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The Problem with Electric Vehicles

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#111

Post by vlucas »

All of these problems strike me as temporary. The only barriers here are current technology getting cheaper and more efficient, which always happens over time - especially the timescale needed for EVs to go mainstream.

The tone of this article seems to think we will be stuck with current levels of technology.

Some future possibilities with in 20-30 years:

* Battery capacity doubling, tripling, or more.

* Widespread solar panel use for recharging at home (maybe they even come with solar panels as an upgrade?)

* Solar panels integrated into the car itself for continuous trickle charging (on the rooftop, for instance)

* Companies offering free charging while patronizing their retail locations (ala free Wifi)

* Parking lot charging via installed solar panels

Those are just the first few I could think of off the top of my head. I know there will be others as time goes by.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#112

Post by jacquesm »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #106
jacquesm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is a non-issue for many people. I drive 15km to work every day, and then 15km home. I'd be happy with a car with a 100 mile range, to be honest. You should cycle if that's an option where you live. That's not a distance that I would consider taking the car for, but then again, nl has excellent bicycle infrastructure.

Hmm. I just calculated that it'd take me over 2 hours to cycle 30km, based on my commute (mind you, we have hills here). Nae chance!

2 hours is too much, that's way too much overhead on a day. Hills don't help and besides costing you a lot of time they will (depending on the grade) also make you sweat quite badly, which is not the best way to arrive at work.

One of my family members does 30 km to work and back again in the evening, it takes him about an hour but he's in top shape and there are no hills.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#113

Post by DanBC »

mikeash wrote: post #70
turar wrote: post #46

Can somebody explain how are EV, and especially Tesla, batteries different from, say, my laptop batteries, which normally degrade to the point of being unusable within 4-5 years, and have to be replaced?

EV batteries are treated much better than the batteries in your laptop. First, EV batteries typically have active thermal management. Heat kills lithium ion batteries. When you charge your laptop, the battery gets hot, and this accelerates degradation. When you charge your car, the cooling system engages and keeps the battery at the optimal temperature. (The LEAF doesn't have an active cooling system for its battery.…

Also, EV batteries do have after car uses. They're able to be used for home energy storage, for example.

And when they're no good for that they're recyclable. Although currently it's cheaper to dig lithium out of the ground than reclaim it there's other stuff (cobalt particularly) that is reclaimed.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#114

Post by brongondwana »

jacquesm wrote: post #74
Grishnakh wrote: post #61

You find this guy to be "brilliant"? I only skimmed the article, but it's just the same old, tired, ignorant anti-EV talking points I see from Luddites and oil industry shills every time I come across some kind of anti-EV rant. This article is just better written, but it's the same crap. If I were being extremely generous, I would just say that it's obviously not written by an engineer or anyone who really understand…

> but it's just the same old, tired, ignorant anti-EV talking points I see from Luddites and oil industry shills every time I come across some kind of anti-EV rant God, how I love HN and the endless stream of negativity that it can produce. Just for you, from this 'Luddite and oil industry shill': http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill Now, do fuck off. Apologies for breaking HN etiquette but I've really…

I see you've already called out to one HN comment. This sentence appears to be missing a negative:

being without power meant that our house would be inhabitable almost instantly

Really interesting article (and disagree with the HN negatives too - you make some good points, though I see that a few of them have been answered in comments to a reasonable degree of my satisfaction, particularly the "plug in for the night and the power company controls when it gets power for a cheaper charge" - the tech for that must be pretty close to ready to roll out to garages.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#115

Post by Roboprog »

coldcode wrote: post #63
tsmarsh wrote: post #45

I have an electric car, a leaf. I also have solar power from Solar City. I live in sunny MA, where in the winter we average 15kWh generated to the summer we average 50kWh. My commute is 60 miles per day which is around 6-8kW depending in traffic and weather. Also, my local power is a mixture of nuclear and wind. So. Can we please stop rolling coal burning power plants into the electric car equation as if it is univer…

I live in an apartment there is no way to plug in a car or build a solar panel. Basically without a means of owning an outlet no plugin hybrid is possible.

yep. These are a great fit for some people, and not an option at all for others.

I think the country/world can accommodate BOTH types of car, ICE and EV. And "none" is also a good choice, in some areas.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#116

Post by joshvm »

If EVs really take off, I wouldn't be surprised if workplaces started putting in more chargers in their car parks. It's an obvious solution to the problem of home charging.

The other option is leased batteries which solves a whole host of problems. It would probably cost a bit more, but you would never need to worry about the state of your battery pack. This would require standardisation though, unless everyone drives a Tesla.

In addition to that, home charging is only an issue if everyone decides to do a full charge every single night, which is unlikely. Most people will only need a daily quarter or half charge, city drivers much less.

Even if electricity doubled or tripled in price to compensate for the grid upgrade, it would still be cheaper than gas (at least in this country).

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#117

Post by return0 »

mnw21cam wrote: post #80
return0 wrote: post #22

How about horses? Tried and true method, reliable for millenia, green and sometimes majestic.

If everyone had a horse these days, the environmental impact would be massive, from the infrastructure required to generate the food for them (there probably isn't enough land area in the world to grow enough grass), and the amount of methane they emit.

We do the same with cows and other animals we eat. Plus we feed billions of pets (for which we have no use). Someone will have to do the numbers, but it's possible that, at a small density, they're a green alternative for short distances. Plus it's easy to share them.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#118

Post by mr337 »

Roboprog wrote: post #110
anexprogrammer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite so. The Honda Accord, or Ford Focus family car that takes the kids to school, a 30 mile daily commute and a few trips to the shops is the low hanging fruit. They're easy to replace. If you need something to haul a big caravan for holiday, or trailer for a move. Just rent - the rental shops will expand to fit nicely. Probably a nice big diesel. The v8 offroader that actually works offroad, the truck, and shippin…

Anecdata: I (almost) bought a used Nissan Leaf (~ $10K) a while back. For taking my daughter to work (about 20 miles round trip), it was great. Just put it back on the charger, which was only a 15 amp 110 V charger, and it was ready to go again in a few hours. (edit: it still had 2/3 the battery left, but was fully recharged in just a few hours) Unfortunately, my commute is a bit further (almost 50 miles), which left…

Good choice, I have a leaf and 50 miles round trip at with a good chunk of highway speeds is doable with a new battery. Once it gets a little age you'll be white knuckling it, especially when it comes to winter (depends how cold).

If you had a 220 at your destination then its a no brainer. My parents and in laws are 47 and 42 miles apart respectively. I installed 220v outlets so I can bring my charger with me.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#119

Post by crispyambulance »

epistasis wrote: post #20

This is not the type of in depth though that I expect from this author, whom I usually find to be brilliant. These are first-level concerns of somebody who just realized electric cars exist and is looking for the "problems", however in practice most of these are mitigated by tech curves, and the true problems are going to be far different.

I think he sort of suggests the "true problem" in the beginning by questioning the premise of even owning a car. He decided, perhaps wisely, to not go down that rabbit-hole.

We are all interested in how technology will change our lives and solve problems but many folks aren't willing to consider that actually solving some problems requires living in a way which is intrinsically different. It might very well be possible that "tech curves" will eventually solve the problem of transitioning everyone now driving gasoline cars to electric but that is perhaps a localized optimization.

Maybe to _REALLY_ solve the problem requires us to re-consider the way we're living. Is it really sane to live 20-50 miles away from where one works and drive a car in bumper-to-bumper traffic as a daily commute? Sure, if the cars were electric, a larger fraction of the energy wasted doing this would be "renewable" or at least "greener" but what about the wasted time, erosion of well-being, and the continued waste of space. Yes, even electric cars need highways, parking lots, and cities which force themselves to be car-scaled rather than human-scaled. How much would we really solve by the transition to electric cars?

These are not considerations which are easy to talk about, but they're the "true problems" which are being swept under the rug by techno-optimists.

Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles

#120

Post by JoeAltmaier »

vlucas wrote: post #111

All of these problems strike me as temporary. The only barriers here are current technology getting cheaper and more efficient, which always happens over time - especially the timescale needed for EVs to go mainstream. The tone of this article seems to think we will be stuck with current levels of technology. Some future possibilities with in 20-30 years: * Battery capacity doubling, tripling, or more. * Widespread s…

Battery capacity has a long way to go. For vehicles, one efficiency measure is Watt-Hours (energy) per kilogram. For Lithium batteries we're at 220. Gasoline for comparison is 13200. So about two orders of magnitude to go, before gas is obsolete.

http://www.energyadvocate.com/batts.htm

Good news: metal-air batteries can achieve close to gas efficiencies! If we can only build an efficient portable reactor, and then an efficient fungible way to refuel with metal.

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