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IMO the BEV is a far more flexible platform for transporation than the ICE. Batteries are still made as cells. Need one for a car? Put 10,000 together. Need on

IMO the BEV is a far more flexible platform for transporation than the ICE. Batteries are still made as cells. Need one for a car? Put 10,000 together. Need one for an e-bike? Put 10-20 together. Need one for a scooter? Put 5-10 together. Cell economics are generally the same. Furthermore, you can make the battery in an ebike or scooter removable and recharge it at work or at a friend's house. No gasoline stink. Or you can make the scooter/blade foldable and haul it in. Again, no gasoline stink. For urban transport, BEV scaling provides the opportunity to affordably enable these energy efficient modes better than stinky dirty two stroke crap. I think what can also happen is that you buy a city car with a 100 mile range, but if you need to go far, you rent an "extension battery", maybe a very energy efficient trailer, or even an ICE range extender. Or maybe it just attaches to the back of the vehicle, or if the battery is swappable, you swap in a rentable long range one. And remember, don't concentrate on current battery economics. Between higher density sodium ion + LFP, sulfur chemistries, solid state, and maybe lithium air batteries, densities will go up by 2-3x in the next ten years. That means less materials, lighter vehicles / battery "rocket equation" for more range from a lighter battery with the same power storage, etc. Zero or negative emissions is perfect being the enemy of bad. BEVs are an enormous opportunity to mitigate massive amounts of emissions AND be a better product that is cheaper for people. There does not exist a practical political path to zero emissions right now, as much as it pains me to say so. What we do need (and there is some political opportunity to do so) is massive funding of BEV transporation at all levels / form factors. There should be a 300-500$ price credit (phasing out 10% per year) for scooters and ebikes to get them prevalent. Make them stupid cheap to adopt. Fund the hell out of battery development. Double down on all the national lab work on batteries (that lithium air paper recently was nice, we should see stuff like that out of every single national lab).

petre 4y ago
For cars, the charging part is inconvenient and there's still not enough infrastructure. So maybe combine a 20 kW battery with a hydrogen fuel cell rather than use superchargers. All charging stations are busy? Fine, get a refill of H2 and go.
- willio58 4y ago
  Hydrogen is even harder to find than charging infrastructure. It’s not easy to convert a gas station into a hydrogen station. To me the two solutions revolve around simple battery tech. 1. Charging stations like we have now but 100x as many. 2. Battery swap stations a la Nio in China. In their system you buy the car (for pretty cheap) and rent the battery. Makes upfront cost cheaper and batteries need replacing anyway so if you can swap batteries easily you never have to worry about this.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    Battery swapping will utterly explode the amount of raw materials needed. It's going to be hydrogen cars simply because it is the genuinely scalable solution. The exact details don't really matter, so long as raw material usage is greatly reduced. You can have cars fully powered by hydrogen, or some kind of PHEV with a fuel cell range extender. Any variation of the idea will work.
- tfourb 4y ago
  I regularly use an EV for several weeks/months at a time and I also own an ICE car. The EV is in no way less convenient. While it takes longer to charge "on the road," I (and most people) only rarely do road trips of a length that intermittent charging is necessary. When I do, the extra 20 minutes spent at a charger is no big deal, you just plan accordingly. On the flip side, on most days it would be much more hassle to spend 10 minutes or so refueling my ICE car instead of just driving home, connecting my EV and let it charge overnight. Granted, I have a property that allows the installation of a charger. But so do basically all suburban Americans, many people in cities and around the world. People that live so urban that owning their own charging infrastructure is impractical are probably better served with public transport, anyway.
- Felminor 4y ago
  I charged my ev at my parents house over the weekend. 90kwh on a 1.5k standard outlet. Charging with electricity is 10x easier remote than gas. And makes you independent.

petre 4y ago

For cars, the charging part is inconvenient and there's still not enough infrastructure. So maybe combine a 20 kW battery with a hydrogen fuel cell rather than use superchargers. All charging stations are busy? Fine, get a refill of H2 and go.

willio58 4y ago
Hydrogen is even harder to find than charging infrastructure. It’s not easy to convert a gas station into a hydrogen station. To me the two solutions revolve around simple battery tech. 1. Charging stations like we have now but 100x as many. 2. Battery swap stations a la Nio in China. In their system you buy the car (for pretty cheap) and rent the battery. Makes upfront cost cheaper and batteries need replacing anyway so if you can swap batteries easily you never have to worry about this.
- _hypx 4y ago
  Battery swapping will utterly explode the amount of raw materials needed. It's going to be hydrogen cars simply because it is the genuinely scalable solution. The exact details don't really matter, so long as raw material usage is greatly reduced. You can have cars fully powered by hydrogen, or some kind of PHEV with a fuel cell range extender. Any variation of the idea will work.
tfourb 4y ago
I regularly use an EV for several weeks/months at a time and I also own an ICE car. The EV is in no way less convenient. While it takes longer to charge "on the road," I (and most people) only rarely do road trips of a length that intermittent charging is necessary. When I do, the extra 20 minutes spent at a charger is no big deal, you just plan accordingly. On the flip side, on most days it would be much more hassle to spend 10 minutes or so refueling my ICE car instead of just driving home, connecting my EV and let it charge overnight. Granted, I have a property that allows the installation of a charger. But so do basically all suburban Americans, many people in cities and around the world. People that live so urban that owning their own charging infrastructure is impractical are probably better served with public transport, anyway.
Felminor 4y ago
I charged my ev at my parents house over the weekend. 90kwh on a 1.5k standard outlet. Charging with electricity is 10x easier remote than gas. And makes you independent.