Maybe in the UK, but not where I am. It was -26 this morning. Batteries don't handle such temperatures well. And the nearest civilian airport is 400km away. I haven't seen a single all-electric car in my town since I moved here over a year ago.
Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
51–60 of 667 posts
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#52The 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…
Own a TM3, my issue isn't traveling from city to city but its instead trips where the round trip is over two hundred but I am not traveling by any major route. There are lot of what I call "country drives" where the quick route may not involve highways and with an ICE car those country bumpkin gas stations are all you see.
So until charging becomes as ubiquitous to where the country store has "two pumps" or such people are going to find situations where it does not work or only works on a good day.
hence the reason I am an advocate of range, range, and more range. Range that lets you make big round trips without charging are the goal. I know many say "they don't need range" or whatnot and can use a short range city car, well that same rule applies to ICE but you will see the market for those small lower end lower range ICE cars was never great so why would an EV market of the same be different?
Soon even low 200 mile range BEVs will be looked at similar to how many look at the sub 150 crowd today; Mini should have been ashamed to release their car; and 250-350 will be the norm (numbers in miles, so KM is 400 to 560)
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#53The 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 high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city) That's not so far off. Even large cities in North America have no more than a few dozen gas stations (and the UK likely fewer still due to things like London's congestion pricing reducing vehicle count). Once-a-week-or-so fueling doesn't really require a huge amount of infrastructure. That's one of the reasons we're all addicted…
I've been mapping Michigan gas stations on OpenStreetMap so I have some data ready at hand here. Wayne County, which is essentially all part of the Detroit metro area, has more than 800 retail fuel establishments licensed by the state of Michigan.
(I don't think my point particularly rests on how the Detroit metro is defined; Detroit itself has 349 gas stations)
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#54I'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 not the same because the torque converters mute this responsiveness.
I've never driven a Tesla or anything, but I expect that they aren't so hyper-responsive under normal driving conditions because it would be pretty fatiguing to drive. Adding that back I think is must have for me to go full EV and not keep around a Miata or WRX for fun driving.
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#55I don't understand how this can happen. An equilibrium seems more likely to me. If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This will make combustion vehicles more attractive. Also, government depends on all the taxes they put on combustion vehicles. As those revenues decline they may choose to get that money from electric vehicle drivers under the guise of 'congestion' taxes or such.
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Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#56Will be watching for the success of Rivian and Cybertruck to see if the rural market can accept electric.. but can't think of any good reason why not, other than pride and prejudice. (FD, I grew up in the country).
Range anxiety?
Few people regularly drive more than 300 miles in a day. Most people drive less than 50 miles a day.
The fact that you start every trip will a full charge means you only worry about range on the longest trips.
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Governments certainly have the power to screw things up, but also to accelerate things. If electrics take over so much of the market that gasoline gets super cheap, there won't be that much political resistance to a carbon price on gasoline, since most people are driving electrics anyway. Besides that, it's not all about fuel costs. Electric vehicles are fun, and generally low-maintenance.
>there won't be that much political resistance to a carbon price on gasoline, since most people are driving electrics anyway. So long as screwing people too poor to justify a new or new-ish car is politically unacceptable there will be some resistance. Cars from the early '00s are still on the road. It's gonna take another ~20yr for the fleet to turn over organically.
> So long as screwing people too poor to justify a new or new-ish car is politically unacceptable there will be some resistance.
The obvious solution to this is to use the money from the carbon tax to fund a dividend that goes to everybody. Then the net result is progressive because everybody receives the same amount back but people with less money tend to buy higher fuel economy vehicles or take mass transit.
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#58I can't wait for my ICE vehicle to be good for recycling only. One day, until then I barely drive anyways, so it'll probably last me another 15 years.
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#59The 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 high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city) That's not so far off. Even large cities in North America have no more than a few dozen gas stations (and the UK likely fewer still due to things like London's congestion pricing reducing vehicle count). Once-a-week-or-so fueling doesn't really require a huge amount of infrastructure. That's one of the reasons we're all addicted…
The real issue is charge times.
Gas fillups take a few minutes at most - meaning no long lines.
Once charges are close to that speed I think EVs will really take off.
Re: Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption
#60Earlier 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 never said it wasn't a concern, I said it wasn't the biggest concern.
If all the gas stations around your house disappeared, would your first concern be how you are going to get to Indianapolis? No. It's going to be how are you going to get work/school/etc everyday (assuming you don't work in Indianapolis).
EVs have an issue where most drivers have to own their own gas-station equivalent. And people without the space to put a personal "gas station" can't really own one. At that point, they don't give a damn whether they can drive to Indianapolis.
Solving the day-to-day charging problem for people without the space for personal charges will, as a side-effect, also solve the issue for driving long distances. Because the issue with going long distances in an EV comes down to availability of charging.