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

Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 450 posts

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#271

Post by bklaasen »

baxtr wrote: post #237
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

The one thing that is really different is that digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. That’s unfortunately where you’re analogy breaks down

The infrastructure for digital cameras to succeed was already in place.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#272

Post by jacquesm »

smileysteve wrote: post #239
perl4ever wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average car in the US is said to be older than 7 years, and ICE powered cars do not normally need a new engine at that point. Cars are usually scrapped at 14 years or more, I believe.

Anecdotally, a valve cover gasket, oil pan gasket, brake discs are going to be recommended on many cars after 7 years. There is already datab out there from high class rental companies that reduced maintenance from oil changes, brakes, and major repairs easily leaves room for new batteries.

Valve cover or oil pan gaskets are replaced when needed, not because some time has passed. Besides that they are a minor job both in cost and invasiveness compared to replacing a battery pack, this is very much comparing apples to oranges.

Typically ICE cars do not require engine work at 7 years of age.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#273

Post by jacquesm »

baxtr wrote: post #264
jacquesm wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, they did. Film manufacture, distribution and developing.

Sorry I don’t understand. Digital cameras require film manufacturing, distribution and developing?

No, film cameras required film manufacturing, distribution and developing. Being able to drop all that was a huge factor in the success of digital.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#274

Post by codeulike »

baxtr wrote: post #237
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

The one thing that is really different is that digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. That’s unfortunately where you’re analogy breaks down

Electricity is already everywhere, you just need to install lots of boxes with charge cables and billing mechanisms. Not that hard.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#275

Post by kwhitefoot »

baxtr wrote: post #237
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

The one thing that is really different is that digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. That’s unfortunately where you’re analogy breaks down

Lack of infrastructure didn't stop the adoption of internal combustion engine vehicles. The infrastructure was built as demand for it increased.

Anyway we have most of the infrastructure we need for electric vehicles already, it's called the grid. All that is missing is the connection points. And for many people that is also not a problem because we can plug the car in at home. So electric vehicles have a massive advantage at this stage of the process compared to what ICE vehicles had at the beginning of their adoption.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#276

Post by kwhitefoot »

taneq wrote: post #143
perl4ever wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a "physical" reason, or to be exact, a concrete logical reason why it will be difficult. We have X number of gas pumps. If it takes Y times the amount of time to charge a car as pumping fuel, then we need X*Y chargers for everyone to go electric. It's not just a matter of what's convenient, but of multiplying the infrastructure.

Yes, but the power grid is already in place (although it'll probably need upgrading, piecemeal, to handle the additional load). You couldn't run a gas pipeline to every kerbside parking spot but you could put a paid charge point there and it would pay for itself in no time.

> although it'll probably need upgrading, piecemeal, to handle the additional load

Not necessarily, see this document from the UK National Grid which discusses the options: https://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/articles/electric-dreams-fut...

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#277

Post by icebraining »

jacquesm wrote: post #267
GW150914 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric bikes are a huge improvement over standard bikes, and no improvement at all over a car for a significant number of use cases. They’re also no more useful than a bike in places where roads are poorly maintained, rain and snow are frequent, or no bike lanes exist. They’re not useful for taking kids to school, or doing significant errands. They are amazing for a single person to get around cheaply without killi…

> They’re not useful for taking kids to school, Where I live a few hundred thousand kids are taken to school by bike every day. All the way up to age 10 or so it's pretty common to see parents with kids on the back (and sometimes on the front or both) of their bikes. https://www.24baby.nl/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mamafiets.j...

Even in Brussels, with its heavy traffic and unseparated bike lanes, there are quite a few parents taking kids around on bike.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#278

Post by ben_w »

codeulike wrote: post #274
baxtr wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing that is really different is that digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. That’s unfortunately where you’re analogy breaks down

Electricity is already everywhere, you just need to install lots of boxes with charge cables and billing mechanisms. Not that hard.

Although electricity is already everywhere, it’s still not going to be an easy transition. Globally, electricity production in 2012 was somewhere around 20 PWh/year, while transport used around 30 PWh/years.

I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#279

Post by benplumley »

aetherson wrote: post #124
stellar678 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent point! California just passed a bill that won't allow high school or middle school to start earlier than 8:30am because there is reams of research showing that early starts cause worse learning and development outcomes. Lots of people are up in arms because they need their kids' schedule to fit around their work schedule so they can drive them everywhere. Somehow it's just too hard for them to envision sett…

In all fairness, people (rarely) call the cops on parents who let their kids walk around unsupervised, and commonly heap scorn on them as bad parents.

Is "wasting police time" not a cause for a caution/small fine in the US?

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#280

Post by kwhitefoot »

rlkf wrote: post #72
jblow wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Household wiring will anyway not have enough current capacity to support charging citation needed

No need, because it is simply untrue: Electric vehicles can charge on anything from 1-ph 8A 240V, to 3-ph 32A 400V, all of which can easily be provided by common urban household wiring.

Or even less. I tell my Model S to charge at 5A when I am at home (230 V single phase). Gets me 5 km per hour, 60 km from 18:00 to 06:00 which is fine because I average about 20000 km a year which is less than 60 km a day. On road trips I use the superchargers.
Post reply on HN