The Electric Car • Hacker News Board

Re: The Electric Car

#101

Post by MiguelHudnandez » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:26 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #52

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…

> To say gas stations will go out of business is ludicrous at best, Tesla will go out of business sooner as established car brands move in and hurt bottom line for Tesla. I don't get that dichotomy. If established car brands move into electric, wouldn't that kill both Tesla and gas stations? Why would gas stations survive?

Gas stations have one shot at survival over the next 30 years: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs).

Part of the reason traditional manufacturers have been reluctant to pursue BEVs (battery-electric vehicles) is that many were betting on liquefied hydrogen as an energy delivery mechanism for FCVs. I presume this was from pressure from current energy companies.

Hydrogen benefits current energy interests because customers would fill up their cars in a way roughly analogous to today's gas stations. Even though the "fuel" product and drivetrain are different, gas stations can adapt for hydrogen.

That is just way too complicated to work out, though, and I think traditional automakers are at the point where they are giving up. The hydrogen infrastructure is hugely expensive and the resulting automotive products are not that much more convenient than BEVs.

Tesla's Gigafactory, enabling products like their PowerWall, is the most straightforward way for us as a society to use more renewables. The problem with wind and solar has always been spotty, inconsistent power generation, and with enough battery capacity, that is no longer an issue. That is a bad sign for gas stations, but an opportunity to pivot for traditional energy companies.

Re: The Electric Car

#102

Post by dnautics » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:32 PM UTC

> In fact, in 2005 few if any of the futurists would have even been able to imagine the kind of device most of us now depend upon.

Well, let's be honest, mod the implementation details, Star Trek pretty much got this correct with the PADD.

Re: The Electric Car

#103

Post by CountSessine » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

roel_v wrote: post #37

jtokoph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That other company of which there was an article here a few months ago drove a car autonomously from LA to NYC. Volvo drives cars around Stockholm. BMW has self driving cars on the road. There are self driving trucks right now at work on oil fields in Alaska and in mines in Australia. It's true that we're not really there yet. And yes there are hurdles like regulation, what about heavy rain etc. But the pace at which…

No carmaker has a city-driving autonomous vehicle that doesn't require super-precise, cm-scale, unrealistically always-up-to-date maps for the AI.

The autonomous super-size dump trucks drive along carefully pre-programmed routes using GPS.

We're still a long ways away from practical and safe self-driving cars. AI and computer vision just isn't there yet.

Re: The Electric Car

#104

Post by ahmacleod » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:38 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.

There was a time when you could say the same about street view. Now they're working on the bottom of the ocean.

Re: The Electric Car

#105

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:38 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #102

> In fact, in 2005 few if any of the futurists would have even been able to imagine the kind of device most of us now depend upon. Well, let's be honest, mod the implementation details, Star Trek pretty much got this correct with the PADD.

If I may nerd out for a moment, the technical manual [+] for the Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) even specified that the entire craft could be piloted from a PADD. This is entirely reasonable based on today's mobile device hardware (I'd argue, if you're offloading computationally expensive tasks to a central processor and using a mobile device solely for taking in aggregated sensor data and outputting navigational commands).

[+] https://cudebi.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/franchise-star-tr...

Re: The Electric Car

#106

Post by msandford » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:40 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #98

JimboOmega wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who live in apartment buildings and don't have a garage where we can install such things, then what? To me this has always been the biggest obstacle of an electric car.

Wait to buy an electric car until it's convenient for you to charge it?

That means few millenials will ever be able to own them; real estate is just too damn expensive to buy, nevermind the car that you really only can get once you own a house with a garage.

Re: The Electric Car

#107

Post by toomuchtodo » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:40 PM UTC

powera wrote: post #88

erikpukinskis wrote: post #24

I don't think people full comprehend the price drop that is imminent. The total cost of ownership per mile for a car in the U.S. right now is about $0.60. I was watching a panel the other day where someone calculated the cost per mile of a fleet of self-driving on-demand electric cars at $0.08. That an 86% reduction. People might have their misgivings about any of this stuff... electric, self-driving, carshare, and o…

If a Tesla Model S costs $70000, even if electricity and maintenance are free (and there's no premium for self-driving) you would have to drive it 875000 miles for it to cost $0.08/mile. This seems like the type of thing that is literally unbelievable without more evidence than "I heard somebody on a panel say this".

If the vehicle is self-driving, and managed by Google infrastructure for ridesharing so its highly utilized, how quickly do you cover 875000 miles? A quick Google search indicates that traditional cabs cover 70K miles a year; so that's a <10 year payback period. Not terrible for an asset that's going to be ancient tech in 5-7 years.

Re: The Electric Car

#108

Post by CountSessine » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:45 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #32

jtokoph wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mapping the roads isn't challenging. How do you think humans perform at driving through brand new cities?

Humans don't need cm-scale precise maps in cities to avoid jumping curbs and running into streetlamps. But that's still a requirement for all autonomous cars that have been demonstrated.

Re: The Electric Car

#109

Post by greglindahl » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:47 PM UTC

msandford wrote: post #106

greglindahl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait to buy an electric car until it's convenient for you to charge it?

That means few millenials will ever be able to own them; real estate is just too damn expensive to buy, nevermind the car that you really only can get once you own a house with a garage.

Lots of places don't have super-expensive real estate, unlike the Bay Area and Manhattan. More and more places over time will require apartment garages to have chargers -- already a law for new construction here in Palo Alto.

Personally, I charge at the city parking garage a block away.

Re: The Electric Car

#110

Post by swombat » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #103

roel_v wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That other company of which there was an article here a few months ago drove a car autonomously from LA to NYC. Volvo drives cars around Stockholm. BMW has self driving cars on the road. There are self driving trucks right now at work on oil fields in Alaska and in mines in Australia. It's true that we're not really there yet. And yes there are hurdles like regulation, what about heavy rain etc. But the pace at which…

No carmaker has a city-driving autonomous vehicle that doesn't require super-precise, cm-scale, unrealistically always-up-to-date maps for the AI. The autonomous super-size dump trucks drive along carefully pre-programmed routes using GPS. We're still a long ways away from practical and safe self-driving cars. AI and computer vision just isn't there yet.

"A long way away" - only true in terms of linear extrapolations of current progress. Think in terms of exponential progress, and we're about 5 years from the majority of trips being done by self-driving car, IMHO. The benefits of self-driving cars are so powerful that they will take over the world even faster than the electric vehicles described in this article...