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Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? We can quibble about timing, regulatory vs customer preference factors, models, etc. but it's cl

Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? We can quibble about timing, regulatory vs customer preference factors, models, etc. but it's clear from all the data I've seen that EVs (and specifically plug in EVs) are growing at a fast clip and are on the way to becoming mainstream and unremarkable within the next decade or two. If you were a big auto company, what wouldn't you spend to not lose out on that wave? I look at other industries where fundamental underlying technology changes remade the landscape: the switch to mobile phones, internet penetration, etc.

Misdicorl 8y ago
I think comparing the switch from gas to EV to internet/mobile phones is quite the stretch. There's nothing really new or different about an EV. The car market isn't going to experience several orders of magnitude growth spurred by EVs. Most buyers will compare across engine types. So to answer your question >If you were a big auto company, what wouldn't you spend to not lose out on that wave I'd spend nothing until the EV I can produce is expected to have profit margins on the order of my other vehicles in that class, discounted at maybe 30-50% of the development cost. Note that brand recognition/green efforts/etc gets wrapped up into the profit margin calculation. The nail in the coffin here is that early movers get penalized unless they can effectively vertically integrate all the tech used for EVs (e.g. Tesla with their battery specialization). If you want to bet on the battery tech getting commoditized, its in your interest to wait as long as possible.
- martythemaniak 8y ago
  The problem with this view is that it assumes the EV/ICE differences are a simple swap, akin to moving from a I4 to a V6. The switch to an EV drivetrain has lead to a much more through redesign of cars and none of the first gen batteries-bolted-onto-existing-chasis type EVs were particularly good. That is, if you don't get on the EV wave early and just wait for cheap batteries, you will be years behind your competitors in producing a properly thought-out EV and will be facing some very tough times.
  - ams6110 8y ago
    Apple would disagree. They were not first to market with music players, or mobile phones. They looked at what others did, saw their opening, and when they were ready they came in and absolutely dominated the market with products that had been designed with the benefit of knowing where others had made mistakes.
    - Brakenshire 8y ago
      That's what VW is attempting to do with the MEB platform.
    - r00fus 8y ago
      They monopsonized the supply chain with their decades of supply chain expertise. There was a lot of mechanics involved in releasing the iPod - e.g. 1.8" hard drive and later flash memory. Tesla is the Apple here, they're already vertically integrating.
      - cptskippy 8y ago
        The hard drive wasn't an Apple innovation. Neither was the battery tech. They brought the wheel interface and were willing to gamble that people would pay a premium for a bunch of very expensive components that resulted in a comparatively small player. The closest thing to an iPod at the time it launched was the Rio players which were flash based and had capacities in tens of megabytes or the Creative HDD players which were battery hogs the size of 2 CD players stacked on top.
        prepend 8y ago
        Creative had the Nomad Jukebox [0] at 6GB. It used a larger drive and was about the size of a discman, not double. The battery was awesome and lasted all day. The iPod was more expensive, but they ended up with being able to both buy and rip music. The size helped using the new smaller drive. But they took off because of their music, I think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD
- r00fus 8y ago
  > I think comparing the switch from gas to EV to internet/mobile phones is quite the stretch. There's nothing really new or different about an EV. That's a bit hyperbolic. EVs dont require gas. This is a huge seismic shift in the way auto and oil industries were tied at the hip and probably why Tesla is able to disrupt so heavily. Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble. A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what? Gas cars will still be sold but the threat of legislation is huge. That market could dry up much faster than expected. The best bet wouldn't be to stay out of the market, but to dabble and know when to strike hard so you can edge out all your laggard competitors.
  - Misdicorl 8y ago
    >> EVs dont require gas. This is a huge seismic shift Not really. >> Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble. This is silly. >> A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what? The batter market will be much larger than cars. I think vertical integration would be the surprise result
    - r00fus 8y ago
      Your dismissals have no case. My case is Tesla.
      - Misdicorl 8y ago
        Tesla only shows one of two things 1) Their profit margins are significantly lower than what traditional manufacturers are willing to sustain for the luxury car market 2) The traditional manufacturers were bad at calculating the profit margin of a luxury EV
        dv_dt 8y ago
        Isn't this how competitive markets supposed to work? With entrants competing to offer lower prices to consumers?
- michaelbuckbee 8y ago
  Rephrasing the question somewhat: Who has the bigger advantage? The car company that spends the most and comes out first? Or The car company that waits and is the last to really move to PEV from ICE?
  - Misdicorl 8y ago
    Almost certainly the answer will be somewhere in the middle. A company that can do the shift after most of the hard and expensive work in battery tech has been completed but before their brand is completely ruined and everyone thinks of them as dinosaurs.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  > I'd spend nothing until the EV I can produce is expected to have profit margins on the order of my other vehicles in that class I think posing the question as a ROI calculation misses context that going forward at some level of risk is how you get the data to model a much better profitability operating point. Until you produce a few models of EV yourself, how can you know your cost estimate is anywhere near accurate? Add in the uncertainty in the speed of drop in the cost of central components like the batteries and I suspect the uncertainty is sufficiently high to surround both sides of the threshhold where if you set up for a go, you don't know if it will be more or less profitable and the ICE equivalent. However, if you don't start now, and your competitors do start down the path, then you might end up with a ICE line of cars where your competitors are posting costs well below yours and eating your market share.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    > I think posing the question as a ROI calculation Posing it as brain dead ROI calculation like an academic economist would just misses pretty much everything about bringing a new design to market and why companies do things. The conundrum is. You never make money on a new blue printed design. You make money reselling tweaks of old stuff. But the reality that you need to innovate or eventually go out of business. Never innovating and eventually going out of business is a valid strategy. That's basically the hedge fund strategy. But companies that aren't controlled by capitalists never do that because there is nothing in it for the people that run the company. Since that's VW they'll they chose to lose money innovating. So the company stays in business and they keep their jobs and status.
    - dv_dt 8y ago
      > But companies that aren't controlled by capitalists never do that I would say that there are a range of companies that are to different mixes of being ruled by accounting vs ruled by innovation. Ironically, I would say the companies most ruled by accounting are the ones with the best foundational resources to make targeted innovation bets (but don't because the ROI doesn't pencil out...).
    - Misdicorl 8y ago
baybal2 8y ago
> Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? No, but the future will look very different from what is the current "industry consensus" Legal side of the question, consumer preferences, and how the developing markets will react to the trend make it all more likely that switch to EVs will not be a drop in replacement for regular cars. Some conventional car concepts, and even entire car classes simply make no sense if converted 1-to-1 to electric propulsion. Few current trends will hold in EV era: 1. The global general trend of car turning smaller will continue. Two-seaters are very likely to turn mainstream. Twizzy like microcars will also have a good chance to make debut outside of niche markets. 2. Battery capacity will be becoming more, and more of an irrelevant metric, as people discover that even basic EVs fully satisfy their need for a commuter vehicle. Thus all extensive investments into battery tech and manufacturing, may well go... sideways 3. New manufacturers from the developing world will actually have more headway than established ones as they are there creating brand new markets, while established makers will still be trying to sell electrified versions of "car 1.0" 4. New EVs will themselves see strong competition from "new mobility" and "public transport 2.0" 5. Same will go for two wheel transport. "The 150cc world" has long been thought to be a developing nation only thing, but it is the one currently expanding, and heading West. I am seeing more and more of maxi scooters, and other "Asian type" motorcycle varieties in the West these days. I think that's a very natural consequence of people adjusting to continuously worsening traffic.
- ams6110 8y ago
  I disagree with almost all of this. Cars are getting bigger, not smaller. At least in the US. Very few people are interested in an tiny car suitable only for commuting. They want an all-purpose car that they can use for commuting, shopping, and 700-mile/day vacation drives. People don't trust new brands in cars until they've seen them on the road for a few years. Tiny cars and especially two-wheelers are seen as unsafe by most motorists. That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    > That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks. The demographic of oversized SUV drivers has been quite stable, and it is very visible in survey data. For the last 20 years, that demographic was just getting older. It is a very generational thing. On other side, the microcars has been only growing, and given that they were a practically invisible minority just few years ago in USA, their growth can be said to be very strong. I'd say, this can be translated to China in some ways. There is also a sizeable demographic of people with very strong preference for all kinds of oversized car types, but there is an equally big polar opposite demographic who drive small vehicles by choice. And you have to add people who simply don't have money for anything but a small, mini or microcar. They are a little bit apart from ones driving smaller cars by preference, but they only add to their ranks.
tengbretson 8y ago
If I were an exec at a car company I would try to hold out as long as possible selling ICE vehicles. The differentiators that justify all the r&d, marketing and bureaucracy of a huge motor company just won't be there for the EV market. We're moving towards a market where cars are much more commoditized. I imagine we will move towards a few companies creating crash-safe bodies that then get outfitted by lean "OEM"s that put the right size battery in, the right kind of leather seats, puts their badge on it and calls it good. Existing car companies are too big for this kind of market, so they might as well go out doing what they're actually good at.
- ohazi 8y ago
  > If I were an exec at a car company I would try to hold out as long as possible selling ICE vehicles. This is basically Mazda's strategy.
  - ticmasta 8y ago
    although in Mazda's case they are working on some potentially very profitable upgrades that do not take the same commitment to long-term R&D, like their compression ignition engine: https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/mazda-bets-big-on-revolutionary-new-petrol-engine_id185659.aspx https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/mazda-bets-big-on-revolut... Selling an EV to an ICE customer is hard; selling 30%+ better fuel efficiency is easy.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    And Fiat, their chairman said they would rather be late than wrong.
- floatrock 8y ago
  > I imagine we will move towards a few companies creating crash-safe bodies that then get outfitted by lean "OEM"s that put the right size battery in, the right kind of leather seats, puts their badge on it and calls it good. That's exactly VW's MEB platform. "Volkswagen wants other automakers to use its MEB electric platform": https://electrek.co/2019/02/04/volkswagen-meb-electric-platform-automakers/ https://electrek.co/2019/02/04/volkswagen-meb-electric-platf... They're using it for a Golf-sized compact, a sedan, a crossover, and the VW bus reboot. Now they're also marketing it to other manufacturers.
navigatesol 8y ago
>Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? They seem to be, mostly because of their simplicity compared to an ICE. But many seem to think we'll gradually keep using more and more EVs until they take over. Much needs to happen infrastructure-wise (hence, politically) before that world is feasible.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  > Much needs to happen infrastructure-wise In what way? Plenty of utilities have stated that ubiquitous home-charging won't require major modifications to the grid. As residential demand creeps up, some spending and changes will have to be made, but nothing major. En-route charging infrastructure is getting built up rapidly without public support. Commercial EV demand alone could drive the formation of a very nice charging infrastructure.
  - lm28469 8y ago
    I have vague memories of countries running out electricity at peak hours in certain conditions. In the UK they struggle with water boilers [0]. I'm fairly certain that if we switched all gas cars to electric we'd struggle quite a lot with peak electricity demand, especially during holidays and other events. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      I always assumed they would be charging overnight when not much else is going on. If we were really smart about it we could adjust the charging according to demand.
      - lm28469 8y ago
        That's what is happening already. https://insideevs.com/average-hourly-electric-usage-ev-households-versus-non-ev-households/ https://insideevs.com/average-hourly-electric-usage-ev-house... The thing is that it's cheap to charge at night right now because it's off-peak. With a shift to EV it'll be the opposite. It doesn't work very well with solar or wind energy since you can't modulate their production.
Gravityloss 8y ago
I don't want to buy a 20,000 euro battery if I can get by with a 7000 euro one + an ICE that I might run every few months on some longer trip.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  That’s one side of it. The other side of the argument is this: I don’t want to pay for a 7000 euro battery and an ICE that has a thousand moving parts and an expensive service schedule. I just did the 60000km service on my vw with oil change, transmission oil, and 4wd oil. It was 1300 euros. I remember thinking it was my last car with lots of expensive fluid changes... I’m thinking I’ll get an electric car that does 90% of what I need and then I’ll rent a car if I need to go on a long trip.
  - gorbypark 8y ago
    I'm sorry, but did I just read that it was 1300 euros to change some fluids? That's absolutely insane. Even buying OEM fluids would only be 100 euros or so, and the labour to do it should be less than an hour, at most.
    - alkonaut 8y ago
      Yes OEM. Just Engine Oil+filter is 5-600. Slightly less for the 4wd and transmission ones. Hourly work cost in an OEM shop is probably 150€. Maybe even €200. Even in the garage on the corner it's probably 80-90/h.
  - Gravityloss 8y ago
    Tesla maintenance at the vendor is also more than 1000 euro per year. I have an ICE car and take it to an independent shop. Walking distance. They're mid priced and do good work.
philwelch 8y ago
Hybrids are "mainstream and unremarkable" already but non-hybrid cars are still sold. Pure electric vehicles today are at the same place that hybrids were at in the late 1990's. It's not like mobile phones where the existing market is going to disappear overnight. Cars survive at least 20 years in many cases, meaning gasoline infrastructure is going to be around for a good, long while. And if you project over the next 2-3 decades it's going to require for electric vehicles to become a majority of the market, it's increasingly possible for the underlying market dynamics to change even more. There is a ton of credible doubt for a future of, "every household has two cars just like 1960's American suburbia, except those cars are electric now".
- r00fus 8y ago
  > Pure electric vehicles today are at the same place that hybrids were at in the late 1990's. I'd say we're well past that. More like mid-2000s. The "cambrian explosion" will be 2020, when China enforces their EV rules.

Misdicorl 8y ago

I think comparing the switch from gas to EV to internet/mobile phones is quite the stretch. There's nothing really new or different about an EV. The car market isn't going to experience several orders of magnitude growth spurred by EVs. Most buyers will compare across engine types. So to answer your question >If you were a big auto company, what wouldn't you spend to not lose out on that wave I'd spend nothing until the EV I can produce is expected to have profit margins on the order of my other vehicles in that class, discounted at maybe 30-50% of the development cost. Note that brand recognition/green efforts/etc gets wrapped up into the profit margin calculation. The nail in the coffin here is that early movers get penalized unless they can effectively vertically integrate all the tech used for EVs (e.g. Tesla with their battery specialization). If you want to bet on the battery tech getting commoditized, its in your interest to wait as long as possible.

martythemaniak 8y ago
The problem with this view is that it assumes the EV/ICE differences are a simple swap, akin to moving from a I4 to a V6. The switch to an EV drivetrain has lead to a much more through redesign of cars and none of the first gen batteries-bolted-onto-existing-chasis type EVs were particularly good. That is, if you don't get on the EV wave early and just wait for cheap batteries, you will be years behind your competitors in producing a properly thought-out EV and will be facing some very tough times.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Apple would disagree. They were not first to market with music players, or mobile phones. They looked at what others did, saw their opening, and when they were ready they came in and absolutely dominated the market with products that had been designed with the benefit of knowing where others had made mistakes.
  - Brakenshire 8y ago
    That's what VW is attempting to do with the MEB platform.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    They monopsonized the supply chain with their decades of supply chain expertise. There was a lot of mechanics involved in releasing the iPod - e.g. 1.8" hard drive and later flash memory. Tesla is the Apple here, they're already vertically integrating.
    - cptskippy 8y ago
      The hard drive wasn't an Apple innovation. Neither was the battery tech. They brought the wheel interface and were willing to gamble that people would pay a premium for a bunch of very expensive components that resulted in a comparatively small player. The closest thing to an iPod at the time it launched was the Rio players which were flash based and had capacities in tens of megabytes or the Creative HDD players which were battery hogs the size of 2 CD players stacked on top.
      - prepend 8y ago
        Creative had the Nomad Jukebox [0] at 6GB. It used a larger drive and was about the size of a discman, not double. The battery was awesome and lasted all day. The iPod was more expensive, but they ended up with being able to both buy and rip music. The size helped using the new smaller drive. But they took off because of their music, I think. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_NOMAD
r00fus 8y ago
> I think comparing the switch from gas to EV to internet/mobile phones is quite the stretch. There's nothing really new or different about an EV. That's a bit hyperbolic. EVs dont require gas. This is a huge seismic shift in the way auto and oil industries were tied at the hip and probably why Tesla is able to disrupt so heavily. Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble. A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what? Gas cars will still be sold but the threat of legislation is huge. That market could dry up much faster than expected. The best bet wouldn't be to stay out of the market, but to dabble and know when to strike hard so you can edge out all your laggard competitors.
- Misdicorl 8y ago
  >> EVs dont require gas. This is a huge seismic shift Not really. >> Un-swearing allegiance to Big Oil is the huge gamble. This is silly. >> A working commodity market for things like batteries may or may not happen. You could get a vertical integrator (or several) who monopsonize the key parts. Then what? The batter market will be much larger than cars. I think vertical integration would be the surprise result
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Your dismissals have no case. My case is Tesla.
    - Misdicorl 8y ago
      Tesla only shows one of two things 1) Their profit margins are significantly lower than what traditional manufacturers are willing to sustain for the luxury car market 2) The traditional manufacturers were bad at calculating the profit margin of a luxury EV
      - dv_dt 8y ago
        Isn't this how competitive markets supposed to work? With entrants competing to offer lower prices to consumers?
michaelbuckbee 8y ago
Rephrasing the question somewhat: Who has the bigger advantage? The car company that spends the most and comes out first? Or The car company that waits and is the last to really move to PEV from ICE?
- Misdicorl 8y ago
  Almost certainly the answer will be somewhere in the middle. A company that can do the shift after most of the hard and expensive work in battery tech has been completed but before their brand is completely ruined and everyone thinks of them as dinosaurs.
dv_dt 8y ago
> I'd spend nothing until the EV I can produce is expected to have profit margins on the order of my other vehicles in that class I think posing the question as a ROI calculation misses context that going forward at some level of risk is how you get the data to model a much better profitability operating point. Until you produce a few models of EV yourself, how can you know your cost estimate is anywhere near accurate? Add in the uncertainty in the speed of drop in the cost of central components like the batteries and I suspect the uncertainty is sufficiently high to surround both sides of the threshhold where if you set up for a go, you don't know if it will be more or less profitable and the ICE equivalent. However, if you don't start now, and your competitors do start down the path, then you might end up with a ICE line of cars where your competitors are posting costs well below yours and eating your market share.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  > I think posing the question as a ROI calculation Posing it as brain dead ROI calculation like an academic economist would just misses pretty much everything about bringing a new design to market and why companies do things. The conundrum is. You never make money on a new blue printed design. You make money reselling tweaks of old stuff. But the reality that you need to innovate or eventually go out of business. Never innovating and eventually going out of business is a valid strategy. That's basically the hedge fund strategy. But companies that aren't controlled by capitalists never do that because there is nothing in it for the people that run the company. Since that's VW they'll they chose to lose money innovating. So the company stays in business and they keep their jobs and status.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    > But companies that aren't controlled by capitalists never do that I would say that there are a range of companies that are to different mixes of being ruled by accounting vs ruled by innovation. Ironically, I would say the companies most ruled by accounting are the ones with the best foundational resources to make targeted innovation bets (but don't because the ROI doesn't pencil out...).
  - Misdicorl 8y ago

baybal2 8y ago

> Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? No, but the future will look very different from what is the current "industry consensus" Legal side of the question, consumer preferences, and how the developing markets will react to the trend make it all more likely that switch to EVs will not be a drop in replacement for regular cars. Some conventional car concepts, and even entire car classes simply make no sense if converted 1-to-1 to electric propulsion. Few current trends will hold in EV era: 1. The global general trend of car turning smaller will continue. Two-seaters are very likely to turn mainstream. Twizzy like microcars will also have a good chance to make debut outside of niche markets. 2. Battery capacity will be becoming more, and more of an irrelevant metric, as people discover that even basic EVs fully satisfy their need for a commuter vehicle. Thus all extensive investments into battery tech and manufacturing, may well go... sideways 3. New manufacturers from the developing world will actually have more headway than established ones as they are there creating brand new markets, while established makers will still be trying to sell electrified versions of "car 1.0" 4. New EVs will themselves see strong competition from "new mobility" and "public transport 2.0" 5. Same will go for two wheel transport. "The 150cc world" has long been thought to be a developing nation only thing, but it is the one currently expanding, and heading West. I am seeing more and more of maxi scooters, and other "Asian type" motorcycle varieties in the West these days. I think that's a very natural consequence of people adjusting to continuously worsening traffic.

ams6110 8y ago
I disagree with almost all of this. Cars are getting bigger, not smaller. At least in the US. Very few people are interested in an tiny car suitable only for commuting. They want an all-purpose car that they can use for commuting, shopping, and 700-mile/day vacation drives. People don't trust new brands in cars until they've seen them on the road for a few years. Tiny cars and especially two-wheelers are seen as unsafe by most motorists. That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks.
- baybal2 8y ago
  > That goes back to why bigger cars sell better. Look at the number of people driving around town in full-size SUVs or 4-door pickup trucks. The demographic of oversized SUV drivers has been quite stable, and it is very visible in survey data. For the last 20 years, that demographic was just getting older. It is a very generational thing. On other side, the microcars has been only growing, and given that they were a practically invisible minority just few years ago in USA, their growth can be said to be very strong. I'd say, this can be translated to China in some ways. There is also a sizeable demographic of people with very strong preference for all kinds of oversized car types, but there is an equally big polar opposite demographic who drive small vehicles by choice. And you have to add people who simply don't have money for anything but a small, mini or microcar. They are a little bit apart from ones driving smaller cars by preference, but they only add to their ranks.

tengbretson 8y ago

If I were an exec at a car company I would try to hold out as long as possible selling ICE vehicles. The differentiators that justify all the r&d, marketing and bureaucracy of a huge motor company just won't be there for the EV market. We're moving towards a market where cars are much more commoditized. I imagine we will move towards a few companies creating crash-safe bodies that then get outfitted by lean "OEM"s that put the right size battery in, the right kind of leather seats, puts their badge on it and calls it good. Existing car companies are too big for this kind of market, so they might as well go out doing what they're actually good at.

ohazi 8y ago
> If I were an exec at a car company I would try to hold out as long as possible selling ICE vehicles. This is basically Mazda's strategy.
- ticmasta 8y ago
  although in Mazda's case they are working on some potentially very profitable upgrades that do not take the same commitment to long-term R&D, like their compression ignition engine: https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/mazda-bets-big-on-revolutionary-new-petrol-engine_id185659.aspx https://www.just-auto.com/analysis/mazda-bets-big-on-revolut... Selling an EV to an ICE customer is hard; selling 30%+ better fuel efficiency is easy.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  And Fiat, their chairman said they would rather be late than wrong.
floatrock 8y ago
> I imagine we will move towards a few companies creating crash-safe bodies that then get outfitted by lean "OEM"s that put the right size battery in, the right kind of leather seats, puts their badge on it and calls it good. That's exactly VW's MEB platform. "Volkswagen wants other automakers to use its MEB electric platform": https://electrek.co/2019/02/04/volkswagen-meb-electric-platform-automakers/ https://electrek.co/2019/02/04/volkswagen-meb-electric-platf... They're using it for a Golf-sized compact, a sedan, a crossover, and the VW bus reboot. Now they're also marketing it to other manufacturers.

navigatesol 8y ago

>Is there any credible doubt that electric cars are the future? They seem to be, mostly because of their simplicity compared to an ICE. But many seem to think we'll gradually keep using more and more EVs until they take over. Much needs to happen infrastructure-wise (hence, politically) before that world is feasible.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
> Much needs to happen infrastructure-wise In what way? Plenty of utilities have stated that ubiquitous home-charging won't require major modifications to the grid. As residential demand creeps up, some spending and changes will have to be made, but nothing major. En-route charging infrastructure is getting built up rapidly without public support. Commercial EV demand alone could drive the formation of a very nice charging infrastructure.
- lm28469 8y ago
  I have vague memories of countries running out electricity at peak hours in certain conditions. In the UK they struggle with water boilers [0]. I'm fairly certain that if we switched all gas cars to electric we'd struggle quite a lot with peak electricity demand, especially during holidays and other events. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    I always assumed they would be charging overnight when not much else is going on. If we were really smart about it we could adjust the charging according to demand.
    - lm28469 8y ago
      That's what is happening already. https://insideevs.com/average-hourly-electric-usage-ev-households-versus-non-ev-households/ https://insideevs.com/average-hourly-electric-usage-ev-house... The thing is that it's cheap to charge at night right now because it's off-peak. With a shift to EV it'll be the opposite. It doesn't work very well with solar or wind energy since you can't modulate their production.

Gravityloss 8y ago

I don't want to buy a 20,000 euro battery if I can get by with a 7000 euro one + an ICE that I might run every few months on some longer trip.

alkonaut 8y ago
That’s one side of it. The other side of the argument is this: I don’t want to pay for a 7000 euro battery and an ICE that has a thousand moving parts and an expensive service schedule. I just did the 60000km service on my vw with oil change, transmission oil, and 4wd oil. It was 1300 euros. I remember thinking it was my last car with lots of expensive fluid changes... I’m thinking I’ll get an electric car that does 90% of what I need and then I’ll rent a car if I need to go on a long trip.
- gorbypark 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but did I just read that it was 1300 euros to change some fluids? That's absolutely insane. Even buying OEM fluids would only be 100 euros or so, and the labour to do it should be less than an hour, at most.
  - alkonaut 8y ago
    Yes OEM. Just Engine Oil+filter is 5-600. Slightly less for the 4wd and transmission ones. Hourly work cost in an OEM shop is probably 150€. Maybe even €200. Even in the garage on the corner it's probably 80-90/h.
- Gravityloss 8y ago
  Tesla maintenance at the vendor is also more than 1000 euro per year. I have an ICE car and take it to an independent shop. Walking distance. They're mid priced and do good work.

philwelch 8y ago

Hybrids are "mainstream and unremarkable" already but non-hybrid cars are still sold. Pure electric vehicles today are at the same place that hybrids were at in the late 1990's. It's not like mobile phones where the existing market is going to disappear overnight. Cars survive at least 20 years in many cases, meaning gasoline infrastructure is going to be around for a good, long while. And if you project over the next 2-3 decades it's going to require for electric vehicles to become a majority of the market, it's increasingly possible for the underlying market dynamics to change even more. There is a ton of credible doubt for a future of, "every household has two cars just like 1960's American suburbia, except those cars are electric now".

r00fus 8y ago
> Pure electric vehicles today are at the same place that hybrids were at in the late 1990's. I'd say we're well past that. More like mid-2000s. The "cambrian explosion" will be 2020, when China enforces their EV rules.