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Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think

• mlang23 5y ago
  "This article has been sponsored by Elon Musk". Its not even clear how we are supposed to produce the necessary amounts of electricity if a significant amount of cars are EVs. This feels like it has been written for the upper class, ignoring the reality of 80% of the people :-)
  • syshum 5y ago
    We will do it with "green energy" using "green technology" in the new "green economy" duh.... /s
    • mlang23 5y ago
      Yeah yeah. And I get downvoted for saying the glaringly obvious. Oh well, I can take that and laugh :-)
  • hannob 5y ago
    The reality of 80% of the people is that they don't have a car.
    • Traster 5y ago
      Actually the majority of households in the uk own at least 1 car and a there are over 35 million cars and 5 million vans in the uk.
  • helloguillecl 5y ago
    I think you are ignoring the fact that we can produce extraordinary amounts of electricity from sources that were not available at economic scale 10 years ago. A solar farm is capable of producing 350 Mwh per year/per acre and it takes 18 kwh to power a Tesla for a 100km ride [1], so a single acre of solar power can produce enough energy for 19,000 of those rides, or power 190 cars (10.000 km per year) just by putting a bit more than the roof of their parking lots in solar cells. Furthermore, people do want to have their own car, and they are going to become the more affordable than their ICE counterparts and the polluting and flammable oil they need. [1] https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/support/european-union-energy-label https://www.tesla.com/en_EU/support/european-union-energy-la...
    • StavrosK 5y ago
      I can't begin to tell you how excited the thought that I can have my car mostly powered from solar panels on the garage roof makes me.
      • helloguillecl 5y ago
        Yeah, like, it sounds too good to be true. People like to think you are incredulous for believing that it might be possible. Yet, it will be a reality that will change the world.
        • StavrosK 5y ago
          I don't think it's that far-fetched, people are already installing solar panels (and have been for a while), it's just that now you'll have a much closer need. Hell, you'll probably even be able to use your car's battery as storage for your energy needs overnight, so you charge the car during the day and power your fridge/TV from it during the night (assuming you don't need to go somewhere in the morning). Pretty damn exciting.
        • dzhiurgis 5y ago
          > Yet, it will be a reality that will change the world. Yeaaaah, I kinda think smartphones were bigger change than this. It's nice, but not a flying or self driving. Just different, cheaper source of energy. It does not enable anything new, other than charge.
          • helloguillecl 5y ago
            For you, who probably are energy rich already, and can afford as much fuel as he needs, like most of us in the developed-ish world. Think of someone in a village in Africa.
      • solresol 5y ago
        It was fun for the first few days and then you get kind of used to it. But what never gets dull is laughing at people paying to fill their cars with liquid explosives.
  • StavrosK 5y ago
    Your comment kind of assumes that tomorrow every car in existence will turn into an EV. If you realize that it will actually be a more gradual process, the question actually becomes "but who will provide supply for a thing that is in such demand?!", and then, well, you know.
  • thirdvect0r 5y ago
    More nuclear reactors would solve the problem best
    • adamcstephens 5y ago
      Given the time it takes to build a nuclear reactor, this is a path we should have started 15 years ago.
      • MagnumOpus 5y ago
        Correct. And what is the second best time to start down that path?
  • leoedin 5y ago
    We already have capacity for that much electricity generation. We'll have to be careful about managing the peak usage - smart chargers which can be remotely cut off will probably be mandatory. As an example, the UK grid yesterday saw a peak of about 30 GW, but was sitting at 20 GW for most of the night. (https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/). That's about 70 GWh of overnight capacity that could have been used (the grid has to be sized for peak loads). The average car in the UK drives about 7000 miles a year (https://www.bymiles.co.uk/insure/magazine/mot-data-research-and-analysis/ https://www.bymiles.co.uk/insure/magazine/mot-data-research-...). An average EV might get 3 miles per kWh. So the average car, on an average night, needs 20 miles of range - which is about 6.4kWh. Our grid excess capacity of 70 GWh means we can charge just under 11 million cars before we're using more than our current peak electricity demand. The UK grid is designed for more capacity than todays peak, though. The maximum delivered power in the last year was 47.275 GW. If we maximised the grid at that level all year we'd be adding an additional 17 GW compared to yesterday. That's 408 GWh, or enough power for an additional 63.7 million cars (on top of our 11 million) - a total of 74.7 million average cars. The UK currently has around 32.9 million registered cars. There is undoubtedly going to be hotspots which need more work, but overall the additional load of electric cars (with smart chargers which can shed load if needed) is within the limits of the current grid and generation capacity.
    • cataflam 5y ago
      From your first link, isn't a lot of that difference between 30 GW peak and 20 GW at night due to solar? It seems to provide about 9 GW during the day, that removes most of your estimated 70 GWh of extra overnight capacity (unless I'm reading it wrong).
    • ppf 5y ago
      > That's about 70 GWh of overnight capacity that could have been used...Our grid excess capacity of 70 GWh means we can charge just under 11 million cars before we're using more than our current peak electricity demand. You've ignored all losses. Transmission and distribution losses, the latter of which are worse for low-voltage customers (ie, domestic use, and is over 10%), total around 15% for domestic use. As well as that, charger loss is around 15%. Adding all that up, a car that needs 20 miles at 333 Wh/mile needs 9kWh of generated supply power, or barely 8 million cars (assuming this power is actually available). There is also the obvious problem that there is no solar availabe at night, which makes up a relatively large percentage of the UK's energy mix (over 8GW right now, as I just looked). >The maximum delivered power in the last year was 47.275 GW How much of that peak power was from peaking plants, for example, the 1.8GW pumped hydro storage at Dinorwic? A huge part of the problems with EVs are related to unrealistic and misleading estimates. Please be careful with the maths.
  • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    To address your 3rd point (can't talk about the first 2 ones), it seems very Western-centric. If you go to a poorer countries you'd see old cars imported from Europe (or Japan - in the eastern parts of Russia you see a lot of right hand drive cars!) which are there because they're no longer economical to run in their home countries. Also trucks and buses. Without regulations or any sort of push, these vehicles will probably keep chugging along for another few decades. A benevolent leading country like the USA that seem to only exist in myths and legends of the past would probably push the poor countries by coupling economic aid with environmental regulations, and then selling them "new and clean" vehicles made in Detroit. Maybe China will step up, although of course we in the West attribute their actions to wanting something in return, unlike the benevolent USA. ;) Let's not talk about the EU government, which is just a stupid club of paper pushers...
  • truth_ 5y ago
    In a PR quote, some bigshot from a conventional car company said, "We will produce cars for the millions instead those that cost millions". Let's see how far they go.
• tokai 5y ago
  Jokes on them - I thought they would take over last decade. More seriously, in their graph it doesn't seem like US electric car sales is accelerating. What gives?
  • runawaybottle 5y ago
    I doubt the infrastructure is in place to easily charge your car if you are not in a city. Someone else can verify if the mileage per charge is feasible in places where you need to drive to do anything. We should expect China to have the most EVs since the CCP is basically mandating it. Americans barely wore face masks. The government will literally have to print trillions again and give tax credits to get a mandate out to the public (our weirdo American capitalist version of CCP mandates at this point).
    • wccrawford 5y ago
      I live in a pretty big city. I can't remember ever actually seeing a charging station for electric cars. They're probably around. But I don't see them, so I don't know that they're around. This definitely makes me more cautious about getting an electric car. We own a house, so we can put in an electric charger, but that would mean parking inside our garage. The problem is that our garage has been taken over by storage (working on that problem) and my woodworking. And when we do park the car in the garage, it's hard to get around the washer/dryer to get into the house. We've already decided not to park the car in the garage except during big storms. So even though we should be able to charge at home, we couldn't really do it well. There are a ton of problems with how things are set up for the majority of people in regards to charging EVs. There's a lot of momentum to overcome.
      • solresol 5y ago
        You don't need some special charger. I charged from a normal wall plug for ages until I paid an electrician to upgrade it (and even then it was only an upgrade to a 15 amp circuit). You'll recharge fully overnight without any trouble. What you'll end up doing is just buying one of those outdoor-rated extension leads that you can find in a gardening store and running it under the garage door out to where you park the car.
• roenxi 5y ago
  Oil prices [0] are at breathtaking all time highs. As in "wow, these prices are really high". Fighting peak oil turns out to be really expensive. I'd say electric cars are guaranteed to take over in the near term. But there is an open question about what % of people will still have cars. The future isn't set in stone. Maybe it'll be hydrogen, maybe it'll be electricity, maybe it'll be no car. But there isn't really a plausible path for internal combustion powered by fossil fuel. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/crude-oil-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/crude-oil-prices
  • iso1631 5y ago
    They were literally paying people to take oil a few months ago Brent was far higher than now from 2009-2014
  • syshum 5y ago
    There are soo many things wrong with your interpretation of that graph... First thing to ask is "WTF happened in 1971" which is where the price of oil really started to take off, hint is has NOTHING to do with "peak oil" The price of oil, in many ways, is a reflection of the health of the economy, spiking oil prices are a sign of a bad economy not a sign of "peak oil"
    • RobertoG 5y ago
      It's not 1971, but 1973, and we know what happened, the OPEC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis Peak oil doesn't mean that there is not more oil, but the point in time where it doesn't make economic sense to extract it, or because demand has fallen or because all the easy oil has been extracted. Some people think that was in 2005. I have been reading about that concept a little lately and some serious people are saying that the oil companies investment have been fallen and, if that trend don't reverse, we will see a fall in production of 50% by 2025. That sounds pretty incredible to me, but the economic consequences would be very serious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
      • 5y ago
• TrisMcC 5y ago
  The charging story is still far from ideal. Even if a large-scale supercharger network is developed and deployed it still takes far too long and needs to happen far too frequently to be convenient is many places in the USA. I was idly watching a Hasan Piker Twitch stream this weekend when he was in Austin, TX and most of the time in a rented Tesla they were very concerned with finding charging stations and the range predictions were dropping far quicker than expected in the hot Texas sun. Also, due to it being a livestream, the supercharging stations were a liability because of the time needed to charge and how "fans" could locate and cause security problems. Gas stations even 100 years ago operated faster than superchargers promise to in the foreseeable future.
  • iainmerrick 5y ago
    But isn’t that a niche case? I’d have thought the vast majority of car usage is short local trips and regular commutes, not road trips. If you’re able to charge the car at home that should cover most usage.
    • TrisMcC 5y ago
      Well, the use-case I mentioned above was not a road-trip but just driving around Austin doing errands. Many places in Texas are routinely 30+ miles away from each other.
      • manmal 5y ago
        All recent electric cars can manage multiple 30+ mile trips on a single charge. Bad privacy around supercharger stations due to streaming is definitely an edge case.
    • throwaway3699 5y ago
      People expect vehicle to work even in the one-off cases like long trips. You can't just design for the median trip.
      • jameshart 5y ago
• danpalmer 5y ago
  While I'd love this to be the case, I suspect we'll hit limitations in our energy infrastructure that prevent this from happening quite as soon as the article suggests. Energy use for cars is substantial, a significant percentage of the energy usage of homes. If that energy use shifts from fossil fuels to home electricity supplies we'll need to substantially increase the energy delivery possible to homes. The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries – I believe these are at least in the same ballpark. But "last mile" electricity delivery is not capable of supporting an electric car in every household (or even half of households) in many areas of the world. It will be interesting to see what the solutions to this are. Smart grids where cars cooperate to ensure they don't all charge at the same time, and increased use of public fast charging infrastructure (at sites with better grid connectivity) are the most likely I suspect.
  • logifail 5y ago
    > The total energy usage shouldn't be much of an issue as we'll move electricity use from refineries to charging batteries Don't forget about the taxation aspect - as the sales of petrol and diesel fall, so does the tax revenue. In many countries tax represents over half of the end-user price of petrol and diesel. How will governments replace this as the revenue drops away?
    • MaheshC 5y ago
      Tax on electricity?
      • novaRom 5y ago
        It exists in Germany and it drives electricity price to the top. Current price for private households is around 0.4 Euro per kilowatt hour (0.5 US Dollars). Large part of it are taxes. Household electricity prices in 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-price...
• egberts1 5y ago
  You will be in the worst spot if snowbounded on a freeway with any electric vehicle and definitely no heat.
  • jmercouris 5y ago
    That is also true of a gas vehicle.
    • egberts1 5y ago
      You can start, heat, then turn off. And this can go on for 72 hours on a full-tank in 28 degree weather. Bet you can’t do that with today’s electric car.
      • leoedin 5y ago
        Here's a video with a Tesla Model 3 keeping the cabin at 21 C for 71 hours in -4 C (24.8 F) weather. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzB3RbjuHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpzB3RbjuHI That car has a heat pump for cabin heat, which has a coefficient of performance of 3-4. That means you only need 1/3 of the heat energy as electrical input. Compare that to a gasoline engine, where almost all the energy in your fuel is wasted as heat outside the cabin. I don't know what fraction actually makes it into the cabin - but I'm guessing it's single digit percent.
        • SigmundA 5y ago
          Heat pumps drop in efficiency the colder it gets and only work down to a certain temp. If the outside coils get too cold they freeze up preventing it from functioning properly. would be interesting to know how cold the Tesla heat pump can operate down to and if it has resistive backup. Edit: looks like the heat pump only works down to about 14F then it runs the heat pump in recirculation mode to basically turning it into a resistive heater with COP 1, its also seems to have 12v aux heat strips.
      • SigmundA 5y ago
        You can run a 1500w resistive heater for 50 hours on a 75kwh battery. I run a 1500w heater in my 30ft RV and it holds comfortable temps down to freezing, in a small vehicle it should have no problem even down to very low temps, 750 watt might be plenty to keep the interior at a safe temp.
• ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "Companies that run big fleets of cars like Uber and Lyft are leading the switchover, because the savings are greatest for cars with high mileage." Nut uber and lyft dont pay for the vehicles or their maintenance, they dont invest in cars. Or have i missed something?
  • pnt12 5y ago
    In my country there are middleman companies which own the cars, which might be more effective to maximize the uptime of the vehicle. Maybe this is what the article refers to?
• bsenftner 5y ago
  And simultaneous to this transition is the all-App-dashboard and the conversion of cars into app store enabled entertainment, Internet, and social media steal-all-your-privacy agents. If there was ever a period when it is wise to maintain one's existing, non-App-capitalized combustion car while the shit show settles, now is that time.
• matt_s 5y ago
  Pick any random apartment complex in the US and pretend 80% of the residents there own an EV, not a hybrid, but a fully electric vehicle. Where and how do they charge it? If you've lived in an apartment complex, think how often they upgrade anything, much less something they may not be able to charge (financially) residents appropriately.
  • kylehotchkiss 5y ago
    In non-SF California cities (I'm most familiar with San Diego) nice apartment complexes will boast about 2-5 electric chargers, and somebody else probably already booked them! The hardly have space to put anything else in other parking spots too, unless they find a way to hang the charging cables from the ceiling.
    • solresol 5y ago
      I stayed in a hotel in Canberra that was set up like that (charging cables hanging from the ceiling). It was just normal domestic extension cables, so not obviously dangerous. Fortunately I was tall enough to reach up to connect my car's charger to it to charge it overnight; I don't quite know how they would have expected someone my wife's height to grab them.
  • tomsto 5y ago
    I don’t know whether on-street parking is as common in the US as it is in Europe, but the solution being quite widely adopted in the UK is to utilise the “leftover” current from when street lighting was converted from sodium to LED to retrofit EV chargers to the lamppost. It works really well up to about 7 kW I think. This is then supplemented with inner city rapid chargers at 22-50 kW. Not as cheap as charging from the wall but (in London at least) other incentives like free on street parking and no congestion charge more than make up for it.
    • ppf 5y ago
      As I understand it, the UK's original street lighting served the dual purpose of absorbing the night-time production of coal power plants, which are hard to throttle. Now that we barely use coal, and instead regularly throttle our gas plants, there isn't the "leftover" current that you think.
• xoa 5y ago
  It's been clear the whole ICE chain is full of tipping points and hidden boosters that we have been seriously starting to accelerate towards for at least a decade now. This article actually doesn't even touch on many of the most important ones. Vehicles aren't just about the vehicle themselves, they include the whole chain needed to supply them with whatever energy they need and all the consequences said chain entails. For ICE, that means gasoline or diesel, and in turn a massive global supply chain with unavoidable geopolitical implications. Much the supply chain has the property of extremely high capex and fairly fixed by significant capex working upon a fairly cheap input. A modern refinery for example costs billions of dollars and then huge amounts more to keep running. What makes it all work is that it can be amortized with great reliability (demand for personal mechanized transportation isn't going anyway) across tremendous numbers of people. This shows up in how the industry itself tends to calculate the costs of refineries, which isn't in straight price but rather capex outlay per barrel of oil. For a long time refineries tended to be around $10-15k/barrel outlay, though that has gone up, and then operating cost. It's most efficient to run it at max capacity all the time. But if a critical mass of people switch to electric, suddenly the same fixed costs have to be spread out across a group that's shrunk enough that they see a significant cost increase at the pump. This shifts the economics against it further, and also begins to shift the economics for ships, pipelines and gas stations themselves, which encourages more BEV usage, which then repeats and boom we've got a driver for a classic equilibrium shift which makes for the steep part of an S-curve. And I think this sort of thing is rife through the industry. There are lots of hidden subsidies that are politically viable because the industry is necessary and in turn rich/powerful which it uses to entrench itself further. But as the bottom falls out those will get questioned more too. For a lot of countries they could get rid of significant externalities, geopolitical risk/unpleasantness, as well as explicit subsidies if they no longer depended on oil for transportation. BEVs also tie in nicely with a host of other positive spirals, like plummeting renewables driving demand for batteries both for vehicles and the grid (and vehicles indeed could play a major part in that creating genuine new economic value out of a time period when current vehicles are just sitting around depreciating). Enhancements to the grid also enhance every single electric user on the grid, so the amortization and ROI there can be fantastic too. So yeah, as well the vehicles themselves seeing a mass production rocket, there's a ton of other drivers pushing for a relatively sudden phase change. It'll be an interesting decade.
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  No talk about the lack of chargers and energy capacity which will be the show-stopper in most regions outside some of the most urbanized ones. Large battery cars that weigh 2 tons don't make sense for most urban dwellers who at most want to take the kids to school and back. Small electric 'cars' will emerge when regulations allow it. For trucks and other powerful cars, a diesel engine will probably make more sense.
  • solresol 5y ago
    The regions outside urbanized ones will deploy solar faster than in the cities, so they will end up with very cheap power in the middle of the day. You can charge a car from an ordinary domestic power plug -- particularly in a low density area where you can park the car close to the house -- so you don't need specialised charging infrastructure.
    • cblconfederate 5y ago
      > from an ordinary domestic power plug At night, when there is no solar. I think you're being very optimistic
  • jasonwatkinspdx 5y ago
    The F-150, the most popular truck and vehicle in the US, is going electric with next year's model. They're advertising 300 mile range, 5 ton towing capacity, and 4 AC outlets in the frunk capable of running power tools. I think many people will be surprised just how fast electric trucks are adopted by suburban and rural folk.
  • thinkcontext 5y ago
    > Small electric 'cars' will emerge when regulations allow it Right on the money. The most popular EV in China is a tiny car with 100 mile range that costs $4500. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/chinas-most-popular-ev-no-longer-a-tesla https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/adv...
  • Maro 5y ago
• perfunctory 5y ago
  It's a little disheartening to read most of the comments in this thread. They sound a lot like the complaints about the lack of the tank stations during the transition from horse power to ICE.
  • kortilla 5y ago
    > They sound a lot like the complaints about the lack of the tank stations during the transition from horse power to ICE. How so? With ICE engines you just bring an extra tank of fuel if you’re going somewhere without fuel stations.
    • dzhiurgis 5y ago
      There's more power sockets than fuel stations
      • philshem 5y ago
        Yeah exactly. We have a very large and robust electrical grid, with amazing geographical coverage.
        • galangalalgol 5y ago
          Is recharging on 110 even a thing? Even on a 50A RV socket you are talking 12hr recharge.
          • theshrike79 5y ago
            12 hours to recharge is still faster than "not at all" with an ICE. You don't need to charge EVs to 100%, just get enough to reliably get to the nearest fast charger on the way back. The rule of thumb is: if you can run an electric kettle, you can charge an EV. If there really are people who are actually driving to places with no electricity that are over 200km from a charger, then they can stick to ICEs for a while.
• Bokanovsky 5y ago
  For me I feel disappointed that hydrogen fuel cells never took off. Toyota spent a fortune researching them, making them safe to avoid Hindenburg disaster type imagery. But it never really seems to have caught on. You can add a hydrogen pumping station to an existing petrol station too. Plus you don't need to add a charging station to your house. So there are lots of pluses.
  • oblio 5y ago
    I initially thought they would take off, when I didn't know about the tech. Then I found out they charge batteries so they kind of have the worst of both worlds. Whoever designs a cheap, safe, durable, light, easily mass produced hydrogen storage material will be a multi billionaire.
  • danielecook 5y ago
    A charging station at home is a net benefit in my book. That’s a good chunk of time saved each month.
  • SigmundA 5y ago
    Currently hydrogen fuel cells have a slight range advantage and speed of refueling advantage. However the efficiency of creating and compressing / liquifying hydrogen and then turning back into electricity in the cell is around half that of just charging a battery. Fuels cells currently also don't put out as much burst power nor can they store energy from regenerative braking so a fuel cell car needs a traction buffer battery like a hybrid. Pretty skeptical for hydrogen fuel cells at this point, battery cost are dropping fast while energy density going up along with charge rate, fuel cells are being left behind pretty quick.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    I don't need to "add a charging station to my house". I already have multiple outlets outside of my house. If I want to be fancy, I can spend 500-1500€ and add a real Type2 charger with load balancing and remote control features. Just FYI about hydrogen cars: - They are just EVs with smaller batteries, a large part of the battery is replaced with a hydrogen tank + fuel cell. - The WHOLE hydrogen storage system will need to be replaced fully every 10 or so years. Hydrogen is really really small and has a habit of escaping every vessel you try to keep it in. - Currently the government subsidised price for H2 in Germany is 9.5€/kg. It takes about 1kg of hydrogen to drive 100km. Would you pay almost 10€/100km to drive a car? While an EV can do the same trip for 1-3€? Do you know the amount of bureaucracy needed to store multiple hundreds of kg of pressurised highly flammable gas (hydrogen) anywhere? Compare that to the amount of work needed to install what is essentially a fancy power outlet.
• Fricken 5y ago
  Electric cars aren't as good for destroying the planet as gas cars, but they're better than nothing I guess. We can still get the job done, it'll just take a bit longer.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  My brother in law was considering a Tesla, so I decided to see what charging stations are near us, just outside of Chicago. The nearest Electric Charging Station of ANY kind is 3 miles from him, in the back corner of a Chevrolet dealer's service bay. He doesn't have a garage, nor electrical service capable of dealing with charging. As for me, I've only got 100 amp service, so I'm not sure how well I'd fare. I also don't know how long a charging cord would last outside in the Midwest. The nearest actual superchargers are 1/2 hour away. There are at least 100 gas stations in that range for me. Infrastructure is the problem, no matter how well it might be glossed over for an outsider, this short little peek into reality has me knowing I won't be going electric in the next few years, at least.
  • arkh 5y ago
    I'm starting to think it is a feature, not a bug: peasants should stop being able to move anywhere so easily. The fact you can't easily charge a personal vehicle? Good. Bunch up in overcrowded cities, use public transportation only so we can keep the outside clean for the new nobles.
    • ppf 5y ago
      This is an opinion I am slowly arriving at - EVs are a very expensive way to force a change in how far people expect to be able to travel.
      • imtringued 5y ago
        That was never a goal, just an engineering limitation. If someone builds a 2000 mile EV it's still an EV and nobody is going to shout that it has too much range.
        • ppf 5y ago
          True, but mandating a switch to EVs is certainly not an engineering limitation.
• lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  My sadness is I don't see the entrepreneurial entry points as low down the scale as they were for Internet. A one or two person start up in the EV world is not going to survive in order to grow. The supply chain for cars is big capital intensive and dominated by the whims of the big players. I am not sure where / if I can play at that table :-(
  • bserge 5y ago
    Conversions is my first thought. In fact, I would love to do this for all kinds of vehicles for the rest of my life heh.
    • lavela 5y ago
      Is there much advancement in that space? I would love to get a panel van in the nearer future but I won't buy a combustion car nor do I have 50.000 € to to spend on a new eletric one. It would be great to be able to get an older MB Sprinter with a motor defect and to retrofit it with some standardized solution. The last time I looked up on that, the only option was to get a very custom solution which wouldn't be feasible due to the high cost for planning and certification.
    • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
      It's so weird that I have a mental conflation of Electric and (semi-)autonomous vehicles. I assumed the effort to build a conversion would include the various controls brakes etc to be software controlled. But I guess not
• pif 5y ago
  I'm not going to buy an electric-only car until these issues have been solved: 1) range - when driving on a motorway, with regular pauses every ~2.5 hours, it must be possible to drive two periods without charging: 5 hours at regime speed, plus some slack, means 700 km. 2) comfort - range must be long enough that manufacturers do not need to focus too much on aerodymanics vs internal space; the correct outline is: horizontal, very steep, horizontal; an arc like a Prius is an abomination. 3) predictable battery life span - I'm not advocating for a huge life span, I understand there are limits, but I want to know in advance how the range evolves as my car ages. ICE vehicules are very clear on this point: range never changes.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I think / hope / wishful think that in the near future, e.g. with solid state batteries, battery technology will take a quantum leap (like internet speeds did, as the article makes an analogy to) so that things like range and aerodynamics trade offs will no longer be a concern - to the point where they far exceed that of ICE's. That would be the real futurology / science fiction flex, a car that can go two, three, five times as far on a single charge than an ICE can. And if on top of that self-driving capability improves, it could mean, especially with better comfort, people can do 8+ hour drives without having to stop. It's not likely at the moment, but I'd be willing to put money on it being the case in 10-20 years. Of course, I could be vastly underestimating the possibilities, like with e.g. smartphones that are far more advanced than the best things we see in science fiction.
  • bryanlarsen 5y ago
    1) We did a 3000km road trip in a Tesla. We only spent 15 minutes waiting for a charge to complete. All other time spent charging was overlapped with toileting, eating or sleeping. 2) Electric cars are the leaders internal space. The most obvious example is the frunk on the F150 lightning. 3) Every electric car with a battery thermal management system (aka pretty much every car except the Leaf) has outstanding battery life. Take a look at the battery warranty and realize that has to assume the owner has abused the battery, anybody who doesn't should do much better.
    • 5y ago
• rogerthat_au 5y ago
  We are currently talking to a fuel station company in East Africa to deploy solar powered battery banks for electric bikes across 250 of their petrol pumps. We have already powered two of their stations with panels and batteries as a proof of concept. They know there is an energy transition coming from fuel to electric and they want to be at the beginning of this curve. The transition has started across the world. Ramez (in the article) is on my Board. He has always maintained that price point/economics is crucial for tech to become main stream, to a point that adoption often can be much faster than anticipated. This has definitely been true for solar adoption so far - it has beat all expectations until now. I won't be surprised if this happens for EVs too.
• DrBazza 5y ago
  Until electric vehicles are like-for-like with petrol/diesel, I'm unlikely to buy one. And by this I mean range, power and price. I can buy a MB/Audi/BMW, 3.0 litre diesel or petrol, that's 0-60 in 6s or less depending on version, a full tank range that is 500 miles for petrol and 700-800 for diesel. And I can buy that starting at £30k. The closest similar performance, and I hope to be corrected, is the top end Teslas, where you pay more and more for the batteries. A Model S long range, is £83k, 50k more. The article is probably correct, because governments are incentivising electric cars. And the "demand" and "supply" by manufacturers is also pushing in that direction.
  • markb139 5y ago
    I don’t think there are any sub £30k Audis that do sub 6s to 60. Base S3 is £38k
  • cvak 5y ago
    Honest question, 3.0 liters from a with a premium badge go for 30k£ in UK?
    • DrBazza 5y ago
      New, and absolute basic is £29,995 for the smallest model/chassis, up to mid 30s, then you start adding on stuff like trim, seat packages and so on.
• waydowntogo 5y ago
  Just wet dream. Did they try electric cars in winter in Europe? Do you think you'll able to ride more thann 500km without worries about power? Electric cars are blind line and it fits only for makers because of money.
  • sime2009 5y ago
    gawd I hope so! Otherwise there are going to be a lot stranded Norwegians come next winter. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/05/business/norway-electric-cars-vw-tesla/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/05/business/norway-electric-...
    • waydowntogo 5y ago
      If I remember correctly they hit record in Norway because of dotations / taxes
  • bserge 5y ago
    > Do you think you'll able to ride more thann 500km without worries about power? I mean, you can't do that even during summer with current vehicles :D
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    -24C last winter, took 7 minutes for my EV to become too hot to have a jacket on inside. Also: where are you driving if you're 500km from the nearest outlet?
• ctdonath 5y ago
  There were plenty of “won’t happen, can’t happen” arguments against mass takeover by digital cameras, CDs, etc. - then they did, very fast. Megabrand Kodak had a five-year plan to transition; customers switched en masse in about five months (how many now even know what Kodak is?). Living near Atlanta, I see lots of electric cars. Many are switching; few switch back. Gas savings & longevity is substantial, to the point of likely paying for itself in the lifespan of the vehicle. Big motivator. Most of the naysaying arguments are obsolete. The few remaining are solvable. Really wasn’t that long ago gas cars barely existed, yet here we are. Change is coming fast.
• larodi 5y ago
  it really does not matter that much, because having this flavor or that flavor of cars solves nothing. the real solution is to innovate public, shared and yet-unfolded transport. if all cars in a city were public shared pool cars used by optimal number of people (not 1 person per car), then perhaps we would've seen much lower traffic levels. pollution from car production and exhaust is a very long story to even touch it.
  • cblconfederate 5y ago
    Remote work solves both issues and will have a bigger impact than both
• upofadown 5y ago
  >It is certainly what the world's big car makers think. That is what they hope. Unfortunately for them there is something else going on right now. The cities have started giving up on the "everyone will drive everywhere" approach to transportation planning. That is caused by the realization that cars cause most of the problems cities face. Current internal combustion cars are already fairly clean in terms of emissions so an electric cars are just more of the same problem to be fought.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    "Fairly clean" vs "zero local emissions" is a huge deal in cities with millions of cars.
    • sagarm 5y ago
      EVs produce more tire dust, which makes up a large percentage of PM2.5 pollution. On net EVs will degrade public space less than gas vehicles, but car-free spaces are still much nicer to live in. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129809_tire-dust-is-pollution-and-this-invention-will-help-vehicles-clean-up-as-they-go https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1129809_tire-dust-is-po...
  • bluGill 5y ago
    A few of the biggest cities have. Most give lip service to the idea, but their actions show that they care about public transport more for a place to send money/power to their friends than any ability to get people around. (Money meaning cash to contractors and unions regardless of results, power as in another appointment to someone who helped them out)
• watt 5y ago
  I am thinking how weird it would be if the EV charger revolution sneaks up on conventional gas station businesses and forces large oil companies to go out of business. Because they did not realize they were supposed to be "energy" business, not just oil/diesel/gasoline/petroleum business. If they don't pay attention, this seismic shift could really cost them.
  • delaaxe 5y ago
    Most oil companies have already been in the clean energy business for a while
    • tachyonbeam 5y ago
      Would like to see some stats, specifically what percentage of their yearly spending goes into clean energy. Also useful to know what they consider "clean energy", because there's no such thing as "clean natural gas".
      • delaaxe 5y ago
        I don't have any stats but it's what I heard from people in the industry. Could be very hand-wavy
  • zzbzq 5y ago
    Oil companies might INCREASE oil production if the renewable energy really goes meteoric. They'll just use all the cheap renewable energy to ramp up plastic production.
    • ArkanExplorer 5y ago
      Plastic uses about 8% of oil: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-gas-price-plastics-peak-climate-change#:~:text=Overall%2C%20plastics%20represent%20a%20fairly,only%20about%20350mt%20are%20plastics https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-gas-.... Many Governments are starting to ban single-use plastic products.
• manmal 5y ago
  People often say that their electric car is “just a better car”, or “a car from the future”. To explain what this means, here are some upsides and downsides I’ve observed during the last 15 months of owning a first gen Hyundai Ioniq: + Less noise. That’s one of the most important benefits to me. Long road trips become enjoyable, and are no longer scary. + Acceleration is smoother. My wife remarked it feels like a hovercraft or something. + Adjustable power - if I need to overtake, I enable sport mode and enjoy the acceleration. Other than that, I use economy mode which throttles the available power. + Less (or no) subtle vibrations from the engine that carry into the cabin. + Charge at home 80-90% of the time. No gasoline spills, no upselling in the gas station store. + Cheaper to operate. I save 60-65% in fuel compared to the old car. Teslas who accelerate strongly a lot, and non-ideally built cars (like a pickup) will not save as much in countries with expensive electricity, but might still save 30-50%. + Cheaper maintenance (-50%), and less appointments to take. + The heat pump heats up way faster in winter, like 2-3x faster than a normal ICE. + It looks like a small-ish car from the outside, but the trunk has proven big enough to go on vacation with 2 kids. + Destination charging at the grandparents’ is great. - The 28kWh battery will last me 175km in winter, and 200km in summer. A small battery is great for the environment, but I’d be happy about more capacity. The sweet spot for me would be 60kWh in this car (it was/is the most efficient EV, so other EVs will need more capacity to match it). When I drive a lot, I have to be way more mindful about charging than with an ICE, but this improves with every charger being added to my area. They recently built a “hyper charger” very near my son’s school, which basically eliminated range anxiety in daily driving. - Slow charging at home. Mostly not an issue, but if the battery is empty and I need to get somewhere, I need to drive to the next fast charger. Happens 1x a month or less. - Fast chargers are sometimes broken or taken. Don’t empty the battery completely (that’s bad for lifetime anyway) so you can get to another charger. Happened once for me, so far. - Tires might wear out early as it’s so easy to stress them with acceleration. So far, no signs of that though. +/- Virtual engine sound simulation is annoying (I often turn it off, but it re-enables every restart), but it has probably saved my cat once because he hid under the car and was startled away by the sound.
  • maxerickson 5y ago
    Noise and vibration are build issues as much as anything. They may be easier to manage with an electric drivetrain, but lots of ICE vehicles are quiet and smooth.
• Xenoamorphous 5y ago
  I want to replace my aging car (Mazda 3 from 2005), it’s served me great and it has no issues at all after 200k km (125k miles) but my gf is pregnant so I’m more concerned about space and especially safety. Even if my car has some important safety features like traction and stability control, lateral airbags etc. there’s been 15+ years of safety improvements. And I feel like it’s a terrible moment to buy a car. I’d like my next car to last for many years like my previous one, but ICE ones feel obsolete right now, and regulations are going to make it increasingly difficult to keep owning one. But EVs are just not practical for my use case (I don’t drive often but when I do it’s long distance) and in my country (very few charging stations). I feel they're just not quite there yet. Also very concerned about battery degradation, seeing how it’s been with phones and other rechargable battery products I’ve owned.
  • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Unless your car lacks side curtain airbags does particularly poorly on the partial front overlap test safety improvements have been negligible since the roof strength increases of the early '00s. Most of the advances since the 2000s have come from cheaper tech enabling things like automatic braking and stuff that makes texting your way into the back of a stopped semi truck less fatal when applied at scale. Is that worth $30k? I dunno, not my money.
    • justinph 5y ago
      Not true. Automatic emergency braking (AEB) has been shown to reduce frontal crashes by about 43% and injuries in those crashes by 64%. That's a pretty big sizable jump. I can personally attest AEB has kept me out of at least one crash. Source: https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/automatic-braking-reduces-car-crashes-injuries-iihs-study/ https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/automa...
      • throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        You are misrepresenting the capability of AEB. AEB will prevent you from rear ending someone at <10mph in stop and go conditions and knocks 5-20mph (being really generous on that upper bound) off the contact speed for higher speed rear endings (that most people won't ever get in over a lifetime). It mostly does not prevent the kinds of accidents where people get injured (save me the anecdote about how your brother's roomate's uncle backed his semi into the loading dock a little too hard and hurt had a sore neck the next day). Don't get me wrong, for what it does it works, but it is not the magic want the internet tends to act like it is. you have to weigh the potential improvement against the price of a new car.
• gtirloni 5y ago
  Besides environmental concerns, is there anything in EV cars that benefit the car makers? I wonder if EV have some engineering advantages that make them more desirable for the car makers to push them.
• Glench 5y ago
  Switching all fossil-fuel powered appliances (including electric cars) to electric will reduce our total energy needs by half due to the inherent efficiencies in electric machinery. Source: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/handbook https://www.rewiringamerica.org/handbook, page i Unfortunately the IPCC report on climate change doesn't take into account "committed emissions", meaning that once you buy a fossil fuel-powered car it keeps emitting CO2 for its lifetime. If we take into account committed emissions from existing cars, gas water heaters, driers, etc, then we're already near 1.8C of warming. Source: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/handbook https://www.rewiringamerica.org/handbook page 11 This is one of the biggest coordinated behavior changes we'll have to make: every time a fossil fuel-powered machine in our home dies, we have to replace it with one powered by electricity. The good news is that with the right financing this will save people money. Source: https://www.rewiringamerica.org/household-savings-report https://www.rewiringamerica.org/household-savings-report
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  They will not take over any time soon. Tesla and co had a decade now, I have seen a handful (literally) of electric cars in the last 3 first world countries I have resided, all of them 30+ million population, and I have been to the cities. Now explain to me how the adaption will happen in the poorer countries(the people just ride a cheap motorbike) with no infrastructure and money. Forgive me my scepticism on the matter, but I will believe it when I see it.
  • lifeformed 5y ago
    Where are you travelling? I feel like I see Teslas all over the place, no matter what city I am in, big or small.
    • yawaworht1978 5y ago
      Europe and LATAM. I imagine some US states and Norway might look different, but I have not been there yet.
      • lifeformed 5y ago
        Interesting. I see a lot in NA and Asia.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    The people in poorer countries aren't driving 2021 BMWs either. It takes a while for new cars to become old cars in order to be cheap enough.
• aboringusername 5y ago
  Can anyone explain why [1] is not acceptable but [2] is? I assume because its cars then it gets a free pass but bitcoin is disgusting and threatens the entire fiscal system so let's talk about how much electricity it uses? Is it propaganda? Currency in general uses lots of electric, so do cars, so do humans as a whole. Is electricity 100% powered by renewables yet? We've made progress sure but we have a long way to go. And all the jobs that gas stations facilitate, I guess they are going away very shortly. I suspect a squeeze is incoming - gas prices will rise as electric takes over, eventually gas will disappear as the last stations close up. But, if it's anything similar to the IPv4 to IPv6 transition we have a few decades yet. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 (Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina') [2]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57253947 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57253947 (Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think)
  • belval 5y ago
    EV are displacing an existing technology and replacing it by centralized electricity production that is more cost-effective and can be swapped later on for renewables. Bitcoin does not actually displace anything (at least with how it is used right now) but consume electricity. In short, EV are a neutral change short-term and a positive one long terme as we move to renewables. BTC are a negative change short-term and could stay negative in the future.
    • imtringued 5y ago
      >Bitcoin does not actually displace anything (at least with how it is used right now) but consume electricity. Even the "bypass capital controls" argument runs into the problem that most of the benefit comes from USD exposure.
  • xyzelement 5y ago
    That seems like a disingenuous question. The correct set of questions are: 1. Do electric cars solve an existing problem in a more efficient way? 2. Does BTC solve an existing problem in a more efficient way? The answer to #2 seems to be a clear no. The problem of payments is solved much more efficiently without the artificial proof of work requirement. The answer to #1 is perhaps debatable but at least there's something to debatable.
• durnygbur 5y ago
  Will consumers accept an obvious downgrade in the car range? Because I do not. Once the EVs market share will exceed the critical mass, charging electricity for EVs will become what petrol is now - heavily regulated, excise tax, etc. Recycling of the batteries is the elephant in the room.
  • Brakenshire 5y ago
    A lot of petrol cars have a 200-300 mile range already when you use real-world mpg figures, and no-one even mentions it. Ordinary electric cars can do 30 minutes charging every 3 hours of driving, the cutting edge can do 20 minutes charging every 4 hours, and both figures will be markedly improved by the end of the decade.
  • theshrike79 5y ago
    Range anxiety is a thing, but usually overstated by a lot. It's really hard to unlearn the ICE way of "drive until the light turns on and then fill up to 100%", which is in no way relevant for EV drivers. With an EV you drive to the supermarket, plug in your car to the destination charger (22kW), do your shopping, disconnect and drive home. In my case I have more charge when I get back than I did when I left. As for recycling, it's a hard industry to gauge. There just aren't enough car batteries at end-of-life to actually have any kind of process down. Most manufacturers are preparing for it though. VW already has a factory running that can recycle up to 96% of materials from their batteries at a rate of 3000 batteries per year
    • thomascgalvin 5y ago
      The Wegmans nearest my house has free charging for EVs, but only two spots. Your use case is the ideal, I think, but we're a long way from being able to support it. Rough guess, I'd say there are often more than a hundred cars in that parking lot. This is a solvable problem, but it does need to be solved, and I don't think anyone really knows what the optimal solution looks like. Does Krogers start a side business selling electricity to its customers? Does a charging network lease space in their parking lot? What self-driving is actually a thing, do we just have our cars go charge themselves while we shop? Electrification is a necessary change, but it's also a huge change, with a lot of ramifications and ripple effects we're still thinking through.
• snarfy 5y ago
  I think we could go a long way in increasing the efficiency of the design. A quick search shows a record holder with 14,573 miles per gallon. All electric seems like more of a possibility if we drastically altered the current designs. It's something that would take top down regulation like carbon taxes. Left to our own devices we seem to go for bigger and faster.
• earthboundkid 5y ago
  For this headline to be accurate, electric cars would have had to have taken over in 2010. It's much later than I expected already.
• MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  Ha Jeremy Clarkson. Luckily most people who drive cars are not in the slightest enthusiasts and just want to go from A to B. "It doesn't sound like a car" is exactly what makes EV good.
• CivBase 5y ago
  I will not consider buying an electric vehicle until I can dependably and conveniently access recharging stations comparable to superchargers. Even that is a big sacrifice at 30+ minutes for a full charge - as opposed to 5-10 minutes to top off a gas tank with a similar range. I live in the US midwest. There are only three metropolitan areas I could make it to one-way without factoring in extensive detours for re-charging. Charge stations with that kind of capacity are still extremely rare here - even 9 years after the Model S launch. Not to mention the nightmare which is compatibility across charging networks. I want an EV eventually, but I cannot justify it until the charging situation improves by an order of magnitude.
  • sagarm 5y ago
    Looks like 17% of Americans, and declining, live in the Midwest[1]. Meanwhile the south and west are home to 60% of Americans and growing. I'd expect to see these warmer growing regions, especially the densely populated coasts, to see investment before the Midwest. It might take a while before your requirements are met. [1] https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=growth https://www.census.gov/popclock/data_tables.php?component=gr...
    • CivBase 5y ago
      Maybe. But the denser the population, the fewer vehicles there are per capita. Plus the midwest gets an immense amount of through traffic as it's impossible to get from one side of the US to the other without passing through here. The problem isn't a lack of rapid charging stations in rural towns since long-distance travel will almost always involve passing through major urban centers. The problem is even large cities in the midwest like Kansas City and St Louis have relatively few stations which come close to approaching the convenience of a gas station, which makes long-distance travel frustrating.
• mchusma 5y ago
  I'm waiting for an electric mini van. The biggest Tesla isn't really competition for the Honda Odyssey. I would switch in a heartbeat to something comparible with >150 Mike's of range.
• fmajid 5y ago
  Petrol service stations are already a marginal business and closing in droves. There will be a tipping point where they will no longer be economically viable on interstate highways and it will be ICE car drivers who will experience range anxiety.
• refracture 5y ago
  EVs will be better in plenty of ways, lack of exhaust is good (though at the moment all of my electricity is produced by coal so.. not really a win in my opinion until that changes), regenerative braking is probably better than brake pad dust covering the roads... etc. I am however pessimistic about the fiscal future of it. Yeah it's cheaper to operate now but it's only a matter of time before taxes from fuel drops to the point that they start charging us by the mile or mandating all EV charging be reported and taxed.
• voisin 5y ago
  Anyone else shocked at how long it is taking incumbent automakers to actually bring EVs to market? They always seem 2 years away and then what they announce (other than VW, maybe) seems like a half hearted incremental step from ICE vs the completely rethought tech implementation of Tesla’s.