7 ms·

Lighter cars, really, that's it. Make vehicles that match the transportation case in question instead of palaces on wheels that carry battery sized for solving

by usrusr 1y ago

Lighter cars, really, that's it. Make vehicles that match the transportation case in question instead of palaces on wheels that carry battery sized for solving some once in a year use case. And/or make them go slower.

potato3732842 1y ago
You can use harder rubber compounds but that's a non-starter because longer stopping distances.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  It is common for electric cars to use harder rubber compounds in their tires. Not because of particulates, but because tire noise is particularly noticeable in an otherwise quiet electric car, and because tire life is a concern for EV drivers. Luckily, both reduced noise and increased life are fairly well correlated with reduced particulate emission.
netsharc 1y ago
Huh, imagine EVs that have removable add-on batteries that you'd only plug in for the longer trips.. Like the Thinkpads with the "bigger battery" humps: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_ap/photo/l/lenovo-thi/lenovo-thinkpad-x250-right-side-with-extended-battery_v2ga.1080.jpg https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_ap/photo/l/lenovo-thi/lenovo-th...
- jopsen 1y ago
  A battery trailer might affect the speed limit your allowed to drive. But it would be cool to just rent the extra 500km when needed :)
  - netsharc 1y ago
    Obviously a trailer would not be a clever idea, but Nio already has cars with swappable batteries, for short distances you could just install a battery pack which is maybe 20% battery and 80% empty space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      It’s enough of a pain in the ass to swap summer and winter tires, and that’s something that (some) people only do twice a year. I can’t imagine people wanting to swap battery packs (either themself or by making an appointment at a service center) before and after every long trip.
      - illiac786 1y ago
        If it’s faster than filing up, why not.
        dboreham 1y ago
        It won't be.
        illiac786 1y ago
        Low effort reply, really, try to put in some arguments at least. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Both upthread replies seem to evidence approximately the same level of effort to me; "It won't be faster" isn't wildly less effort than "what if it will be faster?" Nio has fewer Nio battery swap stations operating in the entire world than just the state of New Jersey has filling stations (not dispensers, entire stations). Nothing in the video above made me think "oh wow, that looks like that process will be a lot faster than filling up!" and several segments made it seem like there would be more time involved in just getting the car into and out of the battery replacement service bay than filling up takes. (Nio's claim of a 2.5-3 minute battery swap seems to be measuring only the swap time while the car is stopped in the bay.) That's all before we consider the travel time to one of the stations (which is unlikely to be as close to your trip as a typical filling station because of the rarity of stations), time waiting for the car [or cars] in front of you to complete their swap (which if Nios ever became popular would likely be longer than waiting for one of the typically eight or more dispensers to free up at a filling station), nor to account for the "all long range batteries are out of stock at this location, because it's the Friday before Christmas and everyone is road tripping to visit family" NACKs that are liable to occur in a Nio-only battery swap system. For me the killer line in the video that will make it hard for Nio to solve all of these is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w&t=270s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w&t=270s : "Building these stations is incredibly expensive and it's no secret that Nio is losing a staggering amount of money right now..."
  - wtallis 1y ago
    Speed limits for towing smaller trailers mostly derive from safety concerns about overloaded or imbalanced trailers being unstable at high speeds. A battery-only trailer with little or no cargo space, designed and certified in conjunction with specific tow vehicles, could easily be safe enough to operate at highway speeds. I think the main reason why we don't see anyone seriously pursuing the battery trailer idea is that it would be an expensive niche product. It would have to be mostly a rental-only product, and offer few advantages over simply renting a more suitable vehicle.
- rangestransform 1y ago
  This is a stupid idea because you’d have to make fasteners and high voltage interfaces that can survive an order of magnitude more cycles than they have to for a fixed pack. It would also be significantly more difficult to use the pack as a stressed member of the car structure. It’s better to just have less batteries and use them more efficiently through weight savings.
  - Earw0rm 1y ago
    Don't the charging ports already have to do that?
  - bcrl 1y ago
    Do you realize that one of the reasons for the swappable batteries on various Thinkpads is so that you can hot swap batteries without powering down or rebooting? I've never had an issue with the connectors for the batteries of the ThinkPad, and being able to swap in a spare fully charged battery has been very helpful many times when out doing field working all day long. What is an issue are the little plastic tabs on the batteries that break off over time. However, usually the batteries have already lost a lot of their lifespan by the time that happens, and since the batteries are removable they can be replaced without opening up the system or melting glue with heat as is the case on most modern cell phones. Seems like a win to me!
    - sightbroke 1y ago
      I could be wrong but the currents and voltages for EVs are rather bit more dangerous and taxing than that typically found used in laptops. Which I think the person you replied was partially attempting to point out.
      - bcrl 1y ago
        My point is that hot swappable battery packs have benefits that outweigh the cost of the connectors for the people that have a use case that needs them, as the grandparent referred to in Thinkpads. Not everyone fits in the constraints of design space chosen for a given product. There's a reason virtually every modern computer has a means of adding expansion devices. Making a high voltage connector is well understood problem space. Every electrical engineer knows how to deal with ramping up current when a power supply is plugged in or turned on (inrush current specifications are most definitely a thing), and the entire electric grid is based on sizing, insulating, spacing and switching conductors appropriately for the voltage and current being used. Moreover, high voltage battery packs tend to have switches / contactors on the battery pack that keep the high voltage off until the connection is securely made and enabled, hence why even Telsas require a functioning low voltage battery to start the system. There are also certain use-cases that are likely best served by putting battery packs in a trailer. Take the trucking industry: going by the charging requirements of a Tesla semi (1MW for 30 minutes), replicating your typical truck stop turns into a huge problem for the grid -- you'd need upwards of 50MW of charging capacity to replicate the flow of diesel coming out of a bank of 10 fuel pumps (sorry, I ran the thought experiment on that one back when specs were first released). Having a battery pack attached to the trailer that gets charged at a more leisurely rate at the warehouse while it is unloaded and re-loaded over a couple of hours is far more scalable than charging the truck in a few minutes at a truck stop. Charging overnight while the driver sleeps is fine, but getting the 8-12 hours of runtime for a workday in a semi is a heck of a lot of battery. The dangers can be mitigated -- that's the entire raison d'etre of the electrical engineering discipline! Otherwise you wouldn't be able to safely charge an electric car at a 350kW rate these days at charging stations all over the world with a connector that is deemed safe to be handled by random humans. It's not like the software industry where we throw half baked shit at the wall and see what sticks when users encounter it by running an A / B test in production....
- ianleighton 1y ago
  NIO does battery swaps in minutes, in China and Europe. I believe you can also perhaps get different ranges but if not, would be great to swap between a 50kwh pack for normal use and say 100+kwh for your road trip. Then again battery charging/weight tech is getting pretty good pretty fast.
- usrusr 1y ago
  I imagine semiautonomous trailers that would just tag along in the slipstream within cable range for distances beyond your daily. With computer-fast reaction to brake and steering inputs of the lead car. Those would universally be rentals that you change like the horses in pre-rail post networks.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
  It surprises me how much people are determined to use the "car" form factor when it's clearly not a good design for weight reduction and efficient transport. If instead people consider EVs that are non-car-shaped then we get things like e-bikes and e-scooters. Both can feature easily swappable batteries as the batteries are so much smaller due to the reduced weight of the vehicle. Also, the problems around congestion can pretty much disappear when you get enough people to use an e-bike/e-scooter instead of a car. The tyre wear/pollution is minimised due to the reduction in weight and similarly the brakes.
carlosjobim 1y ago
It would be incredible if somebody invented a light car, that would transport one or two people and some groceries. Maybe with two wheels instead of four to take up less space. Hmmm why has nobody invented this?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Crash test ratings.
- andrepd 1y ago
  Maybe even some sort of pedal-powered contraption. Perhaps we could even build lanes for these bi-cycles instead of 22 lane highways.
- Krssst 1y ago
  While bicycles are quite convenient for commuting, I am not sure if there is a way for transporting groceries for an entire week for multiple people. Is there such a way? The only solution I see is doing groceries every day.
  - const_cast 1y ago
    Groceries every day (or every few days) becomes viable and common in cities like Paris. It’s a lot easier to do when you don’t have to take a car, and the culture then shifts too to fresher food.
  - gorbachev 1y ago
    My mom used to this year round, in every weather and temperature (incl. -20C), when I was a kid several decades ago. Honestly I don't know how she did it, but she did. It helped that we had separated bike lanes pretty much everywhere. It is entirely possible if the infrastructure supports it. This sort of thing is why I'm personally a big fan of the 15-minute city concept.
  - gnatolf 1y ago
    Plenty of Europeans have cargo bikes and make do with 2-3 supermarket trips per week for families of 4-5 peeps. Only bulk drinks (crates of beer/soda/...) are challenging. But for those, very often delivery systems are in place that surely are more efficient than individual trips anyways.

by usrusr 1y ago

potato3732842 1y ago

You can use harder rubber compounds but that's a non-starter because longer stopping distances.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
It is common for electric cars to use harder rubber compounds in their tires. Not because of particulates, but because tire noise is particularly noticeable in an otherwise quiet electric car, and because tire life is a concern for EV drivers. Luckily, both reduced noise and increased life are fairly well correlated with reduced particulate emission.

netsharc 1y ago

Huh, imagine EVs that have removable add-on batteries that you'd only plug in for the longer trips.. Like the Thinkpads with the "bigger battery" humps: https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_ap/photo/l/lenovo-thi/lenovo-thinkpad-x250-right-side-with-extended-battery_v2ga.1080.jpg https://sm.pcmag.com/t/pcmag_ap/photo/l/lenovo-thi/lenovo-th...

jopsen 1y ago
A battery trailer might affect the speed limit your allowed to drive. But it would be cool to just rent the extra 500km when needed :)
- netsharc 1y ago
  Obviously a trailer would not be a clever idea, but Nio already has cars with swappable batteries, for short distances you could just install a battery pack which is maybe 20% battery and 80% empty space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    It’s enough of a pain in the ass to swap summer and winter tires, and that’s something that (some) people only do twice a year. I can’t imagine people wanting to swap battery packs (either themself or by making an appointment at a service center) before and after every long trip.
    - illiac786 1y ago
      If it’s faster than filing up, why not.
      - dboreham 1y ago
        It won't be.
        illiac786 1y ago
        Low effort reply, really, try to put in some arguments at least. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        sokoloff 1y ago
        Both upthread replies seem to evidence approximately the same level of effort to me; "It won't be faster" isn't wildly less effort than "what if it will be faster?" Nio has fewer Nio battery swap stations operating in the entire world than just the state of New Jersey has filling stations (not dispensers, entire stations). Nothing in the video above made me think "oh wow, that looks like that process will be a lot faster than filling up!" and several segments made it seem like there would be more time involved in just getting the car into and out of the battery replacement service bay than filling up takes. (Nio's claim of a 2.5-3 minute battery swap seems to be measuring only the swap time while the car is stopped in the bay.) That's all before we consider the travel time to one of the stations (which is unlikely to be as close to your trip as a typical filling station because of the rarity of stations), time waiting for the car [or cars] in front of you to complete their swap (which if Nios ever became popular would likely be longer than waiting for one of the typically eight or more dispensers to free up at a filling station), nor to account for the "all long range batteries are out of stock at this location, because it's the Friday before Christmas and everyone is road tripping to visit family" NACKs that are liable to occur in a Nio-only battery swap system. For me the killer line in the video that will make it hard for Nio to solve all of these is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w&t=270s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w&t=270s : "Building these stations is incredibly expensive and it's no secret that Nio is losing a staggering amount of money right now..."
- wtallis 1y ago
  Speed limits for towing smaller trailers mostly derive from safety concerns about overloaded or imbalanced trailers being unstable at high speeds. A battery-only trailer with little or no cargo space, designed and certified in conjunction with specific tow vehicles, could easily be safe enough to operate at highway speeds. I think the main reason why we don't see anyone seriously pursuing the battery trailer idea is that it would be an expensive niche product. It would have to be mostly a rental-only product, and offer few advantages over simply renting a more suitable vehicle.
rangestransform 1y ago
This is a stupid idea because you’d have to make fasteners and high voltage interfaces that can survive an order of magnitude more cycles than they have to for a fixed pack. It would also be significantly more difficult to use the pack as a stressed member of the car structure. It’s better to just have less batteries and use them more efficiently through weight savings.
- Earw0rm 1y ago
  Don't the charging ports already have to do that?
- bcrl 1y ago
  Do you realize that one of the reasons for the swappable batteries on various Thinkpads is so that you can hot swap batteries without powering down or rebooting? I've never had an issue with the connectors for the batteries of the ThinkPad, and being able to swap in a spare fully charged battery has been very helpful many times when out doing field working all day long. What is an issue are the little plastic tabs on the batteries that break off over time. However, usually the batteries have already lost a lot of their lifespan by the time that happens, and since the batteries are removable they can be replaced without opening up the system or melting glue with heat as is the case on most modern cell phones. Seems like a win to me!
  - sightbroke 1y ago
    I could be wrong but the currents and voltages for EVs are rather bit more dangerous and taxing than that typically found used in laptops. Which I think the person you replied was partially attempting to point out.
    - bcrl 1y ago
      My point is that hot swappable battery packs have benefits that outweigh the cost of the connectors for the people that have a use case that needs them, as the grandparent referred to in Thinkpads. Not everyone fits in the constraints of design space chosen for a given product. There's a reason virtually every modern computer has a means of adding expansion devices. Making a high voltage connector is well understood problem space. Every electrical engineer knows how to deal with ramping up current when a power supply is plugged in or turned on (inrush current specifications are most definitely a thing), and the entire electric grid is based on sizing, insulating, spacing and switching conductors appropriately for the voltage and current being used. Moreover, high voltage battery packs tend to have switches / contactors on the battery pack that keep the high voltage off until the connection is securely made and enabled, hence why even Telsas require a functioning low voltage battery to start the system. There are also certain use-cases that are likely best served by putting battery packs in a trailer. Take the trucking industry: going by the charging requirements of a Tesla semi (1MW for 30 minutes), replicating your typical truck stop turns into a huge problem for the grid -- you'd need upwards of 50MW of charging capacity to replicate the flow of diesel coming out of a bank of 10 fuel pumps (sorry, I ran the thought experiment on that one back when specs were first released). Having a battery pack attached to the trailer that gets charged at a more leisurely rate at the warehouse while it is unloaded and re-loaded over a couple of hours is far more scalable than charging the truck in a few minutes at a truck stop. Charging overnight while the driver sleeps is fine, but getting the 8-12 hours of runtime for a workday in a semi is a heck of a lot of battery. The dangers can be mitigated -- that's the entire raison d'etre of the electrical engineering discipline! Otherwise you wouldn't be able to safely charge an electric car at a 350kW rate these days at charging stations all over the world with a connector that is deemed safe to be handled by random humans. It's not like the software industry where we throw half baked shit at the wall and see what sticks when users encounter it by running an A / B test in production....
ianleighton 1y ago
NIO does battery swaps in minutes, in China and Europe. I believe you can also perhaps get different ranges but if not, would be great to swap between a 50kwh pack for normal use and say 100+kwh for your road trip. Then again battery charging/weight tech is getting pretty good pretty fast.
usrusr 1y ago
I imagine semiautonomous trailers that would just tag along in the slipstream within cable range for distances beyond your daily. With computer-fast reaction to brake and steering inputs of the lead car. Those would universally be rentals that you change like the horses in pre-rail post networks.
ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
It surprises me how much people are determined to use the "car" form factor when it's clearly not a good design for weight reduction and efficient transport. If instead people consider EVs that are non-car-shaped then we get things like e-bikes and e-scooters. Both can feature easily swappable batteries as the batteries are so much smaller due to the reduced weight of the vehicle. Also, the problems around congestion can pretty much disappear when you get enough people to use an e-bike/e-scooter instead of a car. The tyre wear/pollution is minimised due to the reduction in weight and similarly the brakes.

carlosjobim 1y ago

It would be incredible if somebody invented a light car, that would transport one or two people and some groceries. Maybe with two wheels instead of four to take up less space. Hmmm why has nobody invented this?

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
Crash test ratings.
andrepd 1y ago
Maybe even some sort of pedal-powered contraption. Perhaps we could even build lanes for these bi-cycles instead of 22 lane highways.
Krssst 1y ago
While bicycles are quite convenient for commuting, I am not sure if there is a way for transporting groceries for an entire week for multiple people. Is there such a way? The only solution I see is doing groceries every day.
- const_cast 1y ago
  Groceries every day (or every few days) becomes viable and common in cities like Paris. It’s a lot easier to do when you don’t have to take a car, and the culture then shifts too to fresher food.
- gorbachev 1y ago
  My mom used to this year round, in every weather and temperature (incl. -20C), when I was a kid several decades ago. Honestly I don't know how she did it, but she did. It helped that we had separated bike lanes pretty much everywhere. It is entirely possible if the infrastructure supports it. This sort of thing is why I'm personally a big fan of the 15-minute city concept.
- gnatolf 1y ago
  Plenty of Europeans have cargo bikes and make do with 2-3 supermarket trips per week for families of 4-5 peeps. Only bulk drinks (crates of beer/soda/...) are challenging. But for those, very often delivery systems are in place that surely are more efficient than individual trips anyways.