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"After a couple of decades, hybrid and electric vehicles still account for no more than 2% of new-car sales in most countries." This is just not convincing. Th

"After a couple of decades, hybrid and electric vehicles still account for no more than 2% of new-car sales in most countries." This is just not convincing. The sales were weak because the products were weak. There are about 500,000 people who have placed orders for the Model 3 sight unseen. There is tremendous pent up demand for these cars, simply because buyers believe that the company selling them finally has the right formula. "Unlike video cameras, lidar cannot be dazzled by bright light nor blinded by the dark." LiDAR I've worked with in fact could suffer 'sun poisoning' if the sun shone directly into the receiver. "Local governments will have to spend scarce resources making road infrastructure more AV-friendly." Right, like fixing this false lane marker (the actual lane marker is the yellow line in the lane barrier's shadow): http://imgur.com/a/KnsXU http://imgur.com/a/KnsXU

daveguy 9y ago
> There are about 500,000 people who have placed orders for the Model 3 sight unseen. * There are 500,000 people who have put down a fully refundable $1,000 deposit on the option to buy a Tesla Model 3. That's a long way from 500,000 orders placed. (But I agree, "less than 2% of all new car sales in most countries" is a weasely stat, because it is growing fast. They are still a small percent of total sales)
- ams6110 9y ago
  It's because EVs only work for a subset of driving needs (local commutes). If you need to drive long distances, even occasionally, you either need to own another car, or rent one. Either is at best suboptimal compared to owning one car that can do it all. When I can own an EV that will go 300-400 miles per charge and can be recharged in 5 minutes at any corner "station" I will think about it.
  - wcummings 9y ago
    I thought the idea was that you could swap batteries, not sit there charging.
    - daveguy 9y ago
      As far as I know no one has implemented that yet. Tesla has superchargers around the country, but those are charge based not exchange based. They give +170 miles for a 30 minute charge, so not exactly a quick stop. The size and weight of the full battery pack may make it infeasible to change quickly. A half pack or 1/4 pack may be useful, but then the car has to be standardized/designed for that and you have to worry about getting worn batteries.
      - wcummings 9y ago
        Agreed, I can see how that would be a hassle. That said, I cant even remember the last time i traveled more than 85mi (half the capacity, so depleting thr battery in a round trip) in a car, and I dont think im that exceptional, so theres probably still a pretty big market for these things. But personally, Ill stick to the bus. I do all my best thinking on the bus.
        llukas 9y ago
        So you and grandparent missed somehow Tesla and other companies that demonstrated battery change?
        daveguy 9y ago
        Oh yeah? They're offering that at charging stations? Where is that? There is an enormous difference between demonstrated and available. Showing something could work doesn't address bad batteries or standardization.
        llukas 9y ago
        Please don't move the goalposts. Grandparent claim was: > The size and weight of the full battery pack may make it infeasible to change quickly. Tesla did it - in 90 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdiGMIUxeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdiGMIUxeY Also WTF is that claim about bad batteries and standarization? Tesla owns entire production/support chain of Tesla cars plus they got live telemetry from each car - they set the standard and got full info about the car battery. There was another company in Israel (Better Place) that had multiple battery swap stations as well. Quick battery swap is technically feasible contrary to grandparent claim.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    It works for any "local commutes" up to 250 miles (base model). That's a shitload of driving. Taking a half hour break after over 3 hours of driving is not that weird. Imagine if we all had electric cars, and had to switch to gasoline. It would seem so inconvenient to have to go all the way to a gas station to refill, when you're used to having a fully charged vehicle every morning. It would seem so inconsequential that you could make 400-500 mile journeys a whole half hour faster. Why would you not want to stop for lunch while on a 6-7 hour trip?
    - taway_1212 9y ago
      Maybe I've had lunch already (am driving in the evening)? Maybe my lunch takes 15 minutes and I don't need entire 30? Maybe I prefer to have my break 4-5 hours into the drive instead?
      - hwillis 9y ago
        My point is that it is certainly not a dealbreaker, and barely even a minor inconvenience. It's certainly irrelevant next to climate change.
        taway_1212 9y ago
        I wonder what's the environmental cost of: producing and disposing of car batteries, and upgrading our power grid (as well as generation capacities) to produce the amounts of energy that switch to electric cars would require.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        hwillis 9y ago
        If you're really curious, this subject is of course extensively studied. I mostly follow EIA and NREL reports. Both organizations take an annual census of the state of involved technologies. The environmental cost of switching to electric vehicles is quite low with the caveat that cobalt mining can produce concentrated heavy metal pollution. This is unlikely to be a problem as cobalt mining will diversify from third world countries, specifically Congo. There is a modest increase in manufacturing energy (~30% iirc) which is made up rapidly by electricity (within a year if powered by renewables- a car burns its own weight in gas in several years). The cost of renewable plants is quite reasonable if you replace old plants, and grid scale batteries are now also cheap. A solar power plant with a 3 day battery backup now costs less than an equivalent nuclear plant. Natural gas is exceptionally cheap but it cant scale fully. Renewables get cheaper at scale. The grid itself will probably not need many upgrades, or even any upgrades. Power draw fluctuates 50%+ between day and night, and electric cars will charge overwhelmingly at night. If we switched all cars to electric it eould increase residential draw by 30-40% (11 kWh per day). The grid will sustain that easily except for specific locations with abnormal charging times or high distance driving. Heres one on power generation: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html
  - daveguy 9y ago
    In the US it's not as feasible because of driving distances between cities, but in the EU where cities are closer and the train system is healthy I can see EVs gobbling up market share fast. In the US you would need random charging stations lining the highways like we have gas stations. I expect people are much less likely to want to stop for 30 min at a random gas station than in a city center to recharge.
    - greglindahl 9y ago
      Current Tesla owners seem to be OK with the supercharging system.
- xbmcuser 9y ago
  India and China the largest growth market for passenger cars and vehicles in general are pushing for electric cars.
ajross 9y ago
> LiDAR I've worked with in fact could suffer 'sun poisoning' if the sun shone directly into the receiver. Notably, the optical guidance systems in all existing vehicles are subject to exactly the same exploit. This is one of the criticisms (of self-driving cars, and with LIDAR vs. imaging specifically) I just simply don't get. You can blind a real driver much more easily and less recoverably than you can any sensor.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Drivers deal with having the sun shining in their eye using sunshades, visors and a whole raft of movement tricks to avoid having their retinas burned out. A passive sensor (which is where we're headed) has no protection at all, it just sits where while it is being fried. It's true that the sun low near the horizon at sunup or sundown, especially on clear winter days causes accidents but I'm not all that sure whether or not LIDAR will do better here than humans. Time will tell.
  - wavefunction 9y ago
    What if you put an intensity sensor next to the LIDAR sensor and came up with some solution to position the LIDAR like sunshades, visors, and 'movement tricks.'
    - XorNot 9y ago
      HDR photography can be applied practically to let you look directly into the sun and still see objects next to it perfectly clearly. There's no actual problem for a video camera to drive while staring straight into the sun, beyond the need to have a camera shutter.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  > This is one of the criticisms (of self-driving cars, and with LIDAR vs. imaging specifically) I just simply don't get. You can blind a real driver much more easily and less recoverably than you can any sensor. Human optics is actually really, really good. We can adapt very well to having a light source as bright as the sun in the same field of view as shaded and make at details in both very bright and very dark regions. Optical sensors can't do that--you either wash out the bright stuff and see the shaded detail, or you darken the shade and make the bright stuff visible.
averagewall 9y ago
I agree with the poor comparison to electric cars. A level 4 taxi will completely destroy competition from "drivered" taxis for the routes that it's allowed to take. Unlike an electric car which is marginally or not at all cheaper than petrol.

daveguy 9y ago

> There are about 500,000 people who have placed orders for the Model 3 sight unseen. * There are 500,000 people who have put down a fully refundable $1,000 deposit on the option to buy a Tesla Model 3. That's a long way from 500,000 orders placed. (But I agree, "less than 2% of all new car sales in most countries" is a weasely stat, because it is growing fast. They are still a small percent of total sales)

ams6110 9y ago
It's because EVs only work for a subset of driving needs (local commutes). If you need to drive long distances, even occasionally, you either need to own another car, or rent one. Either is at best suboptimal compared to owning one car that can do it all. When I can own an EV that will go 300-400 miles per charge and can be recharged in 5 minutes at any corner "station" I will think about it.
- wcummings 9y ago
  I thought the idea was that you could swap batteries, not sit there charging.
  - daveguy 9y ago
    As far as I know no one has implemented that yet. Tesla has superchargers around the country, but those are charge based not exchange based. They give +170 miles for a 30 minute charge, so not exactly a quick stop. The size and weight of the full battery pack may make it infeasible to change quickly. A half pack or 1/4 pack may be useful, but then the car has to be standardized/designed for that and you have to worry about getting worn batteries.
    - wcummings 9y ago
      Agreed, I can see how that would be a hassle. That said, I cant even remember the last time i traveled more than 85mi (half the capacity, so depleting thr battery in a round trip) in a car, and I dont think im that exceptional, so theres probably still a pretty big market for these things. But personally, Ill stick to the bus. I do all my best thinking on the bus.
      - llukas 9y ago
        So you and grandparent missed somehow Tesla and other companies that demonstrated battery change?
        daveguy 9y ago
        Oh yeah? They're offering that at charging stations? Where is that? There is an enormous difference between demonstrated and available. Showing something could work doesn't address bad batteries or standardization.
        llukas 9y ago
        Please don't move the goalposts. Grandparent claim was: > The size and weight of the full battery pack may make it infeasible to change quickly. Tesla did it - in 90 seconds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdiGMIUxeY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XdiGMIUxeY Also WTF is that claim about bad batteries and standarization? Tesla owns entire production/support chain of Tesla cars plus they got live telemetry from each car - they set the standard and got full info about the car battery. There was another company in Israel (Better Place) that had multiple battery swap stations as well. Quick battery swap is technically feasible contrary to grandparent claim.
- hwillis 9y ago
  It works for any "local commutes" up to 250 miles (base model). That's a shitload of driving. Taking a half hour break after over 3 hours of driving is not that weird. Imagine if we all had electric cars, and had to switch to gasoline. It would seem so inconvenient to have to go all the way to a gas station to refill, when you're used to having a fully charged vehicle every morning. It would seem so inconsequential that you could make 400-500 mile journeys a whole half hour faster. Why would you not want to stop for lunch while on a 6-7 hour trip?
  - taway_1212 9y ago
    Maybe I've had lunch already (am driving in the evening)? Maybe my lunch takes 15 minutes and I don't need entire 30? Maybe I prefer to have my break 4-5 hours into the drive instead?
    - hwillis 9y ago
      My point is that it is certainly not a dealbreaker, and barely even a minor inconvenience. It's certainly irrelevant next to climate change.
      - taway_1212 9y ago
        I wonder what's the environmental cost of: producing and disposing of car batteries, and upgrading our power grid (as well as generation capacities) to produce the amounts of energy that switch to electric cars would require.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        hwillis 9y ago
        If you're really curious, this subject is of course extensively studied. I mostly follow EIA and NREL reports. Both organizations take an annual census of the state of involved technologies. The environmental cost of switching to electric vehicles is quite low with the caveat that cobalt mining can produce concentrated heavy metal pollution. This is unlikely to be a problem as cobalt mining will diversify from third world countries, specifically Congo. There is a modest increase in manufacturing energy (~30% iirc) which is made up rapidly by electricity (within a year if powered by renewables- a car burns its own weight in gas in several years). The cost of renewable plants is quite reasonable if you replace old plants, and grid scale batteries are now also cheap. A solar power plant with a 3 day battery backup now costs less than an equivalent nuclear plant. Natural gas is exceptionally cheap but it cant scale fully. Renewables get cheaper at scale. The grid itself will probably not need many upgrades, or even any upgrades. Power draw fluctuates 50%+ between day and night, and electric cars will charge overwhelmingly at night. If we switched all cars to electric it eould increase residential draw by 30-40% (11 kWh per day). The grid will sustain that easily except for specific locations with abnormal charging times or high distance driving. Heres one on power generation: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html
- daveguy 9y ago
  In the US it's not as feasible because of driving distances between cities, but in the EU where cities are closer and the train system is healthy I can see EVs gobbling up market share fast. In the US you would need random charging stations lining the highways like we have gas stations. I expect people are much less likely to want to stop for 30 min at a random gas station than in a city center to recharge.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Current Tesla owners seem to be OK with the supercharging system.
xbmcuser 9y ago
India and China the largest growth market for passenger cars and vehicles in general are pushing for electric cars.

ajross 9y ago

> LiDAR I've worked with in fact could suffer 'sun poisoning' if the sun shone directly into the receiver. Notably, the optical guidance systems in all existing vehicles are subject to exactly the same exploit. This is one of the criticisms (of self-driving cars, and with LIDAR vs. imaging specifically) I just simply don't get. You can blind a real driver much more easily and less recoverably than you can any sensor.

jacquesm 9y ago
Drivers deal with having the sun shining in their eye using sunshades, visors and a whole raft of movement tricks to avoid having their retinas burned out. A passive sensor (which is where we're headed) has no protection at all, it just sits where while it is being fried. It's true that the sun low near the horizon at sunup or sundown, especially on clear winter days causes accidents but I'm not all that sure whether or not LIDAR will do better here than humans. Time will tell.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  What if you put an intensity sensor next to the LIDAR sensor and came up with some solution to position the LIDAR like sunshades, visors, and 'movement tricks.'
  - XorNot 9y ago
    HDR photography can be applied practically to let you look directly into the sun and still see objects next to it perfectly clearly. There's no actual problem for a video camera to drive while staring straight into the sun, beyond the need to have a camera shutter.
jcranmer 9y ago
> This is one of the criticisms (of self-driving cars, and with LIDAR vs. imaging specifically) I just simply don't get. You can blind a real driver much more easily and less recoverably than you can any sensor. Human optics is actually really, really good. We can adapt very well to having a light source as bright as the sun in the same field of view as shaded and make at details in both very bright and very dark regions. Optical sensors can't do that--you either wash out the bright stuff and see the shaded detail, or you darken the shade and make the bright stuff visible.

averagewall 9y ago

I agree with the poor comparison to electric cars. A level 4 taxi will completely destroy competition from "drivered" taxis for the routes that it's allowed to take. Unlike an electric car which is marginally or not at all cheaper than petrol.