And the great thing about your proposal is that we don't have to solve any wildly difficult problems to make it happen! After all, we definitely know how to harvest CO2 at scale from the air and turn it into fuel.
There's definitely a big chunk of people whose usage patterns aren't going to be served by an EV any time soon. That said, EVs are good for quite a few use cases beyond 30 miles of commuting per day. I could do a working week of 30 miles per day in my little EV before needing to recharge. My car could cope with a 140 mile round trip commute (not that I could, but...) and have a full charge every morning. And it fits 5 people and a reasonable amount of luggage (albeit that what I think is reasonable and what a typical US family thinks is reasonable probably differs a lot).
I think EVs will get to scale being adopted as second cars. I seem to remember half of US households have two or more cars. And the percentage who need that second car to do 300 miles before refuelling has to be pretty low.
If you know the funny one about assume, I'll assume you also know the one about anecdote and data.
The top ten maintenance issues for cars are: Oil/oil filter changed Wiper blades replacement Replace air filter Scheduled maintenance New tires Battery replacement Brake work Antifreeze added Engine tune-up Wheels aligned/balanced 8 of those issues involved moving parts. Oil and engine tune-up are moving parts issues and ICE-only issues.
I think they (Renault along with the EU) did quite a lot of work to find out the minimum speed for tyre and wind noise to become audible to pedestrians, and it turned out to be 18mph. Anyway, that's why I like being able to switch the noise off. Sometimes, being silent is exactly what you want.
But you can't deep discharge the pack, because of the BMS. 0 range is not the same as 0 charge. A percentage of charge is reserved to avoid deep discharge. Manufacturers are understandably being cautious. I think you'd really have to be going some to get your pack to 60% SoH after 8 years.
That's exactly how it works today. The Zoe has a pedestrian warning sound below 18 mph. You can switch it off if you want -- I tend to. And you can choose between three different sounds.
Re on-street parking -- I expect lamp-post charging such as Ubitricity will proliferate. And car park charging. You'll get a bit of charging done most times you park. It's a different model from empty-to-full refuelling, just as wireless devices create different usage models from wired devices.
Re your needs. I think it's going to be a while before your needs are met. Maybe as much as 5 to 10 years at a competitive price point. But it's fairly unusual as a usage pattern.
Of course things are won: 1. Powerplants can have better scrubbers and run more efficiently than cars, because they're much larger and the load is more predictable. 2. You shift particulate and other emissions out of urban centres
#2 alone is worth its weight in gold. I went to the University of Cambridge. The old buildings there had to have their stone washed down on a regular basis to clean off the soot from vehicles. If that soot were all shifted to the stacks of powerpoints, that would be great
Of course there's reason to assume greater reliability -- they have far fewer moving parts to fail.
And there's no basis to say battery packs will last only 8 to 10 years. The likelihood is they'll still be delivering 80% or more of original range when they've done 200k miles, because the BMS is very effective (and gets better OTA).
I really hope that this continues to be a feature you can switch off, as it is today in the UK. One of the enormous benefits of EVs is that they are so much quieter. Our cities and motorways will be utterly transformed for the better once most vehicles are EVs.
A second hand non-Tesla EV is pretty cheap, thanks to depreciation, so that's how many people get one as an auxiliary. It works very well if you are driving 80 miles a day, can re-charge at home, and can make a lot of use of a car that size. If not, not...
I have to say, my personal experience has been that once you've got used to an EV, it's tough to go back. I just enjoy too much of the experience. In particular, the instant torque, the silence and lack of vibration, the instant and smooth responsiveness as you accelerate, the full charge in the mornings, the preheat so the car is warm on a cold day when you get in, etc etc. I know lots of people don't care much about those aspects, but I've really enjoyed them. And some of these benefits interact with each other: I feel much more free to use the full acceleration of my car than I do in an ICE because the engine doesn't scream when I put my foot to the floor. So I can move fast off the line in city traffic. (I do plenty of old granny driving too, coasting up to the lights when they're on red. The car is flexible like that.)
But I think it's probably going to be a few years before there's an EV that begins to meet your needs *and* offers you enough extra on top for you to consider it. One day, though.
We felt like that about online shopping when we started, but it has its own advantages and gradually we got used to it. Similarly, UK supermarkets use a lot of self-checkout facilities (you scan and pay for yourself), and I now prefer them.
50k seems like excellent value. It's going to be a while before EVs are able to hit that price point for something like your Explorer. They'll get there eventually though -- ultimately, they're simpler machines, and the scale economies will kick in. But it will be a while.
I guess everything really is bigger in America. British kitty litter is a lot smaller! 8 boxes definitely wouldn't fill up the back of a Zoe.
So I understand better now. However, I disagree that the Zoe needs to get a lot better -- at least for an average family in Europe. I'd like it to have a longer range, obviously, although 180 miles is enough for me to do all but one or two journeys on a single charge. But for driving in London, a larger car is a significant disadvantage, because it's more difficult to manoeuvre. A bigger trunk just isn't that important to me. And the price is pretty reasonable too.
Out of interest, how much does an Explorer cost? What does it compete with? Presumably it's not as expensive as a Model X?
Obviously the Explorer has a much bigger trunk. Obviously.
That wasn't what I commented on. Nor did I comment on your road trip requirements, nor on the general suitability of a Zoe for your use case. I commented on your specific citing of your weekend chores, which required you to carry five adults, 8 boxes of kitty litter, an electric guitar and the week's shopping. And I said that would all fit in a Zoe, hence why I was confused. How much food can a family of five possibly eat?!
It could definitely fit 5 people, 8 boxes of kitty litter and an electric guitar and the groceries for a week. I mean, I guess it partly depends on just how much you all eat, but we routinely get two large suitcases and multiple further bags in the trunk when we go away.
Let's say you're right and the authors of the paper are wrong to cite diabetes as a factor.
Still.
You complained that the OP had not read the summary because they talked about processed foods and high sugar. But in fact, the only person who clearly had not read the summary was you, because processed foods and high sugar are causative for diabetes, and the summary said that the authors cited diabetes as a factor. They may have been wrong to do so, although I think you're wrong about that for the reasons others have put below, but they nevertheless did so, and the summary discussed it, and you didn't read the summary carefully enough to spot it, and then you went on to complain that someone else had not read the summary.
You really ought to apologise for your bad behaviour. Not only were you unnecessarily rude to the OP, but you yourself committed the very sin you accused them of.
Slashdot Mirror
And the great thing about your proposal is that we don't have to solve any wildly difficult problems to make it happen! After all, we definitely know how to harvest CO2 at scale from the air and turn it into fuel.
There's definitely a big chunk of people whose usage patterns aren't going to be served by an EV any time soon. That said, EVs are good for quite a few use cases beyond 30 miles of commuting per day. I could do a working week of 30 miles per day in my little EV before needing to recharge. My car could cope with a 140 mile round trip commute (not that I could, but...) and have a full charge every morning. And it fits 5 people and a reasonable amount of luggage (albeit that what I think is reasonable and what a typical US family thinks is reasonable probably differs a lot).
I think EVs will get to scale being adopted as second cars. I seem to remember half of US households have two or more cars. And the percentage who need that second car to do 300 miles before refuelling has to be pretty low.
If you know the funny one about assume, I'll assume you also know the one about anecdote and data.
The top ten maintenance issues for cars are:
Oil/oil filter changed
Wiper blades replacement
Replace air filter
Scheduled maintenance
New tires
Battery replacement
Brake work
Antifreeze added
Engine tune-up
Wheels aligned/balanced
8 of those issues involved moving parts. Oil and engine tune-up are moving parts issues and ICE-only issues.
I think they (Renault along with the EU) did quite a lot of work to find out the minimum speed for tyre and wind noise to become audible to pedestrians, and it turned out to be 18mph. Anyway, that's why I like being able to switch the noise off. Sometimes, being silent is exactly what you want.
But you can't deep discharge the pack, because of the BMS. 0 range is not the same as 0 charge. A percentage of charge is reserved to avoid deep discharge. Manufacturers are understandably being cautious. I think you'd really have to be going some to get your pack to 60% SoH after 8 years.
That's exactly how it works today. The Zoe has a pedestrian warning sound below 18 mph. You can switch it off if you want -- I tend to. And you can choose between three different sounds.
Re that salt mine. This was an interesting Forbes story:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/h...
Re on-street parking -- I expect lamp-post charging such as Ubitricity will proliferate. And car park charging. You'll get a bit of charging done most times you park. It's a different model from empty-to-full refuelling, just as wireless devices create different usage models from wired devices.
Re your needs. I think it's going to be a while before your needs are met. Maybe as much as 5 to 10 years at a competitive price point. But it's fairly unusual as a usage pattern.
Of course things are won:
1. Powerplants can have better scrubbers and run more efficiently than cars, because they're much larger and the load is more predictable.
2. You shift particulate and other emissions out of urban centres
#2 alone is worth its weight in gold. I went to the University of Cambridge. The old buildings there had to have their stone washed down on a regular basis to clean off the soot from vehicles. If that soot were all shifted to the stacks of powerpoints, that would be great
I agree with much of this, but not the battery replacement part. Packs might well outlast the chassis, BMS systems are so good.
Of course there's reason to assume greater reliability -- they have far fewer moving parts to fail.
And there's no basis to say battery packs will last only 8 to 10 years. The likelihood is they'll still be delivering 80% or more of original range when they've done 200k miles, because the BMS is very effective (and gets better OTA).
I really hope that this continues to be a feature you can switch off, as it is today in the UK. One of the enormous benefits of EVs is that they are so much quieter. Our cities and motorways will be utterly transformed for the better once most vehicles are EVs.
A vanishingly small percentage of drivers use all their range each day.
A second hand non-Tesla EV is pretty cheap, thanks to depreciation, so that's how many people get one as an auxiliary. It works very well if you are driving 80 miles a day, can re-charge at home, and can make a lot of use of a car that size. If not, not...
I have to say, my personal experience has been that once you've got used to an EV, it's tough to go back. I just enjoy too much of the experience. In particular, the instant torque, the silence and lack of vibration, the instant and smooth responsiveness as you accelerate, the full charge in the mornings, the preheat so the car is warm on a cold day when you get in, etc etc. I know lots of people don't care much about those aspects, but I've really enjoyed them. And some of these benefits interact with each other: I feel much more free to use the full acceleration of my car than I do in an ICE because the engine doesn't scream when I put my foot to the floor. So I can move fast off the line in city traffic. (I do plenty of old granny driving too, coasting up to the lights when they're on red. The car is flexible like that.)
But I think it's probably going to be a few years before there's an EV that begins to meet your needs *and* offers you enough extra on top for you to consider it. One day, though.
We felt like that about online shopping when we started, but it has its own advantages and gradually we got used to it. Similarly, UK supermarkets use a lot of self-checkout facilities (you scan and pay for yourself), and I now prefer them.
50k seems like excellent value. It's going to be a while before EVs are able to hit that price point for something like your Explorer. They'll get there eventually though -- ultimately, they're simpler machines, and the scale economies will kick in. But it will be a while.
That's one hell of a lot of cat shit...
$50k Canadian is the new price?
As an aside, I'm always surprised that online supermarket isn't a bigger segment in the US (2% vs 7% in the UK).
I guess everything really is bigger in America. British kitty litter is a lot smaller! 8 boxes definitely wouldn't fill up the back of a Zoe.
So I understand better now. However, I disagree that the Zoe needs to get a lot better -- at least for an average family in Europe. I'd like it to have a longer range, obviously, although 180 miles is enough for me to do all but one or two journeys on a single charge. But for driving in London, a larger car is a significant disadvantage, because it's more difficult to manoeuvre. A bigger trunk just isn't that important to me. And the price is pretty reasonable too.
Out of interest, how much does an Explorer cost? What does it compete with? Presumably it's not as expensive as a Model X?
Obviously the Explorer has a much bigger trunk. Obviously.
That wasn't what I commented on. Nor did I comment on your road trip requirements, nor on the general suitability of a Zoe for your use case. I commented on your specific citing of your weekend chores, which required you to carry five adults, 8 boxes of kitty litter, an electric guitar and the week's shopping. And I said that would all fit in a Zoe, hence why I was confused. How much food can a family of five possibly eat?!
I'm really confused by the comment about your weekend.
My Renault Zoe is absolutely tiny by US standards: it's a supermini.
https://www.renault.co.uk/vehi...
It could definitely fit 5 people, 8 boxes of kitty litter and an electric guitar and the groceries for a week. I mean, I guess it partly depends on just how much you all eat, but we routinely get two large suitcases and multiple further bags in the trunk when we go away.
They sent it to MBS.
What's your magical CO2 emitting fuel that doesn't also release particulates and NOx? You should get a patent for it right away.
Along with deaths from respiratory disease! Yay!
Let's say you're right and the authors of the paper are wrong to cite diabetes as a factor.
Still.
You complained that the OP had not read the summary because they talked about processed foods and high sugar. But in fact, the only person who clearly had not read the summary was you, because processed foods and high sugar are causative for diabetes, and the summary said that the authors cited diabetes as a factor. They may have been wrong to do so, although I think you're wrong about that for the reasons others have put below, but they nevertheless did so, and the summary discussed it, and you didn't read the summary carefully enough to spot it, and then you went on to complain that someone else had not read the summary.
You really ought to apologise for your bad behaviour. Not only were you unnecessarily rude to the OP, but you yourself committed the very sin you accused them of.
I was explaining to Opportunist that he had misunderstood the OP. I wasn't saying the OP was right or wrong.
He was being sarcastic and thus implying that the factors that the OP cited were not the main drivers.