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

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

#361

Post by julienb_sea » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:51 AM UTC

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…

On the other hand its pretty easy to retrofit car parks with chargers if there is demand for it. My building (which, to be fair, is a new construction highrise in seattle) has ~15% of its carpark with charging capacity and I suspect they could add more if needed.

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

#362

Post by esturk » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:53 AM UTC

99_00 wrote: post #134

rasz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that time photo film got cheaper as more and more people switched to digital cameras? Combustion engine powered cars will be relegated to hipsters, museums, hardcore enthusiasts and specialist/niche applications.

I'm not aware of a strong functional benefit of electric versus combustion. But digital cameras had strong benefits over digital, so I don't think it's a good analogy. In general, I don't think analogies are for making arguments, because people focus on the difference between the analogy and what it's being applied to, like I just did. In education, to teach a new principle, I think they are great.

I think your dismissal of all analogies in making a point is detracting you from actually understanding their view.

Some analogies are made to demonstrate the similarities and some are made for the differences. The context is key. You just whiffed.

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

#363

Post by lightfooted » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:57 AM UTC

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…

This is certainly location-dependent. I just went through an apartment search in San Francisco where one of my requirements was electric car charging. Yes of course SF is tech-forward, but most buildings are fifty years or older which makes installation of a charger non-trivial. I just signed a lease for an apartment that doesn’t have a car charger, but the property manager added an amendment which stipulated that one will be installed in a few months, otherwise I’m free to break from the lease. I’d say about half of the property managers I talked to across about 15 tours were amenable to it.

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

#364

Post by baby » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

I looked into it and got a bit scared about charging it. I don’t have a garage and I do street parking and it didn’t seem like I had many options. For road trips it seemed a bit scary too, do I need to stop somewhere and wait for hours to charge?

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

#365

Post by bluGill » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:58 AM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #113

rasz wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unguarded $100 worth of charging cable dangling from every street post? what could possibly go wrong?

Reasonable concern, though: 1. If every car has one, they become a commodity, so how much value will they actually end up having? 2. There are locking cables available: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKaEhBjt1ls

Most of the price is in the copper inside. Walk around with an insulated bolt cutter, and you can make a lot of money. Alibaba will sell you a device to get the insulation off the wire. Plenty of scrappers bring copper into the scrap yards already.

I wouldn't do it, but it is easy to see how a dishonest person could make it work.

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

#366

Post by throwawaysea » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

I don’t see mass adoption being realistic until people can charge on long distance trips that they take few times a year in a reasonable amount of time without congestion and waiting lines at the limited number of charging ports available. Then there’s the question of what people in rural areas or trade jobs or other situations will do, given their needs may be different (working vehicles like pickups may see different adoption rates or constraints). There’s also the question of whether the power grid is ready. And finally I wonder if all the mass mining of lithium and other metals will create its own problems. If all things are better in moderation I wonder if a mixed end state with ICE, EVs, and PHEVs all available is the best equilibrium. Personally I think aggressive bans on gasoline vehicles may be short sighted, apart from being another reduction of individual freedoms.

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

#367

Post by julienb_sea » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 4:00 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #51

Maybe in the UK, but not where I am. It was -26 this morning. Batteries don't handle such temperatures well. And the nearest civilian airport is 400km away. I haven't seen a single all-electric car in my town since I moved here over a year ago.

Isn't this a problem for gasoline cars too? Hence battery heaters?

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

#368

Post by bluGill » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 4:04 AM UTC

jlj wrote: post #14

99_00 wrote: post #2

I don't understand how this can happen. An equilibrium seems more likely to me. If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This will make combustion vehicles more attractive. Also, government depends on all the taxes they put on combustion vehicles. As those revenues decline they may choose to get that money from electric vehicle drivers under the guise of 'congestion' taxes or such.

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.

The demand side is where it gets tricky. If there are only a few gas stations in your state it doesn't matter that the list price if oil is cheap. Gas stations will tear out their pumps as demand drops.

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

#369

Post by snypher » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 4:12 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #348

brewdad wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the efforts to reduce parking requirements succeed, you can be sure that more units will be built with no parking lots at all (Profit$). We are seeing this in Portland where 20 unit apartment buildings are getting built with zero parking (or maybe 10 spaces available for additional rent). The end result, for now at least, is 30-40 more cars parked in the surrounding streets.

> If the efforts to reduce parking requirements succeed, you can be sure that more units will be built with no parking lots at all I'm having trouble seeing the problem here. :) Y'know what's even better for the environment than electric cars? No cars! I realize that living in California without a car is going to be difficult, but if you can manage it, you shouldn't have to pay for other people's parking spaces.

The thing is not everyone is able to manage it. By not providing for those people you ensure the parking problem becomes someone else's problem.

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

#370

Post by kiwijamo » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 4:14 AM UTC

jgalt212 wrote: post #297

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.

Perhaps not but we are at the point now where it is not economically viable to buy new IPv4 blocks. Many smaller (and more recently established ISPs) ISPs have given up on buying IPv4 addresses and are now running CG-NAT behind the handful of IPv4 addresses they still own. Even big (especially older) ISPs with large IPv4 blocks are experimenting with CG-NAT (e.g. I know one large ISP who is doing it only for wireless broadband probably because it's a easy test market). Either they're looking at selling part of their blocks (since they could operate out of smaller blocks with CG-NAT if they downsized) or they are genuinely predicting that they will eventually run out of space in their existing blocks--and these blocks are huge.