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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

#491

Post by jlj »

99_00 wrote: post #131
jlj wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas taxes set a floor for how low prices can go. They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. In Washington, US, they increased the registration fee for electrics to make up for the shortfall in gas taxes that pay for road wear, congestion, etc. So that's already happening.

>They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. Why?

Increased gas taxes would drive behavior change towards electrics. Similar to tobacco and alcohol taxes to discourage their use.

I don't see diesel going away so soon though because of industrial, agriculture, and military use. It will probably be taxed differently according to it's use. In fact it already is taxed differently in the US for home heating, vehicle, and aviation use.

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

#492

Post by jlj »

djrogers wrote: post #33
jlj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US there was a "cash for clunkers" program about 10-15 years ago that tried to clear out ineficient older model cars. It was fairly successful and stimulated purchases of newer cars. The downside was that some perfectly fine cars were scrapped. I suspect that gas stations will start swapping pumps for chargers, and that will motivate people to switch too. By the time this all happens though we will have more c…

> I suspect that gas stations will start swapping pumps for chargers, and that will motivate people to switch too. This may happen some places, but I expect the charging infrastructure to ultimately look very different from the refueling one we have today. Today's fueling infrastructure is the way it is largely due to the difficulties of storing and pumping fuel safely (physically and environmentally speaking). There…

Agree, but my point is that when the gas pumps are gone or hard to find it will make owning an ICE vehicle more inconvenient and encourage use of electrics.

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

#493

Post by theshrike79 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #71
lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

Battery pack depreciation is the one thing that worries me the most. But I wonder if it would be possible and cost effective to test cells and combine the cells that are still good into a newer battery pack. Maybe by the manufacturer. Or to just rate an existing one and give it a score so the consumer can have a clue.

The batteries themselves already have sensors you can query for individual battery pack (a bunch of cells) voltages. Replacing a set of cells inside a battery isn't a completely trivial operation, but still doable, people are already doing this for Priuses and Nissan Leafs - the only two cars old enough to have batteries go bad outside of warranty.

The 3rd party battery industry will catch up when cars get old enough to have battery issues.

On the other hand, according to recent studies, EV batteries don't really degrade that much over time. Leaf is the exception, because the battery temperature management was utter shit.

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

#494

Post by theshrike79 »

analyte123 wrote: post #31
lastofthemojito wrote: post #12

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…

Yeah, you basically need to own a home to have an electric car right now. Many blue-collar workers who have to drive around a lot in the middle of nowhere are also excluded at least for the next few years.

If your job requires you to drive hundreds of km in the outback, then EVs definitely aren't for you and won't be in a long time.

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

#495

Post by gambiting »

worik wrote: post #352
gambiting wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've driven through Germany last summer, tried 3 different charging stations, none of them worked. Or rather, they did, but I couldn't set up the app for them, one because it didn't have an English option, one because it wouldn't accept my non-German card and another because it was giving me an extremely helpful "unspecified" error. But even here in UK it's a mess. There is a charging station near my home that seems…

"But even here in UK it's a mess." I cannot parse that.

Sorry, not a native English speaker, but let me know what I can do to help.

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

#496

Post by dm319 »

mywittyname wrote: post #81
ghaff wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both things are concerns, at least when you get to longer trips on secondary roads in rural areas.

But again, concerns over range are really just a type of concern over public charging capacity. If the people who drive those roads regularly can charge on public chargers, then people driving through on long trips also have the ability to charge there. Thus range isn't a concern.

I think I'm with you on this. Range is largely a solved problem now. Once a car can go 120 miles, that's 2 hours of driving, at which point you need a break anyway. My car is already nearly a 1000kg too heavy because of the battery, and I use only half of it daily for a long commute. Most people would only use a fraction for their commute. Instead of pushing for more miles we now need surplus chargers everywhere. Homes, work, car parks and stations.

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

#497

Post by theshrike79 »

tw04 wrote: post #341
yongjik wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2021 Tesla Model S has a 100kW battery and 402-mi range. I searched for "average driving miles per year" and Google says 13,500 miles - assuming this, we have about 37 miles per day, which would mean our Tesla S only needs to charge 9.2kW every day. If they're sitting on a charger 10 hours per day, they can take a leisurely 920W per vehicle (less than a good hair dryer), not 11.5kW.

I'm not sure I agree with that math for a number of reasons. For starters if you want to go strictly by averages, the average household has two cars, so your 9.2kW goes to 18.4kW out of the gate. Additionally that average includes teenagers which drives the mileage down, but households with teens tend to have more cars, so that means either they come out of the average or the 18.4 jumps to 27.6kW/day. The average hou…

To put it another way: The average person can charge their EV for the same amount of power a top-tier gaming PC draws when playing a game =)

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

#498

Post by theshrike79 »

athms wrote: post #265
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a Tesla battery is 100kWh and it gets like 350 miles - and you can get 6 hours of sun on a 350 watt panel per day on average - that means 2 panels could charge your car about once per month, right?

Do you thinks everybody lives in a single family home with lots of disposable income?

If someone already has a Tesla with a 100kW battery, I don't think the extra $3k for a solar panel will break the bank =)

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

#499

Post by erik_seaberg »

qndreoi wrote: post #381
athms wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Simple: most people charge at night. Except the people that don't have a charging station in their garage or folks that have a power outage. Just this week, we had a heat wave (70-80F) and winds up to 90MPH across California that resulted in power outages throughout the state as well as several fires.

It seems that gas stations would not work during a power outage. Santa Ana winds cause lots of edge case problems.

“What if all the gas pumps go offline because of power or network outages” was a pretty scary failure mode they were thinking about before Y2K.

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

#500

Post by theshrike79 »

twblalock wrote: post #327

It's one thing to install a charger in a two-car garage. Installing charging capacity for 20, or 50, or 100 cars is something else. I'm not sure how most existing apartment buildings could handle all of their tenants charging their cars at night at the same time. I'm not even clear on how much strain that would put on the electrical grid. How much more power would we need to produce to handle the demand if everyone h…

We already do this in Finland.

Pretty much every single private parking spot in an apartment building will have a 8A plug for block heaters and cabin heaters (1,5-2,5kW load). They all trigger around 6 in the morning so the car is nice and warm for the 7:30 commute. Nothing melts, nothing breaks or starts smoking.

And even then people are panicking about EVs charging from 2100-0600 overnight. NOW they think everything will melt, break and be on fire.

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