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Electric vehicles close to ‘tipping point’ of mass adoption

• 99_00 6y ago
  I don't understand how this can happen. An equilibrium seems more likely to me. If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This will make combustion vehicles more attractive. Also, government depends on all the taxes they put on combustion vehicles. As those revenues decline they may choose to get that money from electric vehicle drivers under the guise of 'congestion' taxes or such.
  • adventured 6y ago
    Gas prices might temporarily fall as there is a very brief over-supply. Then the exact opposite will happen, gasoline will become more expensive as the economies of scale vanishes, refineries shut down permanently (never to be restarted, and no new refineries will be built), the market demand continues to dwindle, and on the cycle goes. Gasoline ends up as a largely niche fuel many decades out. And that's before we get to the obviously anti-fossil fuel era we're entering, where they will increasingly hammer fuels like gasoline with taxes, driving the cost up around the globe. Even if somehow the market didn't drive the prices up from the economic efficiency change I described, the taxes will regardless and that's guaranteed to occur.
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      Gasoline is (something like) 20% of refinery outputs. I think a lot of that is coming out of upgraders, so there can be quite a decline in output before there's not enough gasoline refiners for there to be price competition. https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_m.htm https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pnp_refp2_dc_nus_mbbl_m.htm (the upgrading part matters because they can shift their production around a lot more than if they are just fractioning the crude)
    • ogre_codes 6y ago
      Also, the cost to extract oil is higher in some regions and production will drop off as prices drop. Canadian sands oil and shale oil both cost about $40/ barrel to extract so there isn't a ton of room for prices to go down from here before big chunks of supply vanish.
  • DennisP 6y ago
    Governments certainly have the power to screw things up, but also to accelerate things. If electrics take over so much of the market that gasoline gets super cheap, there won't be that much political resistance to a carbon price on gasoline, since most people are driving electrics anyway. Besides that, it's not all about fuel costs. Electric vehicles are fun, and generally low-maintenance.
    • throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      >there won't be that much political resistance to a carbon price on gasoline, since most people are driving electrics anyway. So long as screwing people too poor to justify a new or new-ish car is politically unacceptable there will be some resistance. Cars from the early '00s are still on the road. It's gonna take another ~20yr for the fleet to turn over organically.
      • jlj 6y ago
        In the US there was a "cash for clunkers" program about 10-15 years ago that tried to clear out ineficient older model cars. It was fairly successful and stimulated purchases of newer cars. The downside was that some perfectly fine cars were scrapped. I suspect that gas stations will start swapping pumps for chargers, and that will motivate people to switch too. By the time this all happens though we will have more car sharing programs and maybe autonomous vehicles, so the ownership paradigm will be different in 2030 compared to now. Why buy a car that sits idle for 90% of the day?
        • djrogers 6y ago
          > I suspect that gas stations will start swapping pumps for chargers, and that will motivate people to switch too. This may happen some places, but I expect the charging infrastructure to ultimately look very different from the refueling one we have today. Today's fueling infrastructure is the way it is largely due to the difficulties of storing and pumping fuel safely (physically and environmentally speaking). There's no reason that an electric car shouldn't be able to 'refuel' at a restaurant, grocery store, or at work (ie, where we see most charging places pop up). Having four-corners real estate and employees dedicated for electric charging all over even city is just inefficient.
  • jlj 6y ago
    Gas taxes set a floor for how low prices can go. They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. In Washington, US, they increased the registration fee for electrics to make up for the shortfall in gas taxes that pay for road wear, congestion, etc. So that's already happening.
    • 99_00 6y ago
      >They'll probably increase as gas motor cars are phased out before the process ever sink too low. Why?
      • Ericson2314 6y ago
        Because cars still have externalities, electrified or not. One just hopes that also increased thee gas tax too so as not to subsidize the ICE cars.
        • 99_00 6y ago
          If it's about externalities then there is a ceiling on the taxes. Because combination isn't infinitely bad. If it's about revenue, taxing combustion engines gets less attractive the smaller the market becomes especially if it's easy to switch.
          • kgwgk 6y ago
            And if it’s about revenue, which is obviously the reason why the tax exists at all, what we’ll see is that the taxes will follow the money . They’ll find a way to increase the tax on the use of electric vehicles.
      • jlj 6y ago
        Increased gas taxes would drive behavior change towards electrics. Similar to tobacco and alcohol taxes to discourage their use. I don't see diesel going away so soon though because of industrial, agriculture, and military use. It will probably be taxed differently according to it's use. In fact it already is taxed differently in the US for home heating, vehicle, and aviation use.
  • ogre_codes 6y ago
    > If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This isn't entirely true. The cost of gas has a hard floor due to the cost of extracting oil from the ground. Nobody is spending $40 a barrel to extract oil that's selling for $25 a barrel. So if oil demand falls and prices fall, many of the current sellers pull out of the market entirely. On top of that, as the number of cars going to gas stations starts to drop, gas stations will get less profitable. As profits drop, stations start closing down. Eventually, enough stations close down and it becomes inconvenient to own and operate an ICE vehicle regardless of the cost of fuel.
    • 99_00 6y ago
      >This isn't entirely true. The cost of gas has a hard floor due to the cost of extracting oil from the ground. Nobody is spending $40 a barrel to extract oil that's selling for $25 a barrel. So if oil demand falls and prices fall, many of the current sellers pull out of the market entirely. Not all producers have the same cost. Saudi Arabia is the cheapest I know of at $2.80 per barrel. Others can be 10 times higher or more. Is $2.80 the floor? Maybe not, since SA is a monopoly and can manipulate the price. I think the point is that we can both agree on is that it's a complex dynamic system, with lots of variables and interconnections, and it reacts to changes. >Saudi Aramco, the monopoly oil producer in Saudi Arabia, boasts an extraction cost of about $2.80 a barrel >A geographical comparison from the annual reports of four major international oil companies shows that production costs in Russia were about $22 a barrel https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/by-pumping-at-will-saudi-arabia-hurts-oil-investment/2020/03/15/189505da-6693-11ea-8a8e-5c5336b32760_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/by-pumping-at...
      • ogre_codes 6y ago
        Yeah, what I was trying to say is individual suppliers will drop out of the market as the price of oil drops. That in turn reduces the supply. For Oil Sands, that's roughly $43. Shale oil is similar. Every time the price drops, the number of suppliers drop. OPEC will fight to keep oil prices up by limiting supply when they can, since most of the governments in the Middle East are run on oil profits, they need to!
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • mywittyname 6y ago
    > If massive amounts of people move to electric vehicles gas prices will fall. This will make combustion vehicles more attractive. If gas prices fall any lower due to demand, then production capacity will probably disappear permanently, leading to shortages and a huge, long-term rise in price. Oil pumps aren't like taps that can be shut off and powered back on demand. They basically need to be operated continuously because restarting them is pretty expensive. And storing excess oil is also pretty expensive. We also have to consider that low gas prices are due to volume. Refinement is still costly, and if the volume of gas falls by a large amount, that refinement costs gets distributed among the remaining volume. Refinement capacity is even more expensive to bring back online than pumps. I predict gasoline production will death-spiral at some point. Gas stations will be culled as prices spike and volumes drop. I would expect this to happen in a relatively short timespan, over maybe 1-2 years for the bulk of it, then a long tail of persistent decline.
    • davidhbolton 6y ago
      I think the petrochemical industry might disagree with you there. Sure petrol/diesel for transport will decline but pharmaceuticals, plastics and many more items are made that way and they are not going away. This site has a big list. https://www.ranken-energy.com/index.php/products-made-from-petroleum/ https://www.ranken-energy.com/index.php/products-made-from-p...
      • mywittyname 6y ago
        Per your own link, 50% of a barrel of oil goes to gasoline production. If by, "ultra-low sulfur distillate", they mean diesel fuel for road going vehicles, that increases the percentage dedicated to motor vehicle transportation to 75%. That is pretty staggering. If automotive transportation consumes somewhere between 50-75% of crude oil production, then the fallout from the reduction in that market is going to be very significant. There's no way that growth in the ammonia and rubber boots sector is going to be enough to capture the production excess left by EVs. Your link has me pretty well convinced that the gasoline market collapse will be swift and extreme.
  • rasz 6y ago
    Remember that time photo film got cheaper as more and more people switched to digital cameras? Combustion engine powered cars will be relegated to hipsters, museums, hardcore enthusiasts and specialist/niche applications.
    • 99_00 6y ago
      I'm not aware of a strong functional benefit of electric versus combustion. But digital cameras had strong benefits over digital, so I don't think it's a good analogy. In general, I don't think analogies are for making arguments, because people focus on the difference between the analogy and what it's being applied to, like I just did. In education, to teach a new principle, I think they are great.
      • rasz 6y ago
        Have you driven a Tesla or another fast electric car? They are the new digital cameras.
        • 99_00 6y ago
          How? What do they do that cheaper combustion cars don't?
          • username90 6y ago
            Accelerate faster than a combustion sports car, no expensive engine maintenance etc. And since the only major cost of electric cars is the battery they will go down in price as we get better batteries and very likely get cheaper than combustion cars pretty soon. Electric engines are super simple, only reason combustion cars are even competitive today is that we have invested so much research into building combustion engines.
            • 99_00 6y ago
              There are cheaper and faster combustion sports cars.
  • jeofken 6y ago
    Exactly what is happening in Norway
• dm319 6y ago
  The UK plan for no ICE vehicles to be sold by 2030 is fairly ambitious. I'm seeing more and more electric vehicles on the roads, but I think some regular customers will be disappointed by how poor the infrastructure is. Not only that electric chargers aren't as prevalent as they need to be, but the number of high-speed chargers are tiny (think a couple of locations per large city), but an even bigger problem is the heterogeneity and complexity of coming across a charger and being able to use it on your car. The requirement for registration, fobs/cards etc is crazy. This is a good opportunity for government to step in and mandate that all electric charging points also have the option to pay by contactless/android/apple pay, for example. I don't mind if I pay a few pence more, but I do mind having to find a website on my phone and sign up then wait for a fob to be posted to me.
  • knoebber 6y ago
    California is banning sales of new internal combustion engines in 2035 as well. That should help incentivize the tech/infrastructure a bit.
    • duxup 6y ago
      I wonder what the yin and yang / success rate of such mandates are / how the response really goes. I remember the light bulb rules at a national level had to be rolled back when there just wasn't enough capacity to replace them all with non incandescent options.
      • dm319 6y ago
        The light bulb rules in the UK were frequently snorted at, but everyone has moved over now, and whether it is associated with it or not, we're using less electricity these days too.
  • tyho 6y ago
    The 2030 date will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So long as "everybody" truly believes the Governments threat to effectively ban ICE sales after 2030, then clear economic opportunities to service the future demand for electric cars and charging infrastructure become apparent. This sidesteps the issues with network effects. You don't have to worry about building a charging network before electric cars become widespread, because the Government is sending a clear signal of when that transition will happen.
• k__ 6y ago
  Good to hear. I'm not driving much myself lately, but I'm really excited about the health impact of removing combustion engines from our cities.
  • jillesvangurp 6y ago
    Same here; but living in a big city I can't wait for diesel fumes to not be a thing when I'm riding my bike across town. It's not just annoying, this stuff is actually killing people. But because it's a slow killer nobody seems to care much. EVs are changing that as well; people are getting more critical of pollution like this because they know it is not necessary. The recent lock downs were kind of a preview of what might be in our near future when transport is cleaned up. In terms of tipping point, the other thing that is happening (besides battery cost dropping) is the massive ramp-up in production volume. Just a few years ago, Tesla producing more than 50K cars was news worthy. Last year they did half a million and they have a few more factories coming online this year. Also VW, GM, and other manufacturers are producing cars by the hundreds of thousands per year as well. Soon it will be millions. By mid this decade, the second hand EV market will also start ramping up. Right now a lot of people are still on their first EVs. It's basically a supply constrained market: people are buying these things as soon as they get produced. Most of the popular EVs have waiting lists for getting them and would be selling more if they could produce more of them. These manufacturers are still learning how to produce and design efficiently. A lot of the cars on the market right now are still designed to come in both ICE, hybrid, and EV configurations. That makes them less efficient and more costly to make. It's just not optimal. A few years from now, that will stop being a thing. There will just be too many purposely designed EVs on the market that will be a better deal overall. It's going to take a while for manufacturers to switch to producing EVs only. Production volume overall is something like 90M cars per year and only a few percent is EVs currently. Probably by the end of the decade it will be the other way around. There are billions of vehicles (cars, trucks, etc.) it will take a while for those to disappear. That being said, it will be similar to horses disappearing from the streets early last century. Once it makes sense economically, people will switch as fast as they can (function of price and production volume).
  • dzhiurgis 6y ago
    Noise too. Wish they taxed cars by decibels too. Charge motorcycles, heavy machinery and sports cars like 100k a year.
• strict9 6y ago
  I rarely drive, but can't wait to own one. Where I live (and for a lot of people who live in cities) there is only on-street parking. Will be interesting to see how increased electric vehicle ownership might happen for people without a garage or designated parking.
  • gregkerzhner 6y ago
    This. Curios to hear about people's experiences owning an EV without access to a charger at home.
    • traveler01 6y ago
      Unless they get better charging times, a total nightmare.
    • random5634 6y ago
      I looked into this very closely and opted against it.
    • dghlsakjg 6y ago
      Obviously everyone's use case is different. The way I would frame it is this: 1. Your car has x range. Let's say 200 mi. or 321 km. And takes 1 hr. to charge. (Just for reference, my current car gets refilled with gas every 400 km. and takes 10ish minutes to do the task). 2. How long does it take you to travel that range in everyday life. For me, it would take about 2 weeks. But lets assume that its winter or I'm driving a lot and my time is cut in half, so I need a full charge every week. 3. Now I ask myself if there is anywhere in my driving schedule where I consistently spend about an hour in a place where there are chargers. The answer is, of course, I might go to Costco, the grocery store, home depot and the library In the course of a week. Of course partial charging is also an option, so two 30 min stays at any of the above also solves the issue. So I'm covered for my average use case if charging at home isn't an option. It is a smart question to ask, but it is actually pretty easy to answer if you think it through. Obviously there are a million and one use cases for a personal vehicle, but me and all my friends would be fine. Even thinking back over the past year, including lots of outdoor activities into the backcountry in Canada, I have a hard time thinking of more than one trip that would have been different with an electric car (towing on backroads in the mountains. A corner case if ever there was one). My theory is that charging infrastructure will all of a sudden become as necessary a commodity as parking. A restaurant that has a few chargers in the parking lot will attract more business, and I wouldn't be surprised if it also became a revenue stream as well.
• lastofthemojito 6y ago
  I'm really curious to see how the used electric car market shapes up. New cars (electric or not) are pretty expensive. The average price of a new car in the US just topped $40k, which is out of reach of many car buyers. The people who buy new obviously tend to be well-off, and are often older. Then at some point down the road, those cars end up in the hands of (on average) younger, less-wealthy folks. But younger folks might not want the same thing as older folks. One niche example is the manual transmission. Looking at a car like the Mazda Miata - something like a third of those are sold new with an automatic transmission. The buyers (again, maybe older) don't want to bother shifting their own gears, so they pay an extra $1k or so for an automatic. But when those cars are affordable used cars, and the market is younger car enthusiasts, Miatas with an automatic transmission are worth quite a bit less. The preferences of the new $30k convertible buyers aren't the same as the preferences of the used $5k convertible buyers, even though those $30k cars eventually become the $5k cars. With electric cars I wonder if we'll see a similar divide. I know a few people (software engineers who own their own single family homes) who have bought new electric cars. Folks I know from less wealthy walks of life (daycare providers, teachers, grad students, etc) have not bought used electric cars. Surely that's at least partially because used electric cars don't exist in great numbers, but I also wonder if those folks (people who rent, or move often, etc) might be less enamored with a car where they don't know they'll be able to charge it at home, or a depleted battery pack means less range or costly repair, etc. I'm hoping for an electric future and I want my next car to be electric ... I'm just really curious to see if/when middle- and lower-class Americans start adopting these in large numbers.
  • maxerickson 6y ago
    $10,000 buys a pretty good used ICE vehicle. How many decent electric vehicles are selling used for that price? The lower ongoing costs of electric can justify a higher upfront price, but then you are paying more up front.
    • lastofthemojito 6y ago
      Of the ~20k used electric cars listed on cars.com, ~3k are $10k or less. Mostly Nissan Leafs and Chevy Sparks, so it depends on your definition of decent :).
• bad_alloc 6y ago
  I just got a Renault Zoe 2020 last December and it's been great. Commuting to work and going to the shops is just as comfortable as with a combustion engine. No gas station visits and even with the high cost of electricity in Germany (0,3€/kWh) it's still worth it. Only when driving longer distances (>250km) you need to plan ahead for charging and trips take longer (1-3 hours).
  • zaroth 6y ago
    That is really expensive electricity. Does anyone and everyone with the ability to finance solar panels just install them pronto, or do you not have net metering?
    • Laarlf 6y ago
      Putting electricity into the grid is almost useless in Germany because you don’t get much back. Solar panels and the legal stuff behind them is expensive and it will take many years to break even. Might be better with an electric car, but you charge your car at night usually. When there isn’t a lot of sun available.
      • dzhiurgis 6y ago
        Half of people live in flats - solar is mostly not possible (unless they have system like some countries where you buy a share of solar farm somewhere outside city (arguably much smarter than wrecking roofs with expensive labor)).
  • rconti 6y ago
    I'd go with "more comfortable" when you're talking about a car that can heat the cabin almost instantly, rather than waiting for the combustion engine to heat the coolant enough to trip the bi-metallic thermostat, thereby routing tepid coolant into the heater core in the cabin, and then blowing a fan over it. :)
    • Laarlf 6y ago
• mrtnmcc 6y ago
  Will be watching for the success of Rivian and Cybertruck to see if the rural market can accept electric.. but can't think of any good reason why not, other than pride and prejudice. (FD, I grew up in the country).
  • pretendscholar 6y ago
    Range anxiety?
    • ogre_codes 6y ago
      Few people regularly drive more than 300 miles in a day. Most people drive less than 50 miles a day. The fact that you start every trip will a full charge means you only worry about range on the longest trips.
      • mrtnmcc 6y ago
        I do enjoy driving down country roads which won't have superchargers for some time, but these trips are usually <300-500miles and by it's nature the route is flexible enough to hit a supercharger near a highway if necessary.
      • MrRiddle 6y ago
        Unless you forget to plug in, then the fix is not as simple as hopping to the gas station. Or you live in an apartment building with only public outdoor parking, then you can just forget about EV, unless you want to WFChargeStation.
        • ogre_codes 6y ago
          > Unless you forget to plug in, then the fix is not as simple as hopping to the gas station. Forgetting to plug in will rarely be a big issue unless you forget 3-4 days in a row. Flipwise, there have been many times where I've forgotten to fill up before coming home and had to make a side-trip to a gas station before heading out. As for apartment dwellers. The economics of EVs for people without access to home charging are pretty different you miss out on one of the biggest benefits -> rarely having to fill up.
• u678u 6y ago
  Europe has a big advantage that distances are closer and cars are smaller and newer. USA still will be a long long time. My apt building has 500 cars and zero electrical outlets.
  • paganel 6y ago
    One of Europe's biggest disadvantages is that a larger proportion of people live in apartment blocks and the like (compared to the US, anyways), so no easy way for those people to charge their EVs over night (I'm an European living in such a building myself).
• sandworm101 6y ago
  Maybe in the UK, but not where I am. It was -26 this morning. Batteries don't handle such temperatures well. And the nearest civilian airport is 400km away. I haven't seen a single all-electric car in my town since I moved here over a year ago.
  • mint2 6y ago
    Well yes and solar isn’t a great solution for arctic areas in the winter. There’s rarely a single blanket solution that works everywhere.
    • sandworm101 6y ago
      Solar panels actually do rather well in the north, even in winter. They are more efficient at cold temperatures. When the sun is up, colder air tends to have fewer clouds and having the sun lower on the horizon means static panels can be pointed more efficiently. Shorter trees mean housed generally have a better view of the horizon/sky/sun. And snow on the ground acts as a reflector, increasing the light hitting the panels. So long as you are below the actual arctic circle, there is a place for panels even in winter.
    • argiopetech 6y ago
      Current ICEs seem to be doing a good job of working everywhere. I won't downplay their disadvantages, but the slope down from the current local maximum is pretty steep, and it's not obvious that area electric cars currently (or can in the next 10 years) occupy constitutes an improvement.
    • grecy 6y ago
      Whitehorse in the Yukon has more sunny days than anywhere else in Canada. Sure, the sun is only above the horizon for four hours a day, but during that time you get a good amount of power from your chilly panels. When I lived up there I knew a ton of people living off-grid with solar and a battery setup. It's really common.
  • dghlsakjg 6y ago
    What percentage of the world's car owning population lives in a place with a restriction like that? Few enough that it would be fine to let you keep your ICE/hybrid vehicles with almost no impact on climate is my guess. If I had to guess, you live in Canada which is a country of extremes like what you mention. The solution for Canada probably isn't to prohibit ICE vehicles, but to disincentivize them heavily where they make less sense. So in the areas where extreme cold and long range is the use case, provide an exemption. Out here on Vancouver Island where the longest possible route is less than 500km and a cold day is one where there's frost on my car, there's really not a great reason for me to be buying a brand new ICE car 10 years from now. Same thing for when I lived in Vancouver and drove 5,000 km per year. My point is that a huge majority of people live in circumstances where electric cars will be fine. We shouldn't let the corner cases (living in a place with extreme cold where driving 400km to the airport is routine) dictate what the rest of the world needs to do.
• bfrog 6y ago
  I can't wait for my ICE vehicle to be good for recycling only. One day, until then I barely drive anyways, so it'll probably last me another 15 years.
• dd_roger 6y ago
  The major problems with EV that will keep me from buying one in the foreseeable future are: * Low range, combined with a lackluster charging infrastructure. I think from my list this is the closest issue to being resolved, if I could consistantly get 800km range (in real world usage, not "800km in the brochure but actually 400km in real life") it would be fine because (1) with such a long range the risk of having to recharge multiple time on a single journey is fairly small, thus reducing the inconvenience [assuming one can charge at home or work, otherwise recharging will always be a pain in the butt regardless of how you look at it] (2) it's enough to cross "charging station deserts", areas where inevitably there will be little to no charging infrastructure (see the charging stations on french highways for reference, recharging is just as expensive as refueling and the charging stations don't even work reliably). * A large segment of the EV market is made of cars that remind me more of technological gadgets than proper vehicules. I have very little patience to deal with technology and I certainly don't want my car to be basically a software platform. I shouldn't get angry before bed time but I'm still going to mention the privacy aspect of it. Having SIM cards embedded in every car is bad enough already but at least with the more traditional "analog" cars you can give the manufacturer the benefit of the doubt that the SIM card is only activated in case of accident. Most EV cars lift the doubt by collecting analytics and installing software updates remotely. One day there will be a data breach and everywhere you've ever been with your car will be free for the general public to see. Even worse, a malicious actor gets a hold of the manufacturer's private key and can push arbitrary updates to your car. * Most charging networks (I'm tempted to say "all" because I've never seen an instance where it wasn't the case, but again let's give the benefit of the doubt) are basically spying networks that require an account and a credit card to use. Someone (everybody once there's a data breach) knows everytime/everywhere you recharge your car, how much you used since your last charge, etc. Why can't we just pay cash for, say, $10 worth of electricity just as we do with ICE cars? I believe the first point will be solved in a relatively near future because it's mostly a matter of improving the technology a bit (or paying more for a bigger battery). For the two last points however I only see things getting worse since the current trend is to go further and further in this "everything as a digital service" direction.
  • rconti 6y ago
    You already have a hard time paying for gasoline with cash, particularly after-hours. A "dumb" EV you charge at home could, in theory, leave fewer breadcrumbs than a petrol car you fill up with a credit card.
• mint2 6y ago
  I recently got a plug in hybrid, due to road trips a full ev is not great for me. The all electric range is so nice to drive. But it makes me realize how loud the ICE is after that kicks in, which now annoys me. I’m excited for when electrics will get a 500 mi range. It will happen.
  • theshrike79 6y ago
    How often do you actually drive 500 miles without stopping? My ass gets numb after 200 and _I_ need to stop. =)
    • mint2 6y ago
      Driving from SoCal to Utah or SoCal to Tahoe is a long drive. Adding in a 2 hour stop on top of that makes it that much more unpleasant. A quick stop or two for gas, bathroom and coffee is better. And driving in remote areas on BLM land seems to leave very low safety margin with a tank less than 300.
• julienb_sea 6y ago
  Electric cars are perfectly pleasant to own as a second car or if you very rarely take long road trips. If it's very cold or very hot, if you drive to the mountains or rural areas for pleasure, range anxiety is a serious problem. Waiting for a re-charge is ok if you have access to Tesla supercharger speeds. Forcing this lifestyle change on everyone is absolutely insane. The climate imperative is poor reasoning because this will be a significant increase in electricity generation demands. Renewables alone will not be able to keep up, so we will need to increase fuel based generation of electricity, which is less efficient as an overall usage of fuel for transportation versus an efficient hybrid vehicle.
  • fossuser 6y ago
    It's wild to me that no other car manufacturers have taken Tesla up on their offer for supercharger access. EVs without supercharger access are strict city cars. The electrify america network sucks, non tesla range is mostly bad (with a small number of exceptions). Even with decent range, lack of supercharger access makes the car a non-starter. I think Tesla's advantage here remains huge, I think legacy car companies are in trouble (and this is even ignoring their inability to write or ship software). The dealership model of legacy car companies will also be a big problem for them and will continue to hold them back. That said, I think ultimately forcing the EV switch makes sense and with something like supercharging in place is viable. Battery capacity will continue to improve, charging rates will continue to improve. Pushing this shift makes sense. It just might be that legacy car companies are too dumb to do it properly and will cede a lot of the market to Tesla (and maybe Apple).
    • theshrike79 6y ago
      > It's wild to me that no other car manufacturers have taken Tesla up on their offer for supercharger access. It's a prestige thing. Legacy manufacturers would lose face if they'd have their cars charging at the young upstart's superchargers. This is why most european manufacturers have partnered with 3rd party companies and provide some amount of free charging at certain branded locations for new vehicles.
• fuoqi 6y ago
  I wonder if electrical grids are really prepared for mass adoption of EV. For example, UK is already quite reliant on the HVDC link [0] from France. In 2016 it got damaged resulting in a reduced capacity, which has caused serious concerns at the time. And it's not only about power generation, it's also quite probable that a lot of existing power lines would have to be updated to satisfy a higher demand for electrical power. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Cross-Channel
  • tw04 6y ago
    I've been trying to wrap my head around this as well. You look at the repeated rolling brown-outs that seem to happen in places like California every few years, and I wonder how throwing 10s of millions of cars that all need to charge at extremely high rates is going to be absorbed. Sure, SOME of those people might also install things like solar panels and batteries, but I just don't see how the math works right now.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
      If a Tesla battery is 100kWh and it gets like 350 miles - and you can get 6 hours of sun on a 350 watt panel per day on average - that means 2 panels could charge your car about once per month, right?
      • athms 6y ago
        Do you thinks everybody lives in a single family home with lots of disposable income?
        • theshrike79 6y ago
          If someone already has a Tesla with a 100kW battery, I don't think the extra $3k for a solar panel will break the bank =)
          • athms 6y ago
• hntrader 6y ago
  If a country relies only on oil and gas for electricity, are EVs any better than petrol-powered cars as far as emissions go?
  • ChuckMcM 6y ago
    Yes. If all your cars get the maximum use out of the energy in the petroleum and you provide atmospheric pollution controls on the power plants that eliminate smog/particulates then you have a net win, even if your total energy from petroleum doesn't change.
    • mprovost 6y ago
      And you can locate power plants away from population centres so the pollution isn't being generated right outside homes and schools.
  • jtaillon 6y ago
    Yes, see this plot from IEA: https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-life-cycle-greenhouse-gas-emissions-over-ten-year-lifetime-of-an-average-mid-size-car-by-powertrain-2018 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/comparative-l... This is as of 2018, and one would expect that the grid will continue to get cleaner as time goes on, which means the BEV options will get cleaner as well.
  • nightfly 6y ago
    Yes, because ICE efficiency is so bad you'd still probably reduce emissions caused by mover vehicle use by 30-40%.
  • gumby 6y ago
    Even in that case, yes, as large plants generate power more efficiently and more cleanly than a bunch of smaller power plants (i.e. engines). However the major power grids are no longer 100% fossil fuels.
  • amznthrwaway 6y ago
    Yes, dramatically so. ICE are low efficiency and disburse pollution broadly.
• hehehaha 6y ago
  This is great but the pandemic triggered a permanent shift toward WFH which undoubtedly will drive down total miles driven. In addition, car ownership is increasing. I wonder how all these dynamics will play out in coming years.
• turtlebits 6y ago
  Mass adoption won't happen until charging infrastructure improves dramatically. As a non-Tesla owner, I have had the worst experiences at fast charging stations - I'd say 70% of the time at Electrify America stations (they have the most fast charging coverage), I run into a charger that doesn't work and waste time moving my car and retrying another bay. (I've even experienced a station with 5 bays where none of them would charge - yet they all showed available). I don't even bother with L2 stations as I'm never in a place long enough to get any meaningful charge out of one - and I'm not going to go out of my way to a location that has one. With all that said, taking a long trip is out of the question for me.
  • thatfrenchguy 6y ago
    Opposite experience in 2020 here at EA: sure, I've seen stalls that don't work a few times but it seems to be well correlated with their app showing you they don't work, and most of the time it just works That is in California, did around ~40-50 charging sessions.
  • ogre_codes 6y ago
    The supercharger network is Teslas not-so-secret weapon.
  • gambiting 6y ago
    I've driven through Germany last summer, tried 3 different charging stations, none of them worked. Or rather, they did, but I couldn't set up the app for them, one because it didn't have an English option, one because it wouldn't accept my non-German card and another because it was giving me an extremely helpful "unspecified" error. But even here in UK it's a mess. There is a charging station near my home that seems to be out of order 90% the time. There is another one where I can't set up an account and their customer support is non existent. Funnily enough the best experiences I ever had with charging stations in the UK were always at Shell charging stations - plug in, tap your payment card on the side, done. No apps, no stupid fobs or anything, it's easier than paying for petrol. I really do think that legislation should come in to force all providers to accept card payment at the charger, even if the cost is higher(offer discount to account holders, but at least let me pay even without an account)
• davmar 6y ago
  a year ago I bought a used 2016 nissan leaf for driving around town for 11k. it's the best car i've ever owned. the design is ugly, the generic silver is hideous, but i'm so emotionally attached to it. i don't drive my really nice (and newer) VW GTI anymore. if you're thinking of getting an EV, you don't have to buy a tesla. the used leafs are just brilliant.
  • r00fus 6y ago
    There is a reason that used Leafs are cheaper - the range is reduced due to poor design around thermal management for the battery (no active cooling) so the battery life degrades quickly. Newer (2018+) Leafs fixed this, but if you plan on buying used - make sure the range is confirmed. All that said, I have a cheap EV (2017 Focus) and it's a blast to drive - not a Tesla but still a sleeper.
    • headmelted 6y ago
      Worth mentioning that they upgraded the packs in 2013/2014 to be more resistant to hotter climates, but in colder parts of the world the range degradation seen in hotter places didn’t happen anyway. When I bought mine it had been through something like 900 rapid charge cycles (the Nissan battery report scored it 0/5 which was helpful for getting the price down). Even now years later it’s capacity is about 80-85% of new.
    • davmar 6y ago
      ah, that's good to know. well, i'll say this, i bought one that only has 80 miles of range anyway since it's pretty much just used for short trips. most of my trips are pretty short so it fits my current needs. based on my experience, i'd still feel comfortable recommending the used leafs for those who don't need 100+ miles of range per day.
  • headmelted 6y ago
    Same here! I love my frog-looking golf cart of a car. It’s also (between tax incentives and subsidised electricity) been essentially free to own and run - and is worth about the same now as what I paid for it years ago. People need to check out what they’re missing.
• abeppu 6y ago
  I'm curious how many EV purchasers live in single family homes, or other places where they can provide their own ability to charge at home. I wonder if a new scale of adoption will require a change where most (or a lot) of street parking is by cheap charging. https://youtu.be/RMxB7zA-e4Y?t=1245 https://youtu.be/RMxB7zA-e4Y?t=1245
  • sunstone 6y ago
    The idea of providing charging outlets at the base of street lamp poles seems like a practical way of helping transition to EV's.
    • pacaro 6y ago
      While I agree that this is obvious low hanging fruit, there are plenty of housing in areas with relatively sparse street lamps
      • lazyasciiart 6y ago
        Assuming you mean rural areas, they have their own parking.
        • bradlys 6y ago
          Even where I live, the streets are full of cars but there are maybe 2-3 lamp posts on the street. You’d need lamp posts every 50 feet on both sides of the street. Which we definitely don’t have. I live in the peninsula in the Bay Area in a rich neighborhood. If there is that many cars on the street here in a place with $2mil+ homes then there’s no way it’s gonna work in other areas as well.
          • ryandrake 6y ago
            I’ve lived in mostly working class suburban neighborhoods and it’s the same thing: the entire street is Joe’s Used Car Lot. Two cars in each driveway, and more cars packed in every available nugget of street between driveways. Ain’t nobody gonna be charging all those cars if they were EVs.
• cabaalis 6y ago
  Can someone who knows more about the subject that I do comment on the statement "electric powered vehicles are coal powered vehicles?" I'm seeing that in conservative circles.
  • r00fus 6y ago
    quick google search brought up this: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/a-cheat-sheet-to-debunking-myths-about-electric-vehicles/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/a-cheat-sheet-to-debunking-myth...
  • ddulaney 6y ago
    At least in the US, that statement was much more true 20 years ago than it is today [0]. Today, swapping “natural gas” out for coal is more accurate. There are three big points to consider: - Overall, the (US) electricity mix is lower-emitting than gasoline. - The US electricity mix is trending greener. (Gasoline cars are also getting more efficient, but many of those changes also apply to electric cars) - The electricity sector is easier to move than automobiles. We’ve already seen a couple of major shifts (coal->nat gas->renewables), while we’re still very slow on the first big paradigm shift for cars. [0]: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
    • bagacrap 6y ago
      4. whatever particulate matter is produced is emitted much farther from my lungs
      • ddulaney 6y ago
        Yep! Moving air pollution sources somewhere else is always good (though coal is so much worse than gasoline that any increase in coal burning might be a net negative). This is one reason to be super excited about coal plant shutdowns: often coal plants (even “clean coal”) represent the largest point sources of PM2.5 in a whole region. It’s worth remembering that this does have the effect of concentrating pollution. If a coal plant opens near you, that might be worse on your health than even a broad change to EVs. Happily, nobody is really building much coal anymore, and natgas/renewables are much better for air quality than either coal plants or gasoline engines.
• 4b11b4 6y ago
  This explanation of the rate of electrification was somewhat compelling (I would like to hear arguments against): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2yvsmDvxvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2yvsmDvxvA rough summary: electricity costs become negligible when (~2030) solar, wind, and storage prices all drop to a certain threshold **note: the concept of "superpower" introduced in the featured video (need citation)
• edgarvaldes 6y ago
  How do you pay for the electricity to charge your vehicle in a public spot?
  • recursive 6y ago
    Probably similar to paying for parking parking spots in the first place.
  • cptskippy 6y ago
    In the United States there are several large charging networks who work with businesses to install their branded chargers. The rates are set by the business and you use the network's charge card or App to activate the charger. I've seen a couple, and used one charger that accepted credit cards but those are definitely the minority. I only ever used one network, ChargePoint, and they sent you 2 RFID cards in the mail you could put in the car or on your keychain. You could swipe them on the charger or use your NFC equiped phone with their App. I accidentally swiped my phone once without opening the App and it opened up Google Pay and let me pay that way as well. There are a lot of free ChargePoint chargers, I encountered those mostly on government property. Allegedly the larger networks are interoperable now to some extent but I've yet to use that. Since I moved to California I've only charged away from home once.
  • theshrike79 6y ago
    Either with an app (gps location + number on charging spot) or an RFID tag you swipe on the charger.
• Guthur 6y ago
  The tipping point might be for new car sales, but I'd be more interested in second hand market which is the vast majority of car sale transactions. I personally would not buy a new car with my current finanical situation, even though i'm well paid, because i'd never have the sort of cash on hand to buy one and I try to avoid debt. And so like many I'll be still buying used cars for the foreseeable, which will likely remain ICE cars.
• jiggawatts 6y ago
  My problem is renting apartments. If you ask the strata or the building managers about charging points in the carpark, they look at you like you're speaking Klingon. This is true of even very recently completed buildings in well-off areas of relatively wealthy western countries. Heck, I just walked past three Teslas in my building's car park, one of which is new and wasn't there last week! Do people... not plan ahead? Do architects not read the news? Are they from another planet where electricity delivery is not a problem that architects have to deal with in building design? Mind you, I got the exact same dumbfounded stare from people when talking to cafe managers and gym owners about the impending COVID lockdowns back in February 2020: "Lock...down...? You think so? Really? Here?" (Don't think IT is spared from this, I get the same vacant expression when I talk to network engineers about IPv4 exhaustion and the need for IPv6.) On a more practical note, I have business idea that might interest the YC News crowd: The main problem raised by building managers I spoke to was that it was "too hard" to solve charge-back and the like. Wiring is "easy", that's just a matter of calling out contractor, but organising the billing of the tenant and then splitting the revenue between the various parties involved is more work for them than it is worth, because it is complex to set up but initially there may be only a couple of electric cars generating very little revenue. An "electric charging billing" cloud service that manages everything with low overheads might sell well...
  • kylecordes 6y ago
    Widespread charging points in newly constructed parking areas will happen when required by building code and enforced by local governments; and likely not one minute before. The construction industry is brutally competiive and cost-centric; things are included because they are required or because of customer demand, almost never just because they are a good idea.
  • stcredzero 6y ago
    My problem is renting apartments. If you ask the strata or the building managers about charging points in the carpark, they look at you like you're speaking Klingon. There is legislation on your side in California now. It's even called "right to charge!"
• keriati1 6y ago
  How can 1 000 000 German tourists drive to croatia in the summer for holidays if all have electric cars? Right now in high season the normal gas stations have long lines of cars waiting...
  • Forge36 6y ago
    Hybrids?
• jgalt212 6y ago
  > The tipping point has already been passed in Norway, where tax breaks mean electric cars are cheaper. It's like Norway is actively trying to devalue its copious natural resources.
  • username90 6y ago
    Electricity is one of Norway's copious natural resources, all of their grid runs on hydro power.
    • jgalt212 6y ago
      Norway is one of the world's most prosperous countries, and oil and gas production account for 20 percent of its economy. Other important sectors include hydropower, fish, forests, and minerals. State revenues from petroleum are deposited in the world's largest sovereign wealth fund.
  • supertrope 6y ago
    Less domestic consumption means more available to export.
• h0l0cube 6y ago
  Does anyone have a measure of the feasibility (or lack thereof) of converting ICE vehicles to electric within the next decade? Is there a potential to reduce waste here?
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  We have remote working here to stay. It will be a massive change in transportation needs and habits. Which means cars will be mainly used for non-city trips, i.e. nature / recreation / roadtrips. Sounds like the worst use case for a battery car. Short inner city transportation may be covered by an electric bike / scooter / tiny car, there is not even need for a huge battery, a 30km battery would do and would be more eco-friendly. I think banning non- electric is overkill
• reddog 6y ago
  I've worked on ICE vehicles my whole life and I'd be happy to say good riddance. But this article has a heavy urban bias. The author has obviously never driven through West Texas or taken a road trip from Brisbane to Alice Springs. You'll need to show me how I can drive an $80K Tesla from Austin to Big Bend NP before I start to believe.
  • adrusi 6y ago
    I think widespread EV ownership in urban areas would constitute "mass adoption," no?
  • hughes 6y ago
    How to drive from Austin to Big Bend NP in a $48k car: https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MY_2020_LongRange&o=Austin,%20TX,%20USA_Austin%20Travis%20County%20TX@30.267153,-97.7430608&s=&d=Big%20Bend%20National%20Park,%20TX%2079834,%20USA_Big%20Bend%20National%20Park%20Brewster%20County%20TX@29.2499017,-103.2501638 https://www.tesla.com/trips#/?v=MY_2020_LongRange&o=Austin,%... There's a route planner that can do this built in to every Tesla.
    • reddog 6y ago
      OK, I have to conceed your point. You can drive from Austin to Big Bend NP in an electric car. I didn't know you could now buy a Tesla with a 400m range. Of course that longer range Model S costs $65K, not $48K. And you have to drive 55mph, with the heater off to get that range. Which, in West Texas, is 30 mph under the posted speed limit for many roads. And (I apologize for moving the goal posts) when most people get to Big Bend they don't want to turn around at the entrance and go back to the closest charger -- they want to drive around and see things and maybe vist Terlingua or Alpine or Ft Davis. Maybe they want to spend several days in the area but that's not an option in an EV. Thats probably why I've never seen one in Big Bend. I drive out there often from Austin. I drive a 2004 Sienna which I bought for about $4000. The $61K I save by not buying a Tesla would buy me 700,000 miles in my ICE. https://evstationslocal.com/states/texas/79834/ https://evstationslocal.com/states/texas/79834/
• twblalock 6y ago
  It's one thing to install a charger in a two-car garage. Installing charging capacity for 20, or 50, or 100 cars is something else. I'm not sure how most existing apartment buildings could handle all of their tenants charging their cars at night at the same time. I'm not even clear on how much strain that would put on the electrical grid. How much more power would we need to produce to handle the demand if everyone had electric cars instead of gas cars? That power consumption would be added on top of all the power consumption we currently have.
  • theshrike79 6y ago
    We already do this in Finland. Pretty much every single private parking spot in an apartment building will have a 8A plug for block heaters and cabin heaters (1,5-2,5kW load). They all trigger around 6 in the morning so the car is nice and warm for the 7:30 commute. Nothing melts, nothing breaks or starts smoking. And even then people are panicking about EVs charging from 2100-0600 overnight. NOW they think everything will melt, break and be on fire.
  • castratikron 6y ago
    Seems like this could be solved if the chargers were networked and programmed with a set group charge limit. If you are a charger, and you're the only charger actively charging, you get 100% of the limit; two chargers get 50% of the limit; three chargers get 33% of the limit, etc.
• mrtweetyhack 6y ago
  I trust Americans will purposefully destroy chargers just for fun
• baby 6y ago
  I looked into it and got a bit scared about charging it. I don’t have a garage and I do street parking and it didn’t seem like I had many options. For road trips it seemed a bit scary too, do I need to stop somewhere and wait for hours to charge?
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  I don’t see mass adoption being realistic until people can charge on long distance trips that they take few times a year in a reasonable amount of time without congestion and waiting lines at the limited number of charging ports available. Then there’s the question of what people in rural areas or trade jobs or other situations will do, given their needs may be different (working vehicles like pickups may see different adoption rates or constraints). There’s also the question of whether the power grid is ready. And finally I wonder if all the mass mining of lithium and other metals will create its own problems. If all things are better in moderation I wonder if a mixed end state with ICE, EVs, and PHEVs all available is the best equilibrium. Personally I think aggressive bans on gasoline vehicles may be short sighted, apart from being another reduction of individual freedoms.
• gailees 6y ago
  I never thought I would own another vehicle, then I saw Nimbus: http://nimbus.green http://nimbus.green It's a tiny car that fits in a motorcycle parking spot, charges via a wall outlet, has AC, and is 15x safer than a motorcyle or scooter. Just preordered one. I think not needing a supercharger will change everything.
• zed88 6y ago
  I think what needs to be "mass adopted" is parking etiquette from ICE car owners. Often do I find them parked on parking bays designated to electric car charging. This is such an annoyance when you have an electric car with limited range.
  • 0x10c0fe11ce 6y ago
    Just like some people are used to park in handicap spots. I don’t think that’s a problem with the type of car but with a certain type of driver.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• joejerryronnie 6y ago
  At what point are battery swaps going to become more feasible than charging a battery (or at least an additional option). I’d much rather role into a gas/battery station and have my depleted battery swapped out with a fully charged one in 2 minutes and be on my way than sit at a Tesla supercharger for an hour.
• topkai22 6y ago
  I think the electric f-150 and hummers are going to be huge for adoption in the US. Not necessarily because they'll sell a ton initially (although the f-150 might) but because they make electrics "safe" for a large portion of US consumers.
• gonzo41 6y ago
  I feel like we're not taking the opportunity to usher in a slightly better city experience with the mass adoption of electric bicycles.
• whatever1 6y ago
  EVs currently have high enough utility in the wealthy suburbia where you own your garage and have the capability to charge overnight. If you are a euro-peasant living in a third floor apartment, street parking and commuting to work, then an EV has very little utility to offer. You cannot expect that people will go on a regular basis to charge stations and spend an hour to charge their car. You cannot also have a reasonable expectation that employers will install a charger per employee, or that employees will gamble every day to see if there is a charger open at work. An EV cannot be your single car given the 2 main constraints: 1. Slow charging (>>5') 2. Lack of charging networks #2 can be fixed with investments. #1 needs a technological advance that is not clear that will be commercially available soon. I did not mention cost at all in the above comment, which is maybe the biggest factor currently limiting adoption, but I assume that eventually economies of scale will aleviate this.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • notimetorelax 6y ago
    Agree with your points. I believe this may be a solution to #1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric-car-batteries-race-ahead-with-five-minute-charging-times https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/19/electric... I wonder what’s the dynamic with the chargers in Norway, as I assume if the demand is there the charging stations will pop up.
    • ginko 6y ago
      In Norway if you have a parking spot at an apartment block and want a charging station to be installed the housing association can't deny your request. At least when you're the home owner (the vast majority of Norwegians owns rather than rents). Not completely sure how things are for renters, but electric cars are so common at this point that most landlords will probably allow it if only to raise the value of their place.
  • erikrothoff 6y ago
    I’m literally a euro-peasant in my third floor apartment with street parking outside my third floor apartment window. The city has but up a bunch of charging parking stations on said street parking and it’s great. There are no gas stations on the ”island” (Södermalm, Stockholm) I live on, but a ton of electric street parking charging stations. I think the decentralisation of these types of charging stations will win in the end. The price of electric cars currently is a problem though, but everything is pointing in the right direction.
• elihu 6y ago
  One side of this that doesn't seem to get looked at much is how many ICE cars are on the roads that could be converted. Doing conversions at high volume would be very labor intensive, but it would give dealerships and mechanics something to do, and it would generate less waste than replacing whole cars. Right now it's kind of on the edge of being practical, mostly because of the batteries. They're expensive and bulky and they need to be fitted to cars that weren't designed for them. 200+ mile ranges aren't really realistic either, because you'd be adding too much mass that the car wasn't designed for. Conversion kits now seem to be a custom thing made in low volume for a handful of vehicles and usually cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 or so. On the other hand, if a major manufacturer can buy batteries and motors and controllers at wholesale cost and engineer a conversion kit for their own cars, amortizing the engineering cost across thousands or hundreds of thousands of cars, then maybe you can get the cost down to something reasonable and have something where all the parts just bolt in perfectly and all the car systems work the way they're supposed to. Maybe it can be a simple as walking into a dealership and saying "I want my car to be converted to electric" and they say, "sure, just drop it off for a week and here's what it costs, etc..." The other day I decided to change the oil in my Honda Element myself and crawled under the car. The gas tank is basically a big metal box stuck to the bottom, with a bar in front to keep it from getting scraped off by a rock. It looks a little ridiculous, like Honda designed a car and at the last moment realized "oh, we forgot about the gas tank; let's just stick it to the bottom." If gas cars are made this way, then maybe finding a spot for the batteries in a car that wasn't originally designed for them maybe isn't any worse.
  • scruple 6y ago
    Who is in this space for consumer vehicles? I'm only aware of Hyliion for semi trucks.
    • elihu 6y ago
      There's EV West: https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40 https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40 These don't include batteries or battery boxes. The former are expensive and the latter are generally a huge hassle to make. CanEV makes motor-transmission adapter plates and couplers for a surprisingly wide range of cars. https://canev.com/motor-adapters/ https://canev.com/motor-adapters/ There's Zero-EV in the U.K. I only know about them because of a Youtube video series where they convert a Miata. Looks like they're selling a Porsche kit at the moment. https://zero-ev.co.uk/electric-vehicle-conversion-kits/ https://zero-ev.co.uk/electric-vehicle-conversion-kits/ There's probably some others I don't know about or have forgotten. I don't think anyone is doing this on a large scale.
• DrBazza 6y ago
  The first picture in that article is just one of the problems. On street parking and running cables across a public pavement. Many UK houses don't have off-street parking, particularly in cities. Like a thousand other comments, on here, until the infrastructure is solved, it's nowhere close to the tipping point for electric vehicles. The other problem is range vs time to charge. Members of my family frequently drive hundreds of miles a day from one end of the country to the other. There isn't an electric car that can match a diesel (or petrol) car's range. And then charging time adds an hour to a long journey. No one wants a 5 hour journey to become a 6 hour journey. If time isn't an issue, and we want to be 'green', why don't we just return to a horse and cart?
• phtrivier 6y ago
  Possibly related : https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/volkswagen-faces-24121-million-fine-for-missing-eu-emissions-targets/ar-BB1cZO6T https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/volkswagen-faces-24121-... Don't know if the new regulation is just following the tech, if it's too little too late, etc... But it's pretty obvious, looking at advertisement on French TV, that car dealers now have incentives to sell EV/hybrids. Will they follow them as strongly as they (unfortunately) did with the SUVs ? Frightening is the power of the sales department. Wonder if this will be "democratized" at some point.