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The Coming Electric Car Disruption That Nobody’s Talking About

12 points by jonbaer 5y ago

nickpeterson 5y ago
This is a huge deal, but another aspect is the direct sales model. Websites like Carvana and direct sales models mixed with lower servicing needs means dealerships are going to go away. That has to be another few million jobs on top of the 4 million this is already describing.
simonblack 5y ago
The biggest electric-car disruption that nobody seems to be talking about is that the national electricity grids of all nations do NOT have the capacity to be charging millions or hundreds of millions of electric-cars overnight. You'd have to double or triple even, the capacity of electricity generators and high-voltage transmission lines to enable all of those vehicles to be charged. I don't see any forward planning for the construction of that extra capacity yet.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Grid upgrades soon will also be needed for further wind and PV rollout. Upgrades to transmission grids and distribution grids are being modelled and planned. And IIRC Biden's infrastructure bill had a line item for grid upgrades. Yeah, it's hard to see. We're used to everything being instantly accessible on the web, but an awful lot of work happens off it. You'll read about it when the NIMBYs start going to court.
- jmakov 5y ago
  Perhaps future "gas stations" will charge their huge batteries at night, when the electricity is cheap and sell it to you, when you'll charge, at a higher price. Only when their batttery will be empty will they need to access the grid.
  - simonblack 5y ago
    That's not a solution. It makes no difference whether the electricity is charging a 'gas station' battery or hundreds of equivalent car batteries. That volume of charging capacity all works out in the wash. (it's just the equivalent of filling up at your local gas station or the one in the next town- you're still using the same amount of fuel - you're getting it in a different place.) The fact remains that there is going to be the need to charge (around) 150 million electric vehicles in the US every night. That's a lot of drain on the electricity grids that is not happening now because we're using oil-products for transport instead.
credit_guy 5y ago
Good riddance. Decades ago there used to be lots of people employed in TV sets repairs business. Then, in the blink of an eye, the TV sets became so reliable that the business vaporized. And with it millions of jobs. It was not such a big disruption.
- jleyank 5y ago
  They also became less durable along with pretty much all other appliances. A gain in features and the cost of waste. Hopefully they can be recycled st some point.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    I recall CRT TVs being extremely unreliable. We had to take ours into the shop all the time, especially in the 70s and 80s. As I recall, they were becoming more reliable in the 90s, and I rarely had to have mine serviced. But my current TV (a plasma TV) is 10 years old with no servicing at all. Perhaps I just got lucky with my Panasonic? To be sure, when it does have a problem, it will certainly be unrepairable. But while flat screen TVs are nearly impossible to repair, they seem very reliable to me, perhaps because they're solid-state.
- voakbasda 5y ago
  They did not make them more reliable. They made them more affordable, which then made them disposable. It became less expensive to buy a new unit than have one repaired. Rising labor costs accelerated that transition.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
TL,DR: phasing out of ICE cars will disrupt the industries that supply ICE parts. This title probably fits the definition of clickbait, it doesn't say anything and you have to go through the article to find out what the disruption is.

12 points by jonbaer 5y ago

This is a huge deal, but another aspect is the direct sales model. Websites like Carvana and direct sales models mixed with lower servicing needs means dealerships are going to go away. That has to be another few million jobs on top of the 4 million this is already describing.

simonblack 5y ago

The biggest electric-car disruption that nobody seems to be talking about is that the national electricity grids of all nations do NOT have the capacity to be charging millions or hundreds of millions of electric-cars overnight. You'd have to double or triple even, the capacity of electricity generators and high-voltage transmission lines to enable all of those vehicles to be charged. I don't see any forward planning for the construction of that extra capacity yet.

tuatoru 5y ago
Grid upgrades soon will also be needed for further wind and PV rollout. Upgrades to transmission grids and distribution grids are being modelled and planned. And IIRC Biden's infrastructure bill had a line item for grid upgrades. Yeah, it's hard to see. We're used to everything being instantly accessible on the web, but an awful lot of work happens off it. You'll read about it when the NIMBYs start going to court.
jmakov 5y ago
Perhaps future "gas stations" will charge their huge batteries at night, when the electricity is cheap and sell it to you, when you'll charge, at a higher price. Only when their batttery will be empty will they need to access the grid.
- simonblack 5y ago
  That's not a solution. It makes no difference whether the electricity is charging a 'gas station' battery or hundreds of equivalent car batteries. That volume of charging capacity all works out in the wash. (it's just the equivalent of filling up at your local gas station or the one in the next town- you're still using the same amount of fuel - you're getting it in a different place.) The fact remains that there is going to be the need to charge (around) 150 million electric vehicles in the US every night. That's a lot of drain on the electricity grids that is not happening now because we're using oil-products for transport instead.

credit_guy 5y ago

Good riddance. Decades ago there used to be lots of people employed in TV sets repairs business. Then, in the blink of an eye, the TV sets became so reliable that the business vaporized. And with it millions of jobs. It was not such a big disruption.

jleyank 5y ago
They also became less durable along with pretty much all other appliances. A gain in features and the cost of waste. Hopefully they can be recycled st some point.
- jfengel 5y ago
  I recall CRT TVs being extremely unreliable. We had to take ours into the shop all the time, especially in the 70s and 80s. As I recall, they were becoming more reliable in the 90s, and I rarely had to have mine serviced. But my current TV (a plasma TV) is 10 years old with no servicing at all. Perhaps I just got lucky with my Panasonic? To be sure, when it does have a problem, it will certainly be unrepairable. But while flat screen TVs are nearly impossible to repair, they seem very reliable to me, perhaps because they're solid-state.
voakbasda 5y ago
They did not make them more reliable. They made them more affordable, which then made them disposable. It became less expensive to buy a new unit than have one repaired. Rising labor costs accelerated that transition.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

TL,DR: phasing out of ICE cars will disrupt the industries that supply ICE parts. This title probably fits the definition of clickbait, it doesn't say anything and you have to go through the article to find out what the disruption is.