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> 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 lou

• 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?
        • msandford 11y ago
          That means few millenials will ever be able to own them; real estate is just too damn expensive to buy, nevermind the car that you really only can get once you own a house with a garage.
          • greglindahl 11y ago
            Lots of places don't have super-expensive real estate, unlike the Bay Area and Manhattan. More and more places over time will require apartment garages to have chargers -- already a law for new construction here in Palo Alto. Personally, I charge at the city parking garage a block away.
            • msandford 11y ago
              So let me get this straight. In the "flyover country" where you DON'T get big city salaries, you're going to buy a $100k-$150k house because you don't make six figures. And then with all the leftover money that you don't have because you're not earning SF engineer salary, you're going to buy a car that costs anywhere from 25%-50% of your house?
              • greglindahl 11y ago
                Last I lived in flyover country, I bought a $162,000 house on a $55,000 salary, and owned a car a bit more expensive than a Leaf. So yes, it does work. And that's the owning a house case. There's also the "renting an apartment at a modern complex" case.
              • bpodgursky 11y ago
                Bay area house prices are not proportional (even discarding the effects of higher marginal tax rates). 150K salary for a million dollar house is not easy; 150k house on 50k salary (and a 3x salary difference is a bit of an exaggeration, while house prices are not) is much more plausible.
                • 11y ago
      • baldeagle 11y ago
        There are a number of players looking to open up that market. It will be a second order effect, once electric charging becomes a market driver for high end apartments. See this link for a quick example: http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/15/chargepoint-offering-solution-charging-apartments-condos/ http://cleantechnica.com/2015/04/15/chargepoint-offering-sol...
      • sahat 11y ago
        If you own a Tesla Model S and live near a supercharger network, charging is not an issue. Over 8,000 miles in my Model S, all powered exclusively by the superchargers, free of charge. Note: I live in an apartment less than 2 miles from the nearest supercharger in Los Angeles and only 8 miles from work. So, the range is never a problem.
        • vtsrh 11y ago
          Tesla Superchargers are not the solution for this, as they are simply not designed for such use. They were built to help with long range destinations. There are cases where users, (ab)using them as you do, got a request to reduce their usage. I guess you didn't trigger any flags.
      • adevine 11y ago
        As electric cars become more and more popular, more and more apartment buildings will start offering charging stations. My condo building added them about 2 years ago.
      • cbhl 11y ago
        Electric Car-sharing, just like how since you don't have a garage you would use normal car sharing (Zipcar). If you live in the SF Bay Area: https://us.drive-now.com/ https://us.drive-now.com/
      • ryandrake 11y ago
        Not only that, but commutes > the range of the car make it impossible as well. The only thing stopping me from buying a leaf is that my commute is 50 miles, so if I don't find a charging station near work, I don't get home.
      • higherpurpose 11y ago
        Electric car infrastructure is "cheap" (compared to say hydrogen stations or even gas stations). Chargers will be everywhere by the time 20% of the car market is electric. I wouldn't worry too much about it if you're not planning to get an EV in the next 10 years anyway.
      • VLM 11y ago
        "don't have a garage where we can install such things" Why? In the frozen north its, maybe not customary, but not overly unusual, to have parking spots wired for engine block and battery heaters. Theres a whole cultural thing of not blocking other peoples access, a legal framework of not blocking sidewalks, when its OK to share, or not share, someones extension cord, stuff like that. Its just not a serious issue. The cost of one parking spot was rolled into my bachelor pad, but when space was available I could get another spot for $25/mo or whatever it was, surely a charger spot would have some minor additional costs, but chargers are pretty cheap compared to land and pavement and buildings. I guess the only technological limitation I can think of is service drop size, if you wire up 200 parking stalls at 25 KW each you're probably going to have to upgrade the service drop or implement something "interesting" involving partial charge rates. Presumably someone will start shipping an apartment charger that can bluetooth pair with its neighboring chargers and cooperate such that the total average draw of the entire lot never exceeds 100 KW or something like that. 100 KW is a drop in the bucket for an apartment building, thats like 1000 watts worth of TVs or lights in each of 100 apartments. Dinner time on a hot summer night is a large multiple of that draw. House service drops used to be just 60 amps a few decades ago and now 200 is pretty standard... if you think service drop upgrades for a house are expensive, imagine the cost of an entire apartment building upgrade LOL. Of course this may be a short term thing... solar panels may mean apartments will be net producers while the sun is up, soon enough.
    • rconti 11y ago
      For passenger capacity, note that most car owners utilize 1/4 or 1/5 of their available seats. Yet while all 3 of my vehicles (2 cars and a motorcycle) are 2-seaters, virtually all of my driving is solo (and I'm not even talking about commuting -- I'm primarily a bicycle commuter. Okay, my other 3 vehicles have 1 seat and 2 pedals). The "average" or typical use case is not how people choose their vehicle. They choose it based on the uncommon use case. The executive buys himself a Porsche not because it will get him anywhere any faster, or because she really knows how to drive it, but because it projects an image of what she could do. The SUV is sold on the promise of rugged camping trips and dodging boulders to transport the children safely back home under conditions that can best be described as "apocalypse". Hell, I have many car enthusiast friends who have bought practical, boring cars because they've got that 3rd row seating for hauling their kids' friends.... before they even have kids! For 99% of use cases, yes, the electric car is cheaper and more convenient. But my next car will be a comfortable, powerful, gas-powered car with AWD. Why? Because today's weight (and efficiency) penalty for AWD is basically zero, and on the one trip to Tahoe a year where chain control is in effect, I won't have to freeze my digits off trying to fit chains (or, worse, get taken out by a vehicle careening out of control in the snow).. and I won't have to hunt down nonexistent charging infrastructure where I don't have a driveway, let alone a garage. It will be for the 2 roadtrips I take a year. It will be because, while the electric car is better for MOST of my driving, it doesn't accommodate the rare circumstances we really buy vehicles for -- Because the electric car isn't enough better at the 99% of use cases to make up for its virtual uselessness at the 1%. I love electric cars. I've driven the i3, various hybrids, and the Tesla Roadster and Model S. Some day I will own an electric car, but I wouldn't surprise if the tipping point takes quite a bit longer to trigger than he expects.
      • hvidgaard 11y ago
        Peoples choice is guided by what they percieve they will use the car for. So you buy a minivan if you have children, because there will be situations where you need the space, if you have more than 2 children that makes sense. And as you mention, you buy it for the two roadtrips. I know people who spend a crapton on an station wagon two classes larger "because they need to move shit every now and then", completly ignoring that if they just choose the car that fit their every day needs, they can rent the car they need for special occasions and come our way ahead financially. Many people own 2 cars as well, and it just makes sense to at least make one of them an electric. That is in my opinion will be the tipping point where there is enough demand to heavily invest in proper charging network.
  • mod 11y ago
    So we just need those fast-charge batteries that garner a press release every couple of months. Surely they're just around the corner!
  • paganel 11y ago
    > I think electric cars win on every metric except range and refill/recharge time. And price. Maybe everyone on here is a millionaire or about to become one, but $70,000 is a lot of money. Hell, even $20,000 is a lot of money for me (I live in Eastern Europe), even though for most of the people in here it looks like small change. And if it matters I am currently living a sort of middle class life in these parts of the world.
    • butwhy 11y ago
      The comparison is between cars, not price. Prices will come down eventually. When the iphone came out, did you cry about how it will always be a niche product because the nokia 3310 is so much cheaper?
    • lmm 11y ago
      To be fair the iPhone was a ridiculously expensive proposition when first introduced - something like 3x the normal cost for top-of-the-range phones at the time.
• higherpurpose 11y ago
  That's not quite true. In 2007 you would see 90% of the Internet comments talk about how feature-less an iPhone was compared to the Nokia N95 (or whatever was its Nokia competitor at the time). In fact there were some memes comparing the iPhone with a rock. The original iPhone didn't have video recording, had only 2G support (Nokias supported 3G for a while), didn't support MMS, and it didn't even have apps! And of course something like 1/3 the battery life of Nokia phones with 2" screens. The iPhone at the time "only" had the benefits of a big screen, touch, and an "easy to use interface". But that was about it - which of course was game-changing. But the point is it didn't have "many" benefits over the phones at the time. Quite the opposite (especially from the perspective of Nokia/Blackberry/etc phone users at the time - which were 99% of the people). Electric cars have maximum torque (and usually much higher than your average gas-powered car in the same class) from the moment you put your foot on the pedal, they give smooth liniar acceleration (no gear changing), are very silent, cost much less to recharge (about 1/5), have 1/3 the maintenance costs, an order of magnitude fewer parts that can break on you, and have the potential to use 100% renewable energy in the future.
  • dzhiurgis 11y ago
    Maximum torque will get you home faster by... 1%? You still can't fly in residential areas at 160MPH. Whereas big capacitive touchscreen allowed to read text at least twice as fast. And you can actually manipulate websites UI. That's entirely new enabler. Electric car does not enable you to sleep in it or grow potatoes. It's a great car, but still a car.
    • brc 11y ago
      one-pedal responsive operation is a win in the same way multi-touch is a win. It doesn't sound like a big deal,but once you get used to it, everything else seems dated. Operating multiple pedals to operate a vehicle is a leftover from crude technology. Sure, some people like it that way (a set that includes me). But for most people, once they get used to push pedal a bit to go slow, a lot to go fast, let go to stop - they will love it because it makes more sense. To operate a internal combustion/geared car, you have to modulate the pedal to match the acceleration rate and gears. Max pedal pressure to start, lightening off, re-pressing when gears go up etc. It's normal because it's what we're used to. Single gear, peak torque engines are much more intuitive to drive. That's why toddler can handle electric toy cars so easily.
• Retric 11y ago
  Electric wins on, low end acceleration, safety, noise, and at normal driving levels lifetime costs. They require significantly less maintenance, but it's currently more expensive. Realistically as charging stations become more common you can expect adoption to keep increasing which is a very positive feedback loop. PS: I suspect eventually we will simply directly power cars on the freeway which eliminates range concerns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-level_power_supply