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How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

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Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#41

Post by tim333 »

arethuza wrote: post #37
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its pretty much assumed the rate of accident is proportional to the driving miles. Does that comment mean, because of the limited range, electric vehicles have smaller exposure to accident risk? I guess a bicycle would do even better then.

What I meant was that discussions of vehicle safety always seem to start with assuming you are in an accident - what if some kinds of vehicles are more or less likely to be in accidents (all other things being equal). NB I have no idea what the answer is and I've driven everything from large(ish) SUVs to the old style minis.

Small electrical vehicles like that are going to be used mostly in slow moving urban environments and your chances of being killed are massively affected by impact speed so probably quite low.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#42

Post by JoeAltmaier »

tim333 wrote: post #41
arethuza wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I meant was that discussions of vehicle safety always seem to start with assuming you are in an accident - what if some kinds of vehicles are more or less likely to be in accidents (all other things being equal). NB I have no idea what the answer is and I've driven everything from large(ish) SUVs to the old style minis.

Small electrical vehicles like that are going to be used mostly in slow moving urban environments and your chances of being killed are massively affected by impact speed so probably quite low.

Yet traditionally most accidents occur quite close to home. So they will be in many more accidents? Its the severity-probability product S(a)*P(a) that yields the 'suffering coefficient'

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#43

Post by S_A_P »

pmontra wrote: post #13

A car sharing service in Milan, Italy, is using small two seater electric cars from China. Prompted by this article I finally investigated and found them at http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-eec-l7e-80-elect... They're quoted with a maximum price of $8000. They're definitely made for driving inside a city. Not very good suspensions (don't drive too fast on cobble stones) but good torque (easily beats a gas…

I feel like the size = safety is fallacious. Size can equal safety, but its not a guarantee. Sure I would not want to get hit by a 3 ton lifted SUV with ranch style bumpers on it. I would feel that way even if what I were driving was a 3 ton suv with the same bumpers. There was an NHTSA video a few years back of a modern chevy impala hitting a 1959 impala and the much larger 59 getting demolished, while the new one had much more survivable damage. Safety cages, and metallurgy have made cars much safer, even small ones. I drive a mid sized sedan, and feel that I have a pretty reasonable chance of surviving a crash so long as I am not hit by a vehicle that is so tall the bumper goes through my windows and doesn't hit any significant metal surface of my car.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#44

Post by mikeash »

forgetsusername wrote: post #19
perbu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overestimating the battery capacity loss. There is a Dutch study which concludes the following: Based on 84 data points from the 85-kWh version of the Model S and six from 60-kWh cars, the study concludes that the Model S will retain about 94 percent of its capacity after 50,000 miles, with losses thereafter shrinking to about 1 percent per 30,000 miles. That means that after 100,000 miles, the typical…

> There is a Dutch study which concludes the following You should probably link to the study. > 3 and 6 years is probably not very factual. 3 years might be early, but I have a hard time believing that Tesla has hit on some magic as far as batteries are concerned. The drain on anything I have at home is far more than what you state; my phone battery certainly isn't much good after 6 years.. But I have no idea. I gues…

It's a completely different scenario from your phone battery. Your phone battery gets charged to 100% every day (if you're like most people), gets discharged deeply on a regular basis, and has no thermal management. Tesla batteries are typically charged to 90% or less, with the 100% charge level being reserved for long trips, they're typically not using a particularly large fraction of the battery (most people don't drive 200+ miles every day), and there's a sophisticated thermal management system that keeps the batteries at the optimal temperature.

What kills lithium batteries is time, cycle count, heat, and extreme states of charge. A Tesla battery has a massive advantage on three out of those four compared to consumer electronics, which is why comparing to your phone or laptop isn't very informative.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#45

Post by tim333 »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #12

A cheap used economy car will still have the lowest cost per mile for a very long time.... When you factor purchase price into the equation gas vehicles win by a long ways since you need X years of EV economy cars on the market before you can get an X year old used EV. EV's will need to fill the same market segment as today's Chevy Aveos and Toyota Yarii (plural of Yaris?) for a decade or more before they're competit…

Dunno - you could get a used G Wiz. http://www.goingreen.co.uk/product/g-wiz-dc-midnight/

Costs almost nothing

Bit rubbish though

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#46

Post by madaxe_again »

05 wrote: post #29
madaxe_again wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because with EVs we will see the rise of autonomous vehicles - once you have a car that is run by a computer and powered by electricity, and self-driving tech is available and affordable, it becomes a no-brainer. Once autonomous vehicles become prevalent, traffic volume should drop, as we'll see less car ownership and more car use, meaning fewer cars parking, better traffic flow, etc. I believe the future of road tra…

> Once autonomous vehicles become prevalent, traffic volume should drop That's simply not true; not only will SDCs create 'empty miles' of 0-passenger cars, but they will make people more comfortable with longer commutes (you can sleep on the way to work now), and with average commute getting longer we'll get more passenger-miles. Sharing won't really pick up (except on the low end, displacing public transport) becau…

As I said, "more car use" - I.e. More passenger miles - but you can still paradoxically have less traffic volume, as journies become more efficient but more importantly as freight becomes more efficient.

Re: the personal space bit... Not so sure. Many of the "younger" generation spurn car ownership so have no sunk costs, no personal space to lose. For the rest, it's going to be a question of marginal utility - and the fact that many car owners will get a train preferably where possible suggests that there is a case for non-ownership.

I mean, ten years ago your man on the street would have found it inconceivable that they would own no movies, no albums, that they'd just rent them - yet here we are.

Behaviour changes quickly when it starts, but slowly enough that you don't notice the change until after the event.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#47

Post by [deleted] »

S_A_P wrote: post #43
pmontra wrote: post #13

A car sharing service in Milan, Italy, is using small two seater electric cars from China. Prompted by this article I finally investigated and found them at http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-eec-l7e-80-elect... They're quoted with a maximum price of $8000. They're definitely made for driving inside a city. Not very good suspensions (don't drive too fast on cobble stones) but good torque (easily beats a gas…

I feel like the size = safety is fallacious. Size can equal safety, but its not a guarantee. Sure I would not want to get hit by a 3 ton lifted SUV with ranch style bumpers on it. I would feel that way even if what I were driving was a 3 ton suv with the same bumpers. There was an NHTSA video a few years back of a modern chevy impala hitting a 1959 impala and the much larger 59 getting demolished, while the new one h…

[deleted]

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#48

Post by [deleted] »

pessimizer wrote: post #36
madaxe_again wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orders of magnitude doesn't mean 1000x - just 10x is enough. As to fracking - the wheels have already fallen off, low oil prices forced a production hiatus, stop/start is inefficient and costly, and you need only look at the headlong rush in the UK that kinda petered out to get an idea of where fracking is going - nowhere. The fossil sector is in big, big trouble - this chaotic oscillator will not stop until the mark…

> Orders of magnitude doesn't mean 1000x - just 10x is enough. That's "order" of magnitude, not "orders."

[deleted]

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#49

Post by mark-r »

Such an interesting premise, such a flawed assumption...

An electric car shares most of its parts with a gas one, so you can't expect any savings from economies of scale there. Going back to the Model T for the cost curve is just laughable.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#50

Post by WJW »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #40
arethuza wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny..." Isn't the real test how likely you are to be injured/killed per mile driven? Larger vehicles like SUVs might be safer if you are in an accident but that could be offset if they are more likely to actually be in an accident.

No, the real test is how survivable the vehicle is in a collision. Probability of suffering an accident is a separate discussion. If your family is T-boned in an intersection by a drunk driver who ran a red light, are you going to say, "Well, at least the odds of that happening were very small, since she rarely drives!" No, you're going to be dealing with serious injuries or possibly deaths and you're going to be say…

I'd prefer that they would have been not hit at all, which a more maneuverable vehicle with a shorter stopping distance might help with.

Also, the probability I'm interested in is not the survivability in an accident, it is the total survivability over my lifetime, discounted by some percentage for cost etcetera. In your argumentation, everybody should drive around in tanks on the off chance that somebody else might get drunk. In reality, nobody does that and tradeoffs are made. Have you ever tried driving in an old European city in an average (American) SUV? You literally would not fit in most parking spaces, let alone fit in some of the smaller streets.

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