today I got married. according to projection, in a month I'll have 30 wives
Do you have the pre-marriage pipeline filled? If not, you might want to include that in your projections.
How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
141–150 of 197 posts
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#142A cheap used economy car will still have the lowest cost per mile for a very long time.... When you factor purchase price into the equation gas vehicles win by a long ways since you need X years of EV economy cars on the market before you can get an X year old used EV. EV's will need to fill the same market segment as today's Chevy Aveos and Toyota Yarii (plural of Yaris?) for a decade or more before they're competit…
You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas. No, it isn't going to be overnight, but lik…
> You assume a constant price for gasoline, which is a bold assumption, given that the oil markets are currently gyrating wildly, and have been for some time - we're likely to see prices at the pump go up by orders of magnitude over a relatively short timescale, which will provide a big push towards EV adoption, and will drive people away from older vehicles which guzzle gas.
Sorry, that isn't likely. We have basically "infinite" (50+ years worth) of Oil @ $100 [1] [2] [3] a barrel which is why all those shale wells came online when oil was priced higher. We've already been ~$100 for years at a time. Similarly, the shift to greener technologies is going to put downward pressure on it once it is back to the ~$100 baseline from years past.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/texas-toug...
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/02/29/the-break-eve...
[3] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/20/us-crude-oils-break-even-cost...
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#143A car sharing service in Milan, Italy, is using small two seater electric cars from China. Prompted by this article I finally investigated and found them at http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/China-eec-l7e-80-elect... They're quoted with a maximum price of $8000. They're definitely made for driving inside a city. Not very good suspensions (don't drive too fast on cobble stones) but good torque (easily beats a gas…
>Would I survive a crash? They're very tiny...
Depends on the engineering I suppose. The Smartcar which is just as tiny has a very high score in test crashes. Of course its twice the price of the car you quote and owned by Mercedes and gets all of Mercedes safety know-how. Until that Chinese car gets proper accident testing, I guess we won't know, but I think its safe to assume China's cheaper/faster/copy culture doesn't lead to safer products.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing 'size' gets you is crumple zones. A bigger vehicle has a lot more material that can be engineered to deform and absorb the energy of the impact, spreading the deceleration over a longer period of time. A small car can be designed to prevent intrusion into the passenger compartment, but it can't do anything about the g-forces of the collision (which can seriously ruin your day...).
The thing 'size' gets you is crumple zones. A bigger vehicle has a lot more material that can be engineered to deform and absorb the energy of the impact Not the only thing. Recall your high school physics. Crank through the basic motion equations for inelastic equations. The more massive object experiences less change in momentum. All things being equal, passengers of the more massive vehicle are going to experience…
Not to be overly pedantic, but I intentionally said "size" not "mass". As car manufacturers increasingly use aluminum and various composites in place of steel, bigger isn't always heavier.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Combustion engines are steadily increasing in technology too, due to emissions laws. Batteries are the single most expensive parts of electric cars for now. It was recently revealed that Tesla's Model 3 batteries will cost Tesla around $11,400 ($190/kwh * 60kwh) to make. This is likely much cheaper than current, as they expect the Gigafactory to bring their unit costs down. I agree that this is most likely the single…
{Combustion engines are steadily increasing in technology too, due to emissions laws.} 100. If you ask me, it has reached the point of diminishing returns too (with respect to gains achieved vs added complexity). Take direct injection for example. It provides marginal gains in efficiency, but with that comes a ton of added complexity and side effects. Now you have to get your intake vales cleaned every 60k because th…
> It provides marginal gains in efficiency
Some automakers claim 15% increased efficiency and 50% increased low end torque. That is not marginal.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta call BS. Gas in my area is currently $2/gal. I think it's highly unlikely to go up "orders of magnitude" in a short timescale, unless you're intentionally using weasel words. There's plenty of oil around, wells are being capped due to oversupply/drop in demand.
Lucky you -- where I live, gas is currently $5.48/gal and that's on the cheap end.
How much of that is tax?
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta call BS. Gas in my area is currently $2/gal. I think it's highly unlikely to go up "orders of magnitude" in a short timescale, unless you're intentionally using weasel words. There's plenty of oil around, wells are being capped due to oversupply/drop in demand.
I think the "orders of magnitude" phrase was a misunderstanding of exactly how large an order of magnitude is. Probably meant "an order of magnitude." I could see gas jumping to $20/gal pretty quickly if things go wrong in the right way.
Short of a revolution in Saudi Arabia, or something along those lines, oil/gas costs aren't going to go up 10x. Although gas isn't perfectly linked to oil prices, a barrel of oil isn't going to hit $450 anytime soon. There's far too much accessible oil at under $100/barrel for this to occur.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#148The recharge time will be a major factor in EV adoption. Currently it takes a couple or so minutes to fully fill a gas tank. I will wait until Battery charging tech gets there.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
This issue was covered in great depth when the Smart Car (e.g. Fortwo) got popular in Europe. Smart Cars have a lot of safety features, seat belts, airbags (4x), ABS, stability control, but the question was really about impact distribution. They put in a tridion protection cell[0] and moved the engine to the back to offer SOME crumple at the front. The Euro NCAP rated it 4/5, IIHS rated it "good" but it later failed…
If your driving in a city and never break 45mph then overall risks change significantly. I drive a relatively small car for the US, and it's about the minimum I would consider safe at 70MPH. But, if you are spending 98% of your time in the city then simply renting a larger car becomes very viable. You can rent a mid size SUV at ~600$ per week and for a longer vacation you can upsize for minimal cost. Further, if your…
In theory you're right, but in theory nobody would attempt to crash at all. We have our car sharing services as well and just recently had a fatal accident where one customer was doing everything right according to road safety rules. But the truck driver didn't.
Re: How Cheap Can Electric Vehicles Get?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I said, "more car use" - I.e. More passenger miles - but you can still paradoxically have less traffic volume, as journies become more efficient but more importantly as freight becomes more efficient. Re: the personal space bit... Not so sure. Many of the "younger" generation spurn car ownership so have no sunk costs, no personal space to lose. For the rest, it's going to be a question of marginal utility - and th…
The younger generation is using cars less exactly because driving/parking/owning a car is expensive and a hassle, not because they suddenly prefer watching bums on the subway to watching Netflix alone. Choosing between Uber and shared public transportation is a question of cost, and self driving cars will get the cost down so it's much less of a factor. In all the countries where the share of public transportation is…
> In all the countries where the share of public transportation is significant, the main reason is economical. Gas is more expensive in the EU, free parking is scarce, wages are lower, etc. Actually walkable cities help, but it's not like europeans couldn't find a use for a car if they could easily afford one.
No, the main reason is government policy, most obviously in town planning. There's simply no place to park, and enough traffic that the journey is neither fast nor relaxing. The result is that people who could easily afford to (e.g. my friends working at Google or Facebook, or in finance) don't own cars, and use public transport to get to and from work.
Walk round the suburbs of European cities on a weekday, and you'll see lots of parked cars, in rich and poor areas. People own them, but don't find them the best way to get to work. They use them at the weekend.