291–300 of 349 posts
I've always wondered if the realization of this electric car utopia in the first world will eventually lead to Lamborghinis and Porches being dumped on us poor people in the third world like hand me down clothes.
While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3: > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car…
Aren't they convenient because they're only a few yards from your car? If you no longer need to drive to the gas station to get fuel, it's a lot less convenient, isn't it?
I wish people would be slightly more honest about technological change. Smartphones are very special. They are very cheap, easy to mass produce, and you can iterate on them very quickly. Cars on the other hand have a much longer life cycle, involve much more capital, and in general are going to follow an elongated investment / replacement cycle. Comparing these two systems, while enthusiastic and great for a college…
I hope things pan out the way the article predicts and I'm a massive optimist for EV adoption in the long term. However, there's some obvious wrenches in the plan for such quick adoption, including: - No great options currently for charging in apartments. Virtually the entire world is on an urbanisation trend, so this segment of potential EV owners is really important for adoption, and isn't being currently served. -…
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I think electric cars win on every metric except range and refill/recharge time. They have better torque, better efficiency, lower emissions, lower noise, simpler drivetrains, and more reliable motors.
> I think electric cars win on every metric except range and refill/recharge time. And price. Maybe everyone on here is a millionaire or about to become one, but $70,000 is a lot of money. Hell, even $20,000 is a lot of money for me (I live in Eastern Europe), even though for most of the people in here it looks like small change. And if it matters I am currently living a sort of middle class life in these parts of th…
Tesla has my business, especially if they can pull off a ~$35k in a couple of years. All I have to do is make my current A4 & Honda Odyssey make it a bit longer. :)
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I am one of the biggest Tesla fanboys out. Everything Geoff said is true but he makes it seem like this is around the corner and it isn't even close. At least 60M cars are produced annually[0] and there are about 1B currently in the world[1]. A best case for tesla is to grow from ~50K cars to ~500K cars anually by 2020. There isn't an industrial base yet. Some other manufacturers will contribute of course, but even i…
https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...
Also, this is a pretty lofty goal for tesla. They haven't produced working self-driving tech (the ones now work at low speed and highway but are not 100x better than humans), they don't have experience with high volume production, the gigafactory isn't complete yet, etc. I am really excited for this to happen, but I am not sure if when that clock sweeps over into new years 2021 there will half a million autonomous teslas.
Would never bet against Musk though, hope I am wrong.
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The number of miles driven autonomously doesn't really matter if drivers have to intervene even for a second to resolve an issue. If the car is driving by itself 99% of the time, that's not good enough for the "share an autonomous car" use case. It's no good at 99.9% either. Or 99.99%. It's a lot more interesting if google's cars actually had no steering wheel or way of intervening. Because that's what we're talking…
Ahh but you miss an important point - humans are not 100%.. it does not need to be 100% it only needs to be better then your average human.
I can't believe he's comparing a $70,000 electric car to a huge bucket labeled "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Of course the $70,000 car is better in almost every way. I've driven a lot of electric cars in the $5,000 to $10,000 range and I assure you they are not better than "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Our last gas-powered car was a used Lexus that cost us $8,000. It's an extremely comfortable luxury car that seats…
I wish people would be slightly more honest about technological change. Smartphones are very special. They are very cheap, easy to mass produce, and you can iterate on them very quickly. Cars on the other hand have a much longer life cycle, involve much more capital, and in general are going to follow an elongated investment / replacement cycle. Comparing these two systems, while enthusiastic and great for a college…
"Electric cars are always full every morning" is only true for people owning a garage.