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Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

theguardian.com

441–450 of 667 posts

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

#441

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 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.

> providing for those people

Which doesn't require that every single unit has parking.

> you ensure the parking problem becomes someone else's problem

It just becomes an attribute on the listing. This house has 3 bedrooms and parking. This house has 2 bedrooms and no parking.

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

#442

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 reas…

Agree with your points. I believe this may be a solution to #1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric...

I wonder what’s the dynamic with the chargers in Norway, as I assume if the demand is there the charging stations will pop up.

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

#443
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So no one has said this yet, but a lot of people charge their cars at work. I don't know if you're in the US but in my experience this seems like a east coast phenomenon. Lots of electric chargers in bay area, seattle and generally urban areas on the west coast.

"Lots" is still relative though. A large employer near me has something like 50 chargers available in their lot. Of course, on a normal workday, 8,000 cars are being parked there. If 4,000 of those employees start driving electrics, I'm not sure it would be possible to accommodate them.

I don't see why it would be a big deal. First, my employer doesn't buy me gas so I don't see why they'd charge my EV. Expecting this to be the norm may have unintended side effects. Second, power outlets in parking lots are reasonably common in colder cities so that people can plug in their bloc heaters. You don't need a fancy fast charger if you're going to be at work all day.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a PHEV a year ago and the fuel savings are enormous. I've been filling it up once every 3 months so far, most of my journeys are done in fully electric mode, and when they are not I'm averaging 100-150mpg. Charging at home is pretty easy, but I do have my own driveway which I realize a lot of people don't. But yes, UK company tax structure around them is absolutely broken. You can get one, get a massive tax…

Your fraud scenario is just straight up not going to happen. It's significantly cheaper to run on electricity instead of fuel so it's in the drivers best interest to charge as often as possible.

Except that it does happen a lot of time. According to Volvo's own data 60% of PHEV buyers never plug them in. I have a guy on my street who has a Cayenne E-Hybrid and I've never ever seen him charge that car. Yeah it's dumb, but it lets you buy a very expensive car and deduct almost all tax if it's a company purchase.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long haul trips were never the biggest concern for EV adoption, that's something that can largely be worked around through planning. The biggest concern has always been charging infrastructure. EVs are great for people with garages, but not so much for the people in cities with no dedicated parking spot. Banning ICEs is probably the best mechanism to get society to solve this problem. Otherwise, most city-dwellers wi…

I don't know why you assert this. It is the concern for literally every person I know who would otherwise have bought an EV, including myself. People like the freedom to take longer road trips without meticulous planning, and without sticking to certain interstate routes which skip the interesting parts of the country.

I get why you like the freedom to take longer road trips without meticulous planning, however when I look at how I use my EV (Renault Zoe), it's not that bad. Basically for normal daily usage, you don't really care because the range (180-240 km) is big enough to not worry.

We take longer trips maybe 3-4 times per year. And then you do need to plan. In that case, not a big deal to me.

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

#446

I'm really curious to see how the used electric car market shapes up. New cars (electric or not) are pretty expensive. The average price of a new car in the US just topped $40k, which is out of reach of many car buyers. The people who buy new obviously tend to be well-off, and are often older. Then at some point down the road, those cars end up in the hands of (on average) younger, less-wealthy folks. But younger fol…

I'm a MT diehard (owned 9 cars in my life, 9 of which were MTs), and I'm trying to think what my must have feature is for an EV. Probably some sort of aggressive or responsive driving mode. I mean, the reason I go with MTs is because I love how responsive it is. I still giggle when I'm driving around at 4000 RPMs and punch the throttle to get that instant thrust. Even with manual shifting modes on automatics, it's no…

For anyone else wondering: MT is Manual Transmission

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think gas stations have an internet connection?

I don’t think they require one to function. Gas stations, including ones where you pay at the pump, functioned fine without Internet before the Internet.

I don't recall any pay at the pump gas stations pre internet.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a PHEV a year ago and the fuel savings are enormous. I've been filling it up once every 3 months so far, most of my journeys are done in fully electric mode, and when they are not I'm averaging 100-150mpg. Charging at home is pretty easy, but I do have my own driveway which I realize a lot of people don't. But yes, UK company tax structure around them is absolutely broken. You can get one, get a massive tax…

This just confirms what I said above, if you drive them all electric it's great, they're an EV with a small battery. But if you can't and just charge occasionally the fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are nowhere close to the official numbers, as evidenced by the studies I linked above. I see this struck a nerve with some people but the reality is that those are only best case and the people who meet them are the lo…

>>This just confirms what I said above

Well that was the point ;-)

>>And that's the crux of the matter, most people buy hybrids because they can't charge at home.

Well, that bit I don't really believe. I'd love to see some data about it. If you're buying a plug in hybrid and don't have the plug-in part.....then what are you even doing. Like I said I understand that in UK the tax structure is beneficial regardless of whether you charge it or not. But yeah, if people buy PHEVs and then don't charge them then it's pointless. I just don't think that people buy them because they don't have somewhere to charge. I got a PHEV not full electric car because there wasn't a fully electric car in my price range of the size that I wanted, not because of the lack of charging space .

>>they drove ~2000Km in a brand new PHEV with ~11 liters + 9KWh per 100Km. The manufacturer suggests ~2 liters per 100Km

I drive a Volvo XC60 T8 and that's completely not what my stats are. My long term average over a year is 3L/100km. It really depends what kind of usage you want out of it - short journeys are done without burning any petrol whatsoever. But if you travel long distance frequently then it's simply the wrong drivetrain for you. I mean it's not a novel concept either - for decades we've been telling people that if you only drive in the city don't buy yourself a diesel, but if you drive long distance often don't buy a petrol. PHEVs are in a different category where they really really really work well if you're just commuting within the EV range but can also go further if you need to. The main problem of high usage when out of the battery range usually comes from the fact that most PHEVs use petrol motors and you're not going to see any good numbers from very heavy SUVs with a small-ish petrol engine. Mercedes has it right with the 300de drivetrain where you get about 50 miles of EV range and then a diesel engine after. Like, that just works well on both short and long journeys, but that's not what most PHEVs are like.

>> It doesn't help that where they live in Germany charging the battery at a public charger even when assuming the full ~40Km range is 30% more expensive per Km than filling the tank but this is a local issue that's not generally applicable

Well, exactly, charging at public stations can be incredibly expensive, in some cases it's literally cheaper to drive a good diesel car than an electric one if you're charging at public stations. Here in UK for instance Ionity charges £0.69 per kWh, while at home at night I pay £0.05 per kWh. The difference is insane.

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

#449
post #281
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with card payments in germany for non-germans?

Credit cards are not widely accepted in Germany. Germans generally use cash or EC/Maesto debit cards, and you can't get an EC card if you're not an EU resident with an EU bank account (which can be hard for Americans, and, to a lesser extent, any foreigner, I'm sure). I used to have a Maestro-branded debit card (in the US) when I was younger. I have no idea if it's the same system and/or if they're compatible. I chec…

The problem I had specifically was that the app expected a German billing address to add a card, which obviously I couldn't provide.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was having this conversation with a neighbour the other day. I have a 7kw charger at my house, but the loop for our street is 21kw, which is typical here. It’s going to be a big problem to solve when it comes to it. I wouldn’t mind if I had to charge at 3.3kw, but if every car is an EV the current grid just isn’t going to be able to carry enough juice.

>I wouldn’t mind if I had to charge at 3.3kw, but if every car is an EV the current grid just isn’t going to be able to carry enough juice. What about the theory some folks have that, once there's a ton of EVs on the grid, their batteries will help smooth out peak demands? Also, how did you find out the capacity of your street?

The service engineer that installed my wall charger explained that it’s the upper cap on what they allocate in our area.
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