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You don't know that. The world is really on the way of getting rid of oil. Electric cars, bioplastics, solar panels getting exponentially cheap. From my poin

You don't know that. The world is really on the way of getting rid of oil. Electric cars, bioplastics, solar panels getting exponentially cheap. From my point of view the only thing that stops us all from switching to electric cars is the battery technology. When it comes to the industrial use of solar energy, we already have the technology of storing energy - flywheel (google Beacon Power).

SixSigma 12y ago
> exponentially cheap Solar is following an exponential fall, but the tail has long been wagged http://io9.com/solar-powers-epic-price-drop-visualized-510448484 http://io9.com/solar-powers-epic-price-drop-visualized-51044...
- crdoconnor 12y ago
  It's funny how the amount of FUD has shot up as the price has precipitously dropped: * They're unreliable. * The intermittency makes it impossible to use. * It's unfair on the monopolistic power companies.
  - SixSigma 12y ago
    That last one is particularly egregious. They could have been reaping the benefits themselves but they, like incumbents everywhere, sat on their hands and watched the cash roll past.
JosephHatfield 12y ago
I would switch to an electric car immediately if I had some place to plug it in. That's a bigger problem for me than the number of miles I can get on one charge. I need about 25 miles a day from my car. More than that is gravy.
- greglindahl 12y ago
  It's common on Hacker News for every mention of electric cars to have a complaint from people who can't charge at home. That's not an actual problem: if only the people who could charge at home bought them, that's still a huge % of the market.
adventured 12y ago
The largest impediment to everyone switching over to electric cars, is grid and supply, not storage. We can do the battery storage right now, it's just not as great as what we'd like. If you switched all cars over to electric tomorrow, the grid would melt down in every country that attempted it. There is not even remotely enough power available to handle it. Most first world countries are running their national power grids with a very modest buffer (and for countries sub first world, forget about it, they're still dealing with routine rolling blackouts). By the time all autos are switched to electric in 30 years, hopefully self-driving cars have wiped out at least half of all vehicles in the first world.
- greglindahl 12y ago
  "If you switched all cars over to electric tomorrow" is not a useful scenario. In reality, the shift will take decades, and that's enough time for changes in the grid to happen.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Of course. The parent said this however: "From my point of view the only thing that stops us all from switching to electric cars is the battery technology." My obvious point was that, in fact, that is not even remotely the only thing stopping us from switching to electric cars. My scenario was extremely useful in highlighting the fact that we do not have the capacity to switch to an all-electric car approach, and not primarily due to batteries. We can do the battery tech and manufacturing in the present, to build very effective electric vehicles. Building up the grid to support ~500 million cars in the first world would cost tens of trillions of dollars and take decades. It makes the battery challenge look hilariously minuscule by comparison.
    - greglindahl 12y ago
      Huh. Well, the only thing I can suggest is that if you want to say that, that you say that, instead of what you said. Because no, that's not obvious from what you said, and no, people don't agree with your cost estimate. No "of course" involved.
caseysoftware 12y ago
Even if a perfect battery was introduced tomorrow it would still take at least 10 years before it made a serious dent in the car market. The Prius was introduced in the US in 2000 and it took about 11 years for them to sell the first million.[1] The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. They simply don't have the money. The rest of the people buy a car used and drive it until they sell it to someone else to buy another used car. Cars can last 200+k miles which is often 15-20 years in the life of most vehicles. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius
- computator 12y ago
  > The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. The adage has been that "Americans buy, on average, a new car or truck every 3 or 4 years."[1] That's like a dozen new cars in a lifetime. I was going to call bravo sierra on your assertion, but I decided to try a back-of-the-envelope calculation to check the plausibility: Roughly 10 million cars are sold each year in the U.S., the U.S. has 230 million adults, and they'd likely buy their cars between ages 18 and 65 (a span of 47 years). That means each adult has a 1 in 23 chance (230M/10M) of buying a new car each year, so over a 47-year span they'd buy 47/23 = 2 new cars. There could be all sorts of ways my calculation could be wrong, but it agrees surprisingly well with your claim. I'm wondering now if the "new car every 3-4 years" is a myth propagated by auto makers. [1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504 http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504
  - lancewiggs 12y ago
    2nd hand cars? The 10m is just new cars right?
    - computator 12y ago
      I do mean 10 million new cars are sold yearly in the U.S.[1][2] Without doing a lot of research, I couldn't decide how to deal with questions of: - Including or excluding light trucks - Including or excluding cars that are new but being leased rather than sold - Large year-to-year variations in sales (esp. of low sales during the recession) But I think 10 million is reasonable rough estimate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... [2] http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
BostonEnginerd 12y ago
Unfortunately I don't think that Beacon is doing all that well. They recently had some layoffs.

SixSigma 12y ago

> exponentially cheap Solar is following an exponential fall, but the tail has long been wagged http://io9.com/solar-powers-epic-price-drop-visualized-510448484 http://io9.com/solar-powers-epic-price-drop-visualized-51044...

crdoconnor 12y ago
It's funny how the amount of FUD has shot up as the price has precipitously dropped: * They're unreliable. * The intermittency makes it impossible to use. * It's unfair on the monopolistic power companies.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  That last one is particularly egregious. They could have been reaping the benefits themselves but they, like incumbents everywhere, sat on their hands and watched the cash roll past.

JosephHatfield 12y ago

I would switch to an electric car immediately if I had some place to plug it in. That's a bigger problem for me than the number of miles I can get on one charge. I need about 25 miles a day from my car. More than that is gravy.

greglindahl 12y ago
It's common on Hacker News for every mention of electric cars to have a complaint from people who can't charge at home. That's not an actual problem: if only the people who could charge at home bought them, that's still a huge % of the market.

adventured 12y ago

The largest impediment to everyone switching over to electric cars, is grid and supply, not storage. We can do the battery storage right now, it's just not as great as what we'd like. If you switched all cars over to electric tomorrow, the grid would melt down in every country that attempted it. There is not even remotely enough power available to handle it. Most first world countries are running their national power grids with a very modest buffer (and for countries sub first world, forget about it, they're still dealing with routine rolling blackouts). By the time all autos are switched to electric in 30 years, hopefully self-driving cars have wiped out at least half of all vehicles in the first world.

greglindahl 12y ago
"If you switched all cars over to electric tomorrow" is not a useful scenario. In reality, the shift will take decades, and that's enough time for changes in the grid to happen.
- adventured 12y ago
  Of course. The parent said this however: "From my point of view the only thing that stops us all from switching to electric cars is the battery technology." My obvious point was that, in fact, that is not even remotely the only thing stopping us from switching to electric cars. My scenario was extremely useful in highlighting the fact that we do not have the capacity to switch to an all-electric car approach, and not primarily due to batteries. We can do the battery tech and manufacturing in the present, to build very effective electric vehicles. Building up the grid to support ~500 million cars in the first world would cost tens of trillions of dollars and take decades. It makes the battery challenge look hilariously minuscule by comparison.
  - greglindahl 12y ago
    Huh. Well, the only thing I can suggest is that if you want to say that, that you say that, instead of what you said. Because no, that's not obvious from what you said, and no, people don't agree with your cost estimate. No "of course" involved.

caseysoftware 12y ago

Even if a perfect battery was introduced tomorrow it would still take at least 10 years before it made a serious dent in the car market. The Prius was introduced in the US in 2000 and it took about 11 years for them to sell the first million.[1] The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. They simply don't have the money. The rest of the people buy a car used and drive it until they sell it to someone else to buy another used car. Cars can last 200+k miles which is often 15-20 years in the life of most vehicles. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Prius

computator 12y ago
> The vast majority of people don't buy a brand new car more than once or twice in their life. The adage has been that "Americans buy, on average, a new car or truck every 3 or 4 years."[1] That's like a dozen new cars in a lifetime. I was going to call bravo sierra on your assertion, but I decided to try a back-of-the-envelope calculation to check the plausibility: Roughly 10 million cars are sold each year in the U.S., the U.S. has 230 million adults, and they'd likely buy their cars between ages 18 and 65 (a span of 47 years). That means each adult has a 1 in 23 chance (230M/10M) of buying a new car each year, so over a 47-year span they'd buy 47/23 = 2 new cars. There could be all sorts of ways my calculation could be wrong, but it agrees surprisingly well with your claim. I'm wondering now if the "new car every 3-4 years" is a myth propagated by auto makers. [1] http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504 http://www.cnbc.com/id/49504504
- lancewiggs 12y ago
  2nd hand cars? The 10m is just new cars right?
  - computator 12y ago
    I do mean 10 million new cars are sold yearly in the U.S.[1][2] Without doing a lot of research, I couldn't decide how to deal with questions of: - Including or excluding light trucks - Including or excluding cars that are new but being leased rather than sold - Large year-to-year variations in sales (esp. of low sales during the recession) But I think 10 million is reasonable rough estimate. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Sales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unite... [2] http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html

BostonEnginerd 12y ago

Unfortunately I don't think that Beacon is doing all that well. They recently had some layoffs.