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What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

nytimes.com

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Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#441

Post by erikpukinskis »

ghaff wrote: post #391
erikpukinskis wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People scraping together a few thousand dollars to buy a beater ICE so they can get to work are not doing TCO analyses Is that something you’ve studied, or are you just guessing? You don’t think there are people with low incomes who budget aggressively?

The reasons why it can be expensive to be poor have been studied and written about rather extensively. e.g. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lauren-greutman/why-being-poo... I do think many people with lower incomes budget aggressively. However, they may simply not be in a situation that they can optimize for a longer time horizon.

Ok, maybe don’t say they don’t budget then if it’s not true.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#442

Post by evgen »

twothamendment wrote: post #440
evgen wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And solar panels can both power your home and recharge your car. Indefinitely. What happens when you run out of extra fuel?

The same thing that happens when there isn't sun - yes I have enough winter, clouds and snow that solar isn't "worth it". I have a panel to see what I can get out of it, but I'd hate to rely on it. A Tesla battery is more likely to find its way into my home than my vehicles. My real energy storage is wood because I can't run out of it. Batteries don't grow on trees, but trees do?

Trees may warm your home, but provide neither electrical power for the rest of your home nor provide any fuel for your vehicle. Solar may not be 'worth it' in terms of an investment, but there are few places on the planet where they would not be able to provide some power or slowly recharge a vehicle.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#443

Post by ZeroGravitas »

mschuster91 wrote: post #213

Biggest 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 UK grid company (who also run some of the US grid) put out a report on the impact which I'll summarise as "no big deal". They mapped out a few different scenarios, the most extreme of which got taken, then mangled and exagerrated and turned into scary headlines about EVs destroying the grid.

They then had to issue a second report pointing out that their first report said it wasn't going to be a big deal.

http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.p...

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#444

Post by ZeroGravitas »

greglindahl wrote: post #428
polynomial wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this work in practice, with a high number of cars with such apps? Say everyone arrives home from commute at roughly the same time, how is the delay factor decided/distributed?

In the most interesting fantasy, the car has an idea of how much it actually needs to charge -- Bolts and Teslas often don't use but a small fraction of their battery on a typical day -- and the grid has an idea of how much wind energy it's going to get in the middle of the night. And you'd combine the two to make sure all of the wind energy gets put into a car battery, or car batteries don't end up full because the…

This isn't a fantasy, there's several products that do this and they've been on the market for a few years.

Microsoft provide the api for knowing in advance when energy will be the greenest: https://api.watttime.org/faq/

Some utilities will give you rebates if you use a smart charger to charge at these times (since green energy is both cheaper and time sensitive).

https://emotorwerks.com/products/juicenet-software/juicenet-...

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#445

Post by imtringued »

walshemj wrote: post #271
flexie wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need improvements at a rate that is anywhere near Moore's law. Moore's law is about doubling transistor density every two years. But for EVs to reach that kind of ranges (7-800 km for mid range price) we just need to add 50-60 percent or so one time, and I'm talking about that happening in 4-5 years. For the cheap EVs that currently have a range of around 3-400 km we need to double one time. I suggest we wil…

your going to need Nobel prize level breakthroughs to make ev's ubiquitous and that will take say 20 years from discovery to industrial production

Battery technology is already improving by roughly 8% a year.

There is no need for a nobel prize level breakthrough.

These modern technologies like photovoltaic and eletric vechiles are already viable today. They are within the same order of magnitude as the technology they are replacing and the gap is decreasing with every year.

There is a lot of useless crap out there that doesn't at all work like gravity batteries. EVs and PV are not part of that category.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#446

Post by apatheticonion »

For me it's accessibility, style and performance. In my mind, I wouldn't purchase a car above 4k (NZD) unless it's an electric car.

However, there are fewer electric cars where I live (New Zealand) than I have fingers, and the ones that are available cost over 100k or are very ugly (sorry leaf owners but it's not a cool looking car)

I saw the e-golf, felt hope but after learning of it's lethargic 0-100 (0-60) and the fact that it's not even available here, I quickly lost hope.

I don't care if I get a 100km (60 miles) range, I never travel further than that - I firstly want to actually be able to buy one, would appreciate a little thrill, and style that doesn't make me feel like I am making a statement.

Chances are that won't happen, so I'm probably just going to build one.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#447

Post by kasey_junk »

skookumchuck wrote: post #91
kasey_junk wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But performance cars are already using electronic sound generation in gas cars. Just do that for electrics too.

> But performance cars are already using electronic sound generation in gas cars. Not one I'd buy :-)

I’d take an M5...

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#448

Post by tomxor »

mikestew wrote: post #338
tomxor wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capable of dealing with ICE will become more scarce and expensive, etc It feels like you are ma…

and those huge fuel tanks sunk into the ground aren't going anywhere You think I’m letting that pass without pointing out that the fuel tanks are a sunk cost? Gas stations are really convenience stores, they don’t make money on fuel. The only difference will be that we pull up in an EV to get our Big Gulp. Gas or no, that real estate will still be used to sell you chips and lottery tickets. In the Seattle area, I kno…

> You think I’m letting that pass without pointing out that the fuel tanks are a sunk cost?

That is true, yet it makes no difference to my point.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#449

Post by bluGill »

vvanders wrote: post #332
civilitty wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's all so simple until you realize that means every house running a clothes dryer all at the same time between 5pm and whatever time in the evening everyone is done charging. Los Angeles and parts of the Bay Area have had nearly annual brownouts for the last 20 years just from air conditioners during heat waves. How in the world do you expect that aging power grid (in the fifth/sixth largest economy no less...…

I think 4 hours is on the long end, at least from my usage. For our car 20 miles of highway travel(most taxing for EV) is about 1 hour of charging. With off-peak rates and people having different schedules(I'm home at 4pm for instance) I don't see why everyone would be hammering the grid at 5pm.

Most people get off work between 4 and 6pm. (this is not 50% of the population, but it is still a large number). They all go home and plug their car in then take a shower. Many days the peak electric use for the day is at 6pm when all those people start cooking dinner (electric stove) or jump in the shower (electric water heater). When a significant number of people start plugging their car in when they get home the peak will go up much more.

Of course as has been pointed out repeatedly a smart charger can manage exactly when the battery starts to charge. However it isn't quite that simple: many of those people will go out again for their bowling league or whatever, and need enough charge in their car.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#450

Post by greedo »

ecpottinger wrote: post #411
greedo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking that the ICE is a competitive advantage/disadvantage is what has led to Tesla struggling with building the Model 3. The competitive advantage held by the existing automakers is based around building cars cheaply; in quantity; and in quality. They also have established brands that inspire tremendous loyalty, and they have dealerships that offload a lot of the support issues. When electric drivetrains become t…

Right, by that logic Tesla should not have any sales.

Compared to the incumbents, Tesla doesn't.
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