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Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

theguardian.com

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Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#141

Post by _ph_ »

clouddrover wrote: post #117
_ph_ wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric car sales are up in Germany by similar amounts. Completely without any force applied. The same in many European countries.

Car companies must meet the EU fleet emissions standards and the only way most car companies will achieve that is by selling BEVs. Volkswagen and Renault are the top two BEV makers in Europe. Toyota is in a good position with their fleet emissions because they've been selling hybrids for so long. They're not under as much pressure to start selling BEVs in high volumes.

Yes, the emission standards have forced the car manufacturers to offer electric cars. But how does it explain that customers are buying them? Even so much that there are long waiting times when you order an electric car.

The answer is: there are enough customers interested in buying an electric cars but both the available product range and production count limited their ability to do so. With the offerings of electric cars improving, the consumers are happily buying into them.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#142

Post by [deleted] »

missedthecue wrote: post #110
theshrike79 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a country lead by engineers with unlimited power to do whatever they want. If they want all cars to be electric, that will happen. If they want a 5 million person city just there because it's logistically advantageous, then that will happen. The good thing is that they can make decisions like this. The bad thing is that they can make decisions like this.

Autocracies seem to be the most efficient form of governance. It's a shame that this also means that they can do evil things very efficiently, given no one can stop them.

[deleted]

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#143

Post by axiolite »

missedthecue wrote: post #110
theshrike79 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a country lead by engineers with unlimited power to do whatever they want. If they want all cars to be electric, that will happen. If they want a 5 million person city just there because it's logistically advantageous, then that will happen. The good thing is that they can make decisions like this. The bad thing is that they can make decisions like this.

Autocracies seem to be the most efficient form of governance. It's a shame that this also means that they can do evil things very efficiently, given no one can stop them.

> Autocracies seem to be the most efficient form of governance

Efficient in achieving a particular goal, sure, but the wisdom of crowds (and the market) is a thing, too. When the autocracy decides X will be the next big thing, and it isn't, all that efficiency from the previous correct bets gets wiped away by the inefficiency of one wrong dictate from the top.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#144

Post by speedgoose »

carlmr wrote: post #133
speedgoose wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very local problem that SoCal needs to work on. I can't remember having a blackout ever in my life, I live in Europe. Just keep your car charged between 50% and 80% when you are at home and it should be enough to reach the hospital or a safe place during a blackout.

It's not a local problem just because it's not a European problem. Plenty of countries don't have that reliable electricity.

SoCal is the exception and not the norm as a develop country with enough wealth to afford electric cars while having a non reliable electric grid.

Most of the other countries with unreliable electric grid are not very much into the brand new premium electric cars market.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#145

Post by magicalhippo »

m463 wrote: post #126
magicalhippo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK the main problem with the Leaf battery is that it doesn't have active thermal management[1]. I guess it's possible one could make a replacement battery pack which has an internal cooling loop, but it would be quite limited in how much heat it could get rid of through the battery case body without external radiators. Of course better batteries might heat up less when used or charged, due to lower internal resist…

ha, not really. The main problem(s) with the leaf are - it charges to 100% every time (unless you dig into a menu, turn on analytics and switch to 80%) I never knew a leaf driver that figured this out. - the battery size is very small, so you need a full charge to get anywhere reliably and/or drain it very low. - to put any kind of mileage on the car, you need to cycle the battery MANY times. (one cycle might be a da…

> it charges to 100% every time

Ah, I hadn't picked up on this. My BMW i3 has a built-in buffer so what shows as 100% on the dash is actually about 80%, and similarly for 0% (I verified through the raw data).

Doing true "0-100" definitely does not do the battery any favors.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#146

Post by rhodozelia »

Toutouxc wrote: post #55
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I suspect it syncs with the grids 60hz...) Yeah, that's the actual reason. I've seen someone use a small Honda generator to generate the frequency required to trick the solar generator into going... it's a weird setup because you basically tie in your generator using a breaker, so both generator and solar can be enabled at the same time.

That sounds borderline stupid, is there a technical reason you can't just generate the "clock" internally? Do most of the devices require grid AC?

It is a more complex and expensive inverter that can operate both isolated from the grid and in sync with it I think because it has to know when to do which and if it is outputting power how can it tell if the system is live because it is grid tied or because it is keeping the system energized itself.

I think they need external signals to tell them which mode to operate in.

Maybe the external system sees the frequency and voltage dropping or lower than normal range and decides to disconnect the load from the grid and opens a breaker and tells the inverter to operate in isolated mode.

When the external system sees the utility power is good again it could tell the inverter to shut off, close the breaker to connect the load to the utility, and then the inverter can go back to grid tie. The outage can be very short unless the load is large motors they don’t like the instantaneous change in phase when switching between different sources that are out of sync.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#147

Post by konschubert »

_ph_ wrote: post #112
godmode2019 wrote: post #81

'Global sales' I hope everyone understands in China it is very hard to get a licence plate, the government allows you to get a licence plate if you buy a heavily subsidised electric car. The aim is to stimulate demand to develop an industry. Large cities also banned motorbikes and scooters, with the same aim. This is no way market driven demand, BYD is a very interesting company to look into. It is my understanding t…

Electric car sales are up in Germany by similar amounts. Completely without any force applied. The same in many European countries.

To be fair there are heavy subsidies for electric cars in Germany.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#148

Post by jjav »

theshrike79 wrote: post #116
jjav wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the outage is caused by something large enough for it to last a longer time, it's very likely any charging stations near you are also out.

It's also very likely that any gas stations will be out, unless they hand-pump the stuff.

In areas where outages are expected (hurricanes), the better-prepared gas stations have their own generators. Not all do, for sure.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#149

Post by konschubert »

_ph_ wrote: post #141
clouddrover wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car companies must meet the EU fleet emissions standards and the only way most car companies will achieve that is by selling BEVs. Volkswagen and Renault are the top two BEV makers in Europe. Toyota is in a good position with their fleet emissions because they've been selling hybrids for so long. They're not under as much pressure to start selling BEVs in high volumes.

Yes, the emission standards have forced the car manufacturers to offer electric cars. But how does it explain that customers are buying them? Even so much that there are long waiting times when you order an electric car. The answer is: there are enough customers interested in buying an electric cars but both the available product range and production count limited their ability to do so. With the offerings of electri…

The car makers are taking a loss/low margin on BEVs sales . Pricing is tuned such that they can sell enough BEVs to meet the regulated fleet efficiency, but no more than that.

Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020

#150

Post by mixmastamyk »

gnicholas wrote: post #94
angmarsbane wrote: post #17

One thing I keep getting tripped up on with EV cars is the usability during an emergency. I grew up in SoCal when there were rolling black-outs. Just this week, a windstorm took out my parent’s power for 3 days. I don’t view electricity to be as reliable as gas. What fact am I missing that can change my view on this?

We have thought about this as well. If there is an emergency that affects a metro area, you need to be able to get out of the area and then refill. In an ICE, it's easy to drive 200 miles and then tank up in 5 mins. In an EV, you might be able to get 200 miles, but it's much less likely that you'll be able to refill in under an hour. If many people are evacuating, charging stations will be overloaded. Trickle chargin…

Hotels, motels, and malls are providing charging now. May not be scarce much longer.
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