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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

#291

Post by TheSmiddy »

gambiting wrote: post #207
buran77 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they are about the only way to comply except pure BEVs On paper. In reality [0][1] unless you drive all electric all or most of the time the actual, real life CO2 emissions are far worse. Because now you have an ICE engine that hauls around an extra battery and electric motor, occasionally inefficiently charging the battery by burning gasoline. Many (most?) PHEVs owners don't have charging at home (reason to buy hy…

I bought a PHEV a year ago and the fuel savings are enormous. I've been filling it up once every 3 months so far, most of my journeys are done in fully electric mode, and when they are not I'm averaging 100-150mpg. Charging at home is pretty easy, but I do have my own driveway which I realize a lot of people don't. But yes, UK company tax structure around them is absolutely broken. You can get one, get a massive tax…

Your fraud scenario is just straight up not going to happen. It's significantly cheaper to run on electricity instead of fuel so it's in the drivers best interest to charge as often as possible.

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

#292

Post by jmelloy »

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've seen plenty of chargers at malls and Walgreens and other areas. Usually it's a ChargePoint or blink app, which connects through your phone. One of the local malls subsidizes the electricity and charging is free.

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

#293

Post by 2dvisio »

sunstone wrote: post #239
abeppu wrote: post #202

I'm curious how many EV purchasers live in single family homes, or other places where they can provide their own ability to charge at home. I wonder if a new scale of adoption will require a change where most (or a lot) of street parking is by cheap charging. https://youtu.be/RMxB7zA-e4Y?t=1245

The idea of providing charging outlets at the base of street lamp poles seems like a practical way of helping transition to EV's.

Where I work in Oxford (UK) they have started trialling this approach and seems to be working

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

#294

Post by Ericson2314 »

99_00 wrote: post #131
jlj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas taxes set a floor for how low prices can go. They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. In Washington, US, they increased the registration fee for electrics to make up for the shortfall in gas taxes that pay for road wear, congestion, etc. So that's already happening.

>They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. Why?

Because cars still have externalities, electrified or not. One just hopes that also increased thee gas tax too so as not to subsidize the ICE cars.

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

#295

Post by core-questions »

modeless wrote: post #257
turtlebits wrote: post #178

Mass adoption won't happen until charging infrastructure improves dramatically. As a non-Tesla owner, I have had the worst experiences at fast charging stations - I'd say 70% of the time at Electrify America stations (they have the most fast charging coverage), I run into a charger that doesn't work and waste time moving my car and retrying another bay. (I've even experienced a station with 5 bays where none of them…

Tesla has said they are willing to license the Supercharger network. That said, superchargers are not immune to being broken either. I find that many if not most have at least one broken stall. I got free supercharging for ordering an early Model 3 and didn't expect to use it, but it has been a lifesaver during covid when I suddenly lost access to work charging.

As a petrolhead who has never even seen a Supercharger station: what exactly is broken? What is there to break? Physical damage to the cable / connector?

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

#296

Post by core-questions »

cptskippy wrote: post #280
viraptor wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect new payment plans will get more popular soon. I'm not familiar with the US providers, but in Australia there are already at least two companies allowing you to buy energy at a current, hourly adjusted price. I expect that in a couple of decades "energy cost arbitrage via car charging" will be a normal thing.

You're probably right. In the US there's generally two systems, flat-rate or time-of-use. A lot of people on time-of-use plans are installing battery backups and/or solar to avoid the peak charges. I have a Tesla solar/powerwall setup that's configured for cost savings and it decided that today 100% of solar was going to be back fed to the grid and we've been running 100% off the batteries. Usually the system just sw…

> Usually the system just switches to batteries during peak.

You'd think you'd want to be using them more often - is it just that there's no grid demand for the power?

My hope is that the addition of a huge number of batteries to the grid, in the form of all these EVs, actually adds to its capacity, since most people won't be running them down to 0 and the software to optimize when to charge vs. when to power the grid seems to be evolving.

Pity it's not a nice open source standard or anything

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

#297

Post by jgalt212 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #246

My problem is renting apartments. If you ask the strata or the building managers about charging points in the carpark, they look at you like you're speaking Klingon. This is true of even very recently completed buildings in well-off areas of relatively wealthy western countries. Heck, I just walked past three Teslas in my building's car park, one of which is new and wasn't there last week! Do people... not plan ahead…

> I get the same vacant expression when I talk to network engineers about IPv4 exhaustion

As long as there is a free market to buy/sell addresses, we'll never run out of them.

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

#299

Post by natch »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #164
natch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 charge…

Of course there are a lot of issues still needing solutions.

If you re-read my comment you will see that I acknowledged this won’t work for everyone. Quite far removed from how you portray my comment.

You’ve also made several poorly chosen points that are easily refuted. Perhaps if you want to engage with sincerity and read what people say, your experience here will be better.

You and I both agree a lot of improvements are needed. In the meantime watching evolutionary-paced progress crawl along can be frustrating for sure.

There’s something fascinating though about the difference between what we impatiently want to see, asap, as consumers, and how stuff actually gets done. And you touched on it with the rich people toy comment. The people who can figure out the steps to get from here to there — some of which steps take us through stages that look quite non-ideal along the way — those people really have some special insight or talent.

I find this amazing. Who would have thought that the way to get eco friendly cars to take off would have been to leverage humans’ enjoyment of endorphins? Pretty nonlinear thinking, but it’s working, in the case of Tesla.

(I say it’s working because it helped (or frankly, enabled, full stop) the company to even survive at all to this point. If they had tried to move straight to a cheap model on day 1, there would be no Tesla Inc. today. And now it’s putting pressure on other car companies to catch up. Anyone who thinks it is easy to finance a company while starting with a low priced model is free to try doing so, of course.)

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

#300

Post by safog »

jiggawatts wrote: post #246

My problem is renting apartments. If you ask the strata or the building managers about charging points in the carpark, they look at you like you're speaking Klingon. This is true of even very recently completed buildings in well-off areas of relatively wealthy western countries. Heck, I just walked past three Teslas in my building's car park, one of which is new and wasn't there last week! Do people... not plan ahead…

So no one has said this yet, but a lot of people charge their cars at work. I don't know if you're in the US but in my experience this seems like a east coast phenomenon. Lots of electric chargers in bay area, seattle and generally urban areas on the west coast.
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