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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.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
> 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.
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
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
>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.
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.
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
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:
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).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
FYI it's up to 53 miles now in the new version.