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> 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

by ebbv 10y ago

> 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 buy them. You're letting details you needn't worry about influence your possible purchase now? That makes no sense. Do you worry about how Ford is going to source their parts when they run into supply chain issues (which they do)? Do you worry about any other company's supply chain issues? You are repeating anti-EV FUD. > I suppose we're currently in the honeymoon period for electrics. But what will happen 5-8 years down the line, when all the early mainstream adopters of electrics will have to replace their batteries? Is it feasible to recycle all those batteries? A) All manufacturers have buyback/replacement programs in place that they have to uphold with the customer. Again, you needn't worry about the details as a consumer beyond that. B) If you really insist on worrying about the details, look at some actual historic data instead of FUD; the price of EV batteries has been dropping dramatically over the last 10 years. All real signs (the fact that manufacturers keep opening new plants and increasing capacity, and that there is no real shortage of Lithium in the world despite the "3 companies" baloney) point to them continuing to drop. The only REAL reason to consider not buying an EV right now is the dramatic pace at which they are improving. But to me that just points to leasing instead of buying one.

gnicholas 10y ago
Consumers should absolutely consider whether we are on a sustainable growth curve. How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? If hydrogen-powered cars all of a sudden became the norm, EV drivers will be much less well-served than if EV sales continue to scale (as most EV purchasers probably assume they will).
- ebbv 10y ago
  > 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 did with Ethanol, then yeah Hydrogen cars could become more popular than EVs. But I would argue that even in that world, EVs are the better choice. They are lower maintenance and like I said, you don't need refueling stations. Your car refuels while it's parked in your garage.
  - sowbug 10y ago
    The best part of an electric car is starting every day with a full tank. I could never switch back to gas for that one reason. [edit: yes, I know it's an anachronism. I still dial phones, too.]
  - spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
    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.
    - timthorn 10y ago
      Overnight demand is substantially less than daytime - last night's demand in the UK was about 20% lower:http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php The grid would prefer a another demand curve, so overnight charging is helpful.
      - spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
        Is that going to be the same when say 15%-20% of the nation plugs in a car every evening - its going to the surge when people go to make a cup of tea when the adverts are on during coronation street look tame.
        WorldMaker 10y ago
        Car charging is a steady, predictable usage of electricity. People don't all arrive home at the exact same time. Additionally, being giant batteries, electric cars have the means to charge when most advantageous to the national grid. Most electric cars already have an option to wait to charge until off peak rates happen. (Off peak rates being cheaper because low overall demand.) But electric cars may be useful to the grid as giant surge protectors for things just like that cup of tea electric kettle break. Under some of the "smart grid" proposals, the electric companies would be able to not feed electricity to a vehicle in those brief moments of high demand on the grid, prioritizing immediate needs like people's kettles. Furthermore, "smart grid" ideas could even use electric cars as battery backup options, "leasing" already stored energy back from the car and paying it back later, as changes in demand happen. Even if some of those "smart grid" ideas don't get nationalized, you could still theoretically take advantage of some of those kinds of things in your own home. So if anything, electric cars may be surge stabilizers rather than surge causers.
- sowbug 10y ago
  Most hydrogen-powered cars are electric cars. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle (listing upcoming hydrogen vehicles, all using fuel cells). And that's actually the point of switching cars to electricity: we have many sustainable ways of making electricity, and zero ways of sustainably making gasoline. Get cars running on electricity, then continue building out the infrastructure.
  - dTal 10y ago
    >zero ways of sustainably making gasoline This is untrue, actually. You can depolymerise virtually anything carbon-based into oil. It's currently more expensive than digging it out of the ground, but we'll never run out of oil. What's more, assuming the carbon in the feed stock originally came from the atmosphere, burning the resulting product is carbon-neutral. Something to think about, given the unbeatable energy density of gasoline (barring nigh-magical battery technology).
    - ams6110 10y ago
      This is where we should be heading IMHO. Synthetic petroleum fuels that are carbon-neutral. This lets us keep using the existing infrastructure for transporting and retail sale of fuel, lets people keep using their current cars to maximize that value. Saves the absolutely massive investment that would be necessary to upgrade electical generation and delivery infrastructure to power a large fleet of EVs.
      - ebbv 10y ago
        No, it absolutely is not. Of all the ideas of how to power transportation in the future this is one of the worst. First, the idea that it is carbon neutral is absurdly wrong. If you're pulling the carbon out of anywhere but the atmosphere (and you are), then it's no more carbon neutral than pumping oil out of the ground and burning that. Second, it's hugely inefficient. If you're manufacturing fully synthetic petroleum, then that synthetic petroleum is acting like an energy storage medium, a liquid battery, rather than as a true fuel (a source where you're getting more energy out than you put in.) Any kind of battery source which has to be physically moved around via other sources of transportation is hugely inefficient compared to EVs with actual batteries where the energy merely has to be sent down transmission lines and the like. The losses involved in moving electricity around are far, far less than moving synthetic petroleum or hydrogen or any other "pseudo battery". Lastly, internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient themselves, especially compared with electric motors. They require tremendous upkeep and have energy losses that are three times that of EVs. So even if you could make the claim (which you can't) that your synthetic petroleum energy storage medium is 100% as efficient as moving power around, the ICE is going to result in needing to use up 3x as much energy to move your vehicle from Point A to Point B compared to an EV. Synthetic petroleum is a really, really bad idea and should not be pursued.
ptaipale 10y ago
> 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. Re: wind power.

by ebbv 10y ago

gnicholas 10y ago

Consumers should absolutely consider whether we are on a sustainable growth curve. How common will electric charging stations be if it turns out that EVs can't rise above 10% of the total car market? If hydrogen-powered cars all of a sudden became the norm, EV drivers will be much less well-served than if EV sales continue to scale (as most EV purchasers probably assume they will).

ebbv 10y ago
> 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 did with Ethanol, then yeah Hydrogen cars could become more popular than EVs. But I would argue that even in that world, EVs are the better choice. They are lower maintenance and like I said, you don't need refueling stations. Your car refuels while it's parked in your garage.
- sowbug 10y ago
  The best part of an electric car is starting every day with a full tank. I could never switch back to gas for that one reason. [edit: yes, I know it's an anachronism. I still dial phones, too.]
- spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
  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.
  - timthorn 10y ago
    Overnight demand is substantially less than daytime - last night's demand in the UK was about 20% lower:http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php The grid would prefer a another demand curve, so overnight charging is helpful.
    - spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
      Is that going to be the same when say 15%-20% of the nation plugs in a car every evening - its going to the surge when people go to make a cup of tea when the adverts are on during coronation street look tame.
      - WorldMaker 10y ago
        Car charging is a steady, predictable usage of electricity. People don't all arrive home at the exact same time. Additionally, being giant batteries, electric cars have the means to charge when most advantageous to the national grid. Most electric cars already have an option to wait to charge until off peak rates happen. (Off peak rates being cheaper because low overall demand.) But electric cars may be useful to the grid as giant surge protectors for things just like that cup of tea electric kettle break. Under some of the "smart grid" proposals, the electric companies would be able to not feed electricity to a vehicle in those brief moments of high demand on the grid, prioritizing immediate needs like people's kettles. Furthermore, "smart grid" ideas could even use electric cars as battery backup options, "leasing" already stored energy back from the car and paying it back later, as changes in demand happen. Even if some of those "smart grid" ideas don't get nationalized, you could still theoretically take advantage of some of those kinds of things in your own home. So if anything, electric cars may be surge stabilizers rather than surge causers.
sowbug 10y ago
Most hydrogen-powered cars are electric cars. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle (listing upcoming hydrogen vehicles, all using fuel cells). And that's actually the point of switching cars to electricity: we have many sustainable ways of making electricity, and zero ways of sustainably making gasoline. Get cars running on electricity, then continue building out the infrastructure.
- dTal 10y ago
  >zero ways of sustainably making gasoline This is untrue, actually. You can depolymerise virtually anything carbon-based into oil. It's currently more expensive than digging it out of the ground, but we'll never run out of oil. What's more, assuming the carbon in the feed stock originally came from the atmosphere, burning the resulting product is carbon-neutral. Something to think about, given the unbeatable energy density of gasoline (barring nigh-magical battery technology).
  - ams6110 10y ago
    This is where we should be heading IMHO. Synthetic petroleum fuels that are carbon-neutral. This lets us keep using the existing infrastructure for transporting and retail sale of fuel, lets people keep using their current cars to maximize that value. Saves the absolutely massive investment that would be necessary to upgrade electical generation and delivery infrastructure to power a large fleet of EVs.
    - ebbv 10y ago
      No, it absolutely is not. Of all the ideas of how to power transportation in the future this is one of the worst. First, the idea that it is carbon neutral is absurdly wrong. If you're pulling the carbon out of anywhere but the atmosphere (and you are), then it's no more carbon neutral than pumping oil out of the ground and burning that. Second, it's hugely inefficient. If you're manufacturing fully synthetic petroleum, then that synthetic petroleum is acting like an energy storage medium, a liquid battery, rather than as a true fuel (a source where you're getting more energy out than you put in.) Any kind of battery source which has to be physically moved around via other sources of transportation is hugely inefficient compared to EVs with actual batteries where the energy merely has to be sent down transmission lines and the like. The losses involved in moving electricity around are far, far less than moving synthetic petroleum or hydrogen or any other "pseudo battery". Lastly, internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient themselves, especially compared with electric motors. They require tremendous upkeep and have energy losses that are three times that of EVs. So even if you could make the claim (which you can't) that your synthetic petroleum energy storage medium is 100% as efficient as moving power around, the ICE is going to result in needing to use up 3x as much energy to move your vehicle from Point A to Point B compared to an EV. Synthetic petroleum is a really, really bad idea and should not be pursued.

ptaipale 10y ago

> 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. Re: wind power.