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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

#511

Post by Mauricebranagh »

djrogers wrote: post #465
Mauricebranagh wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This use case is for a 1-2x /yr event, not an every day thing. Also, solar panels do nothing for you if there is a power outage when there's no sun...

So Tesla makes a lot of changes for a facility that a tiny number of people will use once or twice a year.

Refurbishing old car batteries into a Powerwall type of device might make more sense though for a domestic use a fuel cell make more sense.

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

#512

Post by africanboy »

ThomPete wrote: post #506
africanboy wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> than it is in much less developed areas of the world I believe Amazonia air quality is much better than air quality in Milan (where I lived for 10 years). https://www.iqair.com/italy/lombardy/milano > Fossil fuel industry is the industry that have made it possible for us to live longer I'm not at war with fossil fuel industry, I was simply answering to this question > what deductions are we giving for the positive…

I was talking about the deductions for positive externalities of fossile fuel.

> I was talking about the deductions for positive externalities of fossile fuel.

There have been State incentives for at least two decades to buy new cars that produced less emissions on fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel industry benefitted of enormous deductions for over a century for their contribution to the industrial revolutions.

For example they never pay for the disasters they create [0][1].

[0] The oil spill of the Exxon Valdez in 1989 only costed $ 125 million to Exxon https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-and-state-alask...

[1] even when they paid a just fine (like the 60 billion BP paid for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico) it's peanuts compared to the environmental damages that the future generations will inherit (the mangroves still carry the damages from the Ixtoc spill of 1979, 40 years later)

Ixtoc soiled hundreds of miles of beaches, all the way to Texas. The fishermen also said that oysters that used to be found clinging to the mangrove roots seemed to have vanished after the spill and never returned.

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

#513

Post by bluGill »

throwaway2a02 wrote: post #483
bluGill wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

solar panels are the wrong dc voltage, so some sort of conversion is needed. I'm no EE, but my understanding is you go through AC and a transformer anyway in most cases.

Virtually all off-grid solar installations use some kind of an MPPT controller with a battery setup. The controller is always charging the battery (when there is power output from the panels), and the consumer power output is supplied by the batteries. This way you get much higher peak current output than the panels could provide, you also ensure stability. In fact, many cabin installations don't even use inverters t…

Off grid is going to be designed to fit and probably cheap. Not always best. If you panels are near the batteries and near the load what you say can make sense (though I wouldn't be surprised if the charger had a AC step internally, that is clearly optional)

That isn't what you would do for anything tied to the grid. This is far more common (economies of scale mean the parts are cheaper). There you would take advantage of AC's ability to change voltage easily to allow the panels to be farther from the rest of the system. You would also want to use the grid as a backup for any system failures in the solar setup.

Eliminating steps isn't always a good idea.

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

#514

Post by llampx »

symlinkk wrote: post #450

I acknowledge that electric cars are objectively superior. But subjectively I can’t get excited about one. I want a great sounding exhaust. I want a great feeling manual transmission. Cars for me are more about feeling, heritage, and excitement than about raw performance and efficiency. For that reason I think I’ll try to hold on to gas cars as long as I can.

I miss the days when I romanticized cars the way you seem to do.

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

#515

Post by symlinkk »

llampx wrote: post #514
symlinkk wrote: post #450

I acknowledge that electric cars are objectively superior. But subjectively I can’t get excited about one. I want a great sounding exhaust. I want a great feeling manual transmission. Cars for me are more about feeling, heritage, and excitement than about raw performance and efficiency. For that reason I think I’ll try to hold on to gas cars as long as I can.

I miss the days when I romanticized cars the way you seem to do.

Yeah I attach a lot of feelings to them, probably too much. What happened that made you stop being interested in them?

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

#516

Post by konschubert »

thinkcontext wrote: post #442
neuronic wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. The average price paid for new US cars was $40K [0]. There are now plenty of models below that without subsidy, including Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW ID4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona and even the low end of the Tesla 3. That's just the upfront price, of course TCO is lower than a same price ICE car because fuel and maintenance are lower. [0] ht…

What was the median price paid for new US cars?

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

#517

Post by reissbaker »

olivermarks wrote: post #479
reissbaker wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is citing needing 6-8 panels between 320-330 watts to charge a Tesla Model S; 8 if you live in the northeast United States (it's not backyard orientation, it's about where you live geographically), 6 if you live in the southwest United States. The "small" Tesla panel arrays that I mentioned are 4.08 kilowatts [1], which is more than enough even in the northeast to charge a Model S, or any EV. They take up…

Do you own Tesla solar panels? I've heard mixed reports about them. I live in Northern California where there is a big solar presence but most of the solar people I've spoken to (installers and owners) say Tesla is too expensive and not particularly great. I'll be doing solar panels on our roof when the battery storage tech becomes viable and PG&E start being sensible about individual electricity production.

I don't own Tesla solar panels! I'm just going off publicly available info. I'm willing to believe that Tesla is not competitive on price, although I would be surprised if their wattage numbers were fake.

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

#518

Post by reissbaker »

jjav wrote: post #212
reissbaker wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, 11kWh to go 26 miles... I guess it depends heavily on the car, then. The Tesla Model 3 (the car I own) gets a little better than 4 miles per kWh, which would mean the trip would take around 6kWh — so about half the cost, making it cheaper than gas even at California electricity prices.

> Oh wow, 11kWh to go 26 miles... Well that commute includes going up a 2000ft mountain pass so that part drains the battery pretty quick. I'm sure the Fiat would get better range in flat land, but there isn't much flat land around here.

Going uphill would also burn more gas though, so I'm surprised a pure gas car was getting 36 mpg under that scenario. And at least the electric car would regenerate a portion of the electricity on the way back down; it's not like brakes can produce gasoline, after all.

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

#519

Post by djaychela »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #508
djaychela wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply not true - of many makes of car, but BMW in particular. There are lots of issues with combustion engines which can be fatal - look at the issues with vanos bits dropping into them, camchain failures, etc. I buy and sell cars as a side gig, and there are plenty of models which people like me would not touch with a barge pole because of issues like this - many of them German - and you'll find many for sal…

I'm sure there are exceptions, but engine problems are way, way less common than the accepted degradation of batteries over their lifetime. Most car engines keep working well even after running 100-200k kms. There is no "accepted" degradation into uselessness as we have for lithium batteries.

The same degradation happens with ICE engines - they lose power and become less efficient.

And batteries which are thermally managed (ie anything but an old leaf) will have a better lifetime than a typical ICE engine -tesla easily achieve 300k miles with less than 10% range loss.

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