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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

#251

Post by oblio »

theshrike79 wrote: post #243
oblio wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being downvoted because HN loves electric car, but for the layman, that's their thought process: 1. Does the EV cost as much as a regular car? Most of them are very expensive, comparatively, especially for cheap family cars. 2. Is the range comparable to regular cars? It's not, at similar prices it's 60%. 3. Is it trivial to recharge it, especially quickly? Not true for most of the world. 4. Can the car be bou…

1. True, EVs are more expensive and do need government subsidies to make up the difference 2. If you're measuring range as "don't stop at all, I'll pee in a bottle" range, then yes. A better measurement would be "is the range enough for my normal daily use", then the answer is yes for a large number of people. Not everyone of course, some people actually _need_ to drive long distances daily without the ability to rec…

> Recharging should always be done at home overnight (10+ hours of charge time, low power requirement), or during normal daily activities (work, shopping).

A big chunk of the world's population lives in dense cities without access to private parking.

A big chunk of that big chunk lives in developing countries where new infrastructure roll out is very slow, so readily available street charging is probably more than 5 years into the future.

My prediction: for the next 5 years EVs will be the domain of upper middle classes and for the next 10 years EVs will be the domain of middle classes. Poor people will keep using ICE cars until at least 2035, maybe more. And they will still account for probably half the cars on the road.

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

#252

Post by ralfd »

ido wrote: post #98
erikstarck wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that growth rate continues, electric cars will pass 50% sold in 8 years. Going to be an interesting decade.

That would be great but high % growth from a small base doesn't imply the same growth rate will continue once it reaches higher levels (see for example how undeveloped economies grow faster until they become developed, at which point growth slows down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergence_(economics) )

I believe we could reach a tipping point soon. The worst time to own an electric car was when almost none were sold, with zero infrastructure.

But soon electric infrastructure will be mainstream.

While time is counting against combustion cars.

In the UK from 2030 onwards all new cars must be hybrid or fully electric. And the sale of new hybrids is to be outlawed from 2035.

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

#253

Post by jacquesm »

adrianN wrote: post #187
BillyTheKing wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficiency is the opposite of robustness. Autocracies always appear stable until suddenly they don't anymore and break apart or fail in some other way. While democracies seem inefficient and at times quite volatile, they are significantly more robust and can adapt better to changes down the road. Modern China, so far, has only really experienced a fairly homogeneous historical phase, which is one primarily driven by…

I'm not sure that modern democracies exist for sufficiently long to make strong claims about their stability, and premodern democracies weren't particularly stable (as far as I know, I'm not too good at history).

That's a fair criticism, on geological timescales everything we have done that moved us ahead is on the order of an eyeblink and all of the past is the very long and extremely dark time before it. Democracy may not be a strong enough thing to be able to resist our technological progress, which then can result in falling back to a previous stage or some kind of lock-in effect for an undesirable future. It would be naive to expect things to continue as they are indefinitely.

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

#254

Post by jacquesm »

tomp wrote: post #223
m463 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Autocracies seem to be the most efficient form of governance. I've wondered about this. Is there a way that democracy could compete, possibly by reflecting "the will of the people" quickly and accurately? Or would that always fundamentally be a popularity contest? Or will democracy require something akin to "martial law" to quickly decide and act on urgent matters?

> Or will democracy require something akin to "martial law" to quickly decide and act on urgent matters? After the pandemic hit the West - Europe started locking down mid-March, Trump banned EU flights on 12th - Germany (a democracy of 80 million people) passed a financial aid package on 23rd of March; US (a democracy of 300 million people) followed on the 25th. So it's quite clear that democracies can react quickly,…

If anything I think the pandemic shows that the 'free West' sucks at responding to such threats. We've done miserably compared to Singapore, China and Vietnam.

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

#255

Post by hobofan »

neuronic wrote: post #176
konschubert wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They existed years ago and I am skeptical that they are significant enough to make the average person even consider a new electric car. They are still too expensive for what they offer, even with heavy subsidies. However, what I do see in Germany, are more and more electric cars in car sharing, rentals and company fleets. Upper middle class is going pretty electric as well to appear cool/caring about climate. Several…

> They are still too expensive for what they offer, even with heavy subsidies.

> Renault Zoes

In Berlin, Renault Zoes were (maybe still are?) _free_[0] to get for small businesses. I know multiple freelancers who took advantage of that deal. Yes, that might not be the "average person", but it's probably not insignificant either.

[0]: https://efahrer.chip.de/news/elektroauto-gratis-leasen-so-ko...

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

bluetomcat wrote: post #234
kstenerud wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autocracies are only short-term efficient. Once their initial aims are met, they become terribly inefficient, then corruption sets in, and then they must be forcibly removed. It's good for other nations who can benefit from their trailblazing, but bad for the nation itself because they're basically fucked in the future when the bill comes due. Centralization is long-term the worst kind of governance, inevitably becom…

> Autocracies are only short-term efficient. Once their initial aims are met, they become terribly inefficient, then corruption sets in, and then they must be forcibly removed. From the point of view of Western individualism, yes. However, a strong autocracy relies on building a strong collective identity through education and the cultural institutions. That identity isolates the individual from his personal beliefs…

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by ThomPete »

_ph_ wrote: post #188
konschubert wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, there are. About 6k per car. But this just preempts the price development in a growing market. And it helps the market to grow to a point where the cars do get cheaper because of scaling. On the other side: fossil fuels and especially car combustion engines are not taxed along the negative impact they have by toxic and carbon emissions.

If we want to tax combustion engines for negative externalities what deductions are we giving for the positive externalities?

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

#258

Post by africanboy »

kristopolous wrote: post #235

The "iphone" of the electric car still isn't here. I've been saying it's coming soon for a while, cars that are so vastly superior to gas cars that it re-frames the gas car as being legacy technology just as the smartphone from apple finally got the consumer interested in smartphones and view flip-phones as inferior. I think however, it's going to come from left-field (not from Tesla) and for the first time I'm tossi…

> got the consumer interested in smartphones and view flip-phones as inferior

except cellular phones were vastly better devices for their purpose.

smartphones are better only for content networks (FB and similar) and App stores

Meanwhile my Nokia 7650 in 2002 was already doing everything I need today, but it also worked when it rains (most smartphones touch screens get confused by water) and battery lasted days, not hours. It also survived an infinite number of falls.

We see them as "old" only because mobile connectivity was in its infancy and HW has become much more powerful in a small time frame.

But I would trade my actual smartphone for a phone of that era with 4g connection, a physical keyboard and a modern screen immediately.

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

#259

Post by AYBABTME »

kstenerud wrote: post #241
AYBABTME wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at Japan and Korea who took the same approach of "cheap specialized labour", they both pivoted to high quality, and more innovative once they caught up. I have no doubt China will do the same, but at much larger scale. There's already a lot of innovative consumer products coming online, which I'd attribute to the vibe of rapid and efficient hardware products iteration in Shenzen.

Japan and Korea are collective societies, not autocratic ones. China's goal under Xi is a return to the golden age of the Kingdom of Heaven, where all Chinese people exemplify the ideals and morals of the most civilized society on Earth. That goal is only tangentially related to the technical innovations they're making, and will eventually stifle them as the definition of "good citizen" and "proper pursuits" becomes…

Maybe or maybe not. Given that they're basically picking a very similar recipe from the economical development playbook, I wouldn't be surprised if they arrive at a similar outcome. And South Korea was ran by violent dictarors until its recent democratic history. I don't think the same will happen to China, but I wouldn't dismiss the ability of its citizens to innovate based only on the autocratic nature of their government. It's not like if the Chinese people are deprived of imagination. They have it, and they have the ability to act on it, and they do.

The autocratic environment might not be most amenable to free thinking and innovation, but then I'm not convinced that being free from autocracy is truly necessary for innovation to occur. Plenty of innovation occurred when Europe was ruled by Kings, or in 1900 Russia. Even within autocratic corporations, plenty of innovation occur.

Anyways, I don't wish for autocratic governments, but I'm not willing to dismiss China's ability to be innovative based on that.

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

#260

Post by africanboy »

ThomPete wrote: post #257
_ph_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, there are. About 6k per car. But this just preempts the price development in a growing market. And it helps the market to grow to a point where the cars do get cheaper because of scaling. On the other side: fossil fuels and especially car combustion engines are not taxed along the negative impact they have by toxic and carbon emissions.

If we want to tax combustion engines for negative externalities what deductions are we giving for the positive externalities?

better air quality, reduced risk of lung disease, longer, better lives?
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