Now they'll just be held back by lack of a widespread charging infrastructure.
If Norway is any indication, it shouldn't be much of a problem. Once the EV market share hits a certain threshold, build-out of charging infrastructure explodes, as it becomes a good investment.
Grocery stores are starting to have deals with charging station companies, because it gives them a competetive advantage to have a charging station at their store.
Some government incentives can be great to give the infrastructure that initial boost (to help boost initial EV sales) but it seems the market can handle it after that.
There's someone in Halifax researching Sodium Batteries, which would be a fair bit easier to find than lithium, though less effective.
another one is potassium, and giving that the future is metal-air batteries, potassium works great there (its oxide seems to behave better for recharging in that scheme than lithium's) Wrt. possible short-term lithium supply issues, i can see how Musk would just build a new mine operation if necessary, like a Giga-ship to mine it from seawater :)
I wonder what the hurdles are to private nuclear reactor ownership?
And don't forget that there are millions of people who have a car right now, but who wouldn't have a place to charge an electric car. People living in apartments, terraced houses, especially in the UK it's very common to see rows upon rows of houses, none of them with their own driveway.
I know what you're getting at but I don't think the above comparison is entirely fair. Those houses don't have petrol pumps outside them either
Yes, but I go to a petrol station once a month, takes me 10 minutes to fill up and the whole tank lasts me for the whole month. With electric cars there are two ways out of this, either build enough electric charging points that you can charge while you are at work, or make every single car supercharger-compatible. I personally don't think the first option is likely, I don't see why my work(or any other) would have literally every single parking spot wired for charging(there's over 1000 parking spots at our office), and as for the second option, even 30 minute charging is excessive, it's fine o long journeys so you can go an have a coffee and stretch your legs, but if you want to quickly "fill up" after work 30 minutes is not acceptable. That's why I said that for majority of people charging at home is ideal - but a lot of people don't have private place to charge at home.
> How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? One of the beauties of EVs is you don't need charging stations. I leased a Nissan LEAF 2 years ago, and it almost only gets charged at home. You can't really know whether EVs are going to take over or not, it depends on too many factors. If our government gets bamboozled with Hydrogen the way they di…
But what proportion of houses have off road parking in your own garage. Also think what does this do to the Electricity Grid if a non trivial amount of EV's are put on charge every night.
And don't forget that there are millions of people who have a car right now, but who wouldn't have a place to charge an electric car. People living in apartments, terraced houses, especially in the UK it's very common to see rows upon rows of houses, none of them with their own driveway.
I know what you're getting at but I don't think the above comparison is entirely fair. Those houses don't have petrol pumps outside them either
I think it is entirely fair. You can fill gas or diesel up at a station quite quickly. To charge batteries so that you can use the car, you really need a charging station available every night or day.
I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're current…
> Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Why would any consumer have to care at all about this? If it really becomes a problem the price of EVs will go up and then people won't…
> If it really becomes a problem the price of EVs will go up and then people won't buy them.
Taxpayers, for instance, have reason to worry about this, because things are driven ahead by subsidies. We don't necessarily have a market that would work the way you assume because of external pressures.
What about making the battery packs "hot swappable". You pull into the station, the current pack is unloaded and a new one is loaded. I It can also have interesting effects on the battery upgrade you need to do every X amount of years. The packs could be owned by the gas station chain, so you can stop at any of their establishments and get a new one refiled.
These battery pack charging stations could then also be used as power offloading for local power generation.
And don't forget that there are millions of people who have a car right now, but who wouldn't have a place to charge an electric car. People living in apartments, terraced houses, especially in the UK it's very common to see rows upon rows of houses, none of them with their own driveway.
We would probably solve that by putting up more charging points at the roadside (there are quite a few of these around already in the UK), with a card reader for payment or perhaps a payment chip within the car's charging connector.
Where I live (in a dense German city) there wouldn't even be space at the roadside to install charging points; even the street lights are attachted to the houses because there was no space left. I have the same situation at work, so personally have a difficult time imagining to own an electric car anytime soon.
ahhh gotcha, so just the internal energy source and the part that locomotes it. Nothing too important then, eh? edit: yes, it was a joke. However, not for nothing, this is still a bizarre comment indicating that only the highy technical nuances in the car are nuances and that it should be trivial to swap them out. The battery is tied to the drive train each having a highly specialized and proprietary function. The po…
This is wrong. The battery is not tied to the drive train. Given the same electrical interface, dimensions and a compatible BMS, swapping out for a lighter, cheaper battery IS trivial. Even cell level replacement is possible -- it's actually happening commercially where I live.
> Given the same electrical interface, dimensions and a compatible BMS, swapping out for a lighter, cheaper battery IS trivial.
I don't know about the US, but over here in some European countries, there's this thing about vehicle type approval. Changing things like the drive train, brakes, engine or a different type of fuel tank might not be possible because then the vehicle's not conforming to regulation.
I could imagine this could be a problem with a changed battery type as well, even if dimensions etc are the same.
What about making the battery packs "hot swappable". You pull into the station, the current pack is unloaded and a new one is loaded. I It can also have interesting effects on the battery upgrade you need to do every X amount of years. The packs could be owned by the gas station chain, so you can stop at any of their establishments and get a new one refiled. These battery pack charging stations could then also be use…
Tesla designed that, built one, then dropped it last year as nobody was using it. It could be more useful in vehicles which don't charge as fast, perhaps?