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Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

theguardian.com

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

#421

Post by Skinney »

athms wrote: post #230
zizee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points. Also people seem to be forgetting a large percentage of people will be charging at home overnight, and will largely never need to charge their cars at places other than home.

Maybe for people that live in the suburbs and have disposable income to put in a charging station.

I live in downtown Oslo (capitol of Norway). I park my car on the street, but we have a decent amount of type-2 chargers around so its hardly any trouble.

We’ve charged on a fast-charger three times the past three months, all of those times were on longer trips we usually don’t do.

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

#422

Post by ascorbic »

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 used to just charge at work. Workplaces seem more likely to be able to persuade to install charging points.

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

#423

Post by cptskippy »

gnicholas wrote: post #377
cptskippy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you could plug in where ever you park your car? You don't need to stop somewhere for 40 minutes if you're able to charge every where you go.

True, but I’m not going to want to spend the overhead time to figure out if my car is compatible with some random charger, figure out if the price is favorable (some are by the minute, others by the kilowatt hour), and then plug and unplug just to get the range equivalent of 2 gallons of gas while I’m at a store.

Tesla is the only one who doesn't support J1772. The compatibility problem has mostly solved itself with the industry adopting CCS, which is backwards compatible with J1772. Teslas sold in North America are the only new EVs without CCS.

The reason charger pricing is inconsistent is because there isn't regulation requiring a standard the way fluid pricing is regulated.

https://www.nist.gov/document/00-20-h130-iv-c-final-80pdf

Both of those issues are easily solved by legislation.

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

#424

Post by radus »

seanalltogether wrote: post #41
dm319 wrote: post #3

The UK plan for no ICE vehicles to be sold by 2030 is fairly ambitious. I'm seeing more and more electric vehicles on the roads, but I think some regular customers will be disappointed by how poor the infrastructure is. Not only that electric chargers aren't as prevalent as they need to be, but the number of high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city), but an even bigger problem is the h…

The number of people in the UK and Ireland that have to park overnight on the street is way too high to start banning ICE vehicles within the next decade. Electric infrastructure isn't enough, they will have to completely revamp entire neighborhoods to provide space for permanent and predictable overnight parking for residents.

What if your car drives itself to a charger and then back to a spot nearby overnight?

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

#425

Post by ascorbic »

athms wrote: post #230
zizee wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points. Also people seem to be forgetting a large percentage of people will be charging at home overnight, and will largely never need to charge their cars at places other than home.

Maybe for people that live in the suburbs and have disposable income to put in a charging station.

I just charge my car from the same 240V outdoor socket I use for the lawnmower. Sure that's no good for somebody who can't park in front of their house, but it's false to say you need a dedicated EV charger.

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

#426

Post by ascorbic »

cptskippy wrote: post #343
core-questions wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Usually the system just switches to batteries during peak. You'd think you'd want to be using them more often - is it just that there's no grid demand for the power? My hope is that the addition of a huge number of batteries to the grid, in the form of all these EVs, actually adds to its capacity, since most people won't be running them down to 0 and the software to optimize when to charge vs. when to power the gri…

I don't know that any EV is capable of providing power from its charge port, but that would be helpful for stranded vehicles. Even if my EV could push power to the grid, I'm not sure I would want it too. It would require me to keep my EV plugged in and topped off which isn't good for the batteries. Currently both my EVs are sitting at around 50% unplugged.

The Nissan Leaf can https://www.nissan.co.uk/range/electric-cars/v2g.html

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

#427

Post by whatever1 »

EVs currently have high enough utility in the wealthy suburbia where you own your garage and have the capability to charge overnight.

If you are a euro-peasant living in a third floor apartment, street parking and commuting to work, then an EV has very little utility to offer. You cannot expect that people will go on a regular basis to charge stations and spend an hour to charge their car. You cannot also have a reasonable expectation that employers will install a charger per employee, or that employees will gamble every day to see if there is a charger open at work.

An EV cannot be your single car given the 2 main constraints: 1. Slow charging (>>5') 2. Lack of charging networks

#2 can be fixed with investments. #1 needs a technological advance that is not clear that will be commercially available soon.

I did not mention cost at all in the above comment, which is maybe the biggest factor currently limiting adoption, but I assume that eventually economies of scale will aleviate this.

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

#428

Post by ascorbic »

gnicholas wrote: post #377
cptskippy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you could plug in where ever you park your car? You don't need to stop somewhere for 40 minutes if you're able to charge every where you go.

True, but I’m not going to want to spend the overhead time to figure out if my car is compatible with some random charger, figure out if the price is favorable (some are by the minute, others by the kilowatt hour), and then plug and unplug just to get the range equivalent of 2 gallons of gas while I’m at a store.

All slow charging points use the same connectors, which are compatible with all EVs. It's the rapid chargers where there are different standards, but most seem to be converging on CCS, and all chargers support that (and all except Tesla superchargers also support ChaDeMo, the other standard).

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

#429

Post by ascorbic »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #164
natch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they claimed that everyone has access at home. They said “the use case includes” which doesn’t exclude other possibilities. There are many great options for charging if you choose your car wisely. Our apartment building with six parking spaces has three Teslas and no charging on site. We do just fine. Charging takes about 15 seconds of my day on work days. And on the occasion when I need more, it’s quic…

This is what always happens when I bring up product problems about EVs. Everyone on HN who owns a luxury car Tesla in SV or some major metro with their six figure plus salary gets all bent out of shape, and ask "omg why can't everyone do this!" It's tone deaf and out of touch. EVs simply are not there yet. They're ludicrously expensive, inconvenient to refuel, don't offer utility like ICE trucks/SUVs, can't be charge…

Yes, they can't compete on price with a cheap used car (though look at models like the Renault Zoe), but the inconvenience of refuelling is really overblown (almost always by people who don't drive one). If you don't live in a city you can probably charge at home. If not, maybe at work, almost certainly when shopping. There are so many places to charge.

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

#430

Post by ddulaney »

bagacrap wrote: post #402
ddulaney wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the US, that statement was much more true 20 years ago than it is today [0]. Today, swapping “natural gas” out for coal is more accurate. There are three big points to consider: - Overall, the (US) electricity mix is lower-emitting than gasoline. - The US electricity mix is trending greener. (Gasoline cars are also getting more efficient, but many of those changes also apply to electric cars) - The electr…

4. whatever particulate matter is produced is emitted much farther from my lungs

Yep! Moving air pollution sources somewhere else is always good (though coal is so much worse than gasoline that any increase in coal burning might be a net negative). This is one reason to be super excited about coal plant shutdowns: often coal plants (even “clean coal”) represent the largest point sources of PM2.5 in a whole region.

It’s worth remembering that this does have the effect of concentrating pollution. If a coal plant opens near you, that might be worse on your health than even a broad change to EVs. Happily, nobody is really building much coal anymore, and natgas/renewables are much better for air quality than either coal plants or gasoline engines.

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