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Would the plan be more or less effective if instead of focusing on electric-only vehicles governments had only subsidized plug-in electric vehicles with, say, a

• coderintherye 4y ago
  People want extended driving range, irrespective of whether or not they need that range. Just as some people want bigger trucks/SUVs even if there is not a true need for such. Success is built on selling people what they want.
  • toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Indeed. People wanted sexy electric cars, not a plug in Prius. Go where the volume and margin is.
    • foogazi 4y ago
      It’s about convenience You can fill up on gas at any street corner in minutes
      • toomuchtodo 4y ago
        I fill up at my house overnight (In the United States, the majority of housing units are single-family houses – about 82 million out of the total 129 million occupied units in 2021 [1]), or at my grocery store in 20 min while shopping (250kw Supercharger). This is very convenient! I have a CCS adapter if I need to use an Electrify America station but have yet to use it. In ~100k miles of US cross country traveling over the last five years, the only place I could not charge fast was middle of nowhere southeast Missouri, and there is a Supercharger there now [2] [3]. The city did let me plug into a dryer outlet to charge for free at the time, thank you Cape Girardeau! My gym has a free destination charger, as does my local brewery and airport parking. I no longer carry a 100ft 120V extension cord in my frunk, which I had to do in 2018. Yes, we still have much to do to expand EV charging infra, but it’s not an unknown, it’s just more work. Street parking? Street charging [4]. Renters? Mandated EV charging spot quotas with funding for the infra. Workplace charging is important as well. You can even install EV chargers directly on electric poles and tap into the above power lines [5]. Where there is power, there is EV fuel, and what chargers you install where will be the intersection of dwell time and current needed. [1] https://www.statista.com/topics/5144/single-family-homes-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/topics/5144/single-family-homes-in-... [2] https://supercharge.info/map https://supercharge.info/map [3] https://www.plugshare.com/ https://www.plugshare.com/ [4] https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/la-adds-hundreds-of-ev-chargers-to-streetlights-giving-renters-a-place-to-plug-in/ https://electrek.co/2019/11/13/la-adds-hundreds-of-ev-charge... [5] https://www.nationalgridus.com/News/National-Grid-Deploys-Innovative-EV-Chargers-in-Melrose,-MA/ https://www.nationalgridus.com/News/National-Grid-Deploys-In...
        • toomuchtodo 4y ago
          https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-coast-ev-fast-charging-network/ https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-co... (Walmart to launch coast-to-coast EV fast-charging network across thousands of stores)
      • dymk 4y ago
        If it’s about convenience, EVs win. It’s always at a full charge in your drive way in the morning. In the event of an emergency you can get 50 miles in the “tank” in 5 minutes at a supercharger, which are almost everywhere now.
        • illiarian 4y ago
          > If it’s about convenience, EVs win. It’s always at a full charge in your drive way Let's find that driveway in apartment blocks then
          • flutas 4y ago
            My last apartment had EV chargers built in to the parking spots in the US.
            • illiarian 4y ago
              And how many have those? For example, the management company that manages the apartment building where I rent my apartment has sent out a newsletter that they will convert 2000 parking places in their properties by 2025 with the following caveats: - except where infrastructure doesn't support it - except where there's not enough power to draw from the building - except where it's prohibitively expensive to build the infrastructure They manage 395 buildings with a total of 20 000 apartments. Funny how "it's easy and convenient" is actually never easy or convenient.
              • 8uhaal 4y ago
                [flagged]
      • 8uhaal 4y ago
        What's more convenient than not having to do this fill up if the car is always full in the morning?
    • sfblah 4y ago
      Agreed on capitalism. But, in a world of massive government subsidies, I’m asking where they should subsidize.
    • SyzygistSix 4y ago
      That said, the new Prius is a welcome improvement. Toyota has the same problem as most EV makers in that it can't produce anywhere near the amount of its popular PHEVs to meet demand.
• erulabs 4y ago
  You’re absolutely right that batteries are over allocated. However, no one would buy a 75 mile range electric vehicle. The world is insanely simply when you jump to how it ought to be. How it is, is a lot more complex.
  • morepork 4y ago
    That's not what they're advocating for, they're saying a plugin hybrid with a 75 mile electric range, that uses a fossil fuel engine for more range. The general idea is, suppose you want a vehicle with a 400 mile range. Once you have that 75 miles of range (battery pack of around 10-20 kWh), is it then better to add on another 40-100 kWh of battery as a "range extender", or to add a combustion engine and fuel tank as the "range extender" to get you to the 400 mile range?
    • _hypx 4y ago
      And if you took that reasoning one step further, and replace the ICE with something zero emissions, such as a hydrogen fuel cell or even something running on e-fuels, it is basically a zero emissions car. In other words we've completely made transportation green, and without ever having to use humongous batteries. This is an obvious conclusion that anyone can make, but unfortunately too many people have been caught up in the "mission" to not realize the existence of intelligent compromises.
  • ezfe 4y ago
    I just bought a new car and chose a hybrid with a 1.3 kWh battery in it. According to FuelEconomy.gov: - Corolla Regular LE: 316 g-CO2/mi (35 MPG) - Corolla Hybrid LE: 210 g-CO2/mi (50 MPG) - Tesla Model 3 RWD: 110 g-CO2/mi (134 MPGe w/ avg. US electrical mix) So as I see it: - First 1.3 kWh: 33% reduction - Next 58.7 kWh: 32% additional (total 65% reduction from original 316 g-CO2/mi) So why haven't we made every vehicle a hybrid first before pushing full EVs? Why aren't there incentives for regular hybrid vehicles. Seems like a terrible waste of resources when everything is so supply constrained.
    • paulryanrogers 4y ago
• stetrain 4y ago
  Make sure you consider that a such a small-battery hybrid only has a zero emissions profile if it can be charged every single day. A large battery EV can be charged once or twice a week in many cases and cover the commuting needs of someone who lives in a place without home charging.
• startupsfail 4y ago
  Are the costs of solar panel maintenance in the changing climate accounted for? Are the costs of making reliable and scalable storage capacity for temporary disruption of solar power there? Could an alternative of making reliable nuclear power sources (either fission or fusion) work better? Or maybe focus on making AGI/ASI work and jump to some next levels of technology?
  • enslavedrobot 4y ago
    Yes. Nuclear is found to be ~12x more expensive per installed kW and ~9x more expensive to maintain than solar. Storage of 4-8 hours of generating capacity is found to lower the ratios so that nuclear is only -8x more expensive to install and remains -9x more to maintain.
    • bongobingo1 4y ago
      Does that efficiency figure fit with footprint though? As in, Solar may be 12x cheaper per kW but requires 20x more spaces so the argument isn't quite so easy to make? I had always heard that the problem with Electricity in general is shipping it from empty spaces where you could build vast solar arrays to populated regions, but I'm not sure if that's just a lie OPEC sold me.
      • startupsfail 4y ago
        I don’t see where 12x number is coming from and what are the error bars on it. It looks like depending on the source (i.e. France) nuclear energy is considered to be competitive with solar installations.
        • enslavedrobot 4y ago
          Numbers are from the pdf in the link. There is a table with cost per kW installed and maintenance per kW.
      • enslavedrobot 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• mattnewton 4y ago
  Range anxiety is already a problem: there is no way I would trade in an ICE car for one that I can’t also use for occasional longer distance trips or that must be charged at every opportunity.
  • valzam 4y ago
    The suggestion is for plug-in hybrid, so 90% of the time on electric, rest would be petrol
  • elif 4y ago
    Range anxiety is an ICE driver imagined pathology. Once you understand how your vehicle uses electricity, it really is not scary at all. When I am road tripping I usually try to charge such that I make it to the next charger at 3-5%. It ends up being a faster overall trip because you get faster charging speeds. It's not like a gas tank where unexpected traffic can run you to zero. Bad traffic improves your range. If you bite off more than you intended, just drop 10kph and let the estimate adjust.
    • mattnewton 4y ago
      I don’t own an ICE or any car, and I really believe in electric vehicles. Whenever possible I rent electric vehicles, usually teslas, and multiple times and had to plan my vacation around making sure we had time to charge. It’s not imagined, I have almost run out of battery and trips have taken me hours more because of the current lack of high speed charging - the only reason that was possible at all was because of the large battery. I think the only imagined thing here is the demand for smaller battery cars- why would I buy a car that can’t also do these trips? And why would we want to push a heavy ICE and tank around all the time in a hybrid car instead of more batteries for this case?
      • richardw 4y ago
        What I do is own a normal size car and rent a bigger one for occasional trips. Eg 4x4 or something with lots of luggage space. I figure paying monthly for a car I use twice a year is irrational, and I get a car suitable to the trip.
• panick21_ 4y ago
  It would be far more effective if that huge amount of money was invested in bike friendly infrastructure, bikes and public transport. Also the problem with extend range hybrids is that people often just don't plug them in. This has been shown in many usage studies in Europe. And then these are just inefficient gas cars.
• olau 4y ago
  There's the theoretical argument against hybrids that while you might think you get the best from both worlds, you also get the worst - two drivetrains you need to buy, maintain, refuel. In practice, what seems to happen is that surprisingly few people in hybrid cars bother charging the battery. This has been studied since buying hybrid can be a tax evasion scheme in some European countries. And when people actually do have a choice between hybrid and BEV, they don't want the hybrid because driving around with explosion-based engines is simply worse. So while hybrids had some time in the spot light, it looks like maturing markets go to full BEVs. You could argue that still in the ideal world we should do X. But in the real world, developments take decades to play out. You can't expect everything to be perfect in the mean time. In the future, batteries will be much lighter and cheaper, and mining and manufacturing will be done with fossil-free energy.
  • 8uhaal 4y ago
    > In practice, what seems to happen is that surprisingly few people in hybrid cars bother charging the battery. That's just because of incentives. Once gasoline is 5x as expensive per mile than electric, people will charge every night. For the twice-a-year long trip, that extra gasolinr cost won't matter much, and give them the freedom they want. Without driving an extra half a ton of battery around the rest of the year.
• TrapLord_Rhodo 4y ago
  You should look into altera. https://aptera.us/ https://aptera.us/ For your other points, I used to be on the capex team at Tesla, so maybe I can shed some light. > We probably could instead use 25Kwh batteries while still massively reducing carbon emissions. Margins are everything in the automotive industry. Tesla has the highest margins in the industry by a considerable margin. If they release a car now with a 25Kwh hour battery, they will cannibalize their sales. Tesla knows that they can consistently beat the other players at cost, so they can transition easily once the other players catch up... which I'm not sure it's entirely possible at this point. Secondly, the Capital expenditure costs drive, although amortized, much of the cost per car. The battery pack is only a small portion of the entire cost of the line and other material inputs, so dropping the kwH from 150 to 25 doesn't help the price of the vehicle from Tesla's side, but the end user will expect to pay a lot less. Tesla worked directly with Idra to create one of the biggest presses in the world. The dies underwent hundreds of revisions, with a die CNC onsite. Those presses will revolutionize the way cars are made, and Tesla has Idra occupied for years with multiple press orders. >Tesla chronically understates the carbon intensiveness of building lithium-ion batteries. Tesla has been working on brine mining for years. They recently purchased some land in Nevada and have started working on the project. They have an exciting plan of directing an array of mirrors at brine lakes, and using a series of pumps, filters, and solar panels can get close to net zero.