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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

#161

Post by turtlebits »

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 problem is that your 100A charging station will take 8+ hours to charge all 4 cars to max (as that is ~L2 charging speed..

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

#162

Post by SkyPuncher »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

I'm really curious to see how the used electric car market shapes up. New cars (electric or not) are pretty expensive. The average price of a new car in the US just topped $40k, which is out of reach of many car buyers. The people who buy new obviously tend to be well-off, and are often older. Then at some point down the road, those cars end up in the hands of (on average) younger, less-wealthy folks. But younger fol…

> The average price of a new car in the US just topped $40k, which is out of reach of many car buyers.

I haven't found this stat to be particularly compelling. Other than indicating that buyers of new cars are willing to spend money on extra features.

There are tons of cars at much more affordable prices. They are across the board safer, more reliable, more fuel efficient, and last longer than pretty much any historical vehicles. In 2006, the average vehicle life expectancy was about 8 years, 150k miles. Now it's 12+ years, 200k+ miles.

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

#163

Post by turtlebits »

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…

Yes, they are several orders of magnitude worse than gas stations. For an 110V AC outlet to fully charge any vehicle will take days. Anything less than a fast charging station will not meaningfully charge a vehicle when you are outside.

A L2 charger will not even make a dent in your range when you are out running errands (20-25 miles of range per hour of charging). They are generally only useful when they are at your workplace and can charge for hours at a time.

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

#164

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

natch wrote: post #145
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quic…

This is what always happens when I bring up product problems about EVs. Everyone on HN who owns a luxury car Tesla in SV or some major metro with their six figure plus salary gets all bent out of shape, and ask "omg why can't everyone do this!" It's tone deaf and out of touch.

EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charged effectively without huge infrastructure investment. I'm not saying we aren't making strides, I'm saying there are loads of improvements that need to come before EVs take over ICE sales to ultimately help us fight global problems.

EVs have never been about rich people having a toy. We need cheap EVs now to help us fight global climate change and frankly they aren't there yet. You need to make massive assumptions for the vast majority of Americans to make EVs work compared to ICE vehicles.

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

#165

Post by akiselev »

BurningFrog wrote: post #146
fiftyfifty wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

...and the infrastructure to distribute the electricity.

Back of the napkin math with the mall of America: 5.6 million sq ft at ~14kWh/sq ft per year (rough average estimate of all retail buildings) [1] equates to about 78.4 million kWh/year or 784,000 100kWh Model S's charged to full or 7.84 million charged 10% assuming 100% efficiency. The Mall of America has about 40 million annual visitors so about a fifth would be able to charge their batteries 10% if the Mall doubled its (hypothetical) capacity, which would likely require at least some infrastructure upgrades since we're talking about ~10 MW of extra power - and that's averaged out 24/7/365, in actuality it'll be a much higher peak load since the mall isn't 24/7.

I'm not an expert but I doubt the property developer and power companies overbuilt by that much.

[1] https://dsoelectric.com/sites/dsoelectric/files/My%20Busines...

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

#166

Post by abeppu »

fuoqi wrote: post #140

I wonder if electrical grids are really prepared for mass adoption of EV. For example, UK is already quite reliant on the HVDC link [0] from France. In 2016 it got damaged resulting in a reduced capacity, which has caused serious concerns at the time. And it's not only about power generation, it's also quite probable that a lot of existing power lines would have to be updated to satisfy a higher demand for electrical…

I think the other side of the coin is also interesting: If we're smart, could we use EVs to make the grid more resilient? Could we be thinking of EVs both as transportation and as flexible and hyperlocal power storage. E.g. parked EVs could reverse-meter if there's very high power demand, and absorb cheap (or negative cost) power when it's really windy in Texas, etc.

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

#168

Post by sto_hristo »

fuoqi wrote: post #140

I wonder if electrical grids are really prepared for mass adoption of EV. For example, UK is already quite reliant on the HVDC link [0] from France. In 2016 it got damaged resulting in a reduced capacity, which has caused serious concerns at the time. And it's not only about power generation, it's also quite probable that a lot of existing power lines would have to be updated to satisfy a higher demand for electrical…

If people don't stop with the wishful dreaming of how 'renewables' are the future, it's hard to image the grid supporting massive adoption of anything of non-trivial load.

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

#169

Post by ogre_codes »

99_00 wrote: post #116
ogre_codes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This isn't entirely true. The cost of gas has a hard floor due to the cost of extracting oil from the ground. Nobody is spending $40 a barrel to extract oil that's selling for $25 a barrel. So if oil demand falls and prices fall, many of the current sellers pull out of the market entirely. On top of that, as the number of cars going to gas…

>This isn't entirely true. The cost of gas has a hard floor due to the cost of extracting oil from the ground. Nobody is spending $40 a barrel to extract oil that's selling for $25 a barrel. So if oil demand falls and prices fall, many of the current sellers pull out of the market entirely. Not all producers have the same cost. Saudi Arabia is the cheapest I know of at $2.80 per barrel. Others can be 10 times higher…

Yeah, what I was trying to say is individual suppliers will drop out of the market as the price of oil drops. That in turn reduces the supply. For Oil Sands, that's roughly $43. Shale oil is similar. Every time the price drops, the number of suppliers drop.

OPEC will fight to keep oil prices up by limiting supply when they can, since most of the governments in the Middle East are run on oil profits, they need to!

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

#170

Post by paperwasp42 »

fuoqi wrote: post #140

I wonder if electrical grids are really prepared for mass adoption of EV. For example, UK is already quite reliant on the HVDC link [0] from France. In 2016 it got damaged resulting in a reduced capacity, which has caused serious concerns at the time. And it's not only about power generation, it's also quite probable that a lot of existing power lines would have to be updated to satisfy a higher demand for electrical…

Speaking as a worker at an electric utility company--we aren't.

Sure, solar panels and batteries help. Plus there's the possibility of using EVs as a distributed battery system, and lots of other clever ideas like that.

But it's not enough. We hit a record load this summer, and expect another record this year.

Add on the extra burden of regulation that enforces green energy production, and we're edging toward not being able to meet customers' needs. (Green energy is a worthy cause, don't get me wrong, but far more costly and time-consuming to build out the infrastructure.)

TLDR; We're struggling. Real bad.

(Edited to add: I should define "struggling." We strive to keep prices as low as possible, and also to fund low-income assistance programs. We keep having to raise prices, are looking at jacking them up even more this year, and are struggling to fund our low-income programs.

Our community is deeply hurting from these changes, and are making their voices heard.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro green energy. But the effects of green regulation needs to be seriously studied and the negative impacts mitigated.)

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