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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

#381

Post by erikpukinskis »

ghaff wrote: post #341
civilitty wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

Is that something you’ve studied, or are you just guessing? You don’t think there are people with low incomes who budget aggressively?

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

ghaff wrote: post #341
civilitty wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by floatrock »

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…

Your prof has outdated information.

TOU (Time of Use) rates are becoming more and more common.

In 2019, TOU rates will be the default rate structure for new accounts in California. Many more states are following suite.

Even if they're not the default, tons of places have opt-in TOU structures. EV owners and home storage owners use this a lot.

Some states have even already adopted complicated shit only seen in C&I customers: demand charges. Basically, a portion of your bill will be dependent on your peak demand during a period (ie peak kW, not total kWh).

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

#384

Post by floatrock »

avs733 wrote: post #347
mschuster91 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

Have you thought of putting solar on your roof with storage to collect the extra energy you produce during the day and then dump it into your car at night?

Yeah, there are efficiency losses along the way, but two points: - More and more net metering tariffs are homeowner-buys-at-retail-pricing-grid-purchases-back-at-wholesale-pricing... the homeowner value of solar's excess energy is getting less - In a lot of cheaper EV purchases, the car company still owns the battery packs. This is for two reasons: 1) They sell you on a new battery pack when your range starts to decline after a few years, and 2) They're going to use the degraded batteries as second-life storage products... maybe not good enough to power your car, but more than plenty to provide a cheap powerwall alternative.

The points you bring up about mass charging is true, but once pricing starts to reflect that, that's going to make home storage far more economical (it already makes economic sense in some markets).

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

#385

Post by Retric »

mikestew wrote: post #375
Retric wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a weight perspective they still add range so it's not a bad idea. Further, being able to run some fans or even AC while in full sun is a significant benefit. Car companies are not adding panels because the benefit is not huge, they add complexity and cost, and panels negatively impact styling. Still, you see a lot of campers with solar panels on the roof because a few kwh/day of extra power really does add up ov…

Further, being able to run some fans or even AC while in full sun is a significant benefit. You’re going to need those fans with giant, black heat sinks on your roof. To the point that I wonder if the panels heat the car faster than fans can remove it. Still, you see a lot of campers with solar panels on the roof because a few kwh/day of extra power really does add up over time. You see a solar panel on our VW camper…

Solar panels convert sunlight to energy, this means they don't heat up as much as you might think. Further, painting the outside of a car black does not heat up the inside of a car as much as you might think. Most heat gain is from sunlight hitting the inside of the car converting to IR, and then being blocked by glass. Thus, painting the inside black is a larger issue.

A 120mm computer at full speed is ~6w and can move 75 cubic feet of air per minute. So, 20w worth of fans can quickly exchange a lot of air.

Anyway, 100W of panels is minimal if your using 20+% panels. You can get that from a 1.5 foot x 3 foot section, a camper can have 20 of those on the roof assuming your starting with mostly clear space.

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

#386

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #309
kurthr wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#387

Post by LinuxBender »

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…

Would it be feasible to put inductive chargers and battery banks under the parking spot, so that no wires are exposed and the spot could be used by non electric cars if required? Maybe a signal to/from the car to determine charge rates and negotiate power feeds? Or is that too much power to pass through a special thin layer of say, epoxy concrete? Seems like a good place to have a battery box, to protect it from heat/rain/lightning.

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

#388

Post by icc97 »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #325
icc97 wrote: post #324

One of the eye openers for me in this was the average ranges, 475 miles vs 190. ICE cars have 2.5x the range of electric cars. I always assumed it was much more e.g. 800 miles vs 100 miles. According to this graph [0] the price per kWh of batteries is halving every 5 years, so within ~6-7 years the range of electric cars will be equal to that of ICE cars. [0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/15/ev-battery-prices-lo…

Wrong metric. Its kWh / kg (not price) that matters for transportation. Until we get metal-air batteries that's not going to change much.

You're right that's better, but it doesn't completely invalidate my prediction, it just means I might be out a bit with the time. Battery kWh / kg is also improving too, I just don't know if it's at the same rate as price.

Its possible now with Teslas to buy the higher kWh batteries and they go further, so it's not like weight is the only factor. The new Tesla Roadster coming in 2020 [0] has a 620 mile range because it's basically a battery and little else.

So it depends on:

1. how much the extra weight/drag of a model 3 chassis would reduce the range 2. how much of the $200,000 price is down to the battery.

Then you are waiting until the price of the battery comes down.

[0]: https://www.tesla.com/roadster

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

#389

Post by qaq »

flexie wrote: post #376
qaq wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"First world city streets already have electricity supply" powering a light bulb in 100 street lights and having enough capacity to charge 100 electric cars are 2 totally different animals and will require significant infra. upgrades.

It’s the exact same cables that powers the thousands of light bulbs, hundreds of computers, AC, TV, fridges etc in the buildings next to the street

Yep and most of the cables are close to max capacity

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

#390

Post by GiorgioG »

The issue of energy portability is not an insignificant one IMO. I can carry 5 gallons (or 100-150 miles worth of range) of fuel fairly easily. Not so much with an electric vehicle.

What happens when I run out of juice on the side of the road? I don't care how many times the car warns me; that it shouldn't happen, etc. People still manage to run out of gas today. With an electric vehicle already hampered by half the range of an I.C.E. vehicle, it will happen even more often. If I drain my battery, I can no longer walk down to a gas station, fill up a 5 gallon container and be on my way.

"But that should never happen!" sure and people don't get stranded for hours in traffic in the middle of a winter storm. An I.C.E. vehicle can easily idle for a day non-stop on half a tank. Can an electric vehicle provide me with heat for 24 hours when it's -3F outside on half a charge?

Even when we reach range parity, the convenience and portability of gasoline will keep me buying I.C.E. vehicles until it is overwhelmingly superior.

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