Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 243 posts

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#231

Post by mg »

robotresearcher wrote: post #155
mg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking about energy usage always puzzles me. I'm not even sure if driving a car from one city to another really uses energy. For example, let's look at it this way: The energy from the sun is heating earth. When we use some of it to drive a solar-powered electric car from one city to another, does that lower the temperature of planet earth? I would think it does not. So why did we get the energy to drive the car fo…

Other answers correctly talk about entropy. Here’s an analogy that might help with intuition. A kilogram bar of solid gold is worth about $70K. Take every atom of that gold and sprinkle them separately into the ocean. You haven’t used any gold: it’s all still there. The difference in value of the bar and the seawater containing the exact same gold is in the arrangement and availability of the gold, not its mere exist…

I wasn't comparing energy in a battery to energy in the atmosphere.

I was comparing a car in city A with a car moved to city B. Both in warm atmosphere. You can heat the atmosphere AND move the car, without creating more entropy than by just heating the atmosphere. So it looks like moving the car does not create entropy / does not use energy.

With the gold, you cannot buy an apartment with it if you sprinkle it in the ocean. You have to decide: Buy an apartment OR sprinkle it in the ocean. You can't get the apartment AND an ocean with gold sprinkles. So you can't get the apartment for free.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#232

Post by [deleted] »

helij wrote: post #174
marcusverus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you take a look at the numbers above it's not that bad and we drive a new, safe, no issues (free servicing) car every 3-4 years. Driving a new car every few years is incredibly decadent. If you bought a car, paid it off in 5 years and drove it for another 10, you’d be saving thousands every year. Repeat that cycle every 15 years and invest the savings, and you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars in…

As per my calculations our two latest cars cost us around £200/month. That is £2400 per year or £24000 per 10 years. Pretty good for cars costing £30k and £40k new. Buying the same cars and driving them for 15 years would actually cost the same or more. We were lucky as prices of second hand cars were good so we actually came ahead. This might change in the future.

[deleted]

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#233

Post by maxerickson »

browningstreet wrote: post #124
facialwipe wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No

Rains a lot. Pretty cold. Snows. Lots of bikes. But really nice biking infrastructure — of the kind that’s hard to imagine in places like North America.

The population density is a bit of a factor. Like I live in a region in the US that is about the same size as Netherlands by area and has about 1/50th the population. And then if you go out west the difference gets starker than that.

Of course higher density parts of the US also don't really match up with the infrastructure that exists in Netherlands, but it's not unreasonable to expect the infrastructure in a given area to scale with the number of people in that area.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#234

Post by dragonmost »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #161
robotcookies wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been several attempts to make battery swapping for cars a thing. This includes Tesla's attempt and another company that went bankrupt. For some reason, it does not seem to work out and they all stop trying it.

Nio currently has around 2,000 battery swap stations in china. They seem much farther along than the people that gave up.

But you have to keep in mind that it's heavily subsidized by china and is more than likely just burning money

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#235

Post by fnordpiglet »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #229
fnordpiglet wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, as an EV owner I’m 98% confident ICE is over. The age of fire is ending and the age of maxwells equations is upon us. ICE is fundamentally too complex. The primary issue in EV is battery tech, and that is advancing so rapidly with so much investment that the 5 year roadmap of CATL and others already addresses almost all the issues, and there’s a ton of wildcard battery tech looming with intense interest. There’s…

Right, but we’re not talking about the tech, we’re talking about price. For at least the next 25 years, for a lot of people, the significant up-front cost of buying an EV will push them to keep older ICE vehicles on life support in a Captain Vimes’s boots sort of way.

Oh, price today is entirely margin related and poisoning the well by the ICE career attached people at major car makers. Everyone wants Tesla margins so is charging Tesla prices, and the ICE career aligned execs are intentionally pushing the ICE will be affordable narrative.

BYD, MG, and other Chinese EV makers are already eating ICE makers alive in Asia and creeping into Europe. Nothing about EV is necessarily expensive - they’re very simple devices, no part is exotic, and most of the current price is baked into fit and finish plus heavy margins.

ICE cars are genuinely amazing machines of precision mastery. They’re complex and difficult to make. The only reason they’re cheap is scale and long established supply chains. But if you reduced their complexity by 80-90% like with an EV, the scale and maturity of supply chain required to overtake ICE is not 25 years to establish. It’s more like 3-4.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#236

Post by thejazzman »

thebruce87m wrote: post #196
tapoxi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's speculation on the part of the buyer. Why introduce more anxiety when you can just go with what you already know? If every gas station supported CCS it would be less of an issue, but usually you need to find a station nearby and wait for 20-40 minutes if it's CCS or 6-8 hours if it's level 2.

20 minutes every 2 - 3 hours of rare long distance driving is acceptable, considering I save 4 hours of petrol station visits per yer vs my old diesel. Not to mention the fuel cost savings.

Depends how fast your car charges. 2017 Model S 75D charges for 30-40m every ~90 minutes of driving.

It's not as bad as it sounds, or I'm lying to myself, but having the 90 minute planned stops makes a cross country trip seem a lot closer ... even though it's doing the opposite.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#237

Post by Tommstein »

jeffrallen wrote: post #223
Tommstein wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I know most driving isn't long-distance in rental cars, but I was traveling a few weeks ago and offered an electric car instead of the hybrid I had reserved, but since I was going to be driving long distances through rural areas, I declined. Not interested in finding where the hell to charge the car, in general or close enough to the airport for it to still have an acceptable amount of charge left when I returne…

Yeah, I just had the experience of getting a $35 recharge fee when the rental company couldn't be assed to put a high speed charger out front of their return lot. Making me bring back the car at 75% but giving me no way to do that is just lame. The fee should only apply to less than 20% charge. Thanks a lot Thrifty. Not going to rent from you again until you fix your electric car return policies.

On the topic of getting dicked around with refueling/recharging charges, several times in the last few months I have returned a car with a full tank to Avis, only for them to still add some bullshit fuel charge that required calling and talking to someone to get it removed each time. No way the fees keep getting added by accident, they're just doing it so they can keep the fees from people who don't notice or care enough about their casual theft. Avoid those thieving assholes too.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#238

Post by d1sxeyes »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #235
d1sxeyes wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but we’re not talking about the tech, we’re talking about price. For at least the next 25 years, for a lot of people, the significant up-front cost of buying an EV will push them to keep older ICE vehicles on life support in a Captain Vimes’s boots sort of way.

Oh, price today is entirely margin related and poisoning the well by the ICE career attached people at major car makers. Everyone wants Tesla margins so is charging Tesla prices, and the ICE career aligned execs are intentionally pushing the ICE will be affordable narrative. BYD, MG, and other Chinese EV makers are already eating ICE makers alive in Asia and creeping into Europe. Nothing about EV is necessarily expen…

Are Tesla’s margins really that great? I know their stock keeps going up but in terms of revenue vs costs, I didn’t think they were that much better than any other luxury car brand-although I accept on reflection that I can’t identify why I think that, which probably means it’s not based on anything.

Regardless of supply chain maturity and so on, I think you are wrong that the average family is less than 4 years away from a new car though.

Re: Are electric cars too expensive to tempt motorists away from petrol vehicles?

#239

Post by tapoxi »

thebruce87m wrote: post #196
tapoxi wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's speculation on the part of the buyer. Why introduce more anxiety when you can just go with what you already know? If every gas station supported CCS it would be less of an issue, but usually you need to find a station nearby and wait for 20-40 minutes if it's CCS or 6-8 hours if it's level 2.

20 minutes every 2 - 3 hours of rare long distance driving is acceptable, considering I save 4 hours of petrol station visits per yer vs my old diesel. Not to mention the fuel cost savings.

Oh I'm not referring to road trips here, they've been mostly fine in my EV. The issue is for people without a garage or a readily accessible charger then can use. My brother lives in Brighton, MA, and to charge his car he'd need to go out of his way to find a CCS charger and then sit there for 40 minutes about once a week. It just removes an EV as an option unless he moves elsewhere.
Post reply on HN