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This was already discussed a few days ago, and the price of the battery went up substantially from the original estimate. While I'm sure this will be a favorite

This was already discussed a few days ago, and the price of the battery went up substantially from the original estimate. While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs, this is more a story about estimate padding (and borderline insurance fraud) than anything else.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
People rant about Tesla non stop, but they’ll approve my 100kw battery replacement for $10k-$15k and I’ll be on my way. I can even do it through the Tesla app. Most people can’t afford this themselves out of pocket; that is a call to provide financing with the battery as collateral, just as we do with the entire vehicle today. Even with a battery replacement out of warranty, you come out ahead total cost of ownership due to fuel cost delta between electricity and petrol.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs I don't think anyone is ever arguing against EVs, that they're not better for our air quality than sticking to ICEs, but the mass adoption issues come when the rubber hits the road. EVs range is still way behind ICE and drops like a rock in cold weather, and the ones with fast charging and the range close to a cheap ICE cost an arm and a leg, charging networks are still way too sparse and have shit payment UX plus the incoming charges for loitering after your car is charged, while fast chargers being even more sparse and Tesla's prices has continuously been higher than what Elon originally promised in his announcements. All this make EVs still not a drop in replacement for ICEs for the general public with small budgets and who don't live at their own house where they have a charger in their garage. Depending on where you live, public charging infrastructure today is a nightmare in most places making the charging experience much more annoying and time consuming than tanking gas. For example, I bought my 4 year old used ICE car with just 36K KM on the clock for only 6k Euros including another set of wheels with the mandatory winter tires. There are currently no low mileage EVs on the used market anywhere remotely in this price range, and that's before I run into the issue of the smaller range making vacation in Southern Europe nearly impossible, and not having any chargers where I live and park my car. Basically for me right now and others like me(most people in the country), a switch to an EV would be an expansive downgrade, and it doesn't look like pricing is going down and range and charging infrastructure is going up fast enough to match ICEs by the time they're banned from sale in 2030, meaning there will be a lot of angry voters priced/ranged out of EV ownership at that date meaning we might realistically see the ICE ban deadline extended until we sort out the infrastructure and the overly optimistic range/price reaches the values that were said we would reach years ago(basically a More's law for EVs). So nobody in their right mind is against EVs, but since they're too far away in term of range, price and convenience from ICEs for the general masses they need to hit in order to make the transition a smooth reality, I think the correct wording here is people are against a forced premature transition to EVs when they're not yet the drop-in replacements they need to be in order to not negatively affect the lives of people who depend on their cars for work and leisure.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  None of what you said is necessarily incorrect (right now at least), but that's not the point I was making. Many pick the most extreme piece of "data" they can find, and use it as an argument as if were a universal truth, as opposed to the practical argument you are presenting here. A quick check across Twitter shows plenty of tweets doing exactly as I predicted.
  - appplication 3y ago
    This is because critical thoughts are at a premium and it’s easier to pick a side and pad it with whatever arguments augment it than arriving at conclusions by actually evaluating the wide set of facts and reasonable adjunctions.
- audunw 3y ago
  You say your last purchase was a 4yo car. A good choice for budget conscious buyers. In that case the ICE ban will not be relevant for you until 2034. Depending on what country you’re in, the ICE bans being proposed does not encompass hybrid or plug-in hybrids. I’d be quite confident that the infrastructure is good enough by 2030 that most people would want a plug-in hybrid anyway. Think about it: at some point in the transition you’ll realise that your car will rapidly become worthless if it doesn’t have a plug. We’ve already started seeing gas stations close down or reduce the number of pumps here in Norway. I don’t think that point will be any later than 2035. You say you don’t think the cars or infrastructure will be ready by 2030. I find that surprising. When I bought our Kia EV in 2015, non-Teslas had maximum 30kWh and had no benefits over gasoline cars, fast chargers were maximum 50kWh and there were very few of them. Now 60-70kWh has become the norm. Newer EVs have huge benefits over ICE cars (I LOVE being able to pre-heat the car no matter where it is parked in winter). 150kW chargers are standard and 250-300kW chargers are becoming increasingly common. Price for new cars is still an issue but i suspect it’s mainly because all the car companies launched their new EV product lines with luxury models. Their budget variants are starting to come out now. By 2030 we will probably be getting a completely new generation of models. Look at what Hyundai is working on with their uni wheel system: with the next generation it’s plausible that EVs will start having motors on all four wheels, with independent torque vectoring on each motor, and steering on the rear wheels, while having even better interior space. Okay, that’ll be mostly relevant to high end vehicles to start with. But the halo effect will probably be significant. By 2030 I think nobody can deny that EVs are inherently superior. You’ll probably have some with 1000km range if you throw enough money at it. So what about budget models? We’re starting to see LiFePo becoming common for cheap batteries, and sodium-ion is being rolled out on a commercial scale. Hybrid batteries (combining two chemistries to get the benefits of both) are opening new possibilities. There are several dozens of giga-scale battery factories being built right now. All points towards massive pressure to drive down costs by 2030. I suspect geopolitics will drive a massive shift towards EVs around 2030 as well. Imagine being the first country to be fully electric: you can shut down most of the gasoline supply chain freeing up a lot of resources. You’ll be fully energy independent. Swings in oil prices will not bother you. And you’ll have all the lithium and copper within your borders to keep your economy running forever. All you need is some battery recycling and manufacturing plants and you’re completely independent in terms of transportation energy infrastructure.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

People rant about Tesla non stop, but they’ll approve my 100kw battery replacement for $10k-$15k and I’ll be on my way. I can even do it through the Tesla app. Most people can’t afford this themselves out of pocket; that is a call to provide financing with the battery as collateral, just as we do with the entire vehicle today. Even with a battery replacement out of warranty, you come out ahead total cost of ownership due to fuel cost delta between electricity and petrol.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

>While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs I don't think anyone is ever arguing against EVs, that they're not better for our air quality than sticking to ICEs, but the mass adoption issues come when the rubber hits the road. EVs range is still way behind ICE and drops like a rock in cold weather, and the ones with fast charging and the range close to a cheap ICE cost an arm and a leg, charging networks are still way too sparse and have shit payment UX plus the incoming charges for loitering after your car is charged, while fast chargers being even more sparse and Tesla's prices has continuously been higher than what Elon originally promised in his announcements. All this make EVs still not a drop in replacement for ICEs for the general public with small budgets and who don't live at their own house where they have a charger in their garage. Depending on where you live, public charging infrastructure today is a nightmare in most places making the charging experience much more annoying and time consuming than tanking gas. For example, I bought my 4 year old used ICE car with just 36K KM on the clock for only 6k Euros including another set of wheels with the mandatory winter tires. There are currently no low mileage EVs on the used market anywhere remotely in this price range, and that's before I run into the issue of the smaller range making vacation in Southern Europe nearly impossible, and not having any chargers where I live and park my car. Basically for me right now and others like me(most people in the country), a switch to an EV would be an expansive downgrade, and it doesn't look like pricing is going down and range and charging infrastructure is going up fast enough to match ICEs by the time they're banned from sale in 2030, meaning there will be a lot of angry voters priced/ranged out of EV ownership at that date meaning we might realistically see the ICE ban deadline extended until we sort out the infrastructure and the overly optimistic range/price reaches the values that were said we would reach years ago(basically a More's law for EVs). So nobody in their right mind is against EVs, but since they're too far away in term of range, price and convenience from ICEs for the general masses they need to hit in order to make the transition a smooth reality, I think the correct wording here is people are against a forced premature transition to EVs when they're not yet the drop-in replacements they need to be in order to not negatively affect the lives of people who depend on their cars for work and leisure.

bdcravens 3y ago
None of what you said is necessarily incorrect (right now at least), but that's not the point I was making. Many pick the most extreme piece of "data" they can find, and use it as an argument as if were a universal truth, as opposed to the practical argument you are presenting here. A quick check across Twitter shows plenty of tweets doing exactly as I predicted.
- appplication 3y ago
  This is because critical thoughts are at a premium and it’s easier to pick a side and pad it with whatever arguments augment it than arriving at conclusions by actually evaluating the wide set of facts and reasonable adjunctions.
audunw 3y ago
You say your last purchase was a 4yo car. A good choice for budget conscious buyers. In that case the ICE ban will not be relevant for you until 2034. Depending on what country you’re in, the ICE bans being proposed does not encompass hybrid or plug-in hybrids. I’d be quite confident that the infrastructure is good enough by 2030 that most people would want a plug-in hybrid anyway. Think about it: at some point in the transition you’ll realise that your car will rapidly become worthless if it doesn’t have a plug. We’ve already started seeing gas stations close down or reduce the number of pumps here in Norway. I don’t think that point will be any later than 2035. You say you don’t think the cars or infrastructure will be ready by 2030. I find that surprising. When I bought our Kia EV in 2015, non-Teslas had maximum 30kWh and had no benefits over gasoline cars, fast chargers were maximum 50kWh and there were very few of them. Now 60-70kWh has become the norm. Newer EVs have huge benefits over ICE cars (I LOVE being able to pre-heat the car no matter where it is parked in winter). 150kW chargers are standard and 250-300kW chargers are becoming increasingly common. Price for new cars is still an issue but i suspect it’s mainly because all the car companies launched their new EV product lines with luxury models. Their budget variants are starting to come out now. By 2030 we will probably be getting a completely new generation of models. Look at what Hyundai is working on with their uni wheel system: with the next generation it’s plausible that EVs will start having motors on all four wheels, with independent torque vectoring on each motor, and steering on the rear wheels, while having even better interior space. Okay, that’ll be mostly relevant to high end vehicles to start with. But the halo effect will probably be significant. By 2030 I think nobody can deny that EVs are inherently superior. You’ll probably have some with 1000km range if you throw enough money at it. So what about budget models? We’re starting to see LiFePo becoming common for cheap batteries, and sodium-ion is being rolled out on a commercial scale. Hybrid batteries (combining two chemistries to get the benefits of both) are opening new possibilities. There are several dozens of giga-scale battery factories being built right now. All points towards massive pressure to drive down costs by 2030. I suspect geopolitics will drive a massive shift towards EVs around 2030 as well. Imagine being the first country to be fully electric: you can shut down most of the gasoline supply chain freeing up a lot of resources. You’ll be fully energy independent. Swings in oil prices will not bother you. And you’ll have all the lithium and copper within your borders to keep your economy running forever. All you need is some battery recycling and manufacturing plants and you’re completely independent in terms of transportation energy infrastructure.