EPA Ban of Gasoline-Powered Cars Will Slow Development of Electric Cars
reason.com
reason.com
Why not consider that by having more money coming through sales, they can spend more on R&D? Or the fact that, charging stations will become a utility and will allow for competition on features leading to better cars?
But it's on reason.com! It's right in the name!
Jokes aside, almost every time I see a politically-wacky headline on HN it comes from this website. "If you have to say it", etc.
And EVs really aren't that complicated to boot. It is a 1-4 motors and a battery. Building EV factories certainly won't stifle battery innovation. Electric motors are largely a solved problem from ... hundreds of years of electric motors. Sure Tesla and some other EVs are working on a percent or two of efficiency...
EVs are not ICEs, where engines with cams, cylinders, different cycles, fuel injection valves, cooling/radiators, turbos/compression, spark plugs, fuel pumps, flywheels, timing belts, alternators, exhaust, multispeed transmissions, and a ?dozen? embedded computers, and if we had done it right in the last two decades, a mini-EV hybrid system.
The real scaling is in the battery manufacturing, and that has left the building a decade ago (and has several orders of magitude of scaling likely to go) and that hasn't stopped LFP/LMFP and sodium ion chemistries from being rolled out as well as a dozen NMC style chemistries innovated over the last two decades, and whatever comes out of sulfur and solid state research.
Actually you know what would have REALLY helped regulatory wise? The second the EPA/etc saw the prius and insight in 1997, and should have declared "every production vehicle in ten years must be a hybrid or you pay a $2000 surcharge". That would have sparked development of EV drivetrains probably 10 years before Tesla got up to steam.
"reason.com" -- ohhhh right I saw this site a long time ago when I was tracking down some pro-oil stooge's writing trying to connect the dots with their extreme laissez-faire think tank stuff.
The fact this extreme right wing pro-corporate blog is trying to say with a straight face that production scaling and economies of scales don't involve innovation is ... sad.
Some things that I do foresee would be older cars being kept on the road longer, 3rd party parts sites making more money, tow trucks making more money and often being unavailable for hours on end, independent mechanics will likely be spread thin leading to more cars sitting driveways with the legal non-op status and conversely auto-dealer mechanics may see less cars as everything would eventually move out of warranty and require service from the independent mechanics that would already be spread thin. The dealer and non-dealer mechanics will all need to retrain for EV's and it's not as simple as some may think.
Another factor I see is that the augmentation of the existing power grid will need to accelerate dramatically and that may have affects on inflation. Distributed battery storage will have to accelerate dramatically. Hopefully sooner than later we move away from current battery tech and move to sodium like China did, otherwise I foresee material supply and logistic issues not to mention the dependence on China and Africa for a limited supply of the current materials. There need to be massive tax incentives for solar, battery, inverters, level II home EV chargers, etc...
Another potential issue is weight. EV cars only weigh about 1K pounds more than their equivalent ICE but this number goes up a bit as the vehicle gets bigger and there will always be a need for bigger vehicles. The EV tech has not shown itself to be ready for consumer towing vehicles such as Ford F350-650, Chevy 3500-6500 and some ICE setups are already pushing weight limits. People will have to tow less product and for less distance which is a non-starter for some. Those will be the ICE vehicles that remain on the road for some time. Battery tech will need to improve leading to smaller and lighter batteries. Perhaps solid state 3D printed? The Sheriff, search and rescue will need EV's that can haul UTV's and snowmobiles into the mountains to rescue people. Livestock are moved by diesel trucks. AFAIK there are no EV's that would meet these hard requirements as of yet. That extra weight will also contribute to more brake dust and more people sliding off icy and slushy roads.
Finally the elephant in the room is the lack of chargers. Both the electrical infrastructure and acquisition of 145k+ charging stations needs to happen by 2032. This may also have implications on inflation. Why 145K? I didn't just make that up. There are 145K gas stations in the US that need to replace all of their pumps with level III chargers. Anything less will result in people sitting in parking lots for hours and having massive lines. It does not even have to be gas stations. It could be Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, the grocery store, a re-purposed parking lot, etc... Currently about 6% of the vehicle sales in the US are EV's but that does not mean they no longer have an ICE car. When that reaches some critical mass everyone will have to charge at home or be stuck sitting in lines at charging stations. People will not tolerate that limitation and word will quickly get around thus limiting sales of new EV's and some EV's may end up sitting in a garage. There are many people that will not have the option of charging at home.