Toyota CEO talks about why he isn’t all-in on EVs
cnbc.com
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If there are hundreds of billions or even trillions riding on upgrading the grid and securing mineral resources/researching alternative solutions, it will get funded and figured out.
There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B. There will be grid upgrades to handle everyone charging (really topping off is more realistic, few drive more than ~25 miles/day, the upgrade to accommodate this might simply be "grid smart" chargers). There will be alternative chemistry batteries that don't need rare earths (like LFP in some Teslas).
Toyota is just stubbornly refusing to take the L on their 30 years of research into this. I don't blame them, but I'm not them, so I'll call it how it is.
In fairness, they did catch up decades later...but that's likely at least a couple decades of revenue lost. And never really innovating.
If they'd have been more forward thinking, we'd likely see Kodak sensors in every phone today instead of Sony.
Sears, after dominating mail-order for a century, marketed Prodigy, a successful early dial-up network. But they were by that point heavily invested in malls, and were beat out as the 21st century's Sear's, Roebuck and Co. by a bookseller.
How a company that was focused on their legacy customer relationship system and logistics operations lost out to a company that was focused on building the future of customer relationships and logistics is a lot less difficult to understand.
I remember it differently. Also, actual history is different too.
> Bezos finally decided that his new business would sell books online, because of the large worldwide demand for literature, the low unit price for books, and the huge number of titles available in print.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Amazon#Online_books...
Selling books was never the ambition, it was only the path.
All they had to do was have the foresight to move that model onto the internet. They had the supply chain, warehousing, etc. They may have even been able to have done their own logistics, since every city had a Sears. Kinda how Walmart does deliveries now.
And as you mentioned...they got crushed by a bookseller :(.
Sears seems like it could have transitioned if it didn't have its head up its ass. The death of film means Kodak would have to constrict and double down on printing, and simultaneously expand their general chemistry efforts into new markets (which I believe they did but too little too late).
Amazon was the right size to grow with the market. Amazon didn't even start selling clothing until 2002.
Service Merchandise hit some weird bad luck in early franchising (and franchising may have been the wrong choice/it's own bad luck) and accidentally got somewhat region-locked into the US South East, but the business model was from today's perspective ahead of its time, directly addressed that "mall shopping need" while still keeping what made catalogs and drop shipping useful (and relatively efficient just-in-time logistics).
Any yes, people are all over it to the point that the most popular varieties can be difficult to find in stock, and prices have climbed significantly from a few years ago.
One good exampel is Apple. They were a computer company which was doing well again after the return of Jobs. Then came the iPod. And revenue exploded. But when the rumors of a phone appeared, a lot of people would comment: no, they won't do that as that would eat into their cash cow iPod. But we know how this ended. They released the iPhone, grew multiple times the size the company was and eventually even stopped making iPods.
Back to Kodak: they did invent the digital camera, but at a time it was way too early for being a product. But more importantly, they did bring some important digital cameras to the market in the late 90ies, the first usuable DSLR were Nikon/Canon cameras equipped with Kodak guts. They started the professional digital camera market. Without Kodak, it might have happened years later.
And at that moment, when the writing for film was clearly on the wall and they actually had managed to kick start its killer, they dropped the ball. Good management would have seen that they could "protect" film sales only on a per-quarter basis, but it was a dying business. They should have used the billions of cash they still had, to gain a solid foothold in the digital camera business, perhaps even outright bought Nikon, which was limping for a while.
Or invest strongly in all the adjacencies of digital imaging, which they did far too late.
I think you can find examples of failed pivots and successful pivots but I'm not sure that "big companies should stick with their current cash cow and never pivot" is a best practice.
There is nowhere near as much money to be made in the digital camera market. They failed to adapt, but at the same time, there was no saving what was an immensely large company even if they did adapt.
Film revenue for Kodak was $16 billions in 1996, adjusted for inflation that would be $30 billions, that number will make anything digital look like nothing (15 billions is the current revenue for the entirety of the digital sensor market in current dollars and Sony has 43% of that pie, a share that has been dropping as more competitors have entered the market and as Samsung kept improving.). You see a Sony sensor in many phones, but Sony doesn't make anywhere near film-era Kodak revenue on that side of their business. The higher end camera business is more profitable, but it doesn't sell much in volume, and the low end of the camera business has almost disappeared because of smartphones. (Canon, the biggest producer of digital cameras, has all but ceased making compact cameras apart from their G7X model. You can still find other models on the market but they're older unsold stock and refurbs. They also announced they would stop producing new DSLRs and will solely focus on making a narrow range of mirrorless cameras. To put it bluntly, the digital camera market is in a very unhealthy state. Don't solely look at price tags either, Leica for example makes some of the most expensive cameras on the market but.. their revenue is $400 millions, not even $1B)
For example, if Kodak had been first to digital, that doesn't mean they'd have had to give up any film at all. And since they were first, they could have set margins where they liked. Whether it would have survived and thrived...who knows. As others have pointed out, computers weren't commonplace back then.
Digital cameras did get commoditized, nearly 30 years after Kodak had invented it. So obviously, by today they'd had to have move on. High end sensors, glass, heck even cloud computing, something akin to Google Photos... there's no telling where they could have been if they'd have leaned in early.
That said, you point out the sensor market is 15 billion today... and Sony has about half. This is way, way more money than Kodak makes anymore. Today Kodak is at about a billion revenue per year.
Who wants to invest time & money into developing a mature, low-margin business?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2021/06/29/at-last-to...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_C%2Bpod
But it is the first one where they're aiming for mass adoption.
It's not like they're not going in EV, they are just doing it at their pace (which is slow typical of Toyota).
Tesla already got the first mover advantage. Kia/Hyundai/Ford etc are fighting for second place. The gap between second and the rest won't be as large as Tesla vs second.
https://insideevs.com/news/601770/world-top-oem-ev-sales-202...
The same reason Apple went all in on the iPhone and dropped their lucrative iPod business. You drive your car on the road that takes you to the next level, not the familiar one that's heading off a cliff.
Where do you get that stat?
"The United States Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration said that the average driver traveled 12,724 miles in 2020. That’s down from 14,263 average annual miles in 2019. The 2020 average equates to 1,060 miles per month per driver, or about 35 miles per day. By comparison, the DOT said the average annual miles was 13,476 in 2018."
https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year...
I'd expect the distribution of individual amounts driven to be such that the median would be lower than the mean, but a little searching has failed to turn up any details on that distribution.
True, but there can't be that much skew--there's only so many hours in the day.
Somehow I put 32k miles in my EV in 2 years despite WFH with no commute
These things may work, but I don’t want to spend the money to be the one that finds out.
Then don't? There will be millions of people testing it for you.
My yearly maintenance is 250-325USD per year. Occasionally you need to replace the brake pads. And a few other things come up sure. But over 10 years I’m only looking at 5KUSD unless something horrible goes wrong. And I could probably get it cheaper. At my level of fuel consumption I’m looking at another 4K over 10 years.
I can’t find an up to date quote, but in Australia, the Tesla 3 years service plan for a rear wheel drive Model 3 was 1.75 times the cost compared to the standard service for my car in 2018.
Non Tesla EVs do better. And some are half the price or less than what I pay for annual servicing. But I still have to cough up 3-4 times more money 2nd hand. So potentially a 2nd hand EV based on current prices will start to be cheaper in 8ish years. Not including the loan I’d have to take out to pay for the thing.
I've had a water pump die on me within 6 months of buying a 2nd hand car. In nearly 20 years of driving 2nd hand cars I've had more issues with ICE cars I've bought than I have with the two used EVs I've bought.
With that in hand, I was confident in the health of the EV and made my purchase.
In the future it may very well be possible to do the same home repairs on your EV. We're barely past the first decade of publicly available EVs. A number of early EVs have plenty of guides out there on how to replace and rebuild battery packs on your own, and aftermarket mfgs are starting to produce speed controllers and ECUs for custom EVs.
It's just a new wave of tech, and that too will become normal over time just like ICE cars themselves.
Batteries on the other hand will eventually break down. Sure, eventually it will become cheaper to repair and replace. But the oldest EVs on the road are probably Teslas. The Model S is something like 10 years old now? And a full battery replacement is still hugely expensive. A decade on and EVs are still luxury items.
The cost of the vehicle and maintenance over 10 years would have to be dramatically less in the average case for regular people to start buying them. In that sense I think Toyota has plenty of run way.
It somewhat remains to be seen if a used electric with a new battery can be cheaper than a used hybrid.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/review-wuling-hongguang-mini-ev/
I'm just being pedantic though, I agree with your point.
That said, I am also quite a bit more pessimist than OP that we will see a full conversion in the near future. It will be a long, and quite possibly painful, process.
Then, you have the issue of rolling out updates to grids. There's a variety of options, all well technically understood, and little movement in many areas. California, for example, ought to have buried a lot of its electrical lines. Construction work during droughts seem like a good way to start a wildfire, as is installing new overhead lines.
20K isn’t economy. Half that and make sure the car still runs for over a decade with reasonable maintenance costs.
$1000AU worth of panels, a $200 charge and a $1500 battery will give you 30km or so a day.
Pays off in about 4 years vs $1.80/L even with very optimistic fuel economy. if you park at home then the price halves.
If you can put the panels where you park that goes down to 1-2 years.
Then why are you comparing the theoretical _new_ price of an EV with the used price of an ICE?
Many of Toyotas competitors have de-emphasized investments in their ICE products to pursue EVs that they can't produce in large enough volumes for longer than anticipated. Toyotas strategy is going to work well at least in the mid term.
The mindset of the group of people that think $20,000 is economy (and that it "will" definitely get done) reflects everything that is wrong with a lot of recent ESG propaganda and policies. That is, ignorance of the state of most of the world outside of rich, first class bubbles.
People used to do powertrain replacements on used cars, after all. (Maybe still do? The used cars I see are generally in better mechanical shape these days.)
EV batteries won’t get replaced in 20k cars anymore than engines are. You total it out at that point.
Battery replacements may be much easier to complete.
If you buy a full replacement engine (as opposed to parts to rebuild an engine), replacement is quick and easy in an ICE. In endurance racing an engine can often be replaced in less than 30 minutes. In non-racing conditions you'd do it a bit slower but it's not hard.
At the higher end of professional racing, those are custom built cars.
But for most categories of racing, endurance race cars are just regular street cars. Hondas, Mazdas and BMWs are what I've raced or crewed with.
It sounds like there may even be a fully new battery option available for early Model S vehicles in the near future.
If you had to rent your cell phone off of ma bell with no other equipment allowed on the network we wouldn't have iphones.
If roads had ford specific infrastructure like the future elon imagines we wouldn't have tesla.
A balance between interoperability, end user control, and freedom for manufacturers is how you get innovation. In the current auto market you have none of the above.
True. But since every point has at least three counterpoints (true, false and anywhere in between), I will provide a counterpoint.
> They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable.
This is true for urban environments where infrastructure is plentiful, and making it to the next recharging station is not a problem.
There are, however, many places on this planet that have resisted urbanisation (for one reason or another). On the A87 highway from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Australia, service stations can be up to 300 kms apart in some places. Losing 150 km of the driving range out of 450-500 kms on a brand new battery means that the vehicle will not be able to make it to the next service / recharging station.
People going across South Australia into Western Australia on the federal highway bring extra fuel along because there are no service stations in between. Yes, people still travel by cars and, no, they can't bring a spare battery with them but they bring extra canisters filled up with petrol/diesel. Also, going up the coast in Western Australia can be a pretty harrowing or even lethal experience if the vehicle runs out of power especially at the turn of dry and wet seasons when weather turns a holiday road trip into a gamble with life.
Cape York in Far North Queensland is not electrifed at all, and is powered locally by diesel generators. Electric vehicles are of no use in Cape York.
I imagine there are multiple similar fringe areas in countries such as Canada, the US (Alaska certainly comes to mind), Argentina, Brazil, Russia, west and nort-west of China and probably many others that require the infratructure to be built first and, until that happens, the liquified hydrocarbons are still the only viable option.
The remote regions you describe, currently powered by diesel generators (where does that fuel come from?), isn't there an incentive to power them by solar and also charge electric cars that way?
And even if there are some remote spots on earth where electric cars are not useful, how large is the market share for cars for these regions? If Toyota continues to make land cruisers for those regions, what does it matter for eletrifying 99% of all other cars?
Depending on geography diesel comes from boats, tanker trucks or planes. Solar might start getting some niche use, but it's not reliable even with batteries at a reasonable scale. The main benefit to diesel generators is it's pretty easy to fix and maintain them with minimal equipment. The amount of diesel per person for a generator isn't that much, even smallish planes can carry about a week of diesel for about 10-20 people.
EV charging stations just need an electric grid connection. Some maintenance/labor is still a good idea, but it isn't necessarily the same regularity and overhead costs of a trucking-based supply chain.
Maybe these situations will require more service stations be built. Maybe they'll require the development of better towable battery packs. Maybe they'll require the development of specialized vehicles for the, relatively speaking, very small number of people who need to make these trips on a regular basis.
What they don't require is maintaining our horribly-wasteful fossil fuel based transport system indefinitely.
But the same is true of ICE cars. Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators (not to mention routine maintenance like oil changes). EV's win on ongoing maintenance, and even if you have to replace a battery at an authorized dealership, you will still come out ahead versus the maintenance cost you would have otherwise paid.
In terms of 'catastrophic battery failure' compared to 'catastrophic engine failure' - not sure the EV would lose that battle either.
In short, yes, EV's have a finite lifespan, but so do ICE cars, and ICE cars are much more complicated, with many more expensive components that can fail, and are extremely expensive to replace.
I have driven approximately 700k miles across five vehicles and never touched any of these, nor have I ever been concerned about them, except with the vague idea such things can become a problem around ~250-300k miles.
What I have had enormous trouble with in all ICE cars is the electronics, which if anything are more populous in EVs.
The idea that "EV maintenance is clearly superior to ICE maintenance" seems like a baffling canard to me, aside from relieving me of the very minor burden of changing my oil twice a year or so, and some even more infrequent $20 filter replacements or simple spark plug replacements I've had to do exactly once which required only a deep socket. I've done more maintenance on my desktop computer.
Years matter as well, not just mileage. I have a 20 year old truck and the interior is basically just destroyed from sunlight and time.
EV maintenance costs have been well studied at this point and are lower than ICE, and for very sensible reasons, it’s not a mystery or a canard.
There have been many many studies. Here’s a random one;
https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/evs-offer-big-sa...
I’ve seen lots of electronics failures. This will only be worse in EVs, or at least EVs like Teslas, where things like door handles have been motorized.
[0] https://moottori.fi/liikenne/jutut/suomen-henkiloauton-keski...
Of course a sufficiently old car will be falling apart, whether it's part of the "ICE" or not - the suspension and shocks will be need to be replaced, door seals degraded or positively worthless, interior will be faded and cracking, wheel bearings fail, AC compressor goes out, various sensors fail (my favorite so far was the antitheft sensor)...when everything starts going bad, that's when I would expect the engine to be just be worn; basically, I would expect the ICE to last as long, or outlast, the rest of the car, save any issues on the left hand of the bathtub curve from manufacturing defects that should be covered under warranty. What you're saying is totally wild and alien to me. Mechanics must get a lot of business there.
If EVs are so reliable and maintenance free, why is the Tesla drivetrain warranty only 100k miles on the Model 3? That's no different than many ICE cars (eg I know Kia has the same warranty on ICE cars), and also well within the middle of the bathtub curve for an ICE car.
But for the rest of it, like temperature differences...this is still going to be a major impact on EVs, and like ICE cars, it won't be just the engine you have to worry about.
As I noted upthread, Tesla has the same powertrain warranty that, say, Kia has. It isn't much of a testament to the vaunted EV reliability that the most famous EV manufacturer doesn't have more faith in their electric powertrains than Kia does in their ICE powertrains.
- Turbo (~1k€)
- Radiator (300€)
- Clutch
- Dual-mass flywheel (1.5k€ combined with the clutch)
- DPF (would've cost upwards of 2k€, bypassed it for 500€)
Dunno if you always drove brand-new cars or were really lucky.
For my current EV (2,5 years of ownership) I've had to replace the cabin filter twice and I've filled the washer fluid a half dozen times. That's it.
None of my cars stayed with me longer than 220k, but I have never heard of anyone that wasn’t driving cars from the 70s and 80s having to do those things, or with very high mileage.
No more weird running issues where it works just fine to 2000rpm, but at 4000rpm makes that weird noise. Or the transmission rattles a bit at exactly 3700rpm, but is fine on other rpms.
There will be plenty of “weird running issues” from software bugs and electronics failures, which are the worst and least reliable parts in ICE cars as well. An EV is not just a simple electric motor packed into a case.
Finally, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, Tesla is offering the same powertrain warranty on Model 3s that Kia is offering on their ICE cars. Clearly Tesla doesn’t have any more faith in electric powertrains than Kia has in ICE powertrains. If the EV powertrain was really so much more reliable than ICE, Tesla would be offering a standard 250k mile warranty on the powertrain instead of the same 100k warranty offered by some ICE manufacturers.
Anyone with mechanical knowledge, tools, and patience can rebuild an engine or a transmission. It really is not that difficult.
When you have a vehicle with a monolithic conformal battery pack, once you can't buy a new one the car is junk. Unless you just so happen to own a factory you can afford to retool.
It doesn't exist yet beyond some small enterprises because there isn't enough volume: even 10+ year old EVs are still going strong with very few battery issues. We need to wait longer to get any business going.
There was a dude in Finland who replaced and upgraded Nissan Leaf batteries, he had to stop because it was a) impossible to get new batteries due to huge demand b) ran out of customers.
The controllers are black boxes though, but you can get 3rd party units for Tesla batteries _today_. JerryRigEverything on Youtube built his own EV Hummvee on the military chassis using some Model X batteries and all 3rd party electronics.
It wasn't plug and play, but perfectly doable in a semi-well stocked home garage.
Just imagine what can be done with actual resources and R&D.
The current limiting issue isn't skill or technology, but available new batteries. They can't make them fast enough even for new cars, never mind for spare parts.
But when battery production ramps high enough, there's absolutely nothing preventing people from upgrading existing batteries with more modern tech - bigger battery capacity in the same space.
There will also be a huge industry converting "dead" EV batteries to in-house battery backups. A car with 50% battery degradation is a bit iffy, but the battery will still have tens of kWh of usable capacity. Enough to run a house for a day or two in a pinch - or just store cheap energy and sell it back to the grid when the price goes up.
If we're talking hypothetically, why not just expect someone to develop a battery that lasts forever?
It just takes time to build enough factories to produce enough.
Just like everyone with a PC and an internet connection can become a software developer; there are a few steps in between why it doesen't "just" happen
There is some reason to believe this; stories like this [1] are going around, where EV owners have been told they need to replace the battery pack but, by the way, the part cannot be procured.
[1] https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/electric-car-battery...
Yes, other than the battery, EVs are very low maintenance. But that doesn't matter at all to low income people who usually buy 10 year old cars. They are guaranteed to owe a large repair bill on any car that is available to them.
The EVs I see on the second-hand market for $2000 have neither. It'll be a few years before I can get a used tesla for $2000.
At least with current tech, battery chemistry makes such replacement extremely tricky without a full replacement. You can technically swap individual packs in a Model S/X battery[0], but it'll inevitably die[1][2] because of how voltage balancing works.
Packs each with their own BMS would be interesting but I'm sure the automakers have already considered the tradeoffs for a lot of ideas like this.
0: https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacemen...
1: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=...
Then they get less range, they don't die completely..
A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. Not only do you lose range when parked, you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm.
These issues are manageable with a new car of course!
I definitely don't live in California.
> A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures.
A brand new EV gets less range in winter. A used EV gets less range in winter. A used EV in winter gets less range still.
But that doesn't make it unusable, it just changes the use case. A 300km range (when new) EV might reliably get 50% range in winter, and 70% range when 6 years old, combining for 35% of new range when used and in winter - plenty of buffer for an average driver's commute, but wouldn't want to use it for a winter road trip.
> you lose range when parked
Same applies whether it's a new EV or a used. If I were driving an EV in the winter (gets to -20C here regularly), I'd definitely be looking to park somewhere I could plug in - which are pretty common. As is, I drive an ICE, and I have to turn my car on for a few minutes to warm the engine before I start driving (or else the windshield becomes an unusable fogged-up mess before the end of the block)
> you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm.
Yes, monitoring weather is important regardless of your vehicle choice. The only time I've been stuck in a snowstorm was when knowingly going for a weekend camping trip when a blizzard was forecast. (the solution was bring extra food in case we got stuck)
> These issues are manageable with a new car of course!
Or used. It's all about anticipating a situation.
On the other hand, I don't pay for: oil/fluid changes, filter replacements, transmission/engine rebuilds or smog checks. Probably forgetting a half dozen other things too.
Add all that up and it's a free battery replacement in 10 years which I don't even think I'll need.
Ok, there is some sarcasm in that. You can get a Leaf for cheap.
If anything, there's no reason why those rich, first class bubbles should be able to buy $40,000 luxury ICE vehicles when the world is slowly burning, but try telling them that, and now those people who just lectured you about "first class bubbles" will brand you a Marxist.
Some people just want the status quo, whatever the ultimate price is. They can't be reasoned with.
That includes ensuring that Cuba does not use electric cars
And of course people are talking about "economy" relative to the USA, it's where half the people on this site live. Nobody is saying car prices are the same everywhere in the world, and that's not going to be the same with widespread EVs either.
India ranks 4th worldwide for new car sales and will likely take 3rd place in a year or two.
EV have very low maintenance compared to gas cars. As time goes on, new EVs will get better real fast. The old EVs will still be solid workhorses despite this.
The problem with India is twofold: manufacturing and import regulations. But someone somewhere will figure this out: they’re trying to fix that same issue with iPhones. Some EV company (maybe Tesla) can piggyback off of the same solution.
That’s when all the “old EVs” with perfectly useful motors, readable easy to upgrade batteries and solar energy will make sense.
Now I’ll admit: this super hand wavy. But ever since I bought my EV, I have just found my transportation costs trending to zero. It’s ridiculously cheap!
Other than standardising the batteries, unlocking the chips so they can be maintained and maybe switching to a motor that doesn't require niobium, what's to improve?
Electric motors are a mature technology, and putting a box or a 3:1 teardrop on wheels is quite simple.
But no reason not to get an EV. I’m on week 4 and would never dream of going back to an ICE.
Overall I don't see mass EV adoption as a good news for crude oil. If I can get a little conspiratorial IMO this is the reason why there is such a strong push from hydrogen lobby as it provide them for an outlet for existing fossil infra and hope that they can keep it alive with massive lobbying and subsidies.
ref 1: https://imfdirect.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/oil-4.jpg
https://res.cloudinary.com/nimblefins/image/upload/c_limit,d...
Tesla battery only degraded 20% in 9.5 years.
If you have a nickel-cobalt Tesla battery right now, there is going to be at a minimum LFP (no nickel/cobalt) replacements available. Or Li-S, or Solid State, or some sodium ion or maybe sodium sulfur.
If your car lasts ten years, that is going to a completely different ballgame given what is coming down the pipe from technology and scaling.
Even if it drops to 150 mile range, guess what? That is still a car with a ton of use cases: city car, cab, delivery car, etc. Unlike an ICE where the engine or transmission breaks, a battery losing range is still a battery that works.
Battery costs are still falling and the typical cost of a battery in a mid range EV is about 6000 USD. For the battery to lose 30% of capacity, it takes 10 years. So your amortized cost (crude) for 10 years is about 400 USD per year.
I am sure the gas costs will be much more than that, compared to EV running costs.
Still a great deal.
In reality, someone buys an EV new, drives until the battery is worn out, and trades it in. Now the price of used cars just went up $6k across the board because you need to put a new battery in any affordable used car out there.
Any economy car you can buy will easily survive for a very long time even if you completely neglect all maintenance. It is nowhere near true that an engine will fail from missing a few oil changes.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Going from 300km range to 270 isn't going to change my life, anything over 200km is perfectly fine for my daily use.
Even after the battery is at 50% capacity in 15+ years from now, I'll need to consider if it's worth it to replace the battery or just take it out and plug it into my house and sell the other bits of the car to someone.
My newest ICE car is 18 years old and my oldest is 34 years old. They work great.
I want to travel in comfort and safety and not have to worry one second about my car breaking down. I also don't want to spend a single second servicing my car myself. I want it to take me from A to B every single time without fail.
I had enough "fun" with cars old enough to drive when I was young and less well-off. Can't beat the excitement of a car randomly breaking down on a remote road in -20C weather. Oh and it just as randomly started working after my uncle drove for 30 minutes to rescue us. Never again.
https://www.motor1.com/news/613494/tata-tiago-electric-vehic...
(Article says it goes on sale October 10)
https://electrek.co/2021/02/25/this-weird-little-4000-electr...
Keep in mind I'm not saying EV can't be as cheap, but China isn't the best example.
Lots of countries manufacture their own cars, unlike some random plastic toys.
Also, You don't get this price when China are exporting them if that's what you're trying to say.
The price is mainly subsidized on the (Chinese) customer's side (there are big incentives to buy EV over gas car, and it's not limited to the price of the vehicle itself: in some places it costs more money to get a plate for gas car than the car itself), not the manufacturing side (obviously it's both, but why it got as low as $4000 is mainly because of the former).
Most EV's are charged from a grid that's still burning oil/gas/coal to power them. We haven't achieved much of anything in those areas.
The batteries simply DO NOT EXIST to enable a grid that is based off of renewables - or even half off renewables.
A tank of gas does not lose energy in transmission nor in storage, and it is far far more weight:performance efficient.
It is true there is a need to improve infrastructure, but that can be a positive thing to generate employment and invest for the future.
It was a lot easier to put one cell tower every X kilometers than it was to run cabling around the country.
Skipping landlines and going right to mobile is an example of that.
Lots of things could work. The logistics of hydrogen make it laughable as a mass replacement for gasoline as an energy fuel for mass market.
There's also significant subsidies for hydrogen storage technologies, hydrogen vehicles, and hydrogen fueling stations.
Personally I'd take this at face value: the point is that hydrogen has the potential to decarbonize a lot of industrial & transportation uses of fossil fuels, and so it's attempting to build up the necessary technology and infrastructure to make this practical. There are always side effects when you throw massive amounts of money at a problem, so I'd expect some boondoggles, but at least the intent of the law isn't a boondoggle.
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/the-ira-will-accelerate-ele...
First, the well known short comings of BEV as often pointed out on HN. The most common is range anxiety (dead electric car) and how long it takes to recharge (30 minutes at a quick charging). With a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, it has a higher energy density so its range is farther and it takes about 10 minutes to fuel up a Toyota Mirai with hydrogen. This is the reason why commercial trucks and long distance trains are looking at hydrogen fuel cells. [1] [2] [3]
The second and probably more important reason why Toyota is betting on hydrogen is that the Japanese government mandated it. [4] By 2050, Japan wants to transition off fossil fuels using a combination of electrification and hydrogen/methanation/synthetic fuels/biomass. See slide 2(2) Energy Outlook of Carbon Neutrality in 2050 from [4]. This make sense to Japan. Japan is not only looking passenger vehicles. Japan is thinking about how to wean off commercial trucks, heavy industry, and shipping off fossil fuels. It thinks that hydrogen fuel cells may be the answer.
The biggest drawback with hydrogen is that transporting long distances requires cooling hydrogen to –253 °C [5]. However, in 2006, the US Department of Energy had already talked about using ammonia as the "hydrogen carrier" [6]. Ammonia can be transported at –33 °C [5]. The Department of Energy envisions transporting liquefied ammonia via pipelines, trucks, and tankers. Then "cracking" it back to hydrogen at a substation.
>Ammonia may be considered as a potential hydrogen carrier for hydrogen delivery and for off-board storage, such as at refueling stations and for stationary power applications. Ammonia, delivered to refueling stations and stored onsite, would need to be reformed prior to vehicle filling and levels of trace ammonia in the hydrogen stream would need to be reduced to meet fuel purity requirements (e.g., < 0.1 ppm NH3) for PEM fuel cells. The use of ammonia as a hydrogen carrier is being investigated further by DOE’s Hydrogen Delivery Program and the FreedomCAR & Fuel Partnership’s Hydrogen Delivery Technical Team.
[1] https://spectra.mhi.com/planes-trains-and-ships-hydrogens-ro... [2] https://www.cummins.com/news/2022/04/28/cummins-fuel-cells-p... [3] https://www.cummins.com/news/releases/2022/08/25/cummins-fue... [4] https://www.meti.go.jp/english/press/2020/pdf/1225_001a.pdf [5] https://cen.acs.org/business/petrochemicals/ammonia-fuel-fut... [6] https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/01/f19/fcto_nh3...
Also, hydrogen is the better choice for Japan because their power grid is even worse than the one in the US.
Ammonia to Green Hydrogen Project https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Hydrogen beats batteries in terms of energy density, so maybe it has a future in aviation. I think ground transport will eventually all transition to battery electric (and hopefully we'll get electrified roads at some point so battery size and range isn't really an issue anymore) unless energy somehow becomes so cheap that we just don't care how inefficiently it's being used. I don't expect that to happen any time soon though.
From what I've read that seems to already be playing out in small planes that fully battery electric is winning over hydrogen or hybrid hydrogen/battery. It will probably be another decade or so before we see how it plays out on the larger planes.
The only place I've heard hydrogen might win out is large sea transport (large cargo ships and cruise liners), and even then there are interesting recent developments in wind power for ship's cruising speeds and battery charging that are going to be competing with hydrogen
It's called the Nissan Leaf and it's been available for years!
I hope a lot of these people (assuming they're not willing to go car-free, which would be ideal) will switch to low-speed electric vehicles. They're much cheaper than standard cars, take up less space, and are far less dangerous to other road users. This one from Polaris is $15k, and there are off brands for much less. https://gem.polaris.com/en-us/e4/
The largest EV market right now is China, and in India and other similar markets battery-swapping auto-rickshaws are increasingly common.
EVs in developing markets won't look like EVs in North America and Europe, but that doesn't mean that they won't be massive EV markets.
The market for cheap electric cars and scooters/bikes will explode as consumers worldwide see the price of gas get higher and higher. Many of these cheap EVs won't be sold (or even legal to sell) in North America, but someone somewhere will meet that demand.
Opening up a new field costs mucho $$ and it takes a while to pay it back before it'll start making a profit. And it seems that their analysis shows that 25+ years in the future they're not making as much as they are today so there's no point in spending money up front.
It's easier just to sell their existing inventory at insane prices.
Costs Rs. 9 lakhs, about 11,000 USD. They give a 7 year battery warranty.
For coty commutes, which is most of car usage in India, this is a perfect spot.
And Tata, has proven EV tech, via its Nexon EV range (400 km range, 22000 USD for the highest end version).
Tata cars have solid build quality, great resale value and are blindly trusted by many Indians.
The source[1] I found immediately showed a range from 8.5 to 11.8 lakh. If you're going to criticize someone for not providing facts and sources, you should do the same yourself.
[1] lot of ads warning https://auto.hindustantimes.com/auto/electric-vehicles/tata-...
Auto websites are a much better source of prices.
See: https://www.cardekho.com/tata/nexon-ev-prime
However, there are cheaper EVs available from the Tata stable, such as Tigor EV for under 12 lakh, so the point stands.
Tata Tiago is priced much lesser. I would be vary of range as advertised (unlike many other countries). My car gives me practical range of 220 kms and the advertised range is 312 kms. I drive at 115 to 125 WH per km, my wife drives at 135 to 150 WH per km.
All the Korean-Japanese makers otoh are selling sub-standard "tin-cans". Anyone who knows Hindi can check out what Indians broadly think of Tata (as opposed to say, Suzuki) on Youtube.
Tata Tiago (going to be released in 2023, announced yesterday) costs Rs. 9 lakhs. (11000 USD) - https://tiagoev.tatamotors.com
Tata Nexon EV (released a few years back) costs Rs. 16-19 lakhs. (23000 USD) - https://nexonev.tatamotors.com/
A medium model between the two also exists, Tata Tigor, costs about Rs. 14 Lakhs (17000 USD) - https://tigorev.tatamotors.com/
What I understand is that in India
- Buy Maruti for efficiency and low cost of spares and service
- Buy Tata or Mahindra for build quality and sturdiness
- Buy Honda / Hyundai for good engines but high cost of spares and service.India's car industry is a bit of a sad story. The market is flooded with cheaper cars that would never think of showing up to any safety tests. The Volkswagens, Toyotas, and Fords that do come to the market are "made for India" models which means they are severely handicapped in the safety department in order to cut the costs to compete. VW at least a few years ago when I knew would sell you the same car platform, but good luck trying to get service for it anywhere in India without paying near German costs.
I have been living outside India for a long time, so my impressions may be outdated.
However, the claim merely stated: "EVs are definitely going to remain a first-world item for my lifetime at least". It's pretty safe to say, looking at what we already have and how quickly it scaled in the last years, that this is complete nonsense and will be increasingly so.
Also, most traffic in India and other 3rd-world countries drives at much lower speeds than in the US etc.
In India there are some relatively cheap EVs on sale, and they're all picking up stream.
By cheap, this is what I mean: the price of Tata Nexon EV is slightly over the price of Hyundai Accent (called "Verna" over here) and maybe equivalent to the price of a Kia Seltos. The Nexon EV is now a fairly common sight in Indian cities.
Then there's the slightly more expensive MG ZS EV, which at this point I'm seeing on the roads fairly frequently.
Haven't seen too many Hyundai Kona on the road. Tesla is unfortunately not in India yet. There are some super-expensive EV models from Mercedes and the likes, but those are very expensive.
(Disclaimer: I'm NOT affiliated in any way with any of the brands I mentioned).
You don't need hectares of panels to charge an electric rickshaw or a scooter.
Maybe The Tiago EV will ship for 8.5 lakhs, but I'll believe it once I actually see meaningful shipments at that price. Cool if they do though, don't get me wrong. But plenty of promises in the car industry get left at just promises.
Tata has awesome reputation. Also, they have a 23000 USD Car, 17000 USD car and now they are taking bookings for this.
Also, the said car already has a gas version. This EV version is modified version of that, the exact thing they did with the other 2 EV cars (Both have gas versions)
Check out their website. Its not a concept car. It has actual production facilities and will be modified for EV versions.
I guess it would have been better to show the Model 3's $35k price point as example. Or the massive hikes the Mach E has had. Keeping car prices low has been challenging, especially EVs.
Good on them if they can keep those prices low for a while though!
I get that, and I get the car mentioned will probably never even get close to $30k+USD equivalent.
> As for Tesla, why on Earth would they bother selling a $35k car when they're having trouble keeping the $45k one in stock?
As for Tata, what if they similarly can't keep the 8.5 lakhs version in stock? Why would you bother selling it for 8.5 if your entire output of those cars could sell for 9.5 or 12 lakhs? What's the secret sauce that means Tata can manufacture infinite cars while everyone else is seemingly so supply limited? How are you so sure Tata won't experience the same kinds of pressures Ford and Tesla and everyone else seems to be experiencing IRT making EVs?
There are absolutely NO good cars with CVT or DCT transmission under 10 lakh. There used to be one model, Maruti Baleno, but that’s now switched to AMT instead.
If I can get CVT-like performance (or really, much better) for under 10L, I’ll take it. The EV is just the cherry on top.
The only issue is people being against it politically/socially.
The chargers can either do it by themselves (adjust load to match hookup to grid) or the power company can manage it. Usually it's a lot easier just to manage it locally.
You're thinking of the fridge-sized units with the wrist thick black CCS cable. Yes, those need very specific grid hookups.
I'm thinking of, you know, a household plug. The kind an American would plug in their dryer to. You don't need a separate substation to run a dryer, right? Even if an apartment building has 20 of them.
One of those can charge 100-150km of range to a car overnight easily, which is more than the average person drives every day. YMMV.
Oh yes, you do. If too many people run too many electrical appliances, the grid needs to be upgraded.
It is not 100% political. In a single family home you can (usually) put enough solar panels on the roof to charge an EV. An apartment has only one roof for dozens (or even hundreds) of apartments, so that's not going to work.
EV doesn't mean "cars". The V is for vehicles. We've had electric scooters on the roads for many years. In some cities, especially in the north they are nearly the majority of vehicles on the road.
But even if you limit yourself to cars, a friend just bought a Volvo S90 Recharge electric car to drive in Ho Chi Minh City.
And the first electric bus route launched earlier this year.
Toyota will never be very popular in Vietnam. If anything the Kia Smile is probably the most popular car and will be for a long time.
Cars themselves went from being a rich person's curiosity to mostly-affordable to ubiquitous in the space of 50 years.
Airline travel went from a luxury for the rich to broadly affordable in about ~30 years.
For more recent examples see smartphones - in less than 10 years it's gone from exclusively high-end device to near-universal adoption across the world.
It's often hard to figure out what technologies will stick and what will never resolve fundamental flaws - but once it sticks in the high-end market there is a good bet it will rapidly drive its way down the price scale, at a far faster speed than you might expect.
A petrol car engine is inefficient due to constraints (small + no cooling source other than air).
An electric engine + battery is extremely efficient (the "downside" is you can't use the wasted energy to heat up the car in winter like an ICE).
An electric engine + hydrogen fuel tank brings back inefficiency, and you can't even reuse that wasted energy because most of this waste is electrolysis.
I can see a future where you can opt for a hydrogen fuel cell EV rather than a battery powered one. Efficiently using the hydrogen will be a non-issue if we are able to trivially produce a vast abundance of it.
It’s hard to say that an EV is just as good (for the consumer) as an ICE engine if I am taking a road trip and one of many fill-ups makes me wait for hours. There are these uncommon cars that opponents usually cite and are sometimes unfairly dismissed. I say this because we can and will make EV technology better and cheaper and I’m willing to bet money that hydrogen fuel cell in lieu of batteries will become a thing.
It is not even 3 decades to 2050, which is the USA's target date for net zero carbon, so with conservative estimates primary energy from wind should increase by at least 10% per decade, so 4 times faster than last decade.
Where is the vast abundance of renewable energy that you are talking about? Now is not the time for deploying another massively wasteful technology just because some people want to go on road trips without taking a 30 min break (a recent EV fast charge does not take hours) every few hours.
Total renewables = 20.1%, that includes hydro which may not be as renewable as we thought.
Just had this discussion but relative to why not re-invest in nuclear so we looked up the amount of nuclear energy (~20%).
Not sure if we are looking at different sources, they are counted differently, etc.
Source for this is; https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
If you recall from my original post, I said nothing about that hypothetical, abundant hydrogen being born from any particular source, but I did have solar in mind specifically. I personally think solar cells and panel arrays will get more efficient at producing power that we will eventually have a global excess. If we have grids producing renewable electricity when conditions allow, they can redirect some of the excess energy and use electrolysis to produce hydrogen creating energy reserves for when the power source is not available to them.
Hydrogen is still not super efficient because we have not even scratched the surface of optimizing it’s consumption. If we had concerted efforts towards that goal, we can get it to work for us in ways we never thought possible. I don’t think lugging around large batteries is the future, rather our fuel storage needs will be met by hydrogen tanks.
This is a optimistic scenario. Current trend is mostly linear. See:
Wind power generation, world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/wind-generation?tab=chart...
Solar power generation, world: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-energy-consumption?...
You can choose linear/log, it doesn't look exponential to me.
Add to this the fact that primary energy generation is increasing all over the world, so the share of renewables is increasing even less.
The target is 2050. There is no R&D that will get rid of electrolysis and Carnot cycles by then. Maybe by the end of the century if you want. But for the next 30 years, batteries will be in the lead.
Hydrogen might fill a gap to replace large vehicles like buses or trucks but not passenger vehicles.
We have yet to design many vehicles around a hydrogen fuel cell and we have yet to really realize it’s full potential as a power source, dismissing it on these grounds is simply short-signed thinking.
We can extract this resource from a very abundant resource, water, which is huge. With only energy (from the grid or a micro-grid) and water as inputs, you can produce a substance that is able to store energy for later use who’s only byproduct is water.
We are nowhere near being able to satisfy 100% of our energy demand with solar or even a renewables mix, except for a unicorn scenario in which we have high winds and a sunny sky at the same time. On top of that, it is extremely wasteful to use that energy to produce hydrogen and then pipe it around, compared to storing it in batteries - either portable ones like in cars or bigger house or grid-sized ones.
If we have excess solar energy, it would be great to make recharging your car free at that time, although I know that's a pipe dream due to the profit motive.
The EV trickle-charges and uses direct grid current while driving in between cities, and then a 200km range at the endpoint of the journey is more than ample.
Ignore all the "revolutionary" new batteries you hear about almost every week. None of them are heading for production for the same reasons: their capacity or durability are much lower than current Li-Ion batteries.
lol, do you really live in Vietnam?
How many electric scooters do you see on the street in compare to the gasoline counterparts? Honda alone deliver about 2.7 million bikes per year in Vietnam. All of the Honda bikes are ICE. The number of new electric scooters is not even six figures.
> Toyota will never be very popular in Vietnam.
Recently Toyota is not as popular as some years ago. But they still ship the most passenger cars among other manufacturers last year.
Vietnam is still a relatively poor country (~$600USD/month average wage). It's going to take a long time before the current vehicles on the road are replaced with new ones.
It's still pretty common to see people riding around motorbikes from the 80's and 90's.
Honda, Yahama, Suzuki, Piaggio, and SYM combined sold 2,492,372 units in 2021. And that wasn't a massive crash due to covid, sales were "only" down 8.1% compared to 2020. Honda is about 75% of the market. So around 1.8-1.9 million bikes.
https://vietnam.vn/cong-nghe/xe-dien-dang-ham-doa-de-che-xe-...
> The number of new electric scooters is not even six figures.
Sure, I didn't say it was a big thing nationwide, I said some cities, so we're not really disagreeing. They make up 10% of sales now, not 50%, and even if they did it would takes year to replace all the aging bikes on the road.
I said there are some cities in the north where they are very popular; I'm not talking about Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi. I don't pretend to know why some cities seem to have tons, whether it is local policy (I think this is what happened in central Hue) or because cheap Chinese ones have been available for a while (I think this explains some of the border towns) or what. Lạng Sơn is one place where I remember them being very popular.
> But they still ship the most passenger cars among other manufacturers last year.
Toyota sold 69,002 cars in 2021. Hyundai sold 70,518. THACO also technically sells more than Toyota but they sell under multiple brands so it's not really the same thing.
But you're right that I overstated things with Toyota; I was pushing back against the ridiculous claim that they will somehow have a monopoly and went too far.
Toyota sales from VAMA http://vama.org.vn/en/sales-report.html
Hyundai isn't part of VAMA so you need to see their sales from TC Motor https://hyundai.thanhcong.vn/htv/tin-cong-ty/tc-group-thong-...
The heck does this mean? Suddenly, vietnam is going to follow the trend and buy electric cars? This car costs something like $60k in Vietnam. The country gdp per capita is $2700. Most people who can buy cars will probably buy an old gas car.
Everything was either a tiny scooter, or a massive truck well oversized for the narrow and crowded roads.
In countries where wealth divides are big, people go all out on large and expensive items. I could see 60k electric cars taking off among the top 2%, which still amounts to millions of people.
I don't see this happening in EVs, at least not current generations. On super-proprietary cars like Tesla probably never.
And then, electric cars seem to be pretty easily repairable. Just look at all the home-built electric conversions. Or the guy who builds new Teslas out of totalled ones.
I think it is even the other way around. There was a startup in Germany which designed a small electric truck with Africa in mind. Basic, cheap, not only repairable but designed to be assembled by the customers. This is way cheaper to do with electric technology then with combustion engines.
Sure it might take up to a full day to get 50-100 miles in the battery, but with smaller vehicles (three wheelers, motor bikes etc) it will definitely work out. Certainly considering many development countries are mostly sunny places like south east Asia, Africa, and south America.
If you think about the limited battery supply chain, with the minerals, components, modules etc, it doesn't make so much sense to put them to huge battery SUV:s that mostly just sit on the driveway or office parking lot.
This too will eventually happen, but it's better for the economy and the climate to put them where they are actually displacing the most fossil fuels.
What do you mean by break? Everything at some point breaks. If you do your research to buy a quality and cared for vehicle in the first place, keep it maintained, 300k miles is of minimal cost and effort.
I suspect we'll see an overlap in wealthier households of a petrol or plug in hybrid for longer journeys, and a second hand EV for the daily commute, idling in traffic wastes significant petrol.
And that's fine. Remember, EV cars don't just compete with ICE vehicles. They compete with walkable cities, bicycles, scooters(ICE or EV), busses and other mass transit. They will face that competition even in the first-world.
Green solutions are part of the continuing decentralization through technology and will be just as popular in developing countries as in first world countries. One practical example of this is that green tech can be financed in bite-sized chunks, compared to the large commitments needed for power plants.
How much longer are you planning to live?
EVs WILL be the VAST majority of autos sold globally in 30 years.
Depending on the curve, ICE vehicles could still make up the majority of vehicles on the road - but the writing for them will have been on the wall for a long time - probably within 10 years.
They won't. You underestimate the amount of investment needed to upgrade grids, add capacity to account for EVs, and the cost of upgrade to new cars.
Edit: and the cost of scaling up battery production
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Cheapest-Chinese-Elec... [2] https://electrek.co/2022/04/02/awesomely-weird-alibaba-elect...
EDIT: 100Ah 12V battery? So an electric golf cart, supposedly rated to go up to 50mph, with a "bed" and four seats and a lot of extra weight and drag. You're barely going to go 10 miles at 30mph in this even without four people and cargo in the bed of this "truck".
Does a "perfect world" imply me missing birthdays? Does it imply me missing lunch with close friends? Does it imply me not taking a job outside the local bus line? Does it imply me not visiting a dying relative? If I'm limited to either entirely public transit or a vehicle which can barely do 10 miles at 30mph then yes, I'll miss many of these things.
Streetcars built the suburbs, then cars of the 40s and 50s expanded that. Model T and A proved the performance of cars, but they were still largely toys for the wealthy or workhorses. Not necessarily white collar workers commuting to the office.
Plus, suburbs didn't come into full force until after WWII in the US. Show me the massive amount of suburbs which were founded in the 1920s or earlier which were only accessible by car.
What people need most of the time is basically irrelevent though. If you need a car to drive 20 miles a day for 364 days of the year, and 300 miles 1 day a year, then you need a range of 300 miles. It's the outliers that determine the requirements, not the typical use cases.
I did this calculation when I switched from ICE to a cheap EV. With just the money I save a gas+maintenance yearly our family can _fly_ to our yearly vacation spot (~1200km away) and rent the biggest fanciest Mercedes for the week. And we'll still have money left over.
Or we could load our EV on a night train, wake up at the destination and drive around all week.
Or we could rent an ICE car for the week.
There was zero point in spending ~20k€ more for the car just to match that once a year event.
No, I don't. I'll rent a u-haul every now and then, and own the 95th+ percentile transportation machine.
And if you need to do a second trip that year? Or a third? Or 10 extra trips? The marginal utility of a cheaper EV starts looking really expensive. This is how people think. Owning a car that can cope with the outliers is a hedge against a period where you have to make lots of unexpected long trips.
People enjoy the freedom of ICE cars and their ability to go on essentially unplanned long journeys. Giving that up to use a cheaper EV will be a very hard sell.
Maybe I'm unusual but I rarely have any plans further than a couple of months ahead. Whether I'll be going on any long trips in the next 12 months isn't something I have any idea about yet. It depends on loads of factors (money, weather, work, whether I can pick up a bargain, etc.)
A month or two in advance is just fine, most people can do as much. They do know how many days of vacation they get though, and it's unlikely to change, so any plan you have you keep.
I could go camping with it, I could use it to haul stuff. It can fit seven adults and two dogs at the same time.
But for daily driving it'd be a huge pain. I don't need a car that big 90% of the time, a smaller, nimbler car is much more practical.
With EVs people in remote locations can have local infrastructure to generate what they need locally.
But seriously, if you're doing a bunch of long desert crossing trips it's a good idea to keep using an ICE.
Toyota is living in the past, and resting on their laurels just like GM did decades past. I used to be a Toyota loyalist. Not anymore when it’s clear where the future lies
Lithium-ion cars, sure. The EV category, however, is far larger. Economies of scale go both ways. If "everyone other than Toyota goes completely electrics," maintaining consumer gasoline-distribution infrastructure becomes solely Toyota's problem.
I've noticed, especially recently, that a lot of tech people are hilariously out of touch with anything outside of first-world metropolitian environments.
For example, anytime I see someone espousing the virtues of EVs and lambasting pickup trucks and SUVs, or how <popular> infrastructure should be just erected, nearly every time they are only concerned/knowledgable with city life and don't have a single clue what life in rural/undeveloped regions are like. Sometimes I wonder if they even understand how the world functions in general.
Incidentally, yes, some people do need to drive an hour or two down the freeway to commute. Not everyone has the luxury of, nor necessarily likes, city life with decent public transport and tight population density.
A rural/suburban lifestyle where you commute hours a day is inherently energy-intensive, and the rising price of oil is going to put a serious cramp in the lifestyles of wannabe ranchers. Not to mention that roads and oil is pretty seriously subsidized by governments as they are essential for commerce. What happens when oil gets too expensive even after subsidies? Let's see. So far the SPR of the US has had the biggest drawdown in its history just in 2022 in an attempt to rein in the price of oil. I daresay that ends with the Midterms.
You are probably aware that ICE vehicles can run on LPG or hydrogen and even diesel cars can run on synthetic dimethyl ether (DME). A PHEV with a 10 kWh battery or an EV with a small backup combustion generator make total sense as one can charge at home with a wall charger. Use the car regularily for urban trips of less than 50 km and run on some sort of fuel when one needs extended range for extraurban trips. Renault did exactly this with the new Captur PHEV. In markets where suffcient H2 infrastructure becomes available, automakers could sell a variant with a H2 tuned engine and fuel tank, in other markets they could continue to sell the gas version or gas/LPG. Of course, if one wants people to use LPG rather then gas, the gas tank can be made smaller as it's only required at power startup. Others automakers targeting first world countries with sufficient H2 infrastructure will use fuel cells combined with a smaller battery to accomplish the same thing and fully ditch the ICE.
I too think Toyoda-san has the right market approach. They also have a headstart in H2 tech.
The car utilizes the turbocharged inline-3-cylinder engine from the GR Yaris, but with a few alterations to accommodate the hydrogen fuel.
Because the hydrogen is delivered in pressurized gas form, the same kind used in its Mirai FCEVs, Toyota teamed with Denso to develop special fuel injectors that could safely and efficiently introduce the hydrogen—which has a higher ignition temperature than gasoline and eight times the combustion speed—into the combustion chambers.
“Controlling abnormal combustion is the key to hydrogen engines,” said Naoyuki Sakamoto, the Chief Engineer of the project. “The abnormal combustion has the potential to add stress to the engine hardware. Therefore, we developed high-heat parts as well as adjusted the ignition timing and fuel ratio for the Corolla Sport H2 Concept.”
1. https://pressroom.toyota.com/the-familiarity-of-sound-sensat...
I disagree. iPhone remained a first world item. Smartphones are being adopted even in the poorest countries.
I'd argue that it's in the third world where the advantages of the EV are particularly important. Lower operating costs, simpler maintenance, local power sources.
Most of the developing world is where there is a lot of solar radiation. Solar PV has already the lowest generation costs. It's already the power source that requires the least capital investments, and works the best in the regions with underdeveloped infrastructure (see stories about Afghan farmers).
Yes, 50K vehicles are too expensive for countries with a GDP of < 10K per capita. They are even too expensive for most of the EU. But eventually the cost parity will be reached, and at some point it will be more economical to produce budget and low margin EVs than to support a legacy supply chain of ICE vehicles.
Even the bleakest estimates predict EV cost parity in 10 years. 20 years for nearly complete fleet replacement. So in 30 years or so an ICE vehicle will be like a steam engine. TCO parity will happen sooner, and most vehicles are replaced after 10 years, so the majority of the cars will be EVs in 15 years or so (in high GDP countries). And if the majority of the cars produced are EVs, and they are less expensive, the developing world will switch too.
Same for India, Tata will probably not stop making combustion engines for a while but they will have to produce cheap EV for their market and abroad.
Toyota may resist for a while but they will lose market share in luxury and middle-range cars as combustion engines get banned or at least restricted in wealthy countries and will remain too expensive for emerging markets.
So Toyota may end up producing the cheaper models of ICE cars only.
Society subsidizes car ownership to an extreme degree, from the environmental impact, parking space to road infrastructure etc.
A lot of people live in cities, and in a lot of cities, there is just not enough space for cars.
(Just as some underdeveloped countries have been able to jump over transitionary steps in internet infrastructure and where they are seeing investments in internet infrastructure it is often faster on average than developed world averages because they jump straight to fiber everywhere skipping over many copper wire intermediaries.)
I'd much rather we let people not drive at all if they want to as a way of reducing the strain, as well as allowing LEVs or small electric cars on the road for the people that don't insist that they need to tow a boat and a caravan up a mountain at 20 over the speed limit 200km away with a pallet of plywood to drop their kids off at school.
We are so used to EV drivetrains being more expensive, we can't think of the possibility of EVs become so cheap, but I predict they will, and with sodium ion batteries at 140wh/kg coming into production next year, along with 200+ wh/kg LFP and LMFP, it's going to h ppen sooner than I would have guessed only a couple years ago.
I will agree with Toyoda that a PHEV has a functional place in the next two decades. They were one of the top PHEV companies so they probably have the platforms already, so may as well use them.
But make no mistake the arrival of usable sodium ion to me is the game changer for the mass production EV: the napkin math says that 140wh/kg cell density if it is efficiently packed (90% is current cell-to-pack expected ratio) will make a 200-300 mile car. That's no cobalt, nickel, or lithium.
And a city car only needs 150 miles of range for the "second/third world" urban centers in some teeny car.
200 wh/kg (cell) LFP/LMFP should be 300-400+ mile cars. That leaves the cobalt-nickel and whatever comes out of initial solid state into exotics, supercars, and long haul trucking.
And if those sulfur batteries papers are legit, that will also be dirt cheap and near-solid state densities.
But yeah, I think in ten years a cheapo EV will be 1/2 the cost of what a cheapo ICE will be. We'll know when the Chinese invade the US market. Luxury cars and big cars will still be dominated by equivalent doodads costs, but I think possibly in ten years the industry will hit 50% of ICE drivetrain cost.
Now? Why invest in a brand new comprehensive PHEV platform? All existing ICE platforms are "last hurrahs". Like, holy shit ALL ICE PLATFORMS are dinosaurs. They won't invest in new ones, no way, they need ALLLLL that for EV switchover to stand a small chance of surviving the big paradigm shift. No new engines, no new transmissions, no new gee-whiz ICE tech. The last gasp was Mazda's compression ignited gasoline engine, that's probably it.
If the regulatory agencies had said in 2000, "in 10 years all consumer cars will be hybrids, ideally with PHEV hybrids, and ideally in increasing all-electric range capability, and we will deliver a good subsidy and a hefty penalty" and moved the entire industry to PHEV, we'd have had a good decade of ramp-up to hybrid platforms, getting everyone used to home charging, had great gas mileage, had 50-80% of consumer daily trips fully electric, and probably had all electric drivetrain components further down the maturity path.
But... we don't. PHEVs probably could still make an impact in the next ten years, but there is no way our nonfunctional congress could get that done. Instead, it is full bore on full EVs and people carrying around 5x-10x more batteries than they need for driving.
My idea for that is to offer a city car that has about 100 miles of range, and then an optimized aerodynamics "trailer" that is either a battery or a gas generator that extends the range of the car. You could rent them, swap them at exchange kiosks (fully charged/fueled) at highway truck stops, and bam no recharge issues on the car's main battery. That would be cheap EV cars that maximize battery supply. All you need is a trailer hitch and a special charging port on the rear of the car.
That inside-out rotary engine would be perfect for a really long range extender that uses synthfuels or fossil, or for long haul semis. Oh yeah, semis would be perfect for a two-behind booster battery. It could have drive wheels to help stabilize in crosswinds, it could have aero shape to help with the "flying wall" effect of most trailers. The trailers could also do hydrogen, although I still think hydrogen is a trojan horse by the petroleum companies.
Today you’d be lucky to pay that for a Leaf, and if you do it’ll be far more used with far more battery degradation. That’s not a knock against EVs, it’s a product of the car market we have today.
Billions was poured into this and I remember it being a big item in healthcare reform. But im still answering the same questions and filling out the same forms every time I go see a doctor.
Generally more money and mandates from top down don't work
All the labs are also easily accessed online, and I can easily login to my account and download them all to Apple Health app in my phone.
You just think of a college football Saturday where 100k people drive in, tailgate all day and then either stay in a hotel or head back the same day. Often coming from 3-4 hours away.
It’s simply not realistic for all those vehicles to need to do 45 minutes of charging.
When that gets solved, you’ll see rapid adoption.
I'd like to see what kind of electrical infra you need to (even partially) charge 20k cars in 5 minutes.
That's about one Tsar Bomba of energy.
Graphene has seemed to be the key to rapid charging while maintaining temperatures for over a decade. The challenge was always getting enough usable graphene at low cost without mining.
That's about one Tsar Bomba of energy.
This is too high by 4 orders of magnitude. 100 kWh is a larger than average battery capacity for a contemporary BEV [1]. That's 2000 MWh for 20,000 vehicles charging from empty (modulo charging inefficiencies). 1 megaton is 4.18 * 10^15 joules or 1,162,000 MWh [2] while the Tsar Bomba had a yield of at least 50 megatons as tested [3]. So charging 20k electric cars from empty requires about 0.003% as much energy as the Tsar Bomba released.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Battery
Still, if you look at power, that much energy moving in 5 minutes is about 24GW. That's massive. Unless I'm wrong with numbers again :P.
5 minute charging is a nothing burger. If they are tailgating for hours, they can do normal level 2 and get what they need.
5 minute charging is something that sounds like a good idea if you've never had an electric car, and are used to only charging at very specialized locations that you have to seek out and spend dedicated time at, ie gas stations. But after actually having an electric car, the idea becomes superfluous. Current charging speed is going to be just fine for 99-99.5% of those driving long distance to a football game.
Most EV ranges I see are in the 300 mile ballpark (currently) which is going to require a full recharge for the round trip.
On the day to day with an EV, I agree it’s not a big deal. Travel is a very big deal though.
Charleston, SC (240 miles, 580 round trip)
Florence, SC (210 miles, 520 rt)
Columbia, SC (132 miles, 262 rt)
Charlotte, NC (134 miles, 268 rt)
Atlanta, GA (121 miles, 242 rt)
People come from all over and this happens all over the country.
For pretty much every European a 1000km round trip is something you do on a special vacation. And you stay for a few days on the other end :D Definitely not something you do on a weekend to go see a sports team.
There are some UK football fans who do that, but they're on a bus and can sleep both ways (usually they don't, they get shitfaced)
4-5 people in a vehicle loaded with luggage or other gear. People driving to beaches during the summer. People going to Disney. People travelling to ports to go on a cruise.
What we need is not an EV that can drive 400 miles and charge in 5 minutes, but public transportation infrastructure that can ferry you from your home to the massive gathering place and back without you and the other 100,000 attendees needing to drive your own 3 ton vehicles.
Turns out my neighbors next door have relatives the exact opposite direction of where my relatives are and we've got very different hobbies.
100k people drive in. All individually in personal vehicles? Most commuting 4 hours away? No.
Even if the average occupancy gets to 2, you've massively reduced the energy needs.
I really doubt the failures of electric vehicles are because of college football. If that's truly the case I feel really bad about the future of the human race.
It's perfectly enough to have rows of 22kW three phase chargers there, during a 2 hour(?) ballgame you get a good 100km of range - enough to take you back home or at least to the nearest rapid charger if you need one.
Or you could have rows of 100kW+ chargers with smart load balancing. The CCS connector tells the charger how much battery is left in the car so the load balancer can prioritize cars with less charge dynamically.
Solve college football tailgating because that's what most people in the world REALLY care about!
Really no different then solving a drive down the coast to Orlando. When every car on the highway has to stop to recharge to do a long drive a 45 minute recharge will bottleneck the entire highway system.
The rapid recharge is the key use case to address EV adoption. I’ve owned 3 and I’m speaking from experience.
But in your example there are two long periods of time where the cars are stationary, right? They're parked all day while partying and parked all night when they're staying at a hotel. Any pauses in the driving can also come with charging up.
I don't know if that's realistic or not.
1. Electric charging will never be standardized. Gas is gas. Until we pass laws saying your electric car cannot have subscriptions or non compatability for charging you will always be stuck with specific types.
1. Gas stations are contracted to sell gas. That contract can say "no electric". The stores make money from gas customers. The drive range of EV's would have to run circles around gas to compete, and if it does, they won't be customers anyways.
2. The vast majority of people cannot charge an ev rapidly, if at all. Parking infra did not take access to electricity into account. I know at universities you have to pay extra, and it's just a normal 15A outlet.
3. Ev companies, especially Tesla, are rent seeking. The average consumer cannot afford it. Packages and subscriptions to your own vehicle are a cyberpunk dystopia.
We already cannot properly handle power demands. 100% green initiatives lack on demand scaling, especially in disaster conditions. The base cost of natural gas electric generation means it must take up a chunk of overall power gen.
Ehm, it's already standardized, or 90% there, in most of the world. In the US it's basically just Tesla, and they announced they'll also conform. And tbh when they invented their own standard it made sense, it's just no longer necessary.
>2. The vast majority of people cannot charge an ev rapidly, if at all. Parking infra did not take access to electricity into account. I know at universities you have to pay extra, and it's just a normal 15A outlet.
I need rapid charging along highways but not really in a parking - even the slowest available single-phase charger (apart from using a standard wall plug) gets you 41km range in 1 hour in a model 3. That's not quick, but you're likely parked for at least 2 to 3 hours (university, concert, shopping mall, restaurant, movie theater) - if not overnight/a full work day - so that minimum of 82km is already more than what most people drive in a day. We just need cars to have a decent (350km+) range to start with (range anxiety is a thing, efficiency in winter drops significantly, highway driving consumes more, batteries age and lose about 10% over 8 years) so that missing 2 or 3 charges in a row doesn't ruin anybody's day.
>3. Ev companies, especially Tesla, are rent seeking. The average consumer cannot afford it. Packages and subscriptions to your own vehicle are a cyberpunk dystopia.
Tesla is indeed very pricey and their promise of 35K dollars was not really met, even though it existed (with some caveats) for some time. But we're starting to see decent (not crippled with a comically small battery) models from other manufacturers and we'll hit the 20k threshold for an OK car very soon if we haven't already done so, and then 15k, and then 10k (maybe not in the western world but I'm sure China and India will manage - with cars which are actually safe and which make their buyers happy).
Don't judge the entire market by looking at Tesla. They got there first, we owe them this revolution, but they're no longer alone in this space. But don't judge it by looking at Toyota either, they were asleep at the wheel, completely missed the revolution and are now busy coming up with some bullshit to explain it's best for everyone.
They're also pretty good for special use vehicles, a Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is pretty much the best EV-ish vehicle if you need to tow a bigger load for long distances without shelling out 100k€+. And you can still drive on full electric around the town cheaply.
Considering they are unused most of the time, I'd expect very infrequent maintenance, and even some parts switching from X years to lifetime.
Edit: a short Google search [1] shows that for actual cost, plug-in hybrids have the same cost per mile than EVs, which is half the cost of ICE cars. It makes sense to me because batteries are a lot smaller/cheaper, the ICE doesn't get used all that much, and there is regenerative braking.
[1] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129728_plug-in-hybrids...
The Prius engine is a good gateway drug to full EV ownership, you'll learn that the amount you press the accelerator doesn't correlate with the engine RPM at all. The car picks whatever it thinks is efficient to move the car, any extra is stored into the EV system.
>"There will be $20,000 economy EVs with crappy everything but still go A to B."
but you know? https://tiagoev.tatamotors.com/
tata tiago ev is a $10,000 ev that launched a FEW DAYS AGO. Sure it wont have all features of tesla but it is still ncap 5 stars so its not a death box and will be sold hopefully by thousands
Nobody in their right mind would buy an EV there. It may look differently in 10 or 15 years from now, but this is the reality today and this is one of Toyota's markets. They are the maker of the Land Cruiser and the Prius.
There is a reason, why the Prius is so wildly popular all over the world. It is capable of driving long distances anywhere, but it saves money at the same time, while it almost never breaks down. Toyota is not ignorant at all. They realize that now is the time for gradually transitioning to EV, but not for making a sudden dogmatic switch to EV, while ignoring what people actually need. The logical outcome of this though process is the hybrid car. And then the plug-in hybrid. And then the EV - at some point in the future.
2030 is around the year I think they will become an intelligent buy.
Why do electric cars, which you have specified to have to charge in minutes just like petrol cars, need to have double to 50% extra range?
More broadly, having to go 700 miles is a niche issue, I don't drive a lorry/flatbed etc. I drive for more than 3 hours maybe two to three times a year. The vast majority of people are in this situation, in the US, in Asia, in Europe, everywhere. Getting 300-400 miles range and charging in 20 minutes is what is needed. The blockers are initial price, and charging infrastructure.
Tata Motors launches $10,000 electric car in India to further its lead
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tata-m...
Here is a walk around of the car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RCXDsfVniY&ab_channel=Autoc...
People don’t want EVs specifically. People want cheap reasonably clean ways to quickly get from point A to point B.
no Toyota is just not buying the "all in" bet on EV, and they keep researching on other alternatives such as Mirai with fuel cells; the article is quite clear on that.
this imho makes Toyota more reliable than other manufactures who are running at making only SUVs with shitload of batteries just to please the market, greenwashing and not innovating at all.
Unfortunately they didn't listen to their own engineers.
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,288...
His vision for Toyota's eco-friendly autos goes beyond the Prius line. "The next step is to apply hybrid technology to other models, and to reduce its price," he says. After that, he has his sights on dispensing with CO2-belching gasoline engines entirely: "Ultimately, the future is in electric power." It might sound like an eco-platitude. But if someone is going to bring an electric car to your driveway, there's a good chance Hori will be the one to do it.
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/los-angeles-100-percent-renewa...
https://ceo.lacounty.gov/2021/12/07/sustainability/staying-p...
Maybe Californians will be riding horses in the next 10 years ;)
In other words, shift the demand from the 4-9PM slot that is the hot spot.
For what this doesn't cover, this is not rocket science. We will build the capacity. It's just wires and generators.
I work at an engineering firm that is heavily involved in these efforts in SoCal, and this is probably boring to say (without details) but the storage component is fascinating. Not my sector, though, so I won’t/can’t elaborate (I do work in sustainable transportation planning, though).
Wind farms generate the most power at night, so that'll continue to work. If solar becomes dominant, then they'll make it cheaper to use electricity when the sun's still up, and we'll stop delaying charges until after sunset.
It's going to take decades to fully transition to electric vehicles, plenty of time to build all the renewables needed, all the storage needed for time shifting, and all the smarts needed for cars to participate in the smart grid.
That aside, there are a variety of electricity storage mechanisms that have been becoming more and more efficient, like normal batteries, hydrogen electrolysis, and pumped water. With some clever engineering, solar power works at night.
I wish California would keep their nuclear plants open, but the loss of them is not an impediment for electric vehicles.
This is in addition to, if the battery is plugged in at home with solar panels, the home can self-smooth and do a lot of this locally, giving the grid the net in/out it desires from the house based on sum of: battery, appliances, solar as a whole unit.
^ not intended but I'll leave that in there
Imagine you park your car and let either the car or the charger know you aren't moving the car for 2 or 3 days. It can use that knowledge to delay your charging until local demand is lower, or power is cheaper.
The average commute is like 40 miles a day. Go somewhere and recharge once a week while you have a coffee.
I manage a fleet of off-road vehicles at work, and just came back from a camp location we were operating out of a wood clearing with no mains. We pack in our own generators and fuel for these periods where we can't access the grid, which could be used for charging.
You can recharge from mains, or a diesel generator, or a gas generator. Maybe put a big diesel field generator and tank static in a temporary camp location and then work out of that location charging each night.
Have you got much experience running an off-road operation at distance?
I’ve literally personally driven a diesel tanker off-road through the Kenyan bush.
You probably know things that the person you are replying to doesn't and arguing is futile.
Nonetheless, electric isn't so great if you have to pack generators to make it work. It defeats the purpose, right?
My comment up there was from the perspective of a long distance motorcycle traveler. When I look around, I see cars that are already packed: children on parents' knees, one child in the back, and luggage on top. A generator and fuel wouldn't be trivial to add to this.
Above all, it means that fueling up becomes something you can only do where you stop. It's no longer a five minute break, but a constant logistical issue.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, but it's a tough sell. Have you seen The Long Way Up? They attempt a Pan-American trip with electric bikes, and boy what a headache.
> There's no diesel in the bush either. So how do you refuel a diesel vehicle?
How does diesel get to where you need it to refuel except for being hauled around?
With electric you have options. Charge off mains at home base 90% of the time. Then maybe you go to a camp and run off a generator for a couple of days a month.
The generator runs at its peak efficiency RPM at all times, car engines do not. Combine that with the 90%+ efficiency of an electric motor and you're good.
They've all shown that trucks are one of the easier parts of fully transitioning to EV.
You don't need to charge at home. It's just the most convenient.
Not it's not, not unless you have IBM style massive cabinet hard drives. And they are not putting those in every home computer. Regular hard drives will barely give you enough disk space to store plaintext documents.
Sorry, you just sound like people that used to say things like "you'll never need more than 1 GiB of hard drive space." Things will evolve. It'll happen faster than you anticipate.
And no, you never ned 1GB of hard drive for anything that was done with computers at this time. Now we use computers for completly other things. I suppose on cars the usage will not change as far as with computers.
No, we're talking about batteries and charging. If you think battery tech is done evolving, wont shrink, and that "energy" and "power" are interchangeable concepts, then I don't think we can have a fruitful discussion.
> And no, you never ned 1GB of hard drive for anything that was done with computers at this time.
That was my point. Saying something wont happen based on what's happened so far is foolish.
I'm not sure how much of an issue that really is, though. Even if all cars are EVs, it's not like every single grocery store customer is going to fully charge their car every time they buy groceries.
Problem there is that the trend is towards home delivery and working from home.
It does not reach -17C any day of the year in much of the world.
Tesla cell chemistry is different (unless you get one of the new ones that use LFPs from CATL), but it's not an inherent problem with electric cars generally.
The part I'm curious about is how will militaries manage the change?
It's clear fuel isn't going to disappear but will the military or the government end up refining their own petrol for cost reasons or will they just end up shipping around batteries as if they were fuel.
However: EVs don't fix the problems inherent with high rates of individual car ownership in high population density areas, or with low occupancy vehicle, short distance travel.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36302930/tesla-model-s-lo...
All cities built around cars (and that’s almost every American city for instance) will have to change—either by arranging for bicycles and building public transport or through floods, fires, and hurricanes.
It's amazing to me we have put all this work into a fantastic logistics network for gasoline and cough at the thought of chargers in all the same places.
Most people spend a significant time with their car sitting somewhere for at least that amount of time.
Put chargers where people park cars. Don’t awkwardly drive to a random place to charge.
For 75%? Of people that can be at home. For others work. For others the grocery store.
This is where the incentive program breaks down and the 4- or 5-figure electrician quotes start for a lot of houses that were built in a time and place where natural gas powered all of the heavy appliances and panels were sized for 60- or 100-amp service.
There's been arguments about putting them on lamp posts - ok, but again, cables. 1 lamp post for ~10 cars doesnt really work.
Plucking a random average UK street off of Google maps - figure out how you charge cars at 6pm when everyones home from work and this road is full of cars on both sides of the street: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.4257624,-2.9412328,3a,60y,22...
Not seeing anyone coming up with a way to solve that pretty important issue.
That must vary between countries, because I've seen tons of outlets on the outside walls of homes in Finland. They need a weatherproof extension cord, but it comes in handy for a lot of tools. Though most homes have at least a driveway, cars are generally shorter than homes, so they fit close by.
The cost of free parking and where to park should really be reconsidered in cities though, as with your image, those exist here as well and are really bad places to drive in. IIRC in Japan they require people to prove a car has it's own dedicated parking space before they're allowed to get a car
The issue as shown in the streetview image is that those are public footpaths next to the houses. If you tried dangling a cable from your home to your car (if you were lucky enough to get a spot outside your house) you'd very quickly be in a lot of trouble when someone trips over it.
There are just certain sections of the country where you'd either have to turn half of the streetlamps into a chargers (maybe a good idea?)...or make a modular battery swap gas station scheme....or stick with ICE.
It's just a normal plug, maybe with some components related to metering and billing included. Load balancing if you want to be fancy.
My town has on average 1 car per household, but I'd guess like 0.25 off street spots per household. That's a lot of infrastructure on public land.
It's just an electrical outlet. There are dozens of them for every parking spot already, in the house/office/building. Adding an extra electrical outlet isn't hard for a homeowner/lot-owner to do. This isn't going to have to happen overnight. It will happen slowly over two decades.
Regardless though, you're correct that it will take decades, but I think that this is one reason why a CEO wouldn't be all in. If it's going to take 25 years for a large chunk of customers to buy an EV, you still have a lot of cars to sell that are ICE.
A trip to the grocery store takes 30-45 minutes. If even 20% of the existing spots had a charger (even a modest rate charge), you'll get quite a bit of charge. Or if 20% of the parking spots at your workplace had chargers, you could leave it on the charger all day one day a week and charge very slowly (which as a bonus, low-rate chargers should be easier to provision than superchargers).
in the pre-pandemic world they had to implement a queue system for the charging spots, so you couldn't just park your car the whole day in one and had to move it out to let someone else have a turn.
Of course, this would probably (?) be a bit absurd for street parking, that's true.
Source: My dad has his hobby car in a glorified tent during winter, works just fine, the roof is in a 45 degree-ish slant so any snow just falls off.
And I, every winter, see snow clinging to 45° roofs quite often. Slightly wet snow (also the heaviest snow) can even stick to vertical surfaces.
45° would also make an overhang more susceptible to wind forces, acting like a sail.
I'm sure it'd be more costly for commercial work but a simple home charger infrastructure installation runs around $1k, and that's for a Level 2 (240V) charger. Although that doesn't account for the supplemental meter equipment costs.
A Level 1 charger can recharge say a Nissan Leaf from empty overnight. A single day's drive is far more likely to be at or below 20% of the capacity which is closer to 2hrs. For the average user that would be just fine.
A small number of time-limited slots with Level 2 charger could be provided for convenience, but even just allowing individuals to charge at Level 1 rates while their cars are parked would likely suffice in at least half the cases.
There seems to be this misconception that every EV will eventually need a dedicated fast charger and needs to charge to full capacity in 5 mins. But the reality is that, for a large portion of the driving population, a car tends to sit in place for large amounts of time and a modern 150mi+ range EV rarely get depleted in a day. A Level 1 charger would be more than enough for those people. Especially with public fast chargers available for those unusual situations where you need more charge very quickly.
For those who need more than that, an EV is truly not an ideal vehicle for them.
I guess if you're for some reason running your cabin heating the whole time then I suppose you're reducing your range, but that's solved by not doing that perhaps.
I also think that thinking of Level 1 as "chargers" and not "boring wall outlets" is a part of the remaining problem. You shouldn't need to bother with the costs for metering and accounting the delivered power at Level 1. Does Starbucks charge you a wall outlet fee to charge your cell phone or laptop? At Level 1 it can just be a "courtesy".
At Level 1 each car is basically the extra draw of one additional old school incandescent light bulb. Who seriously cares to measure that accurately?
You can do a rough math estimate at Level 1 and just add that overhead to your operating expenses per usual. Many places with existing parking fees the added overhead likely is a rounding error compared to the existing parking price. (Same versus apartment rentals or HOA/COA dues.)
Individual outlet metering is expensive and complicates everything, just install boring outlets like we've done for more than a century.
Exactly! So many people fixate on fast charging that they just don't register the magic inherent in your car and home running on the same "fuel".
And having heard from people that cold climates often have outlets like these in place for engine heaters to prevent engine freezes shows that infra for this can easily exist. Though it's probably more investment for 3-7kW capacity at each outlet compared to powering a block heater.
> Does Starbucks charge you a wall outlet fee to charge your cell phone or laptop? At Level 1 it can just be a "courtesy"
Oh I totally agree, but try getting an apartment complex to buy into thousands of dollars in electrical work only to shell out even more money buying "gas" for all their tenants.
My in-law has trouble getting his complex to fix sidewalks let alone do something like installing charging infra and providing electricity. If the $1k estimate was even close for commercial 120v charging infra, you'd still be talking between 10k and 100k in just electrical work.
But that sounds like something that could be easily turned into a market differentiator, so it's not to say it won't happen.
Perhaps tacking on a flat-rate fee to offset costs would be a strong middle ground as well. That concept is something apartments/HOAs are already quite familiar with, what with things like covered parking, garages, and even additional storage space already available as add-on charges in many places.
> Individual outlet metering is expensive and complicates everything, just install boring outlets like we've done for more than a century.
Somewhere in the eventual development of this tech could be something like a complex level charging system where an apartment could meter through the charger, since most modern IoT type chargers track this anyways. That way the infra is still just as simple as a dumb outlet.
> You can do a rough math estimate at Level 1 and just add that overhead to your operating expenses per usual
This pans out at small scale, though I wonder how that pans out in the real world. The sticker shock of running that calculation at "worst case scenario" seems like an issue. With even 100 EVs at worst case using todays numbers (~60kWh capacity per car, $0.15/kWh, full charge daily) that number is nearly $1k per day. Realistically it'll be much lower since that full charge nightly is highly unlikely, but sticker shock is real.
Methinks the number of stations will organically grow with the predicted amount of EVs an apartment will have parking on site. That’s how it started for me in 2015-2016!
The power grid hasn't melted even though the plugs at the parking spots are on a timer and usually run two hours from 0600 to 0800 so the car is nice and unfrozen when it's time for the daily commute.
Now when we are moving to PHEVs and EVs some people are _very_ worried that an EV using the exact same plug with the exact same load steadily from evening to morning will melt the entire power grid and the local wires and melt the plug. Dunno why.
Street parking is still an issue, but there are solutions for that too. The power could be pulled from street lamps for example.
But yea, the cabling needs to be checked by an actual electrician and they'll determine how many cars can be charged in the ye olde block heater system without melting any wires or tripping fuses.
The 1980's stuff can usually handle 8A continuous loads. They changed the standard some time in the mid 90s, those can handle multiple cars at 10-16A continuous depending on the main fuse.
Anything above that and you'll need to overhaul the whole field and people usually go for Level 2 capable cabling if they need to break ground for cabling anyway.
This doesn't work in cities. None of those places have parking lots.
And don't say "chargers on all the curbs" because we can't afford to further entrench car supremacy and make it harder to reallocate space to bus lanes and pedestrians.
Put the chargers where the cars are parking. With vanishingly few exceptions, they're all parking somewhere.
I'm all for a less car-centric society, but it's gonna be easier to reach that future if we address climate change a bit on the way.
That would really be doubling down on the high cost of free parking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking
Edit: Should have mentioned the climate change is one of the biggest components of the cost of free parking. Without all the government-mandated parking spaces for the past 60 years, there would be far fewer cars today. It's not too late to reverse that.
Where so they park? Put chargers there, then.
But I generally agree: unless you drive a lot and can charge at home (or at work, or both), you aren’t going to get very far ahead with an EV (and lots of L3 charging supposedly strains the battery). But they are also really fun to drive, so it might still make sense for some people to get them even if they aren’t going to be saving money.
Fancier Level 2 ones with Wifi and shit are up to 1k€.
Imagine if every parking spot in an apartment had a slow charger that could charge your car overnight. Simply plug in and activate and it properly charges your apartment.
And now your employer makes it a free perk, or teams up with the electric co. so that you could do the same at work and get charged market rates directly.
Perhaps malls or larger stores provide a similar slow charger without the insane upcharge of Level 2 chargers. Heck, imagine something similar to parking validation. If you make purchases at the store or see a movie or whatever, then you get a code to "validate" your charging so you get the cost (or a portion) waived.
With infrastructure like that, then you only need fast chargers when you travel long distances, such as between states or cities.
People need to get over their mental view of "refueling" being a thing you do when your tank is almost empty and then you fill it to the brim.
It's perfectly workable to charge 50km of range while you're at the grocery store, maybe 100km while you're at work and another 100-150km overnight at home.
I've got a 230V/12A capable plug on my parking spot and I don't bother to plug in every night. A full charge would take around ~18 hours (10% to 100%), but my daily drives rarely take me under 50% and I don't charge to a 100% because the manufacturer recommendation is to keep the car at 80% unless you're going for a longer trip.
The only time I visit a fast charger is when I go see my family, who live a bit beyond my car's comfortable max range. I stop half way for 20 minutes to top up a bit from a 50kW charger (old car, slow charging =) ) and grab some food from the local shop while I'm at it. I don't need to charge to a 100% during the stop, 15-20% of charge is perfectly enough to get me to my destination - where I have a 230V/10A plug to charge overnight.
That's it, I don't need to drive 5-10 minutes to tank up.
And given that my daily driving is well under 50km, I don't even need to plug in every night at home, maybe 2-3 times per week.
Also it costs me 2,25€/100km to drive. With our current prices (~2€/litre) it's the equivalent of a car that does 1.1l/100km. I'm willing to spend the extra 30 minutes to drive back home when I'm saving 50€+.
You do you, but it doesn't tend to make you many friends. Then there's the old diddy of "to Assume is to make an Ass of U & Me".
If you haven't actually sampled a sufficiently diverse set of people's travel use cases, making statements such as yours is at best ill informed and disingenuous.
As for the diverse set of travel, the various DMVs and highway safety groups have done that for us. The average daily drive is under 40mi. When talking about core infrastructure here, assuming a daily drive of 40mi and basing the average charging infrastructure around would go a long way.
If EVs don't fit your life, then don't buy one. Though most people thing they drive much more often than they do, and fixate way to much on this once per week "fillup" charge idea when the daily partial charge is far more viable for the average driver.
EV is kinda limited to out and back trips. Which is a lot of the need (commuting), to be fair. Recharging on the go will always be worse compared to ICE.
With an EV car: 15 minutes to go to the bathroom and buy a coffee, done in parallel with the charge.
Time spent filling a gasoline car in your home city: 5 minutes 3x a month = 3 hours / year.
Time spent filling an EV at home: 5 seconds 3x a week = 3 minutes / year.
Do you practice it like you're at NASCAR or F1? How do you manage bathroom breaks? Bottles or catheters for everyone?
BEVs are fine for many people, but I don't think Toyota is wrong in their assessment. Requirements typically aren't set at the mean, they're set at the extreme. I know people who had to make emergency trips during COVID that wouldn't have been possible in a BEV. Hell, I went on a work trip with some colleagues the other day and we had to use my car, because my coworker's BEV wouldn't have made the distance back.
The reality is that a BEV isn't a one-to-one replacement for an ICEV, and ICEVs are still superior for the "non-average" use case. I'll think about getting a BEV if they're ever able to compete at Le Mans.
The US charging infrastructure is really bad outside of few major thoroughfares.
Secondly, You aren't saving hundreds when using fast charging; in many places you're doing roughly the same cost wise, for a worse experience [2]. Here's a reddit comparison from a year ago versus a hybrid, which came out to be more expensive [3]. It's fair to say that if you're just charging it at home and using it as a commuter, then yeah, you're coming out ahead on fuel costs, but as I mentioned above, you just can't do some things as well as a normal car, and sometimes that really matters.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0cK582iqnY [2] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-charging-costs-equal-fue... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/jrwet6/road_tr...
He's done a 1000km trip on almost a hundred different EVs in Norway. Very few have any major issues.
Double.
Not to mention, we haven’t had to increase the capacity of our electric grid in decades (and it’s still falling down regularly), yet getting everyone in EVs quickly would increase the average need by a fair bit.
I did the calculations some time ago, and it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.
But when I hear about the grid load, I have no pity. Or fear.
Imagine going back to 1800 and describing to an engineer the vast scale of gasoline production, distribution and consumption. Billions of ICEs distributed around the globe. The scale of fuel distribution! The network of trucks. The massive holding tanks. The inshore and offshore refineries. The pipelines and wells. The geopolitics. The strategic reserves, and prodigious tanker fleets. All because we need something everywhere that is only available in a few places.
We can send a rover to Mars for less cost than a prospecting well in the ocean, and there are lots of oil wells in the ocean. Trillions have been spent.
It seems unfathomable to go to such lengths from scratch. To invent and maintain so much, and for what? And we did.
Now imagine all that exists and you just want more. That's not unfathomable. It's just market dynamics. It'll double just fine thanks. It'll more than double.
But I'm going to miss the sweet petrol and diesel engine cars.
Sure. If you let the market operate. But at least in Sweden we don’t. So we’re stuck in this loop of conflicting requirements: “no greenhouse emissions, no nuclear, no wind farms close to my home, and double the capacity - thanks!” It’s not going to happen.
I agree, nothing technological blocks the grids from growing. But there are plenty of political and profit driven blocks which are preventing it.
To continue with my theme of CA power grid bashing - PG&E is still starting forest fires due to poor quality infrastructure (pushing too much power through lines not rated for it, causing sagging). PG&E does constant rolling blackouts over the summer because of their lacking capacity. PG&E imports about 20% of the electricity that CA requires yearly. They do this because it's cheaper than fixing their infrastructure.
And there's no reason they won't just continue in this fashion in the face of their 2035 electric car replacement deadline. They have a government-created monopoly, and have no reason to build out their capacity.
Rinse and repeat for most states and countries.
Fast chargers would require you to leave your shopping cart in the middle of Costco and run back to your car to unplug & move so you don't get idle fees :)
And I'm guessing you mean 20W, not kW? Fast chargers are 300W as a point of reference.
To avoid looking like more of an idiot, I went back and found the official DC Fast Charge levels and wattages (level 3 DC fast charge is up to 350kW, level 2 is up to around 18kW). Which, thankfully, didn't change my conclusions above, I was of a more sound mind when I did those calculations before.
But here they are again.
Level 2, at 18kW, would be around 157,680 kWh/y per charger at full utilization. (18*24*365)
Level 3 would max out at 3,065,000 kWh/y per charger; but it's much more likely to be intermittently used. (350*24*365)
Compare to these commercial building utilization numbers (the units are thousands of kWh/y): https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/cfm...
Depending on the car's internal charger (1 or 3 phase) most charge from "towed to charger" empty to absolutely full in well under 10 hours.
Doing it like that is like trying to calculate how many fuel trucks would a gas station need if all its pumps were being run 24/7/365 at full blast. It'll never ever happen.
> it was about 43,000 GWh/y for CA (15m cars * .24 KWh/m * 12,000 annual miles). For reference CA has a yearly electricity generation capacity of just under 200k GWH/y.
But the numbers I posted that you're directly referring to are still important, as they indicate the need for improved electrical infrastructure for individual buildings who may want to put in chargers. Your grocery stores, apartments, motels, etc.
If just one 18kW charger can double demand on a motel's power, what happens when you add ten? Twenty?
But I said "Costco" on purpose, it's not a place you just drop in real quick and grab one thing. You're gonna be there for a while. Target is another good reference for US people. Maybe even Ikea.
And yes, it's kilowatts. They're not mobile phone chargers =) The Hyundai Ioniq 5 charges at 350kW, 800 volts.
Who's we? In China, generation has doubled in a decade. What a sad time to be alive if even existential failure isn't a strong enough motivator to get a developed country to pay for some infrastructure.
Here's CA, a state well known for its rolling brownouts throughout summer, as an example:
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo...
This doesnt address the point that lots of people dont have access to this. Particularly in late cities.
Since the wattage demands are relatively low, it would not be too difficult to have L2 charging available anywhere that residential parking exists. Unlike fast-charging, you wouldn't need a lot of expensive high-power infrastructure, and if the power utilities were smart they'd do it themselves.
They could put little parking-meter size boxes by the side of the road—tapped off of existing residential power infrastructure—with credit card tap to pay.
I don't think it would take that long to reach a large density of that type of inexpensive, overnight charge systems.
https://www.gm-volt.com/threads/plugging-into-outdoor-parkad...
I'm not sure what the max power output of those types of deployments are, but I've seen block heaters in Canada that pull as much as 1500 watts, so that's not insignificant.
California's building code requires all residential and commercial buildings have EV chargers starting on January 1, 2023.
The national electric vehicle infrastructure program (NEVI) has $7 billion in funding from the infrastructure bill passed last year and just approved the charging station construction plans for all 50 states. Within a few years we'll have "fast charge" stations for EVs every 50 miles along nearly every highway in the nation.
EVs already made up more than 10% of global new car sales this summer. Market demand will mean that apartment buildings and condos will start putting in outlets for EV charging on their own otherwise they'll not be able to attract tenants pretty soon.
I'd say by 2030 buying an EV would be a viable option for most. The people buying them now are usually early adopting Tesla fan-bois who are happy to pay through the nose to be a crash test dummy for self driving.
~700 mile range and ~30C charging rates are ridiculous bars to meet. EVs with ~200 mile range and ~2C charging rates work just fine right now for a lot of people.
The main issue right now with EV adoption is just the cost of batteries, and lack of a convenient way for people in apartments to charge.
There's already been projects to put in chargers on street lights, like this one https://lalights.lacity.org/connected-infrastructure/ev_stat... and this one https://www.electronicspecifier.com/products/renewables/conv...
People just keep thinking that every car needs a 350kW fast charger on their parking spot, when a normal three phase plug would do just fine.
It's better for the battery to charge slowly anyway.
We’ve gone from “ubiquitous” to one spot on every block.
Obviously taken in totality it's a massive undertaking, but you could say the same thing about streetlamps, or roads, or basically any ubiquitous infrastructure.
Many places have started with 1-2 spots per neighborhood, which is prudent and scalable. As demand rises they should be able to keep pace with that demand without significant technical challenges.
You'd be aiming for short runs off of existing power infrastructure and you'd be scaling up over time. You also wouldn't be running these to every single place that a car _could_ park, just trying to get a critical mass of them near where people live.
Most people already have lots of copper cabling in their houses and most cars are parked overnight near to residential housing, so the additional copper used would only be some fraction of what is already in most homes.
Most of that is private property. They could probably treat it like a telephone pole, but it's not as simple as "just go install 400,000 chargers wherever their is street parking."
I was thinking more about street parking and parking lots, though, since that's an area with a the less immediately obvious solution.
I'm sure it differs between principalities, but in many places the city/government controls the area immediately beside the street and if they were onboard it would be feasible to install streetside chargers early everywhere.
Privately owned parking lots couldn't be forced to do so without legislation, but it's inexpensive and adding a few into the mix could add to their revenue streams.
I guess a wildcard would be making the vehicle lighter.
and that's i'm worried that it's going to be part of a hype to symbolically buy them, wasting the materials to create solar panels even further, only for them to stand in a garage or otherwise well-protected from the sun by the buildings around
The Porsche Taycan only gets 2 miles per kWh. The Tesla Model 3 gets 5 miles per kWh. The Aptera gets 10 miles per kWh.
Maybe 20-40 is too optimistic. But even at 10-20 a day that's going to cover a significant amount of usage. It will cut down the fast charging needed from once a week to once a month or so. That's a significant convenience improvement.
Most cars won't gain anywhere near 20-40 miles per day from solar, though, they're simply not efficient enough. Get the consumption down, and the same amount of panels can accomplish a lot more.
And, most folks who live in awkward parking situations are also near the city where their commute needs are very short. Folks out in the country who need to drive farther, generally have their own parking and can do plug-in charging. (Probably also supplied by solar.)
Once EVs are in a clear majority, gas station network will start shutting down, as it is no longer a profitable business. Without easy refueling, old ICE cars will become almost useless for most purposes, and that 80% will start looking more like 100%.
Some claim it’s impossible to add such outlets to parking everywhere, but I’ve noticed some wintery towns already do this- for block heaters!
Do you have a gas station at home?
They are more complex, you have two drivetrains.
They are heavier, you have two drivetrains.
They are not as nice to drive compared to any pure EV.
You have to put gaz into them.
You may look stupid in your neighbourhood too. Not everyone buy a car for the social status but buying a more expensive fossil car today is not cool. At least in Norwegian urban areas.
But yes you save a few minutes if your long trim at the cost of losing a few minutes every time you fuel it.
The future is bright. And electric, apparently.
The only smart use I've seen of that was my old Prius that ran a fan using the panel on the roof if it noticed the indoor temp was higher than outdoor. Kept the car cool-ish when parking during the summer.
BMW and Toyota just look like they got caught with their pants down by not having appealing vehicles, and other companies are now stealing their lunch. On top of that, Toyota has had some shady business too: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/07/30/toyota-actively-lobbyin...
Right now a lot of people who buy electric cars are wealthier people who also own other cars. This is not inherently bad and, for example, if a household that is going to own multiple cars either way chooses to make one of those electric it may be a win for the environment, but if people are buying extra cars because they are excited about electric cars but also need a conventional car when they go longer distances, that may not actually be that great.
Until there are sufficient charger networks everywhere, it might actually be better to incentives phevs to build up the infrastructure and ensure that people who can only afford to own one car but need to travel longer distances can still use electricity for shorter trips in the form of phevs rather than continuing to use conventional cars. It's not completely clear if EV adoption will continue to accelerate or if it's going to hit limits when we run out of people who can easily switch. Toyota may have a point in that the current timetable for full adoption of evs may be unrealistic, and if it is, it might be better to compromise slightly more if it makes it easier to build up the infrastructure on a more realistic timetable rather than risk hitting a wall
If we set the goal as 100% of vehicles being EVs in a relatively short amount of time, we're going to run into problems who are currently unable to use EVs because of the lack of a fast charger network. (In reality, battery swapping would probably make sense for longer trips once everyone is using evs, but there is zero infrastructure for that right now.)
That said, another issue with electric cars in general is that for the type of short trip where they make the most sense, it might arguably be better for the environment to focus on electric public transportation when possible anyway (especially non-battery-powered street cars and light rail which aren't affected by supply of some of the elements required for batteries).
Also, if we can't hit the targets for EV adoption we may have difficulty hitting environmental goals in general.
It's better for 6 or 7 plug-in hybrids to be developed using the same amount of batteries materials it would take to make one fully-electric vehicle.
Most people make short-range daily trips each day, and they could probably do 100% on the battery of a hybrid. The gas portion would kick-in when they do an occassional longer trip.
No significant change to infrastructure would be required, and gasoline use would go down dramatically as most people would be using the smaller battery most of the time, and adoption would be way faster than fully-electric.
I've gone 15,000 miles now on about 30 gallons of gas. I keep trying to get over "500 miles to the gallon" but that's a limit I have a hard time surpassing: occasional long trips or forgetting to charge does me in.
(Not to mention the car will occasionally burn gas on its own just to confirm the engine is in good working order).
It seems like it would be a waste for me to have a 200-300 mile range and no engine. The longest trips would still have been less convenient. And you could build 4-7 cars like mine with the same battery resources.
Long haul stuff should probably be transitioned last both with commuting and things like trucking (stop and go things like trash and delivery and bus service makes a lot more sense than targeting cross-country trucking first).
They just didn't care.
At public chargers you pay much more than at home per kWh. On top of that, they have been incentivized (0,25 Regelung) for companies as fleet cars (Dienstwagen) and companies give out free petrol so you have no incentive to charge it at home using your own electricity when you can just fill up otherwise with free petrol.
Better longer cheaper batteries for everyone.
We are on the road to solving solid state batteries.
I don't think we are throwing enough resources against those topics.
This would solve so many issues at once.
I find it hard to believe that people will elect to spend more money on a plugin hybrid and then not bother plugging it in as long as they have an easy access to a power outlet. Just the extra cost of gasoline in that scenario should overcome the minor effort of developing a habit of plugging in when you get home.
They are called "Foutlanders" because of that.
About not using the plug: when you are driving a corporate car, it‘s often because part of your job is driving around a lot. Driving to customers e.g. In these cases it‘s common in Germany that your employer pays for fuel (you get a specific card for the gas station). They allow you to use the car for anything else as well.
So there is no incentive to use the plug :).
But there's another explanation for why Toyota does not have an EV lineup - they have been pursuing hybrid, hydrogen, and other tech for years. They have a long term vision instead of one that is just based on what is in social media or on what politicians have suddenly decided to subsidize. Since when is ground truth found on social media or from politicians?
It remains to be seen who will be caught out.
It also seems nonsensical to place all our eggs in the EV basket.
I am convinced that BEV are not the future, because there is not enough of material, especially there is not enough copper.
Assoc Prof Simon Michaux on shortage of copper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBVmnKuBocc
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/14/copper-is-key-to-electric-ve...
The description for the video is unpromising, blurring the distinction between reserves (known, characterized, owned) and resources (varying degrees of knowness, characterization, unowned), and implying we face a binary situation: plenty of resources, and then nothing. The world is not like that.
There is always a spectrum of possibilities. We have an extremely abundant adequate substitute for copper for electrical uses: aluminum. The bulk of electrical distribution systems is steel-cored aluminum wire.
Is copper better? Yes. Is it so much better than aluminum that the latter is unusable? No.
Aluminum's lower electrical and thermal conductivities will require design changes (higher voltage, lower current), and overall efficiency won't be as good as with copper. Very sad. But aluminum is still perfectly usable for EV motors.
And there are ways to eke out the copper we have, such as copper-clad aluminum wire (CCAW), which is already extensively used in loudspeakers. Some high currents flow in subwoofer voice coils.
As for poor people being left behind, resource prices are not the cause. Very few mineral resources are used in providing education and healthcare, and none at all in depressing wages or preventing houses from being built.
(And the high-priced vehicles being sold now pay for the R&D to improve the new technologies. The first portable computers and cell phones were ridiculously expensive toys for the rich, as well.)
1) brittle to point of falling apart.
2) increases it's resistance through oxidation, which will increase heat
This is a big problem in Eastern Europe where communist were building concrete apartment towers wired with aluminum wires, it used to be major reason for fires before those towers were reconstructed and aluminum replaced by copper. Today it is forbidden to use aluminum wires in apartments and houses.
Aluminum is more-less unusable in installations where you can't shield it from air and where aluminum will heat up.
Heat losses are proportional to the square of current, so relatively small voltage increases fix the problem.
> Aluminum is more-less unusable in installations where you can't shield it from air and where aluminum will heat up.
Your power was probably delivered over hundreds of km of uninsulated steel-cored aluminum wire.
Usage of aluminum in any small and high power electronics will cause exactly same issues for exactly same reasons
It's not rocket science. Aluminium is slightly less conductive so you have to make the diameter bigger (and coat it, etc...). When you do that, it is fine.
Aluminium can be and is used in smaller, high power applications, especially when weight is a concern, as it has a higher conductivity per unit mass than copper.
The issue with aluminium wiring in practice is not the aluminium oxidizing. Aluminium oxidisation is self limiting. It is an improper connection leading to a few nanometers of oxidation at the connection site, and thus higher temperature at the site of connection leading to a fire. This is avoidable but some places feel it is easier to ban aluminium wiring than enforce proper electrical connections.
As long as your electrician uses approved connections and does them to spec, there is no chance of a problem.
Aluminum also expands and contracts much more than copper when it gets hot, so it can just wiggle its way out of any connection. Furthermore aluminum is soft, and if you bend it too much, it will crack or break, so not only connection can get problematic, any corners can get easily problematic as well.
Only madman would get his house installed with aluminum wiring.
Yes, true. Copper is better there. But it's irrelevant to wind turbines, EVs, BESSs, and power transmission.
You can continue to live in your fantasy world, where aluminum is used widely, I am coming from there, we are ripping it from walls and replacing it with copper.
Tesla is nearly 20 years old. This industry is no longer new. We’re deep into the EV movement and prices are actually going up year over year.
Just exactly how many more years do you think is needed before these vehicles begin to even approach mass affordability? We’re moving the goalposts on the $35k sweet spot and we still can’t get anywhere near it even with a massive tax credit.
Maybe by the time California has banned all combustion engines people will have just stopped driving because they can no longer afford to buy a vehicle to drive.
Find me a car where, say, doubling the cost of that iron would materially impact the affordability of the final vehicle.
You won't be able to, because the price of all modern vehicles is dominated by other factors: design, certification, manufacture, shipping, taxes, etc...
Even batteries. Elon Musk pointed out that it's the lack of cell manufacturing capacity that's holding things up.
Even if all of the input materials for a Tesla was suddenly free, its cost wouldn't decrease significantly.
Which I'm sure will work great in those neighborhoods.
Also, one luuxury car brand is not relevant to the discussion of "can poor people afford to maintain an EV?"
https://jalopnik.com/ford-credit-wont-allow-lessees-to-buy-o...
That's substantially lower than the average price of a car sold in the US ($47k) or average pickup ($60k!)
And by the way: halo cars like the Hummer finance R&D. The Hummer is helping GM pay R&D costs on the Ultium system/platform, which will be re-used for a huge number of vehicles in the coming years.
EVs have vastly less total parts and therefore will soon be more affordable.
It doesn't really really matter how many parts you have when your input is made out of rare resources
This was the week the war in Ukraine started.
The future will probably involve lots of electric transportation, but it won't look like this. (But judging by the electric transportation that people are actually buying right now, it will be much more personal and portable.)
Lastly - I was happily driving an electric 1er convertible in Berlin under the DriveNow car share back in 2012!
They’ve been in the EV game far longer than people realise; and have the iX1, i3, iX3, i4, i7, i8, iX either available now or within the next 12 months.
This is not to gloss over their current subscription based hardware access, which is in poor taste, but obviously people are still buying their cars.
The Model3 outsells any BMW model by large margins
I actually see a need to shift more people to not using cars as much or at all, and having those people walk/bike/transit. I also think lighter EVs such as scooters may be popular and they have ones with swappable batteries which work like swapping a propane tank. I also think the hybrids Toyota sells which require significantly less of certain resources will be appealing. Also finally telecommuting will be a big thing among white collar workers who won’t need anything more than a hybrid or light EV.
My money is on Toyota being correct and is seeing gas cars being around for quite a lot longer than anticipated. I see the person of the future being less mobile. However technology is inherently unpredictable and advances in mining in particular could change this.
What are you expecting us to deplete from the planet in the next 30ish years?
Lithium is the most common element cited when that argument is raised: you can find trace amounts in seawater, so the total amount is enormous, but the extraction cost will make that an expensive process. If there are large desalinisation efforts (to get fresh water) Lithium could be captured in that context.
Copper, in spite of being very abundant, might actually be a problem (if you include electricity transport lines).
My assumption is that the ecological impact of cars will be too great and increasingly obviously so. People will switch to public transport and bicycles, including electric bikes. But all that is overlooking the tiny detail that half of humanity will have to move or die. That part is probably the key element of context people forget to include in their speculation.
This is the solution but I guess we’ll see how consuming our way to ‘sustainability’ works.
This only works for city dwellers.
Of course, their poor fitness may make Americans less likely to want to walk or bike, but I don't see why we'd assume that this can't be overcome with the right set of incentives.
That was a stat put out by CDC [1]. Even after aggressive 64 yr cutoff only 22.9% of U.S. adults aged 18–64 met the guidelines. 80% of people are willing to ignore CDCs modest guidelines and risk " many chronic conditions, disability, and mortality " per cdc . do you really think putting a bike lane is going is better motivation than death ?
If there's a particular passage that you have in mind, feel free to point me to it.
> do you really think putting a bike lane is going is better motivation than death
At the risk of taking this argument too seriously: It doesn't have to be better. It just has to be additive. And making something more convenient can be very powerful. Among other things, unlike marginally decreasing one's risk of death, something that makes your commute easier/cheaper/more enjoyable offers immediate, ascertainable benefits--unlike decreasing the risk of death, which is impossible to perceive in the moment, is highly contingent, and only mitigates a risk that is presumed to exist only far in the future.
More broadly, I honestly can't understand what your position is here. Can it really be that adding bike lane has no effect on peoples's willingness to ride a bike? That just seems...obviously wrong. Of course, how big an effect a given measure might have is a different matter.
And, in any case, Nobody said that just "putting in a bike lane" would get the job done on its own. Though it seems obvious that even that very modest step would help. There are--quite obviously--a lot of other levers out there. I'm no expert but, just off the top of my head we could also make it less convenient to drive and encourage development that allows people to live near where they work.
yes there was small study in Minnesota that said exactly that. https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/200550.pdf
80% are willing to risk a life of suffering ( per cdc) to avoid physical activity. I don't see how its at all 'obvious' that putting bike lanes is going magically get them moving.
Again, a citation to a specific passage would be helpful. But the executive summary seems to say exactly the opposite of what you claim:
> Generally speaking, the results support the notion that people value bicycle facilities, in that they are willing to incur additional time costs in order to use higher quality facilities. In particular, people value having striped bike lanes. The incremental value of this improvement is much greater than the incremental value of moving the facility off-road entirely. The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear. From this research, it appears that a facility can increase the amount of riding in an area even up to one and a half miles from the ends of the facility, but it is not clear whether the effect is larger for residents that are closer than this.
> Somewhat to the chagrin of many officials excited about the prospects of using community design to induce—or even enable—physical activity, this analysis suggests an uphill battle lies ahead.
Anyways, perhaps you can cite your sources behind your claims that you say are obvious. Surely public policy like building bike lanes has to have some solid data behind instead of just wishful thinking.
> The presence of facilities also appears to be associated with higher amounts of riding, although the precise nature of the impact is still unclear. From this research, it appears that a facility can increase the amount of riding in an area even up to one and a half miles from the ends of the facility, but it is not clear whether the effect is larger for residents that are closer than this.
Here are some more:
* https://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5782472/study-bike-lanes-really... (Haven't found the original study yet--the article's link seems to be broken. But the charts tell the story.)
> But when 2,283 of the cyclists in these lanes were surveyed, 10 percent of them said they would have taken another mode of travel (i.e. car, public transit, by foot, etc.) if the lane hadn't been built. Another 1 percent said they wouldn't have taken the trip at all.
* https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Bike-Lanes-and-...
> This study finds a significant correlation between the presence of bicycle lanes and Capital Bikeshare usage, and also highlights the importance of population density and mixed-uses in encouraging ridership.
* https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024399118 (Studies Europeans, though I don't see any reason why incentives would work on europeans and not at all on Americans--though maybe one would expect the effect size to be somewhat smaller in proportion to Americans' lower level of fitness)
> We find robust evidence for substantial short-run increases in cycling in European cities due to new provisional cycling infrastructure.
It bears repeating, though, that this isn't just about bike lanes.
Physical fitness isn't the biggest issue or even really a big issue at all, the biggest practical issues I've found is getting large items to your home and the fact that a lot of work really does take a real full sized vehicle to load up with gear and people. Cars and trucks you to simply move literally tons stuff from place to place in a very flexible way, whereas on foot/transit/bicycle it is very awkward to move around even 50lbs of stuff without some sort of cart or wagon which really isn't going to let you haul all that much more very quickly. It's hard to imagine how you're going to move a work crew from site to site using bicycles lol.
I really see physical fitness as really not being very much of a problem at all except on the extremes. Certainly not for 80% of the population. I'm also going to point out the obvious which is that people that don't exercise are absolutely the type people who should be avoiding using a car to get around everywhere.
30 years later and 30 lbs overweight (thanks, covid), and I decided to start going to the gym and I added the treadmill.
After one month my heartrate at the 10 minute mark at a leisurely 12:00 minutes a mile pace (nowhere near my teen years) went from 150 to 130.
Mostly it’s been about getting my diaphragm back in shape.
If I were smarter or more sensible I would’ve started with the elliptical first, but expensive running shoes and better techniques have kept my back and knees from hurting (so far).
People in suburbia could have this too if they just zoned for it. Take out the stupid strip malls and stroads and put the businesses where the people are and vice-versa. Get some actual neighborhoods and communities again.
Well out in rural areas is a bit of a different matter. Some people will need cars.
But with proper town development and decent public transit, something like 80% of people who aren't way out in rural areas wouldn't need cars except for vacation/road trips. That's not some far-fetched sci-fi idea. It just needs politics to properly utilize what we've had for a long time.
They will be far more exposed to the increase in floods, fires, and hurricanes. Insurance will likely refuse to cover the most common and destructive scenarios.
[0] https://www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/about-us/what-is-rural
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-ma...
We're DECADES away from having enough power generation and delivery to get everyone on electric cars, and that's not even considering the "How the F is everyone going to afford to buy electric cars in the first place?" problem. Look at the lines to charge EVs in states like California already, and that's with ~5% of new car sales being EVs. Multiple that by a factor of 20 and just laugh.
Every state that has passed "We're going to ban the sale of gasoline cars after 20xx" is going to have to repeal it in shame, or just force their residents to drive to the nearest red state when they want to buy a new car.
If you believe that it will take longer to have enough electricity for everyone to drive an electric car, I’m worried that the adjustment variable is not going to be what portions of cars are electric (what you have in mind), or what portion of the population uses a car (where I think we can make the fastest progress) but what’s the size of the population.
However, if less than half of the population of a country dies (which seems likely in the US, for instance, although not by a lot) then it means it’s a favoured country compared to areas that would have become inhabitable. Immigration to that country will explode. I’m not sure how the population will continue to decrease given that pressure, but it will have to.
We’re moving to a future where every car has a battery electric hybrid motor if it’s not a full EV.
This sort of pointless hyperbole, especially when injected with needless partisan politics trying to "gotcha" progressive states, doesn't help anything or anyone.
> Look at the lines to charge EVs in states like California already
Those lines you're referring to are for Teslas, which use proprietary charge connectors and a charging technology which is now behind industry standards in terms of charge speed.
Fast charge stations aren't necessary for most usage. If you have a 20 mile round trip commute and your car spends 10 hours in your driveway or garage, charging at 500W off a normal extension cord is sufficient to replenish the electricity used via your commute.
EVs are fantastically more efficient than ICE vehicles, like 4-5x as efficient in terms of amount of energy needed for the same miles travelled. Our ICE engines are so primitive that it's really kind of embarrassing, honestly.
If every car switched to an EV over night, that would only increase power consumption 30%-50%, depending on the state. And it turns out that there's way more spare capacity than that in the grid, because the grid is sized for peak consumption, not average consumption. So there's plenty of extra grid and generation capacity, especially at night time, which is why night time electricity is so cheap.
But we are not going to switch to EVs in an instant, we are going to gradually switch over. The biggest change will be that after a long period of stalled or falling electricity demand, it will slightly increase. But it will be extremely flexible demand, which will make it far easier to power the grid. Car charging is a huuuuuge boom to the grid because of this massive load that will be made very flexible.
Source CA saying please don't charge your car during specific times, our grid can't handle it - https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210618005573/en/Sta...
Source CA doesn't have nearly enough EV charging stations to force everyone on to EVs - https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Lag-in-EV-charg...
And that's in peak ICE-hating California. Now imagine Wyoming, Utah, or West Virginia.
The prime mover has changed (even though the innovation sits with the energy source i.e. batteries) and that often leads to change in the form factor of vehicles.
[1] e.g. https://www.supercars.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/19...
Without needing a radiator there is room for some change up front.
Of course, scooters and bikes just wave that off. Cars could too, if limited to significantly lower speeds. But good luck making slow cars and low speed limits popular. Especially in car-centric America, where slowing down would make many normal trips unbearably long.
The BMW i3 was the first mass produced carbon fiber chassis, was produced entirely with hydroelectric power, was made from a high percentage of recycled materials and had an optional 3 gallon take with a range extender as an option.
I’m not convinced pure EV solutions are going to be the answer for everyone. The idea of smaller range EVs with range extenders still feels the most practical option for the next decade or two.
The i3 was fantastically cool it just turns out that most people aren't willing to compromise anything for a car that's built sustainably. That's why the i4 is doing much better than the i3 ever did.
And the thing with battery technologies is that there is quite a bit of stagnation as there has been very little improvement in power density - higher densities, and safer chemistries that can do more cycles are still the subjects of research, and it's still a question of 'if' and not 'when' that a given promising technology (like solid state batteries) will pan out.
There are multiple solutions - plug-in hybrids, which Toyota makes can almost match EVs for emissions for a lot of people. I, for example commute about 30km per day, and take longer trips only every 2 weeks or so, and well made ICE engines have such a low emission for long trips that combined with the rarity of use, make their environmental impact negligible.
This is the main reason why I believe the current all-electric goals are too ambitious and not practical.
Nickel and Cobalt are, IMO, tougher to solve for. Nickel is rich in places that are not North America, which will run up against certain domestic sourced stipulations in EV subsidies... We have one nickel mine as of 2021 and it produces far less than the Eurasian mines.[2]
I think an EV future will really depend on innovative battery chemistries like LiFePO4.[3]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/04/the-salton-sea-could-produce...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284604/us-nickel-mine-p...
If you want to have a real mine that might actual produce lithium in North America look at Thacker Pass. The Salton Sea is mostly marketing, its totally unproven technology not anywhere remotely close to production. There have been countless junior minors who have made great promises about lithium production in the last 10 years and virtually all of them have failed.
It will take much, much longer then most of these companies say to produce anything close to battery grade lithium. Lithium is really tricky to get to the right quality, and each mine needs to go threw a multi year very process to go threw valuation at every car and battery maker. So even if you have a mine partially operating, it takes years and years after that until your lithium might actually show up in a car.
Sodium and LFP batteries do help. But LFP still needs lithium and the massive production facilities already built for NMC and NCA can not just be changed.
This is a bigger problem then people realize, specially lithium. After all these years there is still only a handful (less then 5) of companies that produce it at the required grade. And of those many are not expanding fast.
[0] https://www.electrive.com/2022/08/08/niu-to-debut-two-wheele...
These threads are always full of companies just two years out.
We're talking about a company that has been talking about hydrogen cars and is still pretending that they are going to do that at scale; despite no evidence at all of that in the form of production capacity and infrastructure related investments. Speak of supply chain problems! Where is the hydrogen even going to come from? And where's the distribution network for that? And how many hydrogen cars did Toyota actually ship so far? Hint, the volume of their very low number of compliance EVs in places like China is actually higher. They've actually already produced more EVs than hydrogen cars. I doubt those numbers will ever turn around for them.
Toyoda sounds like a broken record just rehashing the same excuses over and over again as to why they are late in a market where other companies are raking in really fat profits on EVs that seems to be going through some exponential growth.
That means even if we can't quite build out the infrastructure for civilian use, and the fuel cells are too expensive for the average Joe, we can still convert semi trucks to hydrogen use.
That might be a good start.
The only lobbying I've heard of is against the narrow focus of BEV-only[1] policies and to include hybrid, HEV, etc. What other lobbying are you referring to?
1: https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/E2EA0E4F-BAD9-4...
I'd also note the depreciation on toyota off-road capable vehicles that would go on these kind of weekend trips (like gas rav4 / tacoma) is stupid low. Like stupid stupid low. To the point many people who bought new in 2020 might get more money now than before they drove it off the lot. Not sure if there's any EVs with only ~29.5% 5 year expected depreciation like say a Tacoma Toyota has.
Teslas are similar.
It's almost certainly less maintenance for well designed electric but the rav4 engine is just dead nuts reliable with almost no maintenance. For most people it's like an hour a work once a year while you drink a beer.
The other issue, is Toyota gas vehicles have such stupid low depreciation that maintenance + depreciation ends up coming out ahead on the gas vehicle vs EVs on the market.
Thanks to government subsidies in place for 14 years so far and locked in for at least another 10, I've experienced no actual depreciation on my electric cars to date. I've actually made money upgrading to a new one every few years. My current daily driver is a 2021 VW ID4 that had a sticker price of $44K, $36.5K after the federal tax credit, and Carvana offered me a bit over $43K if I want to sell it today.
So I was an electrical engineer and designed (and hand wired) a complete drive system for an electric vehicle company. Electric car has, in some sense, all of those. It has a motor(s) instead of a starter. It has an inverter and gearbox instead of a 'transmission' [0]. It has a rectifier / charging system instead of a fuel pump. It has a DC/DC converter instead of an alternator. It has HV electrical distribution network instead of gas lines. Instead of the metals in a catalytic converter or a gas tank, you have hundreds of pounds of chemistries such as lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide. Instead of a muffler or air intake, you have air and fluid cooling systems for the batteries. There are 'all various sensors' for battery temperature and status monitoring as well as for positioning and feedback of the motors.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/files/2018/03/jack-rickard-motor-1...
My grandma gave me $7500 to buy a car so I can sell it for a profit!
-- the logic that 'because tax credits' the car didn't depreciate.
The point is that in a plug-in hybrid you still need all that. You're carrying around two full drivetrains instead of one, for a benefit that might actually be pretty marginal.
Also, the transmission for an ICE is far more complicated, fuel pumps could fail, the muffler / exhaust manifold could get knocked off by something, the radiator could leak...
At least one of those things is likely to happen over the 10 year warranty that new car batteries come with (by law, moving forward) in the US.
There's still complexity involved in the gas one .
My plug-in Clarity has had zero, and I mean literally zero, extra maintenance visits over and above what you'd expect from a pure EV. I take it in every year to inspect the tie rods ends, ball joints, brakes etc and while it's there they change the oil. Whoop-de-doo.
I know Tesla does not recommend regular inspection and lubrication for chassis and suspension which gives owners of young cars the illusion of maintenance freedom, but I view it as just Tesla having no idea how to support a fleet of long-lived cars and lacking the service network to make it work.
A Kia Niro PHEV that can go 25 miles on its battery, and a Kia Niro EV that can go 240 miles on its battery, are only about 400 pounds apart. That's like carrying around two passengers, which has negligible impact on fuel efficiency or road wear.
For me at least that's the rule, not the exception. I travel when there are holidays, and that's when lots of other people rent cars. Maybe I can find a car to rent, but it's going to be hundreds of dollars per day. A lot of people find this to be less than ideal.
NOW, 2 of the 3 cars I've had in the past 15 years have destroyed their catalytic converters. Almost certainly from the fact that much of their driving is short-quick trips. Catalytic converter can't heat up to optimal temps and burn off residual combustion material.
PHEV almost entirely solve this problem. Run on battery for the short hops. Run on the engine for long trips. Additionally, PHEV can utilize both a smaller ICE engine and run it at more efficient workloads. PHEVs can rely on the electric motor to provide surge capacity during acceleration then recharge during cruising.
On top off all of that, PHEV can do regenerative breaking. An ICE engine has simply no way to recover energy while braking.
Where I live, it's almost always rust.
My car weighs 3000 lbs and the RAV4 plugin hybrid weighs 4100lbs. Car engines weigh 300-700 lbs, ignoring the gas tank, radiator, exhaust system, etc. Maybe the dead weight from the engine is the issue? Toyota definitely knows its way around a wind tunnel.
Toyota is only charging $2200 for the plug in hybrid upgrade. Why not charge $4400 for a 36 kWh battery, and make the gas engine optional? Presumably the gas engine, exhaust, gas tank and hybrid transmission add over $4400 to the price!
My guess is that Toyota somehow got blindsided by the EV technology transition (despite having a 20 year lead from the Prius), and now they are in damage control mode.
IMO the fact that the standard car makers have been sitting on there asses and not investing time/energy in creating these solutions is quite disturbing.
Even with premium pricing, demand already outstrips supply for electric vehicles.
And those won't just just magically jump from none to plentiful. It will be more gradual.
Thanks to pandemic stimulus, this is true for almost all vehicle types.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
How do you figure natural resource extraction will be revolutionised to make EV's dramatically cheaper after enough people buy EVs?
The Kia EV6 is $41K and has > 300 mile range.
Leafs start at $28K ($20K after subsidy), but that is a lower range model.
I agree with the point you are making, but I think we are in the middle of the tipping point. Plenty of models exist at many price points. 100% are back ordered. All the manufacturers have to do at this point is scale their production lines.
Nissan and Kia are probably going to eat a few lunches in the mass market segment.
And I agree, a tipping point feels close. If Tesla ever caught up with demand and stopped raising their prices on the Model 3 I think it would be a Model T like hit.
In a couple of years, I think China & India should make it clear if this will be the global play out as well.
China certainly seems interested in getting off gasoline as fast as possible.
If everyone would suddenly want an EV, that would drive raw material prices even higher and would lead to a drastic expansion of lithium mining, without the necessary environmental precautions, which would counteract the environmental benefits of EV adoption.
I don’t want to think about charging. I’m worried it would cause delays and affect my route. Hybrids allow more flexibility.
This board goes really hard on EVs. I don’t understand it.
All I want is to be able to have an electric car, that if I'm in a real jam and need to run it on petrol I can fill up a 20 litre tank and make a few hours of driving, even if it's in 'limp home mode' until I can get a charge again. My range anxiety is real! The Australian outback is big.
That's what PHEVs are (Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles).
Relevant to the article, those include the (Toyota) RAV4 prime and Prius prime. I think the one I see the most is the Chevy Volt, which unfortunately is discontinued, but seemed like a good PHEV.
Also, EVs are way more fun to drive. For instance Kia likes to point out that their 2023 EV6 ($41k) hatchback has better acceleration than a top-end 2023 Porsche Cayenne coupe.
Infrastructure concerns are way overblown. I charge my commuter car with a 110v outlet. It draws as much as a space heater or electric kettle.
I also have no doubt charging technology will continue to improve. I will switch when it’s closer to 10 minutes to charge and chargers are everywhere.
I think its subjective to say which car is more fun to drive. It’s about preference. I had the most fun driving early 2000s v6 sports sedans that could do 0-60 in 6 seconds, compared to an EV that could do that in 4 seconds. Mainly due to the handling characteristics when cornering.
I’m not opposed to owning an EV. It just can’t be worse along the metrics I care about.
Range is sort of bi-modal. If you want a 150-200 mile car, they exist. The same model will usually do 300 miles for about $7000 more. Personally, since we have two cars, I'd probably go with one low range and one long range vehicle.
I'd further try to arrange for the low range one to be a sports car; smaller battery = better cornering, etc.
Just to clarify, in case you misunderstand me, I can't wait to be free of ICE vehicles.
> I also don't think that affordable infrastructure actually gets built without government support - but happy to consider any counterexamples.
You’ve never been to a gas station?
This isn’t going to involve blowing holes in mountains. All you need is a wire and a payment system.
People get ultra religious and evangelical about it. At this point, it should just be a new religion. That is to say, most of the debates aren't founded on logic, but rather hope and belief.
Until it's possible to buy a second hand ev as someone's new car for less than a grand (AUD so $600 USD). EVS won't be the future. $20k for a car is fucking expensive, the "mass market" model 3 in Australia is $60-80k. That's a luxury car price, closer to the top end.
I'm not a management guy so I don't know, probably there are a lot of consideration happening and they surely have some strategy, whether it's right or not we'll see
And that doesn’t even take into account how expensive EVs are here, either.
So for now, it’s my ‘99 Camry all the way.
- if there are any outlets on the outside of your house, buy the highest amperage charger cable you can (~ $200 US), and trickle charge overnight. This is more than adequate for a reasonable commute in a reasonably efficient car. (Check the miles/kWh or km/kWh of the car, then figure out how many kW the charge cable delivers).
- Lobby for "community net metering". The idea is that you buy shares in a non-profit (or other business entity) that owns a solar panel farm near your home. The power company offsets your bill as though the energy your share of the solar panels produced was produced on your roof. In addition to allowing renters and apartment dwellers to save money by buying solar, it allows them to buy things, like wind turbines, that don't scale down as well.
It also allows poor people to lower their energy costs (as people that currently own solar panels do).
The battery is tougher, assuming you want to use it as a backup. If you just want to time shift power, community net metering (and time of use plans) is good enough.
Jay Leno has mentioned several times the numerous advantages steam and electric cars had over gas over 100 years ago but they were not enough to beat the sheer convenience of gas.
I once scoffed at the idea of a hybrid (thinking of them as a stepping stone) but today I realize they make much more sense than I realized before. Think of crossing the Mojave Desert in an EV.
Most people can charge during the day. Employers often provide free EV charging, but even if they don't, power will be mostly free during daylight hours moving forward (due to solar). Also, employers that require people to commute almost universally provide parking lots that could be retrofitted with chargers.
In the worst case (only charge at night, run battery to 0% every day at sunset, leave at sunrise, power company bans charging at night), someone could install a stationary battery with about 120% the EV's charge. That's overly pessimistic and still only a factor of 2.2 on the price of the battery.
Over a 5-10 year period, EVs currently pay for themselves in saved money on gasoline.
Crossing the Mojave seems easy enough to me. There would need to be charging stations evey ~100 miles. Finding space for the necessary solar capacity would not be an issue. The stations could charge 2-4x "city' rates and would be very profitable.
You can already cross the Mojave in even a low range tesla, for what it is worth. (Victorville -> Las Vegas; they say you need to charge for 20 minutes in Baker, CA)
I don't know how else to put this, but that's flat out false. Looking at my miles driven over the past month, 10 years of savings won't even get me half of the value of a Chevy Bolt.
> Crossing the Mojave seems easy enough to me.
LA to Vegas is trivial, since it's a major corridor for tourism.
Driving around Nevada is not. Vegas to Great Basin National Park (4.5 hours one way) and back only recently became possible* since Tesla released their CCS1 adapter. Unfortunately, the EV chargers that the state of Nevada has subsidized are only 50kW, which means 4.5 hours of driving requires 1h50m of charging.
* You could do it before if you drove below the speed limit to reduce aerodynamic drag, but you had to drive way out of the way through Utah, desperately hope that you don't consume more power than predicted, and probably get shot by angry drivers.
Rich Bubble.
Jay Leno is a petrolhead. Biased opinion to say the least.
I'm a second generation Toyota buyer, my father before me. 100% of the cars we purchased over the past 20 years were Toyota. We've been asking for electric but Toyota was too stuborn, or dare I say, too pussy to make the leap.
Like many, I've decided my next car will be electric. I'm sad it won't be a Toyota.
I'm very disapointed in everything Toyoda says. Excuses and no dream.
'Here's What It Takes To Recycle 1 EV Battery' https://youtube.com/shorts/Sj5hI_IiQ7A?feature=share
I can buy that; My Ford Hybrid (drivetrain AFAIR is/was cross licensed from Toyota) has been way more enjoyable to drive than I expected.
The problem was that is was more expensive for GM to build than a pure EV and they wanted to make a clear break.
It's crazy they cancelled the Volt to bring out the Bolt which is short range and slow to charge.
Can anyone say more how the increased electricity consumption by EVs will pressure the existing grid, and what sources (green or otherwise) will generate the extra capacity?
Our current system is basically just a bunch of inefficient portable ICE generators running around everywhere. Maybe a short term solution is to install large ICE generators (at existing gas stations, for example). Sounds expensive, but inaction will also be expensive.
It helps tremendously that many people will hold on to their ICE cars for as long as possible. I for one plan to run my truck for a long time yet. So we have a long ramp-up time for shoring up the electrical grid.
And after that, we just add more capacity to the grid. The electric company exists to sell us electricity, and if we demand more, they will make more. The kind of growth we'd need to see in the grid to support 100% of all new cars being EVs is entirely within the abilities the electric producers have demonstrated in times past.
EVs can be charged overnight during off-peak hours when the electricity is usually dirt cheap.
biodiesel will likely be available but not at scale.
ethanol will almost certainly power old cars, but gas stations will be rare.
hydrogen is a non-starter. 95% of hydrogen comes from fossil fuels already and electrolysis is tremendously inefficient. Not to mention a hydrogen car is really just an electric car with hydrogen range extending.
Everything points to it's going to be EVs.
- Subscriptions to hardware capabilities
- AUP violations for self repair this is slowly changing, maybe
- GPS tracking and Remote telemetry. GPS makes sense for geofencing and automation but no need to dial home to a cloud, any more so than a drone
- Crazy cost of proprietary batteries / battery packs
All of those things are double-red-flags / hard stops for me.
Batteries are a topic in and of themselves. Batteries are evolving every few years and yet newer vehicles are being designed to take proprietary battery packs and this is only becoming more vendor locked-in with time.
I will buy an EV when the above items are addressed, probably around the time that solid state 3D printed batteries are forced to be in a Standard form factor and battery packs can be quickly swapped by the owner, whatever that may look like. Every part needs to be modular and easy to swap. Bonus would be after-market modules, some being vendor approved and some that obviously void warranties without having to reprogram the ECM like I do with my truck just to replace faulty ignition switches and ABS controllers.
Oh right that is another thing. The EV will need to be compatible and writable by my ThinkTool scanner, meaning the EV vendors will need to publish all of their proprietary codes and encryption keys for vehicle diagnostic tools. If I can not enable/disable features from my tool then the vehicle is not mine and I get my money back.
I also looked into getting a mid-sized EV excavator. Same as everything above. Nothing but owner-hostile features. In my obstinate view, the market is tone deaf and not appealing to the right people. Backing my view I have not seen any construction workers using EV rigs and vendors won't even list prices yet. I had to call them. The only change I have witnessed is smaller 2-stroke engines going electric like chainsaws, some yard maintenance equipment that used to be gasoline, etc...
So perhaps gasoline will be gone in 50 years but I forsee many growing pains in this market and predict blackhat hackers will have to rescue some of the equipment owners, assuming the concept of owning hardware is still a thing. If the concept of ownership vanishes then I expect something better than they existing rental process. e.g. I press a button and the hardware shows up, I use it, then press a button and the hardware goes home and I only pay for the minutes used.
Build one then. How much hp/kw is in your tractor? Cant be much. DC motor + batteries + controller. Practically drop it in and all you might need to do is an engine mount.
>Batteries are a topic in and of themselves. Batteries are evolving every few years and yet newer vehicles are being designed to take proprietary battery packs and this is only becoming more vendor locked-in with time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQzW0RT1YSg
Obviously he's being a bit ridiculous with his build but ev conversions are totally doable. If you have the know-how to keep a 47 tractor going you have plenty of know-how to do an ev conversion.
In terms of batteries. Always your last purchase when doing the conversion. They are constantly cheaper.
>I also looked into getting a mid-sized EV excavator. Same as everything above. Nothing but owner-hostile features. In my obstinate view, the market is tone deaf and not appealing to the right people. Backing my view I have not seen any construction workers using EV rigs and vendors won't even list prices yet. I had to call them. The only change I have witnessed is smaller 2-stroke engines going electric like chainsaws, some yard maintenance equipment that used to be gasoline, etc...
This weekend I was talking to same idea. "My combine needs to be able to operate nonstop to get the corn/wheat/whatever off in time."
So do you need a really large battery pack or do you mount 5kw of solar to the roof of the combine up high so it can rotate toward the sun? What's the cost of such a beast?
>The only change I have witnessed is smaller 2-stroke engines going electric like chainsaws, some yard maintenance equipment that used to be gasoline, etc...
Oh man, my very first one years ago was a weed wiper. The lack of shaking your hands to hell is a godsend. Now you also have robotic lawn mowers that just doo that all for you. Only possible as an ev.
>So perhaps gasoline will be gone in 50 years but I forsee many growing pains in this market and predict blackhat hackers will have to rescue some of the equipment owners, assuming the concept of owning hardware is still a thing. If the concept of ownership vanishes then I expect something better than they existing rental process. e.g. I press a button and the hardware shows up, I use it, then press a button and the hardware goes home and I only pay for the minutes used.
The beauty of capitalism. You could build your own first and potentially spawn a lucrative business for about a year or 2. Then Deere will come in with go-away money and you can go back to your original fun.
> Toyoda reiterated that he does not believe all-electric vehicles will be adopted as quickly as policy regulators and competitors think, due to a variety of reasons. He cited lack of infrastructure, pricing and how customers’ choices vary region to region as examples of possible roadblocks.
> “Just like the fully autonomous cars that we are all supposed to be driving by now, EVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than media would like us to believe,”
He sound like smart man unlike European communist bureaucrats trying to force EVs down the throat at any cost, which could be only explained by being controlled by WEF.
I'd say going all in on EV or whatever is as "smart" as putting all your eggs in one basket, world ain't black and white and you gotta be pretty naive to do it, hard to imagine scenario where diversification is not (the more) rational approach.
just google "Toyota Actively Lobbying To Slow Down EV Revolution"
Not saying EV revolution isn't the right thing to do; but how can we allow space for steelmanning Toyota or areas where EV's don't make sense; how can we make sure power cuts won't leave people stranded and resiliency of transporation infrastructure becomes fragile; after all, a massive part of the GDP depends on transportation. Without it, nations will fail.
We should be a bit more level headed of the EV craze, especially hackers on HN.
During the height of renewable energy production the cost of energy would probably even drop to negative, and hydrogen no matter how inefficient can still "regen" it into hydrogen. and the rest is just pricing and betterment of technology.
extremely ambitious but if anyone can pull it off it'd be them.
All of the hydrogen right now used for vehicle comes from the oil&gas industry. It costs over an order of magnitude more to extract it from water. The worst part is that even at the current rates at the pump, it's hard to justify using hydrogen over batteries.
If lithium batteries didn't exist, it may have been a good path for the long term future. In reality, it's only gonna be viable for very specific industrial use cases.
It’s odd the article didn’t talk about how Toyota is betting big on hydrogen fuel cell winning vs battery.
In some european countries, the amounts being paid as subsidies for EVs are insane. In some parts of italy you get a Tesla for like $8000 . But this winter europe will have trouble charging them, and this model clearly does not scale. Let's focus on installing solar and expanding remote work instead
No. It's still cheaper to charge EV than fuel ICE during non peak hours. Let's stop pretending EV owners only charge on the highway at expensive, fast charging stations.
>and this model clearly does not scale
What does not scale? Look at Norway.
Completely false.
In Italy, in certain periods and under certain conditions, you get "up to" 6,000 euros of incentives if you buy an EV. You still pay north of 30,000 euros to buy a Tesla Model 3 (the basic model of course) even after incentives.
https://modo.volkswagengroup.it/en/q-life/electric-cars-whic...
The reason Toyota isn't all-in on EVs is because Toyota is the dominant player in a rival technology: gas-electric hybrids.
This is extremely clear business strategy: Toyota doesn't want to cannibalize its marketshare in hybrids.
Toyota pushed hydrogen fuel cells for years to obstruct EV adoption, just as Elon Musk pushed hyperloop to obstruct high-speed rail adoption. Both hydrogen and hyperloop are fantasy technology: decades away or completely impractical (hyperloop.)
Only after EVs were widely adopted in many countries did Toyota start moving towards EVs. That was a logical business strategy for them.
Toyota isn't all in on EVs because they make lots of money from hybrids. The end.
"Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now It Works to Delay Them." The auto giant bet on hydrogen power, but as the world moves toward electric the company is fighting climate regulations in an apparent effort to buy time.
This is all very clear business strategy. And we shouldn't let Toyota get in the way of a better world for all of us, in exchange for profit for its investors.
The only policy that can make a significant change in the climate is a carbon tax. The effects might as well be less driving and more bussing if indeed the rare earth supply is so limited.
We might even endure another oil crisis because we're cutting down on our investment in fossil fuels while the transition to EV's is lagging.
(1) I've been driving EVs for 8 years now and have yet to see a DC fast charging station at a grocery store. Electrify America uses Wal-Mart and Target as site hosts often, but not everyone does their grocery shopping there. Grocery stores mainly have L2 AC charging stations, which only put about 10 miles of charge in a car in 30 minutes.
(2) DC fast charging stations on almost every charging network will charge idle fees if you remain plugged in after you're done charging, or after a set time like 20-30 minutes, as they want you to move and let the next customer charge their car. So you need to sit in the car and move it when you're done, or it will become unaffordable.
Surely he’s only thinking of the environmental consequences and shared material constraints of manufacturing so many vehicles.
Couldn’t be that they planned for a slower adoption and the pandemic accelerated the curve and now they’ve fallen behind. Couldn’t be that they failed to secure critical contracts thinking that this attempt at scaling would fall short and then they could pick up those same contracts later for cheap.
Also when enviromental crisis will ends we can back to smoking oil or something similiar - reverse engeneering of oil engines technology can give terrible results...
Also industrial vehicles running on electricity is not even in sight me thinks.
Deere employee, but not speaking for Deere.