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> Changing. Rapidly. That doesn't negate my point. > And perhaps you forgot, but building tens of thousands of gas stations all over the place wasn't easy Yo

by cletus 14y ago

> Changing. Rapidly. That doesn't negate my point. > And perhaps you forgot, but building tens of thousands of gas stations all over the place wasn't easy You're not the only one to bring this up and it confuses me why. The gas infrastructure has already been built. It's a sunk cost. EV infrastructure most certainly is not. > Tesla's range is already over 250 miles; this is getting very close to that of many gas guzzlers. For significantly higher capital cost, with (probably) much lower shelf life. And when the "gas guzzler" hits its range, what does it do? Spends a few minutes filling up and does it again (as opposed to recharging for 8 hours). > Uh, you can transport electricity to people, too. We have power lines for that. Yes, that was my point. Look at all the people in NJ/NY/CT without power. > Er, no. Do you know what an order of magnitude IS? Yes, but we're talking about the battery tech and the batteries are only some portion of the total cost of a vehicle. > you can recharge at night. Given a fairly narrow use case, sure.

Bud 14y ago
Fair enough. You say that batteries are "too heavy"; I pointed out that they are getting steadily lighter, which is true. It's also true that they are plenty light, right now, to make the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla. To me, it's self-evident that batteries are therefore not "too heavy" to make a viable product. Part of EV infrastructure is already built, too, and you know this. Yes, we do have to build 9 megashitloads of charging stations, over time. But we may see a model where lots of that charging occurs at home, and the consumer upgrades their own infrastructure, or the power companies offer a free or cheap charging station in return for selling lots more electricity to the customer. I don't see this as an insurmountable issue at all. Yes, the cost is currently higher, but the obvious point is that it's coming down rapidly per unit of vehicle range. Shelf life of the Prius batteries has proven very very good so far, although that's a hybrid and not a pure electric. Yes, power is down to an extent not seen since the 19th century. But gas deliveries are affected in a major way, too. Anecdotally, I have tons of friends telling me how hard it is to find gas. The use case for charging at night already encompasses most drivers in most situations. And with a range of 250-300mi with one-hour recharge at free Tesla stations for longer trips...the use case is getting broader all the time. What's the deal? Did you buy $1M of Hummer stock and lose your Charles Schwab password? This tech is clearly valid right now and getting more attractive by the year.
ojosilva 14y ago
I think gas and electric are not mutually exclusive. It's clear that today's EVs have drawbacks, but many of those drawbacks are non-issues for a lot of consumers out there already. As the technology and infrastructure improve, people will switch. Subconsciously, most of us feel electric is the way to go. There's just something right about it, maybe because all top consumer technology in the 21st century has a battery inside. Or simply because electricity has been the force driving change in society the last 150 years. For a long time to come we'll depend on fuel, for hybrids and traditional cars, be it a jeep in the middle of the Amazon or John Doe's, who loves the sound of his V8 Mustang in the morning.
scythe 14y ago
>The gas infrastructure has already been built. And it works very well: for gasoline. Hydrogen cannot be contained in a rubber hose. Ammonia will eat away copper pipes (see http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=2#MaterialCompatibility http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=2#... ). CNG works fine, under pressure, which requires retrofitting everything, but natural gas is a fossil fuel. Biofuels come with a whole host of other problems. The simple fact is, whatever we use, we're going to have to rebuild stuff. There's no way to reuse the gas infrastructure for any fuel that isn't a non-oxidizing hydrophobic liquid, which rules out approximately everything. Hydrogen fueling stations aren't retrofitted gas stations: they're a totally new thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_station#Hydrogen_filling_stations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_station#Hydrogen_... >However, this does not begin to replace the existing extensive gasoline fuel station infrastructure, which would cost a half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone. This is not cheap.
moconnor 14y ago
If we accept that battery technology is rapidly improving and will be an order of magnitude better in the future, then those points of cletus' argument are indeed invalidated - the root comment is arguing that electric cars will not be the future because (e.g.) batteries are too heavy and take too long to charge. For internal consistency, the argument should have read "batteries will continue to be too heavy and take too long to charge".
maigret 14y ago
> as opposed to recharging for 8 hours Fast charging is faster than that, you just need special power feed, but that can even be included in every home, which is not the case for a gas station. > Yes, that was my point. Look at all the people in NJ/NY/CT without power. The actual problem is that the US infrastructure is in bad shape. Also by looking at the news, the places which have issues with electric power seem to also have oil delivery problems as well.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
lloeki 14y ago
>> Changing. Rapidly. > That doesn't negate my point. Actually it does, and all of your arguments sound like: > The gas infrastructure has already been built. [...] EV infrastructure most certainly is not. which misses the point you're trying to make, which is (emphasis mine): > I still don't see electric cars as being the future. Of course things are not ready, because now is not the future. This kind of things doesn't happen overnight. It's not like Carnot and Otto woke up a morning and everyone sold their horses and were suddenly busy building infrastructure for cars that didn't even exist. > Given a fairly narrow use case, sure. Here in France, more than 90% of (non-truck) traffic drives less than 2x10km per day. It is ludicrous to have people drive 160kph+-able 1'000km-ranged seven-seaters alone in a ICE car and spend 30min to drive 5km at 10kph mean. Yes I acknowledge that there exist people who do need longer range vehicles, but numbers demonstrate that many simply don't. (they could statistically almost drive a plug-in Prius in full electric all year round). (The situation is actually even more ludicrous as they're talked into buying mostly diesel cars, whose engines by design constraints completely hate being driven short distances, being started and stopped endlessly, and highly varying rpms, which results in higher fuel consumption, pollution, running costs, and failure rates). The "running-out-of-energy" argument is for most, a classic case of psychologically biased risk assessment (similar to how people assess the terrorism risk, or planes crashing, while at the same time they smoke, drive recklessly and dry their hair in the bathtub). And you fell for it right there: > Yes, that was my point. Look at all the people in NJ/NY/CT without power. Seriously, how often does that happen? I live in comparatively small cities (500k, and 300k before that) and the grid went down on me like three times in twenty years, the longer being a few hours. Also, I don't know how fuel pumps work but I bet they're electric with no fallback so you could very well be unable to refuel a gas car either. And then, what? tomorrow may bring in different habits, and as the dependency on electricity grows the grid will be made more reliable in a way or another (including possible fallbacks like generators in buildings, especially those who already burn some form of fuel to heat water). The irony is that they could actually have power were their car electric, as some electric cars are designed to be able to power demanding external devices, or even a whole house from the battery (not exactly relevant here, since we're talking about whole buildings). So, why do they buy such cars around here? Because once a year they go on vacation to the beach for a week or three with family, luggage, dog and cat. They completely overestimate the exceptional need. And contrary to the enthusiast minority, they don't even care what car they own (the logo being a domestic one is often the main - yet untold - argument), so they might as well rent a bigger, longer ranged car for the vacation duration and run on the cheaper car otherwise. Even smarter, take the train and rent the car on arrival. And when they go at Ikea they get delivered or rent a van. My own brother bought a huge station wagon so that he can lug around bed and fridge when he moves in. Which happens once in ten years (at best). Which is basically the lifetime of the car, or the fridge. Seriously when you move in, you just rent a damn van(which has the advantage of even being able to fit everything at once instead of going back and forth filling the comparatively small SW). As for energy consumption, it's not even like people will be charging from empty to full every single day, at once (remember 20km per day). And it's not like every single people will move to electric cars at once. So the current network will be able to grow as people slowly migrate to other sources of energy, and we might just even be able to analyse growth and identify the better way to enhance the infrastructure. Again, we're talking, as you mentioned, about the future. Ten years ago the Internet in your pocket was for the nerdiest of nerds, xDSL was emerging and FTTH was unthinkable. All of that came in gradually, and EV infrastructure will certainly come the same way, just not the same rate.
ErrantX 14y ago
> You're not the only one to bring this up and it confuses me why. The gas infrastructure has already been built. It's a sunk cost. EV infrastructure most certainly is not. Back in the day countries had a huge infrastructure for horse-based transport (stables, travellers inns, places to buy food). That was also a sunk cost. Just a thought.
jread 14y ago
> You're not the only one to bring this up and it confuses me why. The gas infrastructure has already been built. It's a sunk cost. EV infrastructure most certainly is not. EV infrastructure, unlike gasoline, can be piggy backed onto existing facilities - service stations, restaurants, hotels... It is much simpler to deploy and maintain - no tanks to install, no gas to deliver, no hazmat, etc. - just a connection to existing electrical infrastructure at those facilites. Adding EV charging to existing businesses also has potential to increase sales as drivers shop, eat and purchase goods etc during the wait. As EV marketshare increases, this will provide motivation to existing businesses to add EV charging capabilities on their own dime and thus stimulate the build out of such infrastructure. Tesla has finally built a practical EV that people want, which can kick start this whole process.

by cletus 14y ago

Bud 14y ago

Fair enough. You say that batteries are "too heavy"; I pointed out that they are getting steadily lighter, which is true. It's also true that they are plenty light, right now, to make the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla. To me, it's self-evident that batteries are therefore not "too heavy" to make a viable product. Part of EV infrastructure is already built, too, and you know this. Yes, we do have to build 9 megashitloads of charging stations, over time. But we may see a model where lots of that charging occurs at home, and the consumer upgrades their own infrastructure, or the power companies offer a free or cheap charging station in return for selling lots more electricity to the customer. I don't see this as an insurmountable issue at all. Yes, the cost is currently higher, but the obvious point is that it's coming down rapidly per unit of vehicle range. Shelf life of the Prius batteries has proven very very good so far, although that's a hybrid and not a pure electric. Yes, power is down to an extent not seen since the 19th century. But gas deliveries are affected in a major way, too. Anecdotally, I have tons of friends telling me how hard it is to find gas. The use case for charging at night already encompasses most drivers in most situations. And with a range of 250-300mi with one-hour recharge at free Tesla stations for longer trips...the use case is getting broader all the time. What's the deal? Did you buy $1M of Hummer stock and lose your Charles Schwab password? This tech is clearly valid right now and getting more attractive by the year.

ojosilva 14y ago

I think gas and electric are not mutually exclusive. It's clear that today's EVs have drawbacks, but many of those drawbacks are non-issues for a lot of consumers out there already. As the technology and infrastructure improve, people will switch. Subconsciously, most of us feel electric is the way to go. There's just something right about it, maybe because all top consumer technology in the 21st century has a battery inside. Or simply because electricity has been the force driving change in society the last 150 years. For a long time to come we'll depend on fuel, for hybrids and traditional cars, be it a jeep in the middle of the Amazon or John Doe's, who loves the sound of his V8 Mustang in the morning.

scythe 14y ago

>The gas infrastructure has already been built. And it works very well: for gasoline. Hydrogen cannot be contained in a rubber hose. Ammonia will eat away copper pipes (see http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=2#MaterialCompatibility http://encyclopedia.airliquide.com/Encyclopedia.asp?GasID=2#... ). CNG works fine, under pressure, which requires retrofitting everything, but natural gas is a fossil fuel. Biofuels come with a whole host of other problems. The simple fact is, whatever we use, we're going to have to rebuild stuff. There's no way to reuse the gas infrastructure for any fuel that isn't a non-oxidizing hydrophobic liquid, which rules out approximately everything. Hydrogen fueling stations aren't retrofitted gas stations: they're a totally new thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_station#Hydrogen_filling_stations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fuel_station#Hydrogen_... >However, this does not begin to replace the existing extensive gasoline fuel station infrastructure, which would cost a half trillion U.S. dollars in the United States alone. This is not cheap.

moconnor 14y ago

If we accept that battery technology is rapidly improving and will be an order of magnitude better in the future, then those points of cletus' argument are indeed invalidated - the root comment is arguing that electric cars will not be the future because (e.g.) batteries are too heavy and take too long to charge. For internal consistency, the argument should have read "batteries will continue to be too heavy and take too long to charge".

maigret 14y ago

> as opposed to recharging for 8 hours Fast charging is faster than that, you just need special power feed, but that can even be included in every home, which is not the case for a gas station. > Yes, that was my point. Look at all the people in NJ/NY/CT without power. The actual problem is that the US infrastructure is in bad shape. Also by looking at the news, the places which have issues with electric power seem to also have oil delivery problems as well.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

lloeki 14y ago

>> Changing. Rapidly. > That doesn't negate my point. Actually it does, and all of your arguments sound like: > The gas infrastructure has already been built. [...] EV infrastructure most certainly is not. which misses the point you're trying to make, which is (emphasis mine): > I still don't see electric cars as being the future. Of course things are not ready, because now is not the future. This kind of things doesn't happen overnight. It's not like Carnot and Otto woke up a morning and everyone sold their horses and were suddenly busy building infrastructure for cars that didn't even exist. > Given a fairly narrow use case, sure. Here in France, more than 90% of (non-truck) traffic drives less than 2x10km per day. It is ludicrous to have people drive 160kph+-able 1'000km-ranged seven-seaters alone in a ICE car and spend 30min to drive 5km at 10kph mean. Yes I acknowledge that there exist people who do need longer range vehicles, but numbers demonstrate that many simply don't. (they could statistically almost drive a plug-in Prius in full electric all year round). (The situation is actually even more ludicrous as they're talked into buying mostly diesel cars, whose engines by design constraints completely hate being driven short distances, being started and stopped endlessly, and highly varying rpms, which results in higher fuel consumption, pollution, running costs, and failure rates). The "running-out-of-energy" argument is for most, a classic case of psychologically biased risk assessment (similar to how people assess the terrorism risk, or planes crashing, while at the same time they smoke, drive recklessly and dry their hair in the bathtub). And you fell for it right there: > Yes, that was my point. Look at all the people in NJ/NY/CT without power. Seriously, how often does that happen? I live in comparatively small cities (500k, and 300k before that) and the grid went down on me like three times in twenty years, the longer being a few hours. Also, I don't know how fuel pumps work but I bet they're electric with no fallback so you could very well be unable to refuel a gas car either. And then, what? tomorrow may bring in different habits, and as the dependency on electricity grows the grid will be made more reliable in a way or another (including possible fallbacks like generators in buildings, especially those who already burn some form of fuel to heat water). The irony is that they could actually have power were their car electric, as some electric cars are designed to be able to power demanding external devices, or even a whole house from the battery (not exactly relevant here, since we're talking about whole buildings). So, why do they buy such cars around here? Because once a year they go on vacation to the beach for a week or three with family, luggage, dog and cat. They completely overestimate the exceptional need. And contrary to the enthusiast minority, they don't even care what car they own (the logo being a domestic one is often the main - yet untold - argument), so they might as well rent a bigger, longer ranged car for the vacation duration and run on the cheaper car otherwise. Even smarter, take the train and rent the car on arrival. And when they go at Ikea they get delivered or rent a van. My own brother bought a huge station wagon so that he can lug around bed and fridge when he moves in. Which happens once in ten years (at best). Which is basically the lifetime of the car, or the fridge. Seriously when you move in, you just rent a damn van(which has the advantage of even being able to fit everything at once instead of going back and forth filling the comparatively small SW). As for energy consumption, it's not even like people will be charging from empty to full every single day, at once (remember 20km per day). And it's not like every single people will move to electric cars at once. So the current network will be able to grow as people slowly migrate to other sources of energy, and we might just even be able to analyse growth and identify the better way to enhance the infrastructure. Again, we're talking, as you mentioned, about the future. Ten years ago the Internet in your pocket was for the nerdiest of nerds, xDSL was emerging and FTTH was unthinkable. All of that came in gradually, and EV infrastructure will certainly come the same way, just not the same rate.

ErrantX 14y ago

> You're not the only one to bring this up and it confuses me why. The gas infrastructure has already been built. It's a sunk cost. EV infrastructure most certainly is not. Back in the day countries had a huge infrastructure for horse-based transport (stables, travellers inns, places to buy food). That was also a sunk cost. Just a thought.

jread 14y ago

> You're not the only one to bring this up and it confuses me why. The gas infrastructure has already been built. It's a sunk cost. EV infrastructure most certainly is not. EV infrastructure, unlike gasoline, can be piggy backed onto existing facilities - service stations, restaurants, hotels... It is much simpler to deploy and maintain - no tanks to install, no gas to deliver, no hazmat, etc. - just a connection to existing electrical infrastructure at those facilites. Adding EV charging to existing businesses also has potential to increase sales as drivers shop, eat and purchase goods etc during the wait. As EV marketshare increases, this will provide motivation to existing businesses to add EV charging capabilities on their own dime and thus stimulate the build out of such infrastructure. Tesla has finally built a practical EV that people want, which can kick start this whole process.