16 ms·

Those of us who own electric cars know that electric cars have already won. They are just too good compared to regular somewhat-junky gasoline cars. The benefit

by jblow 14y ago

Those of us who own electric cars know that electric cars have already won. They are just too good compared to regular somewhat-junky gasoline cars. The benefits are too numerous to list. The only problem that I have with my Roadster is that if I want to take a long road trip, there has to be a big stopover in the middle, which makes trips much longer. The Model S solves that. Therefore, EVs have won. They are here now, they are real, and they work. All that needs to happen is for the cost to come down, but there is nothing preventing that. If you have parking at home, an EV is way better than gas or hydrogen because you never need to take your car somewhere to fuel it, ever (unless on a very long road trip). You just come home, park, and plug it in. It is hard to communicate how good this feels until you've had an EV for a few weeks and you're driving past all these gas stations and kind of laughing because you don't need them.

chc 14y ago
Aren't EVs totally unusable if you live in an apartment? That was my impression when I looked into them. Like, how would I charge a car in my parking stall?
- jellicle 14y ago
  You are correct it is difficult. There is a strong push on now for new underground parking to be constructed with 240V electrical service roughed in to many of the spaces, to accommodate future charging stations.
- jblow 14y ago
  It is definitely less convenient if you don't have a garage. But as mentioned, this is starting to be addressed. Also, the Supercharger-style charging station becomes a lot like a gas station would be for a normal car. I do think that "I don't have a garage / dedicated place to park my car" is in fact the only current anti-EV argument that has any basis in reality. But it's addressable.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Really? The only argument? How about my family lives 575 miles away from me, and even with the ideal 250 mile range of a $100k Model S I would still need to add at least an hour and a half to my already 10 hour one-way trip when I visit them a few times per year? Meanwhile my $5,000, 14-year-old Toyota might only get 20mpg, but the tank holds 350 miles of fuel and I only need to refill once (rather than thrice) during the trip, costing me literally minutes of time. Finding a place to recharge overnight is a problem. But let's not pretend it's the only real problem. I already have enough problems charging my phone every night when I'm staying over at someone's house. Asking them to install an outlet so I can charge my car is asking a bit more than many people will stand.
    - matthewaustin 14y ago
      Congratulations - you are the 1% who this model fails for. The rest of us will be just fine, since 99% of us don't travel more than 250 miles a day. And for the couple times a year we need to take road trips, we can rent a luxury sedan with the money we've saved on fuel costs.
      - ryanhuff 14y ago
        Isn't the 250 miles a max range, assuming ideal driving conditions? Also, as the car ages, will the battery range erode significantly? If its similar to consumer rechargeable battery technology, should we expect that the 250 mile range will be closer to 150 miles with "typical" driving behavior and after the car has been driven for 50K miles?
        mncolinlee 14y ago
        It entirely depends upon the chemistry of the automotive lithium battery, which typically use different catalysts than laptop batteries. For Lithium Manganese Oxide batteries, the prediction is 70% after eight years. That would be 175 miles range at 120,000 miles driving. There are new and better chemistries coming out like lithium NMC arriving this year that store 75% more energy per lb at a similar price. http://insideevs.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-second-generation-battery-is-coming-online-now/ http://insideevs.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-second-generati...
- jlgreco 14y ago
  My (new) apartment building has power hookups for EVs. I have seen two or three using them.
- refurb 14y ago
  Forget the parking stall, what about the big cities (like SF) where a sizable chunk of all cars are parked on the street.
- clauretano 14y ago
  New apartment buildings under construction that want to game the LEED system are always looking for ways to get points. Adding a charging station or two to their underground parking garage is an easy way. The trouble is, investing in an electric car you're going to keep for 4-5 years starts making less sense when it means you might be locked into your apartment for just as long.
- henrikschroder 14y ago
  There are places in the world where these are common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater Getting electricity out to a parking spot is not a problem, and hasn't been a problem for the last 40 years or so that people have had block heaters.
hyperbovine 14y ago
So to get an electric car that affords me as much freedom as a fossil burner I /only/ need to drop $102k? Sign me up! /s Electric cars will have won when normal people can afford them. I hope that'll be soon, but it's definitely not the case right now.
- confluence 14y ago
  You can -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf. It'll take a few more years for mainstream adoption - but it'll hit. Tesla Model S is like the Apple I - only rich smart people own them. The Apple II is when things get really crazy - that's when middle-class smart people own them. See plan here: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-p...
  - mncolinlee 14y ago
    Actually, you can go cheaper than the Leaf, but it's not quite as nice. Mitsubishi makes the I, which costs $22,000 after rebate.
  - hyperbovine 14y ago
    The leaf has an EPA-rated range of 73mi.
tsotha 14y ago
Uh huh. How much did you spend on your Roadster, and how much is it going to cost to replace the battery pack when it wears out after only ten years or so?
- mmoche 14y ago
  How long do people realistically own cars? Only 60% of people keep their cars more than four years...I'd suspect 10 is closer to 5%. source: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090714/carnews/907149994 http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090714/carnews/907149994
  - tsotha 14y ago
    The average car on the road is eleven years old, so even if you only keep your car for four years when you sell it some cheap bastard (like me) is going to buy it used and drive it for awhile longer. My guess is EVs are going to have quite a bit steeper depreciation curves than standard vehicles. A ten year old Leaf on its original battery pack will be essentially worthless, and you can probably work the curve backward from there.
- jblow 14y ago
  The Roadster is definitely expensive, but now the Model S, just a few years later, is 1/2 to 2/3 the price, and is a superior car. Thus, the price is declining rapidly, and this is obvious to anyone who cares to look at actual facts.
- incision 14y ago
  >How much did you spend on your Roadster, and how much is it going to cost to replace the battery pack when it wears out after only ten years or so? Is this a fact, expensive battery replacements after 10 years and all? I really have no idea, but I took a few minutes to try and look it up. At a glance, it looks likes replacing a Prius battery today runs about half a much today as it did 10 years ago. Folks on the Tesla forums claim that you can pre-pay for a an eventual replacement to the tune of about $12K or 11% of the price of a new Roadster. That's a bit less half of of the current Tesla battery replacement cost I've seen thrown around and in line observed reduction in price of Prius batteries. Spending 11% of a car's new price on a such a major repair, 10 years down the road is not bad at all. In fact, in my experience that's right in line with a basic import and cheap for anything could be considering sporting or luxury. Unless I'm way off, this doesn't seem like a big issue at all.
abhimishra 14y ago
How does the Model S solve the longer trips issue? On a road-trip I might drive 500 miles in a day. The priciest Model S gets 300 miles at 55 miles an hour. And with climate control on that is likely to be less in reality. If this trip were in cold weather (ski trips and such) the range would be SIGNIFICANTLY less. As a comparison, my gasoline-hybrid can squeeze out over 500 miles on a tank at 55 miles an hour. And I never worry about being 'stranded' as I might with a fully-electric car. Another issue I have with battery-based solutions is the potential lifespan of the batteries - they are warrantied only for 8-years. A new pack costs ~30k (pulled this unofficial figure from discussions in the Tesla forums).
- rossjudson 14y ago
  So how about you RENT A CAR once a year, for your 8000 mile trip across multiple state lines. Your daily commute is how far?
  - abhimishra 14y ago
    Oh I definitely can agree with the notion of renting a car for the edge case. Others have also suggested that families could have two cars, one electric for daily use and the other gasoline-powered for road trips or tasks that require more utility perhaps. But my point simply was that purely electric technologies cannot satisfy all needs (yet?) and that the range capabilities of electric vehicles is not on part with fossil-fuel vehicles (which is what was seemingly claimed by the parent post). And yes, this might mean that fossil-fuel vehicles don't disappear entirely, but simply play a smaller role in our future society.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    So let's do some math. I drive a Toyota truck that goes anywhere and does everything. It gets 20mpg average (I have a ScanGauge for monitoring this). It's 14 years old, and it cost me $5000 when I bought it. So at an average daily commute for Americans of 16 miles [1] (my commute is 5 miles one direction), that would give me an average of 400 bidirectional gallons used per year (16 miles one direction times 250 working days divided by the mpg) for work use. At $3.50 for a gallon of gas, that's $1400/yr, plus a one-time cost of $5000. Once per year, I take an 8000 mile journey, assuming that's bidirectional. That's another $1400 in gas. We're now looking at $7800 the first year, and $2800 every year after that. If I have the truck for 5 years, I'm out $19,000 in total. Now instead, I buy a Tesla Model S. It costs $100k, but electricity is free at their chargers. Now I want to make my cross country journey, so I rent a minivan at 8000 miles, I'll be gone a week to fully enjoy the resort with the wife and kids. A minivan from Enterprise is $110/day plus gas. Looking at the fuel economy of a minivan [2], looks like I can expect 20mpg. I might get more, but that's what I'll budget for. Same as my Toyota truck, I'm spending $1400 in gas once per year, plus the $770 to rent the van for a week. Which means, in total, I'm spending $100k the first year, and $2170 every year after that. So unless you can spot an error in my math, in terms of fuel cost per year the poster boy electric car only saves me ~$700/yr. Here's the results: Toyota truck: $19,000 over 5 years. Electric car plus a rental one week: $108,680 over 5 years. Maybe you want to be more reasonable and go for the base Model S: $66,080 over 5 years. Which one makes more economic sense? [1] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098&page=2 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098&#38... [2] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byclass/minivan2012.shtml http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byclass/minivan2012.shtml
lobster_johnson 14y ago
While I'm all for EVs and would happily change if I could afford to, this strikes me as off: > ... if I want to take a long road trip, there has to be a big stopover in the middle, which makes trips much longer. The Model S solves that. The Model S has a range of about 400 km (250 miles). For long highway-type trips, that's probably about 4 hours of driving. Which is not much. It won't get you from Köln to Berlin or from Paris to Lyon or from New York to Toronto, to pick a few random examples that slightly exceed 400 km. Those are distances that people would consider "long trips", and quite reasonables ones, too. Obviously a 400-km-range car is plenty for most people, but we can't pretend it doesn't limit our options or force us to find alternative transportation for some trips that would otherwise not be a problem with a gas-powered car. I assume you at least partly financed the Roadster with income you earned through Braid, by the way. If so, good for you, and I was glad to contribute! :-)
- Lewisham 14y ago
  It won't get you from SF to LA either, but that's why Tesla are building those 30 minute charging stations. My guess is that Tesla license the technology out, and road stops on common long-distance corridors start offering the charging stations in their parking lots to dominate the competition, you stop at their place for lunch, and then others will have to install too to compete. Job done: superchargers everywhere. It looks like this is already happening in San Francisco (albeit with the city bootstrapping it): there are parking garages with EV spots and those without. Given a higher EV usage, those garages are going to do better, and the others will need to install in order to win that custom.
- panacea 14y ago
  Köln to Berlin and Paris to Lyon are train journeys, not car trips.
  - tripzilch 14y ago
    Indeed. Much quicker, more comfortable and energy-efficient. Why'd you wanna go there at anything less than 250km/h (160mph)? ;-)
  - 14y ago
jlmendezbonini 14y ago
Did your electric bill increased significantly? Have you measure how many Miles/dollar,or some other similar metric, you get?
- jblow 14y ago
  My electric bill has increased by about $15 a month, depending on how much I drive. It is way cheaper than gas. (But the car is so expensive that you won't break even via cheaper fuel!)
- klinquist 14y ago
  The Volt, for example, is about 12kWh to charge. For that, you get 40 miles. I am signed up for PG&E's variable time-of-day rate plan, so between 9PM-9AM, my power is 9.8 cents/kWh. So the Volt costs roughly $1.10/40 miles.

by jblow 14y ago

chc 14y ago

Aren't EVs totally unusable if you live in an apartment? That was my impression when I looked into them. Like, how would I charge a car in my parking stall?

jellicle 14y ago
You are correct it is difficult. There is a strong push on now for new underground parking to be constructed with 240V electrical service roughed in to many of the spaces, to accommodate future charging stations.
jblow 14y ago
It is definitely less convenient if you don't have a garage. But as mentioned, this is starting to be addressed. Also, the Supercharger-style charging station becomes a lot like a gas station would be for a normal car. I do think that "I don't have a garage / dedicated place to park my car" is in fact the only current anti-EV argument that has any basis in reality. But it's addressable.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Really? The only argument? How about my family lives 575 miles away from me, and even with the ideal 250 mile range of a $100k Model S I would still need to add at least an hour and a half to my already 10 hour one-way trip when I visit them a few times per year? Meanwhile my $5,000, 14-year-old Toyota might only get 20mpg, but the tank holds 350 miles of fuel and I only need to refill once (rather than thrice) during the trip, costing me literally minutes of time. Finding a place to recharge overnight is a problem. But let's not pretend it's the only real problem. I already have enough problems charging my phone every night when I'm staying over at someone's house. Asking them to install an outlet so I can charge my car is asking a bit more than many people will stand.
  - matthewaustin 14y ago
    Congratulations - you are the 1% who this model fails for. The rest of us will be just fine, since 99% of us don't travel more than 250 miles a day. And for the couple times a year we need to take road trips, we can rent a luxury sedan with the money we've saved on fuel costs.
    - ryanhuff 14y ago
      Isn't the 250 miles a max range, assuming ideal driving conditions? Also, as the car ages, will the battery range erode significantly? If its similar to consumer rechargeable battery technology, should we expect that the 250 mile range will be closer to 150 miles with "typical" driving behavior and after the car has been driven for 50K miles?
      - mncolinlee 14y ago
        It entirely depends upon the chemistry of the automotive lithium battery, which typically use different catalysts than laptop batteries. For Lithium Manganese Oxide batteries, the prediction is 70% after eight years. That would be 175 miles range at 120,000 miles driving. There are new and better chemistries coming out like lithium NMC arriving this year that store 75% more energy per lb at a similar price. http://insideevs.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-second-generation-battery-is-coming-online-now/ http://insideevs.com/nissan-ceo-carlos-ghosn-second-generati...
jlgreco 14y ago
My (new) apartment building has power hookups for EVs. I have seen two or three using them.
refurb 14y ago
Forget the parking stall, what about the big cities (like SF) where a sizable chunk of all cars are parked on the street.
clauretano 14y ago
New apartment buildings under construction that want to game the LEED system are always looking for ways to get points. Adding a charging station or two to their underground parking garage is an easy way. The trouble is, investing in an electric car you're going to keep for 4-5 years starts making less sense when it means you might be locked into your apartment for just as long.
henrikschroder 14y ago
There are places in the world where these are common: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_heater Getting electricity out to a parking spot is not a problem, and hasn't been a problem for the last 40 years or so that people have had block heaters.

hyperbovine 14y ago

So to get an electric car that affords me as much freedom as a fossil burner I /only/ need to drop $102k? Sign me up! /s Electric cars will have won when normal people can afford them. I hope that'll be soon, but it's definitely not the case right now.

confluence 14y ago
You can -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf. It'll take a few more years for mainstream adoption - but it'll hit. Tesla Model S is like the Apple I - only rich smart people own them. The Apple II is when things get really crazy - that's when middle-class smart people own them. See plan here: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-p...
- mncolinlee 14y ago
  Actually, you can go cheaper than the Leaf, but it's not quite as nice. Mitsubishi makes the I, which costs $22,000 after rebate.
- hyperbovine 14y ago
  The leaf has an EPA-rated range of 73mi.

tsotha 14y ago

Uh huh. How much did you spend on your Roadster, and how much is it going to cost to replace the battery pack when it wears out after only ten years or so?

mmoche 14y ago
How long do people realistically own cars? Only 60% of people keep their cars more than four years...I'd suspect 10 is closer to 5%. source: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090714/carnews/907149994 http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090714/carnews/907149994
- tsotha 14y ago
  The average car on the road is eleven years old, so even if you only keep your car for four years when you sell it some cheap bastard (like me) is going to buy it used and drive it for awhile longer. My guess is EVs are going to have quite a bit steeper depreciation curves than standard vehicles. A ten year old Leaf on its original battery pack will be essentially worthless, and you can probably work the curve backward from there.
jblow 14y ago
The Roadster is definitely expensive, but now the Model S, just a few years later, is 1/2 to 2/3 the price, and is a superior car. Thus, the price is declining rapidly, and this is obvious to anyone who cares to look at actual facts.
incision 14y ago
>How much did you spend on your Roadster, and how much is it going to cost to replace the battery pack when it wears out after only ten years or so? Is this a fact, expensive battery replacements after 10 years and all? I really have no idea, but I took a few minutes to try and look it up. At a glance, it looks likes replacing a Prius battery today runs about half a much today as it did 10 years ago. Folks on the Tesla forums claim that you can pre-pay for a an eventual replacement to the tune of about $12K or 11% of the price of a new Roadster. That's a bit less half of of the current Tesla battery replacement cost I've seen thrown around and in line observed reduction in price of Prius batteries. Spending 11% of a car's new price on a such a major repair, 10 years down the road is not bad at all. In fact, in my experience that's right in line with a basic import and cheap for anything could be considering sporting or luxury. Unless I'm way off, this doesn't seem like a big issue at all.

abhimishra 14y ago

How does the Model S solve the longer trips issue? On a road-trip I might drive 500 miles in a day. The priciest Model S gets 300 miles at 55 miles an hour. And with climate control on that is likely to be less in reality. If this trip were in cold weather (ski trips and such) the range would be SIGNIFICANTLY less. As a comparison, my gasoline-hybrid can squeeze out over 500 miles on a tank at 55 miles an hour. And I never worry about being 'stranded' as I might with a fully-electric car. Another issue I have with battery-based solutions is the potential lifespan of the batteries - they are warrantied only for 8-years. A new pack costs ~30k (pulled this unofficial figure from discussions in the Tesla forums).

rossjudson 14y ago
So how about you RENT A CAR once a year, for your 8000 mile trip across multiple state lines. Your daily commute is how far?
- abhimishra 14y ago
  Oh I definitely can agree with the notion of renting a car for the edge case. Others have also suggested that families could have two cars, one electric for daily use and the other gasoline-powered for road trips or tasks that require more utility perhaps. But my point simply was that purely electric technologies cannot satisfy all needs (yet?) and that the range capabilities of electric vehicles is not on part with fossil-fuel vehicles (which is what was seemingly claimed by the parent post). And yes, this might mean that fossil-fuel vehicles don't disappear entirely, but simply play a smaller role in our future society.
- freehunter 14y ago
  So let's do some math. I drive a Toyota truck that goes anywhere and does everything. It gets 20mpg average (I have a ScanGauge for monitoring this). It's 14 years old, and it cost me $5000 when I bought it. So at an average daily commute for Americans of 16 miles [1] (my commute is 5 miles one direction), that would give me an average of 400 bidirectional gallons used per year (16 miles one direction times 250 working days divided by the mpg) for work use. At $3.50 for a gallon of gas, that's $1400/yr, plus a one-time cost of $5000. Once per year, I take an 8000 mile journey, assuming that's bidirectional. That's another $1400 in gas. We're now looking at $7800 the first year, and $2800 every year after that. If I have the truck for 5 years, I'm out $19,000 in total. Now instead, I buy a Tesla Model S. It costs $100k, but electricity is free at their chargers. Now I want to make my cross country journey, so I rent a minivan at 8000 miles, I'll be gone a week to fully enjoy the resort with the wife and kids. A minivan from Enterprise is $110/day plus gas. Looking at the fuel economy of a minivan [2], looks like I can expect 20mpg. I might get more, but that's what I'll budget for. Same as my Toyota truck, I'm spending $1400 in gas once per year, plus the $770 to rent the van for a week. Which means, in total, I'm spending $100k the first year, and $2170 every year after that. So unless you can spot an error in my math, in terms of fuel cost per year the poster boy electric car only saves me ~$700/yr. Here's the results: Toyota truck: $19,000 over 5 years. Electric car plus a rental one week: $108,680 over 5 years. Maybe you want to be more reasonable and go for the base Model S: $66,080 over 5 years. Which one makes more economic sense? [1] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098&page=2 http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Traffic/story?id=485098&#38... [2] http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byclass/minivan2012.shtml http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byclass/minivan2012.shtml

lobster_johnson 14y ago

While I'm all for EVs and would happily change if I could afford to, this strikes me as off: > ... if I want to take a long road trip, there has to be a big stopover in the middle, which makes trips much longer. The Model S solves that. The Model S has a range of about 400 km (250 miles). For long highway-type trips, that's probably about 4 hours of driving. Which is not much. It won't get you from Köln to Berlin or from Paris to Lyon or from New York to Toronto, to pick a few random examples that slightly exceed 400 km. Those are distances that people would consider "long trips", and quite reasonables ones, too. Obviously a 400-km-range car is plenty for most people, but we can't pretend it doesn't limit our options or force us to find alternative transportation for some trips that would otherwise not be a problem with a gas-powered car. I assume you at least partly financed the Roadster with income you earned through Braid, by the way. If so, good for you, and I was glad to contribute! :-)

Lewisham 14y ago
It won't get you from SF to LA either, but that's why Tesla are building those 30 minute charging stations. My guess is that Tesla license the technology out, and road stops on common long-distance corridors start offering the charging stations in their parking lots to dominate the competition, you stop at their place for lunch, and then others will have to install too to compete. Job done: superchargers everywhere. It looks like this is already happening in San Francisco (albeit with the city bootstrapping it): there are parking garages with EV spots and those without. Given a higher EV usage, those garages are going to do better, and the others will need to install in order to win that custom.
panacea 14y ago
Köln to Berlin and Paris to Lyon are train journeys, not car trips.
- tripzilch 14y ago
  Indeed. Much quicker, more comfortable and energy-efficient. Why'd you wanna go there at anything less than 250km/h (160mph)? ;-)
- 14y ago

jlmendezbonini 14y ago

Did your electric bill increased significantly? Have you measure how many Miles/dollar,or some other similar metric, you get?

jblow 14y ago
My electric bill has increased by about $15 a month, depending on how much I drive. It is way cheaper than gas. (But the car is so expensive that you won't break even via cheaper fuel!)
klinquist 14y ago
The Volt, for example, is about 12kWh to charge. For that, you get 40 miles. I am signed up for PG&E's variable time-of-day rate plan, so between 9PM-9AM, my power is 9.8 cents/kWh. So the Volt costs roughly $1.10/40 miles.