EV Sales Now Equal 17% of World Auto Sales | Hacker News Reader

EV Sales Now Equal 17% of World Auto Sales

cleantechnica.com

37 pointsbelltaco35 comments

Within 20 years, the entire horse industry vanished: https://youtube.com/shorts/Lvzw7NPmppY?si=AA6wdHy0oDEE19DY

Same thing is going to happen to ICE cars, but faster.

I doubt ICE will be gone completely. There are many places in the world where batteries don’t work well due to the cold or lack of electricity.

But maybe we will find better cheaper batteries. Until then AV is rich people choice.

>Until then AV is rich people choice.

Just came back from Shenzen. ~50% of cars on the road are EVs. 100% of Didi (China's Uber) are EVs due to cost/mile being cheaper than ICE.

So it isn't a rich people choice in China.

Just came back from Shanghai, same situation, BUT from talking to people there are three big reasons for that:

1. The government built the EV charger infrastructure so that even the remotest areas are covered, the chargers have one universal way to use them and you can't go far without seeing one

2. In big cities China made car registration much more expensive for non-EVs

3. Prices of EVs in china are much lower than anywhere in the world

None of these apply for Europe or US, and I am doutbful they can make a swift transition like China can.

>None of these apply for Europe or US, and I am doutbful they can make a swift transition like China can.

If the US government would allow Chinese EV car makers to enter the market without friction, the price of EVs in the US would drop rapidly. But I think the anti-China smearing campaign and protectionist policies do a good job of preventing that.

This. VW has to sell their EVs at 16 - 17K to compete in China, they sell the same for more than 2x in other markets.

Charging doesn't mean infrastructure like roads, bridges. If there is a building, it already has electricity. Running a cable from the building to parking lot (10s of feet) is not really that complicated. Also most countries are on 220V/240V standard, a regular outlet works perfectly fine.

> Prices of EVs in china are much lower

In Germany new Tesla Model 3 is cheaper than any comparable (275 HP, multimedia, cruise control, full size) ICE car.

Still far more expensive than any electric car including the same Tesla model in China.

4. Electric energy is price capped in China.

The electricity price isn't the issue, over 10 years EVs are cheaper to run than ICE vehicles anywhere in the world. The problem is the upfront cost, it doesn't matter if it's cheaper in the long run if you can't afford it now.

Horses are also not completely gone, but that's besides the point.

Also Norway is one of the countries with the largest shares of EVs, so I don't think the cold really is a problem. (I'm well aware that there are places in the continental US, Canada and Russia which get a lot colder than Norway. Maybe EVs struggle there, but hardly any one lives there in the great scheme of things.)

Horses still exist now too :)

(they also had emission problems, but were somewhat self-driving)

> There are many places in the world where batteries don’t work well due to the cold or lack of electricity.

Like Norway? Norway has 90% EV sales.

To be fair, Norway is an extremely wealthy country with a small population that got rich off of oil.

The better example is China.

20 years from what to what ? Two cherry picked dates by a science pop star on a YouTube short with that default "big fact background music" during an interview by Joe Looney Rogan

Electric cars predates ICE cars so you're already far off.

And even if you starts at "modern" electric cars that was in the last part of the 90s, more than 20years ago already.

Gas over horse was a huge upgrade than EV over gas. I don't know will it faster.

Have you ever driven a Tesla dual motor (or greater)? It is pretty crazy having better acceleration than most sports cars while basically driving an egg. Definitely a larger jump in performance from ICE to EV than between any two gas cars I’ve ever driven.

Most people don't care since performance offers no more utility.

I find it much easier to change lanes in traffic and make left turns in traffic because a narrower window is required when the acceleration is higher and easier to control. Short on-ramps are easier to deal with. Braking is much smoother also. I suspect you have not actually driven one?

I have but I also daily drive a 330hp car. The only thing striking about the Tesla is the torque that is instant I don't have to down shift to hunt for power

Anyway that isn't utility. A slower car can still change lanes etc.

You can launch EV faster, but your average travelling speed on a highway is much slower than ICE, because from my experience every 2 hours of driving around 130km/h I need to be attached for 1 hour to a charger.

Given how quickly air resistance scales with speed you might actually get to your destination faster if you drive slower just from needing to recharge less.

No, the optimal speed for efficiency is around 60mph.

When it comes to performance, both ICE and E cars are way above "good enough" though (e.g. the difference between a horse and ca 1920's car is much bigger than the difference between any modern ICE and E car). Fastest way to move the needle is to make E cars cheaper to buy and own than an ICE car I'd guess (now I actually wonder how expensive a Ford Model T vs a horse was, both to buy and in maintenance).

you only needed to work 3 weeks or 3 months to afford a model T on the average wage back then.

Considering the average age of the car fleet in the US and Europe is around 12 years - that seems like a decent estimate.

Obviously there are many cars older than 12 years old on the road, but 80-90% of cars switching to electric within 10-15 years is not unrealistic if new sales are already 17% (and growing).

If you own a house there is no reason not to own EV. It is so much better to plug it in for a night every week or so instead of going to a smelly gas station. Imagine you had to go to a “gas station” for your phone charging.

I own a 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid. It is cheaper to drive than an electric (less than ten cents a mile) and cost of ownership is much, much less. Also, not everyone who owns a house has a garage.

Does 10c/mi account for replacing the battery every 150k miles?

interestingly, the accord hybrid gets around 47 mpg. only about 11mpg more than the gas version.

With Hybrids it gets pretty tricky, because the highway economy is about the same as an ICE car while the city economy is much better. Just looking at the combined fuel usage doesn't help much.

If you live in a city and do mostly city driving then hybrids are worth it, if you do mostly highway driving then they're a waste of money.

I mean, I feel like not having the capital is a good reason. It's hard to find affordable EVs. The used market, while less crazy than it was, is still not great for EVs, st least in my area.

Im a huge fan of EVs, though, and if I owned a car it would be an EV.

>I mean, I feel like not having the capital is a good reason.

Almost nobody has the capital to buy a new car, they are mostly financed.

It's still an expensive vehicle either way, my total avg car maintenance cost + fuel is about $120/month, an EV is just far too expensive to think about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com