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In Oslo people complain that rich people in suburbs get Tesla just to avoid traffic jams and use public transport lines that electrical cars can also use. Yet f
by fpoling 9y ago
In Oslo people complain that rich people in suburbs get Tesla just to avoid traffic jams and use public transport lines that electrical cars can also use. Yet for less fortunate folks who needs a family car non-electric cars are still the only option money wise.
In principle they have a point. As battery is still extremely expensive it is cheaper to make a plugin hybrid that can drive like 50 kilometers on a battery and uses small engine to get a bigger range. In practical usage such car will be 95% electric yet cheaper than pure electric with range of, say, 300 km. Yet in Norway only electrical cars have zero taxes. The tax insensitives for plugins are relatively minor and do not compensate for price increase due to more complex power train. So people looking for a bigger family car often get a gasoline or disel car.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoDont you find it bizzare that adding extremely complex engine + drivetrain integration is cheaper than adding additional solid state battery storage? It’s a bit like CRT vs LCD or HDD vs SSD. Eventually the reduced complexity or even weight of raw components are cheaper than counterparts.
- fpoling 9y agoHDD is still much cheaper than SSD. The same is with ICE cars that have 100 years to perfect manufacturing. I guess in 10 years battery will be cheap enough to end the ICE age, but at this technological point small ICE + small battery looks like the cheapest solution.
- quickben 9y agoIt may or may not get cheaper. Lithium isn't semiconductor engineering where every generation you double the density yearly (even that stopped long time ago). Planning current policies on future scientific discovered usually doesn't end up as planned.
- fpoling 9y agoI do not count on any scientific breakthrough. The current batteries are good enough for cars. It is just too expensive to make them. But most of the price is not inherent in the technology, but rather in expensive specialized tools. Economy of scale should fix this.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoMost cost goes to nickel, cobalt, manganese and other similar metals. Increasing mining capacity can reduce the cost significantly. In very far future tho, most of it is probably going to be all recycled, but thats like 50 years ahead.
- r00fus 9y agoHDD is cheaper for massive sizes but SSD is on par for smaller capacities already