Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 460 posts

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#301

Post by sangnoir »

ams6110 wrote: post #297
sathackr wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great comment! Currently utilities buy power during peak times from other utilities, or fire up expensive peaker generators to manage the load. A network of charging cars could be managed as another resource with a price attached to it that may be cheaper than the alternatives. I like the concept of varying the price of the charge based on your participation in the network. At least in Florida, USA, most residential…

This sounds great and sensible in a hand-wavy way, but getting the technology in place to effectively use plugged-in EVs for extra peak load capacity will take a long time. This sort of thing was never thought about in grid design engineering until very recently. Also think about when peak demand happens -- late afternoon on hot summer days. Right at the time when people are getting home, with their EVs discharged (o…

> Also think about when peak demand happens -- late afternoon on hot summer days. Right at the time when people are getting home, with their EVs discharged (or at least, not at full capacity) after a day's use.

Not completely discharged - the little available per car will add up to a lot when there are a lot of EVs. The EV owners who decide to sell to the grid at peak hours (at higher prices) might make a profit doing so.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#302

Post by okreallywtf »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #250
jokoon wrote: post #84

Once global warming becomes a real problem and the politics are driving laws to be enacted towards using electric vehicles, the situation will change pretty quickly. I'm sure governments could sink a lot of money into battery research if the situation would make it so. Although I've read in several places that once global warming is engaged, you cannot reverse it because of stuff like melting methane ice spots in the…

> Although I've read in several places that once global warming is engaged, you cannot reverse it because of stuff like melting methane ice spots in the tundra. I'm fairly confident that point of no return has already been passed. Permafrost has stared to melt a while ago, causing bacteria to take hold of things they couldn't for x amount of years, catching up on releasing co2 and such that would otherwise have been…

Note: this doesn't mean despair and do nothing. I'm not saying this is what you mean't, just feel like we need to point that out because despair is very counterproductive. Also, this doesn't mean that climate mitigation is the only choice either, it is still cheaper to "diet" than it is to "exercise" to use a weight loss analogy. Lowering CO2 emissions is still going to slow climate change and hopefully give us time to come up with other mitigation strategies.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#303

Post by okreallywtf »

digitalshankar wrote: post #279

The most important thing to happen is to figure out a way to reduce the pollution from the petroleum powered vehicles, especially exhaust gases. This will ensure smooth move towards Electric vehicles.

How? Did you mean to say tax pollution from petroleum powered vehicles?

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#304

Post by kurthr »

kozak wrote: post #256
mschuster91 wrote: post #213

Biggest problem I guess will be expanding the charger network, simply due to physics. On the country side, laying cables for 1MW peak load (4 superchargers @ 250 kW) will be expensive - the grid in rural areas is enough for some farms and small villages, that's it. In cities, electric-car chargers will have to deal with political obstacles (no one wants to sacrifice free-for-all parking spots!), in addition to the el…

If charging happens at the place where the car spends most of its time, then even domestic 16A/230V sockets would be enough for typical usage (for atypical usage, there are superchargers).

Exactly, charging is greater than 10mph at 16A (typical dryer load). If you drive 40mi (1hr commute?) each way and only charge at home, you can charge in the 8 hours between 11pm and 7am.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#305

Post by coding123 »

GuB-42 wrote: post #284
hermenaut wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the next 50 years if solar roofs take off ( https://www.tesla.com/solarroof ) I don't see it being that much of a problem on the country side. We probably won't need to rebuild the entire grid, may be able to leave some part of the grid behind. May even be cheaper to do so with savings compared to the alternative options

Solar roofs are just fancy solar panels. And they wont help it there is no sun. There are two ways of making sure you still get power when there is no sun for your panels: storing power locally and using the grid. For storage, you can have enough batteries to deal with the day-night cycle, but a week of overcast weather in the winter is likely to be prohibitively expensive. It means that the grid is necessary, and it…

There's also wind when these winter storms roll through :). I've found out personally that people can also adapt to new situations such as less availability of electricity.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#306

Post by deelowe »

enraged_camel wrote: post #289
jdietrich wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric cars have the potential to be a key part of the solution to load management on a fully renewable grid. The vast majority of people will usually charge overnight and don't need to regularly charge at peak times. Through intelligent charger management, you can distribute the load of charging across the entire off-peak period. The UX for this can be fairly straightforward - by default you charge at the cheapest…

I was talking to a professor of electrical engineering who performs research on the electric grid. She said that while in theory it is possible to configure cars to charge themselves when electricity is cheapest, currently residential utility plans don’t adjust pricing based on time of day. Your electricity bill’s tiers are based on your total consumption. Edit: lol, I get downvoted for relaying what a professor of E…

This professor has no idea what they're talking about. Every energy supplier I know of in my area offers an off peak discount specifically tailored to electric vehicles.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#307

Post by mschuster91 »

deelowe wrote: post #306
enraged_camel wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to a professor of electrical engineering who performs research on the electric grid. She said that while in theory it is possible to configure cars to charge themselves when electricity is cheapest, currently residential utility plans don’t adjust pricing based on time of day. Your electricity bill’s tiers are based on your total consumption. Edit: lol, I get downvoted for relaying what a professor of E…

This professor has no idea what they're talking about. Every energy supplier I know of in my area offers an off peak discount specifically tailored to electric vehicles.

That depends on the country. In Germany the only discounts I know are for people using electric central heaters which heat up over night (Nachtspeicherofen).

Something as modern as time-variable tariffs... not gonna happen soon here.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#308

Post by coredog64 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #188
tomxor wrote: post #151

Price? (for normal people) Yes there are EVs cheaper than teslas at a comparable price to ICE cars, but they don't seem to have comparable performance and utility. I can't make an economically minded decision to buy an EV today unless i'm an EV enthusiast or I have lots of money to spend on luxury. (That was Elon Musks whole point of Tesla in the first place, but the market doesn't seem to have substantially shifted…

The general prediction is for the total-cost-of-ownership to be lower in the next few years, and for the upfront price to be lower a few years after that. Governments and corporations are making plans based on those assumptions. I've not heard anyone credibly argue against it, though there may be quibbles about the exact timing. (And of course, there's geographical variation based on gas prices, government policy, av…

I've been watching the used Tesla market, and it would appear that the reduced TCO is already priced into cars in that market. They're very close to the new car price.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#309

Post by mschuster91 »

kurthr wrote: post #304
kozak wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If charging happens at the place where the car spends most of its time, then even domestic 16A/230V sockets would be enough for typical usage (for atypical usage, there are superchargers).

Exactly, charging is greater than 10mph at 16A (typical dryer load). If you drive 40mi (1hr commute?) each way and only charge at home, you can charge in the 8 hours between 11pm and 7am.

Yeah but the load peak when everyone arrives home/at work is what's dangerous for the grid. Even 10k cars at only 10 kW of charging power are a peak load of 100 MW. 100k cars are 1GW - which means the city of Munich with 700k cars has a load potential of 7GW at the minimum.

Either we get a grid that's intelligent enough to balance stuff out or the grid has to be built out with massive reserves, and that's everything but not cheap.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#310

Post by mschuster91 »

ams6110 wrote: post #293
anovikov wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that replacement doesn't need to happen quickly, cars won't get replaced sooner well... than the cars are replaced, which is, about once in 15 years. Even if market share of electric cars in dealerships is 100%. So grid requirements will evolve slowly through about 2050, not overnight - which is hardly faster than its normal renewal rate.

In my neighborhood there has been no electrical grid upgrade (other than repairs) since the 1960s (when the subdivision was built). I think your 15 year timeline for normal grid renewal is wildly optimistic at least for most established suburban areas. Also few people keep their cars for 15 years. I think 5-7 years is much more normal (though perhaps you meant the total life of the car, from original owner to the las…

> I think 5-7 years is much more normal

Given the trend (in Germany) to crack down on ICE cars, you're looking at a way shorter timeframe. Once the first court OKs ICE bans, stuff is going to get nasty.

Post reply on HN