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Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

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Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very strange to see a grayed out comment on top of a thread that has about 160 non-grayed out comments. I thought that highest rated comments go to the top and grayed out comments are rated below zero. Regarding your points. First the thing about used evs not selling has more to do with the rapid pace of innovation of evs rather than lack of demand. In the 90s it was very difficult to sell a used PC because PCs…

Agree except maybe... > The fact that one can make electricity out of oil. If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification. Also electricity is cheap usually when the car is not charging and vice versa. People arrive home, start cooking, washing clothes and plug in their car. The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops. The energy dilivered by the pv panel…

> If you do that, there's little benefit from car electrification

Untrue, if you generate power from oil at a big power plant, transmit it down to a house and charge a battery then use the battery to power an electric motor it will still be considerably more efficient than using a car-sized combustion engine (not even counting the energy required to transport the gasoline/diesel to the gas station).

> The sun is already set and the local grid's unprepared cable sections cause voltage drops

It seems inevitable that car-makers and utilities will need to agree on some kind of smart metering for charging cars at non-peak points. Energy costs at 12am->6am are actually cheaper than during the day even in areas with a lot of PVs (baseline power load can't be easily shut on/off). I heard there are some standards about this.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#252
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want an electric bike but I want to go places with it and I’m worried about it getting stolen when I lock it up outside a shop. Do you have one?

Consider an electric unicycle (EUC). It's much more compact, so you can easily bring it into shops and other buildings, as well as it's much less troublesome when you use public transport (most models can be easily kept between your legs). From the safety point of view it's not as bad as it seems on the first glance, especially if you don't plan riding on it faster than 20-30 km/h.

When I go down this chain of thought, I eventually end up at --

Legs. I have legs. They are built in. I can just use them. I can always bring my legs onto the subway.

If they don't go fast enough, then I have two options:

1. Give myself more time.

2. Jog or run. This will make me sweaty. Maybe I will want to shower at the office. That's an option. It will make me healthier, if I do it.

There is also a third choice:

3. Obtain real estate in such a way that substantial travel is not required.

Clearly most people will look at these options and say, "FooBar, you are insane."

It's simultaneously the easiest solution to the problem, and the most difficult.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries still do not mandate that new apartments include charging ports for parking spots. So densely-populated areas will still be plagued with non-EC compatible buildings for decades to come. That's what "city life" mean in several countries.

Densely populated areas shouldn't have surface-area-inefficient cars as a main mode of transportation at all! Good public transport and the other 2-wheel modes should do just fine, but of course those aren't as profitable.

It’s a great ideal state, I just happen to think it’s several decades away. Most people reading this will never witness it. We’ve already heavily invested in what you say should not exist. Financial inertia is strong to keep things on that path. However if we, US, shrink our vehicles we can double or triple the throughput of current roads.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#254
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just global warming but eventually oil depletion. Fracking has given the oil industry a stay of execution but it will work until it doesn’t and the cheapest stuff is exhausted, just like conventional drilling. We know how to build good EVs now, which means the result of this will be a lot less catastrophic than twenty or thirty years ago. We are lucky the peak oilers back then underestimated.

Yes, I don't think many people realize this but we have like ~46 years of oil left in total. That's not very much. It will just keep getting more expensive. Even if we keep burning coal for electricity, we still have 140 years of that left, so it's just a matter of relatively short time until the optimum flips in favor of electric.

I wouldn't be surprised if we stretch it further than 46 years. All previous estimates have been under-estimates. Still, it's a bit like stock market bubbles. During a bubble bears are wrong many times and right once.

Your estimate for coal is probably low, unfortunately. There are vast amounts of it in places like Alaska and Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic, maybe Antarctica too if that melts enough. We probably have enough carbon to destroy the world if we really don't give a damn and decide we don't want Florida. We have quite a lot of gas, too, which is not nearly as bad as coal for climate change but isn't great if we keep using it forever and at huge scale.

The bottom line is that transition to electrified everything powered by solar, wind, hydro, nuclear (maybe fusion too eventually), and geothermal, is inevitable. The question is the timetable. Oil will be the first fossil fuel to go. It's already many times more expensive per kWh as a source of energy due to the difficult of substituting it for internal combustion engines and aviation.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#255
post #240
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good public transport is the key part and I can tell that in most European cities, not the capitals that everyone visits when they say they have been on country XYZ only hanging on the city center without even venturing into the suburbs, that is quite far from where they were supposed to be.

A lot of people look at Europe through the lens of the tourist areas of large cities. As someone who has spent a lot of time in the UK countryside and smaller towns, there is absolutely not a good public transit system even if there might be a few buses during the day. Heck. I arrived by train from London to a town where I found the busses to the start of my walk were basically non-existent. Fortunately a taxi pulled…

Yep, exactly my point.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I terminated my in process application to import the vehicle from my property outside of the US for two reasons: I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future (obvious reasons), and the US government is effectively banning Chinese EVs in the US [1]. Was fun to make the attempt, but sometimes city hall wins. It turns out it is easier to expat than to import a Chinese car. [1] h…

> I no longer intend to maintain majority residency in the US for the foreseeable future I suddenly just became a proponent of in-person voting.

I have similar feelings about both of our votes carrying the same weight. Disappointment in democracy is inevitable.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#257
post #227

Moderators should fix the title and add "in 2018" to the end, as it's on the chart itself. Omitting "in 2018" part changes message completely and is misleading.

It would be misleading if sales peaked in 2018, then fell, and have subsequently surpassed the 2018 peak. That's not what happened though. And reporting "sales have peaked" 6 years after the peak is reasonable - doing so 2 years after the peak would be premature.

I still support adding it to the title, because it's even more impressive.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#258

In my city you cannot charge your car inside the underground garage. No one will build the required facility to ease electric car fire extinguishing. Therefore the buildings will default to deny.

That's incredibly short-sighted, not least because the number of fires per vehicle is orders of magnitude higher for combustion vehicles. I'd be astonished if that made actuarial sense if actually investigated. I've seen and used underground car chargers in multiple European cities. They're definitely viable.

Yes, except ICE fires are a lot easier to put out (possibly partly because of long experience developing tools & techniques vs for electric fires). Electric cars were also banned at most racetracks for years (not sure if that is still true).

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#259

I have an EV (Kia Niro EV 2024). I don't want ever to go back to gas. Reasons: * the driving experience is just much, much better: punch & acceleration, stability, quietness, etc. * if you charge at home it is a lot cheaper than gas * it is so easy to "fuel": you plug it in when you arrive home and unplug the next morning Edit: also, after I installed solar cells at home, I drive almost for free!

Hertz forced me to take a Kia Niro EV as my rental. "We have no other vehicles left, it is a higher class vehicle than the compact you reserved". Like hell it was! Never again! I had plans that involved driving 8 hours each way. Electrify America chargers were all broken. Luckily, CircleK chargers "worked", slowly. An hour and 30 min to go from 10% to 90%. Had to charge twice each way. Time I will never get back. Aft…

Pro tip, don’t charge to 90 or 100% on a DC fast charger. There’s a significant slowdown past 80%.

Bummer about the broken EA chargers. PlugShare has been really great for finding working chargers. People leave reviews and notes on how well the chargers are working and tips about using them.

I think once all cars are NACS and can use Tesla stations too the charging situation will be much better.

Re: Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked

#260
post #16

If this graph is the evidence for "Global sales of combustion engine cars have peaked" isn't it also the evidence proving "global car sales have peaked"?

It does not get into the "why", but I realize that is hard to determine. My question is, are these sales for brand new cars or does it include used cars also ? I know my days of buying brand new ended years ago due to how expensive new cars are. My current car (bought used) is from 2007 and if I have to buy another, it will be used. So I have to wonder, are people avoiding buying new due to the expense. That could po…

I think the point about used cars would have to imply that newer used cars are more reliable than older used cars, which would cause the supply of cars in the market to saturate more quickly, thus causing less demand for new cars. Not sure if that's true but it seems reasonable.
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