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China, Europe Drive Shift To Electric Cars as US Lags (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.

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.

12 of 468 comments (clear)

  1. It's about landmass by omnichad · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:It's about landmass by omnichad · · Score: 3, Informative

      You want me to connect dots for you? Adding a half hour for charging for every couple hours of driving is not a small time sink.

    2. Re:It's about landmass by myrdos2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      They also tend to be far more polluting that a gas powered car. From the production of the batteries to the coal fired power plant that generates the electricity.

      Every time you say this I will shock you through your keyboard, but with a minimum of CO2. From the Wikipedia:

      Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline.

      They even have a dandy little chart with Tailpipe and total CO2 produced for electric and gasoline cars.

    3. Re:It's about landmass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're going to need to have something to eat and a bathroom break anyway - and that's only if you're in a mode of a very long trip. Most people don't drive several hours each day in a continuous trip - they go somewhere because they're going to do something there, so their car can charge while they do whatever they need to do. There's a few people who don't fall into that category, it's true - I guess for that small amount of people, electric cars aren't the answer. They are also fairly expensive at the moment, but prices will come down and there will be more and more places to charge.

    4. Re:It's about landmass by MightyMartian · · Score: 1, Informative

      Ah I see, so your personal and anecdotal claims just totally undermine actual statistics.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:It's about landmass by jheath314 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Have you actually calculated the amount of CO2 released per distance traveled for a car powered by gasoline, versus one powered by electricity from a coal plant? If so, I'd be genuinely interested in comparing notes. If not, please sit down and do a quick calculation before claiming electric cars "tend to be far more polluting."

      Here's my (admittedly rough) calculation:

      Gasoline:
      Approximately 9.5 L/100km (average for 2015 model year)
      times 2.31 kg CO2 emitted per L gasoline burned
      = 21.9 kg CO2 per 100 km traveled

      Electric:
      17.9 kWh/100km (for the 70 kWh Tesla Model S)
      divided by 80% wall charger efficiency (Tesla claims 95%, some users report 80%)
      times 0.527 kg CO2 per kWh (EPA average, includes line losses)
      = 11.8 kg CO2 per 100 km traveled

      Mind you, we're unfairly penalizing the electric car here because we're counting transmission losses over the power grid, whereas we're only counting the emissions from the gasoline already in the tank. A fairer comparison would take into account the carbon involved with gasoline distribution, but that goes beyond something I can easily estimate.

      I'll admit I'm not factoring in the environmental impact of battery manufacturing. (I suspect it isn't as bad as the anti-EV crowd claim, since lithium isn't a heavy metal.) Perhaps someone more informed than me can speak to the overall impact of manufacturing an electric versus gasoline car... I'd be interested in reading their insights.

      --
      Procrastination Man strikes again!
    6. Re:It's about landmass by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

      A Leaf is a realistic 120 (30kWh battery). Tesla is a really solid 300 (100kWh battery).

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:It's about landmass by green1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I live in Calgary, I drive a Tesla.
      I regularly make trips to Vancouver, Kelowna, Merritt, etc. all of which are hundreds of km away and require recharging.

      If you don't think an EV can be used in Canada you're living in the past.

    8. Re: It's about landmass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      There's an extensive 50kW fast charging network in Quebec. (Circuit Electrique, associated with Hydro Quebec) Getting from Montreal to Quebec City is no problem. Hell, you can get up to Alma, Val D'Or, Gaspe and even Manac-5.

      The rest of North America could take a lesson from Quebec on charging infrastructure.

  2. Plug-in Hybrid, solution solved by foxalopex · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. Population density by Pezbian · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.
  4. You don't live on ur use 99.9% of that landmass by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.