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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

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.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    Here in Finland the three big grocery chains are all competing for charging use. One has been doing it for a few years now and has multiple 22kW and 1-4 50kW chargers at most larger stores. One has installed at least one 50kW on most stores, with the goal of having one at every store by 2024 And the last one is doing a huge push with 150kW superchargers and multiple 22kW ones to all stores. They previously had a 3rd party doing the chargers, but it was a complete shitshow of broken chargers and backordered spare parts. Only one of those is giving away electricity for free, the rest require an RFID tag or app - with discounts if you've got the store membership card. I do see that in the future all malls and larger stores will have a charging grid in the parking lot. Either for free (just to get people in the store) or at a competitive price. It really doesn't require that much more electricity than the parking lot lights do - the total power usage of a Type 2 charging grid is less than most big stores spend on air conditioning :)
    - durnygbur 5y ago
      > Only one of those is giving away electricity for free, the rest require an RFID tag or app - with discounts if you've got the store membership card. There will be an increadible itch to fully control and trace the charging patterns and behaviours of both cars and individuals. I can refuel ICE car with petrol within 3 minutes paying cash and no loyalty card.
      - theshrike79 5y ago
        Car makers either owning their own charging infrastructure (Tesla) or making deals with existing ones (VW Group) is the way forward. "Buy a car and get free charging for a year!" or credit for a specific network of chargers offers already exist in Europe. It's a win-win situation, the charging network gets ingrained in the users minds as "the place to go" and the car manufacturers get an extra sales boost for minimal cost.
- pif 5y ago
  > With an EV you drive to the supermarket, plug in your car to the destination charger When EVs will be so cheap that I can have one small EV for the city and one real car for long journeys, I'll happily get one.
  - theshrike79 5y ago
    First and second generation Nissan Leafs aren't that expensive any more. And they're more than capable for grocery trips and driving around town.
- jjk166 5y ago
  > With an EV you drive to the supermarket, plug in your car to the destination charger (22kW), do your shopping, disconnect and drive home. That's fine if your destination is 5 miles away, it doesn't work when your destination is 500 miles away. Long distance travel represents a small portion of total trips, but it's frequent enough that if you can only afford a single car, it needs to be able to make those trips. Fast charging is a hard requirement for mass adoption. Maybe it doesn't need to be quite as fast as filling up a gas tank, but it needs to be short compared to the time spent driving. 20 minutes for 200 miles might be acceptable, 30 minutes for 60 miles is definitely not. Once the infrastructure is there, I'm in. And as that infrastructure becomes more common, EVs with shorter ranges (and thus cheaper batteries) become viable. Right now there are about 5,000 fast charging stations in the US, for comparison there are 136,000 gas stations.
  - chipsa 5y ago
    Small EVs are averaging around 3.5-4 mi/kWh. 60 miles would therefore be around 18kWh. You're postulating a mere 36 kW charger there. We actually have 150 kW chargers as being common, with 350 kW being reasonably often seen. That said, not all cars will necessarily reach that level. Neither of my EVs would see a benefit from the 350kW chargers, as it requires a 800V battery architecture. But expect cars in the next 10 years to be generally 800V systems. So you're looking at 1000 mph of charging speed with 350kW chargers. There may be limits such that cars don't actually get all 350kW, but... yeah, we're already beyond your "acceptable" level. It's just not evenly distributed. And yeah, there's fewer fast charging stations than gas stations, but if most daily charging is done at home, you don't need as many as gas stations. 5k is probably too few, but 136k is almost certainly too many.
    - jjk166 5y ago
      No, I'm saying the 36kW charger is unacceptable. A 150kW charger is the bare minimum that might be acceptable and you're adding about 10% to your travel time for recharging. 350 kW is still about an order of magnitude slower than filling an equivalent sized gas tank, but is probably fast enough. And of course the fast charging capability is useless if it isn't along the route you need to travel. While we may not need quite as much coverage as gas stations, you definitely need regularly spaced stations along major routes like the interstates. It honestly doesn't even need to be a huge number - 4 stations spaced every hundred miles along the interstate system would only be 1900. It would take 27000 stations to get 1 for every hundred miles of paved road in the US, but that can come later as demand increases.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
We need four major changes to our economies, and these require political willpower: 1. Direct user road charging, including a User Interface inside the vehicle to communicate costs (based on weight, location, time, distance). This will have positive externalities by shifting use from peak to off-peak. 2. Smart charging for EVs based on current energy prices. Makes sense for as much charging to be done overnight when demand is low. Could also be used for other appliances. We want to avoid the dumb situation of commuters getting home at 6pm, plugging in the car right at peak usage, and the charging to be completed at around midnight when demand is lowest anyway. Better to shift that demand. 3. Carbon tax. 4. Overhauling road design to suit autonomous vehicles instead of just human drivers.

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.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  Here in Finland the three big grocery chains are all competing for charging use. One has been doing it for a few years now and has multiple 22kW and 1-4 50kW chargers at most larger stores. One has installed at least one 50kW on most stores, with the goal of having one at every store by 2024 And the last one is doing a huge push with 150kW superchargers and multiple 22kW ones to all stores. They previously had a 3rd party doing the chargers, but it was a complete shitshow of broken chargers and backordered spare parts. Only one of those is giving away electricity for free, the rest require an RFID tag or app - with discounts if you've got the store membership card. I do see that in the future all malls and larger stores will have a charging grid in the parking lot. Either for free (just to get people in the store) or at a competitive price. It really doesn't require that much more electricity than the parking lot lights do - the total power usage of a Type 2 charging grid is less than most big stores spend on air conditioning :)
  - durnygbur 5y ago
    > Only one of those is giving away electricity for free, the rest require an RFID tag or app - with discounts if you've got the store membership card. There will be an increadible itch to fully control and trace the charging patterns and behaviours of both cars and individuals. I can refuel ICE car with petrol within 3 minutes paying cash and no loyalty card.
    - theshrike79 5y ago
      Car makers either owning their own charging infrastructure (Tesla) or making deals with existing ones (VW Group) is the way forward. "Buy a car and get free charging for a year!" or credit for a specific network of chargers offers already exist in Europe. It's a win-win situation, the charging network gets ingrained in the users minds as "the place to go" and the car manufacturers get an extra sales boost for minimal cost.
pif 5y ago
> With an EV you drive to the supermarket, plug in your car to the destination charger When EVs will be so cheap that I can have one small EV for the city and one real car for long journeys, I'll happily get one.
- theshrike79 5y ago
  First and second generation Nissan Leafs aren't that expensive any more. And they're more than capable for grocery trips and driving around town.
jjk166 5y ago
> With an EV you drive to the supermarket, plug in your car to the destination charger (22kW), do your shopping, disconnect and drive home. That's fine if your destination is 5 miles away, it doesn't work when your destination is 500 miles away. Long distance travel represents a small portion of total trips, but it's frequent enough that if you can only afford a single car, it needs to be able to make those trips. Fast charging is a hard requirement for mass adoption. Maybe it doesn't need to be quite as fast as filling up a gas tank, but it needs to be short compared to the time spent driving. 20 minutes for 200 miles might be acceptable, 30 minutes for 60 miles is definitely not. Once the infrastructure is there, I'm in. And as that infrastructure becomes more common, EVs with shorter ranges (and thus cheaper batteries) become viable. Right now there are about 5,000 fast charging stations in the US, for comparison there are 136,000 gas stations.
- chipsa 5y ago
  Small EVs are averaging around 3.5-4 mi/kWh. 60 miles would therefore be around 18kWh. You're postulating a mere 36 kW charger there. We actually have 150 kW chargers as being common, with 350 kW being reasonably often seen. That said, not all cars will necessarily reach that level. Neither of my EVs would see a benefit from the 350kW chargers, as it requires a 800V battery architecture. But expect cars in the next 10 years to be generally 800V systems. So you're looking at 1000 mph of charging speed with 350kW chargers. There may be limits such that cars don't actually get all 350kW, but... yeah, we're already beyond your "acceptable" level. It's just not evenly distributed. And yeah, there's fewer fast charging stations than gas stations, but if most daily charging is done at home, you don't need as many as gas stations. 5k is probably too few, but 136k is almost certainly too many.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    No, I'm saying the 36kW charger is unacceptable. A 150kW charger is the bare minimum that might be acceptable and you're adding about 10% to your travel time for recharging. 350 kW is still about an order of magnitude slower than filling an equivalent sized gas tank, but is probably fast enough. And of course the fast charging capability is useless if it isn't along the route you need to travel. While we may not need quite as much coverage as gas stations, you definitely need regularly spaced stations along major routes like the interstates. It honestly doesn't even need to be a huge number - 4 stations spaced every hundred miles along the interstate system would only be 1900. It would take 27000 stations to get 1 for every hundred miles of paved road in the US, but that can come later as demand increases.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago

We need four major changes to our economies, and these require political willpower: 1. Direct user road charging, including a User Interface inside the vehicle to communicate costs (based on weight, location, time, distance). This will have positive externalities by shifting use from peak to off-peak. 2. Smart charging for EVs based on current energy prices. Makes sense for as much charging to be done overnight when demand is low. Could also be used for other appliances. We want to avoid the dumb situation of commuters getting home at 6pm, plugging in the car right at peak usage, and the charging to be completed at around midnight when demand is lowest anyway. Better to shift that demand. 3. Carbon tax. 4. Overhauling road design to suit autonomous vehicles instead of just human drivers.