5 ms·

My guess: Short term, maybe. Sales projections for electric cars in Europe are likely... optimistic. Long term, yes (Northvolt and other competitors), because

by zhdc1 5y ago

My guess: Short term, maybe. Sales projections for electric cars in Europe are likely... optimistic. Long term, yes (Northvolt and other competitors), because markets are fairly efficient at generating sufficient supply given a long enough window.

mschuster91 5y ago
> Short term, maybe. Sales projections for electric cars in Europe are likely... optimistic. Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs. A shift towards fully electric is inevitable.
- ThomPete 5y ago
  I surely don't hope it's inevitable unless the come up with better fuelcell solutions.
  - eru 5y ago
    What do you mean?
    - ThomPete 5y ago
      I mean that we don't want to live in a world where the current battery technology is going to power our car fleet. That's going to be a disaster.
      - eru 5y ago
        Alas, current fuel cells are terribly inefficient. Running cars mostly on current battery technology seems entirely feasible to me? Perhaps a bit inconvenient at times, but far from disaster. Even if the chemistry doesn't improve, we can always move to a model where you quickly swap batteries at a 'petrol station' instead of slowly charging them. Of course, a hybrid world is also entirely feasible: where most cars are electric, but some people with long range needs drive a hybrid like a Prius or even ICE-only car. (After all, from an environment point of view, 90% of people moving from ICE to electric is 90% as good as the full move. Economically, the people with the minority technology will lose out on benefits of scale, of course.)
        ThomPete 5y ago
        A fusion world is possible just not feasible for now just like a hybrid world isn't either. There is simply no reality based fact that indicate we can solve our transportation issues with electricity.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  > Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs These remind me of EU state adherence to carbon reduction targets. I would be - very - suspicious of anything a company in this industry, or a country, promises when they have something to gain from making a target and little or nothing to lose from missing it. > A shift towards fully electric is inevitable Agreed, but keep in mind that electrification itself took 50-60 years to play out. It will eventually happen, but it will happen over several decades.
  - nabla9 5y ago
    EU progress is on track. The carbon reduction goals adopted in 2008 for the 2020 are being met. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20180706STO07407/eu-progress-towards-its-climate-change-goals-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
    - zhdc1 5y ago
      > EU progress is on track. The carbon reduction goals adopted in 2008 for the 2020 are being met. I was referencing the 2020 NDC targets (55% by 2030), but fair enough.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs. A shift towards fully electric is inevitable. Lots of things get announced, particularly from governments and auto manufacturers.[1] Doesn't mean anything. [1] If all their (government and automakers) announcements led somewhere by now I'd be able to sleep while my car self-drove me to my vacation destination. Governments particularly are prone to be wrongly optimistic when announcing their policies.
  - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
    This. I can't see them meeting this deadline judging by the utter lack of new charging stations in my city, or any other city. So where are all these new EVs that everyone will soon transition to supposed to be charged? Wirelessly?
    - bildung 5y ago
      No clue about EU in general, but Germany starts the bidding process for 1000 charging stations along its highways in the next months (each having multiple chargers providing at least 150kW). The law for that ("SchnellLG") passed in February.
      - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
        I meant charing stations in the cities, where people usually park their cars around the block where they live. Those are basically inexistent. What are they gonna do? Leave it overnight on the highway and walk home from there?
    - speedgoose 5y ago
      In my city in Europe, we have a lot of chargers in the parkings, in the streets, and in the gas stations. It may come to your city eventually. In a few years, the situation changed from a few power plugs in the corner of a parking and some street charging to hundreds of chargers in big parkings, the airport has more than a thousand, business areas hundreds, fast charger in all gas stations, and a lot of home chargers. It will scale up.
- piokoch 5y ago
  One thing is announcements, second thing is reality. If nothing changes and we will not have different batteries technology moving all UK cars to electric would require "two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper" [1]. And this is just UK. I don't even mention other factors like charging time (during vacation time we have queues on gas stations, where fueling car lasts 2 minutes), extending abilities of electric grid to meet larger demand, fixing last mile electric network to do the same. There are some ideas like bidirectional charging, smart charging, etc. but we don't know if we any of this can be actually applied. Car manufacturers are very happy about EV cars, as they are very expensive, there are no trained non-official repair shops, parts supplirers, so people are forced to use official, overpriced repair channels, so they keep pushing them. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html
  - Retric 5y ago
    Mining isn’t limited by what’s in the ground it’s limited by demand. For example in 2010 28,000 tons of lithium was mined in 2020 that was up to 82,000 tons a 3x increase in 10 years despite Covid. In terms of charging times, many people simply charge at home. On average EV users spend less time at fast charging stations than ICE drivers do at gas stations especially if you include time driving to a gas station. If you’re filling up everywhere you park you only need fast charging on several hundred mile trips.
    - mschuster91 5y ago
      > If you’re filling up everywhere you park you only need fast charging on several hundred mile trips. The GP does have a point there. A lot of vacation travel in Europe happens by car - the traffic jams at the summer holidays on the route from Munich down to Slovenia and Croatia or from Munich to Italy are legendary, and this one drive and how it works out is what determines the purchase decisions for many Germans. I'd love if the railways could be used - but the network especially in the Balkans is shoddy, international booking is a nightmare, it is about 4-8x (!!!) as expensive as a car ride for a family of four... so yeah.
- jhoechtl 5y ago
  Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the power for the electric engine is coming solely out of a battery, what about hydrogen?

by zhdc1 5y ago

mschuster91 5y ago

> Short term, maybe. Sales projections for electric cars in Europe are likely... optimistic. Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs. A shift towards fully electric is inevitable.

ThomPete 5y ago
I surely don't hope it's inevitable unless the come up with better fuelcell solutions.
- eru 5y ago
  What do you mean?
  - ThomPete 5y ago
    I mean that we don't want to live in a world where the current battery technology is going to power our car fleet. That's going to be a disaster.
    - eru 5y ago
      Alas, current fuel cells are terribly inefficient. Running cars mostly on current battery technology seems entirely feasible to me? Perhaps a bit inconvenient at times, but far from disaster. Even if the chemistry doesn't improve, we can always move to a model where you quickly swap batteries at a 'petrol station' instead of slowly charging them. Of course, a hybrid world is also entirely feasible: where most cars are electric, but some people with long range needs drive a hybrid like a Prius or even ICE-only car. (After all, from an environment point of view, 90% of people moving from ICE to electric is 90% as good as the full move. Economically, the people with the minority technology will lose out on benefits of scale, of course.)
      - ThomPete 5y ago
        A fusion world is possible just not feasible for now just like a hybrid world isn't either. There is simply no reality based fact that indicate we can solve our transportation issues with electricity.
zhdc1 5y ago
> Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs These remind me of EU state adherence to carbon reduction targets. I would be - very - suspicious of anything a company in this industry, or a country, promises when they have something to gain from making a target and little or nothing to lose from missing it. > A shift towards fully electric is inevitable Agreed, but keep in mind that electrification itself took 50-60 years to play out. It will eventually happen, but it will happen over several decades.
- nabla9 5y ago
  EU progress is on track. The carbon reduction goals adopted in 2008 for the 2020 are being met. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20180706STO07407/eu-progress-towards-its-climate-change-goals-infographic https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    > EU progress is on track. The carbon reduction goals adopted in 2008 for the 2020 are being met. I was referencing the 2020 NDC targets (55% by 2030), but fair enough.
lelanthran 5y ago
> Half of Europe has already announced phasing out ICE-based cars in the next 10-15 years, Audi has announced they're shifting off of ICEs. A shift towards fully electric is inevitable. Lots of things get announced, particularly from governments and auto manufacturers.[1] Doesn't mean anything. [1] If all their (government and automakers) announcements led somewhere by now I'd be able to sleep while my car self-drove me to my vacation destination. Governments particularly are prone to be wrongly optimistic when announcing their policies.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  This. I can't see them meeting this deadline judging by the utter lack of new charging stations in my city, or any other city. So where are all these new EVs that everyone will soon transition to supposed to be charged? Wirelessly?
  - bildung 5y ago
    No clue about EU in general, but Germany starts the bidding process for 1000 charging stations along its highways in the next months (each having multiple chargers providing at least 150kW). The law for that ("SchnellLG") passed in February.
    - ChuckNorris89 5y ago
      I meant charing stations in the cities, where people usually park their cars around the block where they live. Those are basically inexistent. What are they gonna do? Leave it overnight on the highway and walk home from there?
  - speedgoose 5y ago
    In my city in Europe, we have a lot of chargers in the parkings, in the streets, and in the gas stations. It may come to your city eventually. In a few years, the situation changed from a few power plugs in the corner of a parking and some street charging to hundreds of chargers in big parkings, the airport has more than a thousand, business areas hundreds, fast charger in all gas stations, and a lot of home chargers. It will scale up.
piokoch 5y ago
One thing is announcements, second thing is reality. If nothing changes and we will not have different batteries technology moving all UK cars to electric would require "two times the total annual world cobalt production, nearly the entire world production of neodymium, three quarters the world’s lithium production and at least half of the world’s copper" [1]. And this is just UK. I don't even mention other factors like charging time (during vacation time we have queues on gas stations, where fueling car lasts 2 minutes), extending abilities of electric grid to meet larger demand, fixing last mile electric network to do the same. There are some ideas like bidirectional charging, smart charging, etc. but we don't know if we any of this can be actually applied. Car manufacturers are very happy about EV cars, as they are very expensive, there are no trained non-official repair shops, parts supplirers, so people are forced to use official, overpriced repair channels, so they keep pushing them. [1] https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/06/20190624-uk.html
- Retric 5y ago
  Mining isn’t limited by what’s in the ground it’s limited by demand. For example in 2010 28,000 tons of lithium was mined in 2020 that was up to 82,000 tons a 3x increase in 10 years despite Covid. In terms of charging times, many people simply charge at home. On average EV users spend less time at fast charging stations than ICE drivers do at gas stations especially if you include time driving to a gas station. If you’re filling up everywhere you park you only need fast charging on several hundred mile trips.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > If you’re filling up everywhere you park you only need fast charging on several hundred mile trips. The GP does have a point there. A lot of vacation travel in Europe happens by car - the traffic jams at the summer holidays on the route from Munich down to Slovenia and Croatia or from Munich to Italy are legendary, and this one drive and how it works out is what determines the purchase decisions for many Germans. I'd love if the railways could be used - but the network especially in the Balkans is shoddy, international booking is a nightmare, it is about 4-8x (!!!) as expensive as a car ride for a family of four... so yeah.
jhoechtl 5y ago
Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the power for the electric engine is coming solely out of a battery, what about hydrogen?