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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."
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.
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.
Does Norway count as an area that has a few days below freezing per year?.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
What the hell are you talking about? I live in Canada, and where I am our winters average between -15 to -30, sometimes -40 on a bad day. Last winter, on all of those days, I saw Tesla's out in full force, including my friend's. It's already proven to be fine. Stop spreading FUD.
Is the battery life not as good as it is in "nominal" (it has problems with very hot temperatures as well)? For sure. Is it unusable? Absolutely not. You can even tell it to start heating from your iWhatever device before you ever get in (or A/C, for that matter).
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...
That's not a long term issue. See (pdf): Electric vehicles in Europe: - McKinsey & Company
The EU’s Clean Fuel Directive, as proposed in January 2013 and being discussed in EU Parliament in March 2014, sets a target of 800,000 publicly accessible EV charging stations to be installed throughout Europe by 2020 – with individual targets being set for each member state. This requirement for publicly available charging infrastructure recognizes that many EV owners, especially in cities, will need to rely on access to charging stations in collective parking lots, at apartment blocks, offices, or business locations, and suggests that member states focus on charging station density in urban areas.
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.
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.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
At present, the TCO is about the same because the lower maintenance and fuel costs are offset by the increased up-front cost. And that is with the government tax credits included. A search for electric car TCO gives dozens of articles that seem to corroborate this.
In the long-term, I believe the TCO of electric cars will probably become lower. I'm betting that electric cars will last longer, the maintenance curve will not increase as the engine ages, and that green electricity sources will widen the gap between gasoline and electricity costs. But at some point we will lose the tax credits.
Just so no one thinks I'm cherry picking my search results: Here are the first 6 Google hits (other than PDFs) and they all agree:
http://www.plugincars.com/tota...
http://www.pluginamerica.org/d...
http://tdworld.com/site-files/...
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/to...
Most of the results are tepid, arguing things like "hey, electric cars are NOT actually more expensive" or "well, it's about the same long term." but are hesitant to declare a clear winner.
It is interesting to note that the average age of cars on the road in the US now is at an all time high. The "pundits" wring their hands trying to discover the cause of this "anomaly", when anyone with half a brain knows the answer:
Yeah, the answer is that cars today are more reliable than they were 30 years ago (all of those advancements in automation and testing), and it's not uncommon to see a car last to 200k miles with minimal issues (as opposed to the 50k that something built in the 1960s would expect).
People are sick and tired of car payments and insurance payments.
If you don't like car payments, then don't finance it. Car loans are, for the most part, a pretty dumb financial decision. It's an item that loses value over the duration of the loan, has a high potential for the value to drop to zero in an instant due to circumstances out of your control, and (assuming you're not in a dense urban environment) is something that has to be replaced asap in the event that it's wrecked. All of those factors mean that you've got a high potential to wind up owing more than the car is worth while simultaneously having to replace it (therefore risking the same situation in duplicate).
A much better choice is to do your homework and decide on a 2-5 year old model with high reliability (there are tons of readily available metrics for this), then pay cash for a low mileage used one. Half the cost of a new one (so less pressure to finance it), and it'll last 10 years if you actually take care of it.
The Volt has a pressurized fuel compartment, so the gas is good for up to a year, and the computer in the car alerts you when the gas has not been used and to turn on the engine.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
On what basis do you make the claim that they are "nicer to drive?
On the basis that everyone that test drives one says the same thing.
I'll put a BMW M3 -- or if you prefer a soft ride a Rolls Royce -- up against a Nissan Leaf any day.
The fact that you have to compare cars from such different classes makes my point. A Tesla is nicer to drive tham an M3. A Nissan Leaf is nicer to drive than a Nissan Versa.
And you have it completely the wrong way around on snow handling. EVs are out in the snow when ICE cars are stuck. It's the low end torque and the extra weight. Don't bother arguing the point, you'll find out if you google.
Biofuels are irrelevant (except for pork barrelling). Virtually all ICE cars run fossil fuels. But when I said in all ways, I clearly didn't just mean the global warming effect. I meant more generally that ICE cars are oily, sooty things.
The important question is: How often do you actually drive far enough in one day to drain the battery and need to recharge away from home.
I know in my own life & commute, the answer is "not at all" - being able to gas up on a long trip just isn't a use case. On the other hand, with an Electric, never having to stop at a gas station is a big advantage/selling point.
Batteries are becoming cheaper very quickly with cost parity expected in less than a decade. The ability to charge faster is also improving dramatically, so those disadvantages of electric cars are rapidly vanishing. It's already a lower cost per mile to drive electric, and maintenance costs are lower on electric cars compared to cars powered by ICE's.
I suspect for an increasing number of people (especially those living in cities or suburbia), the advantages of electric cars will soon be more than sufficiently compelling to warrant a switch to electric.
"Green" has little to do with it. Convenience and cost per mile are big advantages of electric vehicles.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Yes.
As far as efficiency, you fell on your face. Sorry man. The 35% for the car is the engine. That's the max possible, real IC engines in consumer cars are closer to 25%. Your novel idea that that is higher than electric cars get is funny, but no. Also, battery charging using the battery technologies already used in cars is closer to 85% in the worst case, and over 90% average. Nobody is building cars with lead acid. And "battery discharge" is not 75%, the average is over 90%. 75% is the lowest efficiency, which you get briefly at the end of the cycle when the battery is already charged and you're only using a tiny bit of current to top it off. The main part of the charge that uses most of the power is at the higher end of the efficiency range for the battery. You're whacking battery efficiency down twice with made-up numbers and pretending to be science-y.
Battery charging efficiency is actually near 100% below 70% charge. Remember, you're not doing much work here, physically. There is no reason to desire there to be an extra loss here. ;) Discharge loss is also normally only a few percent, not 25%. Almost all the losses in your "equation" are from made-up numbers that are nowhere close to reality.
Fuel cell storage efficiency is only 20-60%. No surprise, because hydrogen atoms are larger than electrons, and so filling up the cell requires vastly more physical work.
Flywheels are super-heavy. The funny part about what you say there is that small flywheels used the same way as electric regenerative braking can increase fuel efficiency in a city, with frequent start/stop, but the mass of flywheel you'd need to be useful at a 50+ mile range would be really heavy, and have huge friction losses. It can be done, it has been done, but you get a slow tank that is inefficient, not a fuel-saver.
Not having better numbers is no excuse for just making them up as if a guess what you use when you can't be bothered to look any of it up, and don't already know about the technologies.
I drive a 16 yo minivan with ~125,000 miles and it is basically "like new" from a practical perspective. It did once have a plugged fuel injector, a dead battery, and a small hose leak. The hoses were ready for scheduled replacement anyway, and the battery was 6 years old. The injector cost $65 to replace, and I was still able to drive it slowly. New cars can get plugged injectors, too. It was plugged the next day after driving 250 freeway miles with 30 city miles and frequent stops in the middle of that, on a hot day. That happens at any age.
It may sound old to some people, but it has electronic throttle control; all I have to do is floor the pedal and I'll accelerate right on the power curve automatically, no wasted revving. Works great with a $12 bluetooth ODB-II reader, too; I can view all the engine info from a smart phone. Any replacement part can be easily obtained from chain parts stores. Any repair or diagnostic will have a youtube walk-through. Not that it breaks down.
The anti-slip does both anti-lock and also anti-slide on ice, with the same processors. It is front wheel drive, but I can drive over a solid sheet of ice and slam on the brakes and stop in a few feet. If there is 8" of powdery snow that slowly forms an ice layer and eventually turns to slush over 2 weeks, I can drive during every stage of that, with regular tires, and never slide around; even freeway on/offramps are fine on ice-covered with powder. I slide a tiny bit, but control is maintained during any slide, so I'll slide a couple inches and correct. All because of a tiny microcontroller in each brake.
I'd love cruise control that can match speeds when behind somebody without cruise control, but that is luxury stuff. There is not much at all that a new car could offer that my used car doesn't already do and isn't available after-market. If my car was 5 years older, I'd have a giant laundry-list of desired features, most of them related to the computers and interfaces.