Slashdot Mirror
Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point?
HughPickens.com writes: Geoff Ralston has an interesting essay explaining why it is likely that electric car penetration in the U.S. will take off at an exponential rate over the next 5-10 years rendering laughable the paltry predictions of future electric car sales being made today. Present projections assume that electric car sales will slowly increase as the technology gets marginally better, and as more and more customers choose to forsake a better product (the gasoline car) for a worse, yet "greener" version. According to Ralston this view of the future is, simply, wrong. — electric cars will take over our roads because consumers will demand them. "Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy," says Ralston. "The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road. This has changed everything."
The Tesla Model S has sold so well because, compared to old-fashioned gasoline cars it is more fun to drive, quieter, always "full" every morning, more roomy, and it continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements. According to Ralston the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. When that happens even more gasoline car owners will be convinced to switch. Rapidly a tipping point will be reached, at which point finding a convenient gas station will be nearly impossible and owning a gasoline powered car will positively suck. "Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun," concludes Ralston. "The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon."
The Tesla Model S has sold so well because, compared to old-fashioned gasoline cars it is more fun to drive, quieter, always "full" every morning, more roomy, and it continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements. According to Ralston the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. When that happens even more gasoline car owners will be convinced to switch. Rapidly a tipping point will be reached, at which point finding a convenient gas station will be nearly impossible and owning a gasoline powered car will positively suck. "Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun," concludes Ralston. "The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon."
Poooooooowwwwwweeeeerrrrrr!
At least that is my hope. The concept of car ownership is archaic. I look forward to the offloading all the associated penalty costs of car ownership in favour of a service model.
I have a relative who is a part owner of a truck stop. I have heard how low the profits/margins are for selling gas. He tells me all the profit at those places is from the junk food inside... Apparently the deals they make with the gasoline/diesel suppliers are so bad there is almost no profit in selling gas.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Gasoline stations don't sell gasoline. The provide it as a service at near-zero margin as a way to lure you in for the high-margin food and sundries in their stores.
They'll find other ways to lure you in (like adding charging stations).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Even if it's true that the consumer market will be converted to electric vehicles, until electric trucks are also in the market, gasoline/diesel stations will be around for a long while.
EVs cost significantly more than gas cars, don't have the range of gas cars, and apartment dwellers have no way to charge them overnight.
A friend has an electric, she loves it. She also drives 20 miles to work, charges the car in her garage overnight, and her road trips are with her kids and grandkids, who drive their gas vehicles.
Is it the same as for cows?
The move to electric is a natural evolution, and will have a significant impact. The economies of scale in terms of pollution mitigation at power plants will utterly dwarf anything cars have ever been able to do themselves, transmission losses nonwithstanding.
Even if they only displace urban drivers (fewer per-trip miles, more population density facilitating more charging stations), the impact will be transformative. Watch the AQI loop around New York, and you can see air pollution rising and falling along the commuter roads into the City in lock step with the morning commute. I can't even imagine a New York with 50-80% fewer gas-powered cars on the road.
But that's still just evolution. Electric is just a natural step.
Driverless cars are the revolution. Electric makes existing car use patterns better. Driverless makes an entirely new paradigm. It may eliminate mass car ownership. It might eliminate parking lots. It might eliminate light rail in suburban areas. Taxis. Deliveries. Shipping. Police reponses.
Electric makes things better in well-projected ways. Driverless changes everything forever in ways we can't yet even imagine.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
How reliable are they in winter driving conditions? How is the battery efficiency affected by temperature? What about cabin heating? I'm having a hard time seeing any of the current crop being adopted for year-round use in areas that get more than a smattering of snow, or a few days below freezing per year.
Again, this works in the US with big suburbs where everyone has a parking lot with an electric outlet. In other countries (like good old Europe), where most people live in apartments and there is just no way you can plug your car at night, it doesn't work. It is just impossible until you can refill your car in 5 minutes like with gasoline...
Oh, and many Europeans travel 1000+km on a single streak with their cars on holidays. Again, if the cars you want to sell have to wait 2 times 4 hours to refill in such travel, you're not going to sell many of them.
Ecars are good for commuters that live in houses. There are not many of them outside the US.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Some folks believe the key to Electric car adoption is better batteries. The Powerhouse by Steve Levine follows the quest for better battery technology. It's not written as well as it might be, but it's still an interesting read...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/...
Seems like a new Prius shows up in the parking spaces of my apartment complex every other day. Especially in the DayGlo color paint. Could be a Silicon Valley thing.
I'm not driving an EV during a snow storm at night..... The draw from the headlights, defroster and wipers and the batteries being weakened by the cold? EVs are fine for warmer climates, but nor the cold.
According to the article, many gas stations will close once 10% of cars are electric, to the point of inconvenience.
Bullshit. I drove a vehicle with one of the most damn inconvenient fuels out there: Propane. In my province, 0.2% of vehicles run on Propane. In my city are alone (population: ~500,000), there's still 4 fueling stations and I'm never more than 15 km away from one. As I said, it is inconvenient because if you're not somewhere populous, it's rare to find somewhere to fuel up, especially in the US. But it was far from "sell it right now!" levels.
And that's with just 0.2% of vehicles using a particular fuel. At 90% I would expect my average drive to refuel for my gas powered vehicle would go from perhaps 2 km to 2.1 km. Wake me when we hit 30% of cars on the road being gasoline powered, which would make the amount of gas sold equal to the amount of diesel sold right now. Those with diesel cars *STILL* don't worry about being able to fill up, despite being at that level of popularity. I figure when gasoline cars hit 5% it will actually require some small amount of planning to refuel. That's a LONG way away.
what's to stop a Waffle House, IHOP, or similar just having a charging stations outside? I think these "gas" stations or any future derivatives are dead, especially if commercial or environmental regulations are lifted/ nonexistent for electric charging stations.
ANY well made product will outsell a mega-corp "just good enough to maximize profitability" product. But that doesn't mean that electric cars are going to gain in mass acceptance.
I live in an apartment complex - There are NO outlets in my parking areas so I won't have a "full" tank every morning and this is true of anybody not living in a house which is increasingly the way things are as home sales continue to fall. The infrastructure for all this additional wiring just isn't there. Then there's the logistics of who pays for this extra power usage. Everyone seems to think that charging your car will be like charging your smartphone at the local airport and mall. Certainly Simon is subsidizing a VERY few spaces at each of their malls to show how "green" they are. But the power consumption for charging your phone and charging your car is an order of magnitude more. Then there's the increased power consumption - fossil fuel usage doesn't put a strain on our power grid which is already near maximum capacity in certain areas and gets worse during heat waves when the ACs are in full use. You think your blessed wind power is going to resolve that?! You're going to need nuclear power... oh get off the fainting couch... and in the meantime you're just increasing consumption of fossil fuels (natural gas, coal and OIL) to power the plants needed to still charge your car!
Then you have the fact that millenials aren't even bothering to learn how to drive, wanting to bike to work or using public/company provided transportation.
Yes, fossil fuel cars will go away - it's inevitable. But all the major manufacturers are down shifting their electric car production in favor of hybrid engines which are far more versatile and just as nearly green (maybe more) than wholly electric.
Living in Los Angeles, the age of the electric car has been upon us for quite some time. everyone from BMW to nissan makes popular electric cars and sells them for a reasonable price here. The problem comes when you aren't in the second largest city in america.
During a business trip to an office in Ohio I learned firsthhand how awkward it must be to own one of these vehicles. In Blue Ash, Ohio I saw one or two teslas, but Ohio doesn't have a tax incentive like Los Angeles gives people to buy them. So, owners in Ohio aren't exactly the average joe. It seemed a status symbol, as though they mostly buy the car out of a desire to be perceived as 'elite' and progressive. Charging also seemed cumbersome. In LA we charge at parking garages for low cost, or free. most employers offer ChaDeMO charger stations as a perk in their garage. taking your car into the shop? its charged when you get out. Finally dedicated charging ports at some gas stations are also prevalent. None of this infrastructure existed in the cities I visited in Ohio because none of it had to. Gas was $3 a gallon, or less. Traffic was smooth flowing and quick, and mileage largely adherent to highway driving conditions above 50 miles per hour. There is also no public transit, no park and ride to charge the car at while you commute the rest of the way in by light rail.
Ohio also has winter weather to contend with. Most people owned larger SUV's or cars with all-wheel-drive in anticipation of snowy or icy roads, and temperatures well below those we're accustomed to in southern California. The car has to warm and cool much more actively, which im not sure is something electric cars can handle.
Disclaimer: I own a tesla. owning it in the midwest would seem to be a chore.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The ICE Spark is under $15k, similarly equipped, with a range of 360 miles. The base Spark EV is $26,000 and has a range of 82 miles. You're paying over $10,000 extra for the EV. On a $15,000 car. For a car with 1/4 the range. That's a pretty big difference.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Electric cars are sooooo quiet!
Perfect for discreetly driving out the farms for some good ol' fashioned cow tipping.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Kinda like how finding a convenient electric charging station is nearly impossible to find?
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Take this further: We trade gasoline for dense power generation, putting stress on the already-stressed grid, making it necessary to build new power stations cheaply... what's cheap and generates a lot of power?
If the electric car really does take up there are a lot of logistical problems to solve
There are 254 million registered vehicles in the USA.
At an estimated cost of $20k per vehicle to replace (currently below almost all electric vehicles), that's $5 trillion.
At a realistic cost of $35k per vehicle to replace (Model 3 and other options), that's $9 trillion.
The 2014 USA GDP is $16 trillion.
16 million cars total are expected to be sold in 2014. At that rate (which is a high water mark), it would take 8 years just to replace half of the gas cars on the road if every single car sold from today forward were an electric car.
It's hard to get real numbers, but it seems like somewhere between 200k and 1.2 million electric + plug-in hybrids were sold in the USA in 2014. Even if we say it's 1 million/year and the number goes up by 50% every year (incredible sustained growth), it will take 5 years to reach 11.4 million electric vehicles sold per year. At that rate (a more realistic maximum for electric vehicles year sales considering all the reasons why people wouldn't choose electric), it will take another
9 years to reach the 50% mark of all cars.
So that would be 9 + 5 = 14 years for a "best case" realistic scenario for us to have 50% of all registered vehicles being electric. And that's assuming we'll still have 254 million cars on the road in 2030... estimating 350 million would probably be more accurate so it would STILL be only 36% of all registered cars (granted, miles driven may start to favor electric at that point).
So while the % of sales for electric vehicles will likely accelerate exponentially, it's a long, long time until gas stations start getting inconvenient. More likely in the 10-15 year timeframe, instead of having 2 gas stations right next to each other as seems to be very common, they'll start spreading out more. Maybe by 25 years, they'll be reduced in number enough to actually be inconvenient for daily use. It definitely won't be in 10 years.
Revolutions do happen (how many people carried a cell phone in 1990 vs. 2005? That took 10-15 years for a $300-600 item, this is something that costs 100x more), but it takes time and money.
"electric car penetration in the US will take off at an exponential rate over the next 5-10 years"
That's a big claim. It's a growing market, but still pretty small. There will have to be big shifts in the economy of the automobile industry to change drastically in as little as 5-10 years.
"Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy," says Ralston. "The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road. This has changed everything."
Sorry, a $90k car is not going to take over the market. Just....no. That makes about as much sense as saying that since Mercedes' are technically superior to Hondas, Honda is in trouble. They will get cheaper, and THAT will usher in the true age of the electric car, but until a solid EV can be purchased for under $20K, it's going to be a niche market. That will also take time. Hopefully by then we'll see electric pickups and good SUVs as well. Don't underestimate the power of the soccer mom when it comes to buying cars. Not everybody wants a 2-seater with no trunk space.
"According to Ralston the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient."
Not sure where this guy is looking, but in most places, 2/3 of gas stations could go out of business and it wouldn't be a major inconvenience. There would still be one every few blocks.
"Elon Musk has ushered in the age of the electric car, and whether or not it, too, was inevitable, it has certainly begun,"
Fanboi. Tesla was neither the first, nor do they have the best selling vehicle.
Nice to see that electric cars are seen as a viable alternative but I think we're a long way away from the "tipping point" which won't change until consumers attitudes change.
I can't see electric cars being at the same or less purchase price than gasoline powered cars for some time. Don't forget there is also the cost of the charger installation and this could be a very significant cost for people who live in (rented and owned) apartments.
Maybe this will change with the $35k Tesla in 2016/2017 but even that is significantly more expensive than a basic Corolla - if the cost difference is $10k and the car is driven 10k miles/year and gets 25 miles/gallon and gas costs $4/gallon and electricity was free, it would take 6.25 years to make up the difference. That extra $10k seems to be hard to justify.
When I talk to friends/family about electric cars, the issue that always comes up is range. These are people who maybe drive more than 100 miles in a day once or twice a year and this is a huge concern. I don't know what happened with Tesla's robotic replacement for battery packs, but until it is common place or cars can travel 1,000 miles on a charge (and can be charged in less than five minutes) or "Mr. Fusion" becomes a reality, I don't see this not being an issue with the public at large.
Maybe we could see the tipping point if the price of an electric car was comparable to a gas powered car but I think it will take lower costs and essentially infinite range for it to happen.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"expect that future to be here soon."... Soon.. like 50 years?
the tipping point will come when gas stations, not a massively profitable business, start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold,
This idea is simply bogus. Here's a good analysis of the argument, but a choice quote sums up the problem with the argument:
Consider that in 2009 there were 246 million motor vehicles registered in the United States. A 10% reduction would be 221 million vehicles but that is how many vehicles there were in 2000.
Gas stations didn't go extinct in 2000 because there were fewer gas vehicles, and they won't do so now. In fact, there are already fewer gas stations now, mostly because gas-powered cars are more efficient. However, no one started yelling tipping point because gas-powered cars became more efficient, an effect which is probably more important than electric vehicles in the foreseeable future. There still so many that the gas-station-tipping-point hypothesis is BS.
...there's gonna be a market for places to take a piss.
I look forward to the offloading all the associated penalty costs of car ownership in favour of a service model.
You can do that today but you'll have to move to someplace like Manhattan.
There's a lot to like about EVs, If i owned a house and could get a charger, i'd consider a tesla, and if there were an electric jeep wrangler, i'd be all over that thing. massive torque and the ability to roll over indefinitely seems pretty darn cool to me. There's one thing i'd really miss though: Manual Transmission
After a decade of owning an xterra with automatic transmission, i bought a used 6 speed miata. shifting gears is just so much fun. yeah, it's more work, but there's something really rewarding about nailing the perfect down shift, powering out of a turn, and shifting back. it doesn't matter that a modern automatic could do it better than me. it doesn't matter that an electric roadster would perform better. There's just something about knowing I did it.
I can get a brand new, gasoline powered car for under $20k that goes 400 miles on a tank and gets 40 miles per gallon. I don't see an electric car coming anytime soon that would be a better alternative to that considering that gas prices are reasonable (where I live at least). Create an electric car that can go at least 300 miles, is under 20K and can be charged in a few minutes and maybe we'll talk.
Why not just combine both? Large population centers would benefit from it. Ag areas could buy less water. A win-win for the both communities.
Apparently the deals they make with the gasoline/diesel suppliers are so bad there is almost no profit in selling gas.
That is correct. The business model is basically that it is a concession stand that uses fuel as the means to lure people to the store. Kind of similar to how a movie theater makes all their money on concessions because the revenues for the movie (around 80%) go back to the company distributing the movie. Pretty much all the profits in the oil and gas industry are made by the big oil and gas companies. They might have service stations (like ExxonMobil) to vertically integrate the entire supply chain but independent fuel stations really don't make any money on the fuel itself.
I have no doubt that electric car sales will keep increasing as the technology gets cheaper and better. That's true for everything.
But just like the "OMG ... solar panels are exploding onto the scene, and soon, EVERYONE will have them and pay nothing for electricity!" commenters, you've got a group trying to convince us that electric cars are going to take over in just a few more years.
Both groups have ulterior motives to keep hawking these technologies and come up pretty short when you look at all of the facts.
For one thing, even if electric chargers were everywhere and "range anxiety" was rendered a complete non-issue, AND costs came down so electric cars cost you no premium whatsoever over a gas powered counterpart? You'd have the problem that most electrics are still your generic 4 door sedan or economy car form-factor. The last vehicle I bought was a Jeep Wrangler, and I love it -- but I doubt you'll see one of these sold in an electric version for a LONG time, if ever. Not much available in all electric full size pickup trucks either, or in large cargo/conversion vans, or even full size SUVs.
Another problem which the industry is really downplaying right now is your resale value as these vehicles age. Sure, right now, it seems like a non-issue because so few used electrics are even for sale, the ones out there get sold at prices sellers are happy with. What I'm saying, though, is that given enough time -- electric motors wear out. Even simple devices like ceiling fans develop bad motor bearings or brushes wear out inside them and they start making ticking/clicking noises and eventually burn out. Electric cars may not have near the complexity of gas powered vehicles, but that means that instead, they rely on relatively few, expensive parts that make up the car as a whole. If you've got an old battery that doesn't hold much charge anymore, combined with a failing electric motor -- are you at the point where the car is essentially scrap, vs. the cost of repairing it?
I think with traditional vehicles, you're far more likely to have random, smaller components fail over time, here and there. So someone gets tired of spending a lot of money on the "money pit" of replacing dry rotted hoses and belts and other wear items like brakes and they decide to sell the car off -- but the next owner finds he/she got a pretty good deal out of it because then it goes for a long time again with relatively little breaking down. Even a total engine rebuild, while a several thousand dollar expense, means the main part of the car is good for another couple hundred thousand miles of driving again.
His argument is that EV adoption will be like iPhone. The iPhone was so superior to flip phones people had to gave it. So his argument goes that EVs are so 'superior' to internal combustion vehicles that they'll see the same adoption rate. What a crock. The iPhone didn't require you to adopt a new charging paradigm; you already had 120V (or 220V) electric socket in your abode that you used for your flip phone. Fine if you have a house, install your charger in your garage or in your driveway, but do we really think chargers are going to appear in apartment parking lots? Will renters want to pay for them. Or will Uncle Sam force property owners to install them?
EVs remind me of CFL light bulbs. Daft, inconvenient (see how long it takes for one to come on at night in Minnesota in January), stupid things that were shoved down our throats by the government while LED bulbs that are vastly superior were still in development. Somebody just needed to take a timeout and wait a few more years for the correct technology to arrive. When they get FCVs right, then we'll have our vehicle of the future. New battery technology? We might as well be waiting on cold fusion. A fill up with hydrogen or CNG will take about as long as a fill-up with gasoline. I don't see you ever recharging a battery that fast without blowing it up.
And what's the range of a Tesla S with a boat trailer, anyway?
how is a gas car "inconvenient" compared to electric? I wake up, get ready and jump in the car and go to work. I can handle extra 0.5 seconds it takes to start the engine. And I'll take the 5 minute gas fill up and long range vs. recharging with cords for much longer thank you very much.
I wish he was right, I really do. But I have a really hard time buying it. Electric motors, power controllers everything is ready for it..... except for the batteries. They're heavy, have low energy density and their longevity leaves much to be desired. We should begin switching over to hybrid electric vehicles (small fuel engine, small battery pack, electric only powertrain) for the efficiency gains and to get manufacturing switched over to go all electric when electric storage technology is developed that can ICE systems. But for the time being electric only vehicles not only don't make economic sense, but are not all that environmentally friendly when you take into account their manufacturing and power sources.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
EVs cost significantly more than gas cars, don't have the range of gas cars, and apartment dwellers have no way to charge them overnight.
All of which are solvable problems. With scale EVs eventually could be cheaper than gas cars since they have fewer parts. There already are EVs with range competitive with gas cars (see the Model S) and they are only getting better. As for apartment dwellers, eventually apartments will end up providing charging infrastructure though I fully expect this to happen late in the game because the cost isn't trivial.
Electric vehicles will probably reach a tipping point when either A) recharge times get to less than 15 minutes with a 200 mile range or B) EVs with a 500+ mile range are developed and economically feasible. Until that happens we'll see hybrids serving as a technology test platform until such time as the battery technology matures sufficiently. I fully expect most luxury cars to be plug-in hybrids within the next 10-15 years. I think you'll start to see semi trucks and long haul vehicles becoming hybrids with a power train similar to locomotives (diesel with electric motors driving the wheels).
EVs won't reach the tipping point tomorrow or even probably 5 years from now but I do think they are the likely future with hybrids being a stepping stone to get there.
No sub $11,000 electric car that has 100 mile range.
No electric car that can charge in 6 hours at home without spending thousands on a fat charger and an electrician and permits to install it.
No apartments with electric charging stations.
So nope.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If I were to buy a new EV today, with the pace of improvements, in 5 years what would the resale value be compared to a IC vehicle? Battery lifespan, new technologies (faster charge, better range) and one would assume lower prices for new vehicles...I can't see EV user prices being very good after 5 years, and virtually nothing after 10.
I will never consider an EV until they have ~300 mile range and can charge in under 20 minutes. I imagine I'm not alone.
Once they meet that criteria then heck yeah!
And frankly, current ranges on EV's make them pretty much useless for trucks. Who really wants to stop for a couple hours a couple times a day?
You won't see pure EV trucks for a long time. What you'll see is a power train similar to that on locomotives. Diesel engine charging electric motors with a battery bank to deal with the excess. It's very efficient, huge torque and the technology is well understood. I'm kind of surprised we aren't seeing it already.
Exorbitant cost, low driving range, long charge times, lack of charge stations, corrupt government subsidies. We are at a tipping point. Electric cars have failed.
Is that guy serious?
Does he think that if he just starts calling petrol powered vehicles inconvenient that it becomes true?
As several others have pointed out, electric cars are massively inconvenient for those that drive a long commute and/or live in an apartment complex where no charging is possible.
There is simply no means of travel which is more convenient that petrol powered cars. I would love to have an electric car, but for where I live, it simply is out of the question given the massive limitations of today's battery and charging tech.
When someone makes a solar panel system that charges a battery pack at home which in turn charges the car when ever you want. Elon Musk's home battery really missed the mark in this regard. If someone came along with such a setup electric cars would become standard fair.
How the hell am I supposed to find a place to by gasoline for my lawn mower or snow blower in the winter? Perhaps at that point they will have gone electric as well, but electric lawn mowers kinda suck right now.
Until an Uber style company who owns the driverless E.V. cars comes along, the writer of the Article is smoking something. Too many people still need to do construction work, for example, where you have the weight of tools and welding equipment to carry around. Electric won't do that. That is one of many I would assume.
This is a poorly reasoned pile of electric vehicle advocacy built around the idiotic prediction that gas stations will go out of business if we go back to the number of gas vehicles we had 5 years ago. It makes no sense that going down to 90 percent gas car ownership levels will cause the entire petroleum industry to collapse but going up to 10 percent electric car ownership will somehow make charging stations popular and profitable without addressing the multi-hour charge time issue.
Gas is a fantastic way to store and transfer energy and it's not going anywhere. Worst case scenario, we run out of dino oil (not likely any time soon) and we switch to bio-ethanol, which is basically 120 octane racing gas.
The tesla is a status symbol and toy for rich people. It's not a harbinger of explosive adoption of ultra-expensive green cars by the masses because the masses are driving cars that were manufactured 10+ years ago.
The situation is not as dire as in China but I'd guess 75% of US car owning population does not park in a garage. Electric cars are great if you can recharge them at night. Otherwise, recharging during day increases demand during peak hours (unless one has >7kW of solar panels) and wastes time when you're on the move.
Can the electric grid handle charging that many cars every night? Not to mention that there can exist a better way, in terms of overall efficiency. If someone has better numbers than the ones I present here, let's see them! .5*.95*.95*.95= about 43% overall efficiency, and regenerative braking increases that number.
It is known that hydrocarbon powered cars typically turn chemical energy into mechanical motion at about 35% efficiency (45% for Diesels). It is known that large power plants generate electricity from fuel at about 50% efficiency. The process of charging a battery is about 75% efficient, turning electrical energy into chemical energy. The reverse is also true, for battery discharge (75%), and the electric motors of an electric car are about 95% efficient. We multiply these numbers to get the overall efficiency of conversion of original fuel energy into mechanical motion for the car: about 27%. Even allowing for regenerative braking energy-recovery, it looks like ordinary cars win the efficiency thing here. We need better than that!
Consider replacing the electric commuter-car battery with a flywheel. We have the tech to do this for ranges of 50 miles or so. Since the flywheel is a motor-generator, it operates at about 95% efficiency, storing and producing energy. The car still has a separate electric drive motor, also 95%. The numbers are multiplied as before:
There is another factor to consider. To cruise the road at highway speed, a car only needs about 15 horsepower to fight wind resistance. All the rest of the horsepower in a car is needed for related to fast acceleration. A flywheel system can easily provide the power for fast acceleration; it could be accompanied by a small engine that generates 15-20 HP for cruising, and charging the flywheel (plus add regenerative braking). Also, a fuel tank gives the car lots of range (the flywheel doesn't have to be so big, to store energy for even a 5-mile range). Total system weight could be significantly less than today's hydrocarbon engines, and total system energy efficiency will probably be around 40% (an engine designed to run at a particular constant speed, for generating say 20 HP, is more efficient than one that revs at different rates).
And here is one more major factor: chemical reactions usually involve two things that we can call here "fuel" and "oxidizer". This is as true for a battery as it is true for a gasoline engine. The difference is that in the battery, both the fuel and the oxidizer are permanently stored; the total weight of chemicals always has to be carried around. The fuel-burning engine is associated with only carrying the fuel around; the reaction products (mostly CO2 and H2O) are dumped and their weight is never carried around. Now you know why electric-car batteries weigh so much!
We should be thinking about replacing batteries with "fuel cells", because, like hydrocarbon engines, only fuel (most agree hydrogen is best) needs to be carried around, and the waste (H2O) can be dumped. Methods of generating hydrogen are improving --can do it straight from sunlight; no need burn hydrocarbon fuel in a large power plant! That changes the efficiency situation drastically! The hydrogen fuel becomes almost free after the infrastructure is paid for (must be maintained, though); the energy efficiency of generating the hydrogen can be ignored. So we have maybe 75% efficiency for running a hydrogen fuel cell to produce 20 HP, plus three sets of 95% efficiency for the flywheel and the car's electric drive motor(s): about 64% total efficiency, increased a by by regenerative braking.
All of this speculation that "gas stations" will start closing is complete BS. They will just put in charging stations so they still have the traffic that gets people to buy higher margin items like snacks. And the last time I checked every fueling station has electricity. Demands change. Businesses change to adapt.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
That's what happens when one drags his feet.
Try to hold a dog wanting to go outside and then suddenly release it to see how it works.
Electric cars, Global warming, non-IE browsers, Linux/*BSD... there's a point when those paid idiots can no longer fool the majority which finally perceives it has been had; foolish conservatives also admit the idea is good after denying for generations (like the global units standard).
The change then comes swiftly and if you to call those people about the losses caused by their stupidity you may even get lynched -- because changing one's mind about one idea is not the same as becoming a mature, progressive person. They are still looking for witches to burn.
The very same people rejecting new things will be the first to promote them, if there's money to be earned. Lame to the 100th degree.
Now, MAYBE, we'll have rapid-charging technology and much more energy-dense batteries soon enough. But currently, I (living in New York) would be unable to drive to visit my parents in Florida in an electric car.
I'm not the only one with the problem. Ground-based shipping is what will keep the petrol stations alive, at least along the highways, at least for diesel. Does this mean that in the US, people are going to be forced to buy diesel cars to drive long distances?
I can't see electric cars being at the same or less purchase price than gasoline powered cars for some time. Don't forget there is also the cost of the charger installation and this could be a very significant cost for people who live in (rented and owned) apartments.
I don't think we'll see significant adoption of electric cars until they start reaching a significant portion of the sub-$10,000 used car market because most people cannot, or are unwilling, to drop $50,000 on a brand new car especially given how plight things look for the middle class in the past few years. I'm somewhat basing this on when Japanese 4 cylinder engines started hitting the US market around the late 1970's and only relatively wealthy people could afford them but now that it has been some 40 years these cars have had time to saturate the used car market so now everyone is driving a 4 cylinder Honda Accord or similar.
People here can't grasp the free market system and how it works. "Hits head with large book"!!!
Given that most oil sits under countries that hate the West, it'll be cool and funny to see them humiliated, and on their knees begging for handouts.
I have avoided buying a petrol car, and I don't fly with Muslim-owned airlines because I don't want to pay the jizya. The transition to electric cars and sustainable energy strikes a blow for freedom against our ancient enemy.
I am looking forward to seeing the enemy suffer.
Yeah, that's great and all, but does it store 2 weeks worth of power? Where I live I've had power outages that have gone on for 7-12 days multiple times in the past 5 years. I still need to be able to get back and forth to work, drop off the kids at daycare, etc. I can't be stranded because my vehicle won't hold enough travel capacity.
Look, I want a Tesla. A buddy has one and they are nearly perfect cars. Powerful, advanced, technical person's dream, etc.. I don't even worry about the range.
But it's going to be more than 10-15 years before even a single gas station is forced out of business by them. Don't be ridiculous.
...marketing hype from someone who wants people to buy electric cars....
Subsidizing the cost of nascent "green" technology is needed to prod the industry to produce and learn how to make a better green mouse-trap through experience and R&D.
It's paying off now as electric cars are getting competitive. Gasoline engines have been the dominant car technology for a century, and thus have had a lot of R&D behind them. Thanks to subsidies to induce sales and R&D, electric cars have evolved to be competitive with gasoline.
Private companies rarely look more than 5 to 10 years ahead. It's why they have to be prodded via subsidies, etc. Finance theory on ROI teaches one to generally focus on the short-term. Whether this is entirely rational or not makes an interesting debate, but it's the ruling view of the current business world.
By the way, I consider "soft" socialism to be incentive-based. "Hard" socialism would be outright banning products. I'm generally against outright banning for products, such as incandescent bulbs and sugar-loaded Big Gulps. Tax them heavily as a disincentive, but don't ban them.
Table-ized A.I.
"The future of automotive transportation is an electric one and you can expect that future to be here soon."
Soon, eh?
I remember the last time something was supposed to be here "soon". It was IPv6 about fifteen years ago.
I haven't smelled this level of FUD since Y2K.
I don't know where the tipping point is, but having owned an EV (well, a Volt) for a year I can say it's not any time soon. Here in California, electricity is as expensive (if not more so) than gas. There's still sparse charging infrastructure, and even if there wasn't--until you can get at least 50% of a charge in the same amount of time it takes to fill a gas car's tank up, I don't think we'll see this tipping point. It still takes 30 minutes to "quick charge" a Leaf. Otherwise, EV use will still require owning a home to have your own high-speed charger, and the concept home ownership is a relic of the past for most people aside from the extremely rich (for whom a Tesla is the equivalent of a Toyota Corolla).
ralphbarbagallo.com
This won't happen until electric cars with Model S-like capabilities cost $20,000 - $35,000. The Volt and its various competitors don't really count as Model S equivalents, and few would compare them directly. While it's true that you can save a huge amount on gas compared to electricity if you drive a great deal, that's money people are used to budgeting per month and it's not typically enough to compare to the up-front price of the car.
Now, if Elon and Co intended to deliver a Model S at even $35,000 in the next year or two, than I might agree with this claim. Until that happens, I don't see electric cars cresting some enormous tipping point.
The money you can save each month on gas doesn't mean squat when the difference in monthly payments on the cost of an electric car vs a conventional vehicle of similar size can often be more than what you'd spend on gasoline. You can mitigate the issue by extending the duration of the car loan to lower monthly payments, but long-period loans on something like a car doesn't tend to make a whole lot of financial sense.
Also, the effective daily range really needs to go up on most EV's.... (that is, how far you could reasonably expect to be able to go in one day, including any time spent recharging, travelling in absolutely any direction that there are roads in the first place). Sure the range on EV's right now is practical for about 90% of all driving, but when that bloody 10% is going to be a recurring problem, you still feel like you need to have a regular car at your disposal too. But not everyone has the luxury of being able to have two cars... one for commuting and the other for longer trips, especially if they are paying more money for the electric car in the first place.
When EV makers can make a vehicle that is actually priced on parity with what you'd spend on a conventional engine car of similar size plus the cost of gasoline, I will start to consider it... when they can allow me to go absolutely anywhere I want to, and drive a thousand km in a day if I want to, including time spent stopping for a recharge, and not charge me a premium of more than double what I could spend on a conventional engine car of similar size and otherwise comparable style (I'm looking at you, Tesla), then sign me up.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Ever notice how electric car backers seem to assume everyone owns a garage for their car where a charging station can be installed?
With charge times measured in hours, what are all the people who rent or park on a street going to do?
How am I going to make a 600 mile trip in one day with an electric car when I have to stop twice and spend 2-4 hours recharging each time?
People act as if the electricity is free, when in fact most of it comes from coal-fired plants.
Ridiculous. Yet another "world changing vision" brought to you by an entitled, elitist cadre of the Bay Area who fail to understand that the rest of the world doesn't live like they do.
The opening premise "well, a lot of people adopted smartphones rapidly, so they'll adopt this too" already smells like snake oil: people adopted smartphones because they were BETTER in almost every conceivable way to the previous generation of phones.*
*would they have done so, if one had to charge the phone for 12 minutes for every 1 you talked? I doubt it.
Let me debunk the list of putative "improvements" individually: (I apologize to /. users for the stupid format characters, but /. still doesn't understand pasted quotes/apostrophes.)
"It's more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned."
- Maybe it's more fun to drive. A vanishingly tiny % of people in this world buy cars primarily based on their "fun". Nobody gives a flying hoot about 'transmissionless' acceleration, nor does 'fastest' really matter in a world with speed limits.
"Itâ(TM)s quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds."
- I've never once heard someone buying a new car based on how quiet it is. Never. (OK, I *have* heard of motorheads not buying a car because it's not loud enough.) Considering some of the instant off/on tech in the newest cars, they're exactly as quiet as the Magical Tesla while idling, ie silent/off. And aside from older cars which will naturally phase out of the system, the bulk of noise from a highway is tires, not engines.
"It is always âoefullâ every morning one drives it and you never need to go to a gas station."
- Simply, completely, thoroughly wrong. Well, unless you sleep 3 days at a stretch.Further, I don't know about you, but I drive more than once just in the morning.
According to (https://www.cars.com/articles/2013/11/how-quickly-does-the-tesla-model-s-battery-charge/) the nominal charge for a non-special installation (ie a normal outlet) is FIVE MILES PER HOUR OF CHARGE. That's ridiculous - 60 hours to "fill the tank" to the full range, or (roughly) needing to charge 5x the driving duration.
The average commute in the US is 25 minutes. Assuming highway speeds, that's 25 miles. That means to stay 'level' in terms of range, the car will need to charge 5 hours for each leg of the commute. Go to visit a friend in a city 250 miles away? Sorry, we can't go to a movie, my car needs to charge *four hours* for us to get to the cinema and back.
"It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - as superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones."
- I can't really refute iphone-zealotry, that's religion, not fact. It probably does have a better UI than most other firms, as they really made the most of the newest touch-screens and systems (and had no aesthetic legacy to maintain), but this is likely to be adopted relatively soon by other automakers. Nothing particularly special here, except indeed being a little ahead of the likely curve.
"It is connected to the Internet."
Christ. You know that you should really be paying attention to the road, right? 4g works well enough for map updates, which is really all the driver should care about. And personally I find the modern paradigm of everyone sitting in the car watching their own movies, playing their own games, reading their own narcissistic social media addiction reprehensible. We already suffer from an atomized society generally, you're saying it's laudable to encourage this? I have an alternative entertainment that is perfect for trips in the car with your kids or friends: "conversation".
"It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements."
The Tesla is comparable to a fixed-hardware console. Ever bricked your Xbox360? In any case, electronic systems in petro-cars also get better with updates and software.
-Styopa
I don't understand your statement
Didn't think it was all that complicated. Your ICE car can go 200-500 miles between refueling. The Tesla Model S can go 200+ miles between refueling stops. That is good enough for plenty of people and hence it is competitive.
My ICE car has effectively unlimited range.
No it does not because you still have to refuel it no different than an EV. The only difference right now is that it for long distance trips it is much quicker to refuel a ICE vehicle. If you drive less than the full range of the vehicle on a given day (most people drive 50 miles per day) then the EV is actually more convenient since you can refuel it at home when the car is not in use. For local driving I'd MUCH rather have an EV in most cases. For long distance driving you want a ICE or a hybrid right now. In time that may change.
In 2013, the average price for a new car was $32K. Many EVs available right now are below that even *before* any state or federal incentives, and many more hit that point after incentives.
Meanwhile, the average price for a used car was $16.8K. I don't know where you'd get a sub-$10K used vehicle from a reputable source (versus a cash transaction in someone's driveway...)
=Smidge=
The range thing is a red herring, and the people who complain about it are short-sighted and stupid. Even right now, EVs are perfectly adequate for most families, since most families have multiple vehicles. It's very simple: one vehicle is electric, and the other is gas. When you need to drive far, you take the gas-burner. For daily commuting, take the EV. For a dual-earner household, obviously this means that one of the spouses will be driving the noisy gas car, but it's better than both driving them. Right now, there's only so many people doing this because EVs are relatively expensive, but that's changing and before long they'll be much more common, even if used mainly for commuter vehicles.
These short-sighted idiots were the same people who said they'd never use a smartphone, and now they all have one. They were the same morons who said they'd never have a computer at home, and now they all have one. They were the same morons who said that 3 TV channels was all they needed, and now they all have cable, and pretty soon even though they're saying they'll never give up cable, they'll be cutting the cord with the rest of us Netflix users. These people are sheep: they follow trends after enough early adopters do it and prove that it works, even though not long before they were loudly proclaiming that "this will never happen".
EVs don't need any more range than current models to be completely viable replacements for at least half of the US's personal automobile fleet. Their main problem is cost: nice ones (Model S) are really expensive, and cheaper ones are $10k more expensive than similarly-appointed gas cars. Hybrids are a decent middle ground, and honestly I'm surprised those haven't done better, but I guess having an ICE plus an electric drivetrain ends up inflating the cost too much, but the Priuses have been doing very well.
That will not happen anytime soon. Electric is not feasible in any sense of the imagination.
I don't mean this because self-driving is cool. Rather, it will make electric vehicles practical in ways they can't be today, particularly in cities.
If you live in suburbia and have a garage, charging your electric car is no problem. If you live in a condo or apartment, you may not have such easy access to electricity. The solution would be to have charging stations available in cities. But then you'd have to walk from the station to your destination to wait for the car to charge. But if the car can drop you off, and then drive itself to the charging station, there's no longer a problem.
Come to think of it, if this sort of system existed, car share / rental programs would instantly become a lot more convenient.
but I need to stretch my legs and rest a bit after driving 180ish miles. so stopping every 3 hours is still roughly in line with typical driving practices
I enjoy the five minute stop to get gas every 300 miles or so in my own car on road trips. I do NOT enjoy a 30 minute stop every 200 miles... That's called a "breakdown".
That's the kind of thing that turns a 10 hour one-day drive into a 17 hour mandatory two-day trip.
It's not like that is so uncommon either, lots of families I know only really stop for lunch, otherwise they are driving very long distances per day with short refueling stops.
Something else no-one seems to consider is the vastly larger number of "refueling" stations required if most cars are electric, each car has to stop for 10x longer, at shorter intervals...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure electric vehicles might replace commuter vehicles at some point. But what about all the tractor trailers, delivery vehicles, construction vehicles, pickups pulling boats or horse trailers or camping trailers, landscapers, etc. These kinds of vehicles will need to buy liquid fuel for quite some time. Also, the average age of cars in the US is around 12 years. People aren't going to get rid of perfectly good cars just because. Gas stations are going to be around for quite some time.
EVs are not necessarily cleaner or better because they need batteries. Mining of the rare earth metals required for the batteries is mostly monopolized by China, and is an unregulated ecologically damaging industry. A shift to electric will move the US from a being energy independent with fossil fuels to being dependent on Chinese rare earths. At any point, China could make our lives miserable by cutting off exports of rare earths, making it very expensive to make or buy batteries. The cost to restart rare earth mining in the US is in the tens of billions, and a decade or more away after all the lawsuits by the eco-lobby.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
Self-Driving cars are what will drive mass sales of electric cars. Electric cars will always be a novelty until that time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But then how will we ban guns, transfats, smoking, Uber, etc.?
You're destroying half the Democratic Party's business model right there!
Auto ownership has probably hit it's peak, self-driving cars will make the expense of individual ownership less and less appealing in general. And owning an ICE for road trips is ridiculous. Just rent the car.
When did we reach the conclusion that self driving cars is some sort of given fact?
I think it is pretty straight forward that private ownership will decrease though it is not often presented well.
1) Self drive will make taxi's much cheaper by removing the cost of paying the driver.
2) Convenience will increase too, partly through better allocating the available vehicles. This is made easier with self drive since it does not have to link up with an available driver but it is also through better information technology predicting where cars need to be.
3) With cheaper and more convenient taxi's more people will use them. Those that can only marginally justify owning a car will give up their cars. The increased use will also make taxi's more convenient creating a bit of a feedback cycle.
However, I am not convinced that, outside of dense urban areas, the ratio of people who can practically give up their cars even with cheap taxis is high enough to produce the "almost no-one owns a car" utopia. I think most suburban dwellers will still own cars. They just won't drive them. The last driven as much by the cost of insuring a manual drive car as the convenience of autonomous drive.
How barbarous. Rich Americans switching to COAL BURNING CARS. Apparently we hate our environment as eve n its alleged defenders conspire to destroy it!
75% of US consumers and over 85% of US millennials own smartphones. 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.
Really? I guess that handful of futurists who could forsee it must have been rocking Palm Treos in 2002. Or maybe they had a pocketPC in 2000.
I was browsing the internet (through my PCMCIA dial up modem) on a PocketPC and running apps and playing games on the touchscreen in 2001. Obviously a cellular connection would have been desirable but at the time bandwidth was terribly constrained however it wasn't like anybody had any trouble thinking "Well if cellular internet is slow today, eventually we'll get at least dial up or DSL speeds."
If futurists didn't see Smartphones coming they were stone dead blind.
Yes well the electric car will eventually make the Zombie Apocalypse a lot less fun... I mean at least you could scrounge, steal, and fight for conventional fuel to keep on running.... What are you going to do now? Use a hand crank dynamo for 12 hours to get 5min of drive time?
Then again, if you chain a bunch of zombies to a treadmill and stand at the other end, you basically just solved all your renewable energy needs! Then some warlord is going to take over a fitness gym and convert it into a power plant... oh the possibilities!
I get 84 miles to the gallon. What do you get?
Pussy. That's what I get.
Yes because smart phones and cars are just the same. When my phone runs out I can be stuck in the middle of no where and have to hitch hike to get more phone juice?
Sorry this twerps arguments are naive at best and just plain stupid at worst.
The articles predictions just seem utterly unbelievable to me, and I'm trying to decide if they are willfully lying.
Consumers don't demand anything merely because 1 small aspect is better -- If you expect consumers to suddenly stop buying gas powered cars in droves, merely because electric cars are quieter -- you're in for a surprise. If they were cheaper (not total cost of ownership - Joe Six Pack cares about the next payment), and quieter and looked better, and performed better and it was easier to recharge even when you were in vacation 1000 miles from home, THEN yes I'd expect people to begin switching in droves.
I don't know about you, but what stops me from even considering an electric car is gas stations. When there are 100,000 electric stations, scattered approximately as often as the estimated 120k gas stations in the US, then maybe I won't care which tech my next car is. Hybrids are fine, cause they take gas. But pure electrics have a hard sell, imho.
It's not the 90% of the time when I just commute to work, its the other 10 percent, maybe even 5 percent, when I want to drive long long distances back-to-back-to-back. 2 Years ago my brother and I drove almost 3k miles. We're thinking of doing something similar this summer.
If the author things gas stations are not very profitable now, how's he going to convince businesses to become electric charge stations, when it seems that it will cost a lot less to recharge these hypothetical cars -- which limits just how much profit margin could be made from them, Or maybe I don't understand the business model of gas stations -- maybe they make their $$ from cigarettes, not gas. But the idea that electric cars would benefit from every gas station going out of business is crazy. Those are the people he should be trying to convince to switchover. not hoping they go out of business.
I like electric cars for basic transport. Truly no nonsense.
Gas cars are actually more fun in the end imo.
But wait until that X class solar flare hits and knocks the power grid out for a day or two. Doesn't matter if you have a garage at that point. Then we'll see if electric makes sense.
Since electrics are likely still going to remain toys for middle class people, this will mean that people like me who are too poor to buy one are going to find leaving town even less possible! Thanks, Elon Musk!
The car lobby and car culture in the US has been successful at limiting the options for biking.
My observation is that Europe developed a "bike culture" out of necessity because it was economically devastated by two world wars. The resources just weren't available to effect the same high rates of car ownership as in the U.S. The pressure continues to this day, with fuel prices of $6 - $10 per gallon (after converting from Euros and liters).
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
From what it seems, electricity costs less to travel, especially if you have cheap solar panels. However, you can get 100,000 miles of gasoline buying a 10,000$ car over a $20,000 electric plugin hybrid. $10,000 /(3$gallon)=3,333 gallons of gasoline * 32 miles to a gallon = 100,000 miles of travel. If an electric plugin hybrid car can get around $15,000 or less, then it will be a game changer for people who care about economy.
God spoke to me
When I was shopping for a car last year, I looked at the electrics available.
The Tesla costs more than a house so it was right out.
The price difference of the cheapest electric cars was larger that a lifetimes worth of gas for the the comparable gas vehicle. That is even neglecting the cost of electricity. This needs to be fixed or it doesn't matter what tipping points are posted in the blogs.
Electric cars price most people right out of the market.
When you scale down to car or truck size, mechanical transmissions work reasonably well, and are very efficient these days.
True but...
There is a significant loss, compared to a purely mechanical setup, that occurs when you turn mechanical energy into electrical energy in a generator, just to send it over the wire and convert it right back to mechanical energy at the wheel.
By that logic hybrids in cars wouldn't make any sense either but they do. They are demonstrably more efficient at comparable horsepower even in the face of the conversion losses. Doesn't matter if they are plug in hybrids or not. Plug-in technology helps but it isn't a necessity.
If the bulk of the electricity stored in the batteries comes from a cheap source (i.e. an outlet), it still makes sense, but if you are talking about a high endurance application where the vast majority of electricity is generated locally it doesn't.
Being able to plug in helps but hybrids without plug-in tech still make sense economically. I think for something like a semi or a UPS truck it would be almost a no brainer. Honestly unless there is something huge I'm overlooking I think hybrids make WAY more sense for commercial trucks than they do for passenger cars.
A vanishingly tiny % of people in this world buy cars primarily based on their "fun".
Occasionally I see articles about "how fun it is to drive cars" which I think the last time I had fun driving a car was way back in 20th century as a young dude going "cruising and looking for chicks." I second your comment and I don't give a hoot about how fun it is. Traffic is slow, congested, PITA when I have spare time it is not about going "cruising," it will be going places to meet and interact with people, or viewing nature. Exception would be dealing with chores and repairs at home. I sure not going to spend time in the damn car!
Good comments you wrote and yes, probably someone trying to boost stocks or sales. Reminds me when wine sales are down, articles appear from physicians about benefits of a glass of wine now and then.
mfwright@batnet.com
I will agree with the author once the range of e-cars exceeds the range of my current car, about ~450 miles. And for long trips, you are able to recharge the car in 5 minutes. Then I see the gas station going the way of the dinosaur.
Most ICE vehicles in 25-50k range are fairly slow. They will run 0-60 in 5-10 seconds. Model 3 will no doubt start in the 5s and go to 3s based on options. In addition, the vehicle will be considered superior to all other ICE vehicles in that range. My guess is that is when customers will insist that car makers quit focusing on masdive profits and focus on great vehicles.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I get so tired of fucking MBA types that BS without understanding what they are talking about. Numerous studies have shown that the grid and generators in america do just fine with 100% of vehicles moved over, as long as less than 25% charge in the daytime. In addition, if less than 15% charge in the daytime, there is a MAJOR savings to utilities. And as to the rest of your tripe, others have already addressed the fact that not a thing was true.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
he's only concerned for your safety...
If you want adoption to increase, make them like the cars that environmentalists want to kill off - large & inexpensive.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The tipping point will come when a usable battery pack costs less than $30,000 (more than a low-end entire car). Sure, the Model S is nice, but at $70,000 to $120,000, it's beyond most people's means. People can keep claiming they are going to come out with and affordable electric with great range "any day real soon now", but until I drive out of a dealership in an electric car with the 200 mile range of a Model S for less than the cost of Honda Civic, I'm going to keep insisting they are full of shit. (Yeah, the Bolt sounds cool, but again, I'll believe it when I can actually purchase it.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So, when it's cold, you expend some battery charge through a resistor (normally a huge energy waste) to generate the heat you need to keep from losing even more energy. This, in "green world" is what passes for efficiency?
People should also remember that cars powered by any form of internal combustion (gas,diesel,hydrogen,LNG,etc) generate surplus heat as a side-effect which is what's used to provide things like cabin heat in cold weather. An electric car, on the other hand, must dump a bunch of the energy it would otherwise use for moving the vehicle into resistive heating elements to heat the cabin air. The electric car already starts out with a lower energy density power source, and then has to use if in a very wasteful manner in cold weather.
Electric cars are neat in their own way, and they are probably superior in many situations (such as in moderate climate short urban commutes, or anywhere where you want a status symbols that says "I'm wealthy and eco-friendly") but they are less than ideal in rural or cold settings and for most long trips. Attempts to paper that over are like jamming a square peg into a round hole - you can sometimes do it (google: Apollo 13) but it's a bit of a scam to pretend everything is great when you do it.
I live in california.
either diesel Golf or e-golf.
Got the e-golf and never looking back. instant torque, full tank every day, and after tax rebates/ fuel/bridge/maintenance savings, the car is costing us $30-50/mo.
Less than my cell phone for a car.
Also have a nice big truck for weekends/road trips. but it's painful to drive an ICE after driving an electric. the power delivery is just so much better in the e-golf it's laughable.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
We get it. People in massive cities with too much money and not enough common sense love mass transit and electric cars. This guy has a really weak list of arguments:
"It’s more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned." - yeah [1] maybe you've never owned a good car and [2] for the deluxe price of a Tesla, you'd better be getting something amazing! Have you ever driven a gas car that cost the same as that tesla???
"It’s quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds." - yes, that's nice... it probably has a nice paint job too, but that's not an argument for most users who need function more than style
"It is always “full” every morning one drives it and you never need to go to a gas station." - That's not some amazing freebie, you're spinning a flaw into a feature like some Dilbert character. You have to plug the thing in every night and it takes hours to re-fill. What if you get home on bingo charge and then remember you have an errand to run at a distant location?
"It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - as superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones." - Idiotic. You can buy a refrigerator with a user interface too. The function of a car is to transport persons and cargo - you are treating a car salesman's selling point (like candyapple paint) as though it's a valid thing like mileage or towing capacity.
"It is connected to the Internet." - so what? I can get a refrigerator that connects to the web. I'll bet the Japanese sell web-connected toilets. Just connecting something to the web is meaningless. In fact, with a car, it probably adds distraction and will cause some to crash their cars.
"It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements." - um, that's a flaw not a feature. If it keeps needing updates and improvements it was not a completed product when you bought it. I know that software vendors have made a fortune over the past several decades by selling people bad products and then selling "upgrades", but nobody else gets away with this fraud.
"It’s more roomy and has a trunk in the front (the “frunk”) AND a spacious back." - Compared to what? There are plenty of vehicles with far more cargo volume, but i guess if your standard is some tiny little Kia or Honda...) and it's not like the Tesla has found a fourth dimension to hide the battery. How's that ground clearance as compared to, for example, a Jeep? All these data points may be valid, but each consumer has his/her own needs, which this stupid propaganda list self-servingly ignores.
"It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from your phone." - well that makes the gas cars superior; THEY do not need you to manage them via a smart phone.
"It allows you to drive in the carpool lane and to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home..." - as even the author admits this is a government-driven manipulation of the market for a political cause and it's only temporary (it's also only in some ares). As communities see their gas tax revenue going down, they are looking to eliminate all the tax breaks and favoritism currently attached to electric cars.
"All electric cars will become cheaper and cheaper." - wishful thinking. It's possible, but not certain. One thing that is certainly true is that the prices will eventually have the thousands of dollars in government subsidies removed and its very unlikely that volume sales will enable a decrease equal to the increase.
"The range of these cars will soon match or exceed that of gasoline cars." - probably not. One reason gas cars get the mileage they do is that they must be heavy to meet all the government regulations ant their range comes from the incredible energy density of gasoline. As technology has enabled car makers to lighten their gas cars, they
The tipping point for me won't be an electric car, but an electric 4x4 truck. Then there won't be much of an incentive to come into town except to restock the beer and ammo once in a while.
Watch the AQI loop around New York, and you can see air pollution rising and falling along the commuter roads into the City in lock step with the morning commute. I can't even imagine a New York with 50-80% fewer gas-powered cars on the road.
I've been watching air quality around Denver for 20 years. The used to be thick smog over the city every day. Now, thanks to cleaner-burning engines, it takes a rare, severe weather inversion for that to happen. So I can easily imagine a Denver with no internal combustion engines, because pollution-wise, we've effectively made it 95% of the way to that destination.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Driverless changes everything forever in ways we can't yet even imagine.
Something you didn't touch upon: I'm guessing the average privately-owned car is in motion 40 minutes per day; that means it sits around doing nothing 97% of the time. Not good to have so much of society's capital tied up in idle assets! If we could quickly summon driverless cars to get us around, those cars would have much higher utilization rates -- maybe they would be in motion for 13 - 16 hours per day -- in theory, driving the cost of personal transportation way down, with none of the drawbacks of mass transit (like having to walk a mile to a bus stop, and being tied to its fixed schedule).
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Moreover, huge new usages for electricity make me a little nervous, considering our aging electricity infrastructure.
Heck, I'd like a fast, silent car that I could refuel at home. But I don't see a personal use case for it yet.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Betteridge's law of headlines says "No", and that's good enough for me.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
All of the hybrids are done wrong. Parallel hybrid is just plain foolish. You inherit everything bad of each system, and it does not give a way out.
Likewise, the current series approach is equally wrong. You take a large regular engine , hook up a generator, and then run a motor with it. Way too much lose.
The right way is for a company to develop a SMALL 30 hp engine that hooks directly to a matching generator. Together, these will be around 100 lbs. Then put 2+ into a vehicle. For a f150 size commercial truck, do 2. For a semi, do 4 or 5. The only place where real loads occur is during acceleration. For cruising at say 70 mph, a semi will only use 50 kw assuming better aerodynamics. As such 3 engines would run to provide the electricity for the motors AND running the cabin.
This is cheaper to make, and cheaper to maintain.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I posted the exact same comment in reply to that actual blog post and predictably, the zealots are going nuts.
It probably makes me a bad person, because I knew that they'd get upset, and I knew that not one mind (there) would be changed. That's pretty much the definition of trolling.
-Styopa
Electric cars are still too expensive and not enough like regular cars. Society cannot regress. We wouldn't stand for a new type of computer that was slower or only worked for 30 minutes per battery charge. We won't stand for cars that have limited range and issues with climates that are too hot or too cold. Not everyone can garage their vehicle. Some people will have to deal with cars covered in snow and ice, which will require plugged in heating or battery draining, which reduces range. On particularly snowy or foul weather days, commute times in the northeast can increase up to 400%. That is a long time to be drawing heating during inefficient stop-and-go driving. Auxiliary battery swaps could help alleviate this, but they would be limited as the batteries of EVs are based on vehicle design. The main battery is largely unswappable. The bigger problem is the focus on luxury cars. Electric vehicle companies should be focusing on pickup trucks and fleet vehicles. Even regional semis. There is more demand and buyers are willing to pay for the technology because it can result in savings across an entire fleet.
It makes me laugh that no one bothers to look past their facade of green. From the chemicals in the batteries to what it takes to manufacture them to the short life between charges to the fact that 99% of the "Zero Emission Vehicles" in this country are powered by shovel loads of burning coal most people don't want to understand that they haven't even begin to get off of fossil fuels yet.
Is this like cow tipping?
Are We Reaching the Electric Car Tipping Point?
Nope. Next obvious 'no' question, please.
"Electric cars will be better than any alternative, including the loud, inconvenient, gas-powered jalopy,
Loud? Inconvenient? This guy seems to have no clue how a modern gas-powered car works (I have no idea what a jalopy is. Maybe a French word for 'car'?) Another person who thinks people don't like their gas-powered car, even though we gladly buy them by the millions.
The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road. This has changed everything."
I can buy a pretty awesome gas-powered car for $100k. Tesla keeps promising something under $50k, but until I see them out on the road, it is just vaporware. The next person who brings up the Tesla as some type of viable alternative to a $20k gas-powered car gets a timeout in the corner.
I thought hazing was illegal. Besides car tipping evokes the violent mob mentality.
I don't think that gasoline stations will go out of business. Some will, but many will convert over to electric charging stations. If electric cars are to become mainstream we'll need plenty of charging stations along every interstate route. Even with a 200-300 mile range, how are you going to handle a 400-500 mile long trip? For average commuting, and short range vacation trips this range may be enough, but what happens when we want to go cross country?
Trucks are the main reason why we need to overbuild roads, and also the huge contributor to their constant need for replacement. Building roads for light weight vehicles is much cheaper and easier.
"It is connected to the Internet." - sure, what a great idea! Now every hacker from Chinese Army will be able to operate your car ;) And self-driving cars are just around the corner, Internet connected car should be mandatory.
I perfectly understand that Tesla, as any for profit corporation, may be dreaming about some kind of monopoly, when they can remotely disable your car, only they can decide if they want to sell you spare part or not, if you are allowed to fix something on your own car or go to their "authorized" facility that may quote something like $11,000 for bent fender replacement to recoup authorization fees. What a great corporate dream! But no, thanks, I don't want it, I would better stay free from their corporate control.
"the concept home ownership is a relic of the past for most people aside from the extremely rich". ;)
Wow!!! You must be true Californian. The land that taxed and regulated itself to death
No. The most efficient source of hydrogen is thermal electrolysis powered by a breeder nuclear reactor, or (if the local geology permits) perhaps geothermal power. No CO2 required.
We'd have to get over the initial tech investment first though, and (in the case of nuclear) convince the general public not to go apeshit.
Errr, what else would it be? Electric engines are already fantastic: they offer great performance, don't have to deal with nearly as much heat stress, and there's no need to screw around with a delicate transmission.
OTOH, batteries are currently very expensive, bulky, can't recharge quickly (nor do we yet have the infrastructure to allow swapping at gas stations) and have a limited lifespan. The cheap, energy dense, durable, fast-charging battery has always been the holy grail here.
Electric car advocates continually make the flawed argument that because an electric car can have a daily range of 200 miles or so, it can replace the gasoline car for most users. This isn't true at all. People pay for gas cars not just to be commuter appliances, but to have transportation flexibility. Flexibility matters to a lot of people, even if they don't use it, it matters. It's nice to know that if I wanted to, I could drive my gas car the 790 miles to my in-laws house, or 200 miles to my brothers, or 500 miles to my aunts and uncles. It my cheaper for me to take a plane to go by myself, but, add a wife and a couple of kids, then my transportation cost for each trip is about $100-$150 in fuel and my time in driving.
So, with that in mind, I think the real tipping point for electric vehicles will be total operating time on a charge. That means, I want to be reasonably able to drive 10-12 hours on a long road trip with perhaps an hour time for charging. Once that happens, then electric cars will take over for everyone.
With that said, in a married family, having two vehicles, one for road trips, an SUV, and a daily commuter that is electric, makes a great deal of sense. But most families are going to have that "one" vehicle.
This is my sig.
My hope is that you go away very soon, that perhaps all the fake soy products, gender-(jenner)-bending chemicals such as BPA, GMO toxins, medications and vaccines work far too well and far too fast and so before we know it - and before the social architects realize it - .. we've reached that one tipping point we'd all like to see tip:
When enough of you uncritical "progressive and trendy" talking-point repeater nodes shutdown and drop out of the public view. You are a generation of abject losers hurling to the ground at supersonic speeds, hitting hard and throwing up plumes of dust on the planes of the rocky bottom of defeat. And that's coming from an older generation similarly pathetic that itself was played by the same people who are telling you now that growing breasts as a man is sexy.
The whole system is designed for people having stuff "they only sometimes need".
That is the result of technology which has massively reduced the cost to produce items. Once the cost to purchase and store the item becomes less than the cost to rent the item (factoring in something extra for the convenience of ownership) people will buy it rather than rent it. However it is not clear to me that the rental model is more efficient: there is an energy cost to moving the device around as well as the cost of the people to manage everything.
Even if you think of massively advanced technology which might let you 3d-print tools, use them, and then break them down and reuse the raw material to build your next item it is still not a given that the energy cost of that would be less than just storing different objects for occasional use.
Electric cars will never become the mainstay until they can completely replace a gas powered car. Presently there are a number of problems:
1) lack of infrastructure. With charge times being very long on most electrics it takes too long to refuel on the go. Having home users install charging hardware at home is often an added cost, and only solves the problem for one location.
2) up front cost. Most EVs have shit range, and if you want one with good range you're headed in to the luxury car market.
3) very little in the way of used cars. People who buy new cars are suckers who are essentially throwing away 50% of what they paid in the first year of ownership. Used EVs that do show up in this market are often there because they have subpar range or performance.
4) EVs are priced to be a toy for the rich. You'd think that with fewer moving parts and simpler gearboxes that these cars would be cheaper, but this often isn't the case. One can argue that the cost savings over time justifies the higher sticker price, but a lot of people won't take the long term view.
5) Range anxiety. Yes, I get that a lot of people just need a commuter vehicle and that a 100 - 150km range is probably sufficient for those. However, what happens when the edge case comes up where you have to go further, or move to a new city? In a gas powered car this isn't a problem. In an electric this is a major inconvenience.
In order for EVs to really take off public infrastructure has to improve DRASTICALLY. There has to be an EV priced to sell - this means 500km range for ~$20,000 - $25,000 new. People like Musk aren't doing the world many favors by trying to build the most tricked out EV ever for rich people instead of focusing on the majority. This will not drive adoption, it will hurt it.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.