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What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World
- mfeldheim 9y agoPaywall
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gnclmorais 9y agohttps://outline.com/VEjrjG https://outline.com/VEjrjG <- paywall bypassed. Enjoy!
- ckastner 9y ago> Price of an electric car powertrain: $16,000 > Price of a conventional car powertrain: $6,000 Can anyone provide a better source for this? This is exactly the opposite of what I expected. I thought electric powertrains had far fewer (in the hundreds, even) moving parts? Edit: Coffee hasn't kicked in yet. As user analognoise points out, this is literally answered by the sentence that follows the above: How soon that day arrives is almost solely a function of the price of batteries.
- analognoise 9y agoBatteries aren't cheap.
- bigbugbag 9y agoAre batteries part of the powertrain though ?
- randyrand 9y agoThe power train means the parts needed for creating the mechanical power. Batteries are the most essential part in that.
- alkonaut 9y agoYes, for hybrid and electric vehicles the batteries are now considered part of the powertrain, although the fuel tank was as far as I know never considered part of the power train for an ICE vehicle.
- avar 9y agoBecause if the fuel tank breaks you can just weld pretty much any replacement on and it'll work, you could even use a bucket on the back of your pick-up trunk & a hose as a temporary replacement. That's not the case with electric cars and their batteries. They're deeply integrated with the rest of the powertrain.
- igravious 9y agoIf they are, they oughn't be. Batteries are like a really really expensive fuel tank. The fuel happens to be way cheaper. That's the trade-off. The article fails to mention this, which is odd. ICE: powertrain + fuel tank ~$6,000 (or whatever your local currency) … EV: powertrain + fuel tank ~$16,000 … That makes more sense, but then you'd need – cost of fuel per mile/kilometre ICE: 10¢ a mile EV: 1¢ a mile (or sometimes free?) That's why people are buying electric vehicles already. Okay, maybe it's partly environmental, but surely it is also because they figure that running costs are lower over the lifetime so they might break even overall. As battery prices drop, electric vehicles only become even more economical in the long run.
- saturdaysaint 9y agoAt the the cost/mile rates that you list, it would probably take 6 years or so to break even (also factoring in the cost savings from oil changes and belts). For the U.S. middle class, at least, that's probably too long of an investment horizon (it's amazing to me how many people lease and buy brand new cars without even doing the math about a used vehicle). So I imagine that there will be a significant uptake in the U.S. when people can expect to save money within the life of a lease, which could be as soon as 3 years with a few bumps in fuel prices.
- benjaminl 9y agoAlmost all of that is the battery. Even though batteries are coming down in price, they are still very expensive. For example GM’s list price for the Bolt battery is $15,734. Now this is the replacement cost Bolt owners pay for a new battery not the actual cost, but it gives an indication of their cost. https://electrek.co/2017/06/12/gm-bolt-ev-battery-pack-price-cost/ https://electrek.co/2017/06/12/gm-bolt-ev-battery-pack-price...
- ianai 9y agoHow much power does the electric motor need? -edit- found it https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is-required-by-the-motor-to-run-the-car-electric-car-in-watts https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is-required-by-the-moto... 80kw to accelerate and 1 kw to maintain. -edit 2- how come no ones put 3 solar panels on top of an EV? Three of the following could output 1 kw and fit in the space available. http://www.solarwholesale.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Silfab-SLA-M-280-and-300-Spec-Sheet-Solar-Wholesale.pdf http://www.solarwholesale.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Sil... Seems like an obvious for electric semis where there’s often plenty of sun (aka an ever increasing portion of the US)
- pjc50 9y agoThat has to be a typo and the real number more like 10kw - 1kw is 1.3HP, lawnmower engine territory.
- mtgx 9y agoModel S has about 500 kW, Model 3 300 kW, Bolt 150 kW, Renault Zoe like 50 kW. As for the other question, the solar panels provide way too little charge for the given area. When EVs are all about to have 100+ kWh batteries soon, it doesn't make sense to have a solar roof top: https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/ArticleID/15290/Why-the-Tesla-Model-3-Will-NOT-Have-a-Solar-Roof.aspx https://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDes...
- ianai 9y agoThe numbers in that article seem chosen as low bars to prove a point. There are panels with much greater efficiency/density and lower cost. If it doesn’t make sense today it will in the future. If a company could move their trucks for “free” for 5 hours/day they would.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoThe article doesn't have a headline that takes total cost of ownership into account. I mean annual oil change, the odd broken alternator (probably also a problem in electric cars), filters, distribution drive / chain, and a ton of extra moving parts that all need maintenance. Mind you I wonder if electric cars can get a million miles out of them, like well maintained conventional cars can do.
- skookumchuck 9y agoThe lithium may not be that much of a problem if existing aged batteries can have the lithium in them recycled.
- leereeves 9y agoOnce the whole world has converted to electric cars, perhaps, but in the near future vast quantities of lithium will be needed to increase the number of electric cars.
- delbel 9y agoIts not the Lithium that is a problem. Its the Colbolt-59 that's next to it. A typical Tesla has about 15 pounds of Colbolt-59. If a small tactical weapon would be used near the location of a single parked Tesla, the Colbolt-59 will transmute to Colbolt-60, the deadlist substance known to earth. 15 pounds of Colbolt-60 is enough to kill 24 million people. Imagine a parking lot of them. 4 tons of it is enough to annihilate all life on earth. These Tesla cars are the biggest extensional threat to human kind. Anyway, have a nice day!
- spiznnx 9y ago>If a small tactical weapon would be used near the location of a single parked Tesla, the Colbolt-59 will transmute to Colbolt-60. Source?
- fabian2k 9y agoThis is probably based on the idea of Cobalt bombs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb) intended to make areas uninhabitable due to radiation. But in that case the Cobalt 59 is placed directly around the nuclear bomb, and spread across the area by the explosion. It doesn't seem plausible to me that this would be a real danger. If I'm close enough to a nuclear explosion that can affect the Cobalt-59 in my car, I'm probably vaporized anyway.
- varjag 9y agoIt's cobalt. Also, my physics is rusty but transmuting an isotope should involve a nuclear reaction.
- myroon5 9y ago"CARMAKERS’ ANNUAL PROFIT: $400 billion" This seems hard to believe. Revenue, maybe?
- cma 9y ago$400 billion / ~80 million passenger cars per year would be $5000 per car.
- reacweb 9y agoA large part of the profit is made on spare parts.
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoand finance.
- Dylan16807 9y agoDo car makers get involved in that?
- tonyedgecombe 9y agoThey certainly do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Financial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Financial
- cma 9y agoYeah, I just meant to say that it was implausible that that number was revenue, which should be much higher than an average of $5,000 per car.
- leereeves 9y agoGross profit, maybe. Toyota alone reported $43 billion gross profit on $247 billion revenue.
- megablast 9y agoHopefully they never take over the world, and we can stop this car nonsense. Having over a million extra people not killed by cars would be nice.
- czechdeveloper 9y agoBut how would you move around? Public transportation cannot reach everywhere. I would just stop seeing my family without having a car.
- craigds 9y agoWe'll find a way though, after some pain. Maybe we'll just become less mobile, and be okay with that. Denser housing and more distributed community hubs seem the obvious solution. The harder question is how would you get from here to a world without cars in the first place. There are some pretty massive political and social hurdles to overcome. I don't think this will happen until we basically run out of fuel, unfortunately.
- explainplease 9y ago> Maybe we'll just become less mobile, and be okay with that. This is bizarre. Is there any other technology, any other quality-of-life issue, in which people would advocate or settle for regression? Technology is advancing faster than ever before, the pace is still increasing--yet people are saying that we should go back to not having personal vehicles, not travelling much... What's going on here?
- c3833174 9y agoSome people are different than others.
- junkcollector 9y agoMost discussions centered on environmental concerns boil down to accepting a massive quality of life reduction for most of the world's population. It is usually colored by someone who thinks it wouldn't impact themselves much and that the world would be better if more people just lived like them i.e. in dense urban environments. This argument at least is not predicated on the need to kill a bunch of people such as you commonly hear in biotech or agriculture discussions.
- _greim_ 9y ago> Drivers will have to shed their attachment to the sound, smell and feel of gas-powered engines. I for one will not feel the least bit sad when continuous, smooth acceleration becomes the norm, and lurchy, awkward automatic transmissions fade into distant memory. I'll probably feel slightly nostalgic about the sound and smell of fuel-burning cars someday, but it won't inform my buying choices in the slightest.
- Swizec 9y agoThere are transmissions other than automatic. And I agree, they’re better if you know what you’re doing. But modern high-end automatics are in fact smoother than most humans. Racecar drivers might be smoother still but even they use flappypadle automatic sequential gearboxes at the very top end of racing because even the best trained humans are just too slow. Curiously, racing electric cars use gearboxes too.
- gambiting 9y agoYep. ZF 8 speed automatic, Mercedes new 9 speed dual clutch, are probably the smoothest transmissions available on the market. I've got years of experience of driving manual cars and I can't even pretend that I would be able to change gears as smoothly as those boxes. And I drive a Mercedes-AMG with a 7-speed dual clutch and under hard acceleration that box changes gears within 100ms(actual number supplied by AMG) - there's no way a human could change gears that quickly.
- clouddrover 9y ago> Curiously, racing electric cars use gearboxes too. Some do and some don't in Formula E: http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2016/october/insight-how-the-cars-have-changed/ http://www.fiaformulae.com/en/news/2016/october/insight-how-...
- hodgesrm 9y agoSpeaking as a manual transmission fan I agree fully with your assessment about current automatics. My BMW 328d xDrive ships with an 8-speed automatic transmission that shifts at least as well as I can myself under normal road conditions. It really changes the equation for manual vs. automatic.
- scythe 9y agoBattery manufacturing is hard. Everyone was really impressed by that "record-breaking" installation Tesla made in South Australia, but that 100 MWh installation is really less than 2000 cars, and Tesla needs to build five times that much per month to keep up with demand. I think people focus on lithium because it's in the name, but lithium access is nowhere near the hardest problem facing battery manufacturers (and correspondingly it's a small percentage of the cost).
- paol 9y agoThese articles keep omitting a pretty big barrier to adoption: street parking. (Maybe it's a function of US being suburb-centric? But at least the New York Times ought to know better.) One of 2 things needs to happen, either charging technology improves to the point where you can charge at a gas station in a span of time comparable to refueling a conventional car, or all street parking spots need to be fitted with charging ports for overnight charging. Neither thing looks likely to happen soon.
- samcheng 9y agoOr street parking needs to make way for bike lanes, transit, and pedestrian space! To be honest, though, electrifying public parking isn't that outlandish either. Fairbanks, Alaska has done it for a while to power engine block heaters.
- paol 9y agoSure, it's entirely possible but it represents a major capital expenditure for urban municipalities, probably more than most could afford without external subsidies.
- kuro68k 9y agoIn the long run it saves money on cleaning and dealing with the health consequences. Like all infrastructure projects there is an initial outlay.
- kozak 9y agoWow, an image search for the query "engine block heaters public parking" gave me a peek of how our all-electrified automotive future is going to look like. Impressive.
- jmnicolas 9y agoThis is what I never understood : why don't they create cars where the battery is removable and when you go to a "gas" station there's a machine that just change your empty battery for a full one. In fact I thought about patenting the idea 10 years ago but I didn't have the know-how.
- kuceram 9y agoI think that the market will decide. It will be a balance between few major things like: price, range, efficiency, safety and fancyness (cars are more emotional than rational :-). The same happened in the beggining of car industry. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/hybrid-technology/history-of-electric-cars1.htm https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/hybrid-techno...
- jackaroe78 9y agoShhhhh!
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago> cars are more emotional than rational :-) Depends; in my country there were / are significant cost / tax benefits for getting hybrid and fully electric cars (for lease cars, and there's quite a lot of those here). If driving an electric car is cheaper then people will go for that too. Does Tesla still do free usage of the supercharger network for the Model S? That's another incentive, given the cost of electricity over time.
- fergie 9y ago> "But the automakers’ existing expertise — building internal combustion engines — will no longer give them a competitive edge." Interesting- this would mean that the real innovation in cars comes _after_ electric drivetrains have become the standard, when any moderately capitalised company without substantial experience of internal-combustion motors can create their own take on a car with any kind of new features they see fit.
- unwind 9y agoCall me naive, but I'd hope that at least some of the competitive edge with existing auto manufacturers comes from experience in designing workable cars, that also are successful at the various collision tests that are required. Safety is not easy.
- greedo 9y agoThinking that the ICE is a competitive advantage/disadvantage is what has led to Tesla struggling with building the Model 3. The competitive advantage held by the existing automakers is based around building cars cheaply; in quantity; and in quality. They also have established brands that inspire tremendous loyalty, and they have dealerships that offload a lot of the support issues. When electric drivetrains become the standard, nothing will be different. These automakers will still have these advantages over upstarts.
- ecpottinger 9y agoRight, by that logic Tesla should not have any sales.
- greedo 9y agoCompared to the incumbents, Tesla doesn't.
- jokoon 9y agoOnce global warming becomes a real problem and the politics are driving laws to be enacted towards using electric vehicles, the situation will change pretty quickly. I'm sure governments could sink a lot of money into battery research if the situation would make it so. Although I've read in several places that once global warming is engaged, you cannot reverse it because of stuff like melting methane ice spots in the tundra.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago> Although I've read in several places that once global warming is engaged, you cannot reverse it because of stuff like melting methane ice spots in the tundra. I'm fairly confident that point of no return has already been passed. Permafrost has stared to melt a while ago, causing bacteria to take hold of things they couldn't for x amount of years, catching up on releasing co2 and such that would otherwise have been in the atmosphere a long time ago already.
- okreallywtf 9y agoNote: this doesn't mean despair and do nothing. I'm not saying this is what you mean't, just feel like we need to point that out because despair is very counterproductive. Also, this doesn't mean that climate mitigation is the only choice either, it is still cheaper to "diet" than it is to "exercise" to use a weight loss analogy. Lowering CO2 emissions is still going to slow climate change and hopefully give us time to come up with other mitigation strategies.
- Dowwie 9y agoAre electric buses even necessary when electric autonomous sedans are available?
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoDepends on how big and busy your roads are. Gridlock might be alleviated a bit due to autonomous driving and planning, but by the time that rolls around the world's population will probably have gone up by a couple billion again (wikipedia says it's projected to be 10 billion by 2050) so there'd be more cars on the road. There'd be less gridlock if people did more carpooling, buses, or drove more on motorcycles.
- f_allwein 9y agoHow about: We need to shift from individual car ownership to more public transport? Sure it will be great if cars turn electric, but that does not solve issues like crowded streets etc. This would be partly addressed if cars were self driving and shared, i.e. would spend less time standing around unused. Nevertheless, I assume (=don't have data) that public transport would be much more efficient than electric cars in terms of energy/ resource/ space usage. Maybe in the future, the line between private and public transport will be more blurry, i.e. you take a shared, self driving car to the railway station etc.
- peterwwillis 9y agoIt's clear that buses are vastly more efficient in terms of moving large numbers of people around, and so ride sharing alone (even automated) will just continue to tie up traffic. At a point, uber and lyft will have to introduce buses in order to keep their single-use services attractive. But, as long as there is private ownership, we won't have wide adoption of public transportation. Everywhere in the world I have traveled, I have noticed that usually 1) public transportation is limited only to a town/city, and 2) private buses to move between cities/provinces are limited by market forces, and thus put a penalty on people living farther from economic drivers. Which forces people in remote areas, who on average make less money, to own cars to get to jobs [which robs them of time and money they could be investing in their future etc]. The only way to change the inequality of people getting to jobs/goods/services is to remove private car ownership and institute nation-wide public transportation, and subsidize the more expensive parts of the network. Not only would this be cheaper overall and more efficient overall, it would raise the GDP, reduce pollution, reduce debt, reduce traffic fatalities, and increase upward mobility. People think cars give them freedom, but they never think about the societal cost.
- lazyjones 9y ago> People think cars give them freedom, They don't just think so, they know it > but they never think about the societal cost. There is a "societal cost" attached to everything. Housing, Eating, going to the restroom. Society should evolve to make known improvements to people's lives available to more people and not devolve to a point where most modern amenities are considered too expensive for most people. That said, pretty much everybody hates public transport everywhere in the world. It's better than nothing of course and in some densely-populated areas it's actually an improvement and faster than using a car (the subway). But given a reasonable choice, people prefer having their own cars, just like they prefer to have their own homes instead of sharing one with dozens of other people. Whatever the "societal cost" may be (what's the cost of individual housing?).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tyu100 9y agoRare metal shortages are self-solving. There's already dozens of mining juniors prospecting in western countries and China has near-limitless resources. Additionally, graphite, lithium and cobalt are substitutable to some degree. Anecdotally, the resource exploration stock message board forum I follow has almost given up on oil and gas companies and has moved to cleantech (or marijuania). Sign of the fast-arriving future.
- 3chelon 9y agoI'm totally in favour of electric cars, but I'm surprised the article never mentioned the problem of sourcing all the power. There have been a lot of contradictory claims over how many more power stations would be needed for a fully-electric future, with some sources claiming the UK alone would need an extra ten nuclear power plants, and other sources massively downplaying that, but clearly if everyone was driving an EV by, say, 2040, then that only gives us 20 years to work out and deliver the answer. NIMBYism and hyper-inflated public infrastructure costs mean this could be a significant problem, both in terms of cost and feasibility.
- cesarb 9y agoMost electric cars will charge at night, which is when power consumption is currently at its lowest. Power stations (and other parts of the power infrastructure) have to be sized to the daytime peak, plus a safety margin to cope with at least the loss of any single element. So until the extra consumption from cars charging overnight grows above the difference between the nighttime low and the daytime peak, not much extra infrastructure is needed. On the other hand, there will be cars charging at daytime (either at fast chargers, or while the owner is at work); and there are some power stations that can only work during the day. I don't know which of these two factors is bigger.
- alex_duf 9y agoI hope that we never reach the point where everyone buys an electric car. By then most big cities will heavily rely on a fleet of car pool, potentially self driving. That decreases the number of needed cars by an order of magnitude.
- dagw 9y agoThe number of cars is irrelevant when talking energy needs, only distance traveled matters. And I can definitely see how easily available self driving pool cars will increase rather than decrease the total distance driven, and thus increasing the total need for electricity.
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- tomxor 9y agoPrice? (for normal people) Yes there are EVs cheaper than teslas at a comparable price to ICE cars, but they don't seem to have comparable performance and utility. I can't make an economically minded decision to buy an EV today unless i'm an EV enthusiast or I have lots of money to spend on luxury. (That was Elon Musks whole point of Tesla in the first place, but the market doesn't seem to have substantially shifted since) Also for second hand cars, maybe it's different in the US, but in the UK the vast majority of people buy used cars at prices well below the "new price". It's going to take quite a while for EVs to trickle down to that price range for it to be economical for 90% of people to bother considering it.
- sandworm101 9y agoEvery EV owner in my area seems to also own a gas car too. My landlord commutes in an EV but his wife has a normal suv for all the kid stuff. (Im in BC where long higheay trips are very much the norm.) EVs are fine if you can afford to keep a second vehicle to cover all the things they cannot do.
- jbob2000 9y agoBC is a bit of an exception because of the low density. In a higher density area, you can count on public transit to take you long distances and use the electric car to make up the difference. One of the benefits of going full electric would be smog reduction. Again, BC doesn't really have a smog problem because of low density, but somewhere like Toronto or LA would benefit hugely from not having gas and diesel vehicles clogging up the streets (and air).
- sandworm101 9y agoBC's density is both low and high. For the entire population, it is very low. But if you start with something like 80% of the population, that lives in two or three tiny places, basically the GVRD, Victoria and Kamloops. The BC population is best described as being very dense but surrounded by vast areas of emptiness. Draw a line from West Vancouver (one of canada's most expensive suburbs) to alaska. You will cross only two roads. Dense urban city, a small fence, then thousands of miles of nothing.
- kriro 9y agoI feel like the answer is "let some time pass". I think the majority of electric cars will eventually come form China. They are serious about the banning of non-electric cars and will be set up to deal with it once that happens. The pricepoint/quality will be attractive enough for non-Chinese markets and that'll be that.
- ransom1538 9y ago"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
- sideshowb 9y agoEven with unsustainable generation the carbon footprint of one big generator is less than the footprint of lots of tiny ICEs. https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml
- jbob2000 9y agoMaybe in certain parts of the world, where they're still stuck in the industrial era. Ontario's power generation is primarily nuclear, then hydro, then wind, with a small percentage being gas turbines. https://cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html https://cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectrici... I can charge my electric car here and comfortably assume that it is clean energy.
- Cthulhu_ 9y agoHow does the emissions of a coal plant (plus the loss from transfering over the power line, battery, into motors) compare to the emissions of a regular petrol or diesel car?
- ecpottinger 9y agoDon't forget to carbon footprint needed to process/make that petrol/diesel .. that oil from the ground needs to be processed and transported too.
- Zarel 9y agoAs I understand it, even electricity generated from coal is significantly cleaner than the equivalent in gasoline.
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- cmrdporcupine 9y agoHonestly, manufacturer supply is the limitation at this point. At least around here I can't think of a single EV that sits on lots and accumulates inventory. The manufacturers are making 30,000 or so vehicles a year of their product and consumers are buying all of them. And this is almost certainly related to battery supply constraints.
- brownbat 9y ago> car companies will have to radically streamline their dealership networks Electrification won't kill inefficient dealerships. They're too entrenched in politics. https://www.inc.com/magazine/201411/paul-keegan/collision-course-truecar-disrupter-gets-disrupted.html https://www.inc.com/magazine/201411/paul-keegan/collision-co...
- UMadBreaux 9y agoI find Japan's car buying culture very interesting. Dealership services in Japan are much more of a concierge service, where the dealer brings the car you are interested in right to your house, and buyers generally have an ongoing relationship with the sales staff and others at the dealership.
- mschuster91 9y agoBiggest problem I guess will be expanding the charger network, simply due to physics. On the country side, laying cables for 1MW peak load (4 superchargers @ 250 kW) will be expensive - the grid in rural areas is enough for some farms and small villages, that's it. In cities, electric-car chargers will have to deal with political obstacles (no one wants to sacrifice free-for-all parking spots!), in addition to the electricity problem - while in a city there might be more available 10+ kV lines (you don't want to do 250 kW over 230V AC, it's over 1k A current!), sidewalks are often enough very slim as it is and it will be difficult to get a charging station installed there, and digging in earth filled with cables is not exactly fun either (been there, done that, it's manual work of the worst kind as you can't even use a proper showel...). Getting chargers in garages will face obstacles of the HOAs, plus the house uplinks usually are without much reserves - my 12-apartment house, for example, is linked to the grid on 3x63A with each apartment (~60 m2) being fed by a single 40A phase. Not much, certainly not enough to feed even two electric cars in the backyard. Either way you'l have to rebuild the entire grid more sooner than later if electric cars should have a future... there's not enough money to rebuild Detroit's water, where should the money for a full scale grid rebuild come from? It's all decades old infrastructure, no matter if in the US or Germany. Replacing or significantly upgrading it means billions to trillions of dollars.
- fjsolwmv 9y agoThe USA installed Cable TV, why would charging cables be harder? The USA spends $500Billion on cars and $400 Billion on gasoline every year. A onetime $trillon upgrade isn't an outsize amount.
- mschuster91 9y ago> The USA installed Cable TV, why would charging cables be harder? Because a TV coax cable is 1cm slim and can be installed very easily. Run it over the air on poles, dig it into a small trench, run it via the sewers. Whatever fits best. A 10 kV or, worse, a 1 kA-capable 3x230V line, not so much. The 10kV (or more) line has special requirements in terms of distance to other cables, a 3x230V line at that capability is pure hell due to its sheer thickness and mass. Also the charger station will require a transformer... which aren't tiny, and transforming 250kW produces significant heat loss. So either find some free place in earth where you can bury it, or deal with adjacent house owners to install the transformer in their basement. > The USA spends $500Billion on cars and $400 Billion on gasoline every year. A onetime $trillon upgrade isn't an outsize amount. Problem is, the car/gasoline spend is done by individuals on small-ish scales. A multi-trillion investment must be fronted by the state - the utility companies don't have nearly enough cash to finance this. But, as noted, the US can't get enough funds to replace Flint's potable water infrastructure or Puerto Rico's broken grid...
- deevolution 9y agoI can't wait for the day where public transportation is replaced by more efficient, cheaper and more personalized ride sharing services. Public transit is horribly broken, at least in NYC... personaly I dont see my self ever sinking 35k into a new car unless it would be making me money.
- bradleyjg 9y agoI don't see how ride sharing services are ever going to be more efficient than public transit. Or how it will even be barely possible to replace the one with the other in a place like NYC. Riding sharing is about utilizing a vehicle in a temporally more efficient way, but it does little to improve spacial efficiency during peak times. The commuter rails, subway, and buses are far more dense than a fleet of self driving cars with one to two people in each can possible be. Even with the increased density that might plausible come from better driving and so more tightly spacing, it would simply be impossible to get everyone into and out of their offices across Manhattan during the communing windows without the density of mass transit vehicles and the utilization of underground space.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoRide sharing does help with parking though. Which is almost as bad a problem.
- digitalshankar 9y agoThe most important thing to happen is to figure out a way to reduce the pollution from the petroleum powered vehicles, especially exhaust gases. This will ensure smooth move towards Electric vehicles.
- okreallywtf 9y agoHow? Did you mean to say tax pollution from petroleum powered vehicles?
- googletazer 9y agoAnyone here investing in lithium/cobalt/graphite?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- icc97 9y agoOne of the eye openers for me in this was the average ranges, 475 miles vs 190. ICE cars have 2.5x the range of electric cars. I always assumed it was much more e.g. 800 miles vs 100 miles. According to this graph [0] the price per kWh of batteries is halving every 5 years, so within ~6-7 years the range of electric cars will be equal to that of ICE cars. [0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/15/ev-battery-prices-looking-back-years-forward-yet/ https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/15/ev-battery-prices-looki...
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoWrong metric. Its kWh / kg (not price) that matters for transportation. Until we get metal-air batteries that's not going to change much.
- icc97 9y agoYou're right that's better, but it doesn't completely invalidate my prediction, it just means I might be out a bit with the time. Battery kWh / kg is also improving too, I just don't know if it's at the same rate as price. Its possible now with Teslas to buy the higher kWh batteries and they go further, so it's not like weight is the only factor. The new Tesla Roadster coming in 2020 [0] has a 620 mile range because it's basically a battery and little else. So it depends on: 1. how much the extra weight/drag of a model 3 chassis would reduce the range 2. how much of the $200,000 price is down to the battery. Then you are waiting until the price of the battery comes down. [0]: https://www.tesla.com/roadster https://www.tesla.com/roadster
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoLike rockets, there a point of diminishing returns where you have to have some battery to push the other batteries around, which push the car around. Its kWh/kg that's king.
- perseusprime11 9y agoCan we pivot this conversation to building cities and towns that don't need cars instead of thinking of filling the streets with electric cars?
- DarronWyke 9y agoEven before reading the article, my first thought was 'need to expand the range of the vehicle'. Yes, advances in battery technology means even the lowest-common-denominator consumer will get better battery life without having to shell out more -- but that will hit a cap before long. Assuming an average range of about 100mi for the consumer-grade EV, that would satisfy many. But there are still many more who that will not work for, with longer commutes or more driving distance (errands, kids, other activities, multiple jobs, ferrying, taxi/rideshare services, etc.). A dual-engine design seems to be a more obvious solution, with a primarily electric engine with a secondary, small engine providing backup power either with recharge or straight up horsepower delivered to the drivetrain when the battery is depleted or running critically low. This doesn't necessarily have to be ICE; this engine could be something else that's fairly revolutionary like a hydrogen fuel cell. Even if we get to a majority EV situation, having these be commonplace will give everyone who owns one more freedom and options rather than locking them down to what that particular model has (I see a future with more vendor lock-in).
- GiorgioG 9y agoThe issue of energy portability is not an insignificant one IMO. I can carry 5 gallons (or 100-150 miles worth of range) of fuel fairly easily. Not so much with an electric vehicle. What happens when I run out of juice on the side of the road? I don't care how many times the car warns me; that it shouldn't happen, etc. People still manage to run out of gas today. With an electric vehicle already hampered by half the range of an I.C.E. vehicle, it will happen even more often. If I drain my battery, I can no longer walk down to a gas station, fill up a 5 gallon container and be on my way. "But that should never happen!" sure and people don't get stranded for hours in traffic in the middle of a winter storm. An I.C.E. vehicle can easily idle for a day non-stop on half a tank. Can an electric vehicle provide me with heat for 24 hours when it's -3F outside on half a charge? Even when we reach range parity, the convenience and portability of gasoline will keep me buying I.C.E. vehicles until it is overwhelmingly superior.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoA car should be able to charge another car. There needs to be some kind of standard here. Or else small portable batteries need to become more common. Or I could envision a service where, if you run out of electrons, you tap a button and a drone is dispatched with a portable battery to your location. Or maybe the car itself could place the call automatically.
- twothamendment 9y agoHow big would a battery have to be to get a dead EV off the side of the road and 25 miles to a charging station? Can a drone fly a 25 or 50 pound battery? What would the range on the drone be? I'm guessing a tow truck with the ability to charge a car is more likely.
- Florin_Andrei 9y agoWhat if the battery shipped by drone is what powers the drone itself? (I'm just trying to imagine some extreme scenarios, I'm not saying this is The Solution.)
- thescriptkiddie 9y agoI'm skeptical that we will ever see a day where there are as many electric cars on the road as there are ICE cars today. That's not because I think people won't buy electric cars, but because I think people won't buy cars in general. In the western world we are rapidly approaching "peak car". The number of cars on the road today is simply unsustainable. I would not be surprised if over the next few decades, more cars are taken off of the road entirely than are replaced with electric.
- apatheticonion 9y agoFor me it's accessibility, style and performance. In my mind, I wouldn't purchase a car above 4k (NZD) unless it's an electric car. However, there are fewer electric cars where I live (New Zealand) than I have fingers, and the ones that are available cost over 100k or are very ugly (sorry leaf owners but it's not a cool looking car) I saw the e-golf, felt hope but after learning of it's lethargic 0-100 (0-60) and the fact that it's not even available here, I quickly lost hope. I don't care if I get a 100km (60 miles) range, I never travel further than that - I firstly want to actually be able to buy one, would appreciate a little thrill, and style that doesn't make me feel like I am making a statement. Chances are that won't happen, so I'm probably just going to build one.
- cyb0rg 9y agoWe no longer live in a past-is-prologue world. Now we live in a if-the-business-plan-works world where human inertia is no longer a big factor. All of the discussions below assume that most cars will be personally owned. My guess is that most passenger miles and commercial ton miles will be logged by robotaxis and robotrucks in the near term (five to ten years) because the convenience will be so high and the cost so low. The robotaxis will have smallish batteries and will charge often, but the charge stations will be more centralized and will be fed by small utility pv installations dotted around the periphery of the city and yes, these same robotaxis could be used for load balancing storage, but I suspect that their used and/or obsolete batteries will provide the storage. No need for parking space chargers or for that matter for parking spaces.