I'm skeptical that we will ever see a day where there are as many electric cars on the road as there are ICE cars today. That's not because I think people won't buy electric cars, but because I think people won't buy cars in general. In the western world we are rapidly approaching "peak car". The number of cars on the road today is simply unsustainable. I would not be surprised if over the next few decades, more cars are taken off of the road entirely than are replaced with electric.
What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
401–410 of 460 posts
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
This gets mentioned a lot, but I think the point is really over stated. First, there's a huge amount of room for growth in electric vehicle adoption even if we assume that EVs are a non-starter for people who park on the street at night. The problem is worth solving, but we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption. Second, cars that are being used will generally spend a fair bit…
Let me put it this way, I looked at buying an Electric Car but I live in a house with no driveway so there is no way I can ever own one. I would never risk the idea of driving to a supermarket hoping there is a free charging port for my car, just in case there isn't any free - it's not like I can just queue up the car. It's a huge fundamental hurdle and one that until solved will stop me from ever buying an Electric…
> I would never risk the idea of driving to a supermarket hoping there is a free charging port for my car, just in case there isn't any free
Is the supermarket really the only place you don't park on the street? I realize at the present moment, it might be the only lot/garage you park in with a charger, but as EV adoption increases more public chargers will sprout up.
My point is that opportunistic charging while parked places people go already can meet the needs of at least some street parkers. I don't panic if there are no charging spots available when I park somewhere, because I'm not depending on any one single parking session to charge my car. I get a little charge here and a little there and in aggregate it meets my weekly charging needs (most of the time anyway, weeks with substantially higher mileage need special handling currently).
This is not to say it will necessarily meet your needs anytime soon; however, I think we are at a point where the relative price is the biggest hurdle to adoption. There's a lot of people for whom an EV would be practical with current infrastructure that don't have one. As more of those people buy them, there will be additional incentive to invest in public charging infrastructure. The more public charging infrastructure there is, the more practical EV ownership is for people who can't easily charge at home.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here (in Estonia) the pricing changes every full hour. We get pricing for the next day (24h) a day before by 14 (2 pm). This is calculated from weather forecast, expected consumption and available generation resources. This is for residential use. For industrial applications you can buy electrical energy from the grid based on 15 minute pricing slots. Almost all the houses are equiped with online readable power meter…
> In case of Germany and France one of the reasons why the systems have mot been upgraded lies in the privacy rules for the power consumption data according to one smart meter manufacturer. Not just that, in addition the smart meters cost a bunch of money to install... people don't like paying anything very much.
This.
Norway is going all-in on smart meters, installation has been rolled out this year to ~80% of the country, due to reach 100% next year. The total installation cost is estimated at around 2.5 billion USD for around 2.2 mill. houses, i.e $1000 per house. Which of course we as consumers will be paying for through higher electricity prices.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#404The 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…
This may sound like a joke but I think it might work - would carrying a pedal/hand generator resolve emergency like this, at least for a little while?
For all that is holy, carry a small gas generator instead. The same way people today carry a small extra battery for their ICE cars.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every EV owner in my area seems to also own a gas car too. My landlord commutes in an EV but his wife has a normal suv for all the kid stuff. (Im in BC where long higheay trips are very much the norm.) EVs are fine if you can afford to keep a second vehicle to cover all the things they cannot do.
BC is a bit of an exception because of the low density. In a higher density area, you can count on public transit to take you long distances and use the electric car to make up the difference. One of the benefits of going full electric would be smog reduction. Again, BC doesn't really have a smog problem because of low density, but somewhere like Toronto or LA would benefit hugely from not having gas and diesel vehic…
BC's density is both low and high. For the entire population, it is very low. But if you start with something like 80% of the population, that lives in two or three tiny places, basically the GVRD, Victoria and Kamloops. The BC population is best described as being very dense but surrounded by vast areas of emptiness. Draw a line from West Vancouver (one of canada's most expensive suburbs) to alaska. You will cross only two roads. Dense urban city, a small fence, then thousands of miles of nothing.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#406The 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…
This may sound like a joke but I think it might work - would carrying a pedal/hand generator resolve emergency like this, at least for a little while?
Ehhhh. I doubt it. I looked up and a typical hand crank is 10 watt. That won't be any good. That wouldn't power a laptop. I found a decent pedal generator that says it can output 400 watt. My car uses around 330 wH to go a mile, so if you charged at 400 watt for an hour, you would get slightly more than a mile of range (assuming no efficiency loses). Pedaling for an hour to go one mile doesn't sound like fun to me.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#407Earlier quoted context omitted.
This gets mentioned a lot, but I think the point is really over stated. First, there's a huge amount of room for growth in electric vehicle adoption even if we assume that EVs are a non-starter for people who park on the street at night. The problem is worth solving, but we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption. Second, cars that are being used will generally spend a fair bit…
> we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world") > We don't drive especially far in a typical week This is a good point, EV range is already long enough that many urban drivers will not need to charge every day. > For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at f…
> Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world")
I'm not sure "taking over the world" is necessarily equivalent with universal adoption. Getting to a substantial majority of new car sales (currently only around 1% in the US) would qualify in my mind.
> Tricks like going to that one Whole Foods store that has the fast chargers won't work when a significant % of cars are EVs, there simply will need to be a lot more public chargers
Increased EV adoption will incentivize more investment in EV chargers. The chargers at businesses like Whole Foods are being installed with private capital because they think it makes business sense. More EVs means more demand for public chargers which will in turn justify increased investment in those chargers.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#408The lithium may not be that much of a problem if existing aged batteries can have the lithium in them recycled.
Its not the Lithium that is a problem. Its the Colbolt-59 that's next to it. A typical Tesla has about 15 pounds of Colbolt-59. If a small tactical weapon would be used near the location of a single parked Tesla, the Colbolt-59 will transmute to Colbolt-60, the deadlist substance known to earth. 15 pounds of Colbolt-60 is enough to kill 24 million people. Imagine a parking lot of them. 4 tons of it is enough to annih…
And how many mega-tons of that deadly heavy metal known as Lead is out there in cars now.
So you claim is we should worry about a possible future nuclear bomb going off while not bothering the dangerous metal already out there.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#409The 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…
This may sound like a joke but I think it might work - would carrying a pedal/hand generator resolve emergency like this, at least for a little while?
Just add removable floorboards so you can Flintstone it.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#410The 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…
In addition to fuel being portable, storage is important too. I can store extra fuel. When the power is out and the gas station can't pump - I don't care, I have a backup. I can put it in my truck, generator, etc.
You can't do that with a spare battery?