10 ms·

With many countries tabling laws to outlaw the sale of diesel and gasoline cars around 2030, this is going to accelerate extremely quickly. In 5 years (2022),

by grecy 9y ago

With many countries tabling laws to outlaw the sale of diesel and gasoline cars around 2030, this is going to accelerate extremely quickly. In 5 years (2022), everyone will know it will be illegal to buy a gasoline car in just under 8 years. I think there will be very little demand for the regular old gas powered car. (excepting maybe exotics, or "pleasure drives", which much be a tiny fraction of overall sales) That car you have to fill with liquid cancer is going to be worth extremely little, very soon.

slg 9y ago
Aren't all those laws focused on new cars? I can't imagine the backlash a government would receive by zeroing out the value of most people's most expensive possession.
- grecy 9y ago
  Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles. It's similar to when Color TVs were invented. What happened to the re-sale value of all the B&W TVs that were already out there? They plummeted, because they had been superseded. This scenario will be even more aggressive, because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech".
  - loeg 9y ago
    No, the laws will only affect new car sales, not the old tech. That doesn't affect the secondary market for used gasoline cars in the slightest.
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      It might have the opposite effect, making them more rare and increasing prices even.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - 1_2__4 9y ago
    That's not really comparable at all. A color tv is a fundamentally more distinct product as compared to a b&w tv than a ICE cars is compared to an electric. Especially for the foreseeable future.
    - hammock 9y ago
      Lol in what way?
      - slg 9y ago
        Because the primary function of a TV is displaying moving pictures while the primary function of a car is not related to its fuel type. The general public has not yet shown a dramatic interest in electric over ICE, but improvements to TV picture have been shown to be major drivers of adoption from color, HD, 4k, and so on. That is the whole reason why these laws are being considered, to help move people off ICE cars quicker than they would in a normal market.
      - batiudrami 9y ago
        Because a colour TV is fundamentally and objectively better at its primary use case (watching TV). A petrol powered car will get you from A to B just like an electric one.
        Robotbeat 9y ago
        EV is fundamentally and objectively better as well. Heat, noise, maintenance/fuel cost are lower. Acceleration higher. Contingent on low battery prices which make range and charge rate competitive.
        batiudrami 9y ago
        Oh don't get me wrong - there are advantages of course. But people are underinformed / bad at calculating whole of life costs / don't have the extra cash available so a cheap petrol vehicle will look appealing. There isn't the "wow" factor of comparing colour vs B&W TV - especially at the low end. The Nissan Leaf was a nice car to drive but it wasn't impressing anyone because of how cool it looked.
  - hnaccy 9y ago
    > Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles. >because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech". ?
    - grecy 9y ago
      I mean laws will ban the sale of new ICE cars, which by then will be the "old tech". So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? (unless, like I said, it's a pleasure driver or some exotic, which is a tiny fraction of all cars sold) Think of all the things that have been replaced and superseded in history - once the new thing exists, the old one drops in price dramatically.
      - refurb 9y ago
        I think you underestimate the financial burden of buying a car. As long as a gas vehicle runs, they'll be a market for it. If they depreciate even faster, they'll still be a market. People don't care about resale at the bottom of the market. They care about reliable transportation which I assume gas cars will continue to provide. There are plenty of 20 year old vehicles out there with plenty of life left in them.
      - hammock 9y ago
        >when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? For the same exact reasons many people today choose to buy used gas cars over new electric cars.
      - woodandsteel 9y ago
        And don't forget that EV's will be a whole lot better than they are now, like cheaper and longer-range.
      - mixedCase 9y ago
        > So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? Because the prices of non-collectable ICE cars is bound to plummet unless we haven't solved the battery charge speed issue (as in, in practice, supposedly it was recently solved in theory).
- lg 9y ago
  but if the entire supply chain knows this is coming, will the growing scarcity of gasoline make these cars worthless anyway?
- curun1r 9y ago
  When new car sales move to electric from gasoline, you'll start to see gas stations go out of business...slowly at first but accelerating as the percentage of gas powered vehicles declines. You'll still have your car and be allowed to drive it, but the days of just finding a gas station wherever you need them will be over. Much like early days of electric cars, people will need a concrete refueling plan for every trip, which is going to make those cars a lot less attractive to own and a lot less valuable on the resale market.
  - admiralpumpkin 9y ago
    Or we'll see "gas" stations incrementally change to "gas-n-charge" stations. As society moves from liquid hydrocarbons to electrons for personal transportation I can see no reason why these locations won't adapt. After all, people will still ingest their liquid fuel and expel their waste. ;-)
    - curun1r 9y ago
      We won't need nearly as many charging stations as we need gas stations because electric cars can be charged at home.
      - slg 9y ago
        Maybe that is true in rural and suburban environments, but I doubt it in dense urban environments. Adding a charger to every spot in residential parking garages and on every residential street is a bigger infrastructure project than converting over gas stations to chargers. You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.
        brewdad 9y ago
        > You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car. True, but for most drivers on most days they will be able to charge up at home overnight. Charge time won't matter as much then. Drivers in dense urban environments will likely move towards a car sharing model since, as you noted, the costs and practicality of infrastructure retrofitting will be exorbitant.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
Kinda curious how electrical vehicles will fare during a mandatory evacuation or disaster. If you don't have a full charge, there's not an easy way to get a full charge, and so you will just not have transportation the full route.
- grecy 9y ago
  Have you seen what happens to gas stations during a mandatory evacuation or disaster? With no electricity, gas can not be pumped from the tanks. Even when it can, there is immediately a line-up of 100s of vehicles. (I see this very often in West Africa)
  - putsteadywere 9y ago
    I saw it the other day when the eclipse came to Oregon, and the population suddenly increased by 25% for a few days. I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem. [0]: http://www.kgw.com/news/eclipse/gas-shortages-long-waits-reported-at-central-oregon-stations/465012913 http://www.kgw.com/news/eclipse/gas-shortages-long-waits-rep...
    - davidw 9y ago
      Interestingly, my observation here in Bend was that the worst shortages were in the middle of last week as locals rushed to fill up so they wouldn't run out... Could have been worse up near Madras, though, which is smaller and had a lot more people.
      - cowsandmilk 9y ago
        yep, article from parent was from August 16, well before the eclipse...
    - cowsandmilk 9y ago
      > I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem. Some parts of the US aren't able to easily meet energy demand they can forecast when it goes up by amounts like 25%. For instance, Pepco pays to install thermostats where they can turn down/off your air conditioner[0]. Same with Dominion Energy[1]. I would be unsurprised if an influx of people of the size to cause gas shortages would also cause problems for electrical grids in many parts of the country. [0] https://energywiserewards.pepco.com/md/faq/index.php#q2 https://energywiserewards.pepco.com/md/faq/index.php#q2 [1] https://www.dominionenergy.com/home-and-small-business/ways-to-save/energy-conservation-programs/smart-cooling-rewards/smart-cooling-rewards-faqs https://www.dominionenergy.com/home-and-small-business/ways-...
askvictor 9y ago
A friend who is a materials engineer told me that there aren't enough rare-Earth metals in the world to supply the demand for magnets to replace all of the current petrol based cars with electric cars. No sources unfortunately, but this thing might not scale.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  That's part of the reason why practically all electric cars currently in production use induction motors, which only require copper. Yes, it would require more rare earths than are currently economically feasible to mine if we replaced every fossil fuel engine with a permanent magnet electric motor of equal power. The only real difference between the two is the design difficulty of the drive circuitry for the VFD to run the induction motor. That's largely a solved problem.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    I think it's likely some other resource might be a constraint in that tight a timeline though. Either something for the cars themselves, or the infrastructure for charging them.
    - hwillis 9y ago
      Do you have any reason to believe that? Almost all car charging is done at night, when grid load is far lower. Charging will not be a problem, and there is no material shortage likely in the near future.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        Just the ban being 5 years out. I've certainly run into homes that couldn't add a clothes dryer circuit without major renovation involving the city. Not saying it will be be an issue everywhere, but the span is too short for it not to be an issue in many places. Given the short time frame, proof that there aren't issues would seem more prudent. Whether that's manufacturing capacity for batteries, or grid shortfalls in certain areas, or whatever.
sien 9y ago
Many countries in 2030? Germany's upper house passed a non-binding resolution about how they want it to happen in 2030. What others are there? There are bunch of countries talking about 2040 and a few including the UK have legislated. However, that is safe enough that the current bunch of legislators will be long gone. It might also be like repeatedly missed emissions targets and so on. Also, called petroleum liquid cancer is inflammatory.
- gutnor 9y ago
  Indeed, 0-emission target (i.e. no car, truck, bus, train new or old circulating emitting CO2) for London is 2050. However, there is a trend at the moment both in local government and national one. If that is followed by actual investment in charging infrastructure, sometimes between 2020-2030 electric cars could reach critical mass. At the same time, some region and countries of Europe are already thinking going backward on fiscal encouragement to buy an electric car. In Europe the major part of the fuel cost is taxes, and at some point they will need to find something to tax electric cars on, doing it too early could kill electric cars momentum ... so wait and see.
gozur88 9y ago
I can't see a law like that passing in the US for generations.
nostrademons 9y ago
There's a non-negligible chance that everything will be self-driving by 2030, and you'll call a car from a car-service on demand instead of owning one. (Yeah, I just got stuck behind a Waymo self-driving vehicle on El Camino again today. They are annoying, but much further along than anyone who doesn't live in Silicon Valley realizes.)
djKianoosh 9y ago
If what you say becomes true, then those 911's and R8's (I'm guessing that's generally what you mean by exotics/pleasure drives) will actually go UP in value, no?
- kbob 9y ago
  It will be a replay of the 1970s when a combination of new emissions and safety standards locked a lot of niche manufacturers out of the US market. Pre-1975 exotics held value and even appreciated. The gray market, which imported high end used cars, became popular until NHTSA banned it.
Hasz 9y ago
Liquid cancer? C'mon, that's a bit extreme. Getting down to the point, can you imagine the political fallout from crushing the value of a gas car? It's a truck sized political landmine, and no party is willing to touch that thing with a hundred foot stick. Gas still has significant advantages that electric has yet to match. Worst gas has 53x the specific energy of the best Li-ion, and even with a hundred % efficient induction motor and a 10% efficient motor (try closer to 30% realistically), gas is still a much more energy dense fuel. Still, gas has a ton going for it. It's quicker to "charge" by an order of magnitude; it's easy to carry an auxiliary supply to double or triple range. Cold weather and reliability are excellent (hundreds of thousands of miles with a minimum of maintenance). There are no concerns about cell wearout (batteries will last for 5 years, maybe). Virtually everywhere on the planet, there's someone in any population center who knows how to work with gas cars. The network for gas is highly developed and highly entrenched. No one is giving up trillions in value without a fight. In all honesty, I expect to see gasoline powered vehicles on the road for the next 100 years, barring an unprecedented revolution.
- beambot 9y ago
  I mean... if you drink gasoline, you probably will get cancer.
  - Hasz 9y ago
    I'd argue eating a battery would end in a similar fashion. this is a link https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/seven-substances-added-14th-report-carcinogens https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/seven-substanc... to a Health and Human Services 14th Report on Carcinogens, classifying cobalt as a carcinogen Point being, "liquid cancer" is fear-mongering hyperbole -- lots of things are carcinogenic.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      Not many of those things get blown into the air in massive amounts right where population density is highest though.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
> I think there will be very little demand for the regular old gas powered car. Nobody has addressed the infrastructural problem of recharging massive fleets of privately owned electric vehicles. It's a pipe dream that this will all be fixed by 2030. This will never happen in the US for the foreseeable future. Considering how our broadband surcharges have been siphoned off with nothing to show for it, no amount of government intervention through taxation will fix this. That leaves market forces as the only factor in play for the US. The market is going to stick with ICE cars.
- ZeroGravitas 9y ago
  Lots of utility grid providers have addressed exactly these problems. Recently in the UK there were some headlines when the usual suspects in the media published their worst case scenarios as "EVs could destroy the grid!" and the grid had to publish a clarification http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.pdf http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.p...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
segmondy 9y ago
I keep hearing this rubbish. Do you know how well entrenched big oil is in the govt? How many wars have we fought over oil? Gasoline cars will still be a thing 20 years from now.
wisty 9y ago
The laws will target new cars. And the price of gas might plummet as big oil realises no-one is buying. Eventually this will end up costing more - all the gas stations will close as it gets too expensive with reduced economies of scale, but until they go out of business they'll cut prices.
donatj 9y ago
They're going to be repealed very quickly in my opinion. The laws were written by incredibly over optimistic people with zero understanding of the actual science or practicalities. Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive.
- keenerd 9y ago
  > there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive. Probably not true. Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14922104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14922104 Particularly the analysis provided by hwillis.
- paganel 9y ago
  > Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive. And unless the power networks from a lot of countries are not modernized. Not sure about the States, but over-here in Eastern Europe we get power-cuts from time to time during summer months because everybody has their AC turned on (they usually don't last long, but it happens). If half of the 1 million cars that are now driving on the streets in my city were to be electric then I'm pretty sure that the local power network will just give up spectacularly.
pwg 9y ago
> With many countries tabling laws to outlaw the sale of diesel and gasoline cars around 2030, And the world moves closer to the tale in Rush's song "Red Barchetta" from 1981 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

by grecy 9y ago

slg 9y ago

Aren't all those laws focused on new cars? I can't imagine the backlash a government would receive by zeroing out the value of most people's most expensive possession.

grecy 9y ago
Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles. It's similar to when Color TVs were invented. What happened to the re-sale value of all the B&W TVs that were already out there? They plummeted, because they had been superseded. This scenario will be even more aggressive, because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech".
- loeg 9y ago
  No, the laws will only affect new car sales, not the old tech. That doesn't affect the secondary market for used gasoline cars in the slightest.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    It might have the opposite effect, making them more rare and increasing prices even.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- 1_2__4 9y ago
  That's not really comparable at all. A color tv is a fundamentally more distinct product as compared to a b&w tv than a ICE cars is compared to an electric. Especially for the foreseeable future.
  - hammock 9y ago
    Lol in what way?
    - slg 9y ago
      Because the primary function of a TV is displaying moving pictures while the primary function of a car is not related to its fuel type. The general public has not yet shown a dramatic interest in electric over ICE, but improvements to TV picture have been shown to be major drivers of adoption from color, HD, 4k, and so on. That is the whole reason why these laws are being considered, to help move people off ICE cars quicker than they would in a normal market.
    - batiudrami 9y ago
      Because a colour TV is fundamentally and objectively better at its primary use case (watching TV). A petrol powered car will get you from A to B just like an electric one.
      - Robotbeat 9y ago
        EV is fundamentally and objectively better as well. Heat, noise, maintenance/fuel cost are lower. Acceleration higher. Contingent on low battery prices which make range and charge rate competitive.
        batiudrami 9y ago
        Oh don't get me wrong - there are advantages of course. But people are underinformed / bad at calculating whole of life costs / don't have the extra cash available so a cheap petrol vehicle will look appealing. There isn't the "wow" factor of comparing colour vs B&W TV - especially at the low end. The Nissan Leaf was a nice car to drive but it wasn't impressing anyone because of how cool it looked.
- hnaccy 9y ago
  > Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles. >because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech". ?
  - grecy 9y ago
    I mean laws will ban the sale of new ICE cars, which by then will be the "old tech". So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? (unless, like I said, it's a pleasure driver or some exotic, which is a tiny fraction of all cars sold) Think of all the things that have been replaced and superseded in history - once the new thing exists, the old one drops in price dramatically.
    - refurb 9y ago
      I think you underestimate the financial burden of buying a car. As long as a gas vehicle runs, they'll be a market for it. If they depreciate even faster, they'll still be a market. People don't care about resale at the bottom of the market. They care about reliable transportation which I assume gas cars will continue to provide. There are plenty of 20 year old vehicles out there with plenty of life left in them.
    - hammock 9y ago
      >when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? For the same exact reasons many people today choose to buy used gas cars over new electric cars.
    - woodandsteel 9y ago
      And don't forget that EV's will be a whole lot better than they are now, like cheaper and longer-range.
    - mixedCase 9y ago
      > So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? Because the prices of non-collectable ICE cars is bound to plummet unless we haven't solved the battery charge speed issue (as in, in practice, supposedly it was recently solved in theory).
lg 9y ago
but if the entire supply chain knows this is coming, will the growing scarcity of gasoline make these cars worthless anyway?
curun1r 9y ago
When new car sales move to electric from gasoline, you'll start to see gas stations go out of business...slowly at first but accelerating as the percentage of gas powered vehicles declines. You'll still have your car and be allowed to drive it, but the days of just finding a gas station wherever you need them will be over. Much like early days of electric cars, people will need a concrete refueling plan for every trip, which is going to make those cars a lot less attractive to own and a lot less valuable on the resale market.
- admiralpumpkin 9y ago
  Or we'll see "gas" stations incrementally change to "gas-n-charge" stations. As society moves from liquid hydrocarbons to electrons for personal transportation I can see no reason why these locations won't adapt. After all, people will still ingest their liquid fuel and expel their waste. ;-)
  - curun1r 9y ago
    We won't need nearly as many charging stations as we need gas stations because electric cars can be charged at home.
    - slg 9y ago
      Maybe that is true in rural and suburban environments, but I doubt it in dense urban environments. Adding a charger to every spot in residential parking garages and on every residential street is a bigger infrastructure project than converting over gas stations to chargers. You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.
      - brewdad 9y ago
        > You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car. True, but for most drivers on most days they will be able to charge up at home overnight. Charge time won't matter as much then. Drivers in dense urban environments will likely move towards a car sharing model since, as you noted, the costs and practicality of infrastructure retrofitting will be exorbitant.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

Kinda curious how electrical vehicles will fare during a mandatory evacuation or disaster. If you don't have a full charge, there's not an easy way to get a full charge, and so you will just not have transportation the full route.

grecy 9y ago
Have you seen what happens to gas stations during a mandatory evacuation or disaster? With no electricity, gas can not be pumped from the tanks. Even when it can, there is immediately a line-up of 100s of vehicles. (I see this very often in West Africa)
- putsteadywere 9y ago
  I saw it the other day when the eclipse came to Oregon, and the population suddenly increased by 25% for a few days. I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem. [0]: http://www.kgw.com/news/eclipse/gas-shortages-long-waits-reported-at-central-oregon-stations/465012913 http://www.kgw.com/news/eclipse/gas-shortages-long-waits-rep...
  - davidw 9y ago
    Interestingly, my observation here in Bend was that the worst shortages were in the middle of last week as locals rushed to fill up so they wouldn't run out... Could have been worse up near Madras, though, which is smaller and had a lot more people.
    - cowsandmilk 9y ago
      yep, article from parent was from August 16, well before the eclipse...
  - cowsandmilk 9y ago
    > I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem. Some parts of the US aren't able to easily meet energy demand they can forecast when it goes up by amounts like 25%. For instance, Pepco pays to install thermostats where they can turn down/off your air conditioner[0]. Same with Dominion Energy[1]. I would be unsurprised if an influx of people of the size to cause gas shortages would also cause problems for electrical grids in many parts of the country. [0] https://energywiserewards.pepco.com/md/faq/index.php#q2 https://energywiserewards.pepco.com/md/faq/index.php#q2 [1] https://www.dominionenergy.com/home-and-small-business/ways-to-save/energy-conservation-programs/smart-cooling-rewards/smart-cooling-rewards-faqs https://www.dominionenergy.com/home-and-small-business/ways-...

askvictor 9y ago

A friend who is a materials engineer told me that there aren't enough rare-Earth metals in the world to supply the demand for magnets to replace all of the current petrol based cars with electric cars. No sources unfortunately, but this thing might not scale.

LeifCarrotson 9y ago
That's part of the reason why practically all electric cars currently in production use induction motors, which only require copper. Yes, it would require more rare earths than are currently economically feasible to mine if we replaced every fossil fuel engine with a permanent magnet electric motor of equal power. The only real difference between the two is the design difficulty of the drive circuitry for the VFD to run the induction motor. That's largely a solved problem.
- tyingq 9y ago
  I think it's likely some other resource might be a constraint in that tight a timeline though. Either something for the cars themselves, or the infrastructure for charging them.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    Do you have any reason to believe that? Almost all car charging is done at night, when grid load is far lower. Charging will not be a problem, and there is no material shortage likely in the near future.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Just the ban being 5 years out. I've certainly run into homes that couldn't add a clothes dryer circuit without major renovation involving the city. Not saying it will be be an issue everywhere, but the span is too short for it not to be an issue in many places. Given the short time frame, proof that there aren't issues would seem more prudent. Whether that's manufacturing capacity for batteries, or grid shortfalls in certain areas, or whatever.

sien 9y ago

Many countries in 2030? Germany's upper house passed a non-binding resolution about how they want it to happen in 2030. What others are there? There are bunch of countries talking about 2040 and a few including the UK have legislated. However, that is safe enough that the current bunch of legislators will be long gone. It might also be like repeatedly missed emissions targets and so on. Also, called petroleum liquid cancer is inflammatory.

gutnor 9y ago
Indeed, 0-emission target (i.e. no car, truck, bus, train new or old circulating emitting CO2) for London is 2050. However, there is a trend at the moment both in local government and national one. If that is followed by actual investment in charging infrastructure, sometimes between 2020-2030 electric cars could reach critical mass. At the same time, some region and countries of Europe are already thinking going backward on fiscal encouragement to buy an electric car. In Europe the major part of the fuel cost is taxes, and at some point they will need to find something to tax electric cars on, doing it too early could kill electric cars momentum ... so wait and see.

gozur88 9y ago

I can't see a law like that passing in the US for generations.

nostrademons 9y ago

There's a non-negligible chance that everything will be self-driving by 2030, and you'll call a car from a car-service on demand instead of owning one. (Yeah, I just got stuck behind a Waymo self-driving vehicle on El Camino again today. They are annoying, but much further along than anyone who doesn't live in Silicon Valley realizes.)

djKianoosh 9y ago

If what you say becomes true, then those 911's and R8's (I'm guessing that's generally what you mean by exotics/pleasure drives) will actually go UP in value, no?

kbob 9y ago
It will be a replay of the 1970s when a combination of new emissions and safety standards locked a lot of niche manufacturers out of the US market. Pre-1975 exotics held value and even appreciated. The gray market, which imported high end used cars, became popular until NHTSA banned it.

Hasz 9y ago

Liquid cancer? C'mon, that's a bit extreme. Getting down to the point, can you imagine the political fallout from crushing the value of a gas car? It's a truck sized political landmine, and no party is willing to touch that thing with a hundred foot stick. Gas still has significant advantages that electric has yet to match. Worst gas has 53x the specific energy of the best Li-ion, and even with a hundred % efficient induction motor and a 10% efficient motor (try closer to 30% realistically), gas is still a much more energy dense fuel. Still, gas has a ton going for it. It's quicker to "charge" by an order of magnitude; it's easy to carry an auxiliary supply to double or triple range. Cold weather and reliability are excellent (hundreds of thousands of miles with a minimum of maintenance). There are no concerns about cell wearout (batteries will last for 5 years, maybe). Virtually everywhere on the planet, there's someone in any population center who knows how to work with gas cars. The network for gas is highly developed and highly entrenched. No one is giving up trillions in value without a fight. In all honesty, I expect to see gasoline powered vehicles on the road for the next 100 years, barring an unprecedented revolution.

beambot 9y ago
I mean... if you drink gasoline, you probably will get cancer.
- Hasz 9y ago
  I'd argue eating a battery would end in a similar fashion. this is a link https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/seven-substances-added-14th-report-carcinogens https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/seven-substanc... to a Health and Human Services 14th Report on Carcinogens, classifying cobalt as a carcinogen Point being, "liquid cancer" is fear-mongering hyperbole -- lots of things are carcinogenic.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Not many of those things get blown into the air in massive amounts right where population density is highest though.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

> I think there will be very little demand for the regular old gas powered car. Nobody has addressed the infrastructural problem of recharging massive fleets of privately owned electric vehicles. It's a pipe dream that this will all be fixed by 2030. This will never happen in the US for the foreseeable future. Considering how our broadband surcharges have been siphoned off with nothing to show for it, no amount of government intervention through taxation will fix this. That leaves market forces as the only factor in play for the US. The market is going to stick with ICE cars.

ZeroGravitas 9y ago
Lots of utility grid providers have addressed exactly these problems. Recently in the UK there were some headlines when the usual suspects in the media published their worst case scenarios as "EVs could destroy the grid!" and the grid had to publish a clarification http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.pdf http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.p...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

segmondy 9y ago

I keep hearing this rubbish. Do you know how well entrenched big oil is in the govt? How many wars have we fought over oil? Gasoline cars will still be a thing 20 years from now.

wisty 9y ago

The laws will target new cars. And the price of gas might plummet as big oil realises no-one is buying. Eventually this will end up costing more - all the gas stations will close as it gets too expensive with reduced economies of scale, but until they go out of business they'll cut prices.

donatj 9y ago

They're going to be repealed very quickly in my opinion. The laws were written by incredibly over optimistic people with zero understanding of the actual science or practicalities. Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive.

keenerd 9y ago
> there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive. Probably not true. Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14922104 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14922104 Particularly the analysis provided by hwillis.
paganel 9y ago
> Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive. And unless the power networks from a lot of countries are not modernized. Not sure about the States, but over-here in Eastern Europe we get power-cuts from time to time during summer months because everybody has their AC turned on (they usually don't last long, but it happens). If half of the 1 million cars that are now driving on the streets in my city were to be electric then I'm pretty sure that the local power network will just give up spectacularly.

pwg 9y ago

> With many countries tabling laws to outlaw the sale of diesel and gasoline cars around 2030, And the world moves closer to the tale in Rush's song "Red Barchetta" from 1981 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta).

deleted 9y ago

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