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Electric Vehicles Can Meet Drivers' Needs Enough To Replace 90 Percent of Vehicles Now On The Road (phys.org)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Phys.Org: Researchers at MIT have just completed the most comprehensive study yet to address whether or not existing electric vehicles could bring about a meaningful reduction in the greenhouse-gas emissions that are causing global climate change. Yes, they can. The study was published today in the journal Nature Energy. Phys.Org reports: "'Roughly 90 percent of the personal vehicles on the road daily could be replaced by a low-cost electric vehicle available on the market today, even if the cars can only charge overnight,' Trancik says, 'which would more than meet near-term U.S. climate targets for personal vehicle travel.' Overall, when accounting for the emissions today from the power plants that provide the electricity, this would lead to an approximately 30 percent reduction in emissions from transportation. The team spent four years on the project, which included developing a way of integrating two huge datasets: one highly detailed set of second-by-second driving behavior based on GPS data, and another broader, more comprehensive set of national data based on travel surveys. Together, the two datasets encompass millions of trips made by drivers all around the country. By working out formulas to integrate the different sets of information and thereby track one-second-resolution drive cycles, the MIT researchers were able to demonstrate that the daily energy requirements of some 90 percent of personal cars on the road in the U.S. could be met by today's EVs, with their current ranges, at an overall cost to their owners -- including both purchase and operating costs -- that would be no greater than that of conventional internal-combustion vehicles."
How about all the people that live in apartments with first come first serve parking? Or people that park in the street? Or way down the street? Overnight charging is not simple for everyone.
as soon as they send me a cheque for $36K I'll get one asap, until then I'll keep driving my 2011 Yaris, 2015 Journey, 1984 D150 and a lifted 1988 Bronco.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Until electric cars have better range and there are more charging stations installed they will remain a niche market that few will have any interest in.
Great, send me the electric vehicle that replaces my '98 Ford Escort at trade in value. And it better not be a used golf cart.
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Electric vehicles could replace most of the trips taken. That is not the issue. The trouble arises where every driver has that one trip a they make that cannot be met by an EV. You end up owning two cars or you get one efficient gasoline vehicle.
Around here Leafs are getting common but you don't see them in the mountains on weekends.
By working out formulas to integrate the different sets of information and thereby track one-second-resolution drive cycles, the MIT researchers were able to demonstrate that the daily energy requirements of some 90 percent of personal cars on the road in the U.S. could be met by today's EVs, with their current ranges, at an overall cost to their owners -- including both purchase and operating costs -- that would be no greater than that of conventional internal-combustion vehicles.
Achille Talon
Hop!
I would love to switch to an electric vehicle, but the reality is that after moving into the city, I might go weeks at a time without touching my car. Also, I tend to make 8 or 10 long-haul trips a year, which wouldn't be feasible in even the best electric vehicles. Yes, I could rent a vehicle for those trips, but then in my situation, I'm renting the vehicle just to drive 500km, park it for a week, then drive the 500km home.
If I wound up in a family situation where we became a two car family, absolutely, an electric vehicle would make sense for one of them. On the other hand, my car (a 10 year old Jetta TDI) is still extremely reliable, and very cheap to operate, and still one of the more efficient vehicles on the road.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
When they can get the batteries to last properly in Ontario Winter temperatures, and go further than 100km on a charge il consider one. until then i dont plan on having to make a overnight stay in the closest city before heading home the next day just so i can go shop at costco.
So if you switched 90% of the cars on the road for low cost electric vehicles, then it would save 30% of the power plant emssions. If you changed 90% of cars for low cost *petrol* cars how much would you save? i.e. How much of the saving is removing the gas-gusslers from the road, and how much from the petrol to electric change?
I drive a Mitsubishi Mirage 3 cylinder petrol car. It's a tiny car, cheap, a tiny engine, it gets a shitload of mileage, accelerates fast due to the light weight body, does the Kessel run in.... well its the perfect car for town and asian highways (lots of slowdowns and traffic). It's about 3 times as efficient as my previous truck.
I doubt its the change from gas to electric that saves the 30%, I bet its the change from trucks and big saloons to "Ford Focus Electric or the Nissan Leaf".
But then you'd get that from switching to the Ford Focus Eco, or the little cars like mine.
Ok, lets NOT talk about a power grid that would be completely overwhelmed and collapse without billions in investment..
I grew up in the mid west, where winter temperatures frequently spend weeks in the below zero range - battery efficiency simply doesn't work well enough there... so cross off 1/3 of the country..
Now I live in the PNW (pacific northwest, for you non-tree huggers) , I commute about 15 miles to work, and yes and EV would suit my commute need - BUT, I pull a camper for vacations and hunting, so my usual driver is a Ford F350 diesel... I have no room to park another vehicle. So either I give up all my hobbies, or 'they' build a 4x4 EV with a 300 mile range while pulling a 30' travel trailer. (Actually, I usually drive a motorcycle to work, unless it's raining - remember, the PNW thing, so that happens alot)
In full disclosure, my wife drives a Prius. Her commutes are anywhere from 2-4 hours, depending on destination. (she's a corporate officer for a company with many locations) The 50 MPG is good enough, and we don't have to worry about a charge problem or availability when she's a couple hours away. So between the Plains/Midwest temperatures, lack of infrastructure across the entire US, or lifestyle - I'm would be willing to bet the actual number of people who COULD switch on a practical basis to an EV is fractional of their WAG number.
Wake me when they can fit in 90% of drivers' wallets.
I'm not interested in a car that gets me to 90% of the destinations I need to go to. Odds are those 90% are able to be handled in lots of ways (including borrowing the neighbors car). I'm interested in the other 10%. Do they have an electric vehicle that can carry lumber and sheets of plywood from the hardware store? Do they have electric vehicles that I can take on a remote and rough dirt road so I can watch the sunrise from a vista? Do they have an electric vehicle that I can put the kids in along with all their friends? The answer is NO. The solution is simply to not replace the standard vehicle but to add an inexpensive and highly efficient vehicle such as the Elio that can be used for 90% of the tasks. Then I can use the truck / off road vehicle / minivan for the other 10%.
Spin up those coal fired generating plants.
Have gnu, will travel.
75% of my driving could easily be accomplished with an EV. 25% can not. Therefore an EV does not meet my requirements. The same would be true if it was 90/10 or even 95/5%. If I got all the way up to 99/1% (about 3 days a year) I might be willing to go to a rental for special occasions, but until then a low cost EV just doesn't cut it. A high end (Tesla) with long range would probably work, but I can buy a lot of gas for the $40K price premium over an Accord.
A couple years ago Elon stated that he was focusing on decreasing cost instead of increasing range, precisely because of this sort of thing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Some pros: .
.
- The lack of engine noise definitely reduced my daily commute stress.
- Way better USABLE acceleration means I can easily change lanes anytime (I am sure a race car driver in a comparably priced ICE standard transmission could beat me, but most people are not race car drivers. An ICE car driven at the same routine acceleration would not last very long, runs the risk of going out of control due to the inconsistent torque, and is embarrassingly loud at pitiful speeds. When we occasionally rent an ICE vehicle, I am blown away by how crazily loud a little punch on the pedal is, resulting in an unsatisfactory driving experience in comparison. Having an EV has killed the joy of driving an ICE for me. .
- Guiltless endless A/C when parked.
- For my routine driving, I never have to worry about "stopping to fill up" because I am doing that every night at home.
- Even at these gas prices, electricity + battery is cheaper.
Some cons:
- The endless times I get to hear "resale value sucks for EVs" because an entire industry is unable to factor the $7,500 tax credit new purchases get. .
- Range. . . though Austin, TX has put in a network of supercharges, so not really the case for me anymore. Range never comes up during my usual driving routine, though.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
The power grid is very lightly used at night. That's the sane time to charge most vehicles, and to buffer energy for the following day. There's no power grid problem in the sense of "not enough power." It's a logistics issue.
Technology issue, presently unsolved -- but ultracaps can provide the temperature extents and service life if and when they get them into an energy storage / size / weight range needed. Remains to be seen if this can be done, but odds seem pretty good that it can from my POV, given progress to date. That's an IMHO, of course.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And what about low income poeple like myself? I guess we just get fucked when they ban internal combustion engines?
I have a gasoline car. Sure, 90% of what I do could be done with an electric can. But I still need a gas car. An no, if you think I'm going to go out and rent a car when I do need a gasoline car then you're full of it. I'm not going to own a gasoline and an electric car for one simple reason, the insurance industry is running a huge scam in getting the state legislatures to force us to have liability insurance on each vehicle we own even if we can't be driving them all at once.
If you have a teenage driver in the family or you ever have an accident or know anyone who has, you know the insurance is really on the driver and not on the car. And the driver can only drive one car at a time. The only reason we pretend the insurance is on the car and not the driver is to make more profits for insurance companies. Otherwise we should not require liability insurance on more vehicles in a household than there are licensed drivers in the household.
So if you want clean air and reduced global warming, then get the damn laws cleaned up to not give the insurance companies a windfall when a person owns two cars, or a household owns more cars than they have drivers. Until then people like me who need the ability to fill up on the road when on a trip beyond the range of our toy electric car, will need gasoline cars. As expensive as it would be to own a second electric car, it would be more expensive to take the double hit on liability insurance (I have a good driving record and no points against me and I already pay more for insurance each year than I do for gas). There is no way that I or others like me are going to spring for an electric second car and then enrich the insurance companies further than we already do.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm kinda wondering - CO2 sits at the bottom of a tank because it's heavier than air.
If you made airtight fish (with the tops open) tanks about 12 foot high then stuck them in a desert - let one be just air, and the other have a high concentration of co2 and put a temperature sensor in both - that should solve the whole co2 debate.
Am I wrong in thinking that?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
I think this study fails to see people as people instead of only in aggregate. If an electric only met my needs 90% of the time, I still need a different vehicle for 1/10 trips - and so would almost everyone else. That's not the same thing as 90% of people not needing internal combustion - and the study even mentioned a need for car sharing. And that is not a small percentage, when you consider the overhead of coordinating a car share.
So yes, the road could be mostly barren of internal combustion if everyone was on board, but that lost convenience is a cost that most people will still want to pay for if the other choice was sharing a car.
It sounds like they analyzed in terms of vehicle-days, not in terms of owned vehicles. The press "helpfully" converted this into "90% of vehicles" which is inaccurate. Yes, probably 90% of vehicles driven on any given day could be replaced by current EV ranges. But I'd guess probably 95% of vehicles can't be replaced by current EV ranges. See, the vast majority of cars are driven short distances nearly all days. But a few times a year they're called on to drive 200-500 miles in a day, for things like that drive to Grandma's for Thanksgiving, weekend trip to Vegas, etc.
If you applied the same type of analysis to car safety, you'd find that 99.99% of vehicle-days, seat belts don't protect you. And therefore it'd be ok to get rid of seat belts in cars.
The flip side of this is that vehicle-days is a valid metric if you can convince people to rent an ICE car for their few trips a year which exceed an EV's range. People erroneously think they've paid a lump sum for the car when they bought it, so driving it for that one long trip is "free" while they have to pay "extra" money if they rent a car. I've been trying for years to convince people that the cost of a car (as well as most other things) is a rate, not an amount. The cost of fuel, maintenance, and depreciation to operate a car is usually in the ballpark of 40-50 cents/mile (insurance drops out since it's mostly based on time).
So driving 500 miles (round trip) to Grandma's for Thanksgiving actually costs you about $200-$250 of expenses and depreciation. Renting an ICE car for those few long trips is very competitive. And you can use your EV as for the other 95% of days.
* somebody is else is paying.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Haven't owned a car in over a decade, but if I do get another it will be electric. My state has good support and the range fits my needs.
One with a fleet of vibrators in her motor pool.
But the $7.5K is a non-refundable credit -- it reduces your taxes, but not past zero. So if you believe that all taxation is theft, maybe you should buy as many electric cars as you can so you can zero out your tax bill.
Amory Lovins worked out the current cost situation a while back in his book "Reinventing Fire." According to him, fuel cell vehicles will also reach parity in a few more years, so there is the other 10% covered.
The dozen or so largest container ships together emit as much carbon as all the cars in the world combined. We keep building these ships bigger and more quickly every year. Eliminating car emissions wouldn't make a difference to global warming. Making more enviromentally friendly cars is just a marketing tool.
By their own statistics, the all electric vehicle would not cut it on an average of 3 days a month. Seems like its not quite ready for prime time just yet. Maybe its ready to be that second vehicle for folks with short commutes, but electricity is not free. The same environmentalists that advocate all electric vehicles would oppose building all the power plants needed to keep them charged if everyone actually had one. Instead we have "flex alerts" and tiered power usage fees.
It would seem they are making some assumptions that I'm not so sure will prove to remain true over time. One thing they assume is that the price and capability of electric cars will remain stable or improve.
I have little doubt that we'll see battery technology improve. What I do see is that batteries are hitting some very real physical limits. The way batteries work means that there are limits to how much energy that one can store per mass and volume. Add on top of this the need to withstand considerable forces, over long periods of time, and remain safe enough that people can be within arms length of it. I suspect everyone reading this has seen videos of exploding laptops, read stories of laptops self immolating, and of house fires caused by faulty batteries in everything from cordless tools to those wheeled skateboards that college kids enjoy so much these days.
It's not just the safety of high density batteries but the cost. Some advancement in batteries is due to chemistry changes, but much of it is from increased complexity. Adding complexity adds cost. The chemistry comes at a cost too. Lithium is a popular material for batteries but that element is not especially plentiful. I'm not suggesting we'll run out of the stuff only that with increased demand comes increased cost.
Then there is the assumption that hydrocarbon fuels are somehow problematic. With few exceptions the demand for electric cars comes from a belief that hydrocarbon fuels are "bad" for us. While I do share the belief that we should find alternatives to importing oil into the USA I do not believe we need to dispose of the hydrocarbon fueled vehicle to do it.
I will say that I do not believe that burning fossil fuels will bring catastrophic climate change. I believe that the problem of burning oil is economic. The USA should be able to produce all the oil it needs domestically if only the federal government would allow us to do so. But let's ignore that as I will concede that fossil fuels are problematic if it means we move to finding viable alternatives.
The reason I've been saying "hydrocarbon" fuel instead of "fossil" fuel is for two reasons. First is that I believe that oil from the ground is primarily from chemical processes within the earth, not from long dead plant and animal life. Second is that we can produce hydrocarbon fuels without having to pump it out of the ground.
We know of ways to produce hydrocarbon fuels from things like sewage, waste products that we'd normally landfill, and seawater. What it takes is an energy source that is other than carbon we dig up from the ground. The best source is nuclear power. The US Navy has been researching ways to get hydrogen and carbon from the sea and use that to synthesize hydrocarbon fuel. By doing this we close the loop on carbon. The hydrocarbon fuel from this process will, when burned, return to carbon dioxide and water. The rain will return that CO2 and H2O to the sea where it can be reconverted to fuel again. This means no more drilling for oil.
I see the solution in synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. We do this and people won't have to compromise with electric vehicles to reduce the carbon added to the atmosphere. I see the solution in nuclear power, not electric vehicles.
Suppose this synthetic fuel technology never does work, that still leaves us with electric vehicles getting charged up with electricity from coal and natural gas. Nuclear power is cheap, plentiful, reliable, and safe. We cannot say the same for solar and wind. If we all agree that "fossil" fuels are bad then that means we need to replace it with something just as cheap, plentiful, and reliable. That means nuclear power. Anything else is suicidal and/or wishful thinking.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
People now charge their cordless phone, mobile phone, wearable, tablet, game device, home laptop, work laptop, power bank and cordless vaccum. And regularly change batteries on their wireless mice, wireless keyboard, TV remote, cable remote, game console remote, smoke alarms, burglar alarms, radio and alarm clock. And, if frugal, think about battery lifetime and replacement batteries for their cordless phone, mobile phone, wearable, tablet, game device, home laptop, work laptop, power bank, cordless vaccum and hybrid car. And if ecologically-conscious, think about rechargeable batteries for their wireless mice, wireless keyboard, TV remote, cable remote, game console remote, radio and alarm clock. And responsible battery disposal.
In addition to all this, we now get to charge the car each night - not with a USB cable or meek little battery, but a heavy duty cable that can instantly kill us if things go wrong.
Who's servicing whom exactly?
This little nugget is buried deep down in the article:
The study cautions that for EV ownership to rise to high levels, the needs of drivers have to be met on all days. For days on which energy consumption is higher, such as for vacations, or days when an intensive need for heating or cooling would sharply curb the EV's distance range, driving needs could be met by using a different car (in a two-car home), or by renting, or using a car-sharing service.
So the expectation is that the average person who leaves the city limits now and again has access to a second car with a gasoline engine.
The problem is that most cars are compromises for users. When I'm commuting to work I could use a pretty small vehicle, but when I'm out and about for other activities then a large vehicle suits me better. Living in an apartment restricts my options too, as well as road tax issues.
So either I have a commuting vehicle or I have a vehicle that also fulfills my other needs, having both is not really an option.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Just don't mention that more greenhouse gasses are created by the American cattle industry in 24 hours than by all cars in the entire world in an entire year.
You aren't fixing shit.
So many here are arguing against going with EVs. The arguments are varied. But most are missing a very important point that few car makers and no car dealer will tell you. German car makers are busy trying to compete with Tesla and losing ground. Their sales are plummeting on the models that compete with MS and MX. Some guy looked into why BMW is now advertising against Tesla M3 , with good car bad car data, and found that their 300 series sales have also started plummeting.
German car makers are working furiously trying to get real EVs going. This will mean that resale values of used luxury ICE cars will do a massive drop in value. In.fact, once M3, and MY hit the markets, it is expected that cars that sold for 25k and above will lose their resale value. The real question is not can you afford to move to EVs, but can you afford to lose massive amounts of money? Obviously, if you drive a Kia, don't worry. You have 5 years before your resale values be hit. Otoh, if you bought a caddy, BMW, Lexus, etc in the last 4 years, you should be concerned unless you are the type to drive it into the ground.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So do you think that you're stating anything that EV owners don't know about or haven't acknowledged? The article states 90%, the EV supporters have generally acknowledged that EVs are not (yet) for everybody.
So you're part of the 10% who aren't ready for EVs. That's fine.
1000km in 13 hours. Let's see. A Tesla model S can have a range of 300 miles. Roughly 500 km. You can get an ~300km of charge in 30 minutes using a supercharger.
So, given that nothing happens instantly, let's say this is moderately in the future and you're looking at a Tesla class vehicle, where the only real difference is that they're now cheaper and superchargers are common.
So, 2 30 minute charges = 600 km, plus 500 km for your morning charge. You'll complete your 1000 km with 100 km to spare.
Figure, oh, 80 km/hour, that's 12.5 hours, plus 1 hour for charging, giving me 13.5 hours for the total trip.
By the way, you are aware that you're supposed to take breaks during the trip, right? Roughly speaking, with the EV you can simply put them with charging - park in the charge spot. 2 sit down meals, which you'd generally want over a 13 hour trip anyways. We're assuming the charge station is close to, if not at, the restaurant. Part of the future thing, and keep in mind that we don't need huge buried or above ground tanks for the EV stations).
Half an hour is enough time for a good meal, but not a relaxed one. Of course, if you hypermile a bit you might be able to get by with only one 1 hour stop(enough for a full charge).
I don't read AC A human right
There wouldn't be a "meaningful reduction in the greenhouse-gas emissions" even if we eliminated all emissions from personal transportation in the US. Anything that is supposed to affect climate change meaningfully would have to result in eliminating a large percentage of worldwide emissions.
Of course, eliminating all emissions from personal transportation is not in the cards: electric cars still produce plenty of greenhouse gas emissions, from the fossil fuels required to produce electricity to the fossil fuels required to produce the batteries and any solar cells. Mass transit is also not all that much more efficient than personal cars.
But the percentage of miles driven? This number is dominated by vehicles that run all day.
Yes, the vehicles we use for commute and errands can generally be replaced with electrics.
The vehicles for which someone is calculating an ROI run all day and have much bigger engines.
Long haul trucks. Distribution trucks. Farm machines and many others. There is no alternative for diesel fuel for these vehicles and nothing even remotely on the horizon.
If these vehicles stop running billions of people will starve within weeks.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
that I am not rich enough to buy a car that doesn't do everything I want it to. I LOVE the idea of electric cars, but... every now and then I need my car to get me 800 miles or so down the road in a day, for a few days straight. My Subaru WRX will do that just fine, probably on 2 tanks of gas. The electric car won't. Possibly the Tesla with the supercharger will, but it won't do it on a single refill like the WRX.
The electric car has a long way to go to be a viable general purpose vehicle. it is a niche vehicle, for near-home travel. I can't buy a car _just_ for that.
The Tesla Model S90D has a range of 302 miles. That is an up-market car, but when the Tesla Model 3 comes out, it will have a base range of more than 200 miles, and will certainly have options for increased range with a larger battery. The Model 3 is set to cost $35000 base.
As for batteries, the life of the batteries is actually quite good, if the battery packs have a cooling system. Heat kills lithium ion batteries, so if you keep them cool they last a long time (btw. don't buy a Nissan Leaf...last I heard, they don't have battery cooling). Tesla makes their own batteries, and they are aiming for the batteries to last the life of the car. I have heard of Tesla Model S cars with 250000 km on the original battery.
As for hydrogen, please not this again. Read this or this. TL/DR: From a physics point of view, hydrogen is fundamentally inefficient. It is difficult to compress, store, and transport. It is also made from fossil fuels as a bi-product, which is one reason why the idea doesn't seem to want to die, in spite of having problems that CANNOT ever be solved...the fossil fuel industry is pushing it.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
The oil industry and fossil car industries are desperate that people not realise how convenient it is to have a charger in your garage.
For everyday around town use the home charger is fine. The problem is that it is not really 90% of vehicles that the electric car could replace but a single vehicle 90% of the time (which is still 90% of vehicles on the road at any one time). ~10% of the time we used our car for going on holiday or taking long road trips for other reasons. This, along with the incredibly high price, is what makes an electric car impractical for me. The high price will probably get fixed with time but to go on holiday with the family I need a car with a large range that can be refuelled quickly. While I would love to have an electric car with that capability for around the same price as a petrol driven one that is not something I see happening any time soon.
When the Tesla model 3 comes out, it's already been announced free access to super chargers isn't part of the package. A super charger is required to get charge time down to 45 minutes. It takes a LOT longer than that without the supercharger.
chargers are really a simple problem in queuing theory, similar to sewer design. blockages are held. Three guesses what a battery electric represents at a charger.
Hydrogen and electric are the only two vehicle choices that are carbon free. The oil/gas industry does not care which wins, they will supply the energy either way. It is the local governments that care because road infrastructure is largely paid for by fuel taxes. With hydrogen they do not have to change anything because they can tax hydrogen. Everyone going electric will require significant changes to how infrastructure is paid for.
Electric cars won't ever work because I drive 3,000 miles each way to work every day across all the peaks of the Himalayas hauling seven shipping containers filled with concrete. And if an electric car can't do that without me having to stop along the way, it's a useless piece of shit that nobody can ever use for anything. /UsualElectricCarNaysayers
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
So? Just tax people based on miles driven. That'd have the additional benefit of having the less damaging vehicles pay less for the public road system.
200+margin miles of range is the tipping point for most people. Most people don't drive more than 200 miles in a day, even when they go somewhere distant for shopping. At an average of 50 MPH it's 4 hours of driving. Most journeys they can charge at home.
For distances beyond 200 miles there needs to be public charging infrastructure, which varies a lot from country to country.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yes it is possible that electric vehicles meet 90% of the rides needs, but all FULL!! electric vehicles cost at least twice what the equivilant gasoline powered car costs.. And a lot of people just don't have the money to buy a new car, even have trouble buying a used car.. So it'll take at least a decade or two before most gasoline cars are replaced with an electric version..
Also a second problem is, as mentioned here a lot already, charging.. A lot of people don't have a parkingspace with a charger next to it, most parkinglots only have a few spots.. So unless more and more spaces get a charging spot next to it (maybe just convert all lampposts to a charging spot) OR a full charge is reduced to 5-10 minutes, then it'll take a time before people are confident enough to use their electric vehicle a lot more..
Let's not forget, a lot of the current 'electric' vehicled are hybrids, which have a small battery which is hardly enough for even a citydrive and have a gasolinepowered generator for the rest of the drive..
Most places have periodic inspections. Conduct those with an odo check, and tack on a mileage fee. Problem solved. Or tax electricity for transportation. That'd have the additional effect of driving greater efficiencies. The problem isn't hard to solve.
Learn to love Alaska
Electric motors are generally more efficient than internal combustion engines. We can create power with a stationary generator, and control the environmental emissions better than we do with a gas motor, but.
We need smaller and lighter vehicles. We need better laws protecting lighter vehicles, bicycles, strollers, scooters, motorcycles, pedestrians, personal mobility vehicles, vehicles for the physically challenged, and even commuter skateboards.
Have you ever heard of someone being arrested for stealing a bicycle, ever? In your how life time?
I've even witnessed auto-pedestrian accident, where the police tried to minimize the lawsuit, all to keep the system going.
But who is it serving?
Electric vehicles are in many cases great, but we still need to reduce our energy consumption, but first we need to create an infrastructure to let it happen.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Let's put it an other way so that 90% doesn't look so good.
They are about 365 days a year. There is 10% time an electric car won't work for you.
So that is being 36.5 days a year (over a full month) of times your electric car will fail you.
And most people will not have the luxury to buy a second car for those extra times.
In short that 90% number is saying that electric car technology and infrastructure isn't quite there yet. But packages in a way to fool people who do not want to dig into numbers.
They still need to work on longer range faster full charging. I would love to see the day where I can choose an electric car... However the technology and infrastructure isn't there yet.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Ed Begley made the same joke 10 years ago when GM killed off the EV-1.
I see that with myself. I do car sharing. I only uise it to do shopping 90% of the time. I could easily take an electric car instead of a diesel one for the distances I do. It ios always less than 15KM, so there would be no issue in using an electric car.
Yet I don't. Why? Out of habit. I should start using them, because why not? When I speak about car sharing or about electric cars or about self driving cars or in fact about ANY new technology, the only thing I hear is why it won't work. I remember why the Walkman would be a bad idea and would never catch on. I remember when we said that mobile phones where a bad idea. I remember when we said that 4K was overkill. I even remember my parents talking about colour TV being stupid.
So yea, people will find excuses as to it being a bad idea, but more out of relutency to change rather than anything else.
And it is all not helped that it will cost the car industry also time and money to go that direction and they, at this moment, rather not invest and thus do not push. They have sold us the idea that the car is a status symbol and the more horse power it has, the better a person you are.
They even add sounds to cars that are too silent, so you can feel better about yourself.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Vehicles are on the road from when someone buys them to when they break down and someone decides they're no longer worth fixing.
That 90% of daily journeys can be completed with an EV isn't inspiring to make me buy one; that suggests that if I'm an average driver, that 1 day in 10 I will be inconvenienced, either having to rent or borrow another car, buy two cars, or take some major sacrifice by avoiding whatever reason is causing me to drive outside the range of an EV 1 day in 10.
Sorry that just won't cut it for me in real life. I can't afford the registration, maintenance, depreciation and parking for two cars. The maintenance on an electric car is roughly twice that of a conventional car, and it makes up 20% of the ownership cost of a typical car. Add in the depreciation and registration (insurance in the US?) and that is over half the costs, putting the fuel in the minority. I drive less than 20km every day, and over 1000km once or twice every few weeks. I'm not going to buy a second car just for weekend driving, so an electric car is a complete non-starter for me.
Electronic Vehicles are topical and trendy but:
1. They are not energy-efficient
2. They do not pollute less than a reasonably designed petroleum powered vehicles, which have a 50 times advantage in terms of the weight of it's energy-bearing fuel. In fact, they are an ecological disaster, as presently designed and "shoved up our ass".
3. They use up very scarce resources like Rare Earths, to make really bad batteries. Can you imagine, if the earth were covered by these huge, inefficient batteries that had to be "recycled"?
4. They are hyped by a bunch of ass-holes, who want to make a buck and don't give a shit about the welfare of humanity.
5. Of course, you can see that this is an objective analysis. I do love the thought of we being able to use the energy of our Mother, the Sun, more efficiently, but this ain't the way, IMHO.
]6. Let't get to work to make something really good, really better, rather than using "electric vehicles" as an excuse for our failure to convert solar energy efficiently.
I don't want an EV.
I'm not going to BUY an EV.
A vehicle that doesn't run on fuel has limited range and utility. I don't want a car that is on a leash.
And if Obama or anyone in DC thinks they can force me into an EV, they can SUCK IT.
Corporatism != Free Market
This is great news! Some fucking libral is telling me an electric car will solve my problems
im pretty sure the person spending 10 minutes to fill a tank can go 2 or 3x's the distance you can on a full nights charge.
They *could* go 2x-3x the distance, but in practice they don't.
The whole point of the study mentioned here, was to gather and integrate the necessary statistical data to reach the conclusion that in practice, 90% of the time, the people with the gas car have the theoretical capacity to do 2x-3x the same distance in one single go, but instead split the distance in several "small go"s, and tank again 3-4 days later.
In 90% of the cases, the extra driving range that the gas car offers is complete waste. It's only purpose is to space apart the necessary trips to the gas station.
Trips that aren't necessary for an electric car that can be left (depending on availability) either charging overnight at home, or charging the whole day at work, or charging a couple of hours at an electric charger on the parking lot of the grocery store/shopping mall/food court/cinema plex/sports arena/etc. or left charging 30-45minute on a highway's rest area during the coffee-/lunch- break that the driver is supposed to take after each batch of 1-2 hours of continuous driving.
Or in other words: gas cars have ranges that are much longer than what is actually needed 90% of time. Electrical cars have range that already covers those times. We just need to put electrical plugs everywhere (as it is already starting to be the case in several european countries).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This study is groundbreaking. It completely trashes any argument for tax subsidies for EVs. If the economics are the same, there's no reason for a tax subsidy. Consumers will simply buy based on their needs without any additional inducement.
So, using your daily EV car, with no record of your long distance rental means you are always within a few miles. Once you plan on not being near home means you have to plan out a trip, file paperwork for rental telling them your full plans and destination with their vehicle. Instant tracking of everyone on even in-country trips, with full historical record. No more need to chip anyone. Rental cars will have bio-scans to log all passengers on any longer than EV travel distance. Any singing by your party on your long trip will be recorded and sold to a car-pool-karaoke entertainment company to offset the outrageously high rental.
Charging stations with data/power cables recording your local travel at each charge to be warehoused in state data farms. Serial tracking at every plug. What snooping state would not want full 24/7 tracking of travel by anyone not on foot?
Black boxes to record not only details of travel, but scans all RF, audio, and maybe even visuals of everywhere the car winds up. Can probably figure out the identity of whom ever comes within 20 meters of the vehicle, so not only tracking passengers. It is a live bug on a grander scale than the cell phones in their pockets. Being labeled support electrinics for the car, you will find it illegal to remove the sensor and storage packs. With storage sizes so small now, it could record for a year waiting for an upload moment, but that would only occur when dumped in a pond in a failed attempt to hide the collected data.
I will stick with my gas can polluter.
"90 percent of the personal daily travel on the road" Is what they mean. Not 90% of the vehicles but 90% of the distances. 90% of my travel is something like 10 miles. Sadly twice a week I drive 100 miles.
Even when it's feasible people want convenience of filling up their car and driving to work for several days. Not thinking about plugging it in at night, or finding a charge station for trips to grandma's. It's not something people want to have to add to their lives. Who wants to plan a trip that includes charge stations?
When you take for granted there is always a gas station near bye. Sorry, eligible drivers vs drivers who actually want to take on a EV are very different numbers. It shows in the dwindling sales of EV's. It really only works for those so dedicated to the cause they are willing to put up with the negatives.
Hooray for gasoline powered motorcycles, and boo for heavy batteries?
Some of it reminds me of a guy who designed an aircraft for the average man only discover there were no average men.
Describing automobile use in terms of average trips driven average miles on average days seems to fall into that same trap. You discover that there are a lot of non-average use cases.
I do agree with your renting an ICE car logic. My complaint would be about the random vehicle factor of car rental.
I once made a week long trip to North Dakota over the holidays. We were carrying three people, a dog, luggage and Christmas gifts and I wanted to rent a Chevy Suburban; based on where we were going and bringing, there was no other vehicle which would meet our needs.
The rental car company, despite me making a reservation a month in advance, would not guarantee a specific vehicle make and model, only a vehicle they considered "in the same class" which included several smaller SUVs which would not have met my needs. We only ended up with the Suburban because my wife knew a regional executive with the rental car company and the friend pulled some strings and we ended up with a brand-new Suburban with about 500 miles on the odometer.
If I'm going to have to rent a vehicle for a specific purpose, I don't want to end up with a random vehicle that mostly just satisfies their fleet logistics and profit margin. Then you end up with a shitty fleet model that degrades from the trip. This may be fine for small one-time use of hauling plywood from Home Depot 6 miles, but not for a 1200 mile trip.
Leasing for 180 a month, gets roughly 60-70 miles a day put on it between me going to work, my wife going to see her horse, grocery store, pet store, book store, etc. I love driving it. Spacious and very zippy, it is our preferred vehicle for 95% of our needs. We also have a truck to pull the horse trailer, so it does the long hauls when needed. Maybe 2 cars isn't normal everywhere (LA, NYC), but growing up in Kansas and now living in Texas - everyone has 2 vehicles - one of them should be an electric. We have filled up the truck maybe 3 times this year, and I personally haven't been to a gas station this year. I also had insulation and a radiant barrier put in when we moved into this house. New windows and replacing the ACs have cut my electric bills in half, so I don't see any additional electricity from using it. It is the perfect solution for me.
People don't care about electric cars, sales are down, let's do a fake news story to try and boost sales of the cars people don't want!
At an average of 25 mph it's 8 hours of driving, since we're using speeds nobody drives at.
As someone who has heniously violated rental agreements over the years and suffered the consequences I'm aware of the many things you can't Do with a rental or it violates the rental agreement. Rentals are not as a rosy alternative as some people lead you to believe.
Typically you CANNOT:
1) drive the car out of state - driving across to another country is a great way to get a cavity search in addition to violating your rental agreement
2) drive the car on dirt or gravel roads
3) rent it at all if you are under 25 years old
4) actually use it to tow a trailer
typically when you rent a vehicle you DO get:
1) a big hassle trying to get every last dent and scratch signed off on rental on so you don't get massively screwed
2) soaked on the price of gasoline and bogus fill charges when you try to return it
3) pay a huge fee for "insurance coverage" which is basically bullshit laws that don't insure drivers but instead the vehicle just to line the pockets of the insurance industry. 4) don't get that attendant over there on return day and sign of on every little scratch and dent? Expect a massive bill screwing you over.
5) unlike a Eula you will be held responsible nearly 100% of the time in court for signing the rental agreement.
Between all the caveats in the agreement and the additional charges that aren't in those low quotes you see online rentals are almost never as cheap or convienent as one is led to believe.
I have zero interest in owning an electric car. Come back when cheap mass-produced ultra-capacitors are available and I'll reconsider.
[Insert pithy quote here]
> The Model 3 is set to cost $35000 base
Still a lot of fucking money.
It's not that difficult. In California l pay an annual fee which is equal to the amount of gas tax.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
As someone who has heniously violated rental agreements over the years and suffered the consequences I'm aware of the many things you can't do with a rental or it violates the rental agreement. Rentals are not an alternative as good as some people lead you to believe. Typically you CANNOT:
1) drive the car out of state - driving across to another country is a great way to get a cavity search in addition to violating your rental agreement. This can get you deep into legal issues in some instances.
2) drive the car on dirt or gravel roads
3) rent it at all if you are under 25 years old
4) actually use it to tow a trailer
typically when you rent a vehicle you DO get:
1) a big hassle trying to get every last dent and scratch signed off on rental on so you don't get massively screwed
2) soaked on the price of gasoline and bogus fill charges when you try to return it
3) pay a huge fee for "insurance coverage" which is basically bullshit laws that don't insure drivers but instead the vehicle just to line the pockets of the insurance industry.
4) didn't get that attendant over there on return day and sign of on every little scratch and dent? Expect a massive bill screwing you over.
5) unlike a Eula you will be held responsible nearly 100% of the time in court for signing the rental agreement.
Between all the caveats in the agreement and the additional charges that aren't in those low quotes you see online rentals are almost never as cheap or convienent as one is led to believe.
"Electric vehicles can meet drivers' needs enough to replace 90 percent of vehicles now on the road"
Is that what they really demonstrated?
"Roughly 90 percent of the personal vehicles on the road daily..."
"Daily" implies they were looking at "trips", not individual automobiles.
"The team spent four years on the project,"
Far less than the lifetime of a typical automobile, meaning they have no idea if an individual vehicle could really be replaced by an electric one.
I find it entirely believable that 90% of all road trips from point A to point B could be completed in electric vehicles. It doesn't follow that 90% of individual vehicles could be replaced while still "meeting the drivers' needs". If the owner of a vehicle wanted to make just one long road trip(Let's take the kids to Disneyland!) then the electric vehicle is not a replacement for the conventional automobile.
It's actually set to cost 42,500. The 35K (which on it's own is quite expensive btw, my car costs new 23K) is assuming a 7,500 credit. A credit that Tesla is almost out of and only a very few of the Model 3 purchasers will get. And then there's also the minor fact that Tesla has never hit a price point they've aimed for, so yes, speculation on my part, but speculation based on past Tesla performance, that 42,500 will probably come in closer to 55K to 60K.
And as I always say, I know you think batteries are the future, but you're aware that they're horribly for the environment, right? Lots of rare earths, lots of heavy metals and lots of really nasty chemicals. Sulfuric acid, yum! Lithium, that's not environmentally damaging to get, would you prefer to get it from methods similar to desalinization or by strip mining? I've never seen anything to make me believe a move to EVs will be beneficial. It always seems like it'll be less polluting in the same way as the move to clean manufacturing in the 70s was. Replace the soot with lead and arsenic contamination and loads of cyanide spills. But it's clean!
I will accept the EV the article is trying to lecture me into getting once all of the following are met:
- Give it to me for free (these cars are not affordable for most people and I personally don't want one anyways)
- Make charging far less of a pain in the ass (not everyone owns a home with a garage, or works at a place with charity charging)
- Make the range of a single charge be as good as the range of a full tank of gas
- Make charging take 10 - 15 minutes MAX in case I need to get somewhere in an emergency
- Don't raise utility rates when all the fossil fuels that used to be burned in cars are now burned at the power plant and upgrades to the grid need to be made
Until then, keep your finger waving and lectures about your POS "green" cars to yourself and leave people just trying to commute to their jobs and go about their business alone.
And? Have you compared how far you can go on a dollar of electricity versus a dollar of gasoline? Big deal if superchargers start, pardon the pun, charging. Even if they charge a big premium making the prices even close to that of gasoline: the vast majority of your charging will still be at home.
Re your "blockages" analogy: gas stations need to be as big as they are because everyone fills up at stations, not at home. Only a small percentage of fillups will be (and are) at superchargers.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
more efficient capacitors and standardisation on quickly removable batteries (doesn't have to be ALL the batteries)
so, your $35,000 base model car equates, in your mind, to the $15,000 Altima I own.
The average commute in the USA is 45 minutes, so MIT is saying that a 'cheap' electric car has a range of an hour and a half in mixed stop and go and highway traffic? Not including stops to pick up kids/groceries/dog, etc?
Once again, this is another BS article full of lies based upon idiots with an agenda in Cambridge, MA... people who also think that no one lives in Montan, Oklahoma, Kansas, etc unless they live in a big city.
Newsflash, those 'superchargers' only exist between Washington, DC and Boston, MA on the east coast
What if you live over an hour south of Washington, DC or over an hour north of Boston Ma, or NOT ON THE EAST OR WEST COASTS?
I'm sure you will be able to pay for the use of the super charger, they wouldn't build the infrastructure and not let the consumer level cars use it. It will cost you money per charge, sure, but that seems pretty reasonable.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
At this point I would like to express my frustration at Tesla's use of the term super charger. Not to be confused with that hundred year old internal combustion engine technology the supercharger...or maybe it was meant to be confused.
Think about it - there are 250 million cars in the US, and 10% of them would NOT be able to be replaced with current EV technology cars. You're one of 25 million cases that don't fit. Congratulations.
So I need a 40 mile range to commute to work. Another 40 miles to get home. Allow 5% for variances, and I need 84 mile range. To pick up the dry cleaning or a rib eye for the grill, make it 90 mile range. Doeable.
Now, if I can charge at work, I need about 50 mile range. And here the math goes to hell.
With the Chevy Volt as an example, a level 2 charger (240v) maxes the Volt's (or a Leaf) charging at 3.3KW, or 10 miles/hour, so I need to charge 4 hours at work to restore a charge for those days I need more than max range. Let's actually assume that the ubiquitous electric car will NOT have 90+ muile range, but more like 50 mile range, to make the batteries affordable. So I need to charge at work.
It seems that this requires 13+ amps. I work with about 3500 other people. If we ALL carpool, those who don't vanpool, I see about 1500 cars out there. Over 9 hours, about a quarter of these cars will need a full charge, a quarter or so a half charge, and about have none - they are within range.
At any given time, of the cars needing a charge, about 350 will be charging. At 13A each, that's 4550A, a new and nontrivial infrastructure to build. And I work in the desert, where this can be buried without a lot of trouble, but still nontrivial. Will employers do this? Oh, and think through the actual infrastructure. Cables, connectors, people driving over cables, taking off with them attached, it gets interesting. My employer will, but not immediately and not all at once.
No, the conversion will be difficult, so I will need a car with that 90+ mile range to avoid charging on the fly.
And since I buy beaters, I'll be buying used electrics that will have at best 70% range, and I'll be using those savings on oil changes and engine/transmission maintenance to do battery repairs and cringe at the thought of the controller frying on a 118 day.
I know people who repair Prius battery packs, and they do a lot of simple mechanical stuff with interconnects. I'm pretty sure I'll figure out how to do that, since I can manage to change tie rod ends and upper manifolds. But electrics will not be without problems...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
But what if you live in NYC
Then you have plenty of transit options, making a personal car less necessary.
in an apartment, where you have to fight for a parking place.
If you do end up finding a job in a city less dense than New York City, make sure to lease an apartment with reserved parking and charger ports.
I was able to use an i3 with a range extender for about two weeks, and it really would work for the majority of my commute. And that's with a 110v socket in my garage, not a fast charger.
Practically speaking, it would work for most homeowners for daily use.
90% of the time I do not drive the long distance so electric car would serve me well. However few times in a year I need long distance car. On average typical office space is occupied in 80%. 20% of workers are sick, attending remote meeting, traveling on business trip, etc. But try to run office with 80% of seats available and quickly some workers will find out, they have no seat available.
The other issue is "potential" for long travel. Buying electric car you need to assume that the need for long distance travel will not occur even if you do not plan for the moment.
And on those rare occasions when they do drive further, even Tesla's supercharging (which is, BTW, very far from the limits of what's possible... alternative li-ion techs can take a charge several times faster) doesn't cost you that much in terms of range per distance traveled.
I have a spreadsheet here comparing different scenarios. For all of them:
* Non-filling overhead for both types of vehicles is assumed at an average of 8 minutes. A quick in-and-out may only be a few minutes, but stations that turn out to be well off the highway, traffic, stop lights, broken pumps, "pay inside only", gas station closed for the day, etc can significantly increase it.
* Gas pumps are assumed to be a fast 10gpm (some pumps are slower)
* Car is assumed to have a 13 gallon tank and go 400 miles.
* "Break times" are allowed to be accumulated and dont have to be at specific intervals, just the ratio of driving to resting.
Category A: drive until 40 miles range remaining
240-mile-range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 64%. Goes about 79% as far as the gasoline car in an all-out cross-country sprint (no breaks); 87% as far as a gasoline car following the DOT-recommended 15 minutes break per 2 hours driving; and 90% as far as a gasoline car following the EU rules for commercial drivers' breaks (45 minutes every 4,5 hours).
310 mile range Model S: Optimal charge level is to 60%. Relative to the same criteria, distance travelled is 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category B: drive until 80 miles range remaining
240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 80%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 90%, respectively.
310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 72%. Relative distances 84%, 91%, and 95%, respectively.
Category C: drive until 120 miles range remaining
240-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 100%. Relative distances 80%, 87%, and 89%, respectively.
310-mile Model S: Optimal charge to 85%. Relative distances 84%, 90%, and 94%, respectively.
Note: this is for an "endless driving" scenario. But in practice, with an EV you'll generally start the drive full and end mostly empty. So the shorter the trip, the better the EV does over these figures, up to the point where trips require no recharge and the EVs best the gasoline vehicles.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Odometer (with a whopping fine if tampering is detected) times vehicle weight seems the most logical way to deal with it. Then you're actually charging relative to actual road damage.
On the other hand, when it comes to public health, EVs have a far better score, since even on dirty power their emissions are emitted at altitude in less densely populated areas rather than at ground level right where everyone is breathing. So some benefit to EV drivers (and drivers of less polluting gas/diesel cars) would be only reasonable.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
Charging pads have the convenience needed, however, compared to a non-air-gaped solution, they throw away over 20% of the power pushed into them. We are going to need a better solution moving forward.
And don't forget costs.
There's no way I'm going to fork out the cost of gas-burning luxury car for an electric Corolla. EV's are going to have to take the low ground and beat the gas-burners on price.
For example: if I spend $40k on an electric, I could have spent $20k on a regular car and had $20k to buy fuel with... plus at the end of 5-6 years... that EV needs a battery.... so it requires a $3k maintenance!... ICE cars routinely run 10+ years now with very little maintenance other than adding fuel... EVs have to crack that barrier too!
We are a one-vehicle family, driving the most fuel efficient car that meets our requirements. We live in an area of extreme temperature fluctuations: winters get down to -40F for weeks at a time, and summer temps climb to +100F for most of the season. In theory, an EV appears to meet our daily driving requirements - short commutes to work, grocery shopping, etc. The problem lies in the fact we also use our car for several longer road trips every year. For us to remain a single vehicle family, an EV is practicable only if it total cost of ownership is the same or less than a conventional car, is capable of going 400 to 500 miles between charges, with recharge time under 1 hour. Finally, it needs to be able to pump out huge amounts of heat in the winter, and continuous full out air conditioning in the summer, without a huge hit in driving range.
Electric sounds great, I'd really like it to work. The problem is that at this point it move the problem upstream. You have to burn fuel or even more expensive rods to make electricity. While it is true you gain efficiency by centralizing energy creation electricity has to be made on demand and cannot be stored except in inefficient kinetic storage or more efficient but more expensive batteries. You also create waste in line transport and conversion.
But, as mentioned below, it ignores the long tern needs of the vehicle owner. My last car drove back and forth between Central Ontario and Nova Scotia maybe ten times in its 3 year life under my ownership. However, if you were to look at far more than 90 percent of the driving that I did with it you would find exactly 150 km a day on the highway, well within EV range. The cost of renting (flying not an option when I was completely filling a hatchback) would have been prohibitive as well as exceptionally inconvenient.
Then there is the fact that some times I would be arriving home late and leaving only 6 hours later, not as far as I know long enough for a full charge (do that several days in a row and it becomes a problem). Charging in the place that I parked for university was not an option. Oh, then there were those few times a year that the car would have to go to the city, around the city, back home and then to the city and back again for one reason or another...all in a single day. Oooh, and Nova Scotia Power sucks which meant that we lost electricity for meaningful periods a few times, certainly long enough to keep me home.
Now that I have moved to Ontario permanently the problem is different. I don't have electricity anywhere near my car, and I can assure you that fact is extremely irritating. Oh, and we are lucky that we have two cars because I had to do a ton of driving between hotels, airports and attractions in Ottawa and Toronto last month while my girlfriend was able to use the Miata while I was gone. The small "not-for-long highway-journeys" car which we bought instead of a four-door as a luxury. A luxury which, like an EV, has incoveniences that we have judged to be worthwhile. An EV has far more inconveniences and, aside from instant torque, gives back much less for your trouble.
My point here is that we would appear to be an ideal candidate for an electric car on the basis of 95% of our driving. Yet, that 5% would cost so much to replace or be so inconvenient that the claim of this study falls apart. I like the methodology of using energy consumed rather than kilometers covered, and I am surprised that they found an entire 10% of trips not to conform. However, in the real world the internal combustion engine gives people an option which most will use from time to time and which is of tremendous economic and psychological value.
We went through the EV vs ICE (and steam!) decision a century ago and all the same factors were in play. I am not claiming that the picture has not changed in favour of the EV, because it has. However, there is a reason that we went the the complexity and expense of the reciprocating piston engine and we would do well not to ignore that face.
There's ammonia that's carbon free, too. Although its current production uses a lot of natural gas as source of hydrogen and heat.
I thought it'd be a very interesting fuel, you can both store and transport it and that's being done at some scale already. If we can use high efficiency electrolysis to make the dihydrogen and an affordable reverse fuel cell to make it react with N2, I think it would be workable but it might be a pipe dream anyway due to the conversion inefficiencies and hence, cost.
an entire industry is unable to factor the $7,500 tax credit new purchases get
This page claims that you forfeit much of this tax credit if you don't already have a large enough income to pay $7,500 in income tax in a single year:
Welcome to the 20%!
See, this is why I don't like gerrymandering, it gives the loners in flyover country with a population density of 0.05/sqmi the feeling of actually being somehow relevant compared to the number of people in the cities.
You are right, charging doesn't actually cost you much time, especially when you can combine it with your own breaks.
One thing I would say though is that Tesla is probably getting close to the reasonable limits for charge current at the moment. 300kW has been demonstrated, but you start needing rather heavy cables with active water cooling, and you run into problems like contact resistance generating massive amounts of heat.
The other limiting factor is the grid tie. Currently Tesla chargers come in pairs or even triplets, with each set limited to 150kW max. The first car to plug in gets as much as it can take, the other car(s) get whatever is left. So actually when you see rows of Tesla chargers, the grid might only be providing them with 600kW for 12 cars. As EVs get more popular the grid supply is definitely the limiting factor.
So in practice I'm not sure we will see cars going much beyond 150-200kW. At the current 120kW that's 240 miler per hour, so for most people 200kW is likely to be enough at something like 200 miles range in 30 minutes.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You seriously think that an Altima is a performance and luxury equivalent to a Model 3? Seriously? If you want a nicer car, you pay more. Electric or not.
Secondly, your whole "average commute...." line is so mixed up it's not even wrong. Electric car ranges are generally rated in distances. The longer it takes you to drive it (the slower you go), the range goes up. Unlike gasoline cars, the optimal steady-state speed for an EV is generally around 15-20mph. The highway-speed range can be drastically multiplied at steady low speeds - and they deal with stop and go better than gasoline cars. So if you half the speed, you don't just double the "time" it can drive for - you more than double it.
Model 3 has a range of 215 highway miles. In town, it's probably around 300 miles. Which at an average speed of, say, 30 mph, is about 10 hours of driving. Now I don't know what your daily schedule is like, but if you're spending 10 hours between commuting, picking up kids, groceries, and the dog (WTF? does your dog have a desk job or something?), then I think you need to rethink your life.
Lastly, the superchargers form a complete network along major interstates and urban areas all across the US, Europe, and other parts of the world.
I get it that you have negative feelings about electric vehicles, and that's okay. But please do learn about a topic before you start ranting about it. It doesn't help your cause any to base your argument on things that even a person with a most basic understanding of the topic knows are inaccurate. It's like posting a sign on the bus, "Because you are riding in a space ship, smoking is prohibited". The sheer ridiculousness of the first statement invites ridicule on the whole argument.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
But willing to put up with the hassle of making sure it is charged and having to replace the battery as the charge it can hold slowly goes down over time. The main selling point is "climate change", and groups like this think everyone believes in climate change and want to buy electric cars while at the same time not letting them know that that power is generated by burning coal.
Ayup - hydrogen is only useful as a fuel, when it is combined with carbon to make a hydrocarbon, which brings us right back to square one.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Wake me up when it costs less than $20,000 and goes 200 miles on a 20 minute charge. Until then, neither I nor most Americans will have any interest in your EVs.
This is like saying smartphones don't ever run out of battery, because we plug them in every day at work and every night at home, whereas ten years ago our phones worked for two weeks between charges and then sometimes we forgot to charge them so we ran out. Now you don't ever run out anymore, because you're obsessively charging all the time.
I am amused that you listed this under "pro." I think you made a wise decision which worked out for you, so I'm totally not calling you stupid or some bullshit like that. But .. pro? No, it's a con that you successfully mitigated by adapting your life to the limitations.
I think.
Hm. I am getting confused about whether or not a mitigated con can actually maybe really be a pro. Hey everyone: help with the analysis. Is this guy wrong, or am I? He's right that he's not having to stop to refuel as an exception, but OTOH he's constantly putting in extra effort that internal combustion people don't have to think about very often. Is that a pro or a con?
Should I be summing up all the annoyances and comparing them over a long period of time (e.g. a year)? Yes, I think that's the correct way to figure this out.
This makes me want to coin a new word which means "amortized annoyance." Ammoyance? Annoytization strategy?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
The biggest obstacle by far to the adoption of electric (only) vehicles is the fact that the corporations will continue to stubbornly refuse to agree on a charging standard -- which will then greatly delay the rollout of charging stations along interstate highways.
Without an adequate density of charging stations in place, people will be reluctant to buy electric (only) vehicles.
Every article I see about electric cars wants to have a drop in replacement for my SUV. What we need is a classification of vehicles that allows lighter cars limited to 50kph. No air bags, no backup cameras, just enough to get me to/from work. Additionally the states could encourage the use of smaller vehicles if they'd allow us to license and tag our cars as a two'fer. Given the choice of a small car that I can't take on a vacation with the kids and a SUV, I'm going to pick the SUV. But if you allow me to license the SUV and add the economy car for an additional $25, I'll buy the econobox to drive to work and keep the SUV at home until I need it. The present laws tend to push us to a one size fits all solution. So fix it so I am encouraged to do the right thing.
they also expect us to purchase a 2nd vehicle for the other 10% of need. Like most EV owners already own 2 or more vehicles.
the "rent what you need" doesn't scale to a hundred thousand or half million in a large enough urban environment.
the tech is close, real close. But not there yet. 90% isn't good enough.
How do you figure hydrogen is carbon free? Where do you think the hydrogen comes from? It comes from Natural gas. Where do you think the left over carbon goes after you pull the hydrogen out? Into the atmosphere.
Hardly near the limits of charge current at all. Have you seen the disconnectable shore power connectors for cruise ships? We're talking over a dozen megawatts. Connectors look like this, though, you have to plug in each phase individually ;) If something like that was ever needed (super-rapid charging of long-range road trains?), I imagine it'd be set up to connect automatically if you pulled in.
Also it's worth noting that copper isn't the be-all end-all of conductors. There are now companies making carbon cables that slightly beat copper in terms of resistance per cross section and significantly beat it in resistance per unit mass. I only expect to see that grow in the future.
No, she's fine. My associate is vomiting for a totally unrelated reason.
People here are echoing the range anxiety arguments with anecdotes- Nothing new here.
What this research is pointing out is a very well known phenomena applies to the car market too - Consumers are idiots, and don't know what they want or need. Including you. Especially you. Yes you, personally. You're going to list lengthy anecdotes about how you're one of those 10% anyway, but that's irrelevant to the greater conversation.
Most people just need to get to work and back and shop - And can re-charge overnight. That's 90% of all driving.
Having everyone buy a car that can cover that last 10% is a waste of money - Which is something consumers excel at.
I have a Prius Plug-in. It has a bare 12 miles of electric range. - 12 miles is useless you say?
That car has an 8.2 gallon tank and I fill it up once every other month if I don't make any out of town trips. I really should have purchased a 100 mile range leaf and just rented a car whenever I needed to make out of town trips.
Sure, that's what I mean. You can go higher, but practically for car charging people probably won't want to. They complain enough about the old CHAdeMO connectors that were half that size. Maybe if they can find a way for a robot to make the connection instead of a human having to do it...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
First, it assumes supercharger stations are available for all the drive, and it then further assumes they are optimally positioned for the journey of the day.
1: Why are you repeating one of my suppositions? I'll repeat: " let's say this is moderately in the future and you're looking at a Tesla class vehicle, where the only real difference is that they're now cheaper and superchargers are common."
2: Optimally placed: There's roughly 100 km of flex built into the given scenario for the charging stations. The only reason it's not 200km is that you really need to get the EV down to at most 100km of range before you can get the really fast charge. IE you could stop after driving 300 km, but you're not going to get 300km of range in 30 minutes due to it charging slower the more charged it is.
3. Neither is likely to be true - Now, but as I posited in the "moderately in the future" scenario, it could be.
I suspect this (and maybe price) is why there is at least 10% that such vehicles won't presently work for.
First and second paragraph. Already stated.
In reality the above scenario would tack probably 90 minutes to the already long drive and would further restrict the routes that could be driven.
Already acknowledged. I was just saying that it's likely possible, with current technology, for the guy to make his drive without significant extra time, and if it DOES take him extra time, it's probably because he's not taking proper rest stops for maximum safety. What's lacking is infrastructure.
I don't read AC A human right
We will all end up as bags of meat being transported to and from work.
The best thing about EV charging is that one does not have to interact with panhandlers and other manner of questionable characters that are always hanging around gas stations.
has slashdot acquired the technology to collapse a thread ? seriously how the f**k you do that.
Battery swap stations. Then this all becomes reasonable, and fill actually needs.
New battery technologies, light and robust enough for automotive use, allow recharge of about 80% of capacity in a matter of minutes (presuming you have a charger that powerful).
They're also extremely efficient. (They HAVE to be or the charging rate would melt them into slag.) So they make effective regenerative braking, with most of the energy stored in the battery, practical.
I don't know if the new Tesla plant will be making this. But I expect it will be deployed as an automotive supply within a couple years.
This, along with the logistical problems of "battery swap" solutions (especially in a many-player competitive market), will no doubt kill such schemes before they leave the drawing board.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To do so will take a huge amount of oil. Peak oil already passed. What is the streamlined takeaway?
FBI and US Gov agencies hope Americans will all join them in mass treason. "globalism".
No such thing as a multi-national nation. FBI is multi-national because of moles.
North of Boston? There are superchargers at Seacoast NH, Augusta ME, construction in progress at Brewer ME, Magog PQ, Drummondville PQ, 2 locations in Montreal, a bunch in NH and VT, and coming soon to Riviere de Loup PQ and Woodstock NB.
Getting to Newfoundland is still an issue, granted.
Then again, I had to carry extra gas on my motorcycle to cross the Trans Labrador highway. Clearly gasoline isn't ready for prime time.
A tiny bit of flyover country needs work. North Dakota, I80 through PA (take I76 instead), Arkansas and west Texas. The rest of the country is essentially covered for travel at this point.
http://supercharge.info
First of all, if you're counting on charging at home, lots of people don't have garage access for overnight charging. This might be mitigated by charging at work, but that's all of a sudden going to challenge the available power distribution for those areas. And that's adding to the peak power problem. And the average parking garage doesn't have 250-500kW service. Might work well in places like Phoenix AZ, where a shaded parking spot could become a shaded solar parking spot.
The next problem is overall power. If we did replace every ICE car with a BEV, we'd just about double the electrical demand of the USA. Just for cars, not even factoring in trucks, planes, and trains. Where is all that grid power coming from? And we'll need grid upgrades to deliver it.
And then there's production. Tesla is hoping to be able to supply batteries about 1.5 million BEVs per year from their Gigafactory... it's going to take quite awhile to replace all 250+ million passenger cars. And of course, ability is one thing, desire another. It's not even a stretch to imagine a large population in the US switching from paranoia about the Government coming to take their guns to one about the Government coming to take their cars and trucks.
This succeeds much better going slowly. That also delivers better costs on batteries and the chance of better technologies along the way.
-Dave Haynie
A useful back seat?
Yes, the conclusion sounds reasonable, except it seems to overlook:
1. Affordability. This is improving, but even if we want to, most of us can't afford to replace our current non-electric car with an electric.
2. Charging access. This is also improving, but anyone who relies on street parking won't be able to charge their car at home.
It would be equally reasonable to say that riding in a taxi would meet 90% of drivers' needs. A taxi would get people to where they need to go most of the time. But for most people, it would be prohibitively expensive, and require extra time waiting for the taxi to show up in the first place.
IMHO an electric car that would be capable of a single-charge one-way trip from Silicon Valley to the Reno entertainment facilities and/or Tahoe ski resorts WOULD be a practical single vehicle, at least for many Silicon Valley early-adopters who use those sites as their primary take-a-break vacation sites.
It would handle both commuting on pure electricity (with recharge either at home or at work) and the common weekender vacations (with an overnight charge at the destination). It would also go five hours in semi-mountainous terrain and more on flatter land, making even cross-country trips practical with some advance planning (i.e. make reservations for lunch and dinner at restaurants or "truck stops" with a recharge facility)
(See parent posting for more discussion. This post is partly because I forgot to change the Subject: on that one to make it stand out.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Fun fact: I know my sensible sedan is 100% capable of a trip through the back country where I live...and it's pretty rough back country.
The problem here is that the summary itself is...well, let me quote the abstract:
We find that the energy requirements of 87% of vehicle-days could be met by an existing, affordable electric vehicle. This percentage is markedly similar across diverse cities, even when per capita gasoline consumption differs significantly. We also find that for the highest-energy days, other vehicle technologies are likely to be needed even as batteries improve and charging infrastructure expands. Car sharing or other means to serve this small number of high-energy days could play an important role in the electrification and decarbonization of transportation.
I don't know exactly what Nature Energy's...quality is, though given that it is a branch of Nature I'm willing to grant it a decent amount of credibility--which is probably why the abstract doesn't make any claims about electric vehicles being able to completely replace traditional vehicles, but rather that they can take over most of the needs in cities.
I'm not shelling out the money to make it past the paywall, but it looks very likely that their population is about as diverse as a KKK meeting--they explicitly say that they only looked at cities, and I'm inclined to bet that all of these cities were large metropolitan cities where at least a decent chunk if not all of that 87% of vehicle-days could be handled by a good public-transit system.
This is actually a very lovely example of a study that might as well have been very intentionally designed to prove a theory--by ensuring that anything that might be...inconvenient to their theory wasn't likely to be in fact involved, which means that of course they chose populations where range would be a 'fringe use,' and the wording means that 'evacuating the city' is a fringe use too. The study also means that they don't actually have to address the minor fact that 'car sharing or other means' might not be practical on those 'small number of high-energy days.'
Not only that, but it needs to be safe to use the public charging infrastructure--for example, you can't have them ever getting put in places where it's a Bad Idea to be if you're not local unless you're plunking them down like gas stations. Are you totally sure you'd like to spend 20-30min in the middle of the night in a town you don't know and not able to GTFO if needed?
You are? Okay. Go ask some friends who are not straight, white cismales about how they're going to feel about it. Hint: The answer will probably be "...yeeeah no." (If I get a bad feeling from a gas station? If I absolutely must get fuel there I will get a gallon before GTFOing but seriously I don't want to get raped and/or murdered because I happen to not be a cishet white man. One of the major reasons you keep a charged cell phone with you when travelling if you're not one is precisely so you can call for roadside assistance from a party you can trust.)
> The trick is to pre-warm the vehicle in a garage both at home and at work.
> And that user scenario accounts for most of the mileage this electric vehicle sees.
Great. You've reduced burning hydrocarbons, or using electricity, to power your car, in winter. But you've replaced that portion with burning hydrocarbons, or using electricity, to heat a garage in winter. Care to compute the overall cost?
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It's actually set to cost 42,500. The 35K (which on it's own is quite expensive btw, my car costs new 23K) is assuming a 7,500 credit.
Oh for fuck sake stop bullshitting. It will cost 35k before incentives.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Most people with electric cars will charge at home or work. Then you will have a full "tank" at the beginning of each trip. No detours to gas stations necessary.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I could replace 90% of my driving with an electric car. Of course, electricity is super expensive where I live, so it would cost more. And id have to replace the batteries, which cost almost as much as a whole gasoline-powered car every 4-5 years.
But none of that makes it impossible (just stupid).
But the killer is that I'd still need to own a second gas-powered car for the occasional trip more than 40 miles from home.
So, I'd spend $40k for the car, plus $5k upgrading my house to charge it, plus $100s per month in electricity, and i'd still have to keep the gas car which is more convenient in every dimensiob, anyway, plus cheaper to operate, meaning that the electric car would never be used anyway.
chargers are really a simple problem in queuing theory, similar to sewer design. blockages are held. Three guesses what a battery electric represents at a charger.
Uh, a river of excrement?
The Tesla Model S90D has a range of 302 miles. That is an up-market car, but when the Tesla Model 3 comes out, it will have a base range of more than 200 miles, and will certainly have options for increased range with a larger battery. The Model 3 is set to cost $35000 base.
Doesn't really replace offroaders though, maybe one day they'll make a viable offroad vehicle with decent range and towing power but I think it's more likely that we'll see a split between those who can get by with electric vehicles and those who switch to fuels like biodiesel and ethanol fuels. I'm not fussed if it costs a bit more and by all means as I said if there comes a decent electric vehicle that suits my needs I'm all for it. But you can't sell me on a solution that doesn't exist.
From a physics point of view, hydrogen is fundamentally inefficient. It is difficult to compress, store, and transport.
This was the same case with batteries once upon a time. If it doesn't work out, no biggy but I'm hopeful.
Try to understand I'm not advocating any solution, electric doesn't solve it for me now but if it does one day then i'm all for it.
*free* access. it does not state that there will be no paying access to the super chargers (which would only cost a few bucks to use)
I have no problem with electric. Look forward to owning one when they are cost effective. I drive cars used... till they die alongside the road. That is what I can afford. My question is is this switch really "green".
I saw a very well put together study about how a Hummer was "greener" then a Prius when realistically assessed: Cost to manufacture, cost of maintenance, cost to recycle. No supprise, the greenest card was a Jeep (old classic one) where the total lifecycle compared to years of use was very low.
What I would rather see is when 90% of us it makes $$ sense to purchase. Take out the "green lifecycle" which I think is not insignificant to the discussion, but just for sake of understanding... Cost to maintain (not enough detail on electric yet from what I see), foot print of cost for a ten year cycle when you get into that 70% of people who can't flip their car every 3-4years, but drive it for a longer life cycle.
And then, add in the green of that kind of car lifecycle use (ten year), where you calculate % of electricity lost in transfer (carbon foot print it yeilds) etc.. compared to gas car with today's 28-30 mpg. Which is really greener?
Add those two together, and that "90%" will start to move over.
If you buy a car because of needs and no wants. I suspect the number of people who are totally practical about it is low.
You know you can RENT a non-EV car for that other 10% right ?
Renting is not always possible when you have a family+dog and need to rent a minivan. Availability is usually very limited and often instead of a minivan they will treat some combined SUV+minivan bastard offspring as equivalent which usually have appallingly bad legroom in the rear seats. In addition where I live in Canada the rental companies all put limited mileage on rental contracts from city locations which makes them extremely expensive for long road trips. If you add to this the inconvenience of having to rental several times a year for this and that you are paying more for the EV in the first place it is hardly a viable option.
I expect we will get an EV for our run-about-town car the moment their price drops to something comparable to an ICE. While you may save on the costs of petrol the cost of installing a recharging station plus the cost of replacing the battery every few years is still non-negligible compared to the fuel savings. However these costs are dropping every year so I remain optimistic that they will drop to the point where an EV is economically viable but unfortunately that point is not yet here at least for me.
We estimate that this vehicle can meet the energy requirements of 87% of vehicle-days across the US, and 84–93% in 12 of the most populous metropolitan areas, even if relying only on night-time charging. This 87% of vehicle-days accounts for 61% of personal vehicle gasoline consumption in the US.
So technically it is only 87%, not 90%, but with a wide margin of error and when it comes to fuel use it is only 61%. Hence my claim that the problem is that for a single vehicle about 13% of the time an EV is not suitable which is the problem because nobody wants the hassle and cost (on top of the EV premium itself) to rent an ICE to replace their EV 13% of the time.
Once again, a slashdot post quotes an article that ascribes a claim to some other article that made no such claim.
Lesson: Follow the chain of references.
Article quotes: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-electric-vehicles-drivers-percent-road.html
Electric vehicles can meet drivers' needs enough to replace 90 percent of vehicles now on the road.
"Roughly 90 percent of the personal vehicles on the road daily could be replaced by a low-cost electric vehicle available on the market today, even if the cars can only charge overnight,"
But the team found that the vast majority of cars on the road consume no more energy in a day than the battery energy capacity in affordable EVs available today.
FALSE!! The original article http://www.nature.com/articles/nenergy2016112 made NO SUCH CLAIM. The team found that the vast majority of cars DO experience a day when they consume more energy than the battery energy capacity in affordable EVs available today. The original article talked about vehicle-days, not vehicles. Most vehicles only go on extended road trips a small percentage of days during their ownership, but that percentage is not zero.
IN FACT, the original article stated that, "We also find that for the highest-energy days, other vehicle technologies are likely to be needed even as batteries improve and charging infrastructure expands. Car sharing or other means to serve this small number of high-energy days could play an important role in the electrification and decarbonization of transportation."
I may not be able to expect better from phys.org, but I do expect better from people who post on slashdot.org.
Heh. I won't say they never work, but my job regularly has me doing 100-150 mile trips *daily*, some cases 200 miles. The cheaper EVs would not work, but a vehicle with a range like the Tesla 100d would suffice...If i charged it almost nightly. For the record, I am a roving network engineer that covers an area with the landmass roughly half the state of Rhode Island (around 550ish miles). I drive a 96 volvo station wagon that averages mid 20's mpg, going as high as 31 MPG on the highway and as low as 20ish in the city. It costs almost nothing to run besides tires, brakes, oil changes and suspension and I do my own maintenance. I love what Tesla is doing, but probably won't buy one until I can get it for less than $5000, I can do my own maintenance and it can haul me, plus all my gear comfortably. I'd imagine for a niche case like this, it may take awhile..
Plus, I wonder how long it will take to trickle to those who simply cannot afford new cars. To those outside of the new car market, there exists an entire underclass of used vehicles and the industries that spurs along. Think shadetree mechanics, places like autozone that sell parts and places that refurbish used parts and sell to the consumer or mechanic. I wonder how EV battery life will look after 10 years. The cottage industries that will no doubt arise selling refurbished batteries and/or doing in-car cell replacement for those who cannot afford to swap the whole unit. As a guy who swapped his own transmission over two weekends, I"m more excited about the prospects of how cheaply I can own and purchase a car, rather than the mass market $35k unit.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.