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China, Europe Drive Shift To Electric Cars as US Lags (reuters.com)
Electric cars will pick up critical momentum in 2017, many in the auto industry believe - just not in North America. Tighter emissions rules in China and Europe leave global carmakers and some consumers with little choice but to embrace plug-in vehicles, fuelling an investment surge, said industry executives gathered in Detroit this past week for the city's annual auto show. From a report: "Car electrification is an irreversible trend," said Jacques Aschenbroich, chief executive of auto supplier Valeo, which has expanded sales by 50 percent in five years with a focus on electric, hybrid, connected and self-driving cars. In Europe, green cars benefit increasingly from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions. China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is aggressively pushing plug-in vehicles. Its carrot-and-stick approach combines tens of billions in investment and research funding with subsidies, and regulations designed to discourage driving fossil-fueled cars in big cities. The road ahead for electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States, however, could have more hairpin curves.
YAY! That means there will be more GASOLINE for America.
Don't worry, Trump will introduce tax rebates for muscle cars in order to secure a market.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
I'm all for electric vehicles, but the US has much lower population density. An electric vehicle only works as a primary vehicle if you rarely leave a major metro area. Unless they become cheap enough that it can be a second or even third household vehicle, it's simply not feasible for a lot of Americans.
Guess who just built an enormous plant to make the batteries everyone else is going to need to make those electric cars? The US.
Americans want to drive their own cars and trucks. It's part of our culture. No one want to sit in a robotic electric fagmobile.
We still don't have batteries! I'm serious I forgot to buy some at Safeway the other day.
No well seriously, we don't have batteries that can enable us to replace gasoline. We need to improve capacity at least 4x, if not 10x.
Some say the answer is Lithium-Air batteries .. but then hardly anyone is doing any research on order-of-magnitude battery technology improvement .. let alone Lithium Air. Whoever is doing research on new battery concept has virtually no funding. The ones getting slight funding are the people working on incremental updates.
We need companies like Tesla, Google, Apple, Samsung, Panasonic to get serious in funding a foundation or institute that researches advanced battery concepts. Battery research funding budget should be in the billions not thousand.
I laso believe that "Car electrification is an irreversible trend".
So then why give hefty tax breaks to the 1% for buying electric cars today, rather than simply waiting for ten years when it makes sense that all cars are electric? You really aren't going to push the development that much faster than it would happen anyway.
Same is true for solar power and other alternative forms of energy. They are coming, they will dominate - just let that happen rather than trying to pick an exact winning form of that technology today.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've owned a Chevy Volt for over 3 years now. In the warmer summer months, (I'm in Canada), the small battery supplies pretty much 100% of all my power needs. In the winter or if I decide to go long distance once a year, it switches to gas usage seamlessly. It's really too bad folks see it only as EV or only as gas. It's essentially both without compromise. So you charge it when you don't want to use gas and you can use gas when you need the distance or heat.
There's a large portion of the USA that isn't very densely-packed. We can't exactly visit several countries on a single tank of gas. Or four times as many people in the same amount of land area.
You just don't have to drive as far to get where you need to be. And that's what electric cars are great for.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Now I can burn coal in my autosteamer and keep those coal miners working!
Besides a high prison population and high crime (how you can have both is beyond me)
That's only logical if there isn't some other reason to switch from fossil fuels. As it turns out, the overwhelming majority of experts in atmospheric and oceanic sciences happen to have a reason why we should encourage the transition to vehicles powered renewables sooner rather than later.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The same could be said about CPUs and GPUs though. The vast majority of users do not use the full capacity of their computers. I'd bet that the CPU is idle 95% of the time and the GPU is barely using a fraction of its capabilities 99% of the time.
And yet here we have with quad-core mobile CPUs and GPUs that are more powerful than a standard desktop from 2007.
I don't understand people. I can't drive to the middle of a mountain range, and charge an electric car. There's no electric grid there. I can easily fill up on fuel wherever a fuel truck can drop some off -- which is basically the very same places that my car can go.
North America is very different than Europe. Paris and London are how many hours away? A European train can take you through ten countries in a single day. In North America, you'd be lucky to hit five major cities in 24 hours of driving.
There's a lot more middle-of-nowhere around here. It's not about electric vs gasolene. It's about portable fuel vs transmission-over-infrastructure. We don't have any infrastructure -- that's why we have roads to get between places.
We can create synthetic fuels (as Germany did during WW2) and use renewable energy during it's creation. If we use CO2 from the air to create the fuel, then any CO2 released during driving becomes a net zero add.
I would love to live in the future but I have to deal with the present.
Also betting that none of these electric cars from Europe or China are anything remotely close to something I would want to use regardless of how it's powered.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
They are busy building out new battery manufacturing.
OTOH, GM, Chrysler, and Ford are basically too stupid for words to actually build new battery facilities. They instead look at how to manipulate their stock prices and do not care about real long-term profits.
Thankfully, companies like Tesla and Rivian will really destroy the American companies and end up buying them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Most of you live in cities, more densely populated than in Europe. So the size of that country is really extremely unimportant.
Hire a petrol car for long journeys. Given your pitiful excuse for holiday allowance over there, you can't afford the time to drive long distances anyway, so you fly internal. Where you can't take your car on in the overhead locker.
It'd be nice for these self-proclaimed globalist elites to latch on to something that isn't an obvious failure. I mean, a quick back-of-the-envelope will tell you that an IC engine burning gasoline wins in just about every utility metric you can come up for a personal automobile (buses and trucks are a whole other matter). Yet they're declared the Wave of The Future (TM) by the Davos set.
I would love it if these knuckleheads chained themselves to something real, like roads, bridges, power lines, or any one of a dozen other things that aren't sexy at first blush but where real attention and real monetary investments are called for.
It must really suck when reality just completely fucks over your moronic claim. I'm going to be generous and assume you're just a fucking idiot ignorant of just about every fact on climate change, and not in fact a dishonorable immoral liar.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh, fuck you and your warming denialist bullshit.
I don't respond to AC's.
If fossil fuels are getting subsidies, so should electric cars.
as has been disprooved by decades of global temperatures not tracking with CO2 increase
[citation needed]
Besides, the U.S. (focus of this article) has ALREADY cut CO2 emissions beyond what was looked to in the Kyoto accords
[citation needed]
That tax break is not for the 1% but for middle class people who could not afford an electric car without it, or wouldn't otherwise want to spend the full amount on such a vehicle. That in turn has made the market for electric cars an attractive one, where it is economically viable to design, manufacture and sell EVs in larger numbers. With the market (and infrastructure) for EVs reaching a certain critical mass, there's a huge incentive to research technologies to further drive down prices and/or increase range and efficiency. Some believe that the critical mass has already been reached, which makes further electrification "an irreversible trend." This would probably have happened without subsidies as well, but a lot later. And once the market takes off, subsidies can be decreased. In my country this is already happening; the Luxury/Pollution Tax on EVs is still 0% I believe (this tax exceeds the factory price for the more ridiculous SUVs), but companies no longer get the Small Scale Environmental Investment subsidy when they buy an EV, and the income tax payable on company cars is no longer 0% either.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Read your own link retard. CO2 has had a much greater percentage increase over the past two decades than temperature has increased.
The whole point of government funded science making you scared of CO2 was to claim that CO2 leads to runaway warming (mandating of course much more government funding for the same scientists), which we can now see is a lie. It's fine if you choose to believe a lie, just don't ask others to which facts tell us otherwise.
All that's left is the fear now, no longer do you and your warming cultists run on facts... what a waste of a human mind.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Do you deny CO2 in the atmosphere has shot up to record levels?
Do you deny that that increase is not matches by an equivalent temperature increase?
You are the one who wants everyone to fear. It is therefore incumbent upon you to prove the assertion that CO2 leads to runaway warming. The data does not show that any longer, but you are welcome to try so we all may laugh at you just like we do the other religious extremists trying to justify nonsense with faith.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and free market outside of Government meddling. So, Good!
ps. FCUK Brussels and the Communists.
Why do they not seem to grasp that?
captcha: fateful
The vast majority of the US does not struggle with air quality issues like China.
Many cities in Europe are not car friendly (lack of wide roads, lack of parking, and most households don't have multiple vehicles)
That explains why those countries are adapting EV's at a higher rate.
Reasons for slow US adoption:
Less population density.
More rural = less opportunity to recharge (recharge != refuel, this is a multiple hour process in most EV's).
Cost. Most Americans do not buy new cars, especially in the current Obama economy.
Cost. Parts are more expensive in new designs. Takes time for parts cost to come down.
Legal issues: Municipalities, states and the federal government have yet to figure out a replacement road usage tax (gas tax) for EV's. So more EV's on the road = less tax revenue to repair the roads. I hate taxes. But the money has to come from somewhere to keep up the infrastructure.
...I need to see faster charging, longer range, and better battery management.
I have wanted an electric vehicle for some time. Almost bought a Volt when then Gen II came out, but the thing is a small 2+2. With me at 6'4" (190cm) and my two 6' tall teenagers, there's no way to fit in the vehicle. (I had the same issue in my Jetta TDI.) Recently bought a Malibu hybrid, which contains the Voltec engine albeit with a much smaller battery. At least I can fit by young boys, though still can't take four passengers comfortably, like in my Avalanche.
Now - if an electric can have the midsize of my 2006 Avalanche and the range (500+ miles) with the ability to recharge in 10 minutes, and the guarantee that the battery won't be sitting in a landfill after losing charge ability in five years, I'm sold.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
providers and aren't embedded in markets related to those power structures. That's the reason they choose the farce that is Global Warming/Climate change/ad nauseam. It's their way to oust the current political power brokers and make bunches of moolah while attempting to do it.
CO2 has increased at a MUCH LARGER RATE than has temperature; moreover the shape of the graphs are not really very similar with an increase in temperature rate of increase where co2 rate of increases show a lull.
I'll let you have the last response because I don't think you are really capable of actually understanding this concept yet. Don't worry, when climate scientists are forced to begrudgingly admit this in ten years or so you can say you knew it before they did.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm all for electric vehicles, but the US has much lower population density. An electric vehicle only works as a primary vehicle if you rarely leave a major metro area. Unless they become cheap enough that it can be a second or even third household vehicle, it's simply not feasible for a lot of Americans.
About a third of vehicle miles were to/from work, a third were for shopping/errands, and a third were for visit/recreation (Exhibit 1-12):
* https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2010cpr/chap1.cfm
The majority of trips are under 20 miles (~30km), with the average being about 9.7 (Table 5):
* http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf
There were "Other" trips which were on average 51 miles, but they counted for less than 10% of all trips. So (according to 2009 numbers), 90% of trips (there and back) done by the average American could be handled by a car with a range of about 100 miles (160km).
Looking at population center , there is a lot of people within high density area. Even the suburb does not seem to be 10 or 15 miles away even in big cities. Keep in mind that normal eV on a full charge can do that 20 miles commute without a hitch. Even in new-york : the distance from Hicksville to Newark is barely 20 miles, and how many million of folk you have in that area ? about 8 millions ? Furthermore how many people well off really want a commute of 20 or 25 miles ? Everybody I know which is well off is actually not too far away from work in a nice house, maybe 5 to 10 miles to work. And those are the initial primary target to drive up adoption.
This is all well and good but make cars that people want. I have two vehicles: a Jeep which I use to the extent of off-roading vacations, towing boats and hauling luggage or cargo. I also have a sports convertible which I enjoy the rest of the time. I road trip in both when I have the need. Between these two vehicles, I have over 60K miles in less than 2 years. The only time I don't drive to my vacation is when there's an ocean in the way on my yearly trips to Europe and Australia.
I would have happily bought an EV if there was one that filled either of those needs, but there are no electric vehicles that can tow a boat and go off-road in the Utah trails or go 700 miles on a tank of fuel in the case of the Jeep. There are also no EV convertibles.
I know I'm an outlier that's 5 sigma from the mean, but I'm still a consumer. I would have easily spent $100K on an EV convertible that I spent on my ICE convertible.
At the current rate, I don't see myself buying an EV any time in the near future.
Right now plug-in cars are mostly pretty expensive (e.g. Tesla). The primary market for them seems to be people who are wealthy enough to own single-family homes or townhouse style condos in urban environments, where it's easy enough to add a charging port in the garage or on the side of your house. What do people propose doing for charging infrastructure when plug-in cars move their way down the price scale, within reach of people who rent apartments and have to park on the street far from the nearest electrical outlet? Even if you're lucky enough to rent a place that has an off-street driveway spot for your car, good luck getting your landlord to add anything like that. Or are there going to be "public" charging ports that exact exorbitant rates for charging your car, creating yet another way in which being poor is expensive?
Without a good plan to provide equitably-priced charging infrastructure for the masses, the whole thing bears a distinct whiff of champagne socialism.
So I think the real question here is the question of whether or not the practice of introducing massive sums of EVs is actually beneficial to the environment. A huge sum of US power comes to us in the following forms (eia.gov)
Coal = 33%
Natural gas = 33%
Nuclear = 20%
Hydropower = 6%
Other renewables = 7%
Biomass = 1.6%
Geothermal = 0.4%
Solar = 0.6%
Wind = 4.7%
Petroleum = 1%
Other gases = 1%
As you can see, 66% comes from burning limited materials, and really 86%, but nuclear doesn't burn nearly as much fuel in relation to natural gas and coal. So when demand goes up substantially with the introduction of these vehicles it can be assumed that that demand will be filled with a similar distribution of generation. That means that we'll be burning more coal, and slowly depleting reserves of what is now cheaply accessible natural gas. And this doesn't account for all the battery manufacture, recycling, and disposal - which with the right personnel presiding over it is surely a clean process, but with a bad actor with little concern for environmental well-being, could itself be hugely destructive.
There is also the fact that approximately 37% of all CO2 released in the US is a product of generation, by effectively increasing demand you'll simply be shifting the transportation sector into the power grid, and until we're running zero coal, and powered almost exclusively by nuclear or other clean sources it's impractical and an ineffective method for the US to reduce emissions.
And no one mentions that you can build a car to swap a discharged battery for a full one.. 10 to 30 seconds..
With batteries, there is the time it takes to recharge. If you could somehow deliver the amps faster, what does that do to the power grid?
Way back in the 70s when I was studying Computer Science. I had a class focused on emulations, and we students had to come up with some sort of thing/system to emulate which the instructor approve and then we'd go and do it. I chose to emulate various forms of electric auto, including hybrids etc. My main source was a book called Alternatives to the Internal Combustion Engine by Robert U. Ayres and Richard P. McKenna.
My conclusion, as I recall, was aluminum oxide batteries which, when exhausted, would be left at the equivalent of a filling station, where you would install fresh batteries the way nowadays you fill up with gasoline. The exhausted batteries would be collected and recharged at special facilities then returned to the 'filling stations'. Thinking about it now, my utopian fantasy is taking the exhausted batteries to a solar recharging plant out in the desert.
There are problems with aluminum oxide batteries, but it always seemed to me they should be solvable problems.
Now, other people, including Elon Musk no doubt, must have considered the model of quickly exchanging exhausted batteries for fresh ones (even if not the aluminum oxide part), and rejected it. Why? (My thought is that maybe they are in a hurry and think building up the infrastructure would take too long. One could start with some particular locale. Maybe I-6 between California's Bay Area and LA. Renting cars to drive along there perhaps with the 'filling stations' at each end?)
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
What range do you think EVs have on a single charge, anyway?
Between 100km and 150km per 20kWh worth of battery charge.
Exact mileage depends on car model.
(e.g.: Tesla use lighter than average material and are designed from the ground up for longer ranges.
Other cars are simply "an electric motor replacing the ICE under the bonnet and batteries bolted wherever there's free place" quick conversion like the VW e-Golf and VW e-Up that VW hastily released in the wake of the diesel scandal, and might have lower mileages).
Also depends on the driver (driving like an aggressive idiot at high speed on the highway, and you'll get a lower range than driving conservatively maybe a bit under the maximum speed limit).
I can drive upwards of 3 hours without a break.
Which is *definitely* not recommanded.
Current recommendations here around in continental Europe is a break each 1 or 2 hours max.
(e.g.: There are big public service campaigns to advise drivers to have at least a quick "turbo-nap" every once in a while when driving long distance)
But let's make the assumption that you are 2 drivers sharing the load, and that you'll switch midway (without charging the car, nor making any break longer than required to change seat - no the best experience, but hey).
With an average-priced EV, that's not even near possible.
Renault Zoe are currently the cheapest e-cars with a decent battery.
(You can even get them for the price of an average priced ICE-car if you decide to rent the battery instead of buying it).
(They are definitely after the same market as Tesla's upcoming model 3, except that Zoes have been on the street for quite some time, and Renault chose the opposite progression from Tesla, release progressively longer range vehicle while staying affordable - instead of long range vehicles while progressively releasing cheaper models)
The latest model has upgraded the battery to 45kWh, which should give you between 200km and 300km of range. (depending on the speed/aggressiveness of driving 130km vs 100km on highway vs. 80km on streets between cities).
That's definitely in near the 3 hours of your example (and by now, both drivers of our assumption should get a nap, or at least make a long break - enough to put quite some additionnal range back into the battery using standard 50kW chargers)
For a car that cost in the general ballpark figure of ~30k USD (not some 100k+ USD Tesla Model S super car).
And all of the above aren't made up numbers, but my actual experience with Zoes.
They are available at the local car-sharing company (though not the more recent 45kWh battery), and I've already driven quite a lot of trip with them.
I can easy get 100km when I drive aggressively or 150km when much more conservative.
The current drawback I see, is that Renault doesn't have collision avoidances option available on their smaller cars like the Zoe.
(unlike VW where - like lots of european constructors - for the last several years even the lowest entry-level model like Up comes with a LIDAR [a.k.a. "City Safety"] in standard configurations,
or unlike all the noise that Tesla is making around their "Autopilot" since a couple of years ago).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Let me get some popcorn....let the flamewars begin! BTW, what's the Godwin equivalent for "Global Warming"?
The problem is that the fossil fuel industry is the most heavily subsidised industry going. A nuclear plant for example is always going to be made to be responsible for complete costs of waste disposal, and yet fossil fuel plants, and cars are allowed to just spew their waste into the environment at no cost.
If you were to make the fossil fuel industry pay it's actual costs - i.e. impact on people's health for example, rather than expect people to subsidise them by paying for their own health issues caused by fossil fuel users then the cost of petrol cars, of power via fossil fuels and so forth would be untenable and the market would change overnight but with massive economic and social disruption as people fail to afford to adjust to paying what they actually should, rather than to continue using their fossil fuel based power source or car at the expense of others.
So given the difficulty in trying to just completely alter the entire economic model of most countries overnight by making it illegal for fossil fuel users and power plants to continue to be subsidised by, say, doubling the price of petrol and electricity from non-renewable sources it's easier to just give at least some kind of counter-subsidy to renewables.
The problem is that the "natural" rate of change you're referring to isn't the natural rate of change, it's a rate of change crippled by the fact that fossil fuel power plants and so forth receive massive indirect subsidies through the fact they're not faced to pay for the actual costs they incur on society.
If you want to learn more search for "fossil fuel externalities". You'll find no end of articles and papers trying to estimate the hidden costs of fossil fuels, and whilst estimates vary it's to the degree of hundreds of billions every year in the US alone. The problem is that the system has been manipulated so long by the fossil fuel industries due to the power of big oil et. al. that they're not even close to playing on a level playing field even with renewable subsidies - they're at a massive subsidised advantage over renewables even when renewables have the subsidies they do.
For people who live in apartments and condominiums electric cars are not a convenient option because the parking spaces do not have plug-ins perhaps the government could create incentives for apartment buildings to have plug-in parking in order to incentivize electric car adoption
I am reading lots of arguments where people go "Well what about THIS random edge case? and THAT one?" You won't win against these people. These are the same people who willingly drop $20,000 on a new truck because they might get 2 inches of snow in the winter, rather than simply $1,000 on a set of good winter tires and wheels. Or $20,000 on a truck because there is the rare occasion they may need to haul something, rather than renting a truck from the local Home Depot or UHaul for a hundred bucks or two.
Electric car usage just moves the fuel use up to the power plant. There are efficiencies of scale but there is no good way to store electricity so all electricity on the grid is either used or wasted. There are also losses with conversion and distance. Then there are the batteries which are expensive and have a short lifetime compared to the auto that they are in. Much of the battery is recyclable but there are costs to the environment for both manufacturing the new car, the battery and disposal for the battery. Usability is another factor, while ranges are getting longer these are not real world as they do not take into account temperature, traffic patterns, battery age etc. I'd like to see a real alternative that does not crap all over the environment but the current crop of electrics are not it.
People in China and Europe would rather live in the US ... where people aren't told (as much) what to drive.
That's what the H1b's I work with from Poland say.
So much misinformation here, as is always the case with msmash posts.
If you google electric car sales you get headlines like "EV SALES UP 44%"! But the fact is they are a TINY percentage of the market, and in 2016 overall sales were actually down. Yes, electric car sales are down in the U.S. Go to a reliable source.
China making moves!! No, the local smog protesters are trying to push the government for more electrics because the smog is so bad. But as usual they have it wrong, the smog in Chinese cities isn't from people's cars, it's because of burning coal. China brings on a new coal power plant something like once a week. Many people heat their houses with coal, and cook with coal. So, just like the environmentalists here have done, they are going to go after the INDIVIDUAL Driver in a grand show while the real polluters - the energy industry - are not touched at all. Same thing that has happened in the US countless times.
And people wonder - when problems are exaggerated, lies are told with statistics, and all kinds of FAKE NEWS is spread to keep the electric car evangelicals happy - why nothing gets done. Stop screaming that the world is going to end if we don't all switch to electric cars immediately, stop pretending sales are through the roof, and stop lecturing us about range anxiety -- and more people would look into electrics. Electric car evangelists, and global warming evangelists, and many environmentalists are their own worst enemy. They think they are helping, but in fact they are slowing down progress.
Murphy was an optimist
Apparently nobody cares to remember that tons of people live in an apartment with no garage and no way to charge an EV at home. What the hell would I do with an EV? Run an extension cord down 3 stories and then 300+ feet into the parking lot?
As I've said before, people who live in apartments make up a large portion of the population regardless of where you live. They mostly park in parking areas several hundred feet from their units. Unless the landlord decides to install power in the parking areas, they can't even consider getting an EV. Even if they did, how can they know their next apartment will have power in the parking area?
Plug-in hybrids provide the best of both worlds: electric for short trips like daily commuting, errands, etc. and gasoline for when you need/want to go on a long road trip that would exceed the range of an electric-only car.
They would sell like hotcakes in the American market if the car companies just upped the battery-only range a bit to ensure most drivers' commutes could be covered by a single charge (say maybe up to 50 miles on a charge). But, no car companies seem to be interested in doing that.