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The Electric Car

blog.geoffralston.com

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Re: The Electric Car

#71

Post by greglindahl »

rfrey wrote: post #43
JTon wrote: post #18

> 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 the…

I think electric cars win on every metric except range and refill/recharge time. They have better torque, better efficiency, lower emissions, lower noise, simpler drivetrains, and more reliable motors.

For refill time, note that most electric car owners do almost all of their charging in their own garages overnight... not something that's common for gas-powered cars. Long trips are worse for electric cars, sure. But day-to-day driving? Charging is not an issue if you can charge in your garage.

Re: The Electric Car

#72

Post by philwelch »

tdiggity wrote: post #28
rickdale wrote: post #17

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.

How often do you drive that distance? Sure, there are people that take road trips of 200+ miles often, and then it may be more convenient for them to refuel quickly. But the majority doesn't do that very often.

People who don't drive that distance don't need cars, frankly--and not owning a car at all is a trend that's growing faster than Tesla sales.

Re: The Electric Car

#73

Post by greglindahl »

elorant wrote: post #66

If electric cars are going to become mainstream we certainly need something far more affordable than Model S. With the money it costs I could buy a Mercedes S-Class which is unparalleled in terms of quality and ride comfort. Furthermore in regions like Europe you can run in all short of inconsistencies with incompatible sockets/recharge stations. Just the other day I was watching a video [1] of a car journalist who t…

... no wonder several manufacturers are working on long-range cars more affordable than the Model S. Examples: Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt, ...

Re: The Electric Car

#74

Post by joars »

I though the lesson from the iphone's success was that a product with less features, easier to use and more integrated make great products. With that reasoning plug-in hybrids are the future, although I'm personally rooting for pure electric to win in the end.

Re: The Electric Car

#75

Post by greglindahl »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #47
mahyarm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Boston has added hybrid buses to their fleet. They are much quieter. I'm a fan. But I agree about the parking spaces. Even now in new construction, it is considered forward thinking to have 2 or 3 spaces with outlets out of 100. For the future of electric cars, they should at least have conduit to spaces where outlets could be installed.

New construction in Palo Alto, including single family homes, is required to have that sort of thing pre-installed. Conduit only for single-family homes, a lot of conduit and some actual chargers for multi-family and commercial buildings.

Re: The Electric Car

#76

Post by higherpurpose »

JTon wrote: post #18

> 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 the…

That's not quite true. In 2007 you would see 90% of the Internet comments talk about how feature-less an iPhone was compared to the Nokia N95 (or whatever was its Nokia competitor at the time). In fact there were some memes comparing the iPhone with a rock.

The original iPhone didn't have video recording, had only 2G support (Nokias supported 3G for a while), didn't support MMS, and it didn't even have apps! And of course something like 1/3 the battery life of Nokia phones with 2" screens.

The iPhone at the time "only" had the benefits of a big screen, touch, and an "easy to use interface". But that was about it - which of course was game-changing. But the point is it didn't have "many" benefits over the phones at the time. Quite the opposite (especially from the perspective of Nokia/Blackberry/etc phone users at the time - which were 99% of the people).

Electric cars have maximum torque (and usually much higher than your average gas-powered car in the same class) from the moment you put your foot on the pedal, they give smooth liniar acceleration (no gear changing), are very silent, cost much less to recharge (about 1/5), have 1/3 the maintenance costs, an order of magnitude fewer parts that can break on you, and have the potential to use 100% renewable energy in the future.

Re: The Electric Car

#77

Post by greglindahl »

yesimahuman wrote: post #16
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.

Tesla rolled out the "destination charger" program for such places. Lots of touristy small towns in California have many more destination chargers than public J1772 stations. Here's a map for the whole country:

http://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82...

Note that you can't even see the California coastline anymore. It's mostly rural and touristy.

Re: The Electric Car

#78

Post by higherpurpose »

curiousjorge wrote: post #31

I think the article is overly optimistic and derives some sort of future prediction based on a simplified past performance of a totally different market. Tesla is a luxury , many of us can't afford it and if we could we would most likely opt for BMW or Benz. The reason these other car makers aren't moving yet is they are learning from Tesla. You don't want to be a first mover in this industry, you want to move so sli…

> Tesla is a luxury , many of us can't afford it and if we could we would most likely opt for BMW or Benz.

You say that as if you're not already aware there will be a Tesla car for $35,000 pre-subsidies in 2017, and a $30,000 Chevy Bolt in 2016, both with 200 mile ranges. That's about the average car price in the US ($33,000). Volkswagen has recently announced a 200-mile EV too, but might be for 2018+.

Considering the cars selling for about as much or close to that started with a 70-mile battery ~5 years ago, then EVs have improved their ranges by 3x in about 5 years. Let's call it 2x if we also account for a ~$10,000 price difference.

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