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

The Electric Car

blog.geoffralston.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 349 posts

Re: The Electric Car

#221

Post by ryandrake »

JimboOmega wrote: post #93
greglindahl wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Not only that, but commutes > the range of the car make it impossible as well. The only thing stopping me from buying a leaf is that my commute is 50 miles, so if I don't find a charging station near work, I don't get home.

Re: The Electric Car

#223

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: The Electric Car

#224

Post by reustle »

> Thanks to Sam Altman for having read an earlier version of this post.

Does this add anything to the article, or is it just a way to say "I'm friends with Sam". Do people proofreading a short article expect this sort of thing?

Re: The Electric Car

#225

Post by eru »

ekianjo wrote: post #205
higherpurpose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> and have the potential to use 100% renewable energy in the future. Except when it comes to manufacturing them.

Recycle them?

Re: The Electric Car

#226

Post by jakejake »

roflchoppa wrote: post #222

Eh. i would like to see independent garages retrofitting batteries into classic cars. but man, theres nothing like hearing carburetors on v8's.

There does seem to be a small group of hot-rodder hackers who are doing that, like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8 - the related videos on the side have a few more who are racing electric cars in old bodies. I haven't seen one with a really classic hot rod body, but that would be really cool.

Re: The Electric Car

#227

Post by eru »

krschultz wrote: post #181
powera wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

What's crazy about 875,000 miles? Most personal gasoline cars last approximately 200,000 miles, but people rarely keep them that long because for the average driver the car is 10-20 years old. The interior will wear out long before the engine. If the car manufacturers built the drivetrain to last 400,000 miles, they would just be wasting money. If the car is running 24/7 at 30 mph, you would top 250k miles per year.…

Of course you won't see 24/7 usage on most cars, just like you don't see 24/7 usage on all electrical power stations.

Unless someone finds an economic activity that you can throw basically unlimited car-hours at in the night time. The yield can be low, but it has to be higher than the variable cost of one more car hour.

Re: The Electric Car

#228

Post by eru »

brc wrote: post #200
beambot wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another driver for fewer car sales: More ride-sharing and taxi (Uber) services obviating the need to purchase individual vehicles which see sub-5% utilization. This is good for the environment too.... IIRC, the embodied cost to fabricate a vehicle represents something like 30% of its net carbon cost. This is pretty significant when you consider the very low utilization rate for a capital asset.

This factor is often overstated - for a few reasons. Passenger miles are likely to go up, if anything, even if because more vacant miles are being driven to collect people, and also because making a service cheaper leads to higher consumption of that service. Passenger miles are what causes car sales - cars wear out. For cars which produce revenue then there comes a point where it's more economical to purchase a new…

We will also see cars that last longer, since the initial capital investment into reliability will be recouped over more time driven.

I wonder whether machine driving will lead to less wear and tear on cars.

Re: The Electric Car

#229

Post by toephu2 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #118

While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3: > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car…

>Gas stations even today don't make money with gas

I've heard this a lot, but is this really true? Gas is highly regulated in the U.S. and supposedly a Mom & Pop gas station's gas is just as good as Shell or Chevron..(because they are inspected yearly by the local county's Weights and Measurements department) But the price difference can be quite large, e.g., 15%+ higher sometimes. Also I'm curious how Costco gas is so cheap? Anyway so who is eating up this difference in price? Shell is making quite a bit off gas then? or is the owner of that particular gas station taking the profit?

Re: The Electric Car

#230

Post by snogglethorpe »

jannotti wrote: post #173
threeseed wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you have missed the big population trends of the last few decades. More and more people are moving to inner city apartments every one of which is not designed with electric cars in mind. And with property prices reaching astronomical amounts in many places e.g. Australia, UK, Europe, HK, SG the lure of cheaper but smaller apartments is only going to grow. For me this is is one of the big advantages of hydroge…

I agree there's a problem here, but the trend you point out is probably breakeven with respect to gas/electric. Many people how move into a dense city have no car at all. (Those who do have more money and often garage their car, so they'll add charging to long term garages as demand increases.)

Yes. People moving to inner city apartments are dropping the car altogether, so for them what matters is what's most convenient for car-rental companies when they occasionally rent a car....

In an environment where people only use cars for special trips, not for day-to-day activities, the longer range of gasoline might end up being a bigger advantage than it is for current-day Americans.

Post reply on HN