Can we pivot this conversation to building cities and towns that don't need cars instead of thinking of filling the streets with electric cars?
What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
371–380 of 460 posts
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
This fact is very easy to forget for most of us here, given the salaries in tech. When you're working multiple jobs or are underemployed and trying to support a family, each dollar is some suffering you can alleviate or a problem you can solve now and that is much more important than long term investment. You can't invest if you can't even guarantee that you can feed yourself for long enough to benefit from it.
People scraping together a few thousand dollars to buy a beater ICE so they can get to work are not doing TCO analyses. It's also a pretty open question what the cost of EVs looks like long-term. Even if we limit the discussion to new vehicles, you can buy a new ICE econobox for close to $15K which could last you 10 years and 150K miles fairly easily. I sure wouldn't bet on an electric car doing that on its original…
Then you will lose, the good EV cars have 90% of their battery life left after a lot more miles than that.
See: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-b...
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#373How about: We need to shift from individual car ownership to more public transport? Sure it will be great if cars turn electric, but that does not solve issues like crowded streets etc. This would be partly addressed if cars were self driving and shared, i.e. would spend less time standing around unused. Nevertheless, I assume (=don't have data) that public transport would be much more efficient than electric cars in…
Whenever I run into an argument for something society-wide like this I do a little though experiment: Imagine the world as the argument suggests - in this case that public transportation is the norm. Now imagine I came to you and said, hey, what would you say to a personal conveyance device? Small and cheap enough to park at your residence, can carry you and all your friends/family/churchmembers/whatever as well as t…
But there is a middle ground solution between large buses and trains and single occupant vehicles. Here is another thought experiment, stand by a busy road or highway for a few minutes. Notice all the single occupant vehicles and how they are all traveling in the same direction. Now picture if some of those occupants were grouped together in the same vehicle and how much more efficient that would be. Lyft line, for example, works pretty well. Wider adoption would make it work better. It should be noted that the U.S., according to recent census data, is "gradually" shifting back to urban core living.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
$400 billion / ~80 million passenger cars per year would be $5000 per car.
A large part of the profit is made on spare parts.
Yeah, I just meant to say that it was implausible that that number was revenue, which should be much higher than an average of $5,000 per car.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was more pointing out that with current panels, putting panels on the car isn’t a good idea.
From a weight perspective they still add range so it's not a bad idea. Further, being able to run some fans or even AC while in full sun is a significant benefit. Car companies are not adding panels because the benefit is not huge, they add complexity and cost, and panels negatively impact styling. Still, you see a lot of campers with solar panels on the roof because a few kwh/day of extra power really does add up ov…
Further, being able to run some fans or even AC while in full sun is a significant benefit.
You’re going to need those fans with giant, black heat sinks on your roof. To the point that I wonder if the panels heat the car faster than fans can remove it.
Still, you see a lot of campers with solar panels on the roof because a few kwh/day of extra power really does add up over time.
You see a solar panel on our VW camper because a 100W panel can easily recharge the battery that runs the 20W of LED lighting, and charge the occasional laptop, not run a 80,000W traction motor. My parents have a 35 foot fifth wheel with A/C, microwave, and other goodies. It has an option for solar panels. They didn’t buy that option because solar panels ain’t gonna do squat for that load. They figured it might buy an extra half day of boondocking before the house batteries run out. No, you see a lot of campers with solar because they either have a small load like us, or the salesman convinced them it would be a good idea on their 40 foot Class A tour bus.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
First world city streets already have electricity supply (for the street light and for the buildings). Setting up charging ports is already rather cheap and once cities realize that they can - drastically reduce air pollution - make more money selling electricity than just charging for parking they will quickly start installing plugs everywhere. Battery range is already at around 500 km for Tesla model S and X and th…
"First world city streets already have electricity supply" powering a light bulb in 100 street lights and having enough capacity to charge 100 electric cars are 2 totally different animals and will require significant infra. upgrades.
It’s the exact same cables that powers the thousands of light bulbs, hundreds of computers, AC, TV, fridges etc in the buildings next to the street
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#377Even before reading the article, my first thought was 'need to expand the range of the vehicle'.
Yes, advances in battery technology means even the lowest-common-denominator consumer will get better battery life without having to shell out more -- but that will hit a cap before long.
Assuming an average range of about 100mi for the consumer-grade EV, that would satisfy many. But there are still many more who that will not work for, with longer commutes or more driving distance (errands, kids, other activities, multiple jobs, ferrying, taxi/rideshare services, etc.).
A dual-engine design seems to be a more obvious solution, with a primarily electric engine with a secondary, small engine providing backup power either with recharge or straight up horsepower delivered to the drivetrain when the battery is depleted or running critically low. This doesn't necessarily have to be ICE; this engine could be something else that's fairly revolutionary like a hydrogen fuel cell. Even if we get to a majority EV situation, having these be commonplace will give everyone who owns one more freedom and options rather than locking them down to what that particular model has (I see a future with more vendor lock-in).
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#378Biggest problem I guess will be expanding the charger network, simply due to physics. On the country side, laying cables for 1MW peak load (4 superchargers @ 250 kW) will be expensive - the grid in rural areas is enough for some farms and small villages, that's it. In cities, electric-car chargers will have to deal with political obstacles (no one wants to sacrifice free-for-all parking spots!), in addition to the el…
The USA installed Cable TV, why would charging cables be harder? The USA spends $500Billion on cars and $400 Billion on gasoline every year. A onetime $trillon upgrade isn't an outsize amount.
Parts of the USA. Eagle Mountain, UT has a population of 30,000 and no cable TV. It is just down the road from the NSA building, it isn't like it is in the middle of nowhere. There wasn't much there in 1999. For a city that is very young - nobody wanted to put up money for cable.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Eagle+Mountain,+UT/@40.335...
I'm almost sure the county I live in now doesn't have cable TV anywhere. It costs a lot to roll out a network of anything. I'd guess a power network costs more than cable or fiber.
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric cars have the potential to be a key part of the solution to load management on a fully renewable grid. The vast majority of people will usually charge overnight and don't need to regularly charge at peak times. Through intelligent charger management, you can distribute the load of charging across the entire off-peak period. The UX for this can be fairly straightforward - by default you charge at the cheapest…
Even if the expensive infrastructure was put in place to allow electric car batteries to be used as a peak load reservoir, utilities would still need to maintain traditional on demand resources, such as natural gas fired power plants. Using a large number of cars is not dependable, utilities need on demand dependability. What happens if during peak consumption in the evening winter months more people stay out late (s…
We've reached the point where utility-scale storage is a cost-effective alternative to natural gas peakers. The big story has been the California Puente peaker plant -- https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/battery-storage...
Long story short: NRG wanted to build a natural gas peaker plant, California Energy Commission said "can you do this cost-effectively with storage?", NRG said no, then people realized the "no" was based on 4-year-old battery figures. With updated figures (storage follows a manufacturing curve where the more we build the cheaper it becomes, so prices are dropping every year just as they've done with solar), turns out that yes, storage is a potentially cost-competitive alternative to nat gas peakers.
The application to build the plant is on hold to let the battery folks submit a few bids, I believe, but the econmic trends are clear: you can do peaker plants with storage now (or at least very soon).
Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
#380How about: We need to shift from individual car ownership to more public transport? Sure it will be great if cars turn electric, but that does not solve issues like crowded streets etc. This would be partly addressed if cars were self driving and shared, i.e. would spend less time standing around unused. Nevertheless, I assume (=don't have data) that public transport would be much more efficient than electric cars in…
A few problems with more public transit. First, public transport is not door-to-door; for my commute atm, public transit would take 2 hours (for a 60 km distance), more if there's a hitch on the way. It'll pretty much always take longer because you're stuck on one or multiple schedules. The other problem in my country is that the public transit networks are already at maximum capacity - train network in particular is…
I approve of your rant :)