151–160 of 424 posts
I recall the first time someone showed me lithium batteries, in a radio control car that outperformed a real car. Even then, the price while high wasn't the biggest barrier to getting large quantities; you just couldn't get as many as you wanted. Don't think that has ever eased. I think that's why TSLA is such a hot stock, people feel there's much more market thats undeserved and TSLA seems to be the only folks geari…
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drawing a line on a graph and saying "look how X Y is gonna be in Z years" is the same exact type of stupid And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors. Imperfect to be sure, but if you don’t skate to where the puck is headed, you will miss opportunity.
> And yet we do it every ~18 months with semiconductors. So, this is about to stop. Very soon. Quantum tunneling, yield rates, etc are all starting to be cost prohibitive. Even if hypothetically it does, there's a very real limit - an atom is only 10x smaller than 2nm.
No improvement trend goes on forever. But why is this the moment lithium ion hits the wall? It’s like trying to call the end of a bull market.
This is important to keep in mind when you read articles and/or studies about how electric cars or wind or solar power is impractical. A lot of the data these studies use is just obsolete. Say you have an opinion piece in a news paper that says that electric cars will always be expensive toys for the rich. It relies on a scientific paper published in a technical journal 2 years ago. The scientific paper does not perf…
> while a car lasts only 10-15 years While it might be the case that today’s EVs will not be economically longer-lived than 15 years, the overall average age of a car in the US is 12 years, and most of my cars have been bought with 10 or more years on them as it makes for very inexpensive motoring (no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation). I bought my 2015 L…
However, battery prices are going drop further. Your Leaf has a 24kWh pack. At the current $100/kwh price, thats $2400 for a completely new battery. In the future I'm sure you could get an even higher capacity replacement.
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Yes, using obsolete data from when tech was bleeding edge in 1999 to imply things about cost going forward is misleading. On the other hand using improvement over the same timeline, drawing a line on a graph and saying "look how X Y is gonna be in Z years" is the same exact type of stupid but pointed in a different direction. In 1991 lithium was highly immature technology and would take about a decade to make it into…
Except when you consider where each technology fits within its own S-curve of adoption (X axis over time, Y axis is % of the technology adopted by the market). When factoring in the shape of the exponential decreases in costs, and that penetration of most of these technologies is at or before the inflection point (between 5%-15% market penetration), it is more likely that the cost declines will ACCELERATE moving forw…
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I'm not a free market apologist by any means, but we also didn't see "poor people" or folks in the lower economic strata buy mobile devices and smartphones when they became first available, at least not the scale we're seeing now (without mentioning the fact that the devices were crazy expensive when first launched, adjusting for inflation). Economy of scale is a thing, and imo it's OK to use the rich and the wealthy…
An expensive phone is about 500-1000€. A cheap EV is in the 20K neighborhood, and the functionality is pretty bad compared to a cheap second-hand utility car (pretty hard to travel outside your city). Even when regulations push prices up, it's still far more economical to buy a cheap gas car than a cheap EV. Even in Europe there are plenty of countries where many people can't afford an EV. They can afford second-hand…
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There’s still a large difference between upper-middle class and upper class. I think many middle class jobs can support owning a Tesla Model 3 or other mid-range new car but not a Porsche. When I hear “expensive toy for the rich”, I think of a millionaire’s 3rd lambo, not Bill’s Silverado lease. Initial Teslas were sports cars, and now it’s squarely in middle class territory. Still a big improvement and a big market,…
Not when I can buy an ICE and operate for cheaper - note the nearest "charge station" to me is 30+ miles away and then the next nearest is 100+ miles beyond that. The drop in diesel and gasoline prices recently only cements the value of an ICE vehicle.
It costs me about $6.00 to charge my 60kwh EV, which has a range of 238 miles.
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Maintenance beyond consumables (brakes, wipers, and tires) costs less than the difference in excise tax ($25 tax per $1000 of imputed value every year). All cars are inspected annually here. At 4K miles per year (my average pre-COVID), if my risk is average, I’d expect to be in a fatal accident slightly less than once every 22K years. I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk.
> I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk. Driver aid, ok. But passive safety?
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I imagine most of the aircon energy usage coincides with the times of peak photovoltaic generation. So if you calculate by total energy consumption, you'll overestimate things by a huge margin.
You can imagine that, but it isn’t true. AC usage is relatively low in the middle of the day because people let their houses warm up while their at work. It jumps at the end of the workday.
Presumably if electricity was free during th day and expensive at night, that habit would change rapdily.
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There’s still a large difference between upper-middle class and upper class. I think many middle class jobs can support owning a Tesla Model 3 or other mid-range new car but not a Porsche. When I hear “expensive toy for the rich”, I think of a millionaire’s 3rd lambo, not Bill’s Silverado lease. Initial Teslas were sports cars, and now it’s squarely in middle class territory. Still a big improvement and a big market,…
Not when I can buy an ICE and operate for cheaper - note the nearest "charge station" to me is 30+ miles away and then the next nearest is 100+ miles beyond that. The drop in diesel and gasoline prices recently only cements the value of an ICE vehicle.
But many people, including myself, think that EVs are better in general. If I was comparing a $15k car to a $20k car, I could be convinced to spend more on an EV if I was just comparing the vehicles themselves in an ideal environment. But that decision doesn’t make sense until the “practicality” problem is solved.
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> no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation But you need to maintain it and have it inspected instead! And you're also paying with your safety - ten years is a very long time in safety technology these days!
Surely you jest. What safety features on standard vehicles became indispensable in the past 10 years? Note: things like collision avoidance and adaptive cruise are still luxury features and the OG poster wouldn’t have bought those anyway.
https://www.subaru.com/engineering/safety.html https://www.nissanusa.com/shopping-tools/build-price?models=...