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As long as they remain expensive and unpopular, electrical service simply won't be an issue. If you're buying a $150K sports car, dropping around $3K to upgrad

by VLM 11y ago

As long as they remain expensive and unpopular, electrical service simply won't be an issue. If you're buying a $150K sports car, dropping around $3K to upgrade to 400 amp service is pocket change. People who live in extreme rural areas or service needs to trench thru solid rock ($30/ft!) or live in extreme tax areas could pay a small multiple of that, but its such a small percentage it'll round down to nothing. Two problem areas are what if entire subdivisions go electric, distribution lines are going to need upgrading, and that will not be cheap. For that matter it trickles up all the way to the plant, shutting down gas refineries is going to mean installing lots of coal burning electrical plants... The other problem area is if electric cars drop to reasonable prices, the used market will suffer horribly in the early years if a couple years old electric sells used for $7K but it'll cost $3K to charge it. This will create a class distinction where rich people charge their cars in 15 minutes and poor people leave their cars plugged into standard extension cords overnight. Something to think about with swapping is its so dangerous WRT connector damage and immense weight that even trained industrial users generally don't do it on pallet jacks up to medium size forklifts. It seems to "work" as a technology up to push lawnmower size, no bigger. Also the cost of swapping is staggering, now the cars engineering is compromised by having removable batteries ($$$$) and obviously people need to own multiple batteries ($$$$$). It rapidly becomes a financial win to simply not drive more than 200 miles per day or to become a multi-car household.

arethuza 11y ago
The "where do you charge" issue is pretty significant if you live in a flat in a city center - only practical way I could use a full electric car at the moment would be to buy a garage, which would be at least $50K and would be at least 5 minutes from where I live. Street level charging may come in - but I don't see that happening for at least 5 years where I live so the Porsche timescales don't look that silly to me - and going by my neighbours high-end cars I suspect they will have the same problem (NB I drive a cheap-n-cheerful Skoda).
Gravityloss 11y ago
You wouldn't have a 800 volt charger at home, obviously. They can just site the stations so they attach to a kilovolt level transmission lines or transformer stations.
CamperBob2 11y ago
Good points for the most part, but with regard to swapping, no one needs to own any batteries at all. You pull into an existing gas station and drive away 5 minutes later -- at most -- with a battery that was charged overnight at a centralized plant with optimum efficiency, minimal thermal losses, and no last-mile infrastructure problems. Yes, this will be expensive, but not doing it this way will be even more expensive in the long run. It will require intelligent, government-enforced standardization of modular battery form factors, which is why it will probably never happen. We just have to have our VHS-versus-Beta and our BluRay-versus-HD DVD wars, even when there is demonstrably zero consumer benefit.
- VLM 11y ago
  Its interesting to abstract out the contentious electric car and just try to find consumer or even professional analogies, looking at just physical bulk and practical and safety issues. Swapping giant dangerous things in and out of very expensive life critical safety issues by and for semi-trained to completely untrained consumers at random times and places. There is nothing like it in all of commerce that I'm aware of. The closest analogy I can think of is renting a u-haul trailer for a car, and that is totally survivable both for an individual customer and as a sustainable business model, but not fast, convenient, attractive, cheap, appealing. And a uhaul trailer is enormously simpler than hundred of kilowatt level electrical wiring and lithium batteries that explode when mistreated and weigh enough to kill someone if dropped, so its far too simple an analogy. There being nothing like it in current commerce means its probably doomed because you'd have to roll out something totally new in the world of logistics at the same time as rolling out something new in the world of automobiles. And you can't "cheat" and roll out electric cars first because people will get used to and not mind home charging making it a very hard sell to switch to inferior cars and batteries that can very expensively and difficultly be swapped. The only real hope I can think of for that business model is massive advancement in control semiconductors such that you can make a "raid array of batteries" so a lunch box battery can haul your car to the nearest charger when necessary, essentially the electric car equivalent of a gas can.

by VLM 11y ago

arethuza 11y ago

The "where do you charge" issue is pretty significant if you live in a flat in a city center - only practical way I could use a full electric car at the moment would be to buy a garage, which would be at least $50K and would be at least 5 minutes from where I live. Street level charging may come in - but I don't see that happening for at least 5 years where I live so the Porsche timescales don't look that silly to me - and going by my neighbours high-end cars I suspect they will have the same problem (NB I drive a cheap-n-cheerful Skoda).

Gravityloss 11y ago

You wouldn't have a 800 volt charger at home, obviously. They can just site the stations so they attach to a kilovolt level transmission lines or transformer stations.

CamperBob2 11y ago

Good points for the most part, but with regard to swapping, no one needs to own any batteries at all. You pull into an existing gas station and drive away 5 minutes later -- at most -- with a battery that was charged overnight at a centralized plant with optimum efficiency, minimal thermal losses, and no last-mile infrastructure problems. Yes, this will be expensive, but not doing it this way will be even more expensive in the long run. It will require intelligent, government-enforced standardization of modular battery form factors, which is why it will probably never happen. We just have to have our VHS-versus-Beta and our BluRay-versus-HD DVD wars, even when there is demonstrably zero consumer benefit.

VLM 11y ago
Its interesting to abstract out the contentious electric car and just try to find consumer or even professional analogies, looking at just physical bulk and practical and safety issues. Swapping giant dangerous things in and out of very expensive life critical safety issues by and for semi-trained to completely untrained consumers at random times and places. There is nothing like it in all of commerce that I'm aware of. The closest analogy I can think of is renting a u-haul trailer for a car, and that is totally survivable both for an individual customer and as a sustainable business model, but not fast, convenient, attractive, cheap, appealing. And a uhaul trailer is enormously simpler than hundred of kilowatt level electrical wiring and lithium batteries that explode when mistreated and weigh enough to kill someone if dropped, so its far too simple an analogy. There being nothing like it in current commerce means its probably doomed because you'd have to roll out something totally new in the world of logistics at the same time as rolling out something new in the world of automobiles. And you can't "cheat" and roll out electric cars first because people will get used to and not mind home charging making it a very hard sell to switch to inferior cars and batteries that can very expensively and difficultly be swapped. The only real hope I can think of for that business model is massive advancement in control semiconductors such that you can make a "raid array of batteries" so a lunch box battery can haul your car to the nearest charger when necessary, essentially the electric car equivalent of a gas can.