Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

recurrentauto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 557 posts

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#391

Post by tpxl »

anovikov wrote: post #347
tpxl wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid capacity is what blocks EV market share and will continue to be the blocker for the foreseeable future. A 2 person apartment where I live will consume ~400kWh of power in a typical month. Charging a 100kWh battery twice a month per person would double the power usage. We don't have the power generation, nor power delivery for that, nor will we have it for some time.

Not really, a car serves for ~15 years, so even 100% EV market share will mean only 6% or so annual replacement rate. Plenty of time for grid to adapt.

According to a random source (American Public Power Association), the US got about 30GW of new power from 2014 to 2021, and is projected to build another 41GW in 2022. The generation as of March 2022 was 1250GW, so about 2-3% increase per year. You'd have to add another 8.5% (12 year car replacement age, and it doubles consumption, so you need to double the total production in 12 years) on top of that and you'd have to start now, not in a couple years, when the problem becomes apparent.

Edit: Average car age is < 12 in the US, not 15.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#392

Post by markus92 »

blahedo wrote: post #272
therealrootuser wrote: post #187

As someone that is currently in the market for a new car, I would love to get an EV, but I also don't have a good way to charge. Seems like most EV owners just charge at their house, but what about people that don't have access to a good power tap? (apartment dwellers, renters, etc.) Sometimes it feels like there is a group of EV elites out there that are predicting the complete demise of ICEs while conveniently down…

Thanks for raising this issue—as you point out, it's often ignored—but I'd posit it's even worse than you (and others on this thread) indicate. When the issue is framed at all, it's usually boiled down to "landlords won't want to install chargers in the apartment garages" with the possible counterpoint of "demand will force them to" or there will be subsidies or etc etc. But there are vast, vast numbers of people who…

In my country, they solved that overnight street parking pretty easily. If there's not a charger close by, you can request the city council to place a charger in your street. They do indeed dig it up, wire it to some electrical lines there and there's your charger. And the cost? Commercial companies actually do all of this and you just pay for the electricity when you charge, the city council takes care of the permits. Win/win/win situation I'd say.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#393

Post by Tade0 »

jjav wrote: post #285
fy20 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, most of the places where people live in Norway are not actually that cold. In Oslo it hasn't dropped below -20C / -4F since 2010.

> not actually that cold > In Oslo it hasn't dropped below -20C / -4F since 2010. -20C is brutally cold, far colder than any coldest winter day I ever experienced while living in the northeast USA.

Man oh man you wouldn't enjoy eastern Europe in the 90s.

Aside from the general post-communism, we had -30C cold snaps.

But yeah, snot freezes at around -18C - I consider this the point at which things become universally unpleasant regardless how prepared you are.

That being said during a cold snap of -22C I saw my neighbours struggle to start their ICE cars while my hybrid just brutally kicked the engine into action.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#394

Post by neallindsay »

lifeplusplus wrote: post #274

Won't electric car have bad resell value given battery cost an arm to replace

I think you're over-estimating how common it will be to need a battery replacement in an EV. Car batteries don't generally "go bad". They instead get "smaller" over time, but not drastically so.

It remains to be seen if modern EV batteries will need to be replaced before all the rest of the car.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#395

Post by lm28469 »

endisneigh wrote: post #74

I love EVs. That being said I wish someone would make an enclosed bicycle/motorcycle that costs less than $2000. Something like that which can go 30mph and had space for 2 days of groceries would be enough for me to eliminate my car all together. I'm cobbling something similar now with a Class 3 cargo ebike, but rain sucks =/ The idealist in me says that electric ebikes could eliminate most of Americas problems in on…

> Ideally we'd just begin to phase out cars

Won't happen, if anything we'll have more cars due to the rebound effect.

It was a major chance to restructure everything and downscale our vehicles and associated infrastructures, we did the exact opposite, they're bigger, heavier, faster, harder to fix/work on, &c.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#396

Post by tecleandor »

sz4kerto wrote: post #248
endisneigh wrote: post #74

I love EVs. That being said I wish someone would make an enclosed bicycle/motorcycle that costs less than $2000. Something like that which can go 30mph and had space for 2 days of groceries would be enough for me to eliminate my car all together. I'm cobbling something similar now with a Class 3 cargo ebike, but rain sucks =/ The idealist in me says that electric ebikes could eliminate most of Americas problems in on…

Renault Twizy was quite popular for short distances here in Europe.

I see the Renault Ami much better for this use.

  - It's bigger (seats two tall people very comfortably. Or one plus your shopping.)  
  - It's half the price (12K€ for the Twizy vs 7K€ for the Ami)  
  - It has windows :P  
  - There's a "cargo" version (it substitutes the second seat for a cargo space).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb9-pbLk3Go

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#397

Post by audunw »

benj111 wrote: post #373
chroma wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EVs are much heavier than their equivalent ICE vehicles. This is not true. The Tesla Model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 3 series (~3,600-4,100lbs depending on trim level). Yes EVs carry a half ton of batteries, but they get rid of the engine block, transmission, starter motor, fuel tank, alternator, exhaust system, and many other parts. Also many combustion vehicles made today are hybrids, meaning they also carry…

I thought EVs still had a 12v battery. Is that not charged via an alternator? I admit it seems more sensible to charge it direct from the battery pack, but then it seems more sensible to me to do away with the 12v battery all together. So if you're going to have a 12v battery it may aswell be completely independent of the main battery pack.

> Is that not charged via an alternator?

No, it's generally directly from main battery pack when the car is turned on, or when the car is charging. I would guses some models can also charge it now and then when the car is off, since some models are always connected to a cellular network.

> but then it seems more sensible to me to do away with the 12v battery all together.

No, no, no.. You need 12V when the car is off (for talking to key fob at the very least), but you probably don't want a DC-DC converter running from the main battery all the time. If you have trouble getting power from the main battery, it'll be hard to diagnose when none of the electronics work anymore. Having a redundant battery is a very good idea.

It's also a redundancy in case of emergency (some cars have buttons you can press to call emergency services).

I seem to remember Elon talking about removing it (of course), but they haven't yet, and I doubt they ever will.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#398

Post by parkingrift »

I’m shocked at the number of people paying EV prices. The Model Y is just about the only EV SUV that you can go out and buy right now, and it starts at $68k.

The math does not support this price premium. You will not save money.

This is before considering that it will cost several thousand to have a charger installed, and to say nothing of the other drawbacks of EV ownership.

My prediction is that EV penetration will plateau pretty quickly. There are no short term plans to turn NYC into an EV friendly city.

Re: EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted

#400

Post by audunw »

blahedo wrote: post #272
therealrootuser wrote: post #187

As someone that is currently in the market for a new car, I would love to get an EV, but I also don't have a good way to charge. Seems like most EV owners just charge at their house, but what about people that don't have access to a good power tap? (apartment dwellers, renters, etc.) Sometimes it feels like there is a group of EV elites out there that are predicting the complete demise of ICEs while conveniently down…

Thanks for raising this issue—as you point out, it's often ignored—but I'd posit it's even worse than you (and others on this thread) indicate. When the issue is framed at all, it's usually boiled down to "landlords won't want to install chargers in the apartment garages" with the possible counterpoint of "demand will force them to" or there will be subsidies or etc etc. But there are vast, vast numbers of people who…

I feel like most of these issues are solved in Norway now. There's plenty of people with just street side parking in Oslo. The municipality set up public charging poles on a lot of them. They were free to begin with but now you have to pay. There's always a shortage since scaling up fast enough is hard during this transition, but in the long term I don't think it'll be a problem.

At the same time, there fast chargers eeeeeverywhere now. Supermarket, gyms, shopping mall, hardware store, etc. I would be fine just charging whenever I shop for food. Most of them were built in like the last 5-7 years.

There's legislation that encourages or forces apartment buildings with garages to install charging points.

There's really no significant technical barrier that hasn't been already solved in Norway. So it's down to cost and political will. I'm optimistic that even in the US this will solve itself in the coming years.

Post reply on HN