning (or unexpected situations).
> Most gas-powered generators that your roadside assistance will come with provide 9.6 kilowatts and generate 240 volts. Inquire with your roadside assistance provider to know whether they offer a mobile charge. Often that not, they may be offering it.
Ya, they are coming with basically with a diesel generator that outputs 240 volts...which should give you 20 or so miles in 30 minutes?
Or towing (on a flatbed) to the nearest charger is an option if you can't bring power to the car.
When on longer road trips I always carry a portable tank of spare fuel just in case. Sure, I rarely need it, but it's been handy a few times.
This is out of California and nearby states where long stretches of emptiness are a regular occurrence. Back when I lived on the east coast I never did this as the population density is much higher.
That was worse than I thought it was going to be.
Even if they visit they visit the densely populated areas not realizing that most Americans regularly drive across areas where you may not see anyone for miles around. It's not that uncommon an occurrence. Most Americans will do something like this a few times a year. Many do it daily...
Canadians too
83% of Americans live in urban areas. Why would they "regularly drive across areas where [they] may not see anyone for miles around"...?
Are you sure you're not just extrapolating from your own experience?
Even then, I think most Americans overestimate their range needs. A stop every two hours is recommended for every driver to keep attention at safe levels, and even then there are bio breaks and the occasional coffee or drink or lunch.
A lot of EV's are already at 500km range. Within this decade we should see 1000km range. Add some charging infrastructure and we are gold. Just look at the chargers Tesla has built in California (and there is still a lot of potential to improve).
Also 140-160 km/h aren't normal highway speed. They are in fact illegal in almost all countries.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36302930/tesla-model-s-lo...
Speed limits are just glorified toll boots made to extract revenue from people with powerful cars.
Also manufacturers are moving away from providing 200km/h+ capable cars. Volvo is pioneering this citing safety concerns.
140 km/h and above is not a normal highway speed in any country except Germany and even there it is not really that common. I returned from the UK to Norway last week. It was about 26 hours of driving through France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, the amount of time I spent at more than 130 was just a couple of hours.
And of course the vast bulk of traffic on the roads is very much slower. Also quite a lot of ICE cars are not built for sustained driving at high speeds anyway.
Perhaps, but how are they going to adapt to significantly lower CO2 emission? Through drastically increased prices? Or just accept the 4C warming and hope the fires are after your lifetime?
I think that this is an interesting corner case, but I don’t think the solution decision tree is that complicated:
1. Every Tesla has comes with an adapter that plugs into a regular outlet. It’s very slow (maybe 3-5 miles an hour charge), but it’s enough to recharge anywhere that has electricity in an emergency. This is slow and may require an extended stay at a hotel (or sleeping in your car), but we are talking about a super rare emergency situation.
2. I would default to not taking a long detour in general in an ev unless I knew where I was going to charge. That would be like taking a detour on a back road in an isolated area on a fraction of a tank of gas without knowing how far the next gas station is or whether it would be open — just not wise.
3. If he was near a charging station in the direction he was going on the main road, I would lean towards just waiting it out. Tesla’s use very little charge when not moving. 12-24 hours would be fine (if boring).
4. If he was not near a charging station in the direction he was going, then I would recommend turning around and finding the nearest charger or find a place you can charge on a regular outlet — drastic situations call for drastic solutions.
I guess I can say that I feel sorry for EV owners who lack the ability to think logically and/or analytically, but these problems, while different than ICE problems, are not terribly difficult to figure out.
I think that I have heard of one challenging charging scenario in the US that is specific to EVs…
There is a wind corridor on some highway that spans from Texas to Colorado. Cars of any kind get reduced mileage by a lot if they are driving into heavy winds that are common on this road. Not a problem with ubiquitous gas stations, but I don’t think the charger network accommodated this wind factor as of last year, so people had to drive at unusually slow speeds in order to extend their range.
That said, I heard that Tesla was building an extra charging station or two on this route to address this issue, and it wouldn’t surprise me if other charging station operators did so as well. It’s just a super weird and rare driving and charging situation that is/was easily solved.
I’d also suggest that you are operating under the illusion of self-repair. Is replacing a transmission something you can do? An engine? Sure let’s say you can. Personally I can’t replace an engine any more than I can replace a motor on an EV. I don’t have the tools, I still have to rely on society to procure the engine and tools and ship them to my house, etc. idk why this would be more or less difficult than replacing something on an EV besides the battery pack.
I don’t really follow your EV battery comment unless you live in a very abnormal situation which is ok, but it makes your comment much more akin to an abnormal anecdote than a generalized point regarding EVs.
If you swapped out the motor on your EV like you suggested, it would start spewing out illegal levels of EM interference, screaming like a pig and randomly chopping out at high speed.
This is why self right to repair is a complex issue. Even for EVs which seem simple but are not. Every single component is so tightly coupled.
It’s not a big stretch to imagine that generations of younger people concerned about the climate might make product consumption choices that draw a clear line between themselves and their ICE-driving parents.
So of course EVs were going to become very popular. Just had to get people past the range anxiety and charging unfamiliarity. Now they see that all their neighbors are doing just fine with their new Teslas/etc, and they talk to them about their experience, anxiety goes down, and they sign their name on the waiting list.
But my point wasn’t that “people are buying EVs because they’re cool”, but rather: I bet current projections of future rates of EV adoption underweight the effect of ICE products becoming desperately uncool faster than most expect.
It’s just a hunch though.
I spent 5-10 minutes of my life every week keeping my last ICE vehicle fueled. I spend 15 seconds a day keeping my EV topped off. I've saved so much time not having to go to the gas station that I still come out waaaaay ahead even if I have to stop for 20-30 minutes to recharge on my road trip.
Full EVs have a much better reputation with them - even something like my Renault Zoe - because they have zero tailpipe emissions, and even the Zoe is pretty quick and super-smooth in comparison to a comparable ICE vehicle.
Big cities have had these for a while, but they become more acceptable when people are seen to be doing something that is both wrong and unusual.
See the acceleration of smoking bans over time.
This is sometimes referred to as "The Inevitable Policy Response" when talking about pricing the value of businesses with carbon-heavy outputs.
https://www.unpri.org/sustainability-issues/climate-change/i...
Unless you are purchasing a very cheap sub-$20k car, EV’s should become the only choice by 2030.
https://insideevs.com/news/506465/evs-price-parity-europe-20...
If you're really worried about the agencies hijacking you to kill you, you're gonna need to buy vintage.
But underlying that is the fact that there are no networked features that I personally want my car to have. So however small the risks (of both physical harm and being effected by bizarre networked car dark patterns), they are risks that I would be taking exclusively for the benefit of the manufacturer of the product for which I am supposedly the customer. As long as there is an acceptable alternative to such a product, I will always choose the alternative.
If you think this has happened, I believe you are mistaken. But I'm open to hearing evidence.
More seriously, a natural obsolescence from dead battery packs that are BER.
Things like navigation can be done on-board (proven when in zero connectivity area), and playing MP3s from a USB can replace spotify.
No idea what it might start complaining about long term though when it can't talk to the backend for extended periods.
What worries me if what happens when manufacturers abandon battery platforms. There have been a few stories lately of older cars- the Chevy volt comes to mind- where the batteries aren't made anymore, and replacing one is in the $20-30k, several times over what the car actually sells for.
Instead, it'd be nice if the battery packs were built in a modularized way, so that if one section dies, it can be replaced rather than the entire pack.
Otherwise, buying a used EV is a massive gamble for lower class folk who typically only buy used cars.
Probably best to wait ~5 years then buy an EV, if you can wait.
But price. That's the killer right now. They're popular, batteries are expensive. I may actually go back to a PHEV for my next car even after I swore I'd never own a non-EV again because I'm hooked. Because the price difference is 20 grand, and the EV will never save me 20 grand over its life compared to a good PHEV. I'm a bit miffed about the whole thing, to be honest. Prices are insane for everything. I need a raise, clearly.
There are lines at gas stations in developed countries? I can't even remember when I last saw one.
I missed that memo.
Eventually EVs will be so common that landlords will be falling over themselves to get chargers installed so they aren't pariahs.
Replacing street parking is going to be a bigger problem.
Level 2 charging (i.e. 240V home charging) is not affected by cold temperatures unless it's well below freezing, like below 0 F.
> In Oslo it hasn't dropped below -20C / -4F since 2010.
-20C is brutally cold, far colder than any coldest winter day I ever experienced while living in the northeast USA.
Aside from the general post-communism, we had -30C cold snaps.
But yeah, snot freezes at around -18C - I consider this the point at which things become universally unpleasant regardless how prepared you are.
That being said during a cold snap of -22C I saw my neighbours struggle to start their ICE cars while my hybrid just brutally kicked the engine into action.
4 miles/hour is very, very slow. It's the maximum output of a standard wall charger. Maybe you were at a level 1 charger?
The only car temperature problem I've had in the winter in Virginia hasn't been with an EV at all - just a VW diesel that had trouble starting due to extreme cold.
I feel like we're dismissing other hydrocarbons too early. When I was a kid, people had propane or methane cars which were basically converted gasoline cars. Sure, not anywhere near as efficient but combined with hybrid tech for regenerative braking you likely have a more efficient car overall(nat gas is less refining energy than gasoline IIRC and we have a lot of it). You can also build them a lot cheaper since they use smaller electric motors, less coppper, less aluminum, and less lithium.
Yes I know BEV zealots hate hybrids but until we have better Li supply chains we need to conserve it and get more vehicles off of pure IC drivetrains.
That may be the doomsday scenario. Imagine we had a new battery tech today that could cram 1000+miles into a car in say 5 minutes. EV sales would spike. ICEs would disappear. Then everyone would get their new EV home ... and the national electricity grid would collapse.
The problem with a lot of this is that the more "responsible" you're already living, the less reasonable the next "responsible" thing is to do. Going solar/off grid is only really possible if you live on a lot of land where you're the only resident, which is otherwise generally not recommended. If you live in dense housing, you probably don't have solar, let alone a way to charge an EV. I park my current car 100-500 feet from the nearest outlet that I own. There's essentially no world I could buy an EV and not have to charge it for hours outside of my home.
The efficient future is here, but it's for the rich who did all the garbage NIMBY stuff that made it necessary for everyone else to have to live "efficiently" to make up for their gluttonous use of land/power over the past decades.
By whom? In my case, I am not the only resident, I have a large family on our acreage.
Grid upgrades are a thing that's going to have to happen, but I think the concern is kind of overblown. It's not like everyone is going to switch to EVs at the same time, and over the course of a decade or two the utilities can use the increased revenue they're collecting to upgrade their infrastructure as needed.
We're going to need more electricity production to offset the increased demand. Some of that might be offset by residential solar.
That seems pretty irrelevant? It's not like you have only one ambulance.
But even then, OK, you could argue that in some specific scenarios you need an ICE ambulance. That does not mean that ambulances can't be EV.
California asked its residents to save electricity (so, among other things, not charge cars) between 4 and 9 pm - during the evening peak.
That's not when most people charge their EVs.
This has been sensationalized by some media outlets.
The country with highest share of EV is… Norway. And by a huge margin.
https://alternative-fuels-observatory.ec.europa.eu/transport...
I think you're wrong.
EVs lose 15-40% of their range in cold weather.
Most people drive so little, they could recharge once a week. And I doubt they couldn't do it neither at home, nor the office, nor the supermarket, nor anywhere else.
Stores will do everything to have people charge at their parking. Remember when hotels made people pay for Wifi? I do.
My HOA has been discussing this and they came to the same conclusion - not installing chargers in the garage will make it very difficult to sell condos here in 5-ish years.
No one wants to pay the power usage of someone else.
The math does not support this price premium. You will not save money.
This is before considering that it will cost several thousand to have a charger installed, and to say nothing of the other drawbacks of EV ownership.
My prediction is that EV penetration will plateau pretty quickly. There are no short term plans to turn NYC into an EV friendly city.
People are just buying the fad.
They think they are being green but most that charging power still comes from gas/oil power plants.
They would still be green if that was the case, though generally it's not, see state by state worked examples here: https://evtool.ucsusa.org/
Bullshit. https://www.geotab.com/fleet-management-solutions/ev-battery...
And these are for 10-year old EV. Battery packs made today won't have to be replace after 15 years, and they'll certainly be used as stationary storage past their time on wheels.
More importantly, most EV will switch to LFP chemistry (already more than half Tesla's vehicles production), which degrades even less.
Other sources:
- https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2021-tesla-impact-report.pdf (p. 67) for Tesla S/X fleet wide results.
- https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-dat...
Eventually landlords will be falling over themselves to install chargers so their apartments will remain rentable.
That means I can plug the car in the garage and it talk to my p.v. inverter eating as much energy as it can when the Sun shine and stopping when Sun is not there with user-configurable simple and quick to set parameter: target SOC and target time. Like "I want a minimum SOC for this time". Than car and p.v. do their best to maximize self consumption high voltage DC to inverter MPPT to maximize efficiency as a bonus. Plus since there are anyway to DC wires and also two/more AC wires and the car have an inverter anyway offering energy to the home as needed, with a minimum SOC for when the home is on grid, another for when the grid fail.
Most hybrid/battery inverter already do that since years. There is no &$&%%( reason why cars with their large batteries and naturally limited service life can't do the same.
If an OEM do that, even before have a public standard, witch means needing to change/add an inverter, I'll buy the car ASAP. If not I'll wait until diesel reach 5-6€/liter or became so scarce I can't keep using it. Sorry but there is a limit of CRAPPY and alpha-alike quality crap to be imposed on people because those who design and sell the aforementioned crap do not use it on their own so do not realize what's needed and what's not.
I still retain a driver's license. I owned a bicycle for a few years but I ditched it, because it was extraordinarily inconvenient for all the use I got, at least after I quit a call-center job in an isolated office park.
I've ridden public transit for about 45 years, thanks Grandma!
This year I'm going multi-modal. I'm using taxi cabs for errands like groceries and laundry. I'm using specialized rideshare for medical appointments. I use public transit for ordinary errands and appointments where I don't need to lug a lot of cargo around. I use scooter-shares for quickly zipping somewhere with zero cargo (it's fun! 17MPH in a traffic lane! Look ma, no helmets!) And I rented a car (ICE, no other options) a few months ago which enabled me to do stuff like haul scrap metal and other recycling to the facility, which does not permit citizens without a vehicle (and just try convincing a taxi driver to cooperate with that ritual...)
I live in a very, very multi-modal-friendly city and they're aggressively adding options and restructuring the highways and byways to be friendly to people just like me. There's a new community of micro-homes going in two blocks down. It's going to be quite the multi-modal transportation Utopia for the foreseeable future!
Edit: I guess I don’t like the idea that ordinary procrastination can, in this case destroy a 50k investment.
In the U.S. we have Jiffy Lube and the "checkup" is just another way for them to squeeze the customer for cash. We are so distrustful of auto mechanics in general that, no, I don't think most of us go looking for a yearly fleecing, ha ha (not funny, really).
I was not aware that Texas was that way.
I haven't lived in Texas in 20+ years but I remember the annual sticker visits at gas stations, they would check that the head lights worked and were pointed at the correct direction for the height of the lamp, that your windshield wasn't cracked in your field of view, the using the brakes turned on the brake lights, and other things, if your vehicle failed any of the checks you were required to fix them and get re-inspected and pass the entire suite of tests before one got the inspection sticker.
At least I got a free transmission rebuild out of it, but walking (or bus :\ ) to work for 2 weeks was not exciting.
Today's car are heavy as hell compared to cars made 30 years ago. Is it possible to make cars that are build on a much lighter base, but that use a heavier/cheaper battery (sodium based?)
Now if you consider the length of it, things aren't any better. The next time you are in gridlocked traffic, look at the cars around you. Imagine the cars just disappeared and everyone was standing in the road. It's obviously pretty inefficient to wait in line with 20-30 foot gaps between the person in front of you and 10-15 foot gaps with the person beside you, but thats what rush hour is in cars.
There are plenty of options for slow electric transportation. I need a car that can do 60mph.
Regulation in the big markets such as the US and Europe to enforce a cost-effective approach to battery replacement seems essential to me. Otherwise, design will go the way of ever slimmer phones.
How do you detect when its doing that? My Prius is 14 years old and I think the hybrid still works. It does switch off the engine still at low speeds. Maybe it is isn't doing as well these days, but still seems good enough to keep for me.
A taxi driver in Vancouver had a 2004 Prius and drove 1 million kilometres only changing tires, bulbs and wipers and it was still going when Toyota bought it back from him and shipped it to Japan to study it.
First, we don't even have the resources to provide electric power at decent prices as things are right now, that's why your nice 70-year lady living with her 2 cats in a house in Cornwall or something like that will see her power invoice multiply by a factor of 3 or 4 at least, thinking that bringing in even more demand for power will improve things when it comes to price is, I repeat, criminal (that old lady presumably needs power in order to heat herself during the winter, making that power exponentially more expensive won't help with that).
Second, we don't have the infrastructure. Maybe if we'll invest trillions of dollars and euros we'll be able to connect the new nuclear plants and solar farms to the main grid and transport the new extra power between big population centers, but at the "last mile" stage things are awful, for example I'm 99% sure my apartments building cannot handle one in two apartments (let's say) charging their cars at night, especially during the summer, the thing will just catch fire.
It does feel like we're going to have at least 5 years of pain during this transition.
It also feels like the market isn't truly fair on price making the pain hurt more. Sure it's legal to rake in record profit but it's not ethical.
But I'm in the U.S. and finally have some slight optimism on climate future for first time in my adult life.
The climate bill provides incentives, credits, straight up money for all sides of this chain.
From raw materials -> clean energy capacity/manufacturing -> EV, charger, & battery production -> and finally the consumer EVs but also energy savings in upgrades & new construction.
~400b depending how you add it up.
Not enough. But not nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/climate/biden-climate-dea...
At minimum you can easily charge a car with 1.5kwh. that's less than a oven which might just eat 5-6 kWh while baking stuff.
It might need a little bit of smart charging, given, but we know how to build this.
In Germany it's expected that ev add 10% to the current energy consumption.
It's btw more efficient to burn the gas for energy in highly efficient big power plants were it's also much easier to filter the shit out and then using electronic engines (EVs) just because engines are that inefficient.
And in worst case we will still be able to have ice were it is really not doable until it is.
UK electricity generation peaked around 2008 or so and is currently ~20% below that level.
There's ample infrastructure in place to send all this power around.
Here's a recently updated article that suggests it's still a good deal: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-111...
Source?
Latest petrol price averages £1.6933/litre [3]. That makes an ICE car cheaper only if it can acheive 280mpg. ( (169.33/2.72) * 4.5 ). My Prius averages 55mpg. That makes my Prius 5 times as expensive to run as an EV right now.
The classic car that only gets driven on summer weekends isn't worth as much as a USPS van in terms of carbon and urban pollution reduction.
ICE has no chance to survive make its time.
I live in an apartment complex. Zero EVs. I suppose you are correct; I never considered myself as part of the "Many of us" moniker.
However, with a little planning it is possible to own an EV even if you live in an apartment where there is no charging infrastructure.
The average American drives 39 (let's call it 40) miles per day. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 has a 303 (let's call it 300) mile range.
That's 7.5 days of driving on a full battery, but most people will get freaked out about having a low battery (despite driving around with their gas light on) so you just have to spend 15-45 minutes every 4 days at a DC fast charger and you'll never have a battery below 50%.
Going out? Go out somewhere with a DC fast charger. There are tens of thousands of them and that number has been increasing by about 25% per year for the last two years.
So EVs in an apartment is a pain in the ass but manageable.
In a couple of years apartments are going encountering friction while attracting renters, destinations will have friction attracting visitors, and offices will have friction attracting employees unless there are accessible charging options so I suspect the public EV charging situation will improve rapidly.
You mean places that discourage cars of all types and encourage mass transit, walking and biking?
And there's plenty of capacity at night. And there are batteries, which we can charge with for example solar in the daytime, and then use at night.
Rooftop solar is great because it's near the point of use. All the people wringing their hands about the grid can rest easy, it will be fine. Sure in some climate solar is less available; see above… it can be a mix as appropriate for the place.
ok, but others do.
The current landscape is just that, current. We can build new stuff. I agree there are challenges with speed and scale though. I don’t think they are completely insurmountable.
It remains to be seen if modern EV batteries will need to be replaced before all the rest of the car.
Bullshit. https://www.geotab.com/fleet-management-solutions/ev-battery...
And these are for 10-year old EV. Battery packs made today won't have to be replace after 15 years, and they'll certainly be used as stationary storage past their time on wheels.
More importantly, most EV will switch to LFP chemistry (already more than half Tesla's vehicles production), which degrades even less.
-https://www.geotab.com/fleet-management-solutions/ev-battery...
- https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-dat...
- https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2021-tesla-impact-report.pdf (p. 67) for Tesla S/X fleet wide results.
And this is for nickel-based batteries. Most EVs will be LFP in the foreseeable future, and they degrade far less. We'll certainly use the battery as long as they car can drive, and then, it will be added to the grid for stationary applications. Then, it will be sold and recycled.
More from the International Energy Agency latest report on EV/batteries: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/e0d2081d-487d-4818-...
also california: YOU MUST ALL BUY ELECTRIC VEHICLES!