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Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

bloomberg.com

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Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#241

Post by icc97 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #197
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street" I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.

> I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside. You're thinking about this from the wrong way around. The people who buy the first electric cars mainly don't live in places they can't charge them, they live in single family homes where they can install a charging port. That allows enough electri…

It raises the value of houses that have garages where you can plug your car in. I'm looking at buying a house in Belgium and it's a definite issue.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#242

Post by widforss »

usaar333 wrote: post #236
soperj wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The do in the Netherlands. Almost all school age kids were going to school together when I was there.

ah, what is the earliest age a kid will travel without adult supervision in the Netherlands?

I don't know about Netherlands, but I know that I started to do that around age 7 in Sweden. I think that is fairly typical.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#243

Post by KozmoNau7 »

I think the first major tipping point is going to be electric buses. They run relatively short, well-known routes, they have lots of space for batteries as a replacement for the big diesel engine, they can have a charging pantograph on the roof without seeming ugly (unlike on a passenger car), and they can trickle charge for 5-10 minutes at either end of their route, keeping them topped up enough to last a full day of driving.

In addition, they're also quieter, have less vibration and don't produce local pollution in the form of diesel exhaust, which modern buses have lots of costly systems installed in order to mitigate.

All public transit should be electrified, to set a good example.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#244

Post by avar »

adrianN wrote: post #209
stellar678 wrote: post #35

They neglected a huge part of the coming electric vehicle picture: lightweight, slow-speed electric vehicles. Almost 60% of US car trips are 5 miles or shorter. (2017 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/ae/work/Job63697.html , 2009 ref: https://nhts.ornl.gov/tables09/fatcat/2009/vt_TRPMILES.html ) Scooters, e-bikes, and electric cargo bikes (not to mention the human-powered versions!) will soak up an enormous portion…

Not if the car lobby can help it. Think of the jobs! Case in point: E-Bikes in Germany. You can either buy an e-assist bike that is allowed on bike paths and doesn't cost tax. Those are limited to 200W and 25km/h. That means you still impede traffic in 30km/h zones where people typically drive 35-40. Or you can spend more and get an S-Pedelec. That costs tax, isn't allowed on bike paths, and needs a driver's license.…

The EU-wide 25km/h limit is extremely frustrating. It makes it so that you can't "take the lane" on the very common 30km/h roads without impeding traffic, and subjectively it's just the wrong speed. A huge number of cyclists on non-E-bikes easily bike at 25-30 km/h, whereas 30-35 km/h is way less common.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#245

Post by jacobush »

kosievdmerwe wrote: post #157
theluketaylor wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conveniently cities have already done a huge amount of the legwork for enabling charging at street parking thanks to street lights. It will be expensive no doubt, but so was converting gas street lights to light bulbs.

Cars draw a lot of power vs electric lamps.

It's better to have a car partly charged vs not charged at all during the night. On my morning walks in Brooklyn I noticed many cars didn't move an inch for days.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#246

Post by icc97 »

Marsymars wrote: post #181
rgbrenner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they put in parking meters to collect money. Are you sure they wouldn't put in charging meters with the equivalent price of gas? That's worth maybe 15k mi/yr / 30mpg * $3 = $1500/yr for the average user (assuming they use it regularly.. which apartment users would). That seems like a pretty decent incentive.

Why would someone buy an electric car if they had to pay the equivalent price of gas to charge it?

They're quieter and safer and as Tesla has shown can have much better acceleration.

The batteries are likely to survive 500k miles and there's a lot less moving parts so less things to go wrong.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#247

Post by gnicholas »

Marsymars wrote: post #181
rgbrenner wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they put in parking meters to collect money. Are you sure they wouldn't put in charging meters with the equivalent price of gas? That's worth maybe 15k mi/yr / 30mpg * $3 = $1500/yr for the average user (assuming they use it regularly.. which apartment users would). That seems like a pretty decent incentive.

Why would someone buy an electric car if they had to pay the equivalent price of gas to charge it?

I bought a used C-MAX plug-in hybrid and was told that with the EV plan offered by PG&E, I'd save money versus gas. Only after I purchased did I learn that the EV plan gives you cheaper charging at night only if you're willing to stomach very high rates during the day. Since I work from home a lot and have a toddler, this is a non-starter for my family.

So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as for gas — and I'm in CA, where gas is expensive. We do save a tiny bit when we get to charge for free or at a subsidized rate somewhere. But I think most of the savings comes from not wearing down our brake pads on the hills in our neighborhood, and not having so many moving parts to wear out. These savings are not huge when amortized over the number of miles driven.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#248

Post by honestoHeminway »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #74
zizee wrote: post #45

I think that electric car adoption is going to have similar characteristics to digital cameras. I remember playing with an early digital camera and seeing a poor replacement for film, but with obvious benefits. Back then it was common to hear "serious" photographers pooh-poohing digital, and how it's many drawbacks would mean it would remain niche, and never replace film. It didn't take long and digial cameras improv…

> "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street" I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.

Make a autonmous cable-drum that comes to your parking spot if you need charging from some underground storage locker?

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#249

Post by p1mrx »

kart23 wrote: post #205
p1mrx wrote: post #26

I'm currently attempting to install an EV charger in my condo carport. The first step was to exchange parking spaces with another owner, in order to get physically close enough to run conduit from my panel. However, I found the property laws surrounding the modification of assigned parking spaces to be pretty murky. It'd be nice if there were a state/nation-wide effort to clarify this sort of transaction, because lot…

The question is not who will let you, but who will stop you.

The answer to that is, a current or future owner of the property that originally held the space.

Re: Electric Vehicles’ Day Will Come, and It Might Come Suddenly

#250

Post by p1mrx »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #186
p1mrx wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old homes would benefit from better load management technology. I want to clip something like this ( http://www.theenergydetective.com/homemtuct200.html ) to my main feed, and have it send power measurements to an EV charger, which automatically adjusts to fill all remaining capacity. This wouldn't require any Internet access, just data sent over the power line, to a charger that's able to listen. Existing home wirin…

This would be awesome - someone Kickstart it or something.

ClipperCreek sells EV chargers with a UART interface to set the charging rate (in 25% increments), so it should be relatively straightforward to stuff a Raspberry Pi or something in there.

But that option costs an extra $184, and the UART protocol is only available under NDA, which probably makes it difficult to open source.

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