121–130 of 238 posts
It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-201...
There are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax. Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car. This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles. I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. T…
Not really. As far as I've read, road wear grows exponentially with weight. Ah, you think, so EVs WILL make it much worse. No. What it means is that road wear is heavily dominated by heavy duty vehicles. Big trucks and such. Not personal cars. What EVs would add is a drop in the bucket.
The traction thing depends on the vehicle. My EV (Kia Soul EV) defaults to an "Eco" mode where traction is limited. The range you get is heavily dependent on driving style, so EV owners do have incentive to drive smoothly. It also increases tire wear. Most people don't like to throw away money. Yeah, you get some Tesla owners that will use "insane" mode all the time.. but that's probably a minority.
"This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles."
Norway is pretty damn far away from making EVs pay more than ICE. There's still a lot of financial incentives for EVs, and pretty much everyone is on board with phasing them out slowly and keeping with the target of 100% of new cars being zero emission in the 2025-2030 time frame.
They just added toll fees for EVs in Oslo, but it's still much less than what ICEs pay.
Do people really build mines with a 5-year horizon? Of course it's going to outpace demand... initially. The great thing about mines is that you can just leave the lithium in the ground if the current prices aren't right.
Eventually you pay off the land and your costs go down. You can keep equipment running for a long time, but it wears out. You are risking all the time though that the mineral demand might drop and now you have a worthless mine (which you need to do environmental cleanup). With equipment you risk a new process making your old equipment unable to produce what the market demands so you have to replace it.
Of course everybody understands you plan on mining for longer than 5 years. However you have a 5 year plan to get the mine operating and prove it can make money.
Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium, it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time!
The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks to improve on LiON in most important areas:
- higher energy density (~2x)
- not flammable
- faster charge rates
- many more charge cycles (~100x more)
- better performance in cold conditions
- either lithium or *sodium* based glass electrolyte
https://www.texasmonthly.com/energy/all-charged-up-john-good...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah sjwright asked about sales and got an answer about sales.
And I'm genuinely impressed that it's that high. I expected the Toyota Camrys and low cost Indian scooters to dwarf EV sales more than that—but I had forgotten about the Chinese manufacturers!
Would those actually be included in these figures?
It seems like people often forget how applicable EVs are to in city heavy commercial vehicles such as garbage truck, buses, service vehicles The high torque nature and predicable nature (at least in the case of garbage trucks and buses) make them ideal candidates for EV. Arguably much more viable use case (at least initially) than household vehicles.
Maybe. Some electric buses have poor range and stall on hills: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-electric-buses-201...
Well, this topic went south really fast! I'm surprised the new Goodenough battery design hasn't come up! Getting back to an actual discussion of lithium , it'll be very interesting to see if the Goodenough solid electrolyte batter works well enough with sodium. If so, a lot of expensive lithium mines will be worth a lot less over time! The Goodenough battery (he invented LiON batteries for those who don't know) looks…
The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Electric cars are still deeply strangled by two key factors: industry inertia and the cost/supply of lithium batteries. Once those two factors are solved (and a build-up of lithium mines is key to that) electric cars will go from being a niche within a niche to utterly dominating the market very, very quickly. Within the next decade we might see companies like Hyundai…
People HATE the maintenance requirements of cars. If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service with a usable life of something closer to 1 million miles and decades of use then suddenly paying a premium for their models can be spread over much greater periods of time. Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (singl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The electric car industry hasn't remotely boomed. Plug-in electric sales in 2018 were up 61% over 2017, which was 51% higher than 2016 (via quick wikipedia check). What numbers would you want to see before calling that a "boom"? How much higher than 60% growth does something have to have before it's not "strangled"? I think that's silly. Clearly these things are going somewhere. Production at all levels is adapting…
yesterday I had a dollar in my pocket, today I have 2 dollars. Dollars in my pocket is booming right now. But relative to amount of dollars I have or that in the world, not so much. So I think other statistics would be more useful to determine quality of boom.
The EV boom seems to tick both those boxes. Your wallet boom has only been going for a day, and you know better than me how sustainable it is.
There are other problems arising for electric cars: road tax. Electric cars are way havier than most cars and have so much traction that road maintenance will be much more expensive when everybody has an electric car. This is why countries like Norway and the Netherlands are thinking about raising the road tax for electric vehicles. I also think this is why brands like Toyota are still thinking about hydrogen cars. T…
> - It does not matter how many passenger cars drive on the roads. Only heavy transport wears it down, says Arild Ragnøy at the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.
> - All the analyzes I have seen show that all wear and tear comes from the heavy trucks, zero from private cars, says Harald Tune Larsen at the Department of Transport Economics.
Source: https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/nxE5/Bare-de-tunge-kjoret...
(Also by current law, EVs will never pay more than 50% of ICE taxes and fees, for toll roads, public parking, etc.)