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What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

nytimes.com

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

#341

Post by ghaff »

civilitty wrote: post #316
tomxor wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes i agree, it's all timing. My comment is in response to the current state of the EV market. > 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. I think upfront price is more important than most people think. The problem with the "total cost of ownership" argument is it ignores the fact that money now is worth f…

This fact is very easy to forget for most of us here, given the salaries in tech. When you're working multiple jobs or are underemployed and trying to support a family, each dollar is some suffering you can alleviate or a problem you can solve now and that is much more important than long term investment. You can't invest if you can't even guarantee that you can feed yourself for long enough to benefit from it.

People scraping together a few thousand dollars to buy a beater ICE so they can get to work are not doing TCO analyses.

It's also a pretty open question what the cost of EVs looks like long-term. Even if we limit the discussion to new vehicles, you can buy a new ICE econobox for close to $15K which could last you 10 years and 150K miles fairly easily. I sure wouldn't bet on an electric car doing that on its original battery pack.

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

#342

Post by mikestew »

ajuc wrote: post #326
mikestew wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, why not just put the solar cells on the car and do away with the batteries Because you might squeeze 200W worth of panels up there at best. On a sunny day you’ll get about 4 extra miles at the end of your workday. And now you can’t drive home with the sunroof open on that sunny day.

Sorry, I meant do away with the batteries at the charging station, not the batteries in the car.

I was more pointing out that with current panels, putting panels on the car isn’t a good idea.

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

#343

Post by cr0sh »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #201
wojt_eu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already feel nostalgic about gas-powered cars, their place is alongside steam locomotives as movie props and tourist attractions. Imagine people doing gas-punk cosplay in a couple of decades.

I bought a couple 1980s Saab 900 turbos to restore. After driving my Volt for months just the act of turning a key and hearing an engine roar feels anachronistic, very retro. I think a small number of ICE cars will stick around as a kind of hobby classic experience. A small minority of people will want the experience of having dinosaur juice explode in front of their feet just like some people like to use Super 8 cam…

Until there's a real breakthrough in battery technology, where you'll always likely see ICE being used will be the off-road community.

There is just no battery technology that will allow you run for more than 50-60 miles on a charge, especially when you have a lifted vehicle on 35+" off-road tires, in dirt, rocks, mountainous terrain (with water, snow, ice, mud, you name it).

There won't be charging stations out there, either. Heck, if you aren't trailering your rig to the trail, it's usually much more than 50 miles just to get to the start of the fun.

The thing is, though, if the battery tech were there, I'm sure that a chunk of the off-road community would be on top of it, given the advantages of electric drivetrains and such. But the batteries have to get a lot better than they are currently in today's electric cars; when we see cars able to go 500+ miles on a charge, and to be able to be recharged in under 10 minutes - that's about when off-roaders will jump on it en-masse.

Plus - there has to be ways to recharge out "in the bush" - and solar panels won't cover it (except in a dire emergency I suppose - recharging for days); off-roaders typically carry several gallons of extra fuel with them (jerry cans or otherwise) - for emergency use for whatever reason.

I'm not suggesting that electric cars won't be a thing for the masses because of off-road needs; just that off-road needs won't allow for electrics any time soon, unless there is a breakthrough in battery tech. Until then, it will be ICE - or at best, hybrid technology.

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

#345

Post by Fuzzy_Logic »

ajuc wrote: post #285
Fuzzy_Logic wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the expensive infrastructure was put in place to allow electric car batteries to be used as a peak load reservoir, utilities would still need to maintain traditional on demand resources, such as natural gas fired power plants. Using a large number of cars is not dependable, utilities need on demand dependability. What happens if during peak consumption in the evening winter months more people stay out late (s…

> Using a large number of cars is not dependable It's just a matter of safety margins and probability. Traditional powerplants break too, and with enough cars the probability that enough of them wouldn't be available at once is smaller than the probability that enough powerplants break at once.

There is so much work and planning that goes on between the utilities and regulatory agencies to ensure we almost always have reliable electrical supply. Traditional plants have planned outages for regular maintenance, and they are constantly working to ensure there are enough backup systems and alternate routes to ensure there are not outages even during maintenance windows. The amount of cars and the amount of extra grid you would have to build to completely replace these traditional plants would be prohibitively expensive. It's not just a matter of plugging a few million cars into homes.

https://energy.gov/oe/services/technology-development/transm...

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

#346

Post by erikpukinskis »

mschuster91 wrote: post #224
fjsolwmv wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA installed Cable TV, why would charging cables be harder? The USA spends $500Billion on cars and $400 Billion on gasoline every year. A onetime $trillon upgrade isn't an outsize amount.

> The USA installed Cable TV, why would charging cables be harder? Because a TV coax cable is 1cm slim and can be installed very easily. Run it over the air on poles, dig it into a small trench, run it via the sewers. Whatever fits best. A 10 kV or, worse, a 1 kA-capable 3x230V line, not so much. The 10kV (or more) line has special requirements in terms of distance to other cables, a 3x230V line at that capability is…

As with all technological transitions, some municipalities will see the writing on the wall and invest. Others will not, and will see their local economy contract and young people flee.

“The grid to your home can’t even provide enough power to charge your car” becomes a decent reason not to move there.

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

#347

Post by avs733 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #234
davidgh wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of rural areas, this will be an interesting challenge. When you drive cross country in the USA, you can expect to find gasoline reasonably close to even the most remote areas. The distance to the next gas station from anywhere in the USA is well below the range of the typical car. However, in regards to cities, you are presenting a situation where the charging station comes to the parked car, rather than the…

> if the charging times are rapidly decreased Charging times have an upper bound: physics. 250 kW is an insane amount of power and still you'd need around half an hour to fill a 100 kWh battery, to get even close to the 5-10 minutes of charging like at a gas station you'd need megawatts of peak power... and as there are two steps of conversions involved (grid => HVDC => battery voltage), even with 99% efficiency you…

So this is not a perfect comparison but potentially a useful one.

Gasoline has about 33kWh per gallon. A typical gas pump is limited to 10 gal/min flow rate (lets say 8gpm just to be conservative).

That means your gas pump takes about a minute to dispense 250 kWh or 23 seconds to dispense 100kWh. That generates effectively no heat. To charge one electric vehicle at the equivalent rate (assuming it could tolerate it) would take a 15 megawatt power source per 'pump'.

Here is the size of a one megawatt AC to DC power substation:

"The complete ABB megawatt station weighs only 20 tons. At 50 m3, the container’s volume is some 15 percent smaller than equivalent solutions."

https://library.e.abb.com/public/52d148c3c4b02ded85257e4c004...

I own an EV (hybrid really, Volt, but I'm 85% electric). I support electric vehicles enormously. But this is a huge huge problem with scaling that no one talks about. My volt can charge, slowly, at 8 amps (~1kW) while I'm at home, a rate my home power can easily take. Most vehicles in the US are static for at least 8 hours once, if not twice, during the day. Using that time to charge slower is a stopgap but I really doubt that the US grid has the excess capacity for this.

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

#348

Post by rangersanger »

jdietrich wrote: post #242
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…

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…

A potential issue I see with this is the fact that some people need to get to and from work during hours that would prohibit them from charging at off-peak hours. Night-shift jobs tend to be on the lower end of the pay scale (though there may be a bonus for taking that awful shift compared to their day-time peers.) So there is an opportunity for some regressiveness in this scheme.

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

#349

Post by _greim_ »

audunw wrote: post #214
_greim_ wrote: post #15

> Drivers will have to shed their attachment to the sound, smell and feel of gas-powered engines. I for one will not feel the least bit sad when continuous, smooth acceleration becomes the norm, and lurchy, awkward automatic transmissions fade into distant memory. I'll probably feel slightly nostalgic about the sound and smell of fuel-burning cars someday, but it won't inform my buying choices in the slightest.

> I'll probably feel slightly nostalgic about the sound and smell of fuel-burning cars someday, but it won't inform my buying choices in the slightest. The sound can be pleasing, but the smell? I always thought gasoline smells and exhaust fumes smell awful. Maybe it's because I never owned an ICE vehicle myself. Fueling a car is a very unpleasant experience to me. It's part of the reason why, after my last road-trip,…

> but the smell?

Yes! Well admittedly, I have somewhat of a redneck past. [cue Ben Fold's Five music.] Having grown up in small-town Midwest and worked on Farms the smell of gasoline is linked to lots of boyhood memories and male-bonding experiences :)

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

#350

Post by rangersanger »

neild wrote: post #296
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 is not true. (It is for some plans and some locations, but not all.) I have a plan which charges significantly less during off peak hours.

Interesting (and probably by design) I had to opt out of such a plan when I signed up for "100% renewable energy" with my plan.
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