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

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

#311

Post by ben_w »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #288
ben_w wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although electricity is already everywhere, it’s still not going to be an easy transition. Globally, electricity production in 2012 was somewhere around 20 PWh/year, while transport used around 30 PWh/years. I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_e…

Electric vehicles use roughly a third of the energy so that 30 PWh only needs to be an extra 10 PWh for the grid. We need to increase overall capcity by 50%.

10 PWh / year (just over 1 TW average) is currently a half-trillion dollar installation cost, assuming $0.23/W PV with a 50% duty cycle.

Yes, this is still an improvement; yes it should be done; it’s just not trivial.

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

#312

Post by sokoloff »

udfalkso wrote: post #305
leetcrew wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i would consider buying an electric car if it were as fast as my hot hatch, had comparable range, and weighed less than 3000 lbs. i doubt that will happen for quite some time.

Why is the weight of concern to you?

Not prior poster, but mass is detrimental to almost every aspect of the driving experience. Heavy cars accelerate slower, brake longer, turn worse, and wear tires more quickly than an equivalent car that's lighter.

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

#313

Post by ben_w »

raverbashing wrote: post #307
ben_w wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although electricity is already everywhere, it’s still not going to be an easy transition. Globally, electricity production in 2012 was somewhere around 20 PWh/year, while transport used around 30 PWh/years. I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_e…

Maybe electric cars will be the solution to the duck curve?

They are one of the four main reasons why I don’t worry about the duck curve.

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

#314

Post by sokoloff »

selimthegrim wrote: post #99
tormeh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. A car is the most outwardly visible status/everything symbol you have. This is important, especially for men without a family. They're not going to want to be seen in a Renault Zoe or a scooter.

You know what cured me of this? Being the proud lessee of an environmentally friendly, low-end-torque having, fuel-sipping 2014 VW diesel Jetta. Oops.

2 out of 3 ain't bad...

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

#315

Post by icc97 »

sokoloff wrote: post #303
icc97 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How much of that is the garage (which I agree would raise the value) vs the EVSE in the garage (which can be added for under 1500€ in most cases)?

Just the garage. If you don't have a garage, you have to buy one apart which is about €20,000. Then you always have a trip to the car and there might still be issues with installing the EVSE.

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

#316

Post by sokoloff »

p1mrx wrote: post #250
WillPostForFood wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The J1772 spec is well documented and supports the "advertisement" of maximum charging current. You could add the capability to something like OpenEVSE. https://www.openevse.com/

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

#317

Post by sokoloff »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #211
lostapathy wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

where are you located that household 3 phase is available? Lots of hobby machinists would kill for that but it just isn’t available most places.

Annecdata: all the houses I personally know of in the south bay (North California, USA) area have three phase power, and the oldest was built in the 1940es. Charging a Model S from a 110V 20A outlet is very slow and probably not a very useful option (but I have done it on a visit to LA).

Three phase (typically 480/3)? Or split-phase 240 VAC (center-tapped, single-phase 240V)?

The latter is extremely common/the standard residential service. The former is extremely uncommon residentially.

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

#318

Post by dagss »

GW150914 wrote: post #227
soperj wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet tons of people do it in europe with kids because the infrastructure exists.

You mean the rich, temperate parts of Western Europe, most of which could fit inside Texas? Sure. If you’re being more honest it’s the urban areas of the richer, temperate parts of Weatern Europe, which is an even smaller geographic area with a total population that’s less than the US, or about 1/5th of China or India. I love cycling in Paris and Amsterdam, not so much in New York City in the winter. I also wouldn’t…

Probably because you talk about size of population on the level of countries/continents which is clearly irrelevant to the question here (where population of an individual city is what matters, at best).

So not distaste or disagreement, but irrelevance.

If you think "Europe has a smaller population than US" is relevant to whether using public transport where the infrastructure exists is possible for families then you need to state why more clearly.

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

#319

Post by cimmanom »

zeta0134 wrote: post #228
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.

It's been quite a while since I visited NYC so forgive me if my memories are outdated, but when I was there, parking meters were commonplace along the roads. Would it not at least make sense to slowly replace those with combination parking meter + charging station, which might be easier for the city to monetize in the long run? I realize this doesn't solve the home-side storage problem, but it might be one way the in…

They’ve replaced the meter-per-space with a single digital meter per block. And that’s also only there in particularly commercially oriented areas, not in residential areas. Though I personally agree with the argument that we should be charging for parking on public property everywhere in the city.

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

#320

Post by nielsole »

metafunctor wrote: post #268
fh973 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: what are the "obvious benefits" (from the consumer perspective)? I can just think of insane acceleration (which is irrelevant for actual use).

Here are a few obvious benefits off the top of my head: * No local emissions from burning fuel. * Noise greatly reduced. * Much less energy consumed (and CO2 generated) per mile overall. * The car is always topped up when I leave to work in the morning. * Great driving experience; instant silent torque is very convenient, and hard to give up once you've gotten used to it. * More space left for cargo. * Middle seat in…

* lower center of mass

* potentially better all-wheel drive

* better crash-security (no massive engine crushing your legs or flying around)

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