The Electric Car • Hacker News Board

Re: The Electric Car

#11

Post by TD-Linux » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #4

swombat wrote: post #2

Interesting article, though it forgets the elephant in the room: self-driving cars. The two will probably work hand in hand, but it is unlikely, in my opinion, that any electric cars will be charging at home very much, because most electric cars will be owned by companies, not individuals. Why own a car when you can pay a tiny percentage of a cab fare to go anywhere? When a journey that currently costs $50 costs 20 c…

What if the self-driving electric cab gets soiled with the last passenger's bodily fluids?

Send it to the service hub and ask for another?

Re: The Electric Car

#12

Post by danhak » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 9:59 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

danhak wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Even Elon Musk's most ambitious projections for "autopilot" are a car that can drive itself 90 - 95% of the time but will require an alert, licensed driver to take over if necessary. Secondly, I don't feel that the possible rise of truly autonomous vehicles (if that even occurs within the next ten years) affects the main point of this article. In fact…

> The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Google cars are pretty damn close to level 4 autonomous vehicles. They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously, and Google runs their self-driving vehicle algorithms against simulated virtual worlds constantly (with data previously collected from their self driving cars). We are so much closer to fully autonomous cars than people thin…

> They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously

Zero of those miles were at a speeds > 25 mph. And the cars have averaged > 1 accident per 100,000 miles.

Re: The Electric Car

#13

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

jtokoph wrote: post #8

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Google cars are pretty damn close to level 4 autonomous vehicles. They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously, and Google runs their self-driving vehicle algorithms against simulated virtual worlds constantly (with data previously collected from their self driving cars). We are so much closer to fully autonomous cars than people thin…

I've always thought that the Google cars have driven 95%+ of their miles in Mountain View, CA where every single aspect of the roads have been digitized, tested and tweaked a million times over. If you stuck one of these cars in a brand new city, it wouldn't work nearly as well.

How quickly could a fleet of Google vehicles ingest a major metros geographic data? Assume a similar project as Street View, with minimum wage drivers piloting the data collection vehicles without autonomous mode turned on. Days? Weeks? Under 6 months for sure.

EDIT: Current street view coverage: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/68384?hl=en

Re: The Electric Car

#14

Post by sremani » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:00 PM UTC

pierotofy wrote: post #10

I would still buy a gasoline car just because there are no charging stations near where I live. Yeah you can charge at home, but if I have to take a longer trip? At least for me, I will wait until charging stations become more available. Could be a chicken and egg problem.

PHEV. 2016 Chevy Volt with 50mile Electric range and 41mpg when running on gas may be what you are looking for.

Re: The Electric Car

#15

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:01 PM UTC

danhak wrote: post #12

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Google cars are pretty damn close to level 4 autonomous vehicles. They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously, and Google runs their self-driving vehicle algorithms against simulated virtual worlds constantly (with data previously collected from their self driving cars). We are so much closer to fully autonomous cars than people thin…

> They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously Zero of those miles were at a speeds > 25 mph. And the cars have averaged > 1 accident per 100,000 miles.

Audi's TTS autonomous vehicle sped up Pike's Peak successfully 5 years ago:

http://www.wired.com/2010/11/audis-robotic-car-climbs-pikes-...

"The car made five runs during a week of testing, reaching the 14,100-foot summit in 27 minutes. The very fastest drivers — in cars putting down more than 900 horsepower — do it in 10 minutes and change, so clearly the car isn’t terribly fast. But the point isn’t the speed, it’s the fact there was no one at the wheel. According to Audi, race officials said an expert driver in car like the TTS would complete the course in around 17 minutes."

Note that none of the accidents Google cars have been involved in were while the vehicles were in autonomous mode.

http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/

Re: The Electric Car

#16

Post by yesimahuman » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

pierotofy wrote: post #10

I would still buy a gasoline car just because there are no charging stations near where I live. Yeah you can charge at home, but if I have to take a longer trip? At least for me, I will wait until charging stations become more available. Could be a chicken and egg problem.

Interesting to think about small towns that lack electric car infrastructure: if many of those rely on tourism (thinking a remote seasonal vacation town), as their customers increasingly drive electric cars, they will have to change, which will bring more infrastructure to the whole city.

Re: The Electric Car

#17

Post by rickdale » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:02 PM UTC

My big qualm with the electric cars that I don't read about is the 40minute-1hour charging. People complain that charging stations aren't near them, but the convenience of pulling into a gas station filling up and being ready for another 400 miles in less than 5 minutes is hard to beat. Even if the charging stations were all around, 5 versus 40-60 min is a big difference.

Re: The Electric Car

#18

Post by JTon » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:03 PM UTC

> The reason electric cars will take over our roads is because consumers will DEMAND them. Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy. The iPhone demonstrated that smartphones are infinitely better than the feature phones which dominated the world in 2007.

The smartphone revolution analogy makes me cringe. Electric cars are currently playing catch up to their gasoline counterparts in almost every metric except emissions. When the iPhone was released it quite literally leapfrogged the competition (with the exception of battery life). What gives author?

Re: The Electric Car

#19

Post by mahyarm » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:04 PM UTC

sosuke wrote: post #7

We just need to add outlets everywhere. I'd love one, but I don't have a place to charge it.

The electric car is actually fairly inconvenient if you don't have a garage or a parking spot that you rent / cannot install an outlet on.

The cycle time on vehicles is far higher than a cheap smartphone mainly due to their expense. And a large amount of the article's bullet points are not something that would be unique to an electric car.

When you take public transit, as long as the train/bus isn't loud, would you care to notice if it was electric or gas based? Or how fast it got you where you wanted to go with comfort?

Re: The Electric Car

#20

Post by hackuser » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 10:05 PM UTC

The real story my be that car sales may decline, gas or electric:

* People drive less; I saw a study showing that significantly fewer millenials are licensed to drive than their predecessors.

* More people live in cities, where the cost of cars is higher (insurance and parking) and the demand for them is less due to the proximity of destinations and the availability of alternatives (public transport, taxis, ride-sharing, car sharing, bicycling)

* Energy costs likely will increase.

* As awareness of climate change grows, people will be less willing to cause greenhouse gas emissions (and the energy in your electric car battery must come from somplace, probably a fossil-fuel in a power plant).