5 ms·

The Chevy Bolt's sales prove America is craving a cheap electric car

10 points by kristianp 4y ago

ggm 4y ago
Two things which radically shake up EV worldwide, are a pricepoint closer to reality for working people, if need be shored up short-term by government assistance, and realistic information about milage. Two things which impede take up are governments obsessed with the income streams from road and petrol taxes, and individuals on the edge of the curve for distance or load, who decry the vehicle can serve their needs. It obviously can't but they just haven't run the numbers. We have 10,000 people in cities, for every farmer. We have 1000 people in cities not doing trades with 400km drives, for every one which does. It's entirely true a small family car which can't do 500km will not suit a farmer or tradesperson who has a 400km daily commute with a tonne of stuff in the back. Statistically, the overwhelming use of cars in western society is for short hops, under 150km. Some people (a lot) are <40km a day. It is also true that as volume ramps up, supply of recharge facilities is going to be a pain point. And, that LONGTERM the supply of lithium and other inputs is concerning against the rate of mining and industrial development. These are entirely solvable problems. There is no impending Erlich/simons "limits to growth" in lithium. If I have to see another input saying "we don't have enough lithium for the coming 4.5million cars" as if they are all due to arrive next tuesday, 4pm, or "batteries are useless after 10 years" which ignores massive amounts of clear sensible potential re-use and re-cycling in the battery, I think I'll scream. I do acknowledge mining is dirty. All mining. If you don't like lithium mining, you're ignoring the fugitive methane problems in Oil and Gas, and mining in generals effects on the landscape to get aluminium and steel and magnesium and plastics and glass and tires. The biggest missed opportunity here is definitely pricing. If I was in car sales I too would have priced to the peak. But what we need, is price to the floor. We need the processes which drive to a $20,000 car, not a $120,000 car. The author is right here, that a Bolt is a more significant EV than a tesla. And the coming VW ID4 sled will be too, if VW get pricing right. And the BYD. and MG. China is all over this space. The second biggest missed opportunity is battery swap. It works, and it works at scale, and we know it works. It requires socialising batteries as shared commons you "rent" and it requires policing to get bad batteries out of circulation, but it solves the recharge time delay problem. It just didn't suit Musk, and didn't suit his ideation of Tesla in the market. Putting batteries into the subframe and the structure won't make battery swap any easier. I tried to get the body corporate of my 5yo condo to talk seriously about charge stations. It was impossible to get them over the capital works cost. The developer who made this condo, put them into all their subsequent developments and to me, that tells a story. There has been no above-cpi increase in the cost of sales in these newer condos: it's simply a cost of doing development now. Sucks to be in an older building, with a body corporate scared of capital works.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  > The second biggest missed opportunity is battery swap. It isn't missed. It's happening. The time wasn't right for it before. Gasoline cars had the same sequence of events. Early adopters bought cans of gasoline from their local general store and stored it in their stables (now a garage). That's where we are now with predominantly home charging. Eventually there were gas pumps at general stores ( = public chargers as we have them now), and later specialized service stations (battery swap stations). The same incentives that led us to large specialized service stations are there for EVs.
  - ggm 4y ago
    Measured in decades, I could agree. I'd call the last decade loss of pace, in that regard. To me, that's a lost opportunity: to build out for what we probably need. The countercase depends on breakthrough technology towards stable, reliable, long lived rapid recharge batteries. For small devices like scooters battery swap already works at scale and my hope was for the taxi, taxi truck and city runabout case we'd already be building infrastructure for it. Breakthroughs aren't impossible, or really that uncommon. They typically come with an IPR outcome so more delay at scale or more cost. Plugs tend to get standardised, so battery swap drives systems design towards unit size battery rigs, and plug compatibility.
    - tuatoru 4y ago
      Yeah, my unit of analysis is the decade, sorry. Been reading Vaclav Smil too much (Energy in Nature and Society; Grand Transitions). There was a news item on the BBC recently about battery swap being used by taxi firms in "second tier" Chinese cities (so, only 5M - 15M inhabitants). That's how it starts: large fleet operators who want their vehicles earning revenue for as long as possible; then smaller fleet operators; then manufacturers sell to the public ("never worry about battery failure", with suitable horror stories like "the Tesla owner up for $20K just out of warranty". True or not).

10 points by kristianp 4y ago

ggm 4y ago

Two things which radically shake up EV worldwide, are a pricepoint closer to reality for working people, if need be shored up short-term by government assistance, and realistic information about milage. Two things which impede take up are governments obsessed with the income streams from road and petrol taxes, and individuals on the edge of the curve for distance or load, who decry the vehicle can serve their needs. It obviously can't but they just haven't run the numbers. We have 10,000 people in cities, for every farmer. We have 1000 people in cities not doing trades with 400km drives, for every one which does. It's entirely true a small family car which can't do 500km will not suit a farmer or tradesperson who has a 400km daily commute with a tonne of stuff in the back. Statistically, the overwhelming use of cars in western society is for short hops, under 150km. Some people (a lot) are <40km a day. It is also true that as volume ramps up, supply of recharge facilities is going to be a pain point. And, that LONGTERM the supply of lithium and other inputs is concerning against the rate of mining and industrial development. These are entirely solvable problems. There is no impending Erlich/simons "limits to growth" in lithium. If I have to see another input saying "we don't have enough lithium for the coming 4.5million cars" as if they are all due to arrive next tuesday, 4pm, or "batteries are useless after 10 years" which ignores massive amounts of clear sensible potential re-use and re-cycling in the battery, I think I'll scream. I do acknowledge mining is dirty. All mining. If you don't like lithium mining, you're ignoring the fugitive methane problems in Oil and Gas, and mining in generals effects on the landscape to get aluminium and steel and magnesium and plastics and glass and tires. The biggest missed opportunity here is definitely pricing. If I was in car sales I too would have priced to the peak. But what we need, is price to the floor. We need the processes which drive to a $20,000 car, not a $120,000 car. The author is right here, that a Bolt is a more significant EV than a tesla. And the coming VW ID4 sled will be too, if VW get pricing right. And the BYD. and MG. China is all over this space. The second biggest missed opportunity is battery swap. It works, and it works at scale, and we know it works. It requires socialising batteries as shared commons you "rent" and it requires policing to get bad batteries out of circulation, but it solves the recharge time delay problem. It just didn't suit Musk, and didn't suit his ideation of Tesla in the market. Putting batteries into the subframe and the structure won't make battery swap any easier. I tried to get the body corporate of my 5yo condo to talk seriously about charge stations. It was impossible to get them over the capital works cost. The developer who made this condo, put them into all their subsequent developments and to me, that tells a story. There has been no above-cpi increase in the cost of sales in these newer condos: it's simply a cost of doing development now. Sucks to be in an older building, with a body corporate scared of capital works.

tuatoru 4y ago
> The second biggest missed opportunity is battery swap. It isn't missed. It's happening. The time wasn't right for it before. Gasoline cars had the same sequence of events. Early adopters bought cans of gasoline from their local general store and stored it in their stables (now a garage). That's where we are now with predominantly home charging. Eventually there were gas pumps at general stores ( = public chargers as we have them now), and later specialized service stations (battery swap stations). The same incentives that led us to large specialized service stations are there for EVs.
- ggm 4y ago
  Measured in decades, I could agree. I'd call the last decade loss of pace, in that regard. To me, that's a lost opportunity: to build out for what we probably need. The countercase depends on breakthrough technology towards stable, reliable, long lived rapid recharge batteries. For small devices like scooters battery swap already works at scale and my hope was for the taxi, taxi truck and city runabout case we'd already be building infrastructure for it. Breakthroughs aren't impossible, or really that uncommon. They typically come with an IPR outcome so more delay at scale or more cost. Plugs tend to get standardised, so battery swap drives systems design towards unit size battery rigs, and plug compatibility.
  - tuatoru 4y ago
    Yeah, my unit of analysis is the decade, sorry. Been reading Vaclav Smil too much (Energy in Nature and Society; Grand Transitions). There was a news item on the BBC recently about battery swap being used by taxi firms in "second tier" Chinese cities (so, only 5M - 15M inhabitants). That's how it starts: large fleet operators who want their vehicles earning revenue for as long as possible; then smaller fleet operators; then manufacturers sell to the public ("never worry about battery failure", with suitable horror stories like "the Tesla owner up for $20K just out of warranty". True or not).