I love china they rule the new world order. Welcome leaders!
Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
281–290 of 519 posts
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#282Earlier 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. 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…
> strong collective identity This makes a society weaker - it's effectively a monoculture that restricts the data available to the decision makers. It also reduces a societies ability to innovate in art, culture and eventually technology and science - innovation requires the ability to take an outside view, to be self-critical, and a society that is too busy forging a 'strong collective identity' will make it harder…
The Western urge for constantly rethinking and reevaluating history and traditions, for innovations in art and science, does not lead to an inherently stable society in the long run that spans across centuries. The changes themselves introduce new kinds of problems requiring new solutions, and that affects the societal structure in unpredictable ways.
Japan and South Korea are western only in a superficial sense, in that they have copied the basic institutional structure of the industrialised West. However, the main forces acting on that structure are rather different, and the main actor is certainly not the "egoistic, cold, self-interested, autonomous individual".
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's not uncommon for people to have at least a gallon of gas stored in a typical suburban home. That's 20-30 miles of emergency travel if needed. I don't think most people can easily store enough electricity to give them 20-30 miles of EV range. Maybe that's possible with a powerwall type setup? I'd be happy to pick up a cheap( The math may change as gas prices spike over the next year. I think that will really…
Modern EVs can have bidirectional charging so they can charge each other. Hence if you run out and the grid is down you may be able to buy electricity off somebody else’s car. Don’t see this flexibility with gasoline.
That’s what my jerrycan and hose is all about.
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it will be really interesting to see what the residual value of the old battery will be. Could be really high- 50% original capacity is a problem for cars but not for grid storage (if the price reflects remaining capacity)
50% capacity for energy storage might be ok for Home gamers but no utility scale project is going to spend all the money on permitting, construction and the rest of the power infrastructure and then get batteries that are beat up.
I fail to see how permitting, etc. has anything to do with battery capacity. The only thing that will matter is price per kWh of storage and if used batteries can be sourced, binned and serviced reliably.
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it will be really interesting to see what the residual value of the old battery will be. Could be really high- 50% original capacity is a problem for cars but not for grid storage (if the price reflects remaining capacity)
80% capacity is EOL for pretty much all batteries. Below that, you start to see issues with output. Its not like a tank of gas where 80% full still means you have 4/5ths of the power of a full tank available to you.
Could you expand on what you mean by that? I have a laptop battery thats at 60% and it still allows the machine to run full-tilt of battery. I also had drones and other equipment with degraded batteries.
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 also suffers from rapidgate and coldgate both. Either the battery heats up too much during driving to accept proper charge (no thermal management). Or it's too cold to accept charge (no heating).
Why is everything a gate now, this is getting ridiculous.
Is there a website to keep track of all the gates?
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#287I’ll be interested to see the lifespan of EVs for “normal” people. I’ve got a 2012 Nissan LEAF we bought post-lease in 2015. I love it still, and don’t have any plans to replace it. The battery is not in great shape, but it gets me where I need to go. I am genuinely considering replacing the battery rather than buying another EV when the battery finally fails.
An EV inverter for $200 can allow your car to power your refrigerator + router/phone/laptops for many hours (days for a LR Tesla).
Why would you want to stress a very expensive and hard to replace car component - reducing its life.
Just put some solar panels on your roof
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Private parking won't be an issue if you can charge the car during grocery runs, but yes, it's an issue.
Rolling out charging isn't much more complicated than rolling out streetlights. But it depends on what kind of "developing countries" we are talking about.
I agree with your prediction wholeheartedly, new car sales will slowly move to EV or PHEV during the next 10 years. After that they'll start to trickle down to the used car market with more affordable prices.
It will be a while before you can grab a $1k beater EV though.
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Though probably unwise (and possibly illegal) in many cases.
Where would it be illegal to store petrol? It might be unwise if you live in an apartment, but illegal?
In UK its illegal to store over 30 liters, and only in special container.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/fireandexplosion/petrol-storage-club-...
Also it goes off after like 6 months if you are not using it.
https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/know-how/does-fuel-go-off....
Re: Sales of electric cars up by 43% in 2020
#290The "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…
For whatever it’s worth, everyone who has driven my model 3 immediately wants one and it has inspired 4 purchases so far. Even the most EV hating Porsche fan was converted. It has been described to me by those friends and family and by myself exactly as “an iPhone moment”. I know HN is usually quite hard on Tesla, but I do disagree - and it has nothing to do with autopilot. I feel like the sales numbers also make the…
I'm a big fan of Tesla, bought their stock in 2010, drove or ridden in almost every model, I still don't think it makes the cut.
It's a bridge tech like the CFL lightbulb or the blackberry. Not that musk can't push it forward, just not with the current lineup
I've worked in tech focussed on alternative vehicle adoption for 5 years now.
This weird left-field long shot thing I'm talking about is the first time I can see it actually happening.
I know it's hair brained and wacky sounding, but I think it's also correct. Taiwan and India have a huge scooter culture for commuters on the same logic I'm banking on here. Conventional 4 doors aren't going away, but there's a large downstream opportunity following all the traditional dynamics - it's pretty by the book, even down to the dismissive attitude, especially by me.
I'm about to get 100 or so on the road in car-sharing by years end so I'll know a lot more by then. I don't know if it will work without the other pieces. Still trying to pull the inductive charging together and once aptera is actually ready to ship, I'll be getting solar ones out too. Odds are murky, but eh, let's do it anyway.