Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by worik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:18 AM UTC

TedShiller wrote: post #344

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…

The problem is actually lithium batteries. Mining that material destroys the earth.

Mining anything causes great big holes in the ground and piles of tailings.

It does not destroy the Earth. It rearranges the furniture. Drastically

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

#352

Post by worik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #201

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…

I've driven through Germany last summer, tried 3 different charging stations, none of them worked. Or rather, they did, but I couldn't set up the app for them, one because it didn't have an English option, one because it wouldn't accept my non-German card and another because it was giving me an extremely helpful "unspecified" error. But even here in UK it's a mess. There is a charging station near my home that seems…

"But even here in UK it's a mess."

I cannot parse that.

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

#353

Post by worik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

GloriousKoji wrote: post #325

core-questions wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Many things can break: the internet connection, the internal computer, the main power wire to the car connector, something inside the connector, something with the charger circuity like a bad contactor. Then there's the obvious stuff like physical damage from vandalization or someone driving into it.

WHat a story for the twenty-first century!

It is energy transfer: "Many things can break: the internet connection..." what does the Internet connevction have to do with it?

(To be clear, that is a rhetorical question. I know why and how those systems are fundamentally broken - almost by design!)

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

#354

Post by worik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

coding123 wrote: post #225

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…

> a non-Tesla owner I think you'll be in the minority.

I am never buying a Tesla.

I want to own my car

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

#355

Post by ggm » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

worik wrote: post #352

gambiting wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've driven through Germany last summer, tried 3 different charging stations, none of them worked. Or rather, they did, but I couldn't set up the app for them, one because it didn't have an English option, one because it wouldn't accept my non-German card and another because it was giving me an extremely helpful "unspecified" error. But even here in UK it's a mess. There is a charging station near my home that seems…

"But even here in UK it's a mess." I cannot parse that.

Try adding the word "the" in every spot, and report back when you find the right one. Hint: sentence.split()[3:4]

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

#356

Post by bluGill » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:33 AM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #278

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we break off the assumption of what most consumers want, sure. But then what would be the point?

Over 80-90% of trips are very short in distance. Long distance trips are more of an anomaly for huge majority of people.

Long trips might be an anomaly, but they are a common one in that every person I know takes a couple every year. So a good answer needs to exist or the whole thing dies.

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

#357

Post by reddog » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

hughes wrote: post #320

reddog wrote: post #315

I've worked on ICE vehicles my whole life and I'd be happy to say good riddance. But this article has a heavy urban bias. The author has obviously never driven through West Texas or taken a road trip from Brisbane to Alice Springs. You'll need to show me how I can drive an $80K Tesla from Austin to Big Bend NP before I start to believe.

How to drive from Austin to Big Bend NP in a $48k car: https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MY_2020_LongRange&o=Austin,%... There's a route planner that can do this built in to every Tesla.

OK, I have to conceed your point. You can drive from Austin to Big Bend NP in an electric car. I didn't know you could now buy a Tesla with a 400m range.

Of course that longer range Model S costs $65K, not $48K. And you have to drive 55mph, with the heater off to get that range. Which, in West Texas, is 30 mph under the posted speed limit for many roads. And (I apologize for moving the goal posts) when most people get to Big Bend they don't want to turn around at the entrance and go back to the closest charger -- they want to drive around and see things and maybe vist Terlingua or Alpine or Ft Davis. Maybe they want to spend several days in the area but that's not an option in an EV. Thats probably why I've never seen one in Big Bend.

I drive out there often from Austin. I drive a 2004 Sienna which I bought for about $4000. The $61K I save by not buying a Tesla would buy me 700,000 miles in my ICE.

https://evstationslocal.com/states/texas/79834/

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

#358

Post by julienb_sea » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

drewg123 wrote: post #122

julienb_sea wrote: post #115

Electric cars are perfectly pleasant to own as a second car or if you very rarely take long road trips. If it's very cold or very hot, if you drive to the mountains or rural areas for pleasure, range anxiety is a serious problem. Waiting for a re-charge is ok if you have access to Tesla supercharger speeds. Forcing this lifestyle change on everyone is absolutely insane. The climate imperative is poor reasoning becaus…

I've taken several long (2000mi) road trips in my Tesla. The only range anxiety I've had has been self induced. Eg, skipping the Tesla map planned supercharger and using the next one down the road for a variety of reasons [1] . The most anxious I've been is when I pulled into a supercharger with 2% remaining. [1] I often do this to arrive at a supercharger with a lower state of charge. This allows for charging lower…

I understand and overarchingly agree - my drive to my preferred ski resort nearby is approx. 180mi roundtrip and this can be easily covered in a Tesla. I used to take weekend trips to Whistler and the increased travel time from charging would be much more noticeable, as the entire trip timeline is pretty tight as it is.

I think charging infrastructure like superchargers will have difficulty scaling up to large potions of the population owning electric vehicles. This is of course my opinion, but if there are a factor of a hundred more Teslas or equivalent on the road than there currently are, and supercharging stops regularly are 30-60 minutes, I suspect the convenience factor of supercharging may decrease substantially.

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

#359

Post by julienb_sea » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

cure wrote: post #124

julienb_sea wrote: post #115

Electric cars are perfectly pleasant to own as a second car or if you very rarely take long road trips. If it's very cold or very hot, if you drive to the mountains or rural areas for pleasure, range anxiety is a serious problem. Waiting for a re-charge is ok if you have access to Tesla supercharger speeds. Forcing this lifestyle change on everyone is absolutely insane. The climate imperative is poor reasoning becaus…

> The climate imperative is poor reasoning because this will be a significant increase in electricity generation demands. Relatively centralized electricity generation can be converted to lower carbon generation. This is happening pretty rapidly in many places for economic reasons; renewable power generation is a lot cheaper than fossil fuel power generation. Doing the same for more than a billion ICE engines distrib…

I'm merely making an in my view commonsense point. ICE engines are carefully regulated worldwide, certainly in any nation which would consider mandating a transition to electric vehicles. Subsidies and gasoline taxes encourage societal transition to make transportation as efficient as possible, without mandating a full phase out of gasoline as a power source.

Renewables have scalability issues. Grid scale renewable energy is possible but needs to be supplemented by either significant on-demand generation when the renewables are offline (at night, when wind is weak), or very large scale battery storage. Localized in-home energy storage is plausible but expensive to roll out. We are also talking about absolutely gigantic demand for raw materials to produce sufficient battery capacity to smooth out the renewable power generation curve.

My point is that in order to feasibly power a society which is heavily reliant on electric cars, power generation via renewables alone is not a viable answer.

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

#360

Post by kingaillas » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:49 AM UTC

akiselev wrote: post #165

BurningFrog wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, every parking spot could be a simple charging station. All you need is a power cable. Reusing the land of all gas stations for other things will be a good benefit of all this. Except for San Francisco, where they all will be preserved as historical landmarks.

> Yeah, every parking spot could be a simple charging station. All you need is a power cable. ...and the infrastructure to distribute the electricity. Back of the napkin math with the mall of America: 5.6 million sq ft at ~14kWh/sq ft per year (rough average estimate of all retail buildings) [1] equates to about 78.4 million kWh/year or 784,000 100kWh Model S's charged to full or 7.84 million charged 10% assuming 100…

A rollout could be smaller in scope yet be useful. Most parking lots have at least one street light... start by connecting the existing grid/infrastructure that already is there powering the streetlight, upgrading if necessary, to a handful of nearby parking spots. Go from there.

Take a step back and think about the ridiculous infrastructure build to support gas powered cars. Imagine a time before gas stations; someone doing a back of the napkin math about a future of cars would have also been met with disbelief - developers will have to invest millions/billions of dollars and build hundreds of thousand of stores across the entire country to sell gas? And how will those stores get the gas to sell? Truck it in?? That's just ridiculous.