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

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

#321

Post by bchanudet »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #159
stellar678 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point that design and manufacturing quality are an important component here. I know the e-scooters used by Lime and Bird have seen a pretty quick iteration, and the models they have on the streets now are a lot better than the ones they had when they launched in my city just a few months ago. In terms of in-between vehicles, I haven't seen too much yet. Our current street designs (at least in most of the…

Yeah I'd absolutely love to use a golf cart or similar, but I need something street registerable (I live in an inner city high-rise in Australia). Our local councils get these awesome little electric golf-cart things to roam around servicing things, but they're not legal for us to own, which is a real shame. Something the size of a golf cart, so it can be tucked away in a corner somewhere, or parked sideways with tai…

It seems it's not (yet?) available in Australia, but Renault produces the Twizy[0] car that would fit most of your requirements.

[0] https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new-vehicles/twizy.html

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

#322

Post by Broken_Hippo »

GW150914 wrote: post #227
soperj wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet tons of people do it in europe with kids because the infrastructure exists.

You mean the rich, temperate parts of Western Europe, most of which could fit inside Texas? Sure. If you’re being more honest it’s the urban areas of the richer, temperate parts of Weatern Europe, which is an even smaller geographic area with a total population that’s less than the US, or about 1/5th of China or India. I love cycling in Paris and Amsterdam, not so much in New York City in the winter. I also wouldn’t…

I live in Norway, in a city of 180-200k people. Folks use public transportation or walking all the time. With children. For everyday food shopping.

You don't need to shop only once a week - 2-3 times makes carrying your goods easier. You can dress for the weather. It isn't all that big of a deal. Children in strollers have warm stuff around them. They sell bikes with studded tires for use on snow. It was tiring when I first moved here, but you get used to it and it isn't a big deal. Kids get used to walking and will sometimes even help carry things back.

I'd more argue that the real reason it doesn't work so well in much of the states is because the public transportation sucks. Walkways suck most places - half the towns I lived in didn't even make sure you could walk to the stores on sidewalks. More people were expected to work 50-60 hours a week on top of this. Poor folks sometimes work two jobs. Many employers don't have secure places to put your stuff while you are at work (no bike racks, no locker to put your winter gear or umbrella in). Fixing these problems help greatly.

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

#323

Post by sokoloff »

bobsil1 wrote: post #168
falcolas wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do if you don’t have a Tesla? They’re not exactly a mass produced value car. And that’s what you need for real penetration to the car market.

$35K Model 3 out early next year, the average selling price of a US car.

I've been hearing promises of the $35K Model 3 for 2.5 years now. I'm still taking the "over" on early next year for broad availability of a $35K Model 3.

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

#324

Post by dagss »

avar wrote: post #244
adrianN wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if the car lobby can help it. Think of the jobs! Case in point: E-Bikes in Germany. You can either buy an e-assist bike that is allowed on bike paths and doesn't cost tax. Those are limited to 200W and 25km/h. That means you still impede traffic in 30km/h zones where people typically drive 35-40. Or you can spend more and get an S-Pedelec. That costs tax, isn't allowed on bike paths, and needs a driver's license.…

The EU-wide 25km/h limit is extremely frustrating. It makes it so that you can't "take the lane" on the very common 30km/h roads without impeding traffic, and subjectively it's just the wrong speed. A huge number of cyclists on non-E-bikes easily bike at 25-30 km/h, whereas 30-35 km/h is way less common.

I support it for lanes with a mixture of walking and biking (which at least in Norway is almost all the bike lanes). There is a huge difference in outcome in colliding with pedestrians in 25 km/h vs 30 km/h. Non-e-bikers that hit 30 km/h necessarily have a certain amount of training to keep those speeds consistently, while e-bikes give people on their first bike trip the same speed.

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

#325

Post by dagss »

snarfy wrote: post #293

I predict any large shift in the EV market will be tempered by the growth of the electric grid as a whole. The grid is already strained. It can barely handle new AC units in the summer. The large 500KV lines that connect cities to plants are near or over capacity already. Upgrading is a delicate balance of income vs cost. Upgrade or run them hotter. They won't upgrade the backbone due to cost, now imagine the cost of…

In neighborhoods you charge cars slowly during night when consumption for other electrical equipment is lower. Certainly no need for 300A+.

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

#326

Post by mpweiher »

lloeki wrote: post #306
mpweiher wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>> Credit to that .. Carl Benz, .. patent in 1886.

> date of 1884 for a production .. two years before the Benz patent.

The car was produced in 1885, the patent was granted in 1886.

The way I understood the OP's "The original cars were electric..." comment was that these electric cars (plural!) were dominant for some time until they were replaced quite some time later ("over 20 years before the Ford Model T") by cars with internal combustion engines.

As far as I know, that didn't happen. Electric cars and cars with internal combustion engines happened essentially simultaneously, with steam a century earlier (1769). From the Wikipedia article the OP quoted (section Golden age):

"In the United States by the turn of the century, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. "

So even during the "golden age", >60% of cars were not electric. I have to admit I was surprised that steam-powered cars were that widespread.

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

#327

Post by thinkcontext »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #193
jblow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, most homes in the USA had 220v 30A dryer outlets.

Our house has a 30A dryer outlet on the second floor. The house is maxed out on a 100A main line. To get another 40A or 50A breaker permitted, and installed would mean new main line, new meter, new main breaker, new breaker box. Bids have come in between $7,000 to $9,000. New homes with 200A service will mostly be ok, but older homes are often underserved electrically.

I had my power upgraded from 100A to 200A for $1800 in DC. Do you have to dig?

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

#328

Post by [deleted] »

Someone wrote: post #298
simonbarker87 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles use roughly a third of the energy so that 30 PWh only needs to be an extra 10 PWh for the grid. We need to increase overall capcity by 50%.

Chances are the network isn’t used at full capacity, so if people are willing to charge their cars outside peak hours (e.g, between midnight 7 AM, we wouldn’t need 50% more, network wise.

[deleted]

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

#329

Post by codeulike »

ben_w wrote: post #311
simonbarker87 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric vehicles use roughly a third of the energy so that 30 PWh only needs to be an extra 10 PWh for the grid. We need to increase overall capcity by 50%.

10 PWh / year (just over 1 TW average) is currently a half-trillion dollar installation cost, assuming $0.23/W PV with a 50% duty cycle. Yes, this is still an improvement; yes it should be done; it’s just not trivial .

Also, most charging will happen at home, at night.

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

#330

Post by roel_v »

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...

No sane person would do so in any country that doesn't have the bicycle infrastructure we have in the Netherlands. I live in Australia and/or New Zealand a few months out of the year, and I've taken my kids to school there - it's insane to do so on a bike. And this was in places that actually have bike infrastructure and bike activism! Dutch people need to try cycling somewhere else before claiming that bikes are a car replacement somewhere else (they could be everywhere, given the right infrastructure and culture, but they're currently not, that's my point)
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