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The Problem with Electric Vehicles

• fweespee_ch 11y ago
  I think the OP is overselling the following problems and/or failing to understand the problem EVs are relevant to: 1) Grid strain - By the time EV cars are popular enough for this to be an issue, installed home solar capacity is likely to be large enough that it is likely to look more like this: 2 kW worth of solar panels 1 Battery Pack (possibly interchangeable with the car) Battery pack is drained when you get home and charge the car. This will cost you ~$15,000 which is cheaper than the car and will last ~20 years (minus the battery pack which you'll need to replace every 5-10 years). This might go as low as $7.5k depending on technology improvements, incentives, sunny days, etc. On cloudy days, it'll just charge from the grid over 6-8 hours while people are at work. You'll want a system like this with 1+ EVs simply because you'll be using enough power it'll start making financial sense in most of the US. 2) EVs are primarily commuter cars so as long as their battery back lasts long enough to return home, it'll work. The rare instances where you'll need to recharge at a station will largely be irrelevant for day-to-day activity. Cars used for long distances ( 180+ miles ) regularly will likely remain hybrids or fossil fuel for decade(s). 4) Sharing will largely also be a non-issue since even when utilization goes up, we are talking ~3 hours of drive time to ~1 hour of charge time. You'd need to have greater than 50% utilization before charge time is likely to create issues. Similarly, as tech improves, that ratio will improve. 6) This is largely solved by the fact EVs are primarily going to be local commuter cars. Replacing commuter cars, in and of itself, is a worthy goal as it improves city air quality substantially which is linked to problems like asthma and cancer. I honestly don't care if long distance trucks which largely are spending their time in rural areas remain fossil fueled. I care about city air quality. http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-outdoor-air-pollution-causes-cancer http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/air-pollution-how-strong-is-the-link-to-cancer-a6894866.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/... http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/air-pollution-s-impact-on-cancer-is-grossly-underestimated/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/air-pollution-s-im... http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/19-californias-air-pollution-causes-asthma-allergies-and-premature-births http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/19-californias-air-...
• wimagguc 11y ago
  This is actually a list of 9 pretty solid research ideas: the current re-charging stations are too small? Find out how to make them bigger. Can't toe with an electric vehicle? Invent one that can do just that. Seems like the first reaction of most people here is to debate that problems exist in the first place.
• phkahler 11y ago
  I think this guy over estimates how much burden electric cars will put on the grid. For a round trip of 20 miles to work and an efficiency of 200 Watt-hours per mile, you get 8kWh which can be charged slowly at 1kW over 8 hours. Think of that in comparison to air conditioning or electric dryers.
  • dev1n 11y ago
    This is all true. However, I think it would be better to put the strain on the grid than continue to do so with companies that squeeze oil out of rocks. The grid can utilize natural gas, coal, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, wave power etc.. Electric cars are the future and will force us to invest heavily in renewable energy.
    • jacquesm 11y ago
      Electric cars are actually more or less a natural sink for wind energy and solar because they add storage capacity to the grid, something it currently does not have.
      • toomuchtodo 11y ago
        Tesla is offering free electricity to Tesla owners in a Scandinavian country under this idea (excess energy is soaked up by the electric vehicles).
        • jacquesm 11y ago
          Scandinavian countries are the exception (and Canada could be) because of the amount of hydropower they produce.
          • toomuchtodo 11y ago
            http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/business/energy-environment/a-texas-utility-offers-a-nighttime-special-free-electricity.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/business/energy-environmen... "A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity" "The women are just three of the thousands of TXU Energy customers who are at the vanguard of a bold attempt by the utility to change how people consume energy. TXU’s free overnight plan, which is coupled with slightly higher daytime rates, is one of dozens that have been offered by more than 50 retail electricity companies in Texas over the last three years with a simple goal: for customers to turn down the dials when wholesale prices are highest and turn them back up when prices are lowest. It is possible because Texas has more wind power than any other state, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state’s generation. Alone among the 48 contiguous states, Texas runs its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated here must be consumed here."
• anexprogrammer 11y ago
  Hmm. All problems that could have been set at the door of internal combustion when it was new. They'll be solved as EVs make up a larger percentage of what's on the road. Are EVs the endgame? I suspect not. Apart from anything else I think it's going to prove far, far harder to replace trucks than buses and cars with EVs. Would we be better investing in public transport that's convenient and reliable enough people want to use? Certainly. But we like personal vehicles. They're not going to go away easily. In fact just like horses and steam trains became a leisure pursuit, I suspect ICEs will also become something for play. The old v8 classic, the motorbike, the quad. You might have increasing difficulty getting fuel, so start lugging 5g jerry cans around in your EV to fuel the Mustang weekend toy. EVs can't beat the soul and sound of a v8 or Triumph triple.
  • phineastcat 11y ago
    ICE cars will go first. Most personal cars are only driven a small mileage per day and don't need to carry much weight. Needing to go more than 350 miles in a day, or needing to tow a trailer are statistical outliers to most users. Anyone who occasionally needs to go really far or carry more weight will find another solution. As you said, I doubt ICE cars will go away completely. There's too much hobby/enthusiasm behind them for that to happen. Trucks, buses, and planes will take much, much longer to phase out because of their extreme needs; e.g. light, compact power with a huge range. Any other problems outside the vehicles themselves will be solved very quickly as they gain more market share.
    • anexprogrammer 11y ago
      Quite so. The Honda Accord, or Ford Focus family car that takes the kids to school, a 30 mile daily commute and a few trips to the shops is the low hanging fruit. They're easy to replace. If you need something to haul a big caravan for holiday, or trailer for a move. Just rent - the rental shops will expand to fit nicely. Probably a nice big diesel. The v8 offroader that actually works offroad, the truck, and shipping are on diesel for the forseeable. I don't even see the space requirements to cater for EVs charging needs as much of an issue. We already have service areas on motorways in Europe. Huge spaces with a petrol station in the far corner. We'll have to adjust to 500 mile journeys including a couple of rest/coffee breaks. If you have young kids they already do. Only difference is plug the car in before going inside. We might have to resurrect a few diners (with charging) along the way on rural or non motorway roads. I think I like that.
• tombert 11y ago
  This was why I thought the Chevy Volt had the right idea; having a gas-tank there as a backup, but depend on electricity 95% of the time. But, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to move to a big city and use the trains, or campaign for a good train system in your city, which obviously can't work for everyone.
  • ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Chevy Volt goes a step further and has the gas powered engine hooked up to the wheels. I prefer the approach taken by the BMW i3 where the (optional) gas powered range-extender is purely used to generate electricity, but there's room for both in the transition period and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) seems like it might be an important market segment.
    • artimaeis 11y ago
      The Chevy Volt and BMW i3 are identical in the regard of the function of their petrol engine. The Volt is using Chevy's Voltec drivetrain, so there's no way for the engine to put power to the wheels except through charging the battery - the same as the i3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Voltec_powertrain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Voltec_powertrain
      • tclmeelmo 11y ago
        "When the engine is running it may be periodically mechanically linked (by a clutch) to a planetary gear set, and hence the output drive axle, to improve energy efficiency."
        • artimaeis 11y ago
          Yeah not sure how I skipped that part so effectively. I've since looked through what else I can find about that Voltec drivetrain and it's clear that the planetary gear can engage in such a way that the petrol motor can provide assistance to the electric motor. In case anyone's interested, here's a fairly good and simple explanation of the 3-clutch system which allows the petrol motor to provide some power to the wheels when in the correct scenario: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80E1fOp95rA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80E1fOp95rA
• atemerev 11y ago
  OK, it boils down to "if all cars will be electric, we'll need much more electricity". There are only two ecologically sustainable ways of increasing generating capacity: solar and nuclear. Both will be deployed on massive scale. The new atomic age awaits us!
• rosalinekarr 11y ago
  Ugh... here we go again... > Problem 1: Transportation will load the grid and generating capacity in rather nasty ways Electric cars are not a _complete_ solution on their own. They are _part_ of the solution, along side more renewable power sources like solar and wind. I drive an electric car and I charge it almost exclusively with solar panels at a local free charging station provided by the Tennessee Valley Authority. (I live in Chattanooga, TN.) Also, as for putting load on the electric grid, electric cars actually help with that. Many can be configured to feed power back into the grid, and as a result, they can balance out the grid load throughout the day with their batteries. > Problem 2: Rapid charging is actually not so rapid, highway re-charging stations will have to be much larger than current gas stations Shift your thinking! Electric cars won't be charged at gas stations like gas cars of the past. Most electric drivers charge at home in their own garages or driveways. I have neither, but I still manage to charge my car in street parking with an extension cord, an exterior wall outlet, and a few of those little safety mat things so strangers don't trip over my cord. Charging stations will still be important for cross-country trips, but the average driver doesn't travel that far often enough for it to clog up charging stations across the country. > Problem 3: Gas stations are not generally in the neighbourhood of electricity generation stations. See above. > Problem 4: Re-charging will not work nearly as well when vehicle utilization goes up due to sharing See above. > Problem 5: We don’t actually have all this infrastructure yet Well, duh. That's why we need to build it. That's not an issue with electric cars themselves. That's a problem with our infrastructure that we need to fix. > Problem 6: Range This is something we need to work on, but it's not as big of a problem as people realize. More than 90% of US drivers drive far less than 100 miles per day. The few times I do need to travel farther than that, it's actually kind of relaxing to stop at a mall or restaurant with a charger, plug in, and have a 30 minute lunch while I charge. > Problem 7: Trailers Really? This is problem for most drivers? This is a niche problem for the few people that actually need to haul trailers. So those people can just use regular cars. > Problem 8: Service I drive a Nissan Leaf, and I am very active in the Leaf driver community. I have never heard of a Leaf having major maintenance problems. Chevy Volt's are known for having some issues, but in my opinion, that's your fault for buying something from GM. > Problem 9: Tax Breaks How is this a problem? Tax breaks will eventually go away? So what? The whole idea is to make these cars cheaper now until manufacturing gets cheaper and the prices start to go down on their own. This is really grasping at straws.
• merraksh 11y ago
  One stop-gap hybrid solution for a number of these issues would be a gas station that has a small power generation station powered by diesel fuel. This would cancel out the ecological benefits of running an EV, even if the power station had more efficiency than a combustion engine.
  • sevensor 11y ago
    You've got to burn something. Much of the electric power used by EVs in the States comes from burning coal. Diesel is the clean option.
    • merraksh 11y ago
      But there are other sources: hydro, solar, wind, nuclear.
    • mikeash 11y ago
      The US grid is currently about one third coal, one third natural gas, and one third zero emissions (mostly nuclear). I doubt diesel is cleaner than an EV given that, even if you don't account for the fact that coal emissions happen far away from most people, while diesel happens in your face.
• vvanders 11y ago
  I really hate the long tailpipe argument every time it comes up. Here in WA state the large majority comes from Hydro so an EV is much greener than traditional forms of transportation.
  • extrapickles 11y ago
    Also, adding new emission controls at the power plant automatically upgrades the entire electric vehicle fleet. EVs will be very good for places with wind power as they can easily tailor the load to what is being produced so you don't have any more cases where the price of electricity goes negative.
• epistasis 11y ago
  This is not the type of in depth though that I expect from this author, whom I usually find to be brilliant. These are first-level concerns of somebody who just realized electric cars exist and is looking for the "problems", however in practice most of these are mitigated by tech curves, and the true problems are going to be far different.
  • sounds 11y ago
    What are the true problems? I find Jacques' concerns to be well thought out, showing that he has actually dug into the numbers. However, I'm interested to know what you see are even more significant problems.
    • VLM 11y ago
      Its sort of an amateurs discuss tactics and generals discuss logistics kind of problem. Oddly enough for HN, its a scalability problem (LOL). If you turned the entire known planetary stock of economically useful lithium ore into present gen batteries with 100% efficiency (LOL) and eliminated all competing uses (LOL), depending who's goofy numbers you use, you could give every human on the planet roughly one electric car. Once. There on its relying on recycling, or the market absorbing dramatically more expensive sources of lithium, or income inequality making a car lifestyle unavailable to most people, etc. Its a kin to the argument of take the amount of copper in the infrastructure of the USA and divide it by the number of people in the USA and multiply that by the population of the undeveloped world, and you end up with more than the worlds known copper reserves. Africa, for example, will never be electrified at least as we in the west understand electrification. Perhaps new technologies or new ways of looking at things... but just picking up the plans for the TVA and dropping them in the 3rd world is literally not physically possible with existing known metal reserves. Universal EVs are no problem for every status signalling coastal yuppie, theres just not that many of them. If the developed world retains hegemony we MIGHT be able to switch as a culture completely to EVs. But "the world" is not switching to EVs unless the global population shrinks to fit the global resource limits or ... ? Note that my numbers assume 100% of the world supply is mined AND 100% efficiency (LOL) and there are no limits. I'm not claiming that 1% of that is realistic, but I am claiming its the very hard upper bound is too low even in some kind of star trek post singularity magical handwave world. Maybe you could fuse hydrogen atoms into lithium in a fusion reactor for a hundred years to make the worlds most expensive battery... I'm not even sure we can pull it off with low range lead acid batteries in low range cars. When discussing infrastructure type stuff, there are only so many pounds of "stuff" currently economically available given current refining technology per human being. There IS enough iron to give us all cars (maybe not crude oil, but at least iron won't be the limiting factor) but there is literally not enough economically lithium recoverable on this planet, at the current technology level.
• return0 11y ago
  How about horses? Tried and true method, reliable for millenia, green and sometimes majestic.
  • mnw21cam 11y ago
    If everyone had a horse these days, the environmental impact would be massive, from the infrastructure required to generate the food for them (there probably isn't enough land area in the world to grow enough grass), and the amount of methane they emit.
    • return0 11y ago
      We do the same with cows and other animals we eat. Plus we feed billions of pets (for which we have no use). Someone will have to do the numbers, but it's possible that, at a small density, they're a green alternative for short distances. Plus it's easy to share them.
      • smacktoward 11y ago
        Even in the late 19th century, cities like London and New York had major problems dealing with the massive volume of dung that horses were leaving on the streets. The population of New York City was 1.5 million people in 1890. It's 8.1 million today.
• sickbeard 11y ago
  These are relatively minor problems however. The gas station problem for example is solved by charging your car at home or work. Gas stations exist because we can't refuel our cars at home.
  • vkou 11y ago
    What about people who park curbside? Will their cars be spending 2 hours/night at the charging station?
    • cloudwalking 11y ago
      Curbside chargers.
    • mikeash 11y ago
      There's no particular reason you can't install curbside chargers. It's just a matter of convincing the powers that be to allow it, and that is just a matter of EVs becoming common enough for there to be demand for it.
      • vkou 11y ago
        There's no particular reason we can't install a gas pump on every street corner, and in every office parking space, either - except for economies of scale, environmental reviews, HOA opposition, theft and vandalism... These are not insurmountable problems, but they are expensive, or very time-consuming ones. You also can't just run a power cord from a wall outlet to the street. You'll need to tear up the sidewalks, to connect the charging stations to the grid. In many places, power isn't underground, so you'll have to bring it down from the power lines to the underground - maybe through the buildings? This quickly starts running to far more then $1000/charging station, and closer to $10,000/charging station. This is what curbside parking looks like where I live: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6236671,-122.3252994,3a,73.2y,7.77h,80.18t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjRaPaYN1H3ZYnCkDQVHexw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6236671,-122.3252994,3a,73.2... It would cost a fortune to wire that up. Better yet, if only half the streets in the area were wired up, due to the saturation of parking spaces, it would be close to worthless.
• _ph_ 11y ago
  I have to disagree with many points in that article. My point of reference is the German grid, so it might be different in the US. - switching all cars to electrical would increase the total electricity consumption by 20%, while currently we export about 10% of our production. All the changes are going to happen over a timeframe of more than 20 years, because that is how long it takes to replace the cars at minimum, a long time to make any necessary adjustments to the grid. - in general, electrical cars should be rather beneficial to the grid. There is no reason to charge them at dinner time. Electrical cars have timers and current control, it is very easy to have them charge at times where the grid is underloaded. Many power companies have rebates at night anyway to get rid of excess electricity. (Assuming a car with a reasonably sized battery, like the Model 3) - long term, the speed of charging could be controlled remotely by the power company (for a rebate) so they could use this further to stabilize the grid. - The Model X is available with a tow hitch, and it seems that the Model 3 might have one too (Elon tweeted something to that extend) - Most Tesla owners seem to be happy with the combination of range and the Supercharger network, and the range is going to improve by about 5% per year.
  • ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    The concept of getting paid to allow grid controlled charging of your vehicle is available today: http://www.emotorwerks.com/index.php/juicebox#rebates http://www.emotorwerks.com/index.php/juicebox#rebates For areas without the rebates in place they can track the carbon content of your local grid and charge only when wind turbines are producing strongly.
  • zodPod 11y ago
    > No reason to charge them at dinner time. Timers and current control & remotely adjusting by power company My main issue is with your notion that the cars should, somehow, be limited to only charging at certain times. The issue becomes, "OMG I CUT OFF MY FINGER". "Oh, sorry, cars not charged yet." "Oh, I want to go to Walmart and grab some chips." "Sorry, cars not charged yet." "Oh man! I forgot about a meeting I had with my realtor!" "Sorry, cars not charged yet" > "There's no reason to recharge them at dinner time." The issue is that this could be a problem now. Instead of me just being able to put fuel in my car whenever, now I have to be like "Oh yeah, it's dinner time and I'm home. Can't recharge my car yet!" AND, when everyone has an electric car, it will very quickly become like a busy cable network in your neighborhood. "Well, it's estimating 18 days until the ~download~ charge is done." Refueling with an ICE takes no time at all and can be done anywhere. Even if the car is out of gas in my driveway, I have a chance to walk and get a can of fuel and put fuel in my car (in probably less time than it would take to recharge it). I would bet that the "power company's night time rebates" would go away really fast when they were struggling to meet the sudden demand of charging everyone's cars. > Most Tesla owners are happy with their range and it will improve by 5%/year. Even if their current range is 300 miles, that's 15 miles the first year. That's not really significant. Lastly, your disagreements all seem to be either flawed or they seem to be with the less important issues (tow hitch, range) and ignore the more important (charge time, accessibility, cost, cost of infrastructure, etc).
• rmoriz 11y ago
  Short-range EV only works in cities however especially in central Europe there is such a good public (and green) transportation system in place, that there is no benefit in (co-)owning an expensive EV that also needs special charging ports installed on at least "one end". Even the number of <30 year olds without having a driver's license is growing. You don't need a car here anymore! Given that you need invest a couple of 1000$ to install a charger (per parking slot) and also limit yourself to one type of EV (there are competing standards) and also your Employer ("Destination") needs to do the same… So we're down to a irregular usage of vehicles, like car rental, car sharing or uber, all of which need to be flexible. EVs are not the right thing. The only useful EV usage I can come up with is for commercial usages in pre-defined distances/routes. E.g. last mile delivery operated in a pool that justify setting up a central maintenance location, battery chargers/or swapping systems and more or less fixed usage time (=> loading batteries/servicing cars during the night or via spare cars)
  • mikeash 11y ago
    You don't need to limit yourself to one type of EV. In the US, a J1772 charger can charge every EV on the road. In Europe, the Mennekes connector does the same. Fast DC charging has a bit of a standards war going on. There's CCS, CHAdeMO, and Tesla Supercharger, which are all mutually incompatible. But for routine AC charging, you can install one charger and work with every car.
    • rmoriz 11y ago
      Simple 230V AC charger take 24hrs to charge a car...
      • mikeash 11y ago
        My Model S takes about 9 hours to charge from 0-100% on my home 240V charger, and you rarely need 0-100%. For it to take 24 hours, you'd have to be limited to pulling 14A. And, well, don't install something so ridiculously slow!
• jwalton 11y ago
  1 isn't a problem; it's awesome. Most people are going to plug in their cars at about 5:30-7, but most people don't actually care when, overnight, their car charges, so some smart software can stage charging, and we can use this to smooth out the peaks and valleys in demand. The electric company here in Ontario already tries to do this by charging less for electricity off-peak. 2 is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Replacing batteries is something Tesla played with for a while but ultimately abandoned. Super Chargers charge a car in far less than an hour. There are probably other interesting solutions out there. These are all fixes for problem 4 as well. Problem 3 and 5 seem like the same problem - we need to build more infrastructure as we build more cars. 6 is a non-issue for many people. I drive 15km to work every day, and then 15km home. I'd be happy with a car with a 100 mile range, to be honest. 7 is an interesting one, because most gas cars actually don't allow you to tow a trailer. My Honda Fit stated in the manual that towing a trailer would void all warranties. My Hyundai Sonata says "Towing with this vehicle is not recommended." Lots of larger cars that you think would be able to tow something can't, usually due to undersized cooling for the automatic transmission. Also, adding a trailer to an EV will hurt the range, but adding a trailer to a gas powered car hurts the range too; you just don't care because it's easy to refuel more frequently. See problems 2 and 4. Problem 8: Service. Yeah. Xerox said they had nothing to worry about when it came to Japanese companies producing cheaper photocopiers, because none of them could match Xerox's humongous service infrastructure. You couldn't get a Canon tech down to your company to fix your Canon photocopier. Who makes your photocopier? And problem 9 seems like a non-issue to me.
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    > is a non-issue for many people. I drive 15km to work every day, and then 15km home. I'd be happy with a car with a 100 mile range, to be honest. You should cycle if that's an option where you live. That's not a distance that I would consider taking the car for, but then again, nl has excellent bicycle infrastructure.
    • nmeofthestate 11y ago
      Hmm. I just calculated that it'd take me over 2 hours to cycle 30km, based on my commute (mind you, we have hills here). Nae chance!
• homero 11y ago
  I like my diesel car, sorry Tesla
• rorykoehler 11y ago
  The major concern from my perspective is how ecologically damaging battery production is. That said I'd still choose it over fossil fuels. Fossil fuels pollution is uncontainable, spewing out into our atmosphere, while the pollution from rare earth extraction is largely localised.
• ebbv 11y ago
  This is a bunch of fallacies that have been brought up again and again and have been addressed. The biggest canard is "If everybody switched to EVs tomorrow our power grid couldn't handle!" Yes and if everyone went outside right now and pooped in the street we'd all drown in shit. Neither scenario is actually going to happen. The reality is that EVs are far, far more efficient than ICE vehicles. Not only that, they don't create all the secondary waste products like used engine oil, coolant, etc. LiOn batteries are highly recyclable. Adoption of EVs has been and will continue to be gradual, and our power grid will continue to expand to handle the load. Just as a personal anecdote, I currently have a Nissan LEAF and when we got it we expected our power usage to jump dramatically. It did not. But our savings on fuel (not to mention maintenance) did jump. Even with current cheap gas prices, it's still way cheaper to drive the LEAF than our 30mpg CR-V.
  • jklinger410 11y ago
    >This is a bunch of fallacies that have been brought up again and again and have been addressed. Nailed it.
  • Grishnakh 11y ago
    Exactly correct. Just wait though, I said the exact same thing above and the author told me to "fuck off", and the HN hivemind is heavily down-modding any comments critical of this guy.
    • ebbv 11y ago
      Yeah wow, my comment had like +2 earlier today and now it's down to 0. Guess the dude called his friends in.
      • Grishnakh 11y ago
        My karma took a huge beating today: some people have been going through a bunch of my older comments and down-modding them. No kidding about the dude calling his friends in. This place is the worst echo-chamber I've seen lately, except maybe for /r/HillaryClinton.
• 746F7475 11y ago
  All this shit we've been working on and actively can improve? Shiiiiiet, I guess we might as well not do it and use gas until it runs out, right?
• lasermike026 11y ago
  Cars are an antiquate mode of transportation that are dangerous and inefficient. Something truly disruptive would be transportation systems where cars and trucks don't exist.
• elchief 11y ago
  Sometimes people are just against things. I don't find any of his arguments particularly compelling.
• mikeash 11y ago
  A world where all cars are EVs will need many changes from the world today, but we have decades to make those changes. Take the grid capacity problem. Household electricity usage has already increased by a ton throughout the history of electrification. The grid can adapt. It takes a long time to build out this sort of infrastructure, but we have that time. Grid capacity needs to increase by 20% over the next 30-50 years? Ok, and? The article also can't seem to make up its mind about whether EVs are suitable for long distance travel. It talks about how highway charging stations will have to be much larger than gas stations because charging takes longer. Then a few points down, it says that range and recharging time are incompatible with charging while traveling. Which is it? If it's incompatible, then you don't need highway charging stations in the first place....
• tsmarsh 11y ago
  I have an electric car, a leaf. I also have solar power from Solar City. I live in sunny MA, where in the winter we average 15kWh generated to the summer we average 50kWh. My commute is 60 miles per day which is around 6-8kW depending in traffic and weather. Also, my local power is a mixture of nuclear and wind. So. Can we please stop rolling coal burning power plants into the electric car equation as if it is universally applicable. The car was affordable: $12k second hand. The solar was $0 down and half the national grid per kW. My commute is at the edge of viable for a first gen electric car (really looking forward to the 200mile range of 2nd gen). I do the vast majority of my charging is at home. My only issue is that the current system (sic) takes DC power converts to to AC only rectify it back to DC in the car. There is still a need for charging stations, but for rare 100 mile journeys. Drive 80 miles charge for 20 minutes, drive 80 miles. 2nd gen it's 160 miles, charge for 40 minutes. We have family in Western MA, which is 150 miles away. With a 200 mile range we'd do it in a single charge and recharge at their house. The use of a charging station is really rare, not part of the routine of ownership, like it is with ICE. We don't have the infrastructure? We don't need the infrastructure. You can run an electric car almost entirely from energy reclaimed from the environment around your house. It will even store it for you in those handy, replaceable lion batteries it has, solving some of renewable energies gnarlier problems. Whilst I understand that electric cars don't work well for people who travel more than 100 miles without a 20 minute break, that number is about to shift to 200miles... and that is virtually nobody. The infrastructure problems are solved by local generation (either municipal renewables or home solar). The recharging problem, even at 100mile range isn't a problem, you just charge it at the end of your journey.
  • makomk 11y ago
    If you commute, I assume your car isn't at home during the daytime on weekdays and so can't actually use most of the energy you generate for charging. How much of the 6-8kW of charging you do actually comes from your solar panels, and how much comes from the grid and is simply subsidized by your power provider being forced to buy your power at retail prices?
    • tsmarsh 11y ago
• turar 11y ago
  Can somebody explain how are EV, and especially Tesla, batteries different from, say, my laptop batteries, which normally degrade to the point of being unusable within 4-5 years, and have to be replaced?
  • mikeash 11y ago
    EV batteries are treated much better than the batteries in your laptop. First, EV batteries typically have active thermal management. Heat kills lithium ion batteries. When you charge your laptop, the battery gets hot, and this accelerates degradation. When you charge your car, the cooling system engages and keeps the battery at the optimal temperature. (The LEAF doesn't have an active cooling system for its battery. It also suffers much worse battery degradation than other EVs. Coincidence?) Second, EV batteries are somewhat de-rated from their full capacity. Lithium ion batteries don't like spending time at the ends of their capacity. They want to live in the middle, not be fully charged or fully discharged. Laptop and phone makers tend to view their products as short-lived, disposable items, so they'll optimize for maximum running time on the battery by charging to 100% and draining to 0%, at the cost of battery longevity. A car will wall off some of the capacity so that when you're at 100%, you're really at, say, 90%, and when you're at 0% you're really at, say, 10%. At least some of these cars take it further and let you limit the maximum charge so you only use what you need. For example, I normally charge my Tesla to 90%, which is all I need for 99% of my driving. When I need that last little bit, I can charge it all the way to 100%. Third, a large portion of degradation comes from the number of actual cycles you use, and deeper cycles are worse. A typical battery might last 300 100%-0% cycles before it degrades beyond usability. If you only use 50% of the capacity each time, then it might last 800 cycles. (Very rough number, totally pulled out of my nether regions, but you get the idea.) Long-range EVs are typically not driven to the limits of their range every day, so the batteries are treated well. Most days, my car might go from 90% to 80%, then get charged back to 90%. My phone, by comparison, goes from 100% to around 20% and back to 100% each day, which degrades the battery far more.
    • NickM 11y ago
      Excellent writeup. Also worth noting is that there are many different types of battery chemistry used by different lithium-ion cells: laptops may have cells with chemistries optimized for a certain lifetime/capacity/power tradeoff, whereas EVs may use a completely different chemistry with very different properties.
• ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  This reads a bit like something a staffer on one of those listicle sites got asked to churn out, the last three (listicle items 7 through 9) in particularly seem very weak.
• bryanlarsen 11y ago
  Problem 2: Electric cars are charged at home most of the time. Let's assume that it takes 10x as long to charge a car at a supercharger compared to filling it with gas. (3 vs 30 minutes). But if you charge at home 90% of the time, then refueling stations can be the exact same size. And I'm fairly sure that people will be charging at home or at work much more than 90% of the time -- it's probably closer to 99%.
• RodericDay 11y ago
  I want public transport and walkable cities to win over electric cars. A lot of people take the need for cars for granted, and gush over the electric car future as optimum. This means that their transport utopia is something where you have these wide streets, click a button in your phone, and an Uber-Tesla picks you up and drops you off anywhere. For me, this is the "faster-horse" of transportation. I want more radical changes towards walkable cities with more space for people and less space for vehicles. Roads take up an insane amount of space, and self-driving electric cars don't make things much better. The car should be more like a family appliance used in weekends for holiday trips.
• rajahafify 11y ago
  The arguments pointed out is rather week. Most can be solved given time and effort. With regards with the environment concerns, I think it's easier to solve the dependency of fosil fuel when all consumers is located in power stations compared to in individual transport unit.
• VLM 11y ago
  Misses numerous the historical examples and present day analogies. Prob 1 is solved by the death of 9-5 full time work. Its just not relevant to most of the population anymore. The problems of deploying EVs in Levvitown in 1949 are not relevant to 2016+. Also "smart" grid connected battery chargers are more advanced than the typical 1949 "battery rectifier". Prob 2 insists that what he calls fast charging would in the industry be called medium-slow charging. Also it strawdogs that a significant fraction of people will every require it and be willing to pay the likely "just under the cost of a SUV's tank of gas" they'll charge as a convenience fee. Finally he misses how rest stops along interstates actually work in recreational states like where I live... its just not a practical issue. Prob 4 overestimates the popularity of sharing. Its kind of like wife sharing, many talk and think about it, only a tiny fraction do it, but its not unusually popular, nor growing, and not a significant population issue. Among certain extremely small subcultures its popular, but much like rurals who commute over 100 miles per trip, they're just going to be ignored and frozen out of the EV market. They can buy hybrids and the remaining 95% of the market will buy EVs. For a gas analogy, the fact that my micro-sub-compact can't tow a 37 foot sailboat turns out not to have eliminated its sales from the market, no matter how important that ability is for owners of 37 foot sailboats, or at least those who aspire. Prob 5 carefully ignores historical infrastructure growth examples, population shifts in the USA, suburban sprawl, and ignores the slow rate of ramping up EV production. Basically, we have decades of experience building new infrastructure faster than we can possibly build new EV assembly lines. NIMBY areas will suffer, nothing new there, but I couldn't care less about them, and a little suffering might improve their views a bit. Prob 7 is the great towing conspiracy (google it) where existing gas mfgrs try to protect suv and truck sales by pretending that magically only trucks can tow in the USA. Its pretty crazy, my (gas) car is rated to tow 2000 pounds in Canada and of course 0 in the USA, because they have to protect truck / suv sales. It is true, if you need to tow in the USA you already must buy a truck to do it legally while insured. So not being able to tow with a commuter EV isn't a downgrade from commuter gas cars that already are legally rated as zero (in the USA). Further when I do need to tow, its usually 3 miles to home depot or 5 miles to the lake, not crossing the Rockies in a blizzard. Prob 8 is absolutely comical, like an anti-hybrid troll from over a decade ago or an anti-import troll from when I was a kid. When that tired argument is the best they can roll out... Overall its mostly problems that exist primarily in the mind of opponents where 99% of the population won't care no matter how many times the talking points are repeated, much like the tired saw that no EV range is acceptable other than (max_currently_available) + 50 miles for all available ranges from 10 miles (homemade lead acid conversions) on up.
• Grishnakh 11y ago
  You find this guy to be "brilliant"? I only skimmed the article, but it's just the same old, tired, ignorant anti-EV talking points I see from Luddites and oil industry shills every time I come across some kind of anti-EV rant. This article is just better written, but it's the same crap. If I were being extremely generous, I would just say that it's obviously not written by an engineer or anyone who really understands both cars and electric power generation and transmission.
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    > but it's just the same old, tired, ignorant anti-EV talking points I see from Luddites and oil industry shills every time I come across some kind of anti-EV rant God, how I love HN and the endless stream of negativity that it can produce. Just for you, from this 'Luddite and oil industry shill': http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill Now, do fuck off. Apologies for breaking HN etiquette but I've really had it, blame my lack of sleep or whatever is convenient but comments like yours really make my blood boil.
    • Grishnakh 11y ago
      Fuck off yourself, you stupid piece of shit. I stand by my comments: this article was standard anti-EV bullshit, and if you don't like my opinion, you can go die in a fire for all I care.
    • brongondwana 11y ago
      I see you've already called out to one HN comment. This sentence appears to be missing a negative: being without power meant that our house would be inhabitable almost instantly Really interesting article (and disagree with the HN negatives too - you make some good points, though I see that a few of them have been answered in comments to a reasonable degree of my satisfaction, particularly the "plug in for the night and the power company controls when it gets power for a cheaper charge" - the tech for that must be pretty close to ready to roll out to garages.
      • 11y ago
• merraksh 11y ago
  Most of the problems listed in this article are, in my opinion, only temporary and would be solved if the technology becomes widespread. As in many technological shifts, what is required is either 1) evolved technology or 2) demand (which would trigger more technological improvements). I remember a similar discussion about SSDs some time ago: they were slow and expensive and a few commentators were quite skeptical about their widespread adoption. Problem 1: Transportation will load the grid and generating capacity in rather nasty ways But not in specific times of the day, as A/C does. Granted, we're talking about much more power. Problem 2: Rapid charging is actually not so rapid [...] Yet. Problem 4: Re-charging will not work nearly as well when vehicle utilization goes up due to sharing If sharing makes usage of a vehicle go up to ~100%, it will only be a matter of having a few more vehicles. If a vehicle spends even 10% of its time recharging, we'll just need ~10% more shared vehicles. This only drives up production by 10%. Problem 5: We don’t actually have all this infrastructure yet Yet. The technology won't be too convenient for the next few years. Problem 6: Range That would make adoption easier in more densely populated regions. Problem 7: Trailers That's a problem for a small percentage of the population (at least here in Europe).
• traviswingo 11y ago
  I want to quickly point out that these appear to be short-term problems, and have been addressed by Elon Musk many times. The manufacturing of EVs is, right now, not a clean process, but this is planned to be remedied by self-sustaining factories with solar and storage.
• bcatanzaro 11y ago
  The author forgot well to tank efficiency when looking at ICE efficiency. You don't get gasoline out of the ground, you get crude oil. In the middle of Nigeria or Venezuela. Which then has to be transported, refined, and transported again. Gasoline well to tank efficiency is somewhere around 80%, which means ICE well to wheels efficiency is somewhere around 14-16%. So EVs at 30% are about 2X as efficient as ICE.
• peter303 11y ago
  I am encouraged by the progress made so far. I point to the documentary "Who Killed [GMs] EV-1?". That movie had a laundry list of the technological and political obstacles to EVs in the 1990s. Many of those have been reduced in the 2010s.
• sremani 11y ago
  This is a good debate, Purist vs Practitioner. The Purist point of view is Autos are horrible, Cities designed for autos are horrible etc. But for the Practitioner, the world we live is not our choice, we are given a shitty hand, so lets improve it 10% at a time, in that world PHEVs and EVs are a solution working towards improvement. edit: I do not mean, Purist in any disparaging way, the actual cost of roads (and their maintenance) is enormous. Please read Purist as one who sees the Core or Central problem.
• sosuke 11y ago
  On the question of larger gas stations I present Buc-ee's in New Braunfels. An 18 acre lot with 60 pumps and 67,000 square foot building. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Buc-ee's/@29.726694,-98.0798213,451m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x865cbccd44bfe4b3:0x695760c690117684 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Buc-ee's/@29.726694,-98.07... http://seguingazette.com/news/article_6dd61114-989d-11e1-b790-001a4bcf887a.html http://seguingazette.com/news/article_6dd61114-989d-11e1-b79...
• Unklejoe 11y ago
  While the electrical grid as a whole may be able to handle the load, can the average US residential service? My house has a 100A 240V service which is barely adequate as it is. I’m sure it could handle a single EV if I charge it overnight, but what happens when the rest of my family switches to EVs? If I remember correctly, a charger for a Tesla requires a 50A 240V dedicated circuit, which would be half the capacity for my entire house just for a single car. Additionally, many homes don’t have such a circuit, so one would need to be installed. This can be easily solved by upgrading my service, but that’s another cost. In the end, it’s not a show stopper, but it’s certainly another hurdle that will cause a slowdown in adoption rates. Perhaps codes should be passed which require the garage of new homes to have such circuits installed by default
• ryanmarsh 11y ago
  Several of the author's arguments center around what exists today in terms of infrastructure. Yes, if necessary grid/stations don't exist the average EV purchaser might have trouble getting recharged, kWh prices might go up, etc... Deep eye roll at stuff like this. I hope the author realizes that at some point there wasn't a network of gas stations across the country, there wasn't much of an electrical grid, or a highway system for that matter. Some of the solutions to these potential challenges are related to public investment, many can be solved by private investment and there is a profit opportunity, thus solutions will come. Better solutions in my mind. Here's the most missed point I see in all this infrastructure discussion. The most costly piece to next-generation recharge infrastructure already exists, and it is the natural gas "grid". It's massive and empowers much cleaner (than coal) local electricity generation. Today you can buy a small plot of land alongside the highway, pour a concrete pad, install a natural gas generator, purchase gas at bulk rates, and charge EV's for $$$. Even the smallest towns in America have NG lines running near or through them. The highest cost I've seen to have a bulk gas line brought on to a business' property was in the low tens of thousands. You can spreadsheet this, there's profit in this model and it requires NO improvements to the electrical grid and suffers practically no energy loss. Most of what the author sees as problems others will see as investment opportunities and solve. In fact I think I'm going to go take a look at the map of supercharging stations right now...
  • vinceguidry 11y ago
    > I hope the author realizes that at some point there wasn't a network of gas stations across the country, Not much of an argument. The ICE won out over electric drivetrains for the express reason that liquid fuels are far easier to provide logistics for than batteries. Most electric car makers stopped production at some point in the 1910s. It's not that electric vehicles were never tried out. They were. Gasoline was just a way better fit.
    • djrogers 11y ago
      Yes it was. In 1910. Do you honestly expect that to always be true?
• pjkundert 11y ago
  If you consider that EVs have A) large batteries w/ efficient charge/discharge cycles, B) efficient high-capacity inverters, and C) are plugged in (somewhere) for large fractions of their life, and D) very often have capacity far exceeding their next expected trip duration, then: It is inevitable that Tesla (or someone else) will implement Grid-tied battery backup as a standard option on these vehicles. When that happens -- the Grid gets "free" multi-GWh battery-based load shedding. Why is this not considered an inevitability? Am I missing something obvious here?
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    No, you're not missing anything, that is a very likely thing to happen.
    • cdibona 11y ago
      This assumes the cars are plugged in when there is the most 'extra' capacity being generated from , say, solar thermal/pv. This is when most cars are out at a workplace, not plugged in. This is also when industrial consumption/ac use peaks, so why would you over produce and feed a battery rather than run a plant/keep places cool...
      • jacquesm 11y ago
        Load shedding.
• RP_Joe 11y ago
  The problem I have with these arguments is they compare all electric vehicles to all internal combustion engines. I don't think that's realistic. Everyone is not going to convert to electric vehicles. I think it's terrific that there is diversity in the energy base for transportation. This is very healthy for the economy and for the country in general. While it's true, that these new technologies may require adjustments, sometimes these adjustments can be overstated. The actual energy usage for many appliances and industry is going down. LED light bulbs and other technologies are lowering the load to the grid. It's not a simple equation. It's a very complex equation and I don't think anyone has spent the time to factor that. At least I have not seen any studies on that. This electric vehicle movement is not just about electric cars. People are rethinking their transportation. That's very healthy. It would be great if we continue to improve mass transit in America, so that less vehicles of all types are needed. I think many Americans would like to see that. We're still also in the very early stages of electric vehicle's engineering. It's not a good idea to extrapolate out into the future based upon the technology of today. It's likely these electric vehicles become even more efficient in the future. As we see more volume in the industry, third-party players will also come in with unique ideas and improvements. This mix of electric and internal combustion is really exciting. I think it's terrific that people are being lured from internal combustion to electric vehicles. The whole system seems to be going in a good direction. I don't agree with the naysayers. The outlook looks very promising. These electric vehicles continued to sell even though the price of fuel for internal combustion's has fallen. The price of electricity is much more stable than the price of gasoline. This may also help people in making their decisions. I suspect in the future we will see families with both electric cars and internal combustion. It will not be either or.
  • jeromeflipo 11y ago
    As more and more people will adopt EVs, you can expect: - gas stations and car dealers to go bankrupt - price for maintenance and spare parts to jump - investment in oil extraction to drop (as demand for oil decreases) - gas prices to increase at the pump, due to diseconomies of scale within the oil industry and carbon tax This could quickly translate into a vicious circle, and make ICE as luxurious as horse riding.
• vlucas 11y ago
  All of these problems strike me as temporary. The only barriers here are current technology getting cheaper and more efficient, which always happens over time - especially the timescale needed for EVs to go mainstream. The tone of this article seems to think we will be stuck with current levels of technology. Some future possibilities with in 20-30 years: * Battery capacity doubling, tripling, or more. * Widespread solar panel use for recharging at home (maybe they even come with solar panels as an upgrade?) * Solar panels integrated into the car itself for continuous trickle charging (on the rooftop, for instance) * Companies offering free charging while patronizing their retail locations (ala free Wifi) * Parking lot charging via installed solar panels Those are just the first few I could think of off the top of my head. I know there will be others as time goes by.
  • JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Battery capacity has a long way to go. For vehicles, one efficiency measure is Watt-Hours (energy) per kilogram. For Lithium batteries we're at 220. Gasoline for comparison is 13200. So about two orders of magnitude to go, before gas is obsolete. http://www.energyadvocate.com/batts.htm http://www.energyadvocate.com/batts.htm Good news: metal-air batteries can achieve close to gas efficiencies! If we can only build an efficient portable reactor, and then an efficient fungible way to refuel with metal.
• joshvm 11y ago
  If EVs really take off, I wouldn't be surprised if workplaces started putting in more chargers in their car parks. It's an obvious solution to the problem of home charging. The other option is leased batteries which solves a whole host of problems. It would probably cost a bit more, but you would never need to worry about the state of your battery pack. This would require standardisation though, unless everyone drives a Tesla. In addition to that, home charging is only an issue if everyone decides to do a full charge every single night, which is unlikely. Most people will only need a daily quarter or half charge, city drivers much less. Even if electricity doubled or tripled in price to compensate for the grid upgrade, it would still be cheaper than gas (at least in this country).
• jeromeflipo 11y ago
  A few thoughts/ideas: Grid saturation: smart charging to flatten the demand curve (overnight), daylight charging with more chargers in parking spaces at the office, west-facing solar panels and grid storage to smooth the duck curve. Lack of chargers on the highway: increase in charging speed (15 minutes breaks are recommended after 2h of driving), increased battery range, platooning with autopilot can save 15% of energy [0], very low cost of expanding supercharger networks, auto-pilot to tolerate longer drive, auto-park to accept longer pauses, battery swapping Energy sources far from charging stations: don't underestimate the predominance of home charging; south-facing solar panels and wind turbines along highways; grid storage; battery swapping Car sharing: battery swapping again; autonomous fleets to dispatch charged car and auto-park cars (with snake-like charger to auto-plug) Infrastructure investment: large public program for distributed generation with solar panels and grid storage Range anxiety: 250 miles might be the average range for EV in 2020, supercharging and battery swapping to the rescue Trailers: battery swapping again, and battery integrated in the trailer (might turn into a backup battery once at home) Lack of servcie: EVs require far less maintenance than ICE, Musk intend to make a 1-million miles powertrain and reuse battery for grid storage; also industry-wide standardization Tax break: they will somehow be extended to balance the externalities of fossil fuels (health, environment); EV will reach cost-parity very soon too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_%28automobile%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platoon_%28automobile%29
• robg 11y ago
  First of all, if you really want to improve the environment the best way to do so is to not buy any vehicle at all. It's pretty clear to me that I will be unlikely to ever own a car again. But this Tesla is the one I expect will be my self-driving taxi for many years to come and before the decade is out.
• AnthonyMouse 11y ago
  This pretty much boils down to "if overnight we replaced 100% of cars with electric it would cause these problems." Let's take a more realistic scenario: That tomorrow all of the existing two car households have one electric car. > 1. Your average town does not have the power infrastructure to deal with an extra draw of a whole bunch of commuters arriving home roughly around the same time (say, between 5:30 and 7 pm) and all of them plugging their cars in to recharge. This has easy solutions, e.g. you tell the charging station what time you need the battery charged by and in 95% of cases it ends up doing the charging from 10PM to 6AM, which makes the power grid very happy. > Rapid charging is actually not so rapid, highway re-charging stations will have to be much larger than current gas stations But you will also need fewer of them because you can't currently buy gas at home but you can charge your car there. So you're really only talking about the gas stations on major highways, i.e. truck stops, which are already quite large because it's typical for people to stop and eat there already. And in the one out of two cars scenario, for long trips you could take the gasoline powered car. > Every highway would be more or less automatically accompanied by a bunch of power infrastructure Most of the existing high voltage power infrastructure already follows the highways because both go to population centers and are installed in places which are cheap and efficient to claim with eminent domain. And needing to build infrastructure is only a problem if we build electric cars faster than we can build power infrastructure, which we probably won't. > Re-charging will not work nearly as well when vehicle utilization goes up due to sharing Which is only a problem for the subset of vehicles used for sharing and there is no reason they can't be hybrids instead of pure electric. Alternatively the people who purchase cars for this purpose could use cars with swappable batteries and leave one charging while the other is on the road and then swap them as needed. > If a substantial chunk of our energy consumption due to transportation needs is going to shift from being directly petroleum based to being mostly based on the timely delivery of electrons in vast quantities and to a very large number of locations then we will have to invest massively in both generating capacity and grid capacity. That isn't necessarily true. If most electric vehicles are charged at night then they'll be using the idle capacity of the existing grid rather than requiring new capacity to be built. Of course some new capacity may be necessary, but that doesn't seem like any kind of insurmountable problem. We already know how to do that. > Range This is a problem exactly where it's a problem. Future electric cars may or may not solve it, but in the meantime you know what kind of driving you do. If you take long trips for business, buy a hybrid. If you have a two car household, buy one electric car and one hybrid and take the hybrid on long trips. There is no law that says 100% of cars have to be electric; they can work where they work. > Trailers Range when towing a trailer is generally not that important because even if a lot of people do it periodically, they don't do it very often. And this is again solved by having a family buy one EV and one hybrid and using the hybrid for what the EV is bad at. > Service This is clearly a problem exclusive to early adopters. If electric cars were half of all cars it wouldn't exist. > Tax Breaks I'm not sure how this one is even supposed to be a problem. All else equal, tax credits increase tax rates because the money has to come from somewhere. If everybody buys an EV then everybody gets the credit and the government raises the tax rate so that everybody ends up paying what they would have without it. If half of everybody buys an EV then the government raises the tax rate half that much and there is a significant tax advantage if you buy an EV, which was the whole idea. The credit can never bankrupt the government because the government also sets the base rate.
• cptskippy 11y ago
  I'm guessing Jacques lives in a large European city because this piece reads like someone who has absolutely no understanding of how a typical American uses an automobile. Land use, city planning, public transportation and highway management in Europe are all completely different from that of America, or specifically the United States. Accepting that you can't just give up your car, he then enumerates short comings of EVs that just don't add up. The implication that simple lifestyle changes would enable most American's to do away with their automobiles is utterly ridiculous and demonstrates complete ignorance to the suburban environment surrounding all cities in the United States and other parts of America. If a large number of people did vacate the suburbs for the city, this would create a housing market crash in the suburbs that would draw just as many people out of the cities into the suburbs. Without revising land use policies in the United States, there's no way to support this. Just look at gun control polices if you need any more evidence of how ridiculous this notion is. His argument that everyone will be charging their EVs at peak times and will overload the grid is ridiculous and completely ignores the fact that most people today are aware of peak vs off peak electricity rates and specifically charge their EVs during off peak hours to avoid paying higher rates. This is analogous to driving a few extra miles to save $.05/gallon on gas. People are cheap and won't do that for financial reasons. He then goes on to make a number of points about the lack of charging infrastructure that would make EVs unfeasible but these completely ignore his first assertion that most people will be charging at home. More than 90%* of commuters have a commute of less than 36 miles one-way which means that only 2 EVs on market (i.e. Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Smart Electric Drive) would be unable to cover their daily commute. Which means that in most cases the need for charging stations would be radically diminished. Another thing to consider is that petrol stations exist in their current form because of regulator requirements around the storage of hazardous materials (i.e. petroleum products). There's no such restrictions around EV charging stations and in a world with 90%+ EVs it's not hard to imagine every parking spot having a charge station. The assertion about vehicle maintenance being an issue is also equally ridiculous. He states that most EV systems will be unservicable at the average garage which is debatable. The power train will probably remain unserviceable but an EV's powertrain is significantly more reliable than your typical ICE. All of the other major and minor systems (i.e. drivetrain, environmental, braking, etc) in an EV are similar to those of an ICE vehicle and thus serviceable at a regular garage. Considering that most EVs will be daily commuters, the likelihood that you'll find yourself with a powertrain failure in a location where your EV can't be serviced is also highly unlikely. http://www.statisticbrain.com/commute-statistics/ http://www.statisticbrain.com/commute-statistics/ http://ecomento.com/2015/03/23/nissan-leaf-ev-battery-reliability/ http://ecomento.com/2015/03/23/nissan-leaf-ev-battery-reliab...
• matheweis 11y ago
  I'm really surprised by this article. Electric cars shouldn't be discounted just because they aren't as green as the seem/are advertised to be - they are still by all accounts more efficient than ICE vehicles (even with our terrible electric grid and issues with demand). Load demand will be solved with local and utility scale energy storage, something which is occurring already in Hawaii where solar is so widely deployed that utilities have placed a moratorium on storage-less solar deployments because they can't handle the demand changes when a cloud rolls through town. The issue with our electric grid is recognized at the highest levels of our nation. President Obama brought this up largely unprompted during his recent interview with Destin Sandlin. Destin: "These huge technological projects that you're talking about, stuff America builds with our hands; I'm thinking of the Hoover Dam, the Eisenhower interstate system, Kennedy launched Apollo... Am I gonna to see that, ever again, in my generation?" Obama: "I would like to see it - you know - in that order for us to do that, it requires a common vision of some of these big projects - now, I'll give you an example of an area where we should be investing, and that is creating a smart grid. This is something I've been interested in for a while. The way we link up energy is hugely inefficient in this country ... but the basic electricity grid that we have wastes huge amounts of energy." This leaves us with only the range/changing issues which will both resolve as battery tech improves. Either of increased range or faster charging batteries will help, and we are seeing both. The demand for the Tesla proves we are already at parity.
• dreamcompiler 11y ago
  I'm seeing at least an article or two per day like this now: Scary FUD-filled headline suggesting that we are stupid to pursue EVs because they're not completely benign, while the body of the article itself eventually acknowledges that in almost every respect they're a helluva lot more benign than ICEs today, and will likely become even more advantageous in the future. There's only one science problem remaining for EVs: Better batteries. All the rest are relatively straightforward engineering problems, and a big chunk of those already have scaled-out solutions (e.g. Tesla's superchargers).
• cdibona 11y ago
  The Model S is very popular in the crescent park neighborhood of Palo Alto. There were brownouts until they upgraded the neighborhoods supply and transformers. Just some food for thought. Most neighborhoods simply are not wired for overnight charging of a significant number of EVs. I would expect EV interconnect fees or time sensitive tierd electric consumption independent of your net metering deal. Or hyper-local generating capacity based on natural gas...?
• stcredzero 11y ago
  Problem 1: Transportation will load the grid and generating capacity in rather nasty ways Maybe. It depends on exactly where. He cites simultaneous draw from many commuters at once. If the utilities incentivized slower charging overnight through pricing (which is something that they already do for power intensive industries) then this would be greatly ameliorated. Also, in many places, as noted by the op, people will start charging after getting home from work. If charging is delayed by just 3 hours, they will merely be using capacity that already exists for running air conditioners. Problem 2: Rapid charging is actually not so rapid, highway re-charging stations will have to be much larger than current gas stations Op is assuming the same structure as gas stations. No need for this. What if the car companies implemented a "charge crawl" feature, where a charging car would slowly inch down a track for a half hour while charging, attached to an overhead suspended cable? Actually, there's no need for that. Just have lots of parking, with each space with a charger. Most road trip rest stops take about 1/2 hour anyhow -- and that's when I'm in drill-sergeant mode with my passengers. Problem 3: Gas stations are not generally in the neighbourhood of electricity generation stations. Tesla is already building stations that get power from solar. Problem 4: Re-charging will not work nearly as well when vehicle utilization goes up due to sharing Consumers may not want battery swaps yet, but car-share companies might well want it.
• omg_ketchup 11y ago
  Can't "gas stations" just swap out your empty battery for a charged one, the way you can swap out an empty propane tank and $20 for a full one?
  • wwweston 11y ago
    A few years back I worked on the web presence for a company focused around doing exactly that (along with a network of charging stations). It didn't quite work out as planned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Place http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-place http://www.fastcompany.com/3028159/a-broken-place-better-pla...
    • omg_ketchup 11y ago
      I was thinking more like a car battery meets a propane tank- easy enough to just lift up and take inside to the attendant. One day, I guess.
• mdip 11y ago
  Well thought out points but he's suffered from a common mistake when comparing a revolutionary technology with a current, well proliferated, technology. The rules of vehicle ownership have changed and will continue to change as we move to EVs. As to points about the grid: The electric companies already manage unexpected peeks/valleys using several techniques. Interruptable power used to cut people's AC off in the summer when the grid is suffering by offering participants a steep discount in electric rates will likely see its first expansion into recharging ports. Off-peek/On-peek rates will change. Even surcharges for vehicle owners charging at certain times could be implemented -- all before the first changes to the grid take place. Refueling: This fell victim to thinking of EVs as having the same limitations as ICEs. With the current crop of EVs, 99.95% of my travel would eliminate the need for a refueling station. I can charge at home and a look around my area, it's easier to find an EV charging parking space than it is to find someone driving an EV (Metro Detroit). More of these will appear -- the incentive to install these at retail locations is that you'll potentially increase your traffic and those who are there "just to refuel" will be there until they're sufficiently charged giving you ample time to make a few sales in the process. Cities are adding them as well and it's probable that this will become another revenue generator by having the car owner pay a rate above the electric rate/maintenance rate. For long-haul travel, these stations will now have something they never had before: a captive audience stuck there for the duration of the charge and their incentives will be similar to retail locations adding "EV parking spots" The remaining problems fall under the category of "EVs are new and not as common as ICEs." Service stations will become more familiar with the products as more of them appear on the road. Add in self-driving, which seems to be growing just behind EVs, and you end up with a model where disabled passengers can be met with a new "rental" while their vehicle is towed to a location that can service them. Because of a simple change to the fuel and engine, EVs don't suffer from some of the pain points of ICEs and require us to think about the similar problems that they share with ICE vehicles very differently.
• bjourne 11y ago
  I think electric BIKES, not cars, is the future. We're already seeing bikes with 1000W engines and batteries which have enough for 60 km range. It takes much less energy to transport one human on a bike than one inside a "steel cage". For longer trips, you still need mass transit or perhaps car pooling services of some sort. But for commuter trips, I think electric bikes or trikes will absolutely replace cars in the near future.