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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

#431

Post by bigiain »

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…

For the milk/bread/postoffice run, I have my "cheater bike":

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nu2q0srtj62w3gl/cheater-bike.JPG?d...

It's a ~$50 Gumtree special 2nd hand steel-framed mountain bike, with ~$150 worth of AliExpress Chinese electric bike conversion parts, and a ~$60 battery (You'd need another ~$50 for a charger - I use one of my quadcopter lipo chargers. That battery was originally a big quad one too, so my total outlay was only ~$200.) It gets ~25km on a charge with no pedalling at all (I use it for my ~16km round trip commute and it rarely uses more than 50% of it's capacity, even when I consciously avoid pedalling...) It's _technically_ illegal - it'll put out ~450W going uphill when fresh off the charger, and it's configured with a twist throttle like a motorcycle. To be street legal it'd need to be limited to 200W with the throttle, or 250W as a "pedalo" (where the pedals need to be turning to activate the motor). I've left the controller settings to top it out at 25kmh though (it'll do over 40 if I remove the software limit), so it's not tempting me into going so fast it'll attract attention from the cops... So long as my legs are moving enough when they see me I don't behave in an illegal fashion...

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

#432

Post by selectodude »

kasey_junk wrote: post #82
selectodude wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, my building is over 120 years old. They weren't forward thinking enough with electricity or parking spots, I guess.

I mean they had electric cars when the building was built... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Times-Herald_race

Not quite, my building was completed in 1890.

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

#433

Post by gnicholas »

davidgould wrote: post #428
gnicholas wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the peninsula. This summer has been very mild so we've gotten off easy, but I certainly can't count on that most years. Since you can't switch plans frequently, I didn't want to take the risk of switching.

How much use do you get out of the pure electric range on the C-MAX? I have a Chevy Spark EV and can make almost all trips I need. My longest is Oakland to San Jose and back. It has only 18kWh battery, but in warm weather we see 4.8 avg miles per kWh. Perhaps solar would help solve your daytime rate problem? Or a car with more battery?

Wife's commute is 15 miles roundtrip, so we get good use out of it. Just wish it took less kWh in to get the same number of miles out.

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

#434

Post by soperj »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #429
GW150914 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said You mean the rich, temperate parts of Western Europe, most of which could fit inside Texas? Sure. You said 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. Is Norway not one of the richest WE countries? (Not temperate though, fair enough.) The country has a very high standard of living compared with other Europea…

They aren't poor, no, but it isn't temperate and that was the point I was getting at. Cold doesn't make things impossible by any means even if folks in the states act like it does, at least where I was. I've never lived in NYC. I spent the first 35 years of life in Indiana, though, in towns smaller than this. The crime wasn't bad. One place even happened to have bus service. Indiana has about the same population as N…

I've been to Ft.Wayne. It's about 250,000. They actually had a bus (i rode it), it didn't come very often, and wasn't at all wheelchair accessible. I live in a similar size city in Canada. Bus system is miles better, and it still doesn't compare to the infrastructure they have in place in Europe, even for smaller cities in Northern climates like Helsinki.

Don't know why that person was going on about it only being temperate places, then comparing to New York, which has to be one of the richest places on earth.

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

#435

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

bchanudet wrote: post #321
ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's perfect! No way they'd ever allow those on our roads though, but in an ideal world I'd buy one tomorrow.

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

#436

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #367
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The batteries are no good in really cold climates" If that's true of EVs (I have no idea, but it is/was true of the batteries in digital cameras), then it's very odd that EVs are so popular in Norway. Incentives can only get you so far if the product doesn't work well in local conditions.

Most of Norway is much warmer than you'd think. The Gulf Stream hits Norway head on, making it much warmer than similar latitudes on the other side of the Atlantic. In Oslo, temperatures very rarely go below -10C.

> In Oslo, temperatures very rarely go below -10C. ... warmer than you'd think

I was spotting Teslas in Oslo in mid 2018, and it was +28C.

But seriously, -10C on a winter night is what I expected, and is cold enough to seriously affect camera batteries.

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

#437

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

baxtr wrote: post #411
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed. Yes, of course they do. What are you going to do with some .jpegs without the internet? Literally a huge network, and it was rolled out around the same time.

I was probably too imprecise. I meant new infrastructure. I just want to point out where the analogy breaks down.

Point taken but since they rolled out around the same time, they did re-enforce each other. More pictures lead to more demand for internet, lead to internet being faster and more widely available, which lead to more pictures. Digital photographs were not the only driver of the internet's rollout, but I'm sure that they contributed.

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

#438

Post by codeulike »

ben_w wrote: post #348
codeulike wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I doubt that; PV is cheap compared to storage, so it makes more sense to install twice as much PV as needed and include the charging plugs in existing car parks (and waste some power during commuting and lunch breaks), than to add enough immobile storage to allow most car charging to happen at night.

The thing about nighttime is that thats when the car isn't moving around much. Best time to charge.

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

#439

Post by Angostura »

multjoy wrote: post #295
Angostura wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The EV infrastructure should be mostly complete by 2025. All the people witgout off-road parking will have charging points outside their house?

Many streets have these things called 'lamp posts', into which electricity is being supplied. All you need to do is work out how to bill it.

Having had a quick look at our street, there is a lamp-post for about every 10 cars.

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

#440

Post by Angostura »

nojvek wrote: post #426
Angostura wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a demand for the internal combustion engine because it was a massive step-change from horses. Electric vehicles represent a marginal gain for people who aren't primarily concerned about the environment. To be clear, I would like an electric vehicle, but I lack off-road parking so I don't see myself getting one for a decade.

I happen to have a number of gas station owners cousins. Their sentiment is, if there is demand for something, they’ll supply it. Charging stations, replaceable batteries, whatever. If there is profit to be made, they’ll do it.

As long as they can recharge in under 10 minutes, I'm happy.
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