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Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

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Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#121

Post by Xylakant »

mantas wrote: post #117
Thlom wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand,car ownership in dense urban areas shouldn't be the norm. The future is also in active transport (walking, cycling) and transit, not only electric cars.

So if you want a car for hobbies (e.g. getting to backcountry) or transporting your kids around, you shouldn't live in an urban area?

There's no reason you can't have a car in an urban area, but we should work towards a transport model that doesn't require you to own one. Public transport in combination with cycling for short distances plus a solid carsharing infrastructure should be sufficient for a large chunk of the population. Even removing 30% of the cars from the streets would go a long way to improve the situation.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#122

Post by garrettheaver »

gambiting wrote: post #106
garrettheaver wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really agree I'm sorry to say. It kinda makes assumptions about charge rates, charge locations (home, work, car parks) or even the means by which cars are "refilled". https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H5V0vL3nnHY

Sure, but we are having a conversation about whether it's possible that electric cars will have 35% market share by 2025. Considering that apart from a few first-world countries(and even then, only in big cities) there is very little infrastructure to fully support a large fleet of electric vehicles, and the battery swapping technology is not available anywhere apart from a couple tesla testing stations, I don't thin…

I understand the skeptical point of view and its fair enough, we'll all just have to wait and see how this all plays out. I'm more optimistic bearing in mind that nine years ago the electric car industry barely even existed and its ramping up at an astonishing pace over the last three years.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#123

Post by kamjam »

mantas wrote: post #117
Thlom wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand,car ownership in dense urban areas shouldn't be the norm. The future is also in active transport (walking, cycling) and transit, not only electric cars.

So if you want a car for hobbies (e.g. getting to backcountry) or transporting your kids around, you shouldn't live in an urban area?

When I was living in Montreal for a couple of years I signed up to a community car share scheme. No insurance, no maintenance, no road taxes so it worked out cheaper to "rent a car" just when I needed it: https://www.communauto.com/index_en.html

With a good, cheap, reliable public transport system with this as backup I could easily get rid of my car if I lived in an urban area but still needed to get around at the weekends.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#124

Post by arethuza »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #118
verytrivial wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see people liking that. Charging at home works because you can sleep while it happens. Road side charging takes time away from some other part of your waking day. Wikipedia is saying 40 minutes for an 80% super charge for a Tesla. That's a sizable chunk of time to be loitering at some random location.

I think it would work fine. Parking meters exist for a reason - a lot of people park their cars on the street and go do whatever they came to do. You could upgrade the meters to also support payment for charging.

Installing roadside charging points is the only approach that I can see working for inner cities - maybe create "charging only" zones where you can only park and charge cars - parking a normal car there getting a ticket.

NB I live in central Edinburgh in a flat and there is no way we could have an electric car without some changes to the parking/charging infrastructure.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#125

Post by avar »

ZeKK14 wrote: post #101
calgoo wrote: post #97

What about making the battery packs "hot swappable". You pull into the station, the current pack is unloaded and a new one is loaded. I It can also have interesting effects on the battery upgrade you need to do every X amount of years. The packs could be owned by the gas station chain, so you can stop at any of their establishments and get a new one refiled. These battery pack charging stations could then also be use…

The french car maker Renault tried this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Fluence_Z.E . ( It didn't work.

Just escape the .: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Fluence_Z%2EE%2E

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#126

Post by JoeAltmaier »

kamjam wrote: post #123
mantas wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you want a car for hobbies (e.g. getting to backcountry) or transporting your kids around, you shouldn't live in an urban area?

When I was living in Montreal for a couple of years I signed up to a community car share scheme. No insurance, no maintenance, no road taxes so it worked out cheaper to "rent a car" just when I needed it: https://www.communauto.com/index_en.html With a good, cheap, reliable public transport system with this as backup I could easily get rid of my car if I lived in an urban area but still needed to get around at the we…

That's what I don't get about 'car sharing'. Everybody wants the car on the weekend. If the service has to have enough cars for everybody, what's the difference between that and leasing/owning? It doesn't save on cars that's for sure.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#127

Post by amelius »

sunstone wrote: post #76

Interesting article but the timelines seem way to conservative to me. For example if batteries continue to improve over the next four years as they have over the past four years, according to the article then in 2020 the batteries will weight 1500 lbs, travel 1142 miles on a charge and cost about $10k. (Or a 500 mile battery for $5k) And the cost of electricity will be, at today's rates, $1 per "e-gallon" Who wouldn'…

> if batteries continue to improve over the next four years as they have over the past four years

If CPUs had improved similarly, we would now have machines running at 100GHz. Just saying that extrapolating technology is a tricky business.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#128

Post by detaro »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #126
kamjam wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was living in Montreal for a couple of years I signed up to a community car share scheme. No insurance, no maintenance, no road taxes so it worked out cheaper to "rent a car" just when I needed it: https://www.communauto.com/index_en.html With a good, cheap, reliable public transport system with this as backup I could easily get rid of my car if I lived in an urban area but still needed to get around at the we…

That's what I don't get about 'car sharing'. Everybody wants the car on the weekend. If the service has to have enough cars for everybody, what's the difference between that and leasing/owning? It doesn't save on cars that's for sure.

Do you really want a car every day of most weekends? What for?

(I suspect the "good, cheap, reliable public transport" thing the parent mentioned is important)

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#129

Post by tirant »

mantas wrote: post #117
Thlom wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand,car ownership in dense urban areas shouldn't be the norm. The future is also in active transport (walking, cycling) and transit, not only electric cars.

So if you want a car for hobbies (e.g. getting to backcountry) or transporting your kids around, you shouldn't live in an urban area?

If you only use it a couple of times a month, it would be cheaper to rent one than to own one.

Re: Electric cars are no longer held back by crappy, expensive batteries

#130

Post by skrause »

dooptroop wrote: post #108
skrause wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live (in a dense German city) there wouldn't even be space at the roadside to install charging points; even the street lights are attachted to the houses because there was no space left. I have the same situation at work, so personally have a difficult time imagining to own an electric car anytime soon.

Where do the normal cars park?

Here is an example of such a street: https://www.google.de/maps/@51.2310008,7.0720156,3a,75y,127....

You bascially park your car somewhere half on the street, half on the curb. The sidewalk is just wide enough for people to walk there.

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