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Interesting but North America has different needs for vehicles. Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale ch

by boringg 7mo ago

Interesting but North America has different needs for vehicles. Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future. FWIW downvoters - I have a PHEV - but I live in the real world and a likely future!

reverius42 7mo ago
> Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. I don't know about the whole national electric grid, but at my house, I didn't really have to upgrade anything and didn't even notice an increase in electric bill when I started plugging in my EV. I don't think my car is even 20% of my household electricity usage. I'd hope we can increase our national grid's capability by at least 20% in the next 20 years. (Also, aren't datacenters causing that massive demand right now, whether or not the upgrades are even there yet? As I understand this is causing massive price increases?) > I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future. As you kind of hint at, whether or not the vehicle is EV or ICE has nothing to do with whether it has subscription models, tracking, etc. and car manufacturers are racing towards both of those things in a way that makes the drivetrain irrelevant.
- boringg 7mo ago
  Two points. 1. Infra will need to upgrade in order to handle heavy charging in neighborhoods with wholesale change in the fleet. It would change our electrical use model considerably in terms of times of use -- and we would be adding all the energy used from gas powered cars to the electrical grid - which is somewhat significant. 2. While you are correct technically -- I think what I am implying is older cars (ICE) will be the ones without all the tracking and software - whereas all EVs will have that embedded as they are all relatively new. There is no world where they remove that from new car production.
  - eigencoder 7mo ago
    Just gotta hope that slate auto is successful!
  - linkregister 7mo ago
    It's a myth that EV charging requires an upgrade to a 100 amp connection. Scheduling charging to times when you're not using appliances will still result in a charged vehicle by morning. The Youtube channel Technology Connections has an interesting video where it describes a successful transition to a fully-electric house while remaining on a 50 amp electrical connection. (it requires a smart circuit breaker)
    - hedora 7mo ago
      We have a F-150 lightning, and charge it on a 12A, 120V charger. It’s fine for 6-10 trips a week. If I commuted in it to an office without a charger it wouldn’t be fine, but a smaller commuter car would be. (The truck gets 2.5 miles/kWh, commuter cars are at 4-5). I’m sure we are outliers, but still. Put another way: growing up with incandescent bulbs, I remember light switches that would turn on 6-8 lamp track lights. That’s half the current our EV charger draws. We had a space heater that drew more than our EV charger currently does. Houses and neighborhoods are still built with electrical systems provisioned for pre-LED, pre-induction/heatpump workloads. They certainly have enough slack for everyone to plug in a level one or two charger simultaneously.
      - reverius42 7mo ago
        I wonder if the household share of grid power has gone down faster than total power has gone up, and that's why people are worried about EVs taking out the power grid even when everyone's individual house seems to handle it easily enough.
    - elihu 7mo ago
      That's true enough at the level of individual households. If the whole neighborhood switches to EVs, the power grid in general might not be built to handle it. (Personally I don't expect this will be that big a deal, since switching to EVs is something that happens one household at a time over many years. So, it shouldn't come as a sudden shock, and its something the utilities can make long term plans about. It just means power utilities need to be on the ball about not putting off infrastructure upgrades, and it means somewhat higher electricity prices for residential customers.)
Night_Thastus 7mo ago
>Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. There's little to no reason that the electrical grid itself needs to change for the sake of EV's. The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with. So, everyone wants DC fast that mimics a gas station experience, even if it's completely unnecessary for almost everyone's use cases. Land is limited, new builds like that are expensive, slower to earn returns, and make little sense with so few EVs in the US - which leads to a viscous cycle. It's a bit of TotC. >I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future. Consumers do not care about this. If they did, such cars would not sell. No one is going to pay extra for fewer features.
- p1necone 7mo ago
  > The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with. I feel like this is only an opinion that people who have never actually used an EV have. Plugging in my car overnight at home every few days is infinitely more convenient than needing to drive somewhere to plug it in somewhere else. The actual charge time is irrelevant as long as it's not more than ~12 hrs.
  - bluGill 7mo ago
    I leval 1 charge my car and that is always enough. Salesmen who sold it to me says he does the same. It depends on your commute, (i typically ride my bike if the weather isn't too bad) and the other trips you make (why I bought it - there is a once a week trip I make outside of bike range)
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  > No one is going to pay extra for fewer features. Right, what people want is to pay less for fewer features. If EVs with all their limitations are going to replace ICE cars for daily use, they need to be cheap. We need the Ford Focus or Toyota Tercel of EVs, with the same set of features (i.e. very few) that those cars had when they were introduced. Otherwise I'll just go buy a used ICE Tercel or Focus. When Tesla showed the world that an EV didn't have to look like a middle school science project and drive like a golf cart, it made sense that they went upmarket. They had to recover development costs. That won't work to get mass conversion.
bryanlarsen 7mo ago
> Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. And if 100% of EV's sold this year were electric, it would take ~24 years for basically all of the vehicles on the road were electric. (The average age of registered cars in the US is 12 years old). Estimates are that a 100% EV fleet would increase electricity demand by 20%. So that's < 1 % a year. Approximately how much demand increases due to increasing A/C usage in the US. And a lot less than AI/crypto is increasing demand. And that's not to mention that EV charging is a relatively easy demand to meet -- most EV owners charge when it's cheapest, so you can shape demand via price signals.
- boringg 7mo ago
  You can somewhat change the profile by price signals -- however if all vehicles are EVs there is a good portion of that demand that is inelastic. You will also need to be able to handle larger volumes of demand for faster charging stations and that entire effort of infra. Its all doable but it is not as a simple as every plugs in at home. Its a large co-ordinated infrastructure effort. You also brought up some other valid issues -- right now we are looking at the being undersupplied for electricity across NA without a wholesale swap to EVs. Maybe the upside of the oversupply of AI is that we have a lot of stranded assets for electrical charging infra/generation afterwards..
  - bryanlarsen 7mo ago
    So if EV's cause electricity demand to go up by less than 1% per year, it'll cause inelastic demand to go up a small fraction of 1%. If operators can't expand at that low a rate, we have bigger problems.
    - boringg 7mo ago
      Full fleet of EVs would be 20-30 % of our annual electricity. Ain't no way we can acomodate for that on any near term timeline especially if you add in all the additional demand on electricity from AI/compute. Now if had money as a country and had a recent history of building actual physical things for a reasonable cost. Yes may we could get there -- but current state of affairs - broke and limited manufacturing ability.

by boringg 7mo ago

reverius42 7mo ago

> Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. I don't know about the whole national electric grid, but at my house, I didn't really have to upgrade anything and didn't even notice an increase in electric bill when I started plugging in my EV. I don't think my car is even 20% of my household electricity usage. I'd hope we can increase our national grid's capability by at least 20% in the next 20 years. (Also, aren't datacenters causing that massive demand right now, whether or not the upgrades are even there yet? As I understand this is causing massive price increases?) > I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future. As you kind of hint at, whether or not the vehicle is EV or ICE has nothing to do with whether it has subscription models, tracking, etc. and car manufacturers are racing towards both of those things in a way that makes the drivetrain irrelevant.

boringg 7mo ago
Two points. 1. Infra will need to upgrade in order to handle heavy charging in neighborhoods with wholesale change in the fleet. It would change our electrical use model considerably in terms of times of use -- and we would be adding all the energy used from gas powered cars to the electrical grid - which is somewhat significant. 2. While you are correct technically -- I think what I am implying is older cars (ICE) will be the ones without all the tracking and software - whereas all EVs will have that embedded as they are all relatively new. There is no world where they remove that from new car production.
- eigencoder 7mo ago
  Just gotta hope that slate auto is successful!
- linkregister 7mo ago
  It's a myth that EV charging requires an upgrade to a 100 amp connection. Scheduling charging to times when you're not using appliances will still result in a charged vehicle by morning. The Youtube channel Technology Connections has an interesting video where it describes a successful transition to a fully-electric house while remaining on a 50 amp electrical connection. (it requires a smart circuit breaker)
  - hedora 7mo ago
    We have a F-150 lightning, and charge it on a 12A, 120V charger. It’s fine for 6-10 trips a week. If I commuted in it to an office without a charger it wouldn’t be fine, but a smaller commuter car would be. (The truck gets 2.5 miles/kWh, commuter cars are at 4-5). I’m sure we are outliers, but still. Put another way: growing up with incandescent bulbs, I remember light switches that would turn on 6-8 lamp track lights. That’s half the current our EV charger draws. We had a space heater that drew more than our EV charger currently does. Houses and neighborhoods are still built with electrical systems provisioned for pre-LED, pre-induction/heatpump workloads. They certainly have enough slack for everyone to plug in a level one or two charger simultaneously.
    - reverius42 7mo ago
      I wonder if the household share of grid power has gone down faster than total power has gone up, and that's why people are worried about EVs taking out the power grid even when everyone's individual house seems to handle it easily enough.
  - elihu 7mo ago
    That's true enough at the level of individual households. If the whole neighborhood switches to EVs, the power grid in general might not be built to handle it. (Personally I don't expect this will be that big a deal, since switching to EVs is something that happens one household at a time over many years. So, it shouldn't come as a sudden shock, and its something the utilities can make long term plans about. It just means power utilities need to be on the ball about not putting off infrastructure upgrades, and it means somewhat higher electricity prices for residential customers.)

Night_Thastus 7mo ago

>Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. There's little to no reason that the electrical grid itself needs to change for the sake of EV's. The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with. So, everyone wants DC fast that mimics a gas station experience, even if it's completely unnecessary for almost everyone's use cases. Land is limited, new builds like that are expensive, slower to earn returns, and make little sense with so few EVs in the US - which leads to a viscous cycle. It's a bit of TotC. >I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future. Consumers do not care about this. If they did, such cars would not sell. No one is going to pay extra for fewer features.

p1necone 7mo ago
> The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with. I feel like this is only an opinion that people who have never actually used an EV have. Plugging in my car overnight at home every few days is infinitely more convenient than needing to drive somewhere to plug it in somewhere else. The actual charge time is irrelevant as long as it's not more than ~12 hrs.
- bluGill 7mo ago
  I leval 1 charge my car and that is always enough. Salesmen who sold it to me says he does the same. It depends on your commute, (i typically ride my bike if the weather isn't too bad) and the other trips you make (why I bought it - there is a once a week trip I make outside of bike range)
SoftTalker 7mo ago
> No one is going to pay extra for fewer features. Right, what people want is to pay less for fewer features. If EVs with all their limitations are going to replace ICE cars for daily use, they need to be cheap. We need the Ford Focus or Toyota Tercel of EVs, with the same set of features (i.e. very few) that those cars had when they were introduced. Otherwise I'll just go buy a used ICE Tercel or Focus. When Tesla showed the world that an EV didn't have to look like a middle school science project and drive like a golf cart, it made sense that they went upmarket. They had to recover development costs. That won't work to get mass conversion.

bryanlarsen 7mo ago

> Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens. And if 100% of EV's sold this year were electric, it would take ~24 years for basically all of the vehicles on the road were electric. (The average age of registered cars in the US is 12 years old). Estimates are that a 100% EV fleet would increase electricity demand by 20%. So that's < 1 % a year. Approximately how much demand increases due to increasing A/C usage in the US. And a lot less than AI/crypto is increasing demand. And that's not to mention that EV charging is a relatively easy demand to meet -- most EV owners charge when it's cheapest, so you can shape demand via price signals.

boringg 7mo ago
You can somewhat change the profile by price signals -- however if all vehicles are EVs there is a good portion of that demand that is inelastic. You will also need to be able to handle larger volumes of demand for faster charging stations and that entire effort of infra. Its all doable but it is not as a simple as every plugs in at home. Its a large co-ordinated infrastructure effort. You also brought up some other valid issues -- right now we are looking at the being undersupplied for electricity across NA without a wholesale swap to EVs. Maybe the upside of the oversupply of AI is that we have a lot of stranded assets for electrical charging infra/generation afterwards..
- bryanlarsen 7mo ago
  So if EV's cause electricity demand to go up by less than 1% per year, it'll cause inelastic demand to go up a small fraction of 1%. If operators can't expand at that low a rate, we have bigger problems.
  - boringg 7mo ago
    Full fleet of EVs would be 20-30 % of our annual electricity. Ain't no way we can acomodate for that on any near term timeline especially if you add in all the additional demand on electricity from AI/compute. Now if had money as a country and had a recent history of building actual physical things for a reasonable cost. Yes may we could get there -- but current state of affairs - broke and limited manufacturing ability.