19 ms·

The Electric Car

• swombat 11y ago
  Interesting article, though it forgets the elephant in the room: self-driving cars. The two will probably work hand in hand, but it is unlikely, in my opinion, that any electric cars will be charging at home very much, because most electric cars will be owned by companies, not individuals. Why own a car when you can pay a tiny percentage of a cab fare to go anywhere? When a journey that currently costs $50 costs 20 cents, private car ownership will plummet.
  • danhak 11y ago
    The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Even Elon Musk's most ambitious projections for "autopilot" are a car that can drive itself 90 - 95% of the time but will require an alert, licensed driver to take over if necessary. Secondly, I don't feel that the possible rise of truly autonomous vehicles (if that even occurs within the next ten years) affects the main point of this article. In fact, the advantages of battery-electric over gasoline become even more pronounced in a world of self-driving cars. The only drawback (speed to refuel) becomes moot as fully-charged vehicles can be dispatched while others direct themselves to charging or battery-swap stations.
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > The truth is we're really not that close to fully-autonomous cars. Google cars are pretty damn close to level 4 autonomous vehicles. They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously, and Google runs their self-driving vehicle algorithms against simulated virtual worlds constantly (with data previously collected from their self driving cars). We are so much closer to fully autonomous cars than people think.
      • jtokoph 11y ago
        I've always thought that the Google cars have driven 95%+ of their miles in Mountain View, CA where every single aspect of the roads have been digitized, tested and tweaked a million times over. If you stuck one of these cars in a brand new city, it wouldn't work nearly as well.
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          How quickly could a fleet of Google vehicles ingest a major metros geographic data? Assume a similar project as Street View, with minimum wage drivers piloting the data collection vehicles without autonomous mode turned on. Days? Weeks? Under 6 months for sure. EDIT: Current street view coverage: https://support.google.com/maps/answer/68384?hl=en https://support.google.com/maps/answer/68384?hl=en
        • thaumasiotes 11y ago
          Mapping the roads isn't challenging. How do you think humans perform at driving through brand new cities?
          • CountSessine 11y ago
            Humans don't need cm-scale precise maps in cities to avoid jumping curbs and running into streetlamps. But that's still a requirement for all autonomous cars that have been demonstrated.
            • thaumasiotes 11y ago
              I don't see why this matters, though. cm-scale maps aren't hard to produce.
              • CountSessine 11y ago
                Aren't hard to produce everywhere?
                • 11y ago
      • danhak 11y ago
        > They've driven more than a million miles fully autonomously Zero of those miles were at a speeds > 25 mph. And the cars have averaged > 1 accident per 100,000 miles.
        • toomuchtodo 11y ago
          Audi's TTS autonomous vehicle sped up Pike's Peak successfully 5 years ago: http://www.wired.com/2010/11/audis-robotic-car-climbs-pikes-peak/ http://www.wired.com/2010/11/audis-robotic-car-climbs-pikes-... "The car made five runs during a week of testing, reaching the 14,100-foot summit in 27 minutes. The very fastest drivers — in cars putting down more than 900 horsepower — do it in 10 minutes and change, so clearly the car isn’t terribly fast. But the point isn’t the speed, it’s the fact there was no one at the wheel. According to Audi, race officials said an expert driver in car like the TTS would complete the course in around 17 minutes." Note that none of the accidents Google cars have been involved in were while the vehicles were in autonomous mode. http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/ http://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/
          • mod 11y ago
            None of them while a car was moving in autonomous mode* As I recall there were collisions where the autonomous car was sitting still. Others while in manual mode. Zero the fault of autonomous drivers, so far.
            • toomuchtodo 11y ago
              Regardless, autonomous vehicles will improve at a staggering pace due to computing power available to them, and sensors rapidly developing. ~33K [1] deaths a year from car accidents currently due to human drivers. I doubt autonomous vehicles can do worse than that. [1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm
        • mikeyouse 11y ago
          I don't think this is accurate.. It was pretty common to pass the Lexus SUVs that Google was using for their autonomous platforms on the highway at speeds of 65+ MPH. I'm not sure if they're still around since my commute changed, but they were previously all over the Bay Area. I personally saw them on HWYs 101, 280, 880, and 92..
      • ninkendo 11y ago
        The number of miles driven autonomously doesn't really matter if drivers have to intervene even for a second to resolve an issue. If the car is driving by itself 99% of the time, that's not good enough for the "share an autonomous car" use case. It's no good at 99.9% either. Or 99.99%. It's a lot more interesting if google's cars actually had no steering wheel or way of intervening. Because that's what we're talking about when we talk about the price reduction of a fleet of autonomous cars: the car driving to your house, completely on its own, with nobody in the car. 99.9% isn't good enough, and we're not even close to 99.9%. The difficulty of the last remaining difficult problems will only increase as we approach 100%, too. I think completely driverless cars are a problem on a similar scale as AI or nuclear fusion, but with the timescales decreased... we're probably going to be always perpetually "five years out" from having them (as opposed to fusion's perpetual "30 years"), even though we're making improvements all the time. We just don't understand the scale of the problems we haven't solved yet.
        • waterlesscloud 11y ago
          "It's no good at 99.9% either. Or 99.99%." That's not completely right. If that 99.9% covers 100% of certain use cases, they will be used for those cases. It's like much else in tech, it's not an instant change, it's going to be all about expanding the uses cases over time.
          • hvidgaard 11y ago
            That is the thing with driving - it's amongst other drivers, pedestrians, especially children. There are so few use cases where 99.99% is enough. I can only think of one, highway from A to B - how you get to and from the A and B respectively is not by selfdriving cars.
          • ninkendo 11y ago
            The thing with autonomous ride sharing though, is that the car has to make it from its last stop to your home on its own. And there's any number of scenarios that can happen on its way... a traffic light could lose power and turn into a 4-way stop, for instance. Or a big event at a large venue where hundreds or thousands of pedestrians are crossing the street and you kinda have to inch forward and wait for some of them to wave you on to go forward (basically everybody jaywalks at that point.) There's a million different 0.01% scenarios that could happen, and if you ramp the usage of a really really good autonomous car up to scale, you'll see them every day. Unless it can handle all of them without intervention, you simply can't ditch the driver, or you'd face huge PR nightmares when you either hit a pedestrian or you block an intersection and cause huge traffic in a major metropolitan area ("Mayor bans autonomous cars due to one too many gridlocks caused by them", etc.) I really think it's down to the PR issues and the fact that one too many mistakes can really kill the idea, that companies will be cautious to just not need a driver altogether. And for autonomous ride sharing, you must be able to do nearly half your miles without a driver. Hence why that last .01% is still crucial.
      • Qwertious 11y ago
        Do they drive properly in rain/fog yet? IIRC they can't drive in rain, which is a hell of a limitation.
  • philwelch 11y ago
    What if the self-driving electric cab gets soiled with the last passenger's bodily fluids?
    • JoshTriplett 11y ago
      Then it drives to a location to be cleaned at that passenger's expense. And depending on the nature of the issue, it may be treated as intentional vandalism.
    • TD-Linux 11y ago
      Send it to the service hub and ask for another?
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      It will probably have facilities for identifying that condition and either self-cleaning or notifying the central dispatch system that it needs to be taken out of the rotation until cleaned. Pretty much the same thing as a human-driven cab. Worst case, all those things fail, and a dirty cab shows up, and you reject it on the hailing app with an explanation of why, leading to some delay till you get the next available cab. Its not like unexpected failures and delays don't happen with personally owned and operated owner-driven vehicles.
      • philwelch 11y ago
        People are still disincentivized from soiling taxis by the presence of the driver. Though at the very least, you'll have to have a membership/accountability system in place, and that becomes harder and harder as you scale.
        • jannotti 11y ago
          Cars can drive autonomously, but they can't sense a spill?
          • Qwertious 11y ago
  • rorykoehler 11y ago
    I published a piece on exactly this earlier in the week. Admittedly I took an extreme position, but not an impossible one: https://medium.com/@rorykoehler/carpocalypse-how-the-robot-car-will-kill-it-s-maker-879e2fe32f46 https://medium.com/@rorykoehler/carpocalypse-how-the-robot-c... The major point of value I took from the OP here was that we have no idea what the landscape will look like in 10 years. It is totally open for disruption.
• joars 11y ago
  I though the lesson from the iphone's success was that a product with less features, easier to use and more integrated make great products. With that reasoning plug-in hybrids are the future, although I'm personally rooting for pure electric to win in the end.
• higherpurpose 11y ago
  > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. That's a great point that I've never considered before. > On the other hand, the potential exists for a huge rollout of home solar power over the next decade. Electric cars will convince their owners to install rooftop solar panels, too, which will then convince them to get Powerwall-like batteries for backup, which will then decrease the price of batteries, which will then make electric cars cheaper and more appealing to more people. It's a beautiful feedback loop. And wow DOE's predictions are terrible (first source). It's almost as if they went around surveying car manufacturers about their plans to make electric cars in 2013 and then made their predictions for 27 years later based on that. Just terrible. And 11% cars will be using ethanol in 2040? Really? I'll be surprised if 0.11% of them will use ethanol by then. > The current range of a Model S tops out at about 300 miles. Even GM is extending it's Volt to 200 miles to effectively compete with Tesla. Volt is the range-extender, and it doesn't come near that (for battery mileage). You're thinking "Bolt" which is not really meant to be the successor to Volt, because it's a full EV and doesn't have a range extender. That's what they claim it will do on battery alone. It will compete with Model 3, not S. > Battery technology is difficult, but it would be extremely surprising if the available ranges don't double again in 5 years or less. I agree. Part of it will be from the natural evolution of Li-ion batteries, and part from Tesla's Gigafactory coming online. I expect battery prices to drop in half again to around $100 in another 5 years, after Apple has launched its electric car, too, and Tesla has made a couple more Gigafactories + the natural progress in density of the batteries. After that we might need some breakthroughs to go to $50 or less per kWh. $100/kWh should be enough to switch the "Early Majority" to EVs, which is half the population. The other half will need batteries to be $50/kWh (or less) to make EVs cheap enough but also with long enough range for the more conservative gas-powered car drivers, who probably won't accept anything less than a (real) 500 mile range on an EV.
• sosuke 11y ago
  We just need to add outlets everywhere. I'd love one, but I don't have a place to charge it.
  • mahyarm 11y ago
    The electric car is actually fairly inconvenient if you don't have a garage or a parking spot that you rent / cannot install an outlet on. The cycle time on vehicles is far higher than a cheap smartphone mainly due to their expense. And a large amount of the article's bullet points are not something that would be unique to an electric car. When you take public transit, as long as the train/bus isn't loud, would you care to notice if it was electric or gas based? Or how fast it got you where you wanted to go with comfort?
    • cowsandmilk 11y ago
      Boston has added hybrid buses to their fleet. They are much quieter. I'm a fan. But I agree about the parking spaces. Even now in new construction, it is considered forward thinking to have 2 or 3 spaces with outlets out of 100. For the future of electric cars, they should at least have conduit to spaces where outlets could be installed.
      • greglindahl 11y ago
        New construction in Palo Alto, including single family homes, is required to have that sort of thing pre-installed. Conduit only for single-family homes, a lot of conduit and some actual chargers for multi-family and commercial buildings.
        • mahyarm 11y ago
          If you own a single family home, then electric cars are ok. If you live in a multiunit, rent, do not have a garage or similar, then charging at home is not practical.
          • 11y ago
• pierotofy 11y ago
  I would still buy a gasoline car just because there are no charging stations near where I live. Yeah you can charge at home, but if I have to take a longer trip? At least for me, I will wait until charging stations become more available. Could be a chicken and egg problem.
  • sremani 11y ago
    PHEV. 2016 Chevy Volt with 50mile Electric range and 41mpg when running on gas may be what you are looking for.
  • yesimahuman 11y ago
    Interesting to think about small towns that lack electric car infrastructure: if many of those rely on tourism (thinking a remote seasonal vacation town), as their customers increasingly drive electric cars, they will have to change, which will bring more infrastructure to the whole city.
    • jrapdx3 11y ago
      I'm thinking about visiting a friend ~8 years ago. He lives in a rural area, and back then cell phone signal coverage was terribly spotty. Couldn't go around a curve without risk of losing coverage. But the situation improved. When I visited a few months back, what a huge difference there was. I was amazed that out in the boondocks mobile phones worked just about everywhere. (Well, at least in that locality.) Seems to suggest that once the demand for electric vehicle recharging begins to ramp up, the charge-station infrastructure will improve just as rapidly as cell phone towers have proliferated. Tourism may be one motivator but seems predictable that once electric vehicles are good enough and affordable, small town residents themselves will generate the bulk of the demand for this infrastructure.
    • Miner49er 11y ago
      The vast majority of small towns don't rely on tourism, however.
    • greglindahl 11y ago
• rickdale 11y ago
  My big qualm with the electric cars that I don't read about is the 40minute-1hour charging. People complain that charging stations aren't near them, but the convenience of pulling into a gas station filling up and being ready for another 400 miles in less than 5 minutes is hard to beat. Even if the charging stations were all around, 5 versus 40-60 min is a big difference.
  • amalag 11y ago
    Yes the only way to get 5 min is with battery swaps.
  • wmf 11y ago
    Electric cars assume that you won't use charging stations at all during day-to-day driving.
  • tdiggity 11y ago
    How often do you drive that distance? Sure, there are people that take road trips of 200+ miles often, and then it may be more convenient for them to refuel quickly. But the majority doesn't do that very often.
    • philwelch 11y ago
      People who don't drive that distance don't need cars, frankly--and not owning a car at all is a trend that's growing faster than Tesla sales.
      • tdiggity 11y ago
        Most people I know that live in peninsula and south bay of silicon valley have a 10-25 mile commute (1-way) and it would be a huge inconvenience to not have a car. You can't get around with just Uber down here.
        • philwelch 11y ago
          Yes, it's unfortunate that people still live in suburban areas that don't have transit.
• JTon 11y ago
  > The reason electric cars will take over our roads is because consumers will DEMAND them. Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy. The iPhone demonstrated that smartphones are infinitely better than the feature phones which dominated the world in 2007. The smartphone revolution analogy makes me cringe. Electric cars are currently playing catch up to their gasoline counterparts in almost every metric except emissions. When the iPhone was released it quite literally leapfrogged the competition (with the exception of battery life). What gives author?
  • rfrey 11y ago
    I think electric cars win on every metric except range and refill/recharge time. They have better torque, better efficiency, lower emissions, lower noise, simpler drivetrains, and more reliable motors.
    • greglindahl 11y ago
      For refill time, note that most electric car owners do almost all of their charging in their own garages overnight... not something that's common for gas-powered cars. Long trips are worse for electric cars, sure. But day-to-day driving? Charging is not an issue if you can charge in your garage.
      • JimboOmega 11y ago
        For those of us who live in apartment buildings and don't have a garage where we can install such things, then what? To me this has always been the biggest obstacle of an electric car.
        • greglindahl 11y ago
          Wait to buy an electric car until it's convenient for you to charge it?
          • 11y ago
• hackuser 11y ago
  The real story my be that car sales may decline, gas or electric: * People drive less; I saw a study showing that significantly fewer millenials are licensed to drive than their predecessors. * More people live in cities, where the cost of cars is higher (insurance and parking) and the demand for them is less due to the proximity of destinations and the availability of alternatives (public transport, taxis, ride-sharing, car sharing, bicycling) * Energy costs likely will increase. * As awareness of climate change grows, people will be less willing to cause greenhouse gas emissions (and the energy in your electric car battery must come from somplace, probably a fossil-fuel in a power plant).
  • soperj 11y ago
    At this point 33% of the USA's energy mix comes from a non-fossil fuel source(http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3 http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3), and the renewable % has been increasing every year.
  • beambot 11y ago
    Another driver for fewer car sales: More ride-sharing and taxi (Uber) services obviating the need to purchase individual vehicles which see sub-5% utilization. This is good for the environment too.... IIRC, the embodied cost to fabricate a vehicle represents something like 30% of its net carbon cost. This is pretty significant when you consider the very low utilization rate for a capital asset.
    • brc 11y ago
      This factor is often overstated - for a few reasons. Passenger miles are likely to go up, if anything, even if because more vacant miles are being driven to collect people, and also because making a service cheaper leads to higher consumption of that service. Passenger miles are what causes car sales - cars wear out. For cars which produce revenue then there comes a point where it's more economical to purchase a new one than to attend to medium-difficulty repairs. So I'm not convinced ride sharing or automated vehicles will lead to fewer cars sold. If anything I would say it has the potential to increase the number of cars sold.
• lvs 11y ago
  I can't imagine what the iPhone has to do with an electric car. The post just refers to a software interface (which all cars now have), a network conncetion, and automatic updates. None of these relies on the powertrain of the car.
  • rosser 11y ago
    TFA is drawing a parallel between the way smartphones, as heralded by the iPhone, transformed the mobile phone market, and the way electric cars, as heralded by the Model S, will do to the car market. That's what the one has to do with the other.
    • rhino369 11y ago
      But it's a really poor parallel. People wanted a smartphone because it was a total game changer. Electric cars are not. I'm an electrical engineer and I only sort of give a shit what kind of powertrain by car has. My mom? Doesn't know or care how her car works. My dad? Probably against electrical out of old man-back in my dad behavior. Cost will be the big change. Once an electric car is cheaper than gas, the public will switch. But that is not why people switched to smartphones. Also part of the reason for the smartphone revolution is the market psychology behind carriers subsidizing very expensive phones. People think their iPhone 6 costs 200 bucks. Finally, the short upgrade cycle for phones is totally different than cars which last for like 15 years on average.
      • snogglethorpe 11y ago
        Smartphones weren't a "total game changer", they were a jump in CPU power and interface smoothness, but the trends were already there (maybe not in the U.S., I dunno).
  • usrusr 11y ago
    Both are desperately waiting for the messiah battery to happen. People like the original author seem to face immense difficulty at wrapping their head around the fact that battery technology does not follow Moore's Law (while even chips have mostly stopped to do so). State of the art battery technology has not improved much this side of the millennium, it has just seen a really big price drop from specialist niche technology to commodity. This makes the battery of a Tesla S a lot more affordable today than it would have been back when Musk started the project (and when he correctly predicted a price drop, and just a price drop, instead of waiting for the miracle battery to happen), but the range would not have been much worse if you built a Tesla around a battery made of crazy expensive y2k cells.
• suprgeek 11y ago
  Shell, Exxon, BP will pour massive lobby dollars to slow down the spread of electric cars. GM, Ford, Honda & Toyota (and the Dealer network) will get in on the lobbying action against electric cars when they see their current monopolies eroding. Comparing the spread of the Smartphone (digital device by definition) to the Spread of the Car (physical) and then extrapolating a best case future is wishful thinking.
  • soperj 11y ago
    Smartphones are physical. They exist in my hand.
• erikpukinskis 11y ago
  I don't think people full comprehend the price drop that is imminent. The total cost of ownership per mile for a car in the U.S. right now is about $0.60. I was watching a panel the other day where someone calculated the cost per mile of a fleet of self-driving on-demand electric cars at $0.08. That an 86% reduction. People might have their misgivings about any of this stuff... electric, self-driving, carshare, and of course many people will go their own way. But for an 86% reduction in your monthly auto bill, it's going to be an avalanche.
  • monk_e_boy 11y ago
    On demand self driving cars will be amazing. A lot of people I know work part time, or have two jobs. Car sharing kinda works, but it is complex to organize over facebook chat at 11PM. Being able to rent the appropriate car to match the passengers would make it much easier. 7 people? 2 people? 3 people + 6 surfboards? 2 people with kyaks? I can not wait for this to happen.
  • powera 11y ago
    If a Tesla Model S costs $70000, even if electricity and maintenance are free (and there's no premium for self-driving) you would have to drive it 875000 miles for it to cost $0.08/mile. This seems like the type of thing that is literally unbelievable without more evidence than "I heard somebody on a panel say this".
    • toomuchtodo 11y ago
      If the vehicle is self-driving, and managed by Google infrastructure for ridesharing so its highly utilized, how quickly do you cover 875000 miles? A quick Google search indicates that traditional cabs cover 70K miles a year; so that's a <10 year payback period. Not terrible for an asset that's going to be ancient tech in 5-7 years.
    • erikpukinskis 11y ago
      Ya, those are good numbers to point out. I was too lazy to link the discussion, but here it is: https://youtu.be/HnQs1k_0Yys?t=29m36s https://youtu.be/HnQs1k_0Yys?t=29m36s The speaker is Stefan Heck from the Precourt Instute for Energy at Stanford. No citation, so I guess it's just math he did. I assume they're factoring in some reasonable price drop. I would expect the vast majority of self-driving cab rides will be in two-seaters like the Smart Car, which starts at $12,000. You'd buy them wholesale, so it should be even less than that. Not to mention you can get rid of the entire steering column, etc. At $10,000 per vehicle, you only need to drive 125,000 miles to break even.
• darkstar999 11y ago
  > The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon. The future is electric driverless cars. How long until they are mandatory?
• darkstar999 11y ago
  Someone has to be working on battery swaps instead of charging, right? That seems like such an easy solution to what most people consider the biggest problem with electric.
  • ececconi 11y ago
    Tesla is working on battery swaps. The problem with it so far is that you have to return to the location where you swapped your battery to retrieve your original battery later, or be hit with a hefty fine.
    • greglindahl 11y ago
      Tesla has now apparently invited everyone who's ever charged at the Harris Ranch charger, on I5 between LA and SF, to use it. Personally, I tend to stop for dinner there, so supercharging isn't a problem.
• curiousjorge 11y ago
  I think the article is overly optimistic and derives some sort of future prediction based on a simplified past performance of a totally different market. Tesla is a luxury , many of us can't afford it and if we could we would most likely opt for BMW or Benz. The reason these other car makers aren't moving yet is they are learning from Tesla. You don't want to be a first mover in this industry, you want to move so slightly close to what everyone is doing but still differentiate yourself on brand. Cars today have vastly improved across the board regardless of make. To say gas stations will go out of business is ludicrous at best, Tesla will go out of business sooner as established car brands move in and hurt bottom line for Tesla. In the short while the euphoria towards Tesla will continue but it's headed for a not so pleasant ending. Great for humanity, bad for Musk.
  • derefr 11y ago
    > To say gas stations will go out of business is ludicrous at best, Tesla will go out of business sooner as established car brands move in and hurt bottom line for Tesla. I don't get that dichotomy. If established car brands move into electric, wouldn't that kill both Tesla and gas stations? Why would gas stations survive?
    • MiguelHudnandez 11y ago
      Gas stations have one shot at survival over the next 30 years: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs). Part of the reason traditional manufacturers have been reluctant to pursue BEVs (battery-electric vehicles) is that many were betting on liquefied hydrogen as an energy delivery mechanism for FCVs. I presume this was from pressure from current energy companies. Hydrogen benefits current energy interests because customers would fill up their cars in a way roughly analogous to today's gas stations. Even though the "fuel" product and drivetrain are different, gas stations can adapt for hydrogen. That is just way too complicated to work out, though, and I think traditional automakers are at the point where they are giving up. The hydrogen infrastructure is hugely expensive and the resulting automotive products are not that much more convenient than BEVs. Tesla's Gigafactory, enabling products like their PowerWall, is the most straightforward way for us as a society to use more renewables. The problem with wind and solar has always been spotty, inconsistent power generation, and with enough battery capacity, that is no longer an issue. That is a bad sign for gas stations, but an opportunity to pivot for traditional energy companies.
• stellar678 11y ago
  While I'm all on-board for the importance and awesomeness of a wholesale transition to electric transportation, I think this essay leaves out some important considerations. The primary one that pops to mind for me: people replace their phones every 2-3 years. (http://www.phonearena.com/news/Americans-replace-their-cell-phones-every-2-years-Finns--every-six-a-study-claims_id20255 http://www.phonearena.com/news/Americans-replace-their-cell-...) How often do people replace their car?
  • ahlatimer 11y ago
    Just shy of 6 years for a new car: http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-of-us-vehicle-ownership-hit-an-all_time-high/2000007854/ http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-of... Obviously a significant portion of those cars remain on the road, just with new drivers. As of 2012, the average age of cars on the road is 11 years: https://www.mainstreet.com/article/how-long-do-you-keep-car-americans-are-driving-them-ground https://www.mainstreet.com/article/how-long-do-you-keep-car-...
• beamatronic 11y ago
  I see a very simple story: Among friends and family, I don't know anyone who would not get a Tesla, who doesn't already have one, once it reaches their price range. I also want to add that most folks I know are planning to make their cars last until such time as they can switch them out for a Tesla ( Model X preferably as a minivan replacement ).
  • mod 11y ago
    Once they release a true offroad type vehicle--preferably a pickup, I'll be buying one. I'm not sure the model x does it for me, though it'll be a "maybe." I live in an area that can have limited access in bad weather, where 4x4 & high clearance are requirements, and right now a Tesla wouldn't cut it.
• callesgg 11y ago
  A big problem is that battery's require lithium, which is quite rare(not supper rare but still rare enough for it to be a problem). My prediction is that sales if electric cars wont become exponential until we get cheaper and greener battery technology.
  • RedCrowbar 11y ago
    That lithium is rare is a common misconception. It is actually one of the more abundant elements on Earth, especially in seawater [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium#Terrestrial
    • D_Alex 11y ago
      Also, the on-land lithium deposits considered commercial already have enough lithium to make every car in the world electric, plus provide battery storage (like tesla power wall) for every home in the world. See: http://lesswrong.com/lw/m4r/stupid_questions_may_2015/cbjf http://lesswrong.com/lw/m4r/stupid_questions_may_2015/cbjf
• martinald 11y ago
  To be honest, this misses the point in urban areas (which is increasingly where everyone wants to live). There's too much congestion for cars to work in urban areas, at least for commuting. It doesn't matter whether they are autonomous, electric, petrol, hydrogen or whatever. The capacity of a multi-lane freeway vs a heavy rail commuter line or metro is so small, even with carpooling. Unless suddenly this trend reverses and everyone wants to live in the suburbs, the car is really in trouble. I use public transit nearly all the time and for the times I don't, I take an uber. I tried uber once when there was a problem with transit, and the door to door time was something like 4x the metro due to traffic. Never again.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  • JacobAldridge 11y ago
    Isn't a big part of congestion due to inefficient human driving? While it won't be v1.0, I could see autonomous vehicles taking half the cars off the road (car pooling) and then providing much more efficient transit regarding speed, lane changes, real time route selection etc. This will definitely be more valuable for the suburbs, or cities with poor public transport infrastructure. Perhaps in some places your autonomous Uber will take you to a much more efficient bus hub (departing every 5 minutes) on the city fringe, but I do believe it will work in urban areas as well. And don't forget, comparing Uber in a time of transit problems isn't really a fair comparison as those are the times when many other people, not used to making that drive, flood the roads. If I drive to the right train station, transit is about 30% faster for me during peak hour so I agree with your point.
    • martinald 11y ago
      Maybe in some cities, but the roads in London are gridlocked all the time and there is something like a 98:2 ratio of people using mass transit vs driving. I would assume it is the same in NYC, etc. No amount of lane selection, car pooling will ever make that better. And unless people carpool from the exact same place to the same workplace, there's going to be duplication of drop off points which probably makes things worse as they'll be downtown with the most traffic. And no, there was no surge on uber to get that journey. There was other transit routes everyone else will take but I was in a real rush (even routing round the disruption would've still been way faster than driving). To be honest though, if you're driving to the transit station then you're missing the point. I'm really talking to the masses of people that have giving up/will give up their car entirely and rely on public transit & the occasional taxi (uber, autonomous, whatever) for when they've been out partying or what not.
• philwelch 11y ago
  This might happen, but I think Geoff is a little too breathless here. Smartphones cost up to $200 with contract. (Approximately nobody buys unlocked phones in the US.) Almost anybody could scrape up $200, and for those who can't, there are $0-with-contract smartphones by now and <$50 prepaid smartphones. The Tesla Model S costs $69,900. That is a hilarious amount of money to spend on a car. That's $18,000 more than a Mercedes-Benz E-Class. $20,000 more than an Audi A6. $45,000 more than a Toyota Prius. $50,000 more than a Volkswagen Jetta. You could buy a different, damn good used car for every day of the work week for the cost of a single Tesla Model S. OK, you say, but the iPhone launched at a high price too. The difference is, the iPhone's price came down in a couple of years and the Tesla's price is still extremely high, even for a luxury car, seven years after the launch of the Roadster. Is the price of a Tesla going to drop $50,000 in the next five to ten years? Has the Tesla sold well? About 50,000 Teslas have been sold in the United States since 2012[1]. In contrast, Toyota sold over four times that number of cars in June 2015 alone.[2] "Struggling" Volkswagen sold 30,000 cars in April.[3] Even in the luxury category, BMW, Mercedes, and Lexus all sell in excess of 300,000 cars a year[4]. 300,000 cars a year, vs. 50,000 cars in three years. The author also notes a number of advantages of the Tesla: > It’s more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned. > It’s quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds. > It allows you to drive in the carpool lane > It’s more roomy and has a trunk in the front (the “frunk”) AND a spacious back. I agree with these. > [It allows you] to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home. > It is always “full” every morning one drives it and you never need to go to a gas station. This is true for people who live in detached houses. People who are ecologically conscious often prefer not to do this, and that makes it harder to gain a foothold among early adopters. In fact, among this segment, and among the younger segment overall, Tesla's biggest competition isn't going to be other car makers; it's going to be the decision not to own a car in the first place. Once Tesla reaches a point of economical mass production, they should seriously consider partnering with Zipcar to install charging stations at Zipcar lots and provide Teslas as Zipcar fleet vehicles; in the long run, they might get more Tesla drivers that way than they ever would selling vehicles to individual buyers. If electric cars are the future, I'm going to despair that in the 21st century, we're still hauling around individual 300 pound Americans in 4,000 pound, 16 foot long cars. The trends towards young people returning to the city center and not owning cars are both better trends to encourage and more powerful trends than the trend of selling a really nice, $70,000 electric luxury car. > It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - as superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones. > It is connected to the Internet. > It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements. > It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from your phone. None of these are inherent to electric cars, and any luxury marque should be able to copy these, just like they've been copying from each other for years. And once the luxury marques copy these features, they will filter down to all new cars. (This is even assuming that the last three points are a positive, which I don't think they are.) > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. On the contrary, I think not actually having to sell as much gas would be a boon to the gas station. Gas stations make next to zero margin on actual gasoline, and all of their margin on the convenience store. People on road trips will still have to take breaks, use the restroom, and buy a Red Bull. The gas station doesn't really care whether you refuel your car along the way, but as long as they still exist and provide the service of refueling the driver (and how hard is it to set up some sort of metered power jack for your electric car at the gas station, too?), the business of actually selling fuel will be subsidized. In fact, here's another way to look at it: diesel-powered cars are fairly rare in the US, and yet it's still easy to find a gas station that pumps diesel. Not every gas station does it, but it's not a barrier to diesel fuel sales. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Global https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S#Global [2] http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+lexus+scion+june+2015+sales+release.htm http://toyotanews.pressroom.toyota.com/releases/toyota+lexus... [3] http://media.vw.com/release/976/ http://media.vw.com/release/976/ [4] http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/05/us-usa-autos-luxury-idUSKBN0KE1RG20150105 http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/05/us-usa-autos-luxur...
• elorant 11y ago
  If electric cars are going to become mainstream we certainly need something far more affordable than Model S. With the money it costs I could buy a Mercedes S-Class which is unparalleled in terms of quality and ride comfort. Furthermore in regions like Europe you can run in all short of inconsistencies with incompatible sockets/recharge stations. Just the other day I was watching a video [1] of a car journalist who tried to make the trip from UK to Amsterdam in a BMW i3 Rx and it took him twice the time it would with a conventional car. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f0_hqWdTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0f0_hqWdTk
  • greglindahl 11y ago
    ... no wonder several manufacturers are working on long-range cars more affordable than the Model S. Examples: Tesla Model 3, Chevy Bolt, ...
  • _ph_ 11y ago
    While it is a very nice car, the i3 is really limited by its range. Tesla had journalists take a S from Munich to Amsterdam and back without issues a year ago. It took 1-2 hours more (on an 10h trip) than a petrol car would have taken, assuming the petrol car driver did not require rests. But indeed, charging networks need to be expanded/unified. This also sets Tesla apart from other manufacturers, they are taking care of the charging infrastructure too.
• gfrga 11y ago
  Fuck the police
• gfrga 11y ago
  I love drugs and dope smack cocine
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• stuaxo 11y ago
  "Ten years ago a prediction that this would be the future would have been met with scorn or laughter" ... this sounds like bollocks, I guess I am an outlier as I worked on J2me apps at the time, but mobile phones where everywhere in 2005, the US was a bit behind, but certainly in the UK mobile wasn't the future, but the present - many of those people used apps and games, they just didn't know what an 'app' was although they used them.
  • sixothree 11y ago
    Specifically smartphones. The landscape for which in 2005 was absolutely abysmal. The iPhone was revolutionary in almost every way down to the silence switch and visual voicemail.
    • Aloha 11y ago
      The iPhone was evolutionary, not revolutionary, it pulled together a bunch of ideas from a ton of different places (visual voicemail for example was seen in various TAPI applications in the 90's) - what made the iPhone slick, was not what it did - a 2006 era palm did everything the iPhone did - its that it worked better than all of its progenitors.
• Istof 11y ago
  To me the best parts of an electric car is that the power-train assembly is much simpler then with a gas powered one and it can be powered with pretty much any kind of energy... whatever feeds your home. and the downfall is of course the range.
• dnautics 11y ago
  > In fact, in 2005 few if any of the futurists would have even been able to imagine the kind of device most of us now depend upon. Well, let's be honest, mod the implementation details, Star Trek pretty much got this correct with the PADD.
  • toomuchtodo 11y ago
    If I may nerd out for a moment, the technical manual [+] for the Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) even specified that the entire craft could be piloted from a PADD. This is entirely reasonable based on today's mobile device hardware (I'd argue, if you're offloading computationally expensive tasks to a central processor and using a mobile device solely for taking in aggregated sensor data and outputting navigational commands). [+] https://cudebi.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/franchise-star-trek-tng-technical-manual1.pdf https://cudebi.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/franchise-star-tr...
• sgustard 11y ago
  An excellent but longer and more detailed piece in the same vein is "How Tesla Will Change The World" at http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...
• mschuster91 11y ago
  While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3: > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car parts that won't go away with e-cars (windshield wipers, wiper fluid) - and in many regions gas stations are exempt from normal store opening hours and serve as 24h-supermarket. The convenience of a readily available store, even with a hefty markup, simply is too good to avoid it.
  • gorgak 11y ago
    surely they will just change the name of them then to shops :) or stores as you call the over there. over here we have petrol stations and other places called 'services' which basically serve the function you are on about. so i guess we will just rename the petrol stations to services, the ones that survive that is. this cant come quick enough for me!
  • MattHeard 11y ago
    Aren't they convenient because they're only a few yards from your car? If you no longer need to drive to the gas station to get fuel, it's a lot less convenient, isn't it?
    • artursapek 11y ago
      They're convenient because they're right off the freeway. The gas pumps will disappear and be replaced with superchargers.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  • frankus 11y ago
    But once it's no longer an effective loss leader, they might just stop selling gas, which has the same effect. You can see from land use patterns (at least in the West Coast North American cities I'm familiar with) that at a certain land value the retail gasoline business no longer pencils out, or at a minimum it becomes more of a natural monopoly. Intersections in gentrifying neighborhoods that used to have two or three gas stations increasingly have one or none. Like drive-thru restaurants and banks, they're pretty effective at sabotaging walkability, so I wouldn't be too sad to see them go (or transition into just convenience stores).
• tikhonj 11y ago
  > The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road. I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. What the Tesla Model S has actually shown is that a startup-designed $100k electric car can be comparable to $100k luxury cars (S-class, 7-series... etc) and that classic car makers got complacent on certain features (like electronic UI elements). Much of what he said is true, or could easily be true, for $100k gasoline cars too! In fact, I think that's enough of an exaggeration for me to question his whole conclusion. He made a good case for why Tesla could be the next big thing, but just like Android popped up against the iPhone, I could see gasoline cars copying many of the advantages—anything that's not a direct result of an electric drive-train. This isn't to say that electric cars won't take over—I think they very well might—but the blog post doesn't make the best case for it. I also really dislike that whole argument style of cherry-picking a "disruptive" innovation that happened to succeed but ignoring all the others that either failed or didn't deliver for decades. You can't generalize the smart-phone's success that easily! It feels like a pernicious case of what poker players call "results oriented thinking"[1], which is something I see a lot in business analysis. [1]: http://www.toppokersites.com/strategy/results-oriented-thinking/ http://www.toppokersites.com/strategy/results-oriented-think...
  • chillingeffect 11y ago
    Too true. It's classic case of "seek and ye shall find." OP wanted to see all the reasons why something he hopes is true, and he found them all. He did not want to see any reasons why his hopes might not be true, so he sought none of them.
• sharemywin 11y ago
  Part of the iPhones success was the base of iPod users with music collections in the ecosystem that could only get it on the their phone with an "upgrade". No such thing exists for Telsa. Now when someone figures out drive as a service and it cost <$200/mo for the average user with a commute. You have a disruptive scenario.
• MattHeard 11y ago
  > Current predictions of the future of electric cars are as wrong as any predictions about the future of mobile phones made in 2005. I find it odd that Mr. Ralston says this while predicting the future of electric cars. Surely he meant "Everyone else's current predictions…"
• staunch 11y ago
  I find even this view to be pessimistic and limited, because it assumes we need to keep fairly conventional (but electric) cars around, which we don't! It's likely we'll rapidly end up with something like the computer controlled "carpods" Google is building, which could be radically cheaper than any car people have to be able to drive. Even if they can only go 45mph, that's enough to navigate most major cities at an optimal speed.
  • eru 11y ago
    Vehicles driving at most 25 mph are regulated much lighter than `cars' in the USA, that's why Google chose that speed limit for their `carpods'.
• dangrossman 11y ago
  The future's already here. A 2-3 year old Nissan Leaf, top trim with all the features, with 10-20K miles on it and a 7-year factory CPO warranty, costs just $10-12K. That's thousands less than the average price paid for a used car last month. If your commute's less than 40-50 miles each way, you can have all the advantages of owning an EV today, not X years down the line. Zero gas, zero maintenance, zero emission inspections, and damn fun to drive. And you don't need any special charging hardware; you can plug it into any old 120V wall socket overnight.
  • chc 11y ago
    Eh, I'm not sure the Leaf is the future for most people. Based on what I've heard from Leaf owners, even a commute of 35 miles can be iffy depending on travel conditions. And even if your Leaf can make the trip today, common levels of battery degradation on the Leaf will place that commute out of your range within a couple of years (the users at mynissanleaf.com estimate that a battery can be expected to lose about 10% of its capacity after one year, 15% after two years and 26% after five years under moderate conditions).
• reedlaw 11y ago
  I can't believe he's comparing a $70,000 electric car to a huge bucket labeled "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Of course the $70,000 car is better in almost every way. I've driven a lot of electric cars in the $5,000 to $10,000 range and I assure you they are not better than "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Our last gas-powered car was a used Lexus that cost us $8,000. It's an extremely comfortable luxury car that seats 5 and can easily be driven across the country. A new electric car [1], on the other hand, costs approximately the same but can only seat 2 people and can travel 160 km on one charge. It's top speed is 80 km/h. It takes 6 hours to fully charge. The costly lithium-ion batteries will have to be replaced at some point. True, it is convenient for trips around town without much luggage. I'm fairly confident that the used Lexus will outlast and outrun the new electric car. 1. This is the car: http://chinaautoweb.com/car-models/zotye-zhidou-zd-e20-ev/ http://chinaautoweb.com/car-models/zotye-zhidou-zd-e20-ev/
  • kailuowang 11y ago
    If I remember correctly, iPhone came out when most featured phone is either free with a contract or less than 50 bucks.
    • dzhiurgis 11y ago
      You can get everything for free with contracts. High end smartphones of the time were about 20-30% off iPhone retail price. Either way, comparison with smartphones is totally irrelevant.
    • kw71 11y ago
      And you don't "own" it if it's carrier locked (wait out your contract)
  • GutenYe 11y ago
    Just one more thing, he forgot to mention that we still need to wait for Tesla Model 3.
    • lectrick 11y ago
• JacobAldridge 11y ago
  One element Geoff doesn't cover in the comparison, which I think will slow the take-up, is that the lifecycle of a phone (<2 years) versus the lifecycle of a car (4-5 years?). And those (from memory, please correct with data) are median averages. For every person still toting an iPhone3 I imagine there are scores still driving a 1993 Camry. Smartphones exploded in use over the timeframe described, because the technology improved rapidly AND consumers upgraded 2-3 times so could choose the newest and best. Even if cars had similar tech trajectories, the market is moving more slowly. Of course, electric cars have a secondary market that's much stronger than used phones, which will work against my numbers.
  • quanticle 11y ago
    4-5 years? Try more like 10. Cars have only gotten more and more reliable, and that, combined with the economic recession have meant that people hold on to cars for longer and longer.
• harshaw 11y ago
  I wish people would be slightly more honest about technological change. Smartphones are very special. They are very cheap, easy to mass produce, and you can iterate on them very quickly. Cars on the other hand have a much longer life cycle, involve much more capital, and in general are going to follow an elongated investment / replacement cycle. Comparing these two systems, while enthusiastic and great for a college term paper, seems premature. I am really excited that there may be a fleet of self driving electric cars in urban areas in 10 years. It's going to be awesome. But I am willing to bet for the rest of us its going to be a more conservative change that is going to evolve over decades.
  • nnethercote 11y ago
    Indeed, the fact that phone contracts effectively force most people to upgrade every two years is an unusual, important, and often-overlooked characteristic of the smartphone market. It's a big part of why Apple makes such incredible amounts of money from iPhones, but their iPad revenue has dropped off significant.
    • TeMPOraL 11y ago
      This is probably the part of it and it probably used to have stronger effect, but right now I think the reason people change smartphones often is the same reason people changed their PCs every two-three years - software increases in features / bloat so fast that if you don't upgrade, you'll quickly be out of the loop (and God forbid you actually update your software - then it will gradually stop working as authors make it bigger and slower).
    • Atiim 11y ago
      It's all about life cycle. A typical car lives for nearly 15 years. There are huge numbers of 15-20 year-old cars on the road today. An introduction of a new type of car won't change the life cycle dynamics. Even if auto manufacturers manage to sell 50% of new electric cars in 10 years, there will be tens of millions of old gasoline cars on the road ... just because people keep driving them.
  • schuke 11y ago
• laurentoget 11y ago
  If this prediction is right, the electric grid will have a tough time catching up. Power plants take a long time to plan, fund and build.
  • D_Alex 11y ago
    But the electric car can be the tool to enable wider use of intermittent-supply renewable energy, like wind or solar! With some smarts, the cars can be charged at high supply/low demand times, and even feed energy back to the grid when demand is high and supply is low. There is money to be made in making this happen, people! Also, I did the math once on how much extra power a city will need if all cars go electric. It is not that much: take Perth, Australia, as an example. We have about 5.5 GW installed power generation capacity (there is a huge gap between this and the actual usage which peaks at less than 3.5 GW usually, but that is another story...). We have say 500,000 cars, driving 40 km/d on average... that's 20 million km driven, at 5 kwhr/km we need an extra 4 million kwhr/day. If the charging is spread over 20 hours, that is an extra 200 MW required to supply them all. A 200 MW power station is small-ish.
• aabajian 11y ago
  The original iPhone had a lot going for it, but I think it was the call-the-Starbucks example that really sold it for me. Remember Steve Jobs on stage looking up the GPS walking path to Starbucks, and having the phone number ready with one-push? It just made perfect sense - a smart phone eliminates the yellow pages. I don't know if I can find such a feature for an electric car. It's nice that you can plug it in at home, but this is just replacing one need (visit a gas station) with another (remembering to plug it in / staying close to home).
• tomtang0514 11y ago
  I can't believe he said electric cars are more fun to drive. There're fun to drive electric cars such as tesla and fiat 500e, but they're never more fun to drive than most (if not all) other cars in it's price range. The only advantage of an electric car in terms of performance is torque. And it doesn't necessary has more torque. Yes electric cars has maximum torque at 0 rpm, but do anyone actually bother looking at it's torque curve? Different from gasoline cars, the torque of electric cars goes DOWN when rpm goes up. I do believe electric cars make a lot of sense for normal people, especially commuters, but please do not say it's more fun to drive because it's absolutely not.
  • krschultz 11y ago
    Do you own one? Everyone I know that owns a Tesla says it's insanely fun to drive. That includes a couple guys I know that own gasoline powered race cars in the same price range as well as Teslas.
    • tomtang0514 11y ago
      I've test driven one and that's why I didn't bought it. Look at all those car medias who put good words on Tesla, is there any one of them said it's more fun to drive than things like the new Mercedes S class? I don't even compare it to sports cars in that price range like corvette or 911. What kind of "race car" are your friends talking about? A charger?
• toephu2 11y ago
  Seems that this article fails to mention that owning a house is a prerequisite to buying an EV (electric vehicle). If you rent a room in a house, it's unlikely the landlord is going to install a charger just for you, and the same goes for apartment complexes. So that already excludes a large portion of the population from buying an EV. I bet 90% of EV owners are not renting their residence. (The other 10% can charge at work or other places, but relative to the number of parking spaces, count how many charging stations there are at BigCo)
  • butwhy 11y ago
    If you're just commuting; charge it at your workplace? park it anywhere you can access a power outlet? If absolutely nothing is available, spend an hour of your time on the weekend using a supercharger.
    • ams6110 11y ago
      Fine for the handful of spaces at work that have a charging outlet. Most workplaces don't have any. Nor will they want to pay for the electricity to charge everyone's car. It's all fun and games to do it for two or three cars as a novelty. It will be an entirely different matter to do it for hundreds of employees. And even if they wanted to do it, and have a payroll deduction or something to pay for it, the electrical grid will need to be upgraded to deliver that kind of power. I believe that scaling up the electrical grid is going to be the biggest impediment to mass adoption of electric cars. It may happen, but not in 10 years. It will take many decades.
  • _ph_ 11y ago
    Adding an electrical outlet to parking spot is not very expensive, so as soon as there is a demand on the market, landlords are going to add them to the parking spaces, like they do with other ammeneties, like kitchens or air conditioning. Or at least allow the renter to install one.
• kumarski 11y ago
  I think this is a tough discussion to have without discussing the following engineering realities and understanding how the needle moves for each of them over time. Key Metrics: Specific Energy Density Cost/ Unit of Specific Energy Density Liquid Hydrocarbin Energy Density vs. Galvanic Battery Density Simplicity and Maintainability http://qr.ae/7L89on http://qr.ae/7L89on (everyone should read this post.)
• jebblue 11y ago
  "The iPhone demonstrated that smartphones are infinitely better than the feature phones which dominated the world in 2007." The iPhone had predecessors, some Apple, some Microsoft, many tiny companies with good ideas but no business brains. It like the electric car stood on the shoulders of giants. The electric car still has two major hurdles (I wish it weren't true I really wish that the prediction comes true): 1) the Oil industry is powerful 2) batteries. With a car, if I want to take a short trip to the local gas me up station then decide to drive 300 miles just to say hey to a friend...I could do that. With an electric car and today's batteries, each "filling" station would have to be able to provide a fully charged, safe battery pack that is compatible with my vehicle. If better batteries could be made with oil, adoption for electric cars would be overnight and the prediction manifested.
• roflchoppa 11y ago
  Eh. i would like to see independent garages retrofitting batteries into classic cars. but man, theres nothing like hearing carburetors on v8's.
  • jakejake 11y ago
    There does seem to be a small group of hot-rodder hackers who are doing that, like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8 - the related videos on the side have a few more who are racing electric cars in old bodies. I haven't seen one with a really classic hot rod body, but that would be really cool.
    • roflchoppa 11y ago
      Yeah i've seen that car, theres also this classic mustang that this texas company was working on. I think the biggest issue (like always) is battery location and storage.
• reustle 11y ago
  > Thanks to Sam Altman for having read an earlier version of this post. Does this add anything to the article, or is it just a way to say "I'm friends with Sam". Do people proofreading a short article expect this sort of thing?
  • nicboobees 11y ago
    It's there to suggest that he agrees completely with the article, and if you disagree with any of it, you must be crazy.
• gambiting 11y ago
  Eeeeeee, coming from a country where average age of a car on the road is 10+ years, I would say absolutely no. And about fuel stations becoming less profitable and closing...how do you think stations survive in remote places of the world where there is very few cars? They increase their prices. And some of us will still gladly pay those prices,because we have to drive petrol/diesel powered cars(trucks are not going to be electric powered for a long time).
• SQL2219 11y ago
  One point not addressed in this article: gas will get cheaper and fuel efficiencies will rise. Internal combustion will not just lay down and disappear.
• SQL2219 11y ago
  Then there is the whole theory that car ownership will go away as driverless cars take over.
• skc 11y ago
  Must be nice to live in the first world. I've always wondered if the realization of this electric car utopia in the first world will eventually lead to Lamborghinis and Porches being dumped on us poor people in the third world like hand me down clothes.
• Corrado 11y ago
  I have test driven a Model S and I will strive to never purchase a ICE driven car again. I, quite literally, changed my perspective on transportation and my life. Previously, I've been lusting after a used 911 or S4 but no more. Tesla has my business, especially if they can pull off a ~$35k in a couple of years. All I have to do is make my current A4 & Honda Odyssey make it a bit longer. :)
• vamur 11y ago
  Without cheap batteries, electric cars are a niche product, unfortunately. And with the Iran deal, oil and natural gas are going to be even cheaper so electric cars would become even more expensive.
• lectrick 11y ago
  > and to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home Wait... What is this??
• ph0rque 11y ago
  For gas stations, the profit from gas is ~1%, but the profit from snacks etc. is much higher. So gas stations could easily add electric charging stations and continue making profit. Source: worked at Sheetz during high school and college, sat through their corporate presentations from time to time. Now, it is true that the electric charging stations have to compete with an additional category: people charging at home, so there will be gas station closings. The first franchise to add electric chargers should still be profitable, though.