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Electrical (battery based) car's are more a marketing thing that a real tech change. They simply can't for now substitute fossil-fuel car's. Battery life is st

by xte 8y ago

Electrical (battery based) car's are more a marketing thing that a real tech change. They simply can't for now substitute fossil-fuel car's. Battery life is still a problem, most of the people have yet do discover due to the young age of ALL electric car's in actual market, inability to offer enough electricity to recharge them at scale is another problem most people still have to discover simply because we actually have very small percentage of EV around. And that's only to cite most important problems. Of course I expect may downvote, without comment so I expect this comment fade quickly but since today's prize of EVs people that can actually buy them is supposed to been able to compute enough to choose and REAL EV sell confirm that. Despite all the marketing.

cevn 8y ago
What are you even talking about? My EV's battery is 90% of the size as my old Toyota's. I drive it every day. I charge it at home. I don't go to gas stations any more. IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. (excluding circumstances such as nowhere to charge).
- TheBeardKing 8y ago
  Genuinely curious and prioritize frugality, how will I save money buying any EV over a 2-3 yeard old Civic or Corolla? Gas is <$2 gallon here.
  - jsendros 8y ago
    Owner of both a gas and electric vehicle here (Ford + Tesla). Gas is still way cheaper. Electric (specifically Tesla) is way more convenient. All EVs will soon be more convenient as fast charging options become more available for all EVs. I bet as EVs get cheaper, so does gasoline because of dropping demand. I doubt EVs will beat gas on long-term-ownership-cost within the next 5 years. *EDIT: Should've noted I also live in the northeastern US which is probably relevant for both price and convenience factors.
  - nikivi 8y ago
    I would imagine EV will hold value better the more into the future we get vs gasoline.
- btgeekboy 8y ago
  You must admit though, circumstances such as nowhere to charge and overall cost are a pretty core problem. Electric cars are great, except when they’re not.
- pmjordan 8y ago
  IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. I'm guessing this is deliberate hyperbole, because it's simply not true. The OP very much has a point: aside from Tesla X, the interior space (both rear bench seating - important for families - and boot (trunk)) in current EVs is nowhere near many combustion engine cars. (We just bought a VW Touran; we really wanted an EV, but fitting baby seat and pram plus shopping or luggage is just not possible unless you spend ~€100k on a Tesla; aside from the price, the OP's point about the footprint/width of the car is a major obstacle in much of Europe. The range question is only really resolved on the very latest models (Renault Zoe, Hyundai Kona EV, Jaguar i-Pace) and the Teslas as well. Our absolute minimum was 200km mixed driving in all seasons and that already narrows you down to a very small pool of models. Our VW Touran has a range of 800km. (500km would be more than enough for 99.9% of our trips though.)
- xte 8y ago
  How may years your EV have? As said above while I do not have owned an EV myself I know few peoples with one and NO one, after an initial period of high enthusiasm, would buy another in the future. So my data, surely not significant in statistical terms tell a really different story than actual marketing claims. And since car's are build in series I bet they have still a generally valid value.
Brakenshire 8y ago
You’ll be downvoted because you are wrong. Because battery life isn’t an issue with thermally managed batteries, Teslas are doing well over 100,000 miles and on average retaining 80%-90% of battery life. And because electric cars will provide a massive pool for demand shifting, barring four hours of peak, electric cars can be charged at any time of day, that means with price structures you can create almost any demand curve you want.
- xte 8y ago
  How old, in years, your EV is? I bet you do not know anyone with a moderately used EV with more than five years. If I'm right wait a bit before try so sure conclusion. I know few people with few not-so-new EVs (Renault ZE series most of them) and hear their practical experience outside marketing. No one of them is willing to buy an EV again.
  - outworlder 8y ago
    Maybe it is a problem with Renault then. Go hang out in Leaf forums instead (and the Nissan Leaf doesn't even have a thermally managed battery). I have one. I haven't lost a SINGLE capacity bar after 3 years (first year saw really heavy usage with multiple quick charges a week). Unless it decides to self-destruct after 5 years, I would expect it to last a while. Yes, they lose maximum capacity over time. Very slowly. They still work. This is not a phone or laptop.
    - xte 8y ago
      No, thanks, I do not ask on some vendor's forum. I prefer ask people I can trust as sources, not eventually disguised marketing guys or bot. As I write before I say most of them are on Renault, But one is on a Tesla. This last one essentially stop using it because it's too large for him in city and it can't use it because of reduced range to go to it's country house or on mountains to ski without recharge... The problem, beside battery life, Renault ZE have and nobody like to recall it in marketing is 85 euro/month fee for battery (mandatory) rental. BTW battery tech is the very same of phones, laptop, cordless drill etc, any other devices that use lithium ion battery. Only very few vendors offer other option that last even less than Li-Ion battery.
jillesvangurp 8y ago
Happy to counter all of that. First, it's fossil fuel that has a marketing issue. First of all, you have to pretend the second hand value of your car is not going to rapidly tank as EVs take over. If you are buying Diesel, I hope you factor in that it will be a hard sell in a few years and you might have to write off a lot more than you bargained for when you sell at a much lower price than you hoped. IMHO Diesel is the canary in the coal mine here; the same will happen to petrol cars in a few years. This will rapidly kill the market for new ICE vehicles as there is no point in buying them if you can't pass them on at a reasonable price a few years later. Secondly, fossil fuel cars benefit from all sorts of government protection including tax benefits for big oil, tax funded expensive wars in the middle east (at trillions $ cost), silly subsidies for things like bio diesel, etc. And that's before you factor in the damage burning fuel does. Which people seem to be allowed to get away with for absolutely free. If you stop all that overnight, ICE based cars would become a really hard sell because fuel prices would rise, and manufacturers would be retrofitting cars with expensive fixes to make them stop being a health and safety risk in fear of action law suits. Think tobacco industry here. Why not? Diesel/petrol, fumes kill people, by the millions with long term health affects and measurable life time decreases. There's no good reason for any of this to continue to be the case as EVs become widely available commodity products available at competitive prices. This is more than a little marketing challenge as governments world wide seem to be cracking down on this with taxes, vehicle restrictions, etc. And that's of course aside from the whole co2 business. I know, not a popular topic but it's having real effects on fuel prices and vehicle taxes in most civilized places at this point. I don't see that ending any time soon; rather the opposite. Norway is leading here, but plenty more countries are following. This will kill demand and increase cost for ICE based vehicles. That's why GM and Ford shut down a lot of their ICE business last year and why the likes of VW are making tens of billions of investments in production capacity for EVs over the next few years. In fact, most major manufacturers are effectively divesting their ICE business for a few years now. A few percent now, doubling every 18 months or so creates a nice exponential growth curve for EVs. Meanwhile, everything else is dealing with shrinking markets, declining ASPs, increasing taxes, government pressure, etc. There's very little future in ICE based vehicles, judging from how major manufacturers are behaving in the last year. Charging infrastructure is just fine. There's plenty of it already and more is on the way. Actually, most of it is under-utilised most of the time (<10%). So, there's plenty of room for growth short term and plenty more long term as there are continued investments in charging infrastructure happening everywhere. Sure, in the utterly unrealistic scenario that everyone would switch overnight to EVs this would indeed be a minor challenge for grid providers. But growth as per even the most optimistic scenarios, provides plenty of room for continued investments in infrastructure, clean energy, etc. You say problem, I say business opportunity. Most healthy businesses would consider predicted growth spread over multiple years/decades to be fantastic news. Of course it kind of sucks if all you know is burning coal/gas and all the cool new hip kids are undercutting your prices with solar/wind. Battery life is not really a problem for the vast majority of commuters. Even with the unimpressive/limited range of already obsolete first generation vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. Long distance travel indeed requires annoyingly long charging breaks; but on the other hand taking a break after 200-300 miles is not the end of the world. And if you drive those kind of distances daily, your life sucks much more than that of most drivers stuck in perpetual traffic jams. Luckily, faster charging high end vehicles with longer ranges are becoming available as well. And that's before you factor in battery R&D over the next few decades that will decimate cost and double/triple capacities. But most people rarely need to rely on public charging points since their car will be fully charged when they unplug it at home in the morning. And coming back to the charging infrastructure, most people see a measurable but not spectacular increase in their electricity use while charging almost exclusively at home. You have to drive a lot to double your usage. So if that's the same for most people, we're talking probably much less than 2 x increase in total electricity demand. And that's spread out over the next 10-20 years. Also, charging happens mostly off peak at night. And you can do some interesting things such as use charged cars to provide power back to the grid during peak hours. In short, this is not an issue now and unlikely to become one. Finally, battery life span seems awesome in first generation vehicles. Mostly their batteries get reused rather than recycled after their vehicles are written off. Tesla guarantees 100K+ miles for their drivetrains + batteries at or above 70% capacity: reason: they know full well, they can do at least double that. I think Elon Musk was actually boasting numbers closer to 500K miles recently. Most ICE cars would go to many expensive maintenance cycles every few tens of thousands of miles.

by xte 8y ago

cevn 8y ago

What are you even talking about? My EV's battery is 90% of the size as my old Toyota's. I drive it every day. I charge it at home. I don't go to gas stations any more. IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. (excluding circumstances such as nowhere to charge).

TheBeardKing 8y ago
Genuinely curious and prioritize frugality, how will I save money buying any EV over a 2-3 yeard old Civic or Corolla? Gas is <$2 gallon here.
- jsendros 8y ago
  Owner of both a gas and electric vehicle here (Ford + Tesla). Gas is still way cheaper. Electric (specifically Tesla) is way more convenient. All EVs will soon be more convenient as fast charging options become more available for all EVs. I bet as EVs get cheaper, so does gasoline because of dropping demand. I doubt EVs will beat gas on long-term-ownership-cost within the next 5 years. *EDIT: Should've noted I also live in the northeastern US which is probably relevant for both price and convenience factors.
- nikivi 8y ago
  I would imagine EV will hold value better the more into the future we get vs gasoline.
btgeekboy 8y ago
You must admit though, circumstances such as nowhere to charge and overall cost are a pretty core problem. Electric cars are great, except when they’re not.
pmjordan 8y ago
IMO anyone buying a fossil fuel car at this point is the one being duped by marketing. I'm guessing this is deliberate hyperbole, because it's simply not true. The OP very much has a point: aside from Tesla X, the interior space (both rear bench seating - important for families - and boot (trunk)) in current EVs is nowhere near many combustion engine cars. (We just bought a VW Touran; we really wanted an EV, but fitting baby seat and pram plus shopping or luggage is just not possible unless you spend ~€100k on a Tesla; aside from the price, the OP's point about the footprint/width of the car is a major obstacle in much of Europe. The range question is only really resolved on the very latest models (Renault Zoe, Hyundai Kona EV, Jaguar i-Pace) and the Teslas as well. Our absolute minimum was 200km mixed driving in all seasons and that already narrows you down to a very small pool of models. Our VW Touran has a range of 800km. (500km would be more than enough for 99.9% of our trips though.)
xte 8y ago
How may years your EV have? As said above while I do not have owned an EV myself I know few peoples with one and NO one, after an initial period of high enthusiasm, would buy another in the future. So my data, surely not significant in statistical terms tell a really different story than actual marketing claims. And since car's are build in series I bet they have still a generally valid value.

Brakenshire 8y ago

You’ll be downvoted because you are wrong. Because battery life isn’t an issue with thermally managed batteries, Teslas are doing well over 100,000 miles and on average retaining 80%-90% of battery life. And because electric cars will provide a massive pool for demand shifting, barring four hours of peak, electric cars can be charged at any time of day, that means with price structures you can create almost any demand curve you want.

xte 8y ago
How old, in years, your EV is? I bet you do not know anyone with a moderately used EV with more than five years. If I'm right wait a bit before try so sure conclusion. I know few people with few not-so-new EVs (Renault ZE series most of them) and hear their practical experience outside marketing. No one of them is willing to buy an EV again.
- outworlder 8y ago
  Maybe it is a problem with Renault then. Go hang out in Leaf forums instead (and the Nissan Leaf doesn't even have a thermally managed battery). I have one. I haven't lost a SINGLE capacity bar after 3 years (first year saw really heavy usage with multiple quick charges a week). Unless it decides to self-destruct after 5 years, I would expect it to last a while. Yes, they lose maximum capacity over time. Very slowly. They still work. This is not a phone or laptop.
  - xte 8y ago
    No, thanks, I do not ask on some vendor's forum. I prefer ask people I can trust as sources, not eventually disguised marketing guys or bot. As I write before I say most of them are on Renault, But one is on a Tesla. This last one essentially stop using it because it's too large for him in city and it can't use it because of reduced range to go to it's country house or on mountains to ski without recharge... The problem, beside battery life, Renault ZE have and nobody like to recall it in marketing is 85 euro/month fee for battery (mandatory) rental. BTW battery tech is the very same of phones, laptop, cordless drill etc, any other devices that use lithium ion battery. Only very few vendors offer other option that last even less than Li-Ion battery.

jillesvangurp 8y ago

Happy to counter all of that. First, it's fossil fuel that has a marketing issue. First of all, you have to pretend the second hand value of your car is not going to rapidly tank as EVs take over. If you are buying Diesel, I hope you factor in that it will be a hard sell in a few years and you might have to write off a lot more than you bargained for when you sell at a much lower price than you hoped. IMHO Diesel is the canary in the coal mine here; the same will happen to petrol cars in a few years. This will rapidly kill the market for new ICE vehicles as there is no point in buying them if you can't pass them on at a reasonable price a few years later. Secondly, fossil fuel cars benefit from all sorts of government protection including tax benefits for big oil, tax funded expensive wars in the middle east (at trillions $ cost), silly subsidies for things like bio diesel, etc. And that's before you factor in the damage burning fuel does. Which people seem to be allowed to get away with for absolutely free. If you stop all that overnight, ICE based cars would become a really hard sell because fuel prices would rise, and manufacturers would be retrofitting cars with expensive fixes to make them stop being a health and safety risk in fear of action law suits. Think tobacco industry here. Why not? Diesel/petrol, fumes kill people, by the millions with long term health affects and measurable life time decreases. There's no good reason for any of this to continue to be the case as EVs become widely available commodity products available at competitive prices. This is more than a little marketing challenge as governments world wide seem to be cracking down on this with taxes, vehicle restrictions, etc. And that's of course aside from the whole co2 business. I know, not a popular topic but it's having real effects on fuel prices and vehicle taxes in most civilized places at this point. I don't see that ending any time soon; rather the opposite. Norway is leading here, but plenty more countries are following. This will kill demand and increase cost for ICE based vehicles. That's why GM and Ford shut down a lot of their ICE business last year and why the likes of VW are making tens of billions of investments in production capacity for EVs over the next few years. In fact, most major manufacturers are effectively divesting their ICE business for a few years now. A few percent now, doubling every 18 months or so creates a nice exponential growth curve for EVs. Meanwhile, everything else is dealing with shrinking markets, declining ASPs, increasing taxes, government pressure, etc. There's very little future in ICE based vehicles, judging from how major manufacturers are behaving in the last year. Charging infrastructure is just fine. There's plenty of it already and more is on the way. Actually, most of it is under-utilised most of the time (<10%). So, there's plenty of room for growth short term and plenty more long term as there are continued investments in charging infrastructure happening everywhere. Sure, in the utterly unrealistic scenario that everyone would switch overnight to EVs this would indeed be a minor challenge for grid providers. But growth as per even the most optimistic scenarios, provides plenty of room for continued investments in infrastructure, clean energy, etc. You say problem, I say business opportunity. Most healthy businesses would consider predicted growth spread over multiple years/decades to be fantastic news. Of course it kind of sucks if all you know is burning coal/gas and all the cool new hip kids are undercutting your prices with solar/wind. Battery life is not really a problem for the vast majority of commuters. Even with the unimpressive/limited range of already obsolete first generation vehicles like the Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt. Long distance travel indeed requires annoyingly long charging breaks; but on the other hand taking a break after 200-300 miles is not the end of the world. And if you drive those kind of distances daily, your life sucks much more than that of most drivers stuck in perpetual traffic jams. Luckily, faster charging high end vehicles with longer ranges are becoming available as well. And that's before you factor in battery R&D over the next few decades that will decimate cost and double/triple capacities. But most people rarely need to rely on public charging points since their car will be fully charged when they unplug it at home in the morning. And coming back to the charging infrastructure, most people see a measurable but not spectacular increase in their electricity use while charging almost exclusively at home. You have to drive a lot to double your usage. So if that's the same for most people, we're talking probably much less than 2 x increase in total electricity demand. And that's spread out over the next 10-20 years. Also, charging happens mostly off peak at night. And you can do some interesting things such as use charged cars to provide power back to the grid during peak hours. In short, this is not an issue now and unlikely to become one. Finally, battery life span seems awesome in first generation vehicles. Mostly their batteries get reused rather than recycled after their vehicles are written off. Tesla guarantees 100K+ miles for their drivetrains + batteries at or above 70% capacity: reason: they know full well, they can do at least double that. I think Elon Musk was actually boasting numbers closer to 500K miles recently. Most ICE cars would go to many expensive maintenance cycles every few tens of thousands of miles.