4 ms·

Electric vehicles will ultimately become more convenient and will win on that basis alone. Electric car designs can be more flexible, and performance will conti

Electric vehicles will ultimately become more convenient and will win on that basis alone. Electric car designs can be more flexible, and performance will continue to increase above and beyond the already ludicrous levels in some Tesla models. When you think about gasoline engines they're terribly inconvenient. They need a lot of maintenance. They have tons of finicky moving parts. They need gasoline, which is only sold at select retailers, and the price of gasoline changes constantly, often spiking higher without warning. It's only because this enormous infrastructure has built up around gasoline-powered cars that any of that is bearable. Can you imagine gasoline-powered cars trying to make inroads in a world that was historically all-electric? It'd be absurd. Somehow electric cars are gaining market share even when going against tradition, so it seems inevitable they'll hit some tipping point and gasoline will be considered the exotic, difficult to obtain fuel. When people can charge their car overnight for free with a wind-turbine, or on the weekend with a solar roof they'll have little reason to prefer gasoline powered cars.

gambiting 10y ago
There's loads of people who live in places which conceivably won't have the ability to charge electric cars, ever. Terraced houses in the UK - you have to park on the street, and the spaces are not marked - sometimes you can fit 30 cars on one side, sometimes 40, depending on how and what people park. Sometimes you park in front of your own front door, sometimes you have to park in a parallel street because maybe the neighbour has visitors and there's no more room. How do we solve that? Have 40 charging points on each side of every residential street in the UK? Not only would that be ugly as a sin, but also hideously expensive.
- apercu 10y ago
  Sure. There's also loads of people (millions and millions) that live in rural and suburban US and and Canada that could very easily install a charger in their garage or driveway. Don't ~~show~~ throw the baby out with the bathwater.
- cocoflunchy 10y ago
  How about driving to the nearest charging station?
  - andygates 10y ago
    This ties into charge/range anxiety, with short-range cars that journey might itself eat into the day's driving and we all like a full phone... One 250-mile cars are commonplace, it'll go away.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Plenty of places have that many parking meters - you need one per pair of cars. You'd end up paying the council a small premium to park and charge in front of your house, I suspect. Which isn't great but at least works. (I've seen someone charging a normal vehicle battery with an extension cord from a third floor window of an Edinburgh tenement..)
apercu 10y ago
If they made an electric with AWD/4WD that was sort of SUV boxy (you know, to put stuff in it) that was 4-5 inches higher off the ground than a typical sedan and sold for around $30k USD it would handle 90% of my needs.
coredog64 10y ago
Electric cars were initially more common than those powered by gasoline. Gasoline has very high energy density and they aren't really that fiddly: It is fairly common for an IC vehicle to rack up 200k miles with no service but consumables. Unless electric cars ramp to crazy levels overnight, they will have the effect of keeping fuel prices low. Demand for oil is (mostly) inelastic, with small surges in supply and demand responsible for large swings in price. As electric comes online, it will reduce those surges. When it gets more common, demand will shrink, lowering prices even further. I don't see electric powertrains taking over all the varied use cases for vehicles for a long time.
- astrodust 10y ago
  Charcoal powered cars were initially more common than those powered by gasoline as well. Energy density was the initial driver behind the push to gasoline, but if they'd had lithium-ion technology in 1880 the world would be radically different. Electric powertrains won't take over all uses, but they'll take over enough that the remainder is mostly an anachronism. As batteries are produced at higher capacity and lower cost, as alternative energy becomes more pervasive, the whole thing tips steeply to electric. For example, even for a cottage application with a boat electric might be better since you can charge it yourself vs. having to truck in marine fuel. With the right battery technology and solar panel system you'd save thousands. It's merely a decade or two away.
pjc50 10y ago
They might be more convenient, for journeys up to the battery's range, but they're also much more expensive upfront.
closeparen 10y ago
>When people can charge their car overnight for free with a wind-turbine When the HOA/planning commission determines that wind turbines are not eyesores, and property speculators decide to install more than a small handful of chargers in the garages under the apartment buildings they own... It's going to be a long climb. I'd guess that in the immediate term, we'll see a Luxe-like service to come get your car in the middle of the night, charge it, and put it back. This should be substantially more expensive than the amortized cost of a charger in your garage, so renters will eventually start demanding chargers, and over a few decades things will change.

gambiting 10y ago

There's loads of people who live in places which conceivably won't have the ability to charge electric cars, ever. Terraced houses in the UK - you have to park on the street, and the spaces are not marked - sometimes you can fit 30 cars on one side, sometimes 40, depending on how and what people park. Sometimes you park in front of your own front door, sometimes you have to park in a parallel street because maybe the neighbour has visitors and there's no more room. How do we solve that? Have 40 charging points on each side of every residential street in the UK? Not only would that be ugly as a sin, but also hideously expensive.

apercu 10y ago
Sure. There's also loads of people (millions and millions) that live in rural and suburban US and and Canada that could very easily install a charger in their garage or driveway. Don't ~~show~~ throw the baby out with the bathwater.
cocoflunchy 10y ago
How about driving to the nearest charging station?
- andygates 10y ago
  This ties into charge/range anxiety, with short-range cars that journey might itself eat into the day's driving and we all like a full phone... One 250-mile cars are commonplace, it'll go away.
pjc50 10y ago
Plenty of places have that many parking meters - you need one per pair of cars. You'd end up paying the council a small premium to park and charge in front of your house, I suspect. Which isn't great but at least works. (I've seen someone charging a normal vehicle battery with an extension cord from a third floor window of an Edinburgh tenement..)

apercu 10y ago

If they made an electric with AWD/4WD that was sort of SUV boxy (you know, to put stuff in it) that was 4-5 inches higher off the ground than a typical sedan and sold for around $30k USD it would handle 90% of my needs.

coredog64 10y ago

Electric cars were initially more common than those powered by gasoline. Gasoline has very high energy density and they aren't really that fiddly: It is fairly common for an IC vehicle to rack up 200k miles with no service but consumables. Unless electric cars ramp to crazy levels overnight, they will have the effect of keeping fuel prices low. Demand for oil is (mostly) inelastic, with small surges in supply and demand responsible for large swings in price. As electric comes online, it will reduce those surges. When it gets more common, demand will shrink, lowering prices even further. I don't see electric powertrains taking over all the varied use cases for vehicles for a long time.

astrodust 10y ago
Charcoal powered cars were initially more common than those powered by gasoline as well. Energy density was the initial driver behind the push to gasoline, but if they'd had lithium-ion technology in 1880 the world would be radically different. Electric powertrains won't take over all uses, but they'll take over enough that the remainder is mostly an anachronism. As batteries are produced at higher capacity and lower cost, as alternative energy becomes more pervasive, the whole thing tips steeply to electric. For example, even for a cottage application with a boat electric might be better since you can charge it yourself vs. having to truck in marine fuel. With the right battery technology and solar panel system you'd save thousands. It's merely a decade or two away.

pjc50 10y ago

They might be more convenient, for journeys up to the battery's range, but they're also much more expensive upfront.

closeparen 10y ago

>When people can charge their car overnight for free with a wind-turbine When the HOA/planning commission determines that wind turbines are not eyesores, and property speculators decide to install more than a small handful of chargers in the garages under the apartment buildings they own... It's going to be a long climb. I'd guess that in the immediate term, we'll see a Luxe-like service to come get your car in the middle of the night, charge it, and put it back. This should be substantially more expensive than the amortized cost of a charger in your garage, so renters will eventually start demanding chargers, and over a few decades things will change.