5 ms·

The transition to luxury EVs is hard. The transition to EVs is less hard. Things get easier if you throw out some of the requirements that we didn't need in t

by elihu 4y ago

The transition to luxury EVs is hard. The transition to EVs is less hard. Things get easier if you throw out some of the requirements that we didn't need in the first place. For instance, we don't need cobalt to make batteries. LFP cells are fine, though they may need extra insulation and heating/cooling systems in cold weather. We don't need copper for the main power cables. Aluminum is fine as long as you can properly engineer the connectors. For that matter, we don't need copper for the motor windings either. Aluminum could work there too, it's just that the motor will tend to be physically larger and less powerful. We don't need rare earths for permanent magnets, though again this means a bulkier and less powerful motor (unless you go with induction, but induction motors aren't as efficient as permanent magnet motors). We don't need cars with 300 mile range batteries. We /do/ need cars to be able to make long trips in a timely fashion, but that can be addressed by increasing charge station availability or (what would be much better) electrifying our major highways so that vehicles don't even need to stop to recharge. If the average car has "only" 100 miles of range rather than 200 miles, that translates to being able to make a lot more cars with the same amount of batteries, and the cars can be a lot lighter. Most people buying Rivians and Lightnings and electric Hummers are wasting resources that could have gone towards building three or four boring sedans or minivans. Some people really do need trucks for what they do, but we could adopt policies that discourage truck ownership rather than encourage it (e.g. CDL requirement for vehicles with more than a certain power/weight, get rid of the chicken tax to improve availability of smaller trucks, add visibility regulations to prohibit comically tall grills).

zamnos 4y ago
Honestly even sedans and minivans are big when you consider that the majority of trips are taken by one person, the driver. EV Smartcars and Fiat 500's should be where it's at. And yet they don't even exist. The electric Fiat 500 was discontinued. So as much as I agree with you, the market has spoken, and, well, we're wrong. The transition to luxury EVs is easier than the people's EV, because luxury car buyers spend more money on their cars. This means you can spend more money on the pieces that comprise the car, on super efficient motors and high capacity batteries using rare materials, and position yourself at the upper end of the segment. Those customer will scarecly blink at the idea that they need to spend $50k to rewire the neighborhood power distro point to add 600 amps so they, and 9 of their neighbors, can have 60 amp circuit with 48 amp chargers on them, and then be able to swallow a $7k charger install to rewire their whole garage as well. Meanwhile, an apartment dwelling people's EV owner might not even have an assigned spot in the shared complex carports, never mind afford a couple hundred to install hardware to get an at home charger in a shared garage becase only half of Americans can even afford an emergency $500 bill. People buy cars based on what they want, and only secondarily based on what they can afford (otherwise auto financing wouldn't be a thing). Selling a small functional EV? Well, just ask Nissan how well the Leaf is doing and compare that to Tesla's sales numbers.
- elihu 4y ago
  I think Arcimoto has the right idea. (The company itself though seems to be in a financially precarious position.)
  - zamnos 4y ago
    Given the average price of a new car in the US is now $45k, There's a ton of room in the market for an electric car that costs < $10k
    - elihu 4y ago
      Unfortunately the FUV is about $20k, but given the nature of the vehicle it's probably possible that someone could manufacture something similar for around $10k. The FUV doesn't qualify for the federal rebate, unfortunately. (I think you need four wheels for that.)
- fomine3 4y ago
  It's sad that EV smart are now looks like a random non-compact EV. https://ev-database.org/car/1667/Smart-1 https://ev-database.org/car/1667/Smart-1 https://www.motor1.com/news/658590/smart-3-crossover-debut-shanghai-auto-show/ https://www.motor1.com/news/658590/smart-3-crossover-debut-s...
- wnkrshm 4y ago
  I live in a German university town and there is not charging port I could use in any paid-for parking garage within 1km of my apartment (or in the entire city that I know of). EVs for now are a thing for people who own houses.
dahfizz 4y ago
Nobody would buy those cars. We already have the Mitsubishi mirage, and the bmw 3 series easily outsells it. Most people don't get the cheapest car they can, they get the nicest car they can.
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  I'd buy that car, and so would lots of people like me! The problem of course is that we wouldn't buy them new, we'd wait 5 to 10 years and buy them even cheaper used, which in the eyes of manufacturs is basically the same thing.
ryukafalz 4y ago
> or (what would be much better) electrifying our major highways so that vehicles don't even need to stop to recharge Had to stop there. We already can't maintain all the road infrastructure that's already out there before it deteriorates. Adding electrification to any substantial portion of that would not be cheap or simple.
- elihu 4y ago
  What's your benchmark for cheap and simple? There's a system being tested in Sweden that uses electrified rails embedded in slots in the road surface. Cars or trucks can have devices that drop into the slots and make electrical contact. It's not terribly complicated, though I don't know the specific details of how well it's performing. There are also systems with overhead lines that are about half the cost of slots in the road, but they're only really usable by trucks because the cables have to be high enough for a truck to pass under. The cost of petroleum fuels plus the environmental costs of CO2 emissions are themselves huge costs and drags on our economy and quality of life. Our options are: keep burning fossil fuels until they run out, transition to electric vehicles in a reasonably scalable way, or do away with cars entirely. Transitioning to EVs seems like the best available option to me, and appropriate infrastructure will make that transition much easier. If we can cut the average battery size in half by having electrified highways, then that's probably worth it.
  - ryukafalz 4y ago
    Getting the technology working is not the hard part. As with EVs in general, the difficulty is in the deployment. And if you thought rolling out a charging network was difficult... here's just a few things you need to consider: - How many such systems are there? Are they compatible, or will cars sold in one state/region not be able to charge in another? - Can it be retrofitted onto existing cars or would people need to buy entirely new cars to make use of this? - What happens when construction crews need to work on the roadway? Lanes are often shifted with cones or temporary paint, which won't follow the tracks. - How expensive is it to install and maintain? We already have so much infrastructure that we have trouble keeping it going, and this adds extra costs on top of that. See how many bridges we have in poor condition. And what happens when it's not maintained? - Who owns the technology behind it? Will they still support it 10 years from now? 20? 50? Sure, it could work - but I think you're underestimating the logistics of actually rolling something like this out. The battery supply chain is a problem, but I don't think it's enough of a problem that electrifying highways would be simpler. > Our options are: keep burning fossil fuels until they run out, transition to electric vehicles in a reasonably scalable way, or do away with cars entirely. This is a false dichotomy. We can reduce our dependence on cars without fully eliminating them. (Oh, and smaller EV batteries are more practical if the places you're going are closer together anyway, even if they're not quite within walking or biking distance.)
scythe 4y ago
>We don't need rare earths for permanent magnets, though again this means a bulkier and less powerful motor It sure would be nice if there was a breakthrough in producing rare-earth-free magnetic materials: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202204315 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202204...
stetrain 4y ago
> or (what would be much better) electrifying our major highways so that vehicles don't even need to stop to recharge. Man, electrifying 8-lane highways everywhere sounds like a lot of work and maintenance. What if instead, we built a special electric road with just two lanes, which means you only need to electrify one lane in each direction. We want those cars to move fast, so let's make the lanes out of metal and use metal wheels on the cars. By making the lane actually a set of guide rails for the metal wheels, the cars can autonomously stay in their lane at high speed without special computer control. Then, you could make each vehicle larger, so that you are efficiently using the capacity of each lane. These larger vehicles could autonomously follow each other at very close distances on the guide rails. I bet such a system of two-lane, electrified, high-speed, autonomous-steering high capacity vehicles could move as many people as a large multi-lane highway in a smaller footprint all on grid power!
- lll-o-lll 4y ago
  Appropriate user name. I agree with part of this approach, but trains suck for two reasons. Getting to the station, and sharing a carriage. Why not have an EV that can run as a train? Drive to station, control goes to “highway management system” chill for journey?
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    That's basically "pods" from every future sci-fi. Pods are not efficient because they have all the same problems as cars and none of benefits (except emissions). You will need gigantic roads everywhere like we have today, traffic jams, parking issues, all super expensive and financed by the city dwellers who don't benefit from cars so much. It is actually funny that rich car centric suburbs are subsidised by poorer population in the apartment blocks in the city cores. :)
  - stetrain 4y ago
    > Getting to the station, and sharing a carriage. Both things that are in common with air travel which seems quite popular. A good train system is better at both. Stations are smaller and less noisy than airports so they can go directly in city centers instead of miles outside the city. And space and comfort per passenger is usually much better than airline coach class, plus on intercity trains you can usually move around to cafe cars, dining cars, etc. Overnight trains are often built with private sleeping compartments if that’s more your style.

by elihu 4y ago

zamnos 4y ago

Honestly even sedans and minivans are big when you consider that the majority of trips are taken by one person, the driver. EV Smartcars and Fiat 500's should be where it's at. And yet they don't even exist. The electric Fiat 500 was discontinued. So as much as I agree with you, the market has spoken, and, well, we're wrong. The transition to luxury EVs is easier than the people's EV, because luxury car buyers spend more money on their cars. This means you can spend more money on the pieces that comprise the car, on super efficient motors and high capacity batteries using rare materials, and position yourself at the upper end of the segment. Those customer will scarecly blink at the idea that they need to spend $50k to rewire the neighborhood power distro point to add 600 amps so they, and 9 of their neighbors, can have 60 amp circuit with 48 amp chargers on them, and then be able to swallow a $7k charger install to rewire their whole garage as well. Meanwhile, an apartment dwelling people's EV owner might not even have an assigned spot in the shared complex carports, never mind afford a couple hundred to install hardware to get an at home charger in a shared garage becase only half of Americans can even afford an emergency $500 bill. People buy cars based on what they want, and only secondarily based on what they can afford (otherwise auto financing wouldn't be a thing). Selling a small functional EV? Well, just ask Nissan how well the Leaf is doing and compare that to Tesla's sales numbers.

elihu 4y ago
I think Arcimoto has the right idea. (The company itself though seems to be in a financially precarious position.)
- zamnos 4y ago
  Given the average price of a new car in the US is now $45k, There's a ton of room in the market for an electric car that costs < $10k
  - elihu 4y ago
    Unfortunately the FUV is about $20k, but given the nature of the vehicle it's probably possible that someone could manufacture something similar for around $10k. The FUV doesn't qualify for the federal rebate, unfortunately. (I think you need four wheels for that.)
fomine3 4y ago
It's sad that EV smart are now looks like a random non-compact EV. https://ev-database.org/car/1667/Smart-1 https://ev-database.org/car/1667/Smart-1 https://www.motor1.com/news/658590/smart-3-crossover-debut-shanghai-auto-show/ https://www.motor1.com/news/658590/smart-3-crossover-debut-s...
wnkrshm 4y ago
I live in a German university town and there is not charging port I could use in any paid-for parking garage within 1km of my apartment (or in the entire city that I know of). EVs for now are a thing for people who own houses.

dahfizz 4y ago

Nobody would buy those cars. We already have the Mitsubishi mirage, and the bmw 3 series easily outsells it. Most people don't get the cheapest car they can, they get the nicest car they can.

gibspaulding 4y ago
I'd buy that car, and so would lots of people like me! The problem of course is that we wouldn't buy them new, we'd wait 5 to 10 years and buy them even cheaper used, which in the eyes of manufacturs is basically the same thing.

ryukafalz 4y ago

> or (what would be much better) electrifying our major highways so that vehicles don't even need to stop to recharge Had to stop there. We already can't maintain all the road infrastructure that's already out there before it deteriorates. Adding electrification to any substantial portion of that would not be cheap or simple.

elihu 4y ago
What's your benchmark for cheap and simple? There's a system being tested in Sweden that uses electrified rails embedded in slots in the road surface. Cars or trucks can have devices that drop into the slots and make electrical contact. It's not terribly complicated, though I don't know the specific details of how well it's performing. There are also systems with overhead lines that are about half the cost of slots in the road, but they're only really usable by trucks because the cables have to be high enough for a truck to pass under. The cost of petroleum fuels plus the environmental costs of CO2 emissions are themselves huge costs and drags on our economy and quality of life. Our options are: keep burning fossil fuels until they run out, transition to electric vehicles in a reasonably scalable way, or do away with cars entirely. Transitioning to EVs seems like the best available option to me, and appropriate infrastructure will make that transition much easier. If we can cut the average battery size in half by having electrified highways, then that's probably worth it.
- ryukafalz 4y ago
  Getting the technology working is not the hard part. As with EVs in general, the difficulty is in the deployment. And if you thought rolling out a charging network was difficult... here's just a few things you need to consider: - How many such systems are there? Are they compatible, or will cars sold in one state/region not be able to charge in another? - Can it be retrofitted onto existing cars or would people need to buy entirely new cars to make use of this? - What happens when construction crews need to work on the roadway? Lanes are often shifted with cones or temporary paint, which won't follow the tracks. - How expensive is it to install and maintain? We already have so much infrastructure that we have trouble keeping it going, and this adds extra costs on top of that. See how many bridges we have in poor condition. And what happens when it's not maintained? - Who owns the technology behind it? Will they still support it 10 years from now? 20? 50? Sure, it could work - but I think you're underestimating the logistics of actually rolling something like this out. The battery supply chain is a problem, but I don't think it's enough of a problem that electrifying highways would be simpler. > Our options are: keep burning fossil fuels until they run out, transition to electric vehicles in a reasonably scalable way, or do away with cars entirely. This is a false dichotomy. We can reduce our dependence on cars without fully eliminating them. (Oh, and smaller EV batteries are more practical if the places you're going are closer together anyway, even if they're not quite within walking or biking distance.)

scythe 4y ago

>We don't need rare earths for permanent magnets, though again this means a bulkier and less powerful motor It sure would be nice if there was a breakthrough in producing rare-earth-free magnetic materials: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202204315 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/advs.202204...

stetrain 4y ago

> or (what would be much better) electrifying our major highways so that vehicles don't even need to stop to recharge. Man, electrifying 8-lane highways everywhere sounds like a lot of work and maintenance. What if instead, we built a special electric road with just two lanes, which means you only need to electrify one lane in each direction. We want those cars to move fast, so let's make the lanes out of metal and use metal wheels on the cars. By making the lane actually a set of guide rails for the metal wheels, the cars can autonomously stay in their lane at high speed without special computer control. Then, you could make each vehicle larger, so that you are efficiently using the capacity of each lane. These larger vehicles could autonomously follow each other at very close distances on the guide rails. I bet such a system of two-lane, electrified, high-speed, autonomous-steering high capacity vehicles could move as many people as a large multi-lane highway in a smaller footprint all on grid power!

lll-o-lll 4y ago
Appropriate user name. I agree with part of this approach, but trains suck for two reasons. Getting to the station, and sharing a carriage. Why not have an EV that can run as a train? Drive to station, control goes to “highway management system” chill for journey?
- Yizahi 4y ago
  That's basically "pods" from every future sci-fi. Pods are not efficient because they have all the same problems as cars and none of benefits (except emissions). You will need gigantic roads everywhere like we have today, traffic jams, parking issues, all super expensive and financed by the city dwellers who don't benefit from cars so much. It is actually funny that rich car centric suburbs are subsidised by poorer population in the apartment blocks in the city cores. :)
- stetrain 4y ago
  > Getting to the station, and sharing a carriage. Both things that are in common with air travel which seems quite popular. A good train system is better at both. Stations are smaller and less noisy than airports so they can go directly in city centers instead of miles outside the city. And space and comfort per passenger is usually much better than airline coach class, plus on intercity trains you can usually move around to cafe cars, dining cars, etc. Overnight trains are often built with private sleeping compartments if that’s more your style.