Electric Vehicles Have Another Record Year, Reaching 2 Million Cars In 2016 (iea.org)

An anonymous reader shares a report from the International Energy Agency: The number of electric cars on the roads around the world rose to 2 million in 2016, following a year of strong growth in 2015, according to the latest edition of the International Energy Agency's Global EV Outlook. China remained the largest market in 2016, accounting for more than 40% of the electric cars sold in the world. With more than 200 million electric two-wheelers and more than 300,000 electric buses, China is by far the global leader in the electrification of transport. China, the US and Europe made up the three main markets, totaling over 90% of all EVs sold around the world. Electric car deployment in some markets is swift. In Norway, electric cars had a 29% market share last year, the highest globally, followed by the Netherlands with 6.4%, and Sweden with 3.4%. The electric car market is set to transition from early deployment to mass market adoption over the next decade or so. Between 9 and 20 million electric car could be deployed by 2020, and between 40 and 70 million by 2025, according to estimates based on recent statement from carmakers.

Comments

China, the US and Europe

[turkeydance]

made up the three main markets....of just about everything

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric dildos have owned the market for years

Re:Not surprising

[elrous0]

The difference between a dildo and a Tesla is that one is a prick and the other is driven by one.

Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[mykepredko]

I feel like I'm the only person in the world that doesn't get a stiffy when looking at a Tesla. The Model S reminds me too much of a Jag with a dashboard that is overwhelmed with the 17" display and the Model 3 is just plain ugly.

Just like the Bolt and the Leaf. The i3 is about the best of a bad lot.

How about putting the front line designers on the vehicles and get the concepts evaluated by real people (not tree huggers that want drivers to be tortured even if they're burning electrons and not dinosaur sludge)?

I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

Re: Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

So the eGolf or the b-class then.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Gravis Zero]

I feel like I'm the only person in the world that doesn't get a stiffy when looking at a Tesla.

If you want a car that will give you an erection when you look at it then you need therapy, not a new car.

I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

Have you considered a Prius?

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[MightyMartian]

Technology has to go through stages. First you have the early adopters, who will buy the initial market offerings, which are inevitably too large, too expensive, and too inadequate, but they get to go around and say things "Have you seen my awesome cellular phone? And it only ways 10 lbs!"

Then you get the hipsters. They're the ones that buy the next generation of a technology, which has been greatly improved, but it still very damned expensive, but they're proud to announce over a cafe latte "I can buy my Pendleton scarves on Ebay with this!"

Then you get the executives. They want rugged and yet screams "I'm outrageously wealthy with a wife, a mistress and $200,000 sports car!" Again, the tech is still expensive, but at least it's now within the realm of an ordinary middle class grunt getting one.

The final stage is basically here everyone from a 12 year old to your gramma can get one. That's pretty much peak evolution for a technology. After that it's just steady refinement until one day, a successor product, after having gone through the early adopter, hipster and executive stages knocks it off its mantle and it ends up in a box somewhere and when you finally kick the bucket, your kids can go "Oh yeah, remember when we used to play Candy Crush and look up porn on that?"

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[DontBeAMoran]

The i3 isn't bad, but the i5 and i7 are better. Oh and there's the new upcoming i9 too, that thing is seriously badass.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

And it only ways 10 lbs!

I guess you're not an early adopter of writing correctly.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[MightyMartian]

Missed your cognitive therapy class again, I see.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Fisker Karma / Revero

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

A Preach-At-Us?

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[amiga3D]

Prius? Japanese for "turd on wheels."

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[_merlin]

Suspension in the Prius is horrible. If you want a Toyota hybrid, you're better off with the Camry or one of the Lexus hybrids.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Jeremi]

I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free for the first 38 miles each day and you don't ever have to worry about getting stranded by a depleted battery.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you want a car that will give you an erection when you look at it then you need therapy, not a new car.

I think he really meant "I want a car that doesn't look like generic a car from a cheap videogame that doesn't have licenses or talented designers, like the Tesla."

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Beautiful and probably the most wicked car money can buy.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

> I feel like I'm the only person in the world that doesn't get a stiffy when looking at a Tesla.

You're not the only one.
It's a cult just like Apple.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

i3 looks like it was designed by Mattel or Fischer-Price for two year olds. Ghastly thing.

I dont pay much attention to styling, and I almost bought i3 purely on the specs. 120 mile range and a limp home ic engine for emergencies. Enough, I said. Eagerly waited for it. BMW released a truly God awful car with 2000 lb carbon frame and the ugliest BMW ever made. They also released a Tesla competitor i8 or i9. That thing is cool. But priced at 90K to 120K I will only gawk at it.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[tehcyder]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Beautiful and probably the most wicked car money can buy.

Amusingly bonkers quote from Wikipedia:

The electronically limited top speed is now 355 km/h (221 mph)

Is there a technical reason for this limitation? Does the car take off if it goes faster or something? I can't imagine it's a regulatory thing.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[l20502]

In Europe most poeple consider the Prius rear to be really ugly, only topped by some ssayong cars.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[DirkDaring]

FYI it's up to 53 miles now in the new version.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[minogully]

If it goes too fast, the car starts to damage itself. These electronically limited top speeds improve the longevity of the car.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[trevize42]

I have a 2014 volt. Love it. I'm averaging 42-45 miles on the battery. I gotten gas 2 times since I purchased it. It has an 8 gallon gas tank. I drive it every day to work which is 35 miles each way. So... 70 miles a day for 3 years and so far used a total of 10 gallons of gas.. Cause well I still have 3/4 of a tank in it now... I charge at home with a phase 2 charger in my garage. My house is solar powered. My cost to charge at home is $0 I charge at work from my employers solar grid. My cost to charge at work is.. $0.. So ya.... I'm basically done with the whole buying gas thing.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Nidi62]

I'm still waiting on a pickup. The bed of a pickup would be a perfect place for battery packs and should still leave a decent amount of space for hauling (most owners of electric pickups would not be doing any heavy hauling, but it's always nice to have room for bulky or large items).

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[jimbolauski]

You are 100% correct the i3 is not bad it's awful. BMW should recall every i3 and remove all the W's on its badging.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

I totally agree with this. I had a Honda Fit EV which was almost indistinguishable from the regular Fit. We now have a Volt which looks just like a Cruze, i.e. nobody realizes these are electric cars.

On the other hand, the Leaf is too fugly for me to want to own one (we'll see what they do with V2), and the i3 is also pretty darn ugly.

Early adopters (which I guess I am) typically want to make a statement, so you end up with something like a Prius that screams "I'm so green!!!".

I think we're past early adopters - it's time for mainstream looks for BEVs that aren't converted gas cars.

I actually like the Chevy Bolt and the Model S and Model 3. I didn't like the nose of the Model 3 when it was first shown, but I guess it's grown on me.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

That brings up another point. I like sports cars. I would not consider any of the BEVs out there a sports car. The Model S is a luxury sedan. I'm hoping that the Model 3 will handle well. If not, perhaps BMW will come out with a good handling BEV.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[drinkypoo]

The Model S reminds me too much of a Jag with a dashboard that is overwhelmed with the 17" display and the Model 3 is just plain ugly.
Just like the Bolt and the Leaf. The i3 is about the best of a bad lot.

Everything you say is true, or at least the automotive press generally agrees with you. But what they have to say about the situation is that you can see that the vehicles are becoming less and less aggressively styled. The enthusiast early adopters want to be noticed. The best way to attract these people is with bold styling. Most other people just want something that looks like a car, and the automakers are beginning to serve those markets now. The Volt is relatively mainstream in appearance, Kia's Soul EV looks just as bad as the normal Soul, Hyundai's Ioniq looks exactly like a normal car and comes in hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric variants.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[drinkypoo]

The i3 was really a design study that BMW tricked people into funding for them. In spite of the fancy pants materials they don't lose money on i3s because they are much cheaper to build per vehicle than almost any other low-volume vehicle. There's a cool video on Youtube where they take you through the plant and show you most of the build process. The biggest difference in cost is in the tooling for the carbon fiber body panels versus the cost in tooling for stamping metal ones. Since the pressures involved are comparatively negligible you can just use an Aluminum mold, which means it's vastly cheaper to machine than a stamping die.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

We had a pure BEV which my daughter crashed. I replaced it with a low mileage 2013 Volt for $11,000. For 98% of what my two daughters need, they can do it all on the battery. But, when they want to drive to New Hampshire to the beaches, they can put a few gallons in it and use the gas engine. It gets about 40 mpg which isn't as good as say a Prius, but 98% of the time they're not burning any gas at all (and thus no teenage fights about who needs to fill the tank).

So far I'm very happy with the Volt...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[swillden]

I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice, drives well and I can smile smugly to myself when I pass the pumps.

How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free for the first 38 miles each day and you don't ever have to worry about getting stranded by a depleted battery.

The Volt is okay. I dislike the idea of carrying around an extra motor, though. All that complexity and weight, for something that you really would prefer never to use.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a car that will give you an erection when you look at it then you need therapy, not a new car.

No. He just needs a Ford Probe...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[mrun4982]

You're not the only one. Teslas are, at best, boring looking sedans but really they're just ugly (not to mention way over engineered in lots of ways... cough*stupid door handles*cough). All other electrics are pretty bad looking as well. I do disagree with you on one thing and that's the i3 is by far the worst looking one. Hybrids are no better either. The Prius? That's terrible looking as well. Yes, like virtually every car buyer out there (even the ones who refuse to admit it), looks are important in my car buying decision. When will they start making cool looking electric cars?

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[mrun4982]

No way. Hybrids are a hack. There's no point in having an electric engine if you still have a gas engine you need to maintain.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Rei]

More specifically, motor wear increases significantly as you go into the high end of the RPM range. Most EVs don't use a multi-gear transmission, so to get more top-end speed you have to choose a different gear ratio, which reduces your low-end torque. EVs are excellent on low-end torque in general, but it's not unlimited; as you keep dropping the RPM, eventually torque flatlines, due to either mechanical or electrical limitations. And most customers would rather have fast accel that they can actually use instead of crazy top speeds that they never get to experience. Unless they're buying it as a track car, that is.

Technically it's possible to reduce wear at high RPMs, which provides another way to get a higher top speed - and EV motors have been moving in this direction. But the torque / top speed tradeoff will always remain, unless you add in the weight, cost and maintenance of a multi-gear transmission.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[cayenne8]

That brings up another point. I like sports cars. I would not consider any of the BEVs out there a sports car. The Model S is a luxury sedan. I'm hoping that the Model 3 will handle well. If not, perhaps BMW will come out with a good handling BEV.

I keep saying, if Tesla would bring back the roadster, or something of the like, that is a sports car, with great performance, but also doesn't look like a "family car"....and could price it in the ballpark of a Corvette, I'd be first in line for it....

While a smaller market than for family cars, there is a decent sized market that wants sports cars, why not feed it?

Other car companies use these to generate interests in their other models....c'mon Tesla, make a fun, good looking car again!!

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[haruchai]

"The i3 is about the best of a bad lot"

"I don't need to scream out at the world I have an electric car, I want something that looks nice......"

These two statements were written by the same personality?? There's nothing subtle about the i3 and the kindest thing I can say is that it's somewhat less weird than the Leaf.
There's nothing about the Model S that screams "electric car" and it does looks nice & I've been told it drives well so apart from the price & the screen, not sure what your beef with it is.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Rei]

Composites are cheap in small volumes relative to metal stamping because of the low tooling costs; you can carve a mould out of styrofoam if you want. But metal stamping is generally cheaper in large volumes; there's more steps in making a composite part, there's the curing times, there's often a higher defect rate, automated production equipment is more complex, and so forth. There's a lot of work trying to achieve lower mass-production costs for composites, and I really do think they're the future. But the future is not quite here.

I really respect what Boeing has been doing with the Dreamliner. They've taken a real risk, and it's costing them a lot of money. But anything to push forward large-scale composite usage production is good in my book.

BTW, your mention specifically of CF: one thing that's kind of neat that you're starting to see now is carbon/dyneema weaves. And it took me a bit to really catch onto the point of it, but I really like it. Basically, dyneema = UHMWPE = ultra high molecular weight polyethylene. Low density (even floats in water), but still with a good tensile strength; its specific tensile strength (aka strength per unit mass) is nearly as good as carbon fibre's. It's not frequently used in laminates however because it's extremely slick and doesn't adhere well with most resins. It's also UV sensitive, but additives and coatings can work around that. Its specific compressive strength is also worse than carbon fibre's - but on the upside it's also much better at energy absorption than carbon fibre (aka not likely to shatter). So combining the two into a single weave, you still get excellent mechanical properties, but it's not brittle.

But here's the neat part: yes, UHMWPE has a slightly lower specific tensile strength vs CF. But that's not the figure that actually matters. Because the density is lower, a sheet of equivalent tensile strength is thicker if there's spectra in the weave. And thickness matters hugely when it comes to bending resistance - that's why sandwich composites are so much stronger than single layers, why you use trusses in large structures rather than just simple beams, and why you use hollow beams or I-beams rather than solid ones. If I recall the formulae correctly, stress is proportional to the distance from the centreline to the third power, while deflection is proportional to its fourth power. So the fact that the composites are less dense adds an unexpectedly large amount of strength. And that strength carries over when you use these stronger layers in sandwich composites, trusses, tubes, etc.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[haruchai]

In the case of cell phones, executives & business people were the early adopters.
And we didn't have (those kind of) hipsters back then. Well not anywhere of the several places I lived.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You think the Model S is ugly? What's your ideal car? A 1988 Camaro?

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

There are 3 or 4 companies working on BEV pickups right now, so you shouldn't have to wait too long...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[mykepredko]

In terms of styling: Jag XKE
Power, coolness: '69 Mustang Mach 1
Practicality: Audi Q5

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[quenda]

If you want a car that will give you an erection when you look at it then you need therapy, not a new car.

You do realise he was using a metaphor, right?

Arousal and desire are not just for sexual matters. Though the more socially acceptable term is "lust", rather than stiffy.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[ctilsie242]

It could be worse. It wasn't that long ago when most electric cars looked like the i-MyEV, or little pods that looked cool at a "let's all go green" conference, but were just too ugly to take seriously. Tesla and others at least has made electric vehicles look decent, and though definitely not as stylish at front-line vehicles, good enough for a daily driver. Tesla also made electric vehicles into decent performance vehicles.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free for the first 38 miles each day and you don't ever have to worry about getting stranded by a depleted battery.

Yes, you do. Ask my wife about been stranded and towed to a dealer twice this year. Plenty of gas to get home, but if the battery pack detects any of several faults, it will not turn on the engine and it will kill all power and you coast to a stop in the middle of a major highway if you are so unlucky. She was, and you get about 5 seconds to try and get to the shoulder while slowing so much that cars on the right won't let you over. It's awesome.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Gravis Zero]

You do realise he was using a metaphor, right?

What I realize is that it's very crude. I rather frustrate people using such vulgarities than indulge them.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at Workforce. They recently announced a pickup with gas backup. Seemed like similar capability to a "half-ton" pickup, but the first 60(?) miles were on battery. Supposed to be delivering to fleets this year.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

No way. Hybrids are a hack. There's no point in having an electric engine if you still have a gas engine you need to maintain.

This, and doubly so for the Volt since the Volt can drive in full gas mode with direct drive via a transmission (I think it's called mountain mode). Normal hybrids leave out the transmission and just use the gas engine to generate electricity. Volt has basically got all of the maintenance you'd expect with a ICE vehicle and all of the maintenance you'd expect with an electric, and the additional mechanisms to stitch it all together.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[SCVonSteroids]

You just sound like the worst kind of person.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

I kind of felt like that with my first electric vehicle (Honda Fit EV). I really didn't like the idea of hauling around an engine and a gas tank that I would never use.

On the other hand, for some people a pure BEV won't work. Or, they just don't want to have to plan every trip. So, for them, a range extended electric probably makes a lot of sense.

We have a Volt now and my daughters really like the fact that they can go on trips longer than the range of the Honda Fit EV. Ultimately, I think pure BEV will be the way to go for passenger cars, but while the battery and charging is still being improved, Rex vehicles make sense for some people.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[BostonPilot]

I don't think this is a fair posting. It would be like one person saying "I like my ICE car because I can go as far as I want without having to worry about range" and someone countering that isn't true because their ICE car lost oil pressure and wouldn't work, despite there being gas in the tank. Or maybe stopped running because of a check-engine condition.

I can understand your frustration with the situation your wife found herself in (twice) but that's an argument against unreliable cars, not against range extended vehicles (except maybe that a Rex is more complicated so more chance of something going wrong).

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

You can also get tuned Model S's for sports driving. Why would you even consider a stock car's handling properties if you're that much into sports driving?

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot all about the Fiat 500e?
Don't need a semi-chubby, just need to burn rubber with it coming up the hill to my house every day to be happy...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[ctilsie242]

I would say the Volt is one of the most underappreciated cars in existence, just because it is American made. If Toyota or BMW made the exact same car with the exact same style for twice the price, it would be selling left and right, because it solves the range anxiety problems that pure BEVs might raise.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[mbkennel]

> Normal hybrids leave out the transmission and just use the gas engine to generate electricity

As far as I know, only the BMW i3 works like that---all other mainstream ones have a mechanical linkage to the wheels.

Using the battery lowers wear on the engine and friction brakes.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[shilly]

Take a look at a Renault Zoe.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[shilly]

Or if you prefer high-end supercar, a Rimac

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Like a Chevy Bolt? You seem like the type who really doesn't want an electric car, but isn't really willing to admit it, so you'll find something not to like about each of the dozens of models already out there.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the mileage while using the gas motor. Can't come close to the Prius Prime at almost 60 mpg. If you regularly go further than the electric range, the Prius plug-ins are far better on gas (and cost less).

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tesla roadster then? Not a luxury thing, but faster than most sports cars.

Internal combustion consumer cars are immensely useful for some things, like pulling a boat trailer all day. But they have no charm anymore - too slow you know. Trucks or wannabe trucks. If you want to take off, you go electric.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

tree huggers that want drivers to be tortured even if they're burning electrons and not dinosaur sludge)?

Nah, we only want people like you to suffer.

OK, just kidding. But it's endlessly amusing how Slashdot (and other forums with large brogrammer populations) hold such an abiding hate and fear of environmentalism.

Anyway, why do electric cars interiors mostly suck, and typically their exteriors are built without any concessions to style? Because nobody's offering anything better. Face it, when the Tesla hit the streets us Greens ran for it as fast as we could - we've always known that we could have better, faster, higher performance electric cars, we've just never been offered any before.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Socguy]

I used to think that as well, but there is some really interesting hybrid technology coming down the pipe. Combining an electric motor with a gas engine enables designers to get away from the Otto cycle and exploit far more efficient cycles such as the Atkinson cycle without sacrificing performance.

http://www.caranddriver.com/fe...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

Happy with mine so far, too -- got it in February, have used up 10% of the gas in the tank so far, been driving on electric otherwise, charge overnight at home (110V). Pay a bit extra for the renewable-only option on the electric bill, so it's not burning coal at a distance. It's a comfy and quiet ride.

Did get it on a 39-mo (3 yr) lease rather than buy outright, since I have no idea what non-ICE cars will be like in 3 years, but I'm sure the market will be quite different and current EVs may have a crappy resale value. Will probably go BEV by then.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Agripa]

How about a Volt? It's pretty understated, it works well, is emissions free ...

... and is made by GMC. Having owned a GMC, hell no.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[RespekMyAthorati]

Very interesting post.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[sad_]

you like the i3 of all the available options, really? it's a horrible car with so many strange design and usability choices.
in fact, ekectric cars shouldn't look any different then normal cars at all, just keep it normal instead it trying to make something that looks scifi now, but will be totally outdated in a few years (while classic car design can stay great for years and years).

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Shirley Marquez]

A lot of the appearance of electric cars is dictated by function. Reducing the coefficient of drag directly translates into increased range, and so most electric cars (especially ones designed to be driven on the highway because it becomes more important at high speed; it's not as big a factor for the little Chinese electrics or the Smart Electric Drive) pay a lot of attention to that. Getting range in other ways isn't as easy as it is with a gasoline car; increasing the size of the gas tank doesn't cost much, but adding more battery capacity does. Buyers of hybrids also care about efficiency, leading to some of them being ugly in the same ways that you find electric cars ugly. (Prius and the former Honda Insight, I'm looking at you. Especially the original Insight.)

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Shirley Marquez]

Tesla doesn't have the resources to both make the car you want and also build a car to bring electric cars to the masses. Elon Musk has decided that the latter mission is the more important one. Faraday Future may build the car you're looking for if they ever manage to get something to market.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Hamsterdan]

Looks like something out of a Transformers cartoon, but still cool

https://cleantechnica.com/2017...

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[toddestan]

Have you considered a Prius?

Uhh, he said something that looked good.

Re:Need to get cooler looking electric cars

[Anonymous Coward]

remove all the W's

Too unsubtle. Let's see, the logo on the front & back already looks like a puckerhole, which serves as a warning to other drivers. The split front grill already looks like buttcheeks, with the puckerhole in the middle.

I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Anonymous Coward]

I could pay cash for a lot of new cars, including a tesla, but I love my inline wrangler

nothing is is better than driving that bad ass jeep all over anything and towing the boat, rocking out ahead of jimmy concerts with blenders running in my line-x bed, it fuckin owns

and I give zero fucks that I get like 16mpg. Who cares!

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it does have electric start... so a step in the right direction

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[DontBeAMoran]

I could pay cash for a lot of new cars, including a tesla, but I love my inline wrangler.

An inline wrangler is great, but have you tried inline-block wrangler, or even absolute wrangler? Some people like static wrangler too but I find it a bit annoying.

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Cmdln Daco]

My mom used to drive a '72 Dodge Dart with an inline 6 in it.

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[PopeRatzo]

nothing is is better than driving that bad ass jeep all over anything and towing the boat, rocking out ahead of jimmy concerts with blenders running in my line-x bed, it fuckin owns

And that's just your morning commute!

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Anonymous Coward]

lol we've found a slashdotter that doesn't understand CSS jokes.

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[drinkypoo]

and I give zero fucks that I get like 16mpg. Who cares!

More MPG means more range, which means longer trails. 16 mpg is pretty piss-poor, before it died the death of cavitation my 1992 F250 7.3 IDI with a turbo kit and big chunky mud tires got 16, on the freeway anyway.

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[amiga3D]

Mopar people call that a slant 6. 225 cubic inches of torque. With a hyperpack intake and a good four barrel carb it'll get up and go.

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, he also outed himself as not knowing anything about engines since he couldn't tell that the other two were fake.
He is just some tool that has heard from someone else that inline wrangler is great.

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[tehcyder]

rocking out ahead of jimmy concerts with blenders running in my line-x bed

No, I give up, what does this mean?

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Maritz]

lol we've found a slashdotter that doesn't understand engines. Inline and wrangler means the best goddamn straight 6 ever made u moron

Think I better file that under 'who gives a shit'.

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Maritz]

Probably nothing, but it's provocative.

Re: I love my 11 year old wrangler

[rikkards]

True Jeep aficionado wouldn't call it a Wrangler they would have called it a TJ as it is the more accepted name. The TJ was the last model with the inline 6 and there was some IP issues with calling it the Wrangler back in the day due to Ford (I think) had a Wrangler edition of one of their small trucks. Once the JK came out they switched to the V6 and it was called a Wrangler again everywhere. The only other Wrangler was the YJ but that was square eyed and we don't talk about it...

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[Nidi62]

rocking out ahead of jimmy concerts with blenders running in my line-x bed

No, I give up, what does this mean?

Late middle aged guy pretending he's still young, making margaritas in the back of his car and wearing a Tommy Bahama shirt.

Re:I love my 11 year old wrangler

[turp182]

OK. He's driving down a gravel road on his way to a Jim Beckel concerto presentation.

http://jimbeckelmusic.com/

He's wearing Blenders sunglasses, might be jogging.

https://www.blenderseyewear.co...

I'm assuming "line-x" is mattress company.

Makes sense to me.

Good news or bad news?

[Neuronwelder]

Are they buying solar cells to charge or help charge their car as a 2nd car to get around town? Excellent! -- Are they driving it as as main car an charging it from a power plant? Bad news! If the second case is true, they need to develop a hybrid with a very small motor that runs at the motor's resonant speed all the time running a generator. It would lessen the drain, and a need for a big battery supply, by acting in tandem with the drain on the battery. Also, it would act as a backup, so the car can limp down the road if the person does not keep an eye on charge left, or the battery fails. If you drive long distances you are better off with a small car with a small engine in the long run, pollution wise. Mine gets over 40mpg in the summer, 38-39mpg winter. I wish I could get more mpg. But the automakers are still in bed with petroleum.

Re:Good news or bad news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, ICE cars STILL produce more ground-level pollution, and that's not even considering the people (like myself) who live downstream from a nuclear or hydroelectric plant.

There's no need to develop a series-parallel hybrid though, you can go buy one today.

Re:Good news or bad news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typically, electric cars are charged with whatever the grid provides at night, and that is rarely solar. Nuclear is an ideal partner for electrified transport, and it will continue to provide the bulk of clean energy for the foreseeable future.

Electric cars waste very little energy in motors and batteries, and can even recover energy from braking. Combusting hydrocarbons at the plant is considerably cleaner and more manageable than countless internal combustion engines, and growing the share of nuclear will reduce emissions further.

Re:Good news or bad news?

[drinkypoo]

Well, I hate to break it to you, but the EV adoption is going to have to slow down sooner or later because of infrastructure issues. Expect to see a metric assload of 48V mild hybrid systems that replace the starter motor on a tiny little car with a belt-driven motor/generator/starter and use a fairly small battery to provide short battery-only ranges, and regen. This will be cool because it will encourage drivers to change velocity gradually, so as to maximize use of the electric power system, instead of nailing the pedals like spastic assholes.

Re: Good news or bad news?

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit. I can afford one, but I can't charge the goddamned thing. I'm pretty sure I can't buy a charging cable to run out the window of my apartment to the street, where I may or may not find a parking spot.

Re:Good news or bad news?

[Anonymous Coward]

they need to develop a hybrid with a very small motor that runs at the motor's resonant speed all the time running a generator.

Congrats, you win the "I have no clue what I just said" award.

Re: Good news or bad news?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no Tesla superchargers near you? Where do you live?

Re: Good news or bad news?

[fluffernutter]

Don't Tesla superchargers only support Teslas? The guy said he could afford an EV, not a Tesla. Also, if he is using the car daily he might have to fill every day or two. No one wants to visit a filling station that often.

Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Those huge, big, mega, uber, massive 2 million IN USE...actually represents 0.2% of -->light use-- vehicles.

2016 had a record car sales of ~88 million, how many were electric uh uh. Maybe if remote controlled toys get counted...

Color me utterly unimpressed...I'll keep my ICE vehicle, thank you very much.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[MightyMartian]

One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"

In 1900, there 8,000 cars in the US. By 1910 there were over 458,000.
Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...

And that's why we joke about buggy whip manufacturers.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[DontBeAMoran]

Color me utterly unimpressed... I'll keep my ICE vehicle, thank you very much.

That's like, a really cold comment, dude.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll find horses are still in wide use.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[MightyMartian]

There are nine million horses in the United States. There are 260 million automobiles.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[Cmdln Daco]

Horse-drawn to Gasoline Car was a revolution.

Gas to Electric is a little thing that car dealers and mechanics worry about.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[ugen]

I am definitely hopeful. I'd love to buy an electric car now. However, I live in a condo, and board and owners are not interested in installing any charging points in our parking. So, no luck in any foreseeable future.

In that sense, gasoline was easier to distribute - you did not need to get a fuel barrel at your residence. Someone had to install one relatively nearby in a commercial location.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[swillden]

I am definitely hopeful. I'd love to buy an electric car now. However, I live in a condo, and board and owners are not interested in installing any charging points in our parking. So, no luck in any foreseeable future.

Give it a few years. Charging stations in the parking area will become an important competitive point for apartment and condo complexes, just as parking spots and swimming pools are now.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[Barsteward]

No reason why you can't do the same with a supercharger point in the same commercial location but obviously limited on numbers that can use it overnight

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[goose-incarnated]

One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"

This fallacious argument is trotted out every time this topic comes up. You know, just because people who claimed "that won't catch on" were wrong about the automobile, does not mean that anyone who claims "that won't catch on" is wrong.

For every 1 time the naysayers were wrong, there's about a thousand times they were right. You are making a stupid argument, using that single time out of thousands to "prove" your point. That single time was an outlier - it doesn't mean anything, other than "tech is hard to predict".

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

One hundred and twenty years ago an automobile was a pretty unique sight, and I'm sure every fellow with a horse and carriage snorted "You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy. Who would want that when you've got a perfectly good horse?"
In 1900, there 8,000 cars in the US. By 1910 there were over 458,000.
Source: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/...
And that's why we joke about buggy whip out manufacturers.

Joke is on you. Consider this possible alternative history: what if they paid attention to those smelly and noisy complaints way back then and banned autos long enough for electric autos to get a dominant hold... Way back then. There would be no global warming problem.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You got to find the gasoline for it, it's smelly a noisy

Strange, that's the exact reasons I bought an battery powered Echo v58 string trimmer yesterday. Plus my old one conked out 3x yesterday due to ICE tech (primer bulb, fixed, then clutch, then fixed, then some odd noise and smoke before losing power - my patience was killed by then).

Not needing gas and constantly yanking a cord to start it is just a bonus.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[orzetto]

I am an EV owner living in Norway, and we had this kind of problems in the news. The government is thinking of making it a requirement for condos to allow installation of charging stations.

The argument of the recalcitrant condos was that old electric systems could not support charging all cars if all tenants switched to EVs, so they decided to forbid it outright for everybody, in order not to create a precedent. In my condo, for example, we have a standing rule that we cannot install a charger for more than 16 A each. Yet this point is moot, since it practically never happens that all cars are charging at the same time, and if it does is during the night. I charge my Leaf on average once a week (in our garage we also have a Tesla S, a Tesla X, a Kia Soul Electric and a VW E-golf out of 15 flats). The electric grid could just as well get overloaded if all tenants started their ovens, washing machines and heaters at the same time, and the worst that can happen is that the main switch trips.

Also, having 32 A charging is nice to have the time you need it, but no one actually uses daily it if they can help it, because:

• 10 A is more than enough for overnight charge, and higher currents degrade the battery faster
• 32 A is a big share of each tenant's limit of 40 A, so you have to run the rest of the flat on 8 A (which must be enough for heating, cooking and so on)

What I think is more challenging for the US is that a lot of people rent rather than buy, so they would be unwilling to buy their charging stations. I bought my own for about 1000 dollars (including cabling, B-type residual-current device and installation) and I consider an investment in the house, but people renting will not be willing to shell out that much money (though you can probably get away with 100 $ if you install a simple socket and use the onboard charger).

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[orzetto]

Having experienced both (my own charger and fast chargers): you definitely want to use your own charger. Fast chargers are really expensive (about as expensive as gas by the km—European gas that is!), and their kWh price is about 10 times what you would get from your power company; the reason is that they pay high tariffs for kW rating (as opposed to kWh).

Fast chargers are for people driving long distances once in a while who need to recharge their vehicle midway. If you use them regularly, you will not save anything on "fuel" compared to gas, plus your battery will degrade faster in the long run. If you can buy an EV, you should also have your own little (slow) charging station at home, and use it overnight as you main charging strategy: this will save you loads of money.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Technology always moves forward. I never fails. Just look at the CueCat.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[tehcyder]

I thought condos were a US-only thing? I never saw a proper explanation of what the difference between a condo and a block of flats was anyway.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[AmiMoJo]

Just install a multi-head charger that limits the maximum charge rate of all vehicles. They are readily available. Simple ones sequence charging so that on X vehicles are charging at once, but all get done overnight, and more advanced ones charge all vehicles but rate limit them.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

..and hope you don't have an emergency at night that requires you to use your vehicle before it is charged.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

Are EV's really 'moving forward'? Seems a step ahead for the environment but a step back for consumers.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[jittles]

Give it a few years. Charging stations in the parking area will become an important competitive point for apartment and condo complexes, just as parking spots and swimming pools are now.

That is already starting to be the case. In fact, it is already the case at many hotel brands as well. The big name ones all have electric vehicle chargers at their properties with VIP parking for them.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[orzetto]

Condominiums are pretty common the world over, actually—Wiki is your friend.

What is particular in Norway, is that we have two distinct types of condominiums:

1. The Sameie, or "joint ownership", which is a condominium proper like anywhere else: everybody owns their flat and do what they want with it, and they pay a fee to maintain the jointly owned estate;
2. The Borettslag, or "Right-to-reside company", which is more structured like a company in which you buy one share that grants you the right to use a flat (you don't own the flat formally, the company does).

The first are usually common for larger and more expensive apartments, and for (almost) all free-standing houses. The second are exempt from the heavy taxes levied on acquisition of real estate (2.5%), since you are buying a share, not real estate, but require more administration since it's the company that formally owns the whole building. They are also more heavily regulated, for example there are strict limits to subletting, since their social purpose is to provide people a home they own and live in, as opposed to be a pure investment object.

Most problems with EV chargers come with the Borettslag, because there you need to ask for permission for any major renovation you want to do (because formally it's not yours). In a Sameie things are usually easier, though you must handle them yourself.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[orzetto]

Thought about that, but that requires the condo admins to standardise on a specific model, and possibly to install the chargers in each parking stall. We still have a majority of fossil-fuelled cars, and new EVs trickle in slowly, and by the time the next (PH)EV arrives the previous charger model could be out of production.

I see that as a thing 10 years from now, in newly built condos and after EVs have penetrated over 50% of the market.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[MorePower]

It is generally understood (at least in the US) that a condo can be individually bought and sold, i.e. each unit has its own parcel recorded with the government, while apartments in an apartment complex are all owned by a single entity and only rented to individual tenants.
You can rent a condo, but you would be renting from the individual homeowner of that unit rather than the owner of the building/complex (because condos buildings don't have a singular owner, just an HOA that manages the common structure/area).

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Saudis, the Gulf States, Russia and all the other economies funded by the sale of oil.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're like digital cameras in 1994 at the moment. Catching on, but expensive and not good enough for everyone yet.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

They were less smelly than the horse, manure was a crisis-level issue in cities by then.

In the early days, electric cars were actually popular, particularly with women. Unfortunately battery development did not advance as rapidly as ICE advances were made. Now ICE is reaching it's limit, and batteries finally have a change to equal and exceed ICE performance.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[trawg]

Awesome post. Really interesting to hear (again) how much ass Norway is kicking in doing cool stuff.

The thing about the starting ovens, etc, I discovered actually has a term here in the UK - TV pickup, referring to the fact that when there's a TV commercial break for something that many people are watching, there is a big spike in usage because everyone goes and turns on their kettles or whatever.

It's interesting (to me, anyway) thinking about how simply that effect could be mitigated with even a tiny amount of battery storage in a large number of homes to act as a local buffer for demand like that.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[AmiMoJo]

The condo owner might as well just install chargers in every stall and be done with it. It's going to happen eventually, the chargers are not expensive and won't become obsolete.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[Anonymous Coward]

But I thought in a few years 95% of travel will be self-driving cars. Some city dwelling autist neckbeards said so!

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[BostonPilot]

I guess it depends on why you say a step back for consumers.

I much prefer driving a BEV over a gas car. The low amount of noise, the quick acceleration, no lurching as it shifts, and the one pedal driving.

Disadvantage: having to plan refueling. With a big enough battery, that won't be the case for most people. It's pretty rare for the average guy to drive more than 300 miles a day, so most people could just plug in at night and not really worry about it. For those who do drive a lot of miles a day, or end up in places without a charging infrastructure, a Rex like the i3 or Chevy Volt gives you 99% of the advantages of a BEV without having to worry about running out of charge.

I think they're definitely a step ahead for consumers, and will continue to be even better.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

That's a pretty big disadvantage. And I know people say I can rent an ICE if I need to go on a long trip, but you know what? It's a big pain to deal with a company for use of their car that I don't want to deal with if I am on vacation, and I couldn't imagine risking running out of juice if I needed to take a family member to the hospital at midnight and the car wasn't charged enough yet.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[BostonPilot]

I agree that Gas to Electric by itself isn't a big thing.

Now fossil fuel -> renewables is a BIG deal in my book, and a car that runs on the power source that Solar + Wind + Hydro produce... I think that's also a big thing.

Gonna take a couple decades to make a dent, but I think we're seeing the beginning of the revolution that is humankind's switch to renewable energy. It's about goddam time!

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[BostonPilot]

I couldn't imagine risking running out of juice if I needed to take a family member to the hospital at midnight and the car wasn't charged enough yet

That's my point about a big enough battery. Restate your comment: "I can't imagine running out of gas if I needed to take a family member to the hospital at midnight" and the obvious thing you do now is you don't run your gas tank down to empty and park overnight that way. You make sure you always have at least enough for the quick emergency trip.

So, the BEV way of thinking of that is that you should have a big enough battery that when you get home and plug in, you still have enough charge for a quick emergency trip if you need to...

(or, as I mentioned, you buy a Rex like an i3 or a Volt so that you can always fall back on the gas engine if you need to).

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

Again, I need a vehicle that can seat four. Sometimes five, with luggage. My mother in law comes along with us a lot.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

These are $43K vehicles! LOL, no F'in way!

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[swillden]

But I thought in a few years 95% of travel will be self-driving cars. Some city dwelling autist neckbeards said so!

I'm sure there will be a variety. But, yeah, car ownership in urban, and even sub-urban, areas is going to drop rapidly.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[BostonPilot]

I'm seeing Bolts advertised for $32,200 in my area. Take the $7,500 federal incentive = $24,700. In my state (MA) another $2,500 state incentive and it's $22,200.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[fluffernutter]

Yes but it doesn't sound like it is big enough for my family anyway. My wife felt cramped in a Dodge Journey and this seems to be smaller.

Re:Amazing isn't it...

[b0bby]

I think the US equivalent of your Borettslag is a Co-op - joint ownership of the whole property, with the right to use a particular unit. They aren't too common, but I know they have them in NYC and San Francisco.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[orzetto]

Oh, but charges do become obsolete, unfortunately. In my garage, my car uses Type 1 for normal charging, the Kia I believe as well. The VW uses Type 2. The Teslas have their own standard. So in a small garage we have 3 standards for charging. Most likely Type 2 will win out, but for now there is fragmentation.

Re: Amazing isn't it...

[AmiMoJo]

The charger itself normally has a type 2 or a standard domestic socket, and then each car comes with a suitable adapter cable. The EU has standardized on type 2, and actually Teslas sold in the EU have a type 2 compatible socket.

I have a Leaf with the type 1 socket, and it came with both a type 2 cable and a domestic (3 pin UK plug) cable.

And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Snotnose]

Unless I want to spend 10 hours at Kohls. So I'll stick with my gas guzzler.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[dprimary]

You have zero outlets in your home? Is it a tent?

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to buy a Nissan Leaf, and last month when looking for a new place to rent, I tried to find somewhere I could rent in the Seattle area that had a parking spaces with an outlet. Other than a few oddball places that were way out of my price range and had tiny units, I didn't find a single place I could afford. Outlets to charge electric cars aren't that easy to find.

Also, I recently helped a friend add an outlet to the garage in his house. We had to rip out the old breaker box and add a new one to add a new 240V dual pole breaker. Also, we had to rip-out the sheet rock to run the romex to get garage for the new NEMA 14-50 outlet. It was a major hassle. After all of that, he still has trouble charging his car since he has 120 Amp main service so his car often trips the main breaker.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

At my house In Redmond, WA about 500 yards from Microsoft Red West, an electrician quoted me over $6k to install an outlet to charge a Tesla. I assume you spent much less than that when helping your friend, but that isn't legal here since we have to get permits and do an environmental study. The GP's quote of "Is it a tent?" is just ridiculous when even in my house that is currently worth about $1.2 million, but even at my house I can't charge a Tesla. Also, the $6k quote didn't include upgrading the main service so the electrician said my main breaker would probably trip if my heat pump was running while I was also using my dryer or oven. My wife nixed that since she didn't want to have to deal with that.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

This. He is wrong since so many houses don't have 240V outlets in garages or service that can support the extra load. I can't plugin my Tesla when I first get home. I have to remember to plug it in after we finish cooking dinner.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

My house is pretty new and about 200 yards from the building where I work at Microsoft, but I haven't been able to get the permit to allow me to install an outlet for an electric car. I really, really want one since my commute is less than a mile round trip.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just bike to work? I know it rains a lot here, but it isn't that bad to sit at your desk with wet clothes. Just buy a fan.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Just set an alarm. That is what I do since my electrical service can't run my AC and microwave at the same time as when I charge my car. It sucks that in the Seattle area the environmental studies are so damn expensive.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

The environmental studies are important. I live near the corner of 148th Ave NE and Old Redmond Road about 0.8 miles from Microsoft Red West where I work. Until I was denied permission to install an outlet to charge my electric car, I had no clue as to why I shouldn't be allowed to. I sold my Leaf and bought a used Toyota Corolla.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. I live in Redmond near Microsoft and work in a building farther away, so while it is a hassle to watch my peak power usage, I understand why the city won't allow me to install a higher amperage service.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a house not far from Microsoft that has power from Puget Sound Energy. Getting them to provide a higher amp service is hard as hell. I've been fighting them for nearly three years so I can install a 40A charger for my Tesla. Currently, I can't completely recharge my car and the charge catches-up over the weekend. When I need to go into work on a weekend or have to drive somewhere else, I'm in the negative. I've had to walk into work and back home many times to allow my car's batteries to charge. Microsoft does have a few parking places with chargers, but they fill-up pretty damn early.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than a few oddball places that were way out of my price range and had tiny units, ...

Same here. I own a Leaf, and after I got evicted because a Chinese investor bought my place, I wasn't able to find anywhere that offered a place where I can charge my car. Fortunately, I work in a building that has charging space so I can charge there. That is the Key Center in Bellevue, WA across from the transit center. I'm pretty much only limited to drive to work and home so it sucks having to walk almost two miles round trip from where I live to go to a grocery store.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

The Microsoft building where I work doesn't have showers, so I hate biking to work since I smell bad all day.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of environmental studies? That is why I was denied a permit to charge my electric car.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

In 1 mile you smell bad? You must be horribly out of shape

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. It's like Microsoft doesn't want us to commute by bike.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Barsteward]

Thats a bummer, here in the UK you can charge an EV off a standard plug, takes 8-10 hours to fully charge. i think the only proviso is that its best to check your wring is up to date

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Maritz]

He said it's a mile round trip, so actually half a mile on the bike is making him reek all day. I'd say maybe get the bike out in the evening instead. ;)

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

There are ways to install 220V outlets, idiot.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[minogully]

Not true, you can use any electrical outlet. But charge times will be higher the lower the voltage.

It's possible that it's still feasible even with the higher charge times, so long as you don't regularly drive farther than what you can charge. People forget that you typically don't need to charge the whole battery every time, just what you used that day.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[aaarrrgggh]

Add solar and a powerwall at the same time, and it is effectively free.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[aaarrrgggh]

The Tesla has a built-in timer and can schedule charging start times to take advantage of off-peak rates. I don't know if it has a rate-limit feature though, but it would surprise me if it didn't.

Moreover, although it is slow there is a standard 120V, 20A charger for Tesla, providing 29 miles/hour of range.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[BostonPilot]

I'm reading all these and I'm really surprised. When I got my Honda Fit EV it came with a 220v charger. I paid my electrician a couple hundred bucks to put a dryer outlet next to my panel, plugged the 220v charger into the dryer outlet and I was done. No environmental study, no hassle. Granted, my panel is in my garage so I didn't have to run a cable the length of my house, so it might be more of a hassle if your panel isn't in the garage, but still...

Do you really have to get an environmental study in Washington State to install a dryer?

I'm also a little surprised to hear people saying their service isn't sufficient to run the extra circuit. I've got an electric dryer, electric oven, well pump, septic pump, AND the circuit for the car in a house built in 1975 (i.e. the service isn't THAT new) and I've never had a problem.

We now have a Chevy Volt (daughter crashed the BEV) and my only complaint is that the Volt takes longer than it should to charge @ 220v... Would love it if GM would sell an upgraded charging system in the Volt that would use more current.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[BostonPilot]

That's a good point. With my Honda Fit EV I would typically have only used 1/2 the charge, so it would only take 90 minutes @ 220v to charge. With 110v that would have probably been 4-5 hours... not nearly as good as 90 minutes, but it would probably work for a lot of situations.

Re:And I still have nowhere to charge one

[WheezyJoe]

You have zero outlets in your home? Is it a tent?

Some people live in apartments. You know, those tall things - some with covered parking and some without. Management doesn't take kindly to running 100-yard cables out your window to a car parked 3 floors below.

Even townhome-living people are SOL for EVs if they don't have a garage or at least have their own driveway.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[shilly]

Does a Tesla really not have an app that lets you set a charging schedule or start charging remotely??

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

At half a mile even a bike may be overkill -- that's just 10 minutes of walking.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

No you don't. 110V is fine, it just takes longer, which is no problem for overnight charging.
Disclaimer: I drive a 2017 Volt and plug the charger into a plain 110V socket at home.

Re: And I still have nowhere to charge one

[Terje Mathisen]

The standard Tesla app allows you just to turn charging or AC on/off, as well as honk the horn (to find the car in a big underground garage with no GPS coverage), flash the lights etc.

What it sorely misses is the capability to program in the time for charging to finish (so that the battery will be full & warm in wintertime), the car is already able to adjust the charging speed with single-digit Amp steps. As it is now I have to do a quick mental calculation and then adjust the Amp rate and/or the starting time.

Since the API is somewhat documented you can also use VisibleTesla from your laptop/home PC and control pretty much everything.

Terje

A better way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an auto enthusiast through and through, and regardless of personal opinions the future is electric. Battery capacity is the single biggest hurdle to making it mainstream but solutions continue to evolve.

I'm a fan of ICE (internal combustion engine) but the parts and time needed to maintain and improve performance and drastically simplified using an electric platform. Transmissions become an option.

If you're a car nut, that will never go away or change. The only difference becomes your choice of engine swaps available from the wrecking yard. My eventual dream ride is a lightweight car powered by dual Tesla motors. As in a reliable, comfortable, daily driver sub 8 second quarter mile capable vehicle. You just can't do that easily with ICE.

Obligatory Responses

[CohibaVancouver]

- Insert obligatory Slashdot 'electric vehicle' responses here -

[Response 1: My commute is 300 miles! As a result this electric vehicle is useless for everyone!]

[Response 2: Some electricity is coal-generated! As a result, in all jurisdictions, this car is more polluting than a 1973 VW Microbus!]

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the other easy one. "These sales would never have happened without government kickbacks."

Re:Obligatory Responses

[mark-t]

[Response 3: I do not have a private garage and have no place to charge it at home]. While there are an ever growing number of public charging facilities, given that charging times are rarely less than 20 minutes, the time you spend just waiting in a line to charge you car at a public charging station can sometimes be an hour or more. Compared to waiting perhaps 5 to 10 minutes in a line up at a gas station where your car can be ready to go in about another 2 or 3 minutes.

This is actually my own sole objection to electric vehicles, really... and I doubt I'm alone.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

My first thought about this was about these vehicles being coal powered as you predicted. My second thought was that with billions of people without reliable electric service this development is quite meaningless to them.

How do we bring electricity to one or two billion more people and not add to the carbon output of humanity? If this plan to replace petroleum powered vehicles with electric ones does not include a plan to develop carbon free energy then we will have a problem.

Wind power is great until you realize that for every megawatt of capacity installed it takes over 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete. Nuclear power takes one tenth of that. To replace coal with wind would take 10 billion tons of steel and concrete annually. Current world production of steel and concrete is 1.5 billion tons. This is from a Morgan Stanley director at the 2016 Platts nuclear conference.

We cannot have "green" energy and provide electricity to the world unless nuclear power is part of the plan. This does not mean solar and wind cannot also be part of that plan but without nuclear power having electric vehicles is not practical.

We have three choices:
- Status quo and all that comes with it
- Nuclear power and an improved environment
- We join those people without reliable electric services

I'll predict that someone would respond with that some technological advancement will solve all of our problems. To those thinking this right now I ask, what should we do until that technology comes along? We have three choices, pick one.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

It's worse than you think, if you do some math.

Look up how much energy is in a gallon of gasoline. Next time you fill your tank note how long it takes to fill and how many gallons were pumped. Now figure out how many watts that gasoline pump just transferred. Do some tinkering with that math and compute how many amps that would be with a typical household electrical service voltage. With an atypical household service voltage. With an industrial electrical service. Go look up some electric service codes on how large of a conductor it would take to transfer that much current.

Even if you assume that the gasoline fueled vehicle has terrible efficiency and the electric vehicle is near 100% efficient the amount of energy transferred in gasoline is at a level that modern electrical technology cannot do. These electric vehicles are fine for things like a commuter car, or city buses, but electricity does not work for things like powering trains, long haul trucking, aircraft, watercraft, and so much more. People may call trains "electric hybrid" because it has a diesel generator set driving electric traction motors but that does not make it "electric" in the same way as a Tesla car.

Even if we have some leap in technology tomorrow that makes electric vehicles more practical we will still be burning a lot of petroleum for another fifty years as the infrastructure gets built out and these vehicles reach their service end of life.

So, what should we do about it? Well, for one it might be helpful if idiot tree huggers stop protesting oil pipelines. We need that oil. If it doesn't move by pipelines, with their electric pumps (powered by "green" nuclear and wind) then it will move by diesel trains, trucks, and ships.

These idiot tree huggers are destroying the environment.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[amiga3D]

Forget Nuclear power. It's not going to happen because when you break ground for a new plant thousands of crazy people will descend on you and picket and sue you into oblivion. Chernobyl and Fukishima failures have brought that hysteria to a crescendo. Forget it.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

> but electricity does not work for things like powering trains

Maybe in US. In Europe allmost all rail routes are electrified - if someone is an idiot like you say later in your post - it's you.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

From some of those pesky Wind Farms In Old Blighty...

>> The cost of electricity from wind power has fallen to $50 per megawatt hour on average worldwide, without subsidies – half the cost of coal

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170606-the-largest-wind-farms-in-the-world-are-in-the-uk

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

Of course, all is negated because you found the black swan, the tall midget, the short giant.

There is still a majority of rail that is not electrified. Many of these rails it is not economical to electrify. When an electric locomotive fails how is it recovered? With a diesel locomotive. How is a failed diesel locomotive recovered? With another diesel locomotive.

A diesel locomotive can travel electrified tracks but an electric train cannot travel on non-electrified tracks. This advantage is used often in cases when the electric line is at capacity or the line loses power.

Let's say that we use electric locomotives to move the fuel for airplanes and ships, does that mean we can do away with those oil pipelines? No. Because moving oil by electric train is asking for not only another spill (much more common when moving fuel by train than by pipe) but now it's moving on a rail in close proximity to high voltage power lines. Let's add the risks of a fire on top of the environmental damage to an oil spill. This is on top of using limited rail capacity to move a product that can be more cheaply and safely moved by pipeline.

The electric lines are a danger to cargo and passengers, put height limitations for cargo when the lines are overhead. Sure, electric trains have advantages which is why they are so common. If we made an all out effort to convert those diesel locomotives to electric then we'd have to spend a lot of money, and it would take decades to complete. What do we do in the mean time? We need to build oil pipelines so that the trains that carry the materials to electrify these lines can run. Even then we'd need to keep some diesel locomotives around for emergencies.

No, I'm pretty sure it is the tree huggers that look like idiots here.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

Still does nothing to address the amount of steel and concrete needed for wind power. Coal and nuclear use 1/10th the steel and concrete for the same power output. Where does this steel and concrete come from?

If advancements in wind mill technology can halve the cost of wind then would it not also be possible for advancements in technology to reduce the costs of nuclear power by a similar amount? Especially when wind takes so much more resources per production capacity? Wind is dead, it just doesn't know it yet. Once people realize the environmental impact of wind power to that of nuclear then nuclear will dominate.

Those that oppose nuclear power are ignorant, mentally impaired, or both. We can fix ignorant, but we can't fix stupid.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[thegarbz]

Of course, all is negated because you found the black swan

Given the number of black swans in my area. I find this reply to "electricity doesn't work for trains" hilarious.

There is still a majority of rail that is not electrified.

Across the entire world yes, America contributes their fair share to that statistic. In the EU >90% is electrified. >98% of haulage is done electrically. Many countries ban train cargo haulage by any non-electric means, and some countries have 100% electrification and ban the use of diesel locos.

Let's say that we use electric locomotives to move the fuel for airplanes and ships, does that mean we can do away with those oil pipelines? No. Because moving oil by electric train is asking for not only another spill (much more common when moving fuel by train than by pipe) but now it's moving on a rail in close proximity to high voltage power lines.

Let me quote to you something of reference: "Of course, all is negated because you found the black swan, the tall midget, the short giant."

The electric lines are a danger to cargo and passengers, put height limitations for cargo when the lines are overhead. Sure, electric trains have advantages which is why they are so common.

Electric lines aren't a danger to cargo or passengers. The big problem comes in derailment and then 100% of injuries occur due to the derailment itself and nothing to do with the electric lines. It's also why people don't die if their car gets struck by lightning.

If we made an all out effort to convert those diesel locomotives to electric then we'd have to spend a lot of money, and it would take decades to complete.

Yeah something taking a while is a good reason not to start.

What do we do in the mean time? We need to build oil pipelines so that the trains that carry the materials to electrify these lines can run.

Why didn't you open with "I don't know how electricity is generated, and don't have a clue about how the oil industry works". It is shorter to write and you could have saved half your post.

No, I'm pretty sure it is the tree huggers that look like idiots here.

We prefer the term "the rest of the sensible world". India is laughing at you and your polluting oil powered (allegedly) trains.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[dunkelfalke]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Intelligent people who know about nuclear power much more than you oppose it. The argument about steel and concrete is laughable because neither is consumed continuously and at the end of the life time both can be recycled - with the exception of nuclear power plant, that stuff is contaminated.
Looks like you are the one who is both ignorant and stupid.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

The gasoline vehicle HAS terrible overall efficiency. An electric car is pretty efficient and can get back some energy when slowing down. So you need far less energy for the electric car. If you dismiss that, you're going to end up in the wrong ball park.

Still, you're right, modern electric cars don't have the range of a gasoline car. But people are working on that, currently with exponential results year-by-year.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

These electric vehicles are fine for things like a commuter car, or city buses, but electricity does not work for things like powering trains

Ever noted those wires above railway tracks? They provide the power that the trains run on. If there's one means of transportation that is especially suited for electrification, it's trains, as proven by the the fact that the overwhelming majority of them are already powered by electricity and have been for many decades.

People may call trains "electric hybrid" because it has a diesel generator set driving electric traction motors but that does not make it "electric" in the same way as a Tesla car.

Only a small fraction of trains are powered by diesel and those that are indeed often essential a serial hybrid setup, with a generator and traction motors. Hydraulic transmissions are also quite common

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, coal and steel does comes out of the ground, just like uranium... but on a more serious note

The wind farm mentioned in that bbc article added 32 * 8MW wind turbines...

Are you telling me that these new wind turbines needed = 8 * 500 * 32 = 128000 tons of steel..

Which is more steel than in a Nimittz Class aircraft carrier? Weighing in at 117152 tons?

And => 8 * 1000 * 32 = 256000 tons of concrete...

Which is more concrete than is in the Hoover damn? Roughly 211500 US Tons..

These new wind turbines must be freaking huge! :-)

(Please forgive my ignorance on long tons versus imperial versus metric - I is just a simple metric man.. but I don't think they are that far off each other... )

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

But people are working on that, currently with exponential results year-by-year.

Unfortunately, the coefficient is negative. The energy density for batteries has been slowly creeping up to an asymptote for many years.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[swb]

To the extent that my exposure to electric vehicles is riding in a friend's Model S, I think electric car are great. My concern is where all the extra electricity will come from with mass adoption.

The best figure I've seen is a study by Xcel energy that says with 75% penetration, demand grows by 14%. I don't know if this is a big number or a small number relative to available capacity or if it takes into account peak effects like everybody wanting to charge in a 10 hour window, especially the loading on residential grids which is highest in the peak charging window.

I think when I've seen this it's been "no problem" because of lower overall nighttime loads or some hand-waving with "more rooftop residential solar" and the like, although I don't know how solar helps with nighttime charging without some extra batteries for storage.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Maritz]

This boils down to "we can't have nuclear because we are fucking stupid". I think I probably agree. It's the answer to our problems, but we're fucking dumbasses.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[AmiMoJo]

In 3 years o Leaf ownership, doing regular 150 mile round trips, I've spent maybe 10 minutes waiting for charging. Less than I spent queuing for petrol in the 3 years prior.

You don't charge an EV like you fuel a combustion car. You park it, plug it in and go do something else you were going to do anyway. 99% of the time it's much, much more convenient than having to go out of your way just to get fuel and dedicate time to nothing but pumping dirty, smelly liquid.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[AmiMoJo]

How do we bring electricity to one or two billion more people and not add to the carbon output of humanity?

Batteries. They fix the intermittency issues of renewables. You could even put them on wheels and transport that stored energy around!

This is from a Morgan Stanley director at the 2016 Platts nuclear conference.

Hmm, I'm sure he was being completely unbiased and straight with you when he claimed that wind was so much worse than the industry whose conference he was at.

Wind is much cleaner than nuclear any way you slice it. Fewer bird kills, less CO2 emitted over its lifetime, much cheaper...

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Smidge204]

Do some tinkering with that math and compute how many amps that would be with a typical household electrical service voltage.

Counterpoint 1: Consider how many hours a day is your vehicle is sitting unused, and that virtually every moment of that could potentially be used for charging.

Counterpoint 2: The basic "level 2" charging rate available at virtually all private homes and businesses charges at a rate of about 25 miles per hour, and completes a full charge in 4 hours or less.

but electricity does not work for things like powering trains

Counterpoint 1: Virtually all light rail in my area is "3rd rail" electric, and pretty much every subway is as well. There is also older, overhead electric type.

Counterpoint 2: Trains are about the easiest to electrify, adding "battery cars" strikes me as quite feasible.

long haul trucking, aircraft, watercraft, and so much more

Counterpoint 1: The vast majority of trucking is not long-haul.

Counterpoint 2: Why would it be necessary to replace *every* mode of transportation with a single technology? How does it affect the benefits of electrifying personal vehicles if it's currently not practical to make battery electric aircraft?

Well, for one it might be helpful if idiot tree huggers stop protesting oil pipelines. We need that oil.

Counterpoint 1: Basically none of the oil in the recently contested Keystone XL pipeline would end up being used in the US. The pipeline is bullshit.

Counterpoint 2: Yes, we will need petroleum for lots of things for the foreseeable future... all the more reason to try and NOT burn it unless we absolutely have to.

These idiot tree huggers are destroying the environment.

Counterpoint: Your derogatory characterization and pigeonholing of people who can see the forest for the trees (if you'll allow the expression) is both inaccurate and childish.
=Smidge=

Re:Obligatory Responses

[drinkypoo]

It's worse than you think, if you do some math.

You can always make a situation look dire if you start doing math with bad assumptions. I'm shit at math, and even I understand that if you're working with the wrong numbers, you're going to get the wrong answer. People's behavior changed when we went from the horse and buggy to the train, and when we went from the train to the car, and it will change again when our cars change from rapid refill to a longer charge time, even if that time is not that much longer. Perhaps the gasoline filling stations that don't outright go away are going to have to convert into hydrogen filling stations — powerful forces are determined that we shall have hydrogen vehicles, and the military looks to be heading in that direction for many vehicles as well, so it seems like it's definitely going to happen at this point. Meanwhile, most recharging of EVs will be rolled in with other things which take longer than a liquid fuel fill that most people already do regularly, like going to work, or going to the supermarket.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[fluffernutter]

In my city people are complaining about people who leave their cars at an EV charging station and go off and do something, because other people are usually waiting for that station.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[drinkypoo]

I think when I've seen this it's been "no problem" because of lower overall nighttime loads or some hand-waving with "more rooftop residential solar" and the like, although I don't know how solar helps with nighttime charging without some extra batteries for storage.

Well, we are getting extra batteries for storage. Right now the primary option seems to be Powerwall, which is not especially affordable; the primary customer for that product seems to be the Model S owner, who has already demonstrated themselves to be possessed of some significant disposable income. However, as such products become more common, we can expect to see the prices fall.

Another aspect is non-residential solar helping to pick up the slack there. covering commercial parking lots with solar panels effectively takes up no space, is much less hazardous for workers than actual rooftop installs, and reduces energy consumption in many regions by reducing air conditioning demand. (It takes a lot of work to cool your vehicle down initially after it's been baking in the sun, even if it has mitigation hardware like a solar sunroof.) Residential solar can only ever be a piece of the solution, as long as we don't make solar siting of residences mandatory. I'm not calling for such a move, but it would promote solar adoption.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[fluffernutter]

We have a wind farm where I live, and the main highway has diesel trucks driving up and down it 24/7 with parts for the wind farm.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[AmiMoJo]

There are two types of charging station: Normal and rapid.

The normal ones take 4-8 hours to completely charge a car, but of course no-one rolls up with 0% so it's almost always much less than that. It's generally acceptable to leave your car plugged in to those while you are parked, and the solution to waiting it just to install more of them. They are cheap and some places just have one per parking space now.

With rapid chargers you are looking at 40-50 minutes for a full charge, but 30 minutes is more typical since again people don't arrive with 0% or bother charging to 100% (charging slows after about 80% anyway). It's not acceptable to block rapid chargers for longer than you need them, but they are usually located at places like motorway service stations where you wouldn't want to linger anyway.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[mark-t]

In 3 years o Leaf ownership, doing regular 150 mile round trips, I've spent maybe 10 minutes waiting for charging

I'm assuming that's only because you can charge it at home.

Or weren't you paying attention to the context of the reason to not get an EV?

[Response 3: I do not have a private garage and have no place to charge it at home]

Re:Obligatory Responses

[swillden]

. Next time you fill your tank note how long it takes to fill and how many gallons were pumped. Now figure out how many watts that gasoline pump just transferred. Do some tinkering with that math and compute how many amps that would be with a typical household electrical service voltage.

This is a pointless exercise, because it assumes that electric vehicles are charged in the same way that gasoline-powered vehicles are fueled. mark-t's issue will be addressed by fixing his core problem, charging infrastructure at home or wherever his car is parked for long periods of time (at work, at stores, etc.), rather than super-fast charging. The only time fast charging is even relevant (given EVs with a few hundred miles of range) is on road trips, and even there as long as the car can be recharged in a half hour or so, you're good. People need time for food, bathroom breaks, etc.

Also, even if very fast charging were required, there's no reason to demand that the grid be able to supply it that quickly. Buffer the energy in a large battery so the grid only needs to be able to keep up with the average draw, not peak. Large batteries are expensive today, but prices on new battery capacity are dropping fast, and in a few years we're going to have a large supply of used EV batteries coming onto the market. When your car battery has lost a third or half of its capacity, it no longer makes sense to use it in the car because it means you're hauling a lot of dead weight. The same concern doesn't exist for fixed locations, so EV batteries will be repurposed for load-smoothing.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[minogully]

This wouldn't help all energy markets, but oil refinery takes a large amount of electricity. The more EVs that are out there, the less oil is refined and therefore less electricity is used. Some estimates put the amount of electricity at 6kWh of electricity for every gallon of gas.

This amount of electricity translates to roughly 15 miles of driving in an EV. Whereas with a gas powered vehicle, you may get more or less distance on that gallon of gas depending on your mileage.

So, replace a high mileage car with an EV and electricity use will go up, but not as much as you would think. Replace a low mileage car with an EV and electricity usage stays the same or even improves.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[fluffernutter]

Wow, it must suck to have to hang around for 30 minutes to fill your car.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[CohibaVancouver]

My concern is where all the extra electricity will come from with mass adoption.

Places like this -

https://www.bchydro.com/energy...

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

But the futurologists said we'd have flying and self-driving all electric cars in 5 years.

AI and technology are exponential, Exponential, EXPONENTIAL!!!!1111

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is too expensive relative to the cost of natural gas and renewables. And all the new nuke plants are *massively* over budget and behind schedule. Nuclear is dead. Let it go.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution to that is simple: just make the wind farm power only electric trucks and the factories for the parts. At large scales it will be like Conway's Game of Life as the wind farm proliferates.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[AmiMoJo]

Nah, the distance between stops is great enough that my bladder needs emptying and I want to eat/drink at that point anyway.

It's actually faster than filling up with petrol. By the time you have queued for petrol, sorted the pump out and paid it's taken you 15 minutes and you still need to go and pee/drink/eat.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, there is no such thing as a diesel train. There are diesel-electric trains. The wheels of the train are driven by electric motors powered by a diesel generator.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[aaarrrgggh]

British offshore wind is getting down to a fully amortized cost of production around $50/MWh. Nuclear's best case projections were at $20/MWh, but reality (still ignoring waste disposal) is closer to $100/MWh. Coal is at $70/MWh; not sure where natural gas is currently; the last reasonably reliable number I had was $70/MWh, but I understand it has dropped.

Yes, research improves all technologies, and natural gas could improve substantially, but coal's flaws would require much more to deal with all the extra carbon and other trace elements in the system. Nuclear's only real hope is small scale (<100MW) modular breeder reactors, which are a long way off.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Ksevio]

Do you park in a public parking spot or something? Even just a driveway could have a charging station

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Our office has a coffee machine, people are constantly getting coffee from it.

We're playing the 'observe something in the world and describe it' game, right?

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why we need a carbon tax. Just tax the pollution and the free market will figure out the least-polluting way to generate electricity.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[fluffernutter]

Well, where I live the charging stations are only in the hipster spots with the boutique stores and I'd go bankrupt doing any shopping there. Nor can I afford to eat/drink wherever I want. That's a lie, I can afford it, but I don't see the point of saving money on an EV if you're just going to spend it eating out anyway.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality begs to differ. There are plenty of diesel trains with hydraulic or even mechanical transmissions systems.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[angel'o'sphere]

but electricity does not work for things like powering trains,
How do you come to that retarded idea? All high speed trains on the planet are electric. And countries running them alos run most of their rail cargo by electricity. Google for TGV, ICE (the german train) or Shinkansen, the Japanese one.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Cro Magnon]

It takes me about 5 minutes when I stop for gas. That includes the time to pee, grab some quick snacks & drinks, and wait in line to pay for the stuff. I'd hate to wait another 25 minutes with nothing else to do.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Cro Magnon]

Many houses in my area don't even have driveways. They'd need a long extension cord, and hope that no pedestrians sue them after tripping over them.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

In a perfect world we would use 100% fission until fusion was ready.

In this world, the "best" nuclear plant design is inefficient and laden with technology and processes determined by decisions made decades ago. There is no real way to fix this -- to get the decisions and fixes made fast enough to keep the nuclear plants viable. On one hand the government moves too slow to change with the new tech, and on the other hand we can't trust corporations to operate in the public interest. There is no middle ground so nuclear is only a so-so solution.

I like nuclear energy. Clean, relatively cheap, very little waste. It scares people and so people don't want it. Maybe if oil and coal scared people we could get nuclear power up to date?

Re:Obligatory Responses

[angel'o'sphere]

You obviously have no idea about the european railroad networks.
Just because you live in a third world country, it does not mean the rest of the world looks the same.
Except for pulling a failed electric locomotive with a diesel one, all your rant is wrong and pointless.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ. The mayor of London said that Trump was ignorant, so Trump challenged him to an IQ test.

Hee.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[angel'o'sphere]

>98% of haulage is done electrically. Many countries ban train cargo haulage by any non-electric means, and some countries have 100% electrification and ban the use of diesel locos.
And at least for passenger trains, in Germany 100% of electric power used for trains is generated via renewables.
Blindseer is just an idiot ...

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

24/7!?!!!???!!?????!!???!

What? An no one has put a stop to that? Why hasn't anyone SUED THE PANTS OFF THE INSTALLATION COMPANY?????

Those things go years without much more than routine maintenance.

Either the windmills are defective our you are. One of those two.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[AmiMoJo]

Driving while drinking or eating is illegal in the UK, and I don't eat that fast...

Re:Obligatory Responses

[angel'o'sphere]

Wind power is great until you realize that for every megawatt of capacity installed it takes over 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete.
From where do you have such retarded numbers?

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

Yeah something taking a while is a good reason not to start.

I didn't say that. I said that if we start making that transition now it will take decades to complete. In the mean time we will continue to burn oil. We can move that oil by train or by pipes. Moving by pipes takes less energy, produces less pollution, and is much less likely to spill. The people protesting these pipelines out of a concern for the environment are ignorant fools.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[amiga3D]

No argument from me.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Cro Magnon]

I live in the US, where it's legal to eat, drink, text, and put on makeup, all at the same time while driving with my feet.

Seriously, I don't know what you're charging stations are like, but there's not really any provision for eating at our gas stations.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[thegarbz]

No people protesting oil pipelines are doing so because there is zero reason for oil consumption to increase beyond current levels if your government is even remotely competent.

People protesting oil pipelines are doing so because they realise (unlike you) that none of the proposed pipelines are going to have anything to do with domestic consumption and everything to do with shipping oil overseas benefiting only a few oil companies.

Get yourself a clue man. You look silly.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[WheezyJoe]

Forget Nuclear power. It's not going to happen because when you break ground for a new plant thousands of crazy people

Some nuclear-friendly federal regulation and funding could fix that. Research funding into next-gen safer designs? Streamlined permit approvals toward pilot programs? Tax incentives, perhaps to convert aging coal plants? A little DARPA action, enough to encourage universities to offer nuclear engineering degrees again?

When the Soviets were around, propagandizing a nuclear world with nuclear plants that fit on trucks to show off how nuclear they were, the U.S. was red hot to show how nuclear it could be. Now with the Soviets and their propaganda gone, U.S. politicians have no balls for moon-shot beat-the-russians tech stuff.

Or maybe it's not completely gone. The Russians and the Chinese are getting back into nuclear, even in spite of the Russians sitting on shit-tons of fossil fuels. The Chinese want to quickly power up these little islands they're building in the China Sea to claim as their new territory. The Russians want to fill the melting Arctic with flag-flying nuclear ice-breakers to get at all the stuff up there (the U.S. hasn't built an ice-breaker since the late 1970s). Gosh, if we would only elect Congress-people who gave a fuck, we might be able to get in on this while there's something still to get got.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Kernel Kurtz]

I agree. And because we as a society are too stupid to embrace nuclear power, I feel no pressing need as an individual to move from an ICE to an electric vehicle.

If you are not going to do it right, count me out of your scheme.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[clong83]

I agree nuclear is a viable, and necessary source for the future. I also agree that wind is overblown (pardon the bad pun). I wouldn't say it so bluntly or insult people who may not know better, but that's not why I am commenting.

The one aspect of wind power that I rarely see mentioned, including in your post, is that it is absolutely the least efficient in terms of power output/acreage required. Even if you count areas around coal mines and oil fields that are essentially unlivable, they do not come close to wind. Arguably, this is less important than greenhouse gases, and doesn't matter so much for local supplemental production and such. Wind power certainly has a role in the future. But I think it is disingenuous to switch to a source that would require us to monopolize so much of the landscape. All those windmills in remote valleys would require roads and infrastructure to service them. We're basically talking about wholesale destruction of pristine environments on a scale that coal and oil couldn't come close to matching.

FOr those who think I'm exaggerating, consider that wind currently generates less than 10% of our power needs, and many of the most suitable locations for them are already well-developed (See: Kansas, Texas panhandle). We'd have to either go massively offshore, which is possible but has it's own problems, or build an order of magnitude more of them in less than ideal locations, spoiling millions of acres of land. If it were the only option, I could get on board, but with nuclear available.... why on earth would you do that?

Re:Obligatory Responses

[blindseer]

Even with decreasing oil use we would still need to build new pipelines because pipelines wear out and demands shift.

There is little doubt to those that know what they are talking about that we will still be burning oil in 30, 50, or perhaps 100 years. The dispute is over how much we will need.

Another thing, is exporting oil out of the USA so bad? I'm pretty sure the USA has much better rules on worker safety and environmental protection. The USA needs money too. If we don't export this oil then other nations will buy it from dictatorial hellholes and use that money to buy weapons they use against US citizens and allies. US oil producers getting a profit benefits me in many ways, including more jobs for Americans.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[TomGreenhaw]

Very happy ardent electric vehicle supporter here. But I have to admit - If you cannot charge your car at your home overnight, an EV is simply not for you.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[thegarbz]

Even with decreasing oil use we would still need to build new pipelines because pipelines wear out and demands shift.

Negative. With reducing demand people don't build pipelines due to the expense. They maintain existing pipelines. Never underestimate just how much a pipeline can leak like a sieve and still not justify getting replaced.

There is little doubt to those that know what they are talking about that we will still be burning oil in 30, 50, or perhaps 100 years.

That is the only thing you've said that makes sense so far. The oil industry has huge knock-on effects. The Shah of Iran once famously said "Oil is too valuable to burn," and he's right. Our dependence on it will have little to do with energy going forward.

Another thing, is exporting oil out of the USA so bad?

Yes and yes. Firstly you gain nothing from it. It's not USA oil that is flowing through the new pipelines, and it's not USA refineries it's flowing to. There's two people who stand to make a lot of money but it has nothing to do with the US economy at all. As for the second yes, by exporting more it makes oil cheaper on the world market. The net effect is increase consumption and delay even more environmental initiatives. Not only has the USA firmly stuck it's head in the tarsands on global warming, it is actively approving projects that make it difficult for other governments to work against it as well all while digging up much of a pristine country north of you that even some oil majors pulled out of in shame.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have electricity at home how do you post on Slashdot?

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Anonymous Coward]

Still does nothing to address the amount of steel and concrete needed for wind power. Coal and nuclear use 1/10th the steel and concrete for the same power output. Where does this steel and concrete come from?

Are you saying that you don't believe there's enough steel and concrete left on the Earth to build enough wind generating equipment? That would mean our future supply of those materials is limited to something less than 10 times whatever is currently used by coal and nuclear plants. Human civilization has much larger problems if steel and concrete are in that short of supply. Luckily they're not, since the Earth is about 33% iron and carbonates will never be in short supply as long as we are burning fossil fuels.

If advancements in wind mill technology can halve the cost of wind then would it not also be possible for advancements in technology to reduce the costs of nuclear power by a similar amount?

1. Wind is already cheaper than nuclear. If both are halved, it will still be cheaper. Why are you dead set on the most expensive method of generating electricity?

2. The advancements in one unrelated field do not influence the advances in another. Whether or not it is possible for advances in wind power generation have no relation to whether it is possible to advance nuclear generation technology.

Those that oppose nuclear power are ignorant, mentally impaired, or both. We can fix ignorant, but we can't fix stupid.

Says the guy advocating the most economically inefficient method of power generation as an answer to a problem he doesn't even believe is happening.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Socguy]

I call BS. Doing all that in 5 minutes is almost impossible unless perhaps you're paying for full service... or not washing your hands after you pee.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[Socguy]

JOBS!

Re:Obligatory Responses

[mark-t]

When did I suggest that I don't have electricity at home? I said I don't have a private garage and therefore do not have any place to charge it at home, unless you are suggesting that I run a 1000 foot or so extension cord from my apartment, spiral the cord all the way down the stairs into the public parking area, run the cord across the parking floor to my spot and plug my car in that way. The tripping hazard that this would likely cause for other people in my building alone would probably get me sued so fast I wouldn't even be able to afford to own either a condo or car.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[nickersonm]

This is a good reason to get a plug-in hybrid like the Volt. I live in a condo and don't have access to any electric service at my parking spot, so I actually got mine expecting to use the free charging at work. A month before I picked up my ordered configuration, the charging at work changed from 'free' to 'double utility rate' - now I only use gas with my Volt. Given the relative efficiencies and current prices in Boston, gas is actually cheaper for me to use per mile. Electricity would be slightly cheaper if I could charge at home.

It still works like an electric vehicle, though: the Volt has an electric drive train, and the ICE functions as a generator. So there's no gearing, and I get the benefit of electric-drive torque. Quibble: the Gen2 volt (2016 and newer) has a generator-regenerator drive box that can technically be used to direct-drive the transmission, but mine has never done so. The efficiencies are mapped, and as I understand it the ICE-transmission losses can be fractionally less than generator-battery-direct drive losses at high speeds on flat terrain for long distances.

The downsides of the Volt are that it has a fairly short interior, the rear two seats have almost zero legroom, and it has limited rear window visibility.

Re:Obligatory Responses

[mark-t]

... the US, where it's legal to eat, drink, text, and put on makeup, all at the same time while driving

Unless you are in Arizona, Missouri, Montana, or Texas, no it is not. All the US states, except these four, *explicitly* have laws the prohibit any driver texting while driving, and even Missouri and Texas still prohibit certain classes of drivers from texting while driving.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[PopeRatzo]

I can wait.

You remind me of my father, who wouldn't buy a color TV until 1998 because they weren't "perfected" yet.

I have somewhere to charge one

[drinkypoo]

And even a convenient circuit run into the carport.

My problem is that I live in the sticks and the range won't do, because most of my trips are out of town.

Maybe my next car purchase will be a hybrid or something but I'm only about 4k into my highly safe and comfortable German luxobarge and the difference buys a lot of fuel. If I drove more, it would make no sense. I just hope I can hang on until EVs get cheap so that I don't have to work on cars any more, at least not really. Not like now.

Re:I have somewhere to charge one

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget to include maintenance in your comparison. EV's are cheaper to maintain.

Re:I have somewhere to charge one

[drinkypoo]

don't forget to include maintenance in your comparison. EV's are cheaper to maintain.

I could buy two to four more of these cars before I would even approach the cost of the cheapest vaguely credible used EV.

Re:I have somewhere to charge one

[BostonPilot]

The used market for electric cars is really low, i.e. the original purchaser takes quite a bath when they sell (except for Tesla - they seem to hold their value). If you don't mind buying a used electric to give it a try, the pricing is very affordable.

I bought a 3 year old Chevy Volt with 40,000 miles on it for $11,000. My daughters do 98% of their driving on the battery (about 38 miles worth on a charge) and only buy gas when they want to go on a long trip. So far it's working out very well...

Re:I have somewhere to charge one

[drinkypoo]

The used market for electric cars is really low, i.e. the original purchaser takes quite a bath when they sell (except for Tesla - they seem to hold their value). If you don't mind buying a used electric to give it a try, the pricing is very affordable.

A really nice first-generation Audi S8 clean inside and out is around $5k. A good A8 can be had for around $4k. If I commuted regularly I would need something else, but since I rarely drive, the cost savings will buy me lots of fuel and other consumables. I've just done the front suspension, the transmission has the pressure valve fix, my engine has good compression on all cylinders and the Alusil cylinders are smooth like glass, which I know because I've done the head gaskets, timing belt, and all the oil seals. So the car is in actually pretty fantastic shape, and it's made out of Aluminum so it won't rust, parts are fairly cheap (this was actually a $300 parts car because it needed a $2000 transmission plus $? labor) and as importantly, I am 6'7" and around 300lb (sometimes less... sometimes) and I don't fit into normal cars well. I need something big. Since I have no kids, I should probably have stuck with my 240SX, but I had it all slammed down and my lady hated it and I live in pothole country. The car I'm actually replacing right now is a 1982 300SD, which was magnificent in its day and is still quite enjoyable in many ways, but which actually costs notably more to insure than the Audi and which has basically no safety features, the AC is out, the seats suck by comparison... And it barely gets better mileage. It's got to go.

I look forward to a magnificent future where large EVs are cheap used, because I just don't enjoy running the rat race fast enough to buy one new. I think having to do all this work sucks eggs, even though I do get a sense of pride from doing it. And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact of rolling around in a car with a V8. But again, if I were commuting regularly I'd get something a lot more efficient, and just go ahead and suffer with it.

Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[Zombie Ryushu]

Look Identical or indistinguishable to a Gasoline powered model. Just like there is a market for Android Phones that cosmetically resemble iPhones because of community shunning for the use of Android Phones as inferior to avoid the social stigma.

There seems to be a Social Stigma against people driving electric cars in the US, So, can they be camouflaged to look like their counterparts except for the label.

Re:Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gas-powered cars can be inefficient and still not cause range anxiety. Electric cars need to eke out ever possible mile in order for folks to feel comfortable buying them.
   

Re:Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[Jeremi]

Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that look Identical or indistinguishable to a Gasoline powered model.

They do. You just never notice them because, well, they look indistinguishable from the gasoline-powered model.

Here are some examples of electric cars you probably wouldn't be able pick out of a crowd:

      2017 FIAT 500e
      2017 Ford Fusion Energi
      2017 Mercedes Benz E-Class
      2017 Ford Focus Electric
      2017 Kia Soul EV
      2017 Volkswagen e-Golf

Re:Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[someoneOtherThanMe]

I would also like more of that. But as it is, there are cars like that but they are not among the most popular electric ones:
VW golf, up
Mercedes B, smart
Renault Kangoo
Fiat 500

Re:Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's the e-Golf, the Chrysler Pacifica EV, the Fiat e500, the Kia Soul EV, and others...you just don't notice because they look identical.

And social stigma against electric cars? Tesla has had a halo effect, most people think electric cars are cool. Or maybe that's just a California thing.

Re:Why do Electric Car makers not make EVs that...

[shilly]

They do. The Renault Zoe looks more or less the same as a Renault Clio.

But it's a super-mini, a category that doesn't really exist in the US. And Renault doesn't sell in the US anyway.

I feel the opposite

[SuperKendall]

I never liked how the other Tesla cars looked, or at least I thought they were kind of bland - the Model 3 however I really like the look of. Have not seen the interior though.

Re:I feel the opposite

[jlv]

There are very few pictures of the interior floating around from the Model 3 RCs driving around. It's best described as spartan, since there is nothing other than the 15" touchscreen.
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tm...

electric cars look slippery, which is very cool

[DanDD]

Electric cars don't look odd just to annoy you, they look the way they do because engineers are trying to compensate for limited energy in today's batteries with reduced weight and lower coefficient of drag. If your electric car were to look more like a Chevy Corvette and less like a Tesla model S, then you wouldn't be passing many pumps, or charging stations, as a Corvette Cd is probably better in reverse, and a Tesla Model S has an excellent Cd, as did the Chevy EV1.

This aerodynamic car from 1934 shows that this is nothing new

Emissions tests are required in many areas to keep poorly maintained & polluting vehicles off the road. Maybe someday a progressive tax will be applied based on the overall, including aerodynamic efficiency, of the vehicle. People who commute by foot or bicycle get free healthcare. The general idea of what 'looks cool' might evolve a bit.

Don't worry - the western culture of excessive consumption will breed newer and better batteries and power sources to charge them. Eventually you'll be able to cruise around in your muscle-car shaped flying vehicle powered by a Mr. Fusion, which will probably be better for everyone involved than burning the fossil fuels of today.

This utopian future might be stymied by all the people displaced by the rising sea levels, who will start walking inland in some sort of environmental catastrophe version of a zombie apocalypse. Growing evidence suggests that sea levels have risen so rapidly in the past that civilizations couldn't keep up.

Re:electric cars look slippery, which is very cool

[Rei]

Parent makes the right response. Aerodynamics doesn't care what you think of how it looks; it is what it is. If you want to know what the extreme end of aerodynamic streamlining looks like, the Aptera 2e was a pretty close example to maximizing it for a road vehicle. There's various decisions one can make about how they'd like their internal area laid out, and this affects the particulars of the optimal shape, but in general: front end like a deformed egg, all surfaces highly smooth with as few panel gaps as possible, air intakes as small as possible, steady transition from hood to windshield, wiper hidden, mirrors small and streamlined (or ideally, absent and replaced with cameras), maximum diameter reached relatively quickly (no fat front end pretending there's a huge engine inside) followed by a long gradual taper; taper ends at a line or point (line usually allows for a better use of internal space), wheels small and shrouded, exposed all struts shaped as airfoils, and as little exposed hardware as possible. Cabin air ejected through whatever flat rear surfaces you have can help reduce the wake. Where you can't taper to a line or point (aka, you want to have a space that's both tall and wide behind the front seats for additional passengers), an abrupt cutoff (kammback-style) is better than a steep taper; if your taper is too steep, you get flow separation, and you start dragging a low pressure wake from that point. Deliberate vortex generation at the point of expected flow separation can help reduce the size of the wake; this is often done with overhangs, vortex-generating spikes, or in some unusual cases, golfball-like dimples. Higher driving speeds, as well as crosswinds, require a shallower tapering angle to avoid flow separation; concerning crosswinds, a bit of a lateral taper can help as well.

Once you get into extreme streamlining, however, you have to become more of a niggler for details. A traditional exposed set of windshield wiper would double the drag of an Aptera-like vehicle, for example. If you let snow and ice accumulate on the vehicle, you've totaled the drag coefficient. On the upside, those smooth curves and slick composite surfaces help resist accumulation. A funny thing with the Aptera was that if the vehicle was out in the rain or you sprayed it with a hose, almost all of the water ran off the same point, in the bottom centre of the vehicle. :)

Re:electric cars look slippery, which is very cool

[Rei]

One may note that what the average person thinks "looks aerodynamic" often doesn't correspond to what actually is aerodynamic. The Saturn Sky sure "looks" aerodynamic (top up), but its drag coefficient is 0.42. The Dodge Viper is even worse, at 0.45, and the Ford Mustang ranges from 0.44-0.48. Meanwhile, the definitely not-sleek looking Ford Escape has a drag coefficient of 0.29. The SUV has a much larger cross-sectional area, of course, but that's beside the point -cross-sectional area is useful, but a high drag coefficient is not. Well, with one exception: a number of "sporty" cars get deliberately bad drag coefficients by being designed to create downforce (for an ideal streamlined shape you want no net lift); a Formula 1 car can have a drag coefficient of over 1.0, deliberately, in order to get as much downforce as possible to maximize its grip on the road. But for the most part, when a mass-market car has a bad drag coefficient, it's to play to people's style preferences, not for any functional reason.

Re:electric cars look slippery, which is very cool

[BostonPilot]

Electric cars don't look odd just to annoy you, they look the way they do because engineers are trying to compensate for limited energy in today's batteries with reduced weight and lower coefficient of drag. If your electric car were to look more like a Chevy Corvette and less like a Tesla model S, then you wouldn't be passing many pumps, or charging stations, as a Corvette Cd is probably better in reverse, and a Tesla Model S has an excellent Cd, as did the Chevy EV1.

There are a couple reasons EV look the way they do. One is certainly Cd as you mention. But another is that a lot of companies feel the car has to look unique/different/futuristic. They believe that the early adopters won't buy it unless it's different enough to attract attention. The Prius is an example of this way of thinking (both Cd and looking unique).

I personally think we're past the early adopter phase and we need to make sure the BEV looks like any other "normal" car.

Some people like the way the Leaf looks. I can't stand it. Some people hate the way the Bolt looks. I think it looks pretty good.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[amiga3D]

I got married in 1980 and we had a 12" black & white until 1983 when I got a 19" color set. I didn't really need a color set, shitty shows look just as shitty in color. Still, the Jones's had one so we got one. Now I have a 50" HD that weighs less than the 19" color. And shitty shows still look just as shitty. But they're in High Def now.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[Anonymous Coward]

i can relate. i don't want to get a flat panel one until quality and reliability improves on them.

i've seen so many (belonging to friends or relatives, or customers) go to shit (flat panel monitors, too) in a year or two, but i've had the same color tv for forty years and the same 21 inch trinitron monitor for twenty.

All I want

[Anonymous Coward]

All I want is a two seat convertible EV, something like the MX-5 or the Boxster, but electric.

Re:All I want

[Anonymous Coward]

like the Tesla Roadster? I think you need to wait a few years for its replacement.

Re: All I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Convert one yourself. You can even buy a kit.

just ban truck games.

[gl4ss]

look, if you want emissions down in USA it is rather simple, start co2 taxing like many places in the world.

do you know why Musk put his pants in a knot because trump announced getting out of the paris deal? because he needs that. tesla badly needs same kind of taxing as Finland etc have to go in effect in USA.

a small example is that for the same price of the cheapest tesla you can get a maserati in the usa. in Finland the maserati is 50 000 euros more expensive than the cheapest tesla. mind you that the cheapest tesla is still a _very fucking expensive car_ by any normal finnish persons scale.

the joke about american autos is that they agreed for lowering emissions on cars.. by making complex agreements on how much of the sold fleet should use how and how much and.. ..proceeded straight to selling trucks instead that are not counted.

also elsewhere.. attaching a hybrid system to a car is practically free because it lowers the emission tax, due to how even a small phev range can mess up the emissions calculations.

Re:just ban truck games.

[dehachel12]

>because he needs that. tesla badly needs same kind of taxing as Finland etc have to go in effect in USA.
He doesn't need more sales for Tesla. They have a very long list of customers. If you order a tesla 3 NOW you'll have to wait a year. In fact, no adverts for tesla are being made.

Re:just ban truck games.

[blindseer]

look, if you want emissions down in USA it is rather simple, start co2 taxing like many places in the world.

Taxes won't help. All they will do is make everyone poorer. I've heard talks from people working on alternative energy and funding dries up when taxes are increased. People need the money and freedom to develop the next best thing. Oh, and these people complain about the cost of energy. It takes a lot of energy to weld windmills together and get them tested. Moving the windmills to the site means transport by truck.

When it comes down to it energy is energy. If carbon fuels are taxed then all energy prices go up. This will always be the case until we no longer burn fossil fuels. Until then adding taxes on the fuels will only slow down the transition, not increase it.

Think about it. You have an electric train that has a cost of $10 per whatever (I'm not feeling creative enough to thing of proper units right now). I have a diesel train that can do it at $15 per whatever. After I add in overhead and profit margin I come up with a total of $20 per whatever to charge. You want business and maximum profits and so you charge $19 and get most of the business.

Then a carbon tax comes along, my costs just went up to $20. If I want to make any profit at all I have to raise my price. I do some thinking, and I decide I have to charge $25. What are you going to do? You've already got as much business as you can handle. Your clients aren't going to pick me unless they have to. Unless you also raise your prices, to something like $23, you are going to get hassled by stockholders in your company and potentially sued for not doing your duty as the operator to maximize profits.

Also, some of what you need for your business will move to you by my and other more expensive trains. At some point you will have to raise prices as the taxes work their way into the prices of goods. Who wins on this? The government. Who loses? EVERYONE.

I've also talked to people that deal in ethanol. If you want to see a taxation and regulation nightmare then look at what it takes to open an ethanol fuel plant. The prohibition of alcohol may have ended but the taxes never did. If you want to see bio-fuels get some development then we need to get rid of the alcohol taxes.

Re:just ban truck games.

[cayenne8]

ook, if you want emissions down in USA it is rather simple, start co2 taxing like many places in the world.

The purpose is not (and should not be) for the purpose of molding behavior, they are to pay for government services.....period.

It is not the responsibility of the US government (certainly not the FEDS) to alter or change citizen behavior....they are supposed to be answerable to us, not the other way around.

I'm trying to find in the Constitution where it says the federal govt is tasked with molding and manipulating citizen behavior....????

Re:just ban truck games.

[aaarrrgggh]

Maybe no advertisements, but they are spending a hell of a lot of money on marketing with flashy stores in the highest rent locations.

Re:just ban truck games.

[angel'o'sphere]

Who loses? EVERYONE.
So EVERYONE has an incentive to avoid the expensive goods, so you finally get the message to switch your trains to non taxed ones.
That is actually how it works in reality and not as you describe in short sighted scenario.

Re:just ban truck games.

[j-beda]

It is perfectly valid for a society to decide to use the tool of taxation to ensure that externatities (such as polution) are properly captured by the pricing system used by businesses.

To not have price reflect the cost sounds like some form of communism. We certainly wouldn't want that.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[dehachel12]

I'm in a room with 12 developers, 24 screens (24 inch flat). SInce I have been here (4 years) only 2 have died.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[Lennie]

And if you are using the trinitron monitor on a daily basis you are probably paying more in electricity than it would cost you to buy a new LCD every few years.

People still don't really get it

[Maxymoos]

My wife and I don't drive EVs because we're tree-huggers. We drive them because they're smooth, quiet, refined and fast. Once people start realising this they'll find it horrible going back to muggle cars. When I have to drive an ICE hire car for work now, the experience is horrible.

Re:People still don't really get it

[tehcyder]

muggle cars

I just fwew up

Re:People still don't really get it

[fluffernutter]

Well I wont invite you to my vacation spot then, because you'll never make it there.

Re:People still don't really get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I wont invite you to my vacation spot then, because you'll never make it there.

How often do you go?

And the taxpayers PAID for them

[Anonymous Coward]

All of us had to pay so that a tiny handful of people could afford a SUBSIDISED electric car.

Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Terje Mathisen]

EVs are simply inevitable, the only ting that have held them back (i.e."only" 29% of all new cars in 2016) here is the fact that most people prefers 4x4 station wagons for carrying stuff up to their winter cabins, and so far only Tesla have been able to provide more or less that, and at a price point which is more or less the same as a Volvo or BMW 4x4.

As soon as you can buy a dual-motor (4x4) EV with reasonable range for under $50K, no more ICE cars will be sold here.

My father was the Chairman of the largest EV importer in Norway for a number of years, so my family had various EVs as second cars, and I got intimately familiar with range anxiety from those. Based on that and the need for 4x4 I believed I had to wait for the Tesla Model X to be able to use an EV as our only car, but when they announced dual-motor versions of Model S I immediately decided to order one.

In hindsight my only regret is that at least some of the extra perks EVs get here have to go away over the next few years, the tax people have to get their revenue some way which means that the toll roads will start charging us, parking won't be free any more and we'll probably lose general access to bus & taxi lanes.

Terje
PS. Since Norway is a net exporter of hydro-electric power, all EVs are really 100% pollution free here, in countries with lots of coal-fired power plants in the grid mix the case isn't quite so obvious but still better than the very best ICE cars.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[pelpet]

Give me a small battery + a ICE range extender. That would create a better vehicle than any EV or ICE.

ICE Vehicle: Virtaully unlimited combination of heat/ac/towing/range, high maintenance, high energy cost, high noise, low touque

EV : Very limited combination of heat/ac/towing/range, low maintenance, low total energy cost, low noise, high touque

EV + REX : Virtaully unlimited combination of heat/ac/towing/range, medium maintenance, low/medium energy cost, low noise, high touque, mobile power plant function

Workhorse W-15, I am looking at you. Please transform yourself into a 4x4 station wagon.
http://workhorse.com/pickup/

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[tommeke100]

How much does the cold weather affect a full charge and the range?

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem is and your father should be painfully aware of this. Now that the tax rebates are going away Norway isnt selling nearly as many EV's. Its almost like as long as they were 180% less taxed then ICE vehciles they sold well...29% over multiple years but now that the tax rebate is going away. That % is falling like a stone. Experts expect it will not be 10% of the vehicles sold next year. So yeah keep telling us how great these are. They are not 1 out of 10 vehicles on the roads here in America. They are not 1 in 50.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[fluffernutter]

Will the electric grid up at those cabins support charging all those EVs?

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[argStyopa]

Curiously, not every country is an oil-rich petrostate awash in "free" hydropower, so much so that they export it.

So perhaps your model isn't one that will be entirely portable to the rest of the world?

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[swillden]

Workhorse W-15, I am looking at you. Please transform yourself into a 4x4 station wagon.

I'd prefer it stay a pickup truck... but they should move the REX from the chassis to the truck bed. Make it so I can jack the REX up and drive the truck out from underneath it, so that when I don't need to cart an ICE around with me (which is most of the time), I can leave it home. When installed the REX should mount forward, against the cab where truck boxes often sit. Also, the electric-only range should be increased to about 150 miles, though the current 80 miles is adequate for most purposes.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[BostonPilot]

Depends on the car. My Honda Fit EV took almost 50% hit on cold weather days here in Boston. That car used resistive heating, having a heat pump like in a Leaf helps somewhat, but there's still lots of range lost. I also notice my ICE car loses range on a tank of gas in the cold weather...

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Terje Mathisen]

As long as you have a regular 240V 16A outdoor plug available within reach of the car you can recharge any model over a normal weekend (friday evening to sunday afternoon): You'll get about 13 km/hour of additional range, so in 40+ hours you can add more than 500 km which is enough to take a Tesla 100 kWh battery from completely empty to 100% full.

Many people do not have any charging available at all, so they typically have to either charge on the last available supercharger, or just have enough range to make it all the way and back again, something which works for most cabins since they tend to be located 100-200 km from where people live.

Terje

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Terje Mathisen]

As others have commented, that depends a lot on the car and the cold weather support:

In Norway all Teslas are ordered with the cold weather package and we start preheating the car from the app 10-30 min before leaving on a winter morning, i.e. while the car is still plugged in. With active cooling and heating of the battery range drops far less than for many older EVs. New slushy snow on the road is a much more serious problem, either that or a really heavy rain can easily increase power usage by 15-25%, but I have never seen more than about 30% additional power use/km.

I.e. we have never had any problems driving 240-250 km over one mountain pass and up to Hardangervidda as long as the car had been plugged in overnight.

Terje

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[fluffernutter]

A lot of this assumes that you are going to your cabin and staying there, not driving on the highway to a golf course, or town grocery store, beach, campground, etc. When I go to my cabin I don't really know where I am going to drive to from there the next day, that's part of the fun of it. There are other places around that I want to visit. And the vehicle I buy needs to support that. So unless someone installs a supercharger in the little town by my cabin I might be limited as to what I can use my vehicle for once I bring it there.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of places are awash in "free" (no fuel) solar power and/or wind power.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Terje Mathisen]

You sound a lot like many others who try to come up with marginal use cases as to why they cannot have an EV as their only car. :-)

I.e. our previous 2-3 cars all had a tow bar which I typically used once during the time we owned the vehicle, such a tow bar isn't available for a Tesla Model S, right?

This doesn't turn out to be a real problem as long as we have friends with regular SUVs: Just after buying the Tesla we had several couples over for dinner and then somebody brought up this particular issue - "How will you manage to pull a trailer with gear up to your cabin?"

- That's easy, I'm betting at least one of you guys would be willing to swap your SUV for my Tesla on any given weekend!

I immediately got 4 offers for such a swap. :-)

I.e. we don't need every car to have all capabilities, just that the total sum of use cases at any given time is covered. This is similar to lots of standard queue theory problems, like the old local vs long distance phone exchange capacity calculation.

Terje

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[sad_]

i hear subaru is releasing ev's next year which will feature awd, so i guess scandinavia will be a big market for them.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[Terje Mathisen]

This is almost only Norway, in the rest of Scandinavia the rules are different:

Norway settled shortly after WW2 on big luxury taxes on cars: Only the very rich can afford them so we can tax them heavily, right? This stayed with us to now, with import duties of up to 180%, and then an additional sales tax of 25%. This means that a high-end fast sports car would cost 3 times as much here as in the US or major parts of the EU.

For EVs however there is neither import duties nor sales tax, which means that a BMW or Audi with similar performance to a low-end Model S (sub 5-sec 0 to 100 km/h times) will cost a lot more than the EV, while a supercar/hypercar which can compete with a P100DL (~2.5 sec) will cost from 2 to 10 times as much.

Denmark had similar EV rules until a year ago, when the tax breaks went away all EV sales effectively stopped. (Denmark is the only country in the world with higher car taxation than Norway.)

Sweden with a big domestic car industry have never had those huge taxes, so there the EV situation is closer to the US, but Tesla and other EVs are still selling quite well.

Anyway, Subaru is a popular brand in Norway so if they can deliver a long-range 4x4 EV they will indeed have many buyers lining up!

Terje

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[fluffernutter]

I'm not thinking of edge cases, I'm thinking of situations that may realistically happen that might make my life difficult. You may be willing to kick yourself when they happen and change your life by them, but i'd rather just buy a vehicle that works for me in all cases. I'm spending too much on it not to.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[argStyopa]

So they have the gobs and gobs of petro dollars needed to make the massive (subsidized) investment to gather those too?

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[MooseMiester]

ICE cars lose range in the Winter because they change the fuel mix. I find from State to State I get wildly different mileage as different states allow more alcohol in the gas. What's actually impressive is the improvements in fuel mileage we'd get if we didn't dilute gas with alcohol. If you have a modern car with a decent computer in it. find some ethanol free gas (Most marina's have it) and try a full tank of that, you'll be amazed at the mileage you get...

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[BostonPilot]

I'm sure you're right about the fuel mix, but drag also goes up because of denser cold air (quick calculation says it changes about 10% between summer and winter), and probably the tires have more rolling resistance even if you keep them at the proper pressure (but that's just a guess).

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[MooseMiester]

Absolutely but denser air means more oxygen which should result in a higher fuel burn = more efficiency.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[BostonPilot]

You may be right, but I would think that a modern car with a mass flow sensor will simply adjust the fuel to maintain the correct air/fuel mixture, so I actually wouldn't expect any difference in engine efficiency.. Not sure about that, though.

Re:Here in Norway the case is already settled

[MooseMiester]

I have a 2013 Ford. After 66K miles of anal retentive geek monitoring I can tell the quality of the fuel I got - based on the mileage! Now I'll have to start paying attention to the seasons too :)

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[OpenSourced]

You remind me of my father, who wouldn't buy a color TV until 1998 because they weren't "perfected" yet.

My father didn't want to buy a VHS VCR because, after the Beta debacle, he was sure that VHS was next, and the final standard would be the 8mm tape. Some smartass at work had convinced him of it.

Re: Here's when I'll buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't interrupt an idiot with facts.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[tehcyder]

I'm in a room with 12 developers, 24 screens (24 inch flat). SInce I have been here (4 years) only 2 have died.

"Only" 2 out of 12 developers dead in 4 years? Are you in some Special Forces cyber unit?

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[Maritz]

i can relate. i don't want to get a flat panel one until quality and reliability improves on them.

i've seen so many (belonging to friends or relatives, or customers) go to shit (flat panel monitors, too) in a year or two, but i've had the same color tv for forty years and the same 21 inch trinitron monitor for twenty.

I really hope this is true. It gladdens me to think that there are still people out there who are this mental.

Think I'm yet to see a flat panel 'go to shit' randomly without misfortune befalling it.

Taste is subjective

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I do actually care about automobile design and I like the looks of the Tesla, Bolt and Leaf. I had a Leaf for 3 years. I'm somewhat fussy about car looks and it satisfied me. Nissan has a proposed re-design of the Leaf that I think is amazing looking, but nobody knows if it will ever see the light of day. You should be able to find it by searching for "Nissan Leaf next generation" (without the quote marks) but again, taste is subjective so I'd venture a guess that you're not going to like that one either. Personally I think the i3 is "crap on a stick" as a friend would say, so I doubt that you're ever going to see an electric car that meets your unique styling requirements in the next 10 years.

Re:Taste is subjective

[jlv]

But almost *all* of the "LEAF 2" pictures you can find to date are wishful thinking renderings. There is only 1 picture that is not, and that's of a headlight that was released by Nissan 2 weeks ago. Basically, what you think is amazing is likely *not* going to be what the LEAF 2 looks like!

I like to say the LEAF is so ugly only a mother could love it. FWIW, I've put 27K miles on my LEAF in 3 years; it's my daily commuter.

I think the Model S is sweet. It's certainly more fun to drive than the LEAF, and I can go lots of places my LEAF won't/can't take me in a reasonable amount of time. FWIW, I've put 5K miles on my S in 3 months.

Oh oh I know what this proves!

[zifn4b]

DISCLAIMER: You are about to read a satirical joke, don't take it serious and get butt hurt. Also read this in Norm Macdonald's voice.

What we can learn from this using demographics correlation is that: Liberals are worse drivers than Conservatives.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[minogully]

10 minutes to fully recharge using a readily available station

It's funny. If people were doing the opposite and moving from EVs to gas powered vehicles, they would be saying that they'll wait to buy until they can gas up their car in their garage while they're sleeping.

Trapped

[fluffernutter]

Personally I wouldn't buy an EV because I'd feel trapped in my city. The capability to take a long road trip whenever I want means a lot to me. I don't care that I could rent an ICE, it's not the same as having your own because you have to baby it or get charged for damage.

Re:Trapped

[BostonPilot]

Consider a Rex like an i3 or a Volt. Around the city, 99% of your driving can be electric only, but if you want to do a road trip you're still getting 40 mpg or better.

BMW claims that some huge percentage of the people that order the i3 with the Rex almost never use it.

Some of this depends on the range of a car. With 110 miles of range (in the summer) with my Honda Fit EV, I was finding that I needed my ICE car about once a month. I figure with a Bolt or Tesla it would be once or twice a year. I'd be willing to rent a car once or twice a year to have an electric vehicle the rest of the time.

Re:Trapped

[Anonymous Coward]

I was looking online last weekend at the Bolt. Apparently they are real, sitting on the dealer lots here in Michigan. Have been for sale for 6-7 months in CA, maybe close to 10,000 sold by now. The range is 238 miles, apparently if you slow down a little that can be pushed to 275 (supposedly a hypermiler got 305 miles).

Couldn't you fricking drive 3 or 4 hours, stop and have lunch while fast charging, and then drive another 3 or 4 hours? You could be 500 miles away. It's a very rare day when I need to go further. (ok, today I would like to be driving to Ottawa for BSDCan, 558 miles -- could still be done with a dinner stop to charge)

This totally changed my doomer perception that industrial civilization will collapse soon. If my math is accurate, three 340W solar panels in my back yard would charge the Bolt to drive 4000 miles. Nine panels would cover the average person's 12,000 miles per year. (I used NREL's PVWatts calculator)

Re:Trapped

[fluffernutter]

Are these large vehicles? I have a family of four to transport with luggage.

Re:Trapped

[BostonPilot]

Both the i3 and the Volt are 4 seat vehicles.

I've never been in an i3, but lots of YouTube videos have people saying they're small on the outside, big on the inside (i.e. they make efficient use of space... still, it is certainly what you would consider a city car).

The Volt is a medium size car... 4 people fit very comfortably. I haven't tried loading a bunch of luggage in the trunk yet, so I can't really comment on that.

Re:Trapped

[fluffernutter]

And as I said, if I'm paying $43K i'd better be getting two vehicles.

China Coal Plants

[Anonymous Coward]

No wonder they need to build so many Coal powered plants, it's all those Green Eco- Hybrid and electric cars!

Good thing they signed the Paris Climate Accord. Oh, wait...

One man's Pacer is another Man's Ferrari

[mykepredko]

Thank you for the comments back.

Interesting to see the comments back about different vehicles and it's interesting to see the wide range of tastes in vehicles. I can respect that electric vehicles need to be "slippery" as well as visually different but for the most part they seem to miss their mark in terms of coming up with something that can be simply driven around town.

For what's available right now, I really don't find any appealing, maybe the b-class when it becomes available will change my mind.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[Rei]

I totally get it. I don't want a car until they can stop them from breaking down

I've seen so many cars (people I know) break down (farm equipment, too) after just a few years, but I've had the same horse for thirty years and the same mule for twenty.

Also, re: my lawn? Get off it.

big whoop!

[p51d007]

England and all of Europe fit WITHIN the USA, with room to spare. When you can drive across Europe in one day, but it will take you a couple days in the U.S. If you have two cars, one headed north, the other south, from the Texas/Oklahoma border, the one going north will reach Canada, before the one going south, will reach Mexico. THAT is how big the USA is. Plug in type AFFORDABLE cars do not have the range, for use in the USA, like they do overseas.

Re:big whoop!

[Anonymous Coward]

The distance people travel in a single go does not somehow scale with the land area of the country they happen to live in.

Re:big whoop!

[BostonPilot]

Just curious - I drive about 12,000 miles a year here in Boston... How many miles a year do you drive?

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[0123456]

Uh, you can, like 'recharge' your gasoline vehicle in a few minutes in your garage by pouring in cans of gasoline, dude.

Our ancestors had electric cars before they had gasoline cars. They dumped the electric cars as soon as the gasoline cars came along, because electric cars sucked due to short range and charging time. They still do, though they're slowly getting better.

Good lord you are a moron.

[Brannon]

The vast majority of people can and will recharge at night via a convenient plug. You can easily recharge your typical daily drive amount over night from a standard plug.

There is a large network of quick chargers that can supply 130KW *right now*, that is good enough to recharge 170 miles in 30 minutes. That covers long trips & the occasional day of heavy local driving.

There are plans to go over 350KW in a few years. There are no insurmountable hurdles here; electricity is pretty easy to work with and humanity has quite a bit of practice.

Re:Good lord you are a moron.

[mark-t]

The vast majority of people can and will recharge at night via a convenient plug

This assumes that a "vast majority" of people have a convenient plug for their own private use where they usually park their car at night.

You are right that the number of people that can do this is indeed in the majority, but I wouldn't call approximately 60% a particularly "vast" one. In highly densely populated areas, where commuter cars would otherwise often make even more sense, that number is often less than 50%.

Need to get better electric cars

[fyngyrz]

I've read this far, and my main conclusion is that people are more concerned with looks than function. AFAIAC, a car must incorporate these eight important things:

1: It needs to be reliable
2: It needs to be affordable to buy
3: It needs to be affordable to run
4: It needs to meet the cargo / passenger requirements
5: It needs to be comfortable
6: It needs to provide sufficient practical amenities
7: It needs to be safe
8: It needs to pollute as little as possible

How it looks is wholly irrelevant.

Electric Autonomous Future (& Flying Fusion Ca

[ClarkMills]

A few years after that you hopefully WON'T need:

* charging station
* a car
* a car park or garage
* a driveway
* indeed street parking clogging up the streets
* car insurance
* car repayments (& depreciation)
* car warrants of fitness (hassles & costs)
* car registration (hassles & costs)
* car maintenance (hassles & costs)

You'll ask your device transport from A to B & when. The device will give a countdown ETA and alert when near/there. You'll jump in the car, browse slashdot in transit, arrive and get out. The car will then head off on its merry way whether to top-up charge/park at what used to be called car-parking-buildings or do the next pickup.

Ideally the cars will be electric so there are obvious environmental (noise, particulate & noxious gas) HUGE wins here especially for the cities. Autonomous vehicles won't need to lead-foot, won't have road-rage, won't need to squeal at lights or indeed be distracted by their devices when the lights do go green as so many people obviously are. The lights indeed might just be for pedestrians and the vehicles would maximise their stop/start cycle to a gentle decelerate/accelerate for passenger comfort, efficiency & noise reduction.

Traffic will flow more efficiently as the cars can huddle more efficiently than "slow" humans can as everyone will know where they're going. Street routes would be balanced to spread the load across the street network. Indeed ride-sharing is an obvious option/extension for a reduced price of course. Streets could be more mall like with the extra "lanes" available that used to be for parking on the curb.

Some sort of feedback for the car quality would be good, a bit like feedback on eBay... Useful if you get in a car and it stinks; you say so. The system may determine that the last person to use the car is always smelly. The system can either send a smelly car for that prior person, let them know that they have a problem (a la feedback) or up their cost so that the car gets "refreshed" after they have used it. The car would have environmental sensors on board anyway and may be able to detect issues.

My wife has epilepsy so autonomous vehicles would make a huge difference.
I have better things to do than watch the bumper of the car in front of me for hours a week & I'm sure you do too.

Yep, it may happen after flying cars & nuclear fusion but I live in hope...

Solvable problem

[Brannon]

In densely populated areas it is pretty easy to add electric outlets adjacent to nearly every parking space. The parking meters already have power running to them.

Most Manhattan parking garages already have destination Tesla fast-chargers.

It won't happen overnight, and this will slow the penetration of EVs into cities, but it'll get there eventually. The public health benefits of getting ICEs off the roads will be more than enough incentive to distribute the power.

Re:Solvable problem

[mark-t]

It won't happen overnight, and this will slow the penetration of EVs into cities

This is true, but also incredibly ironic, since those who live in cities would be the most likely to benefit from EVs.

In densely populated areas it is pretty easy to add electric outlets adjacent to nearly every parking space.

No, it is not. In many places are talking about adding extensive wiring into places in the public parking areas where no plans were ever made to add electrical connectivity. This isn't cheap... coming in at many tens of thousands of dollars per charging station added. Now this per-unit cost can be reduced to somewhat more manageable levels if you get enough charging stations installed at once in a given location, but given that in such places where there wasn't any prior charging facilities near resident parking, very few people would even *have* electric cars or would currently be in the market to buy one, the number of people willing to front the capital to get it installed would be too low.... and so the initial costs would remain unjustifiably high. People who aren't in the market for an electric car but might get one if the charging facilities were already there just would expect somebody else to pay for it, and the result is that it doesn't get done at all.

In parts of a city where many or most buildings are more than 30 years old, there can be issues even with just getting the electrical infrastructure to the buildings that the city simply has not put there yet. Sure the cities will have the infrastructure on any new buildings, but people living in older parts of the city will continue to be stuck with not being able to own an EV on account of no ability to charge at home.

Re:Here's when I'll buy

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about that. How does the gas get to your garage? Are you installing a pipeline? Or are you taking an extra few minutes to drive out of your way to fill up multiple jerry cans? And you have to actively pour the liquid. You can't exactly do this while you're sleeping.

EV? Plug-in when you exit the car, maybe takes 15 seconds. Then unplug when you get in the car, another 15 seconds. If you have a short-enough commute, you don't even need to do this every day.

You spend less of your personal time recharging your car than you do for a gas car. Even for long-distance, you typically can plug-in, walk away and use the bathroom and get something to eat, rather than sit or stand with your vehicle while it charges.

I'll concede that MOST electric cars still suck though - not Teslas, they've got it figured out.

Actual Statistics not Hyperbole

[MooseMiester]

Total vehicle sales last year 88.1 million units. http://www.businessinsider.com...

In the U.S. 156,000 EV's were sold http://www.fleetcarma.com/ev-s... Mostly to people in CA who got tax breaks for buying them, or the well heeled San Francisco crowd no doubt. Certainly not the farmers in the San Joaquin valley.

Total US Vehicle sales 17.5 million units. http://www.latimes.com/busines... Biggest growth segment, SUV's and pickup trucks.

EV market penetration in the U.S. 2.2%. Yeah these things are going to take over like tomorrow.

I call bullshit on "USA is too large"

[Terje Mathisen]

You have to include Alaska to make the US that large, and then you cannot drive from one part to the other without spending a day or three in Canada.

The lower 48 which would be your normal driving range is much easier to drive across than all of Europe since the latter includes all the former East Block countries and a substantial part of Russia. If you want to go north-south Norway alone is much longer than the west coast of the US!

The shortest possible route in Norway (mostly following Euro Highway 6) from Lindesnes in the south to Grense Jakobselv on the Russia border in the north is 2891 km according to Google Maps, you can compare that to the 1380 miles (2221 km) from Mexico to Canada along I5 through California, Oregon and Washington.

Terje

Read it and weep EV fans

[MooseMiester]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

No subsidies no buyers. Imagine that.

I stopped reading at: "tens of thousands of $"

[Brannon]

That's absurd. You don't need an 100kW charger for each parking spot, these are for nighttime charging.

Your entire premise is absurd.

Re:I stopped reading at: "tens of thousands of $"

[mark-t]

The point remains, if there is no electrical connectivity anywhere near where people park their cars, you are looking at an extremely expensive rewiring job just to even *begin*. I realize that this isn't applicable to everybody, but it's not even slightly abnormal in high density living situations.