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

301–310 of 450 posts

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

#301

Post by vvillena »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #76
stellar678 wrote: post #35

They neglected a huge part of the coming electric vehicle picture: lightweight, slow-speed electric vehicles. Almost 60% of US car trips are 5 miles or shorter. (2017 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/ae/work/Job63697.html , 2009 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html ) Scooters, e-bikes, and electric cargo bikes (not to mention the human-powered versions!) will soak up an enormous portion…

I never thought of that. Are there the same moves in tiny electric hatchbacks (eg kei sized, not Leafs), scooters, mopeds, etc as there is currently in fullsize cars? I'd love a high quality electric moped to run down the shops and pick up milk and bread, or pick something up from the post office. All I've seen is those cheap plastic electric mopeds that people get from eBay/Aliexpress or Costco. I don't remember see…

Electric cars tend to use lots of light plastic because there's less need to dampen noise and vibrations, due to the lack of a combustion engine. Plastic is lighter. I suppose bikes are the same.

I think the good-looking, premium electric motorbikes will come. Their limiting factor has been battery density (which makes it difficult to build a bike with good range), and weight distribution (you cannot put the battery too high or the bike will be very unstable).

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

#302

Post by HeadsUpHigh »

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

That's a very weak excuse, especially when there are tons of money to be made building that infrastructure.

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

#303

Post by sokoloff »

icc97 wrote: post #241
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside. You're thinking about this from the wrong way around. The people who buy the first electric cars mainly don't live in places they can't charge them, they live in single family homes where they can install a charging port. That allows enough electri…

It raises the value of houses that have garages where you can plug your car in. I'm looking at buying a house in Belgium and it's a definite issue.

How much of that is the garage (which I agree would raise the value) vs the EVSE in the garage (which can be added for under 1500€ in most cases)?

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

#304

Post by sokoloff »

gnicholas wrote: post #247
Marsymars wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would someone buy an electric car if they had to pay the equivalent price of gas to charge it?

I bought a used C-MAX plug-in hybrid and was told that with the EV plan offered by PG&E, I'd save money versus gas. Only after I purchased did I learn that the EV plan gives you cheaper charging at night only if you're willing to stomach very high rates during the day. Since I work from home a lot and have a toddler, this is a non-starter for my family. So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as f…

I'm in MA (home of $0.20/kWh electricity) and my LEAF gets about 21 miles per dollar of energy. A comparable gas car would get ~13 miles per dollar of gasoline.

I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.

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

#305

Post by udfalkso »

leetcrew wrote: post #218
gbear605 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another driving force, perhaps the biggest driving force, is ecological. A very significant fraction of people today would, all else equal, choose electric cars over gasoline for the benefit to the environment. And all else is gradually becoming more equal. As you implied, the biggest remaining hurdle is the battery size. But for many people, it’s already good enough, and for many of the rest it will probably be shor…

i would consider buying an electric car if it were as fast as my hot hatch, had comparable range, and weighed less than 3000 lbs. i doubt that will happen for quite some time.

Why is the weight of concern to you?

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

#306

Post by lloeki »

mpweiher wrote: post #300
ohhellno wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built the first practical production electric car in London in 1884, using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

Hmm...the Ford Model T wasn't exactly the first car with a combustion engine. Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886. There were earlier self-propelled vehicles.

> I don't know much about the state of rechargeable battery technology in the late-1800's

This link has some info about rechargeable batteries in the context of electric vehicles. Basically in 1881 key improvements to the original 1859 lead-acid design made batteries practical on board a vehicle at an industrial scale.

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

> Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886.

The above link reiterates the date of 1884 for a production vehicle by Thomas Parker, two years before the Benz patent.

Also, earlier than that, a tricycle was successfully demoed along a Paris street in April 1881, following a 1867 two-wheeled prototype that did work but wasn't quite drivable for production use.

EVs got a slight head start to ICEs but they subsequently developed alongside each other from the late 19th to early 20th.

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

#307

Post by raverbashing »

ben_w wrote: post #278
codeulike wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_e…

Maybe electric cars will be the solution to the duck curve?

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

#308

Post by jacobush »

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

Digital cameras required a huge network - electricity. It's easy to forget, but for most of the history of photography, electricity was not everywhere a camera could go.

And before the digital camera, came the Internet which made it possible for you to show someone the pictures.

Imagine digital cameras of the specs of the first popular wave, but without Internet. Many downsides! The images would be low quality, you'd have to charge the camera, to show someone the images you'd still have to go to the lab for printed pictures.

No, I firmly believe electrical vehicles is about to crush the competition.

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

#309

Post by rando444 »

SomewhatLikely wrote: post #37
rando444 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never is not the right word. I owned a natural gas combustion engine Honda Civic for a decade and refueled at home.

That's fascinating. Curious how the gas is stored. I remember for a while there was talk of fuel cells based on hydrogen, but safely storing the gas was problematic.

In the house you just run your natural gas line into a small compressor.. no storing it, just turn it on when you need it. It takes several hours to fill with this setup, but it's not a big inconvenience.

In the car the gas is just stored compressed/liquified in a tank. It takes up a lot of space, so you end up sacrificing some trunk space. Again, just another tradeoff.

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

#310

Post by sokoloff »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #98
mabbo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside Consumer/taxpayer demand for a solution, like most problems in a capitalist democracy. I imagine streets where every nth parking spot has something that looks like a beefy parking meter, but will allow thick-ish extension cords to run from a car to it. Turn it on with an RFID tied to which house yo…

In most urban areas hooking up new electrical service does not usually mean breaking concrete. I think you'll be amazed how quickly cities deploy charging infrastructure once they realize the premium they can charge for the same parking spot.

What's the "premium" that a typical consumer would pay?

Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas.

At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of their charging in that space or network of spaces.

That premium/willingness-to-pay won't even cover the all-in cost of installing a single EVSE in the first year.

Post reply on HN