Liquid cancer? C'mon, that's a bit extreme.

Getting down to the point, can you imagine the political fallout from crushing the value of a gas car? It's a truck sized political landmine, and no party is willing to touch that thing with a hundred foot stick.

Gas still has significant advantages that electric has yet to match. Worst gas has 53x the specific energy of the best Li-ion, and even with a hundred % efficient induction motor and a 10% efficient motor (try closer to 30% realistically), gas is still a much more energy dense fuel.

Still, gas has a ton going for it. It's quicker to "charge" by an order of magnitude; it's easy to carry an auxiliary supply to double or triple range. Cold weather and reliability are excellent (hundreds of thousands of miles with a minimum of maintenance). There are no concerns about cell wearout (batteries will last for 5 years, maybe). Virtually everywhere on the planet, there's someone in any population center who knows how to work with gas cars.

The network for gas is highly developed and highly entrenched. No one is giving up trillions in value without a fight. In all honesty, I expect to see gasoline powered vehicles on the road for the next 100 years, barring an unprecedented revolution.

Mostly you are right, but not entirely. Many of your concerns about electric cars are growing pains which means they need to be separated.

Cold weather reliability for electric cars will get better.

Battery wear out will be a problem we learn to solve - replacement batteries already exist, they just need to be factored into the cost of the car.

Most of the things you need to work on for electric cars are exactly the same as gas. You still have brakes, tires, a suspension system. The rest are things that those mechanics will learn, just as their learned to work on gas engines.

When there are enough electric cars on the road the network will follow.

You are correct that in 8 years the gas/diesel car will still dominate. It isn't clear if buyers will switch to electric cars by enough that all new cars are electric in 8 years (if the buyers don't switch the politicians will blink and repeal the 8 year law). However as buyers switch to electric cars the infrastructure will follow.

The real question is will non-cars switch to electric. The fuel density difference is just a minor annoyance for cars. For truck, trains, tractors, and other heavy duty operations the energy density is much more important.

I think you might be a bit off here on the extent to which the average driver will be needing gasoline.

Tesla's have less than 10% battery degradation after 8 years so far.

What will happen is people will buy an electric car as a second car. They'll get comfortable charging every night and then buy a Chevy volt like car that usually won't need gas but can range extender as needed. A large portion of those users will realize you don't even need the range extender most of the time.

More like 80-85% original capacity after 100,000 miles (http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/tesla-roadste...)

Do you have a source for the Tesla battery degradation?

How many cycles over 8 years?

I mean... if you drink gasoline, you probably will get cancer.

I'd argue eating a battery would end in a similar fashion.

this is a link https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/seven-substanc... to a Health and Human Services 14th Report on Carcinogens, classifying cobalt as a carcinogen

Point being, "liquid cancer" is fear-mongering hyperbole -- lots of things are carcinogenic.

Not many of those things get blown into the air in massive amounts right where population density is highest though.

Precisely! If you need an exemplar, just look at lead... an element that was known for centuries to make people crazy, which was formerly a gasoline additive. And what about all those other additives and emissions? Then you start looking at bunker fuel. This stuff ain't good for you by any stretch.

I doubt you will last long enough.

Many countries in 2030?

Germany's upper house passed a non-binding resolution about how they want it to happen in 2030. What others are there?

There are bunch of countries talking about 2040 and a few including the UK have legislated. However, that is safe enough that the current bunch of legislators will be long gone. It might also be like repeatedly missed emissions targets and so on.

Also, called petroleum liquid cancer is inflammatory.

Indeed, 0-emission target (i.e. no car, truck, bus, train new or old circulating emitting CO2) for London is 2050.

However, there is a trend at the moment both in local government and national one. If that is followed by actual investment in charging infrastructure, sometimes between 2020-2030 electric cars could reach critical mass.

At the same time, some region and countries of Europe are already thinking going backward on fiscal encouragement to buy an electric car. In Europe the major part of the fuel cost is taxes, and at some point they will need to find something to tax electric cars on, doing it too early could kill electric cars momentum ... so wait and see.

Aren't all those laws focused on new cars? I can't imagine the backlash a government would receive by zeroing out the value of most people's most expensive possession.

When new car sales move to electric from gasoline, you'll start to see gas stations go out of business...slowly at first but accelerating as the percentage of gas powered vehicles declines. You'll still have your car and be allowed to drive it, but the days of just finding a gas station wherever you need them will be over. Much like early days of electric cars, people will need a concrete refueling plan for every trip, which is going to make those cars a lot less attractive to own and a lot less valuable on the resale market.

Or we'll see "gas" stations incrementally change to "gas-n-charge" stations. As society moves from liquid hydrocarbons to electrons for personal transportation I can see no reason why these locations won't adapt.

After all, people will still ingest their liquid fuel and expel their waste. ;-)

We won't need nearly as many charging stations as we need gas stations because electric cars can be charged at home.

Maybe that is true in rural and suburban environments, but I doubt it in dense urban environments. Adding a charger to every spot in residential parking garages and on every residential street is a bigger infrastructure project than converting over gas stations to chargers. You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

Interesetingly in the Nordics this is already done. Practically all the parking spots (excluding street side) have 230VAC outlets for engine block warming.

I live in a Bay Area apartment with no garage and commute every day with an EV. I've never plugged my car in at home once.

Meh, how much does a regular old 15-20A 120V outlet cost to install? $200 per plug, maybe? Just need a relay inside that talks over Bluetooth to a cloud-connected app on the user's phone (or just city wifi), and you've got a smart outlet that can handle payment. Another $20 (based on costs I've seen online for similar products), total $220. People can use their own chargers as all electric cars come with level 1 chargers. Cost is low, so could use residential electricity rates (slightly more expensive than commercial) and still make profit.

We already have lighted parking, don't see why adding outlets is that hard. We're talking slow overnight charging here for the most part.

> You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

True, but for most drivers on most days they will be able to charge up at home overnight. Charge time won't matter as much then. Drivers in dense urban environments will likely move towards a car sharing model since, as you noted, the costs and practicality of infrastructure retrofitting will be exorbitant.

Disagree. Just need an outlet, like the engine block heaters on light poles in Minnesota. Infrastructures costs are low of people use their own chargers.

Considerable amount of parking here in the UK is on-street. None of the homes built in the post WW2 rebuilding have dedicated room for cars, or any of the 10s of 1000s of homes built before that.

By "post WW2 rebuilding" do you mean a specific limited time period?

Because otherwise, "None" is a bit strong - there's hundreds of new homes and apartments within 5 miles of me that have dedicated parking spaces.

Even my block (seems to be 1960s) has dedicated off-street parking for 8 cars (admittedly there are 12 flats but I suspect 8 cars for 12 flats in the 60s was an outlandish estimate.)

Sorry, yes I meant the public housing built in the 40s & 50s.

Hmm, in trying to find an example, it doesn't look as bad as I know it is.

This is the kind of estate I was thinking of

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ambleside+Primary+School...

but many of the fronts have been turned into parking

These are pre war

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/6+Newfield+Rd,+Nottingha...

I know these places and night-time parking is more of a squeeze than these images show

Gas stations don't make much money on actually selling gas - consumers are irrationally price sensitive when it comes to the price of gasoline, so the stations are generally selling it at or near cost.

As long as people still pop into the convenience store to get a soda and a candy bar, it doesn't matter if they're filling your tank with gasoline or charging your battery.

I'm thinking gas stations will stop selling garbage and start selling actual food, since charging takes longer and people will be hanging around for a little while.

How can the price of gas can be at or near cost, when the difference between two stations across the road from each other can be easily 20%?

There are likely other factors at play. For example, if the more expensive fuel station has brand associations it triggers (e.g. Shell [1]), the higher pricing likely benefits them more so than it hurts, as their target market discerning customer is likely to interpret the price as a proxy for quality.

[1] http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/0258054051061...

Can you provide a concrete example? I can't recall ever seeing such a disparity in the US having lived in the midwest, northwest, and east coast. Perhaps you're in a different location?

Burlingame CA, California Dr @ Broadway. A & A Gas has regular at $2.72, while Chevron is at $3.20.

The Burlingame A&A is notorious for being the one of the cheapest -- if not the cheapest -- places to fill up between SF and SV. In this case, it's likely that the Chevron literally across the street just decided it's not worth playing that game, hoping instead to appeal to the crowd who wonders if the cheap competitor is actually up to par.

The fact that the Chevron gets any business at all seems to validate this strategy at first blush.

Also the Chevron at grant and el Camino is $3 when the shell a block away on grant is $3.60 or so. The Chevron is one of the highest trafficked gas stations in SV and operates on volume. The shell can't play that game so charges a pronoun to grocery shoppers.

Wow. I wonder what economic factors are at play here.

Costco is 20% cheaper than all other stations in Toronto. So either Costco is selling at a loss (unlikely) or there's plenty of profit in gas for gas stations.

Given that you have to pay an annual membership fee to get access to that gas, it's likely subsidized by the fee and used as a loss-leader to bring people to shop at Costco.

Costco does not subsidize its gas sales. It makes money from them:

https://www.fastcompany.com/60019/tiger-costcos-tank

It's an older link, but they still do much the same. There have been court cases brought against them by consortiums of other gas stations here and there, but AFAIK Costco has emerged victorious so far.

Or they buy a lot in bulk when the price is low.

I've seen it frequently, especially when road configuration makes one station more convenient to, e.g., a freeway on/off-ramp.

The freeway offramp nearest my house has two gas stations with a ten-cent difference.

And wouldn't you know, I use the more expensive one, because it's the one that I can get to without making a bunch of turns.

They make a lot of their money in the convenience store.

I think a lot of them will stay in business and just have a smaller tank/less pumps.

So long Bucees!

Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles.

It's similar to when Color TVs were invented. What happened to the re-sale value of all the B&W TVs that were already out there? They plummeted, because they had been superseded.

This scenario will be even more aggressive, because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech".

That's not really comparable at all. A color tv is a fundamentally more distinct product as compared to a b&w tv than a ICE cars is compared to an electric. Especially for the foreseeable future.

The difference is that a B&W TV will still be usable as long as there is an NTSC signal while an old ICE car won't be usable without gas stations.

Lol in what way?

Because a colour TV is fundamentally and objectively better at its primary use case (watching TV). A petrol powered car will get you from A to B just like an electric one.

EV is fundamentally and objectively better as well. Heat, noise, maintenance/fuel cost are lower. Acceleration higher.

Contingent on low battery prices which make range and charge rate competitive.

Range lower, maintenance costs higher. The argument goes both ways but whichever side you are on, we are on the same side that EV are fundamentally different than gas cars, at least as much as color TV vs b&w.

In my mind, just as getting 3x more colors gives you exponentially richer storytelling, 3x more range (way more than that actually, since a gas car can be in almost continuous use with brief stops for fuel) gives you the freedom to go exponentially many more places, do things etc

Oh don't get me wrong - there are advantages of course. But people are underinformed / bad at calculating whole of life costs / don't have the extra cash available so a cheap petrol vehicle will look appealing. There isn't the "wow" factor of comparing colour vs B&W TV - especially at the low end. The Nissan Leaf was a nice car to drive but it wasn't impressing anyone because of how cool it looked.

> Heat

Not in the winter.

Because the primary function of a TV is displaying moving pictures while the primary function of a car is not related to its fuel type. The general public has not yet shown a dramatic interest in electric over ICE, but improvements to TV picture have been shown to be major drivers of adoption from color, HD, 4k, and so on. That is the whole reason why these laws are being considered, to help move people off ICE cars quicker than they would in a normal market.

No, the laws will only affect new car sales, not the old tech. That doesn't affect the secondary market for used gasoline cars in the slightest.

It might have the opposite effect, making them more rare and increasing prices even.

> Yes, the laws only apply to new vehicles.

>because laws will ban the sale of the "old tech".

?

I mean laws will ban the sale of new ICE cars, which by then will be the "old tech".

So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one? (unless, like I said, it's a pleasure driver or some exotic, which is a tiny fraction of all cars sold)

Think of all the things that have been replaced and superseded in history - once the new thing exists, the old one drops in price dramatically.

I think you underestimate the financial burden of buying a car. As long as a gas vehicle runs, they'll be a market for it. If they depreciate even faster, they'll still be a market. People don't care about resale at the bottom of the market. They care about reliable transportation which I assume gas cars will continue to provide.

There are plenty of 20 year old vehicles out there with plenty of life left in them.

> So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one?

If people would want to buy them before considering availability of new ones, banning new one increases market clearing price of used ones by eliminating an obvious alternative.

Now, as the number on the road dwindles, you'll start to see reduced support infrastructure (gas stations, parts availability, etc.) which will make ownership less attractive, but that's likely to be a slow and lagging process. So, if there are still utility advantages to gas cars, I'd expect used ones to become more expensive initially with a ban on new ones, but drop sometime later.

>when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one?

For the same exact reasons many people today choose to buy used gas cars over new electric cars.

> So when you can't even buy one new, why would someone want a used one?

Because the prices of non-collectable ICE cars is bound to plummet unless we haven't solved the battery charge speed issue (as in, in practice, supposedly it was recently solved in theory).

And don't forget that EV's will be a whole lot better than they are now, like cheaper and longer-range.

but if the entire supply chain knows this is coming, will the growing scarcity of gasoline make these cars worthless anyway?

Kinda curious how electrical vehicles will fare during a mandatory evacuation or disaster. If you don't have a full charge, there's not an easy way to get a full charge, and so you will just not have transportation the full route.

Have you seen what happens to gas stations during a mandatory evacuation or disaster?

With no electricity, gas can not be pumped from the tanks.

Even when it can, there is immediately a line-up of 100s of vehicles.

(I see this very often in West Africa)

I saw it the other day when the eclipse came to Oregon, and the population suddenly increased by 25% for a few days.

I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem.

[0]: http://www.kgw.com/news/eclipse/gas-shortages-long-waits-rep...

Interestingly, my observation here in Bend was that the worst shortages were in the middle of last week as locals rushed to fill up so they wouldn't run out... Could have been worse up near Madras, though, which is smaller and had a lot more people.

yep, article from parent was from August 16, well before the eclipse...

> I'm guessing that if the number of electric cars surged by 25% for a few days, it would be much less of a problem.

Some parts of the US aren't able to easily meet energy demand they can forecast when it goes up by amounts like 25%. For instance, Pepco pays to install thermostats where they can turn down/off your air conditioner[0]. Same with Dominion Energy[1]. I would be unsurprised if an influx of people of the size to cause gas shortages would also cause problems for electrical grids in many parts of the country.

[0] https://energywiserewards.pepco.com/md/faq/index.php#q2

[1] https://www.dominionenergy.com/home-and-small-business/ways-...

That doesn't follow. There is a vast difference in cost of different forms of electric. The grid has a lot of built in ability to scale by turning on more expensive sources of power. People want low prices, and so the power company does what it can to stay on the low cost sources of power even while higher cost sources exist and could make up the demand without those tricks: it make customers happy.

My company maintains an old boiler from the 1880s connected to a steam engine/generator from the 1920s. Because we have it maintained and can start it up with 12 hours notice the power company gives us a substantial discount on our power. I understand we actually did turn it on about 5 years ago when something major happened to the grid. We were able to power our [small] town alone. This is one of the least efficient power plants in the country and thus one of the most expensive.

This happened after hurricane Sandy: http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Two-Arrested-for-Ga...

200+ miles ought to be enough to get you out of the disaster area. Plus if you can charge at home you'll almost always be near full, whereas most people let gas tanks get low before filling them back up.

You generally don't leave disaster areas at highway speeds. Electrics should be better at this if you don't run the tunes or the ac. Also there are a lot of disasters that will be bigger than 200m. If Rainier goes off it will have a very large ash spread mostly east depending on prevailing winds. Seattle was just blanketed by smoke from way up in bc all the way to Portland. Way more than 200 miles. Imagine if it was a foot + of air intake clogging ash and low visibility.

I wonder if trucks with solar panels and batteries would help.

There's a non-negligible chance that everything will be self-driving by 2030, and you'll call a car from a car-service on demand instead of owning one.

(Yeah, I just got stuck behind a Waymo self-driving vehicle on El Camino again today. They are annoying, but much further along than anyone who doesn't live in Silicon Valley realizes.)

> I think there will be very little demand for the regular old gas powered car.

Nobody has addressed the infrastructural problem of recharging massive fleets of privately owned electric vehicles. It's a pipe dream that this will all be fixed by 2030.

This will never happen in the US for the foreseeable future. Considering how our broadband surcharges have been siphoned off with nothing to show for it, no amount of government intervention through taxation will fix this. That leaves market forces as the only factor in play for the US. The market is going to stick with ICE cars.

Lots of utility grid providers have addressed exactly these problems.

Recently in the UK there were some headlines when the usual suspects in the media published their worst case scenarios as "EVs could destroy the grid!" and the grid had to publish a clarification

http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.p...

They're going to be repealed very quickly in my opinion.

The laws were written by incredibly over optimistic people with zero understanding of the actual science or practicalities.

Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive.

> Unless some fantastic new battery is invented very soon, there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive.

And unless the power networks from a lot of countries are not modernized. Not sure about the States, but over-here in Eastern Europe we get power-cuts from time to time during summer months because everybody has their AC turned on (they usually don't last long, but it happens). If half of the 1 million cars that are now driving on the streets in my city were to be electric then I'm pretty sure that the local power network will just give up spectacularly.

> there literally isn't enough lithium on earth to support the electric car market and lithium ion batteries are soon going to become prohibitively expensive.

Probably not true. Check out this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14922104

Particularly the analysis provided by hwillis.

A friend who is a materials engineer told me that there aren't enough rare-Earth metals in the world to supply the demand for magnets to replace all of the current petrol based cars with electric cars. No sources unfortunately, but this thing might not scale.

That's part of the reason why practically all electric cars currently in production use induction motors, which only require copper.

Yes, it would require more rare earths than are currently economically feasible to mine if we replaced every fossil fuel engine with a permanent magnet electric motor of equal power.

The only real difference between the two is the design difficulty of the drive circuitry for the VFD to run the induction motor. That's largely a solved problem.

I think it's likely some other resource might be a constraint in that tight a timeline though. Either something for the cars themselves, or the infrastructure for charging them.

Batteries, but that's why a lot of money is currently being invested in battery R&D and mass production.

Do you have any reason to believe that?

Almost all car charging is done at night, when grid load is far lower. Charging will not be a problem, and there is no material shortage likely in the near future.

Brand new flat or house built today in Madrid, Spain are fitted at best with a 20A connection. The standing charge alone is more than what I pay for electricity (standing charge and consumption) in a 2 bed flat in London. The vast majority of flat and house I have seen in Spain have 15A or 20A. That includes city, and country houses.

It is a cost cutting measure rather than an infrastructure limitation (people chose a 20A connection because of the standing charge cost) in the newer building, but I suspect that if a significant portion of the population need to double their contract and maxed it out during the night, there is going to be some work needed.

20A? In USA, 200A is not uncommon. Some cities in the bay have 100A service minimum in their building code..

Seriously, 20A? How do you even run an air conditioner on that, much less an entire house? 200A (at 240V split phase) is standard here in the Midwestern US. It's easy and cheap to get more if you want a better connection, such as for an EV or a home shop with welders and large motors.

> How do you even run an air conditioner on that, much less an entire house?

My guess is "they don't". A quick web search reveals less than 50% market penetration in homes of air conditioners.

That said I live in an apartment with 30A 100V service, and I've run 3 air conditioners at the same time no problem.

> Seriously, 20A? How do you even run an air conditioner on that, much less an entire house?

The poster mentioned Spain, which uses 230V (unlike the USA, which uses 120V), so 20A should be around 4600W if I did the calculation correctly. With a quick search I found a window AC with 18000 BTU using only 1700W, so even with 15A it would be possible to run one AC with plenty to spare.

The USA uses 120V for outlets and lighting, but most buildings have what we call "split phase" where 240V is available between two opposing sine waves. A neutral down the middle gives you 120 from either of these phases. Large appliances run on 240V dedicated circuits, the rest are 120.

And 4600 KW is only a couple tons. You'll need more than that for a 5-ton central HVAC to cool an average house in a hot or humid area.

What's a ton in this context? I'm hoping it's not the mass of the unit, but what do I know.

No, as the other poster pointed out, the US is 240 volts not 120 for this discussion. 120 volts is what you get to your general use outlets, but when we say a house in the US has 200 amps of mains service, we mean 200 amps at 240 volts, or 400 amps at 120 volts. The split to 120 volt happens in your mains panel after the main breaker.

UK houses are generally 50A, single phase.

Just the ban being 5 years out.

I've certainly run into homes that couldn't add a clothes dryer circuit without major renovation involving the city.

Not saying it will be be an issue everywhere, but the span is too short for it not to be an issue in many places.

Given the short time frame, proof that there aren't issues would seem more prudent. Whether that's manufacturing capacity for batteries, or grid shortfalls in certain areas, or whatever.

Too bad your materials engineer friend has no idea that the most hyped EV car company, Tesla, doesn't even use rare earths in its motors because they're all induction motors.

And you could of course replace the copper with the incredibly plentiful aluminum, which actually has superior conductivity per unit mass to copper. (Copper is nice because it's volumetrically more compact and is easier to make electrical connections with, but if it were seriously in danger of a shortage, none of these are anything like showstoppers to switching to aluminum.)

It depends on the Tesla.

the Model S and X use induction motors. The Model 3 uses a permanent magnet motor:

https://www.edmunds.com/car-news/auto-industry/2017-tesla-mo...

That's very interesting, thanks.

TIL... I had just assumed that rare earth motors were more efficient and would be preferable in electric cars. I'll pass that on to him.

There's a real question as to whether we'll have enough copper, too.

World production is almost 20 million tonnes annually so that shouldnt be an issue. Its also not like electric cars use that much more copper than normal cars: normal cars have both a starter engine and an alternator plus all the engine wiring.

Also, electric motors can use aluminum wiring, and many induction motors have aluminum rotors since they can be cast at a lower temperature than copper.

So use aluminum, which has better conductivity per unit mass. And is essentially inexhaustible.

I wonder if we can "mine" all of the old copper wires (telephones, etc)?

It's actually a problem with people breaking into unused houses and ripping out the wiring. Or stealing other metal.

Scrap yards in my state (and I'm sure many others) are required to take identification from anyone that sells them metal.

Copper recycling can be quite profitable. Enough so that people rob houses under construction just to recycle it for cash.

There is a very lucrative black market in "recycled" copper. It's been known to be stolen off trucks by the tonne.

I keep hearing this rubbish. Do you know how well entrenched big oil is in the govt? How many wars have we fought over oil? Gasoline cars will still be a thing 20 years from now.

The laws will target new cars.

And the price of gas might plummet as big oil realises no-one is buying.

Eventually this will end up costing more - all the gas stations will close as it gets too expensive with reduced economies of scale, but until they go out of business they'll cut prices.

I can't see a law like that passing in the US for generations.

> With many countries tabling laws to outlaw the sale of diesel and gasoline cars around 2030,

And the world moves closer to the tale in Rush's song "Red Barchetta" from 1981 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta).

If what you say becomes true, then those 911's and R8's (I'm guessing that's generally what you mean by exotics/pleasure drives) will actually go UP in value, no?

It will be a replay of the 1970s when a combination of new emissions and safety standards locked a lot of niche manufacturers out of the US market. Pre-1975 exotics held value and even appreciated. The gray market, which imported high end used cars, became popular until NHTSA banned it.