Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption • Hacker News Board

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#121

Post by marvin » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #104

sandworm101 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And charging stations are, of course, absolutely dirt cheap to build relative to fuel stations. Really? A normal gas station can handle around 100 cars per hour using a handful of pumps and is refueled by daily deliveries from a big truck. Simple. An electric charge point capable of that will require a massive amount of electricity, electricity delivered over wires. Look into how much it costs to run such a servic…

I'd want to see numbers for that argument, because I don't think I'm willing to buy it on assertion. A single, routine, boring 100A building drop is enough to charge 4-5 cars (i.e. "one station worth"), and those wires and infrastructure are already there, and have been for decades.

The biggest problem is peak power. The naïve approach is to try to pull 500kW from the grid during the 20 minutes that you have five cars charging, then zero once they leave. This will at best be very expensive, but most likely impossible as the local grid won't support it.

So a battery buffer needs to be built into the charging station in order to operate them cheaply, with a smoother load profile that the power company and grid operator will service without exorbitant costs.

Thankfully, at least one EV company has already realized this :-) Let's see if more than one of them eventually starts producing enough batteries to support the strategy.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#122

Post by drewg123 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #115

Electric cars are perfectly pleasant to own as a second car or if you very rarely take long road trips. If it's very cold or very hot, if you drive to the mountains or rural areas for pleasure, range anxiety is a serious problem. Waiting for a re-charge is ok if you have access to Tesla supercharger speeds. Forcing this lifestyle change on everyone is absolutely insane. The climate imperative is poor reasoning becaus…

I've taken several long (2000mi) road trips in my Tesla. The only range anxiety I've had has been self induced. Eg, skipping the Tesla map planned supercharger and using the next one down the road for a variety of reasons [1] . The most anxious I've been is when I pulled into a supercharger with 2% remaining.

[1] I often do this to arrive at a supercharger with a lower state of charge. This allows for charging lower on the curve, which allows for faster charging. I sometimes do this to avoid unpleasant chargers. My least favorite is the Savannah super charger, which is located several stoplights from the highway in an airport parking garage.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#123

Post by jeofken » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #73

strict9 wrote: post #7

I rarely drive, but can't wait to own one. Where I live (and for a lot of people who live in cities) there is only on-street parking. Will be interesting to see how increased electric vehicle ownership might happen for people without a garage or designated parking.

Might be based on something like this: https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-po...

In Copenhagen there are charging poles in a lot of places, also in the inner city. They’re reserved for EVs. For this reason, it’s very easy to find parking with a EV and leave with a full tank.

You bring your own cable which costs $120 (+25% VAT), which is locked to the car and the charging pole, so it can’t be stolen without being ruined.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#124

Post by cure » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #115

Electric cars are perfectly pleasant to own as a second car or if you very rarely take long road trips. If it's very cold or very hot, if you drive to the mountains or rural areas for pleasure, range anxiety is a serious problem. Waiting for a re-charge is ok if you have access to Tesla supercharger speeds. Forcing this lifestyle change on everyone is absolutely insane. The climate imperative is poor reasoning becaus…

> The climate imperative is poor reasoning because this will be a significant increase in electricity generation demands.

Relatively centralized electricity generation can be converted to lower carbon generation. This is happening pretty rapidly in many places for economic reasons; renewable power generation is a lot cheaper than fossil fuel power generation.

Doing the same for more than a billion ICE engines distributed all over the world is effectively impossible.

> Renewables alone will not be able to keep up

Source please?

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#125

Post by jeofken » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

rasz wrote: post #96

r00fus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be based on something like this: https://thedriven.io/2020/03/24/siemens-converts-all-lamp-po...

unguarded $100 worth of charging cable dangling from every street post? what could possibly go wrong?

The cable locks to both your car and the charging pole, at least where I live

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#126

Post by chrisseaton » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:10 PM UTC

davidhbolton wrote: post #109

rini17 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After street lighting was upgraded to more energy-effective LEDs there's surplus capacity. Making every pole available for slow overnight charging does not mean to "completely revamp entire neighborhoods". The possibility to sell the electricity might even become attractive for municipality or utility. Also, parking is going to be overhauled anyway, after decades of cars occupying every nook and cranny, there's a str…

I lived in London until 2015 and took a recent look on Street View where I lived (Search for E10 6QB if you want to see) . It was a typical London street where everyone parks nose to nose. There's about 20 cars for every lamp post. No way could you charge every car that way. With the typical 50-70% street occupancy. You'd be lucky to find a spare lamp post.

> There's about 20 cars for every lamp post.

Maybe the real problem is we have too many cars in the first place? Maybe we should limits cars to one per couple or something like that?

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#127

Post by glial » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

p1mrx wrote: post #118

ajross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd want to see numbers for that argument, because I don't think I'm willing to buy it on assertion. A single, routine, boring 100A building drop is enough to charge 4-5 cars (i.e. "one station worth"), and those wires and infrastructure are already there, and have been for decades.

100A at 240V can charge 4-5 cars... in about 12 hours. That would be useful at a hotel or workplace, but it won't replace a gas station.

OK, maybe the goal should be to relax our assumption that recharging happens at the gas stations, and just spread the load to all the parking lots we can find. Then gas stations could just have the quick-charge versions for more $$.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#128

Post by marvin » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

MrRiddle wrote: post #72

ogre_codes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people regularly drive more than 300 miles in a day. Most people drive less than 50 miles a day. The fact that you start every trip will a full charge means you only worry about range on the longest trips.

Unless you forget to plug in, then the fix is not as simple as hopping to the gas station. Or you live in an apartment building with only public outdoor parking, then you can just forget about EV, unless you want to WFChargeStation.

Forgetting to plug in is like forgetting to bring your keys. It becomes second nature pretty fast. You always do it after you park, unless you do 20 errands a day or something. It takes five seconds.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#129

Post by fiftyfifty » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #102

ajross wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the number of high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city) That's not so far off. Even large cities in North America have no more than a few dozen gas stations (and the UK likely fewer still due to things like London's congestion pricing reducing vehicle count). Once-a-week-or-so fueling doesn't really require a huge amount of infrastructure. That's one of the reasons we're all addicted…

>> And charging stations are, of course, absolutely dirt cheap to build relative to fuel stations. Really? A normal gas station can handle around 100 cars per hour using a handful of pumps and is refueled by daily deliveries from a big truck. Simple. An electric charge point capable of that will require a massive amount of electricity, electricity delivered over wires. Look into how much it costs to run such a servic…

This is a false dichotomy, we have to get away from thinking of charging stations like gas pumps. Charging stations can be everywhere: grocery stores, retail stores, office buildings, malls, just about any parking lot or parking garage, hotels, airport parking and on and on. Gas pumps have to have huge underground tanks, and they have to be regularly refilled by large tanker trucks, by their very nature they will be less common and so they'd better be able to service more cars per hour. Charging stations are much smaller and can tie into the grid just about anywhere, there should be a lot more of them and thus they won't need to handle as many cars as a gas station does.

Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

#130

Post by uncledave » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

marvin wrote: post #114

sandworm101 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla superchargers take about 40 minutes to deliver an 80% charge. Call that a "full" tank. A gas pump can do the same in about 5 minutes (probably less). So to charge/fill the same number of cars per hour as one gas pump you need 8 superchargers. That's a significant increase in real estate area needed. Another approach: A top-end Tesla supercharger delivers around 250kW. So eight of those would be 2000kW or 2 Mega…

This line of reasoning is incorrect. Unlike fossil refuelling, the vast majority of EV charging happens at home. This charging does not load public charging stations at all. Unless your needs are esoteric, you might only charge at a public charging station one out of twenty times. Of course some homes don't have private charging easily available, but that's a different argument.

Very few homes have anywhere to charge anything in London as an example. I don’t think the model works without knocking cities down and starting again.

The two people I know with Teslas have to charge at the local supercharger or park it a quarter of a mile away at the nearest slow charger which becomes a chore.