How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#131

Post by rhino369 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #14

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…

You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas. No, it isn't going to be overnight, but lik…

>You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas.

If anything the move towards electric car adoption will make gasoline less expensive. Oil isn't running out anytime soon. We already have the distribution and refinement infrastructure. Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries will want to sell the oil they have before the market disappears.

Maybe in 100 years when gas cars go extinct, gasoline would be expensive. But for the time being, it's not going to massively jump in price.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#132

Post by frankus » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

It may seem like a minor nitpick, but the title should be "How Cheap Can Electric Cars Get?".

It's a bit like equating "Digital Camera" with "DSLR", and ignoring camera phones as a source of disruption.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#133

Post by Animats » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

Auto internal combustion engines aren't that expensive to make. A base Ford engine cost about $100 to make in the 1980s. Today's cars have more cost in the electronics than in the powertrain.

The Tata Nano, the world's cheapest car, originally cost about $1500. But Tata discovered that the versions with more features sold better. It also flunked even basic crash tests.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#134

Post by tomtang0514 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

knz wrote: post #108

S_A_P wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand your point that modern vehicles are relatively safe, but after seeing the result of a semi truck taking out a pickup truck on the Interstate yesterday I am seriously considering my choice to drive a compact vehicle. I assume larger vehicles have larger/longer crumple zones compared to compact vehicles and that higher vehicles have less chance of going under other vehicles? Of course it's zero sum if ever…

I agree your point. larger cars have great advantage in a crash due to crumple zones. And even though some compact cars has great crash test result, it doesn't mean they're safe enough to survive a highway crash since most if not all crash tests are done under 50mph.

BTW, just a reminder that pickup trucks are body-on-frame structure which is design for more towing capacity. Unibody structure on most modern cars and SUV's are safer in general. If you check this list http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List you'll see pickup is worse than even compact cars in crash test.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#135

Post by Retric » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:36 PM UTC

tomtang0514 wrote: post #130

Retric wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your driving in a city and never break 45mph then overall risks change significantly. I drive a relatively small car for the US, and it's about the minimum I would consider safe at 70MPH. But, if you are spending 98% of your time in the city then simply renting a larger car becomes very viable. You can rent a mid size SUV at ~600$ per week and for a longer vacation you can upsize for minimal cost. Further, if your…

FYI, the IIHS small overlap frontal test, which I personally consider as the "hardest" test today, is done at 40mph. By that saying, a crash in the city can be worse than the test result. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurance_Institute_for_Highwa...

You can have a partial overlap at 40MPH or 70MPH, the second is much more difficult to survive.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#136

Post by rhino369 » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #3

kozak wrote: post #2

So, can an electric car (not counting the cost of the battery) be realistically cheaper than a gasoline one within the next 5-10 years? I know that the number of moving parts is smaller, but these parts that are there are kind of higher tech.

The battery costs are all that prevent electric cars from being cheaper.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#137

Post by blisterpeanuts » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

nathan_long wrote: post #56

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once, I was driving about 65mph on a state highway and a car pulled out of a farm road right in front of me. I had one or two seconds to react and swerve around them. They were probably going 10mph when I passed them. I was driving a Toyota Camry. If I'd been driving a large truck, I probably couldn't have avoided the crash. When I buy a car, I want to know both how likely it is that I can avoid a crash (manueverabil…

How would your reflexes have helped in my scenario, when you are T-boned (i.e., hit from the side) by a speeding motorist running a light?

Maybe you have extraordinary reflexes and could have accelerated out of the way, or slammed on the brakes, but the average driver? I think not. I'd like to have some serious steel and crumple zone between me and that motorist under those circumstances, and the tiny little electric buggy is probably not going to have the same amount of protection as a large SUV.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#138

Post by kleiba » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #87

madaxe_again wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas. No, it isn't going to be overnight, but lik…

Gotta call BS. Gas in my area is currently $2/gal. I think it's highly unlikely to go up "orders of magnitude" in a short timescale, unless you're intentionally using weasel words. There's plenty of oil around, wells are being capped due to oversupply/drop in demand.

Lucky you -- where I live, gas is currently $5.48/gal and that's on the cheap end.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#139

Post by philovivero » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

greedo wrote: post #87

madaxe_again wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas. No, it isn't going to be overnight, but lik…

Gotta call BS. Gas in my area is currently $2/gal. I think it's highly unlikely to go up "orders of magnitude" in a short timescale, unless you're intentionally using weasel words. There's plenty of oil around, wells are being capped due to oversupply/drop in demand.

I think the "orders of magnitude" phrase was a misunderstanding of exactly how large an order of magnitude is. Probably meant "an order of magnitude."

I could see gas jumping to $20/gal pretty quickly if things go wrong in the right way.

Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?

#140

Post by blisterpeanuts » Thu, Apr 28, 2016, 6:55 PM UTC

WJW wrote: post #50

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Larger vehicles have larger crumple zones and more steel all around. Are you saying larger vehicles are no safer than smaller ones? This runs counter to decades of conventional wisdom based on thousands of crash tests. See Edmunds, Consumer Reports, and other reputable organizations for corroboration of this.