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Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

theguardian.com

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

#141

Post by tyfon »

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 recently drove over 800 km in my Hyundai Ioniq 28 kWh EV, it only took 1 hour more than when I drive my Tesla. Most of that time was spent eating or stretching legs anyway so it is fully possible to take longer trips :)

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

#142

Post by dghlsakjg »

sandworm101 wrote: post #51

Maybe in the UK, but not where I am. It was -26 this morning. Batteries don't handle such temperatures well. And the nearest civilian airport is 400km away. I haven't seen a single all-electric car in my town since I moved here over a year ago.

What percentage of the world's car owning population lives in a place with a restriction like that? Few enough that it would be fine to let you keep your ICE/hybrid vehicles with almost no impact on climate is my guess.

If I had to guess, you live in Canada which is a country of extremes like what you mention.

The solution for Canada probably isn't to prohibit ICE vehicles, but to disincentivize them heavily where they make less sense. So in the areas where extreme cold and long range is the use case, provide an exemption. Out here on Vancouver Island where the longest possible route is less than 500km and a cold day is one where there's frost on my car, there's really not a great reason for me to be buying a brand new ICE car 10 years from now. Same thing for when I lived in Vancouver and drove 5,000 km per year.

My point is that a huge majority of people live in circumstances where electric cars will be fine. We shouldn't let the corner cases (living in a place with extreme cold where driving 400km to the airport is routine) dictate what the rest of the world needs to do.

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

#143

Post by paganel »

u678u wrote: post #35

Europe has a big advantage that distances are closer and cars are smaller and newer. USA still will be a long long time. My apt building has 500 cars and zero electrical outlets.

One of Europe's biggest disadvantages is that a larger proportion of people live in apartment blocks and the like (compared to the US, anyways), so no easy way for those people to charge their EVs over night (I'm an European living in such a building myself).

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

#144

Post by paganel »

cure wrote: post #124
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 distrib…

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

Delivering said energy to over a billion cars all over the world is pretty impossible. As things stand right now that's an entire continent (Africa) which in many places doesn't have reliable power even for basic things like keeping the hospitals running (they have to use diesel generators and the like).

But, then again, this EV-vehicle "revolution" is targeted at the Western middle-classes + China, they can afford to not care about the rest of the world as they've done until now.

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

#145

Post by natch »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #105
imglorp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the road for long trips, yes absolutely. But the EV usecase also includes low and medium speed charging at home overnight, and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison.

You're making many assumptions here. 1st, you're assuming people can charge at home - assuming they have a garage and access to power. This isn't true for a huge portion of the population. > and while at your destination (say a retailer) which you can't do with your ICE car. So overlapping but not identical comparison. This really isn't available yet either. Who's going to pay for this? Really?

I don’t think they claimed that everyone has access at home. They said “the use case includes” which doesn’t exclude other possibilities.

There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely.

Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine.

Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quick and I can grab a few minutes (like, 10 or 15) of a youtube video or Netflix while charging. Or step into a store and do an errand while charging.

In 10 minutes I can get about 100 miles of charge. I often go to our nearby Target (a store in the US) which has a supercharger right in the parking lot, and I don’t charge, even though I’m already there shopping right where the charger is. Why? No need. Already charged. It’s not that difficult.

Notice I never said this will work for everyone. But it works for some, with no assumption about having chargers at home.

>Who’s going to pay?

Sometimes you pay per kilowatt. Other times you’re charged per minute, like 3 cents a minute or so which includes parking. Other places it’s free and advertising on nearby signs subsidies for it. Or employers pay for it as a work benefit. One network (Chargepoint) covers most of this stuff.

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

#146

Post by BurningFrog »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #129
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…

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…

Yeah, every parking spot could be a simple charging station. All you need is a power cable.

Reusing the land of all gas stations for other things will be a good benefit of all this. Except for San Francisco, where they all will be preserved as historical landmarks.

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

#147

Post by ghaff »

sandworm101 wrote: post #107
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.

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…

More to the point, I'm not sitting around for 40 minutes at a charging station even once a week to get recharged (and it will be more frequent than that for many). Especially given that offices may be a less regular thing, people need ways to charge when their cars are parked wherever they're parked when they're at home. Even if they eat out a bit that's not a substitute.

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

#148

Post by jussij »

fiftyfifty wrote: post #129
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…

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…

I also think from the driver's perspective the usage will be totally different.

Today's driver generally goes to the gas station only when the tank is empty.

That leads to a 'big bang' event in that the tank will be close to empty at the start of the visit and full by the end of the visit.

By comparison the driver of the electric car will be using a 'top up' approach, charging the car at home over night, at work when parked, at the shopping center, etc. etc.

Those 'big bang' events, where a full recharge is required will be fewer and far between.

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

#149

Post by smileysteve »

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.

> That would be useful at a hotel or workplace, but it won't replace a gas station.

Also useful at any sit down restaurant (even fast food). (which although self driving makes driving while eating safer, was a horrible practice to begin with)

Addon; Tracked long trips we took in the SE last year against the Tesla charger map; There was always a super charger within 1 mile of where we stopped for food, were stopped for about an hour, etc. And some in our group also needed bio breaks every hour and a half; aka < 150 miles.

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

#150

Post by dzhiurgis »

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 why a lot of stations are now moving to adding batteries to meet peak demand.

Also if you have lots of stalls of cars charing to 100%, you can steal some of their charge and route to someone who needs to get to 80% ASAP.

Also, fast charge is very slowed down in cold climates and/or when you are reaching 80%.

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