Add to the situation that a popular figurehead with a superhero alter-ego is leading the way with awe-inspiring (crash inducing) feats of science and technology, and I think we'll all be surprised at how fast electric vehicles become mainstream.
I realize my opinion will be highly controversial in the HN bubble, but I find it to be very common in real life, particularly outside the U.S. Like any future prediction, I'm probably way off, but to me it looks like on the list of vastly overhyped car trends pure electric cars are second only to self-driving cars. I'm sure they'll find specific markets (taxis, urban deliveries, etc.), but I don't see myself switching to an electric car for at least a decade, probably more.
My Tesla Roadster does not corner like a Porsche 911, it's true, but it does not matter for everyday driving, because it is so effortlessly faster than anything else on the road, when I pull away from a stoplight, whoever I want to cut in front of is 50 feet behind me.
Instant acceleration is worth a lot, too.
For comparison: My previous car was a BMW M3. I would much, much rather drive my 2010 Tesla Roadster, and that is an old car at this point ... 2020 Tesla Roadster is going to be amazing.
> The range and the charging times are still an issue, especially if you don't live in California.
My roadster goes 340 miles on one charge. The upcoming 2020 Roadster goes 620 miles on one charge.
Admittedly, battery capacity costs money. Price-sensitivity is the reason most of these newly-announced cars don't have as much range. It is not a technical limitation.
And as with any such technology component, battery costs will continue to drop over time.
For a six-figure vehicle, they better be ballers!
Where is my performance EV that's a competitor to the Miata or the Camero for $30k?
See I drive a Miata and there is nothing like it in the electric car world. The way you zoom from corner to corner without slowing. It’s interesting that people say electric cars and fun , then quantify it by saying it’s really fast but saying nothing about the handling. The good thing about a balanced and good handling car is that you can enjoy it all the time whereas straight line speed is becoming increasing irrelevant due to traffic and zealous speeding enforcement.
Put it this way how many seconds of full throttle will get you banned?*
*in the UK where a speeding ticket of 100mph plus is a ban.
Besides being a daily driver it's been autocrossed and tracked plenty of times.
I have Miata friends and listen to the way they describe how tossable their cars are with a glimmer in their eye. I've driven their Miatas and I'd take my Mini's handling any day.
My current daily driver is a Model S 100D (not the P100D) and it is insanely fun to drive.
As far as daily drivers go I'd choose the Model S over the Mini 99 days out of 100.
It's over TWICE AS HEAVY as the Mini but that weight is about a foot off the ground, the suspension is more than up to the job of handling 2.5 tons, and it has a near 50/50 weight distribution.
The Mini might corner like a go kart, but the Model S corners like its on rails. I have just as much "fun" driving the Model S around town as the Mini but the effort put in to doing so is a mere fraction.
You present your Miata as a "balanced and good handling car", and I assure you; a competent electric car is 100% both of those things while also being effortless in traffic.
I grew up as a "driver" which is why the Mini is never going anywhere and other enthusiast ICE cars have made their way through my stable over the years. It's why I still choose a manual transmission car where I have to spool up the motor 1 day out of 100. And I don't foresee electric cars being realistic choices for a track day any time in the next 10-15 years.
But anybody who truly believes they aren't already sufficient for 99% of the car-buying public's needs* because they aren't "fun" either hasn't given one a shot or is in irrational denial.
* - Trucks are a different matter, but Musk hopes to change that soon, as well...
Why not? People are already taking Teslas to track days, and doing quite well with them. They're faster than the majority of random cars that people are already bringing to track days. That's why track days have performance classes, so you don't have Civics competing directly against (and getting trounced by) Ferraris.
So your argument in favor of gas cars is that they are slow? Ok.
I had two Miatas, including one that I modified for autocross (SCCA CSP) and later turbo'ed. A Miata with 1.2 bar of boost is almost too much fun. Great cars! So I know what you are talking about.
About 4 years ago I leased a Chevy Spark EV, one of the most basic of tiny econo-hatches. I assume the gas one is pretty sad to drive. The electric one is brilliant. Instant silent thrust! One pedal driving! It was a revelation. I'm never going to buy another ICE car, they just don't drive right.
Try something like a Chevy Bolt or a Tesla and see for yourself.
I disagree. The costs will drop, sure, but that's not particularly relevant for performance cars. The weight, on the other hand, will only increase with every bit of range you add. While electric cars can easily produce enough torque to still accelerate quickly (though how much range you'll really have driving that way is another question...), even with adaptive suspensions using magnetorheological dampers you can't cheat basic physics in corners.
And that's why I'd much rather have a BMW M3 (well, I'd prefer one of the AWD 911s, a V10 R8 or even an Audi RS4, but YMMV) than any electric car. Even if you value raw straight line acceleration that much, do note that the Tesla Roadster doesn't really compete with the BMW M3. You can get ICE vehicles with much better acceleration than an M3 that are still vastly superior in terms of handling to any Tesla.
Conversely, cost is highly relevant for non performance cars, which, from the perspective of displacing transportation petroleum use, are far more important.
Once the typical EV range reaches the limit that a person can comfortably drive without taking a long break (~300 miles?), range anxiety becomes a non-issue.
Absolutely. I was responding to a post about performance cars, so I stuck to that.
> Once the typical EV range reaches the limit that a person can comfortably drive without taking a long break (~300 miles?), range anxiety becomes a non-issue.
I don't entirely buy the argument that range anxiety just goes away after some magic number. Charging times still impose constraints and require planning ahead, especially for longer trips. Even people who spend 99% of their time in short city commutes don't necessarily like the idea that they might not be free to just jump in their car and set off when they please.
Ultimately, no matter how far battery and charging tech advances, range and charging times will always be an objective disadvantage of electric cars vs ICE. When electric cars can actually outcompete ICE vehicles in price and other factors it may turn out to be a tradeoff most people are okay with, but we're not there yet.
Anyway, other reasons are that electric cars accelerate more, won't be banned from cities like Paris, etc. any time soon, won't be affected by possible spikes in oil prices. Range and charging times are of course the biggest drawback, but it's getting better rather fast.
I think a wholesale shift from gas/diesel to electric is a long way off, but certainly it seems that electric/hybrid is the end of compressed natural gas vehicles.
The Leaf is the only car I have driven where the wife has said, "owe! stop doing that! my eyeballs hurt!"
I sense you may be bullshitting us.
As a sidenote: that's why I liked platinum and rhodium as speculative investments in 2017 and I like them again for 2018. Platinum especially has been declared dead, exactly because of this "future is imminent" sentiment and nobody will supposedly need catalytic converters anymore. Platinum has been comatose for years on end now, despite production shortages and the supply side risk coming from South Africa's politics. Most platinum mines are operating at a loss.
After all, what good is being able to go fast in a straight line if you can't brake or carry that speed through the corners?
A friend loaned me her 1999 Vectra B[1] wagon, five-speed manual 2.2L 108 kW. Compared to the van, it corners like it's on rails! With myself behind the wheel of the Vectra I reckon I'd eat the E90 320i 115 kW[2] auto she replaced it with.
So, neither of these three vehicles are performance cars, but they're all quite fun to drive. Though I do toy with the idea of getting a Miata.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Vectra#Vectra_B_(1995–200...
Worse, that two hundred mile range is only good in mild to warm conditions. throw in winter conditions and it plummets. plus until automakers all adopt a higher voltage charging system similar to where Porsche is going adding range will just exaggerate how long it takes to charge.
Higher voltage charging is easier than higher amperage from both the size of cables internal and external as well as cooling. a trip in even the fastest available charging cars requires an hour diversion/stop per two hundred miles on average. this needs to get down to fifteen minutes with a range pushing beyond three hundred in winter.
instead of trying to encourage employers to install chargers at work more effort should be made toward the electrification of school and city bus lines. everyone who has ever been caught behind one knows the pollution factories they appear to be. initial up front costs will be high but it will keep districts insulated from volatile gasoline and diesel prices. delivery trucks already might be headed there but government investment into this area should be by example and where better than to have children on electric buses to tell mommy and daddy
[0] https://www.touring.be/nl/artikels/benzineprijzen-europa [1] https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
That said, the penetration rate of electric vehicles as a proportion of new vehicles here is staggering. The Model S easily outsells any competitor's luxury car in the same class, you'd have to combine all A6 / 5 series / E Class sales to even hope to show the same numbers. And I can see why -- if you want to plunk down all this cash for a new car, why not get something truly new, not something outdated?
My uncle is very frugal and has spent years looking at buying a new car and then up and ordered a (very base) Model S with the reasoning, if I'm spending all this money, I want to spend the money on future tech, not old tech.
Even sitting in my 2016 car this morning, in the cold, I was thinking how silly it is that I have to wait for the coolant in the car to warm up before the heater starts blowing hot, and how funny all of the ICE cars look with steam coming out of the exhaust on a cold morning. It already feels out of date.
More than that, after six years of Leaf ownership it feels downright primitive. In our ‘81 VW it’s acceptable because, hey, it’s an old vehicle. You know, back when you could really feel what a car’s doing, blah, blah, blah. But in a modern $50K car? Turning mechanical gears to get that rattling contraption of an ICE going, gawd, I’m surprised you didn’t make me crank it by hand. To refuel it, I have to go out of my way to a specialist vendor? Not just plug it in when I get home?
Sounds silly unless you’ve owned an EV, but it truly represents my feelings even when driving our smooth, reliable Scion. But as the old canard goes, if I have to explain then you wouldn’t understand.
There is an argument to be made for this. In most new cars, whether ICE or electric, electric power steering racks have almost removed all feedback through the wheel.
Feedback is good, it communicates what the wheels are doing, what the road surface is like, what traction is like, etc... and I'd argue that good steering feedback is important for safe driving.
There most certainly is, for a tiny, tiny minority of people who buy cars. That’s why I used it as example. Picture the older middle-aged guy going on about how “cars back then..” until your eyes glaze (and if you’ve met me, you’ll have a working example). Yeah, nobody cares, old man, my ‘08 Corolla was cheap.
I already typed this before you deleted, so I’m putting it here. :-)
In summary, I think “feel” matters to a small number of people. To those that notice (I count myself amongst them), it’s pretty important. To the vast majority of drivers I think that as long as the car gets them to work it’s good enough.
The reason I used it as an example is because the ones I find that will argue the importance of “feel” are old, rambling guys like me. IOW, I was originally making of myself to some degree.
Just got it last year too, ah well.
http://www.autonews.com/article/20171105/INDUSTRY_REDESIGNED...
The way we northerners deal with that is to have a remote starter installed in our car. By the time we're done putting on our coats and shoes, kissing our wives, and brushing the accumulated snow off the car, the heater is blowing hot and it is fairly comfortable inside. I will grant that this does burn some gas, but how much range in comparison does an electric car sacrifice by heating the cabin off battery power over your entire commute?
In the US, Tesla's home market, yes. But if you go to Europe, it changes completely - those three models you listed average a combined annual European sales volume north of 300 000, which is more than the global total of all Tesla cars ever sold.
The only way Tesla will be anything but an SV-hype-fueled anecdote is if they can actually deliver on the Model 3 next year, and it ain't looking too peachy. I mean, GM's outselling them on chargeable vehicles in the US this year.
Edit: GM 38699. I initially missed the 179 CT6s, 21 Spark EVs, and 17 ELRs at the bottom of the table.
December: Tesla 9335, GM 5173
but the cold-start is the best part!
reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exenWWOK_2o
how silly it is that I have to wait for the coolant in the car to warm up before the heater starts blowing hot
[EDIT: extended quote to full clause]
You need not wait longer than 15 seconds or so to put 'er in gear and go. This isn't Buffalo.
For your information, yes, I fire the car up, put on my seatbelt, close the garage door, put it in gear and go. But even in the mild bay area (it's been around 33-35 most mornings on the peninsula), I'm all the way across town before the coolant temp even comes off the low mark which is 124f, at which point SOME warm air starts coming out of the vents. But again, it's not a comfort complaint, it's a "electric cars make ICE cars seem dated" observation.
You conveniently truncated the quote to change the issue. If they wanted heat, they have to wait longer than 15s.
How many EVs produce passenger heat in meaningful amounts immediately (even ignoring the added battery drain), and how much of a burden is 50+-degree in-car temperatures for a few minutes while you're already in outdoor clothing?
I'm trying to redirect the conversation back to things that matter. The weather in SF last night doesn't matter, not really; it's just some ephemeral fact, and not even worth arguing about whether someone "needed" instant-on heat for it or not. What matters is electric vehicle models and sales worldwide, which is what the top-level article is about. Tesla is the most popular car manufacturer in Norway. You better believe that they appreciate instant-on heat there (as well as remote start), and that Teslas having these features gives them a competitive advantage.
Long commute, OTOH, seems favorable for a well-built ICE car.
You mean no need in your life besides our shared need to reduce atmospheric carbon, oil extraction, and other automobile pollutants, to keep climate change to a level merely devastating rather than catastrophic, and to preserve a habitable planet for the generations to come?
What's the break-even on how many lbs of CO2 I'd have to pump into the atmosphere before it was more environmentally friendly to produce an entire new automobile with 800lbs of batteries?
Yes. That's the other thing: the best argument for an electric car is driving one—particularly a Tesla. The minute most of the population has access to one (from a friend, family, whatever), they're going to want one.
1. Range. Right now I can drive ~400 miles on a fill. Can I get even close to that in EV?
2. Refills. I am pretty sure wherever I go, there would be a gas station within tens of miles. And I'm pretty sure most maps or GPS devices I would have would be able to point me to it. With electric car, not only I have to worry about finding charging station (or even plan the trip around its presence) but I'm not even sure how to find one. Would my GPS device show it? Would it work with my car (Tesla ones e.g. work only with Teslas)? Would I need some kind of subscription/registration to access it? I imagine being anxious about these things would be pretty annoying (unless it's already solved somehow - I have no idea).
3. Do I need to have charging station at home? What if I move - would I need to get a new one or pay to move it? What if I need to go somewhere at night and the car isn't charged yet? Would I need to buy special "fast charge" station? What if one day I'm too tired at the evening and forget to plug in the car for the night?
4. With ICE car, I am sure any competent mechanic would be able to take care of the most problems with my car. Electric cars are new, most mechanics had no training for them and no experience with them, and manufacturing solutions and practices would be very non-uniform - how I find the good service and how I make sure he doesn't use relative scarcity on the market to fleece me?
5. If I want to sell this car, what would the resale value be? Would I be able to resell it at all, or would it be the analogue of 5 year old smartphone, worth tiny fraction of the premium price it fetched only recently?
6. Wouldn't buying now, when the technology is still developing, lock me in with inferior first-try technology while superior one will show up in 5 years and make my car not only look like Flintstone's carriage but also drive its resale value down and maybe make it unusable due to chargers switching to newer superior standard of something?
I'd like to hear how these concerns are resolved.
2. Newer Teslas (Model S, Model X, Model 3) have charger planning built into their standard map program. About other EVs, if I were an EV manufacturer I would do a license deal with Tesla to allow my cars to use their charging network. But maybe they'll build their own. The one Tesla built is pretty good ... if a small company can do that, GM can do way more, and do it faster. So even though "there's no infrastructure" has been raised as this huge problem for years, it does not in actuality look like much of a problem.
3. Good electric cars have their own charging circuitry built in, so you just plug it into the wall. You can even charge off 110 volts, though it takes a long time. A dryer socket is much more reasonable. Just being able to plug in your car, in your garage, is much more convenient than going to a gas station. (This presumes you have a garage to park in. If you park on the street, different story.)
4. Electric motors and drivetrains are much simpler and much more robust than mechanical engines and drivetrains. Electric cars just do not tend to need repair in the same way. (I have had my car for over 7 years and it has never yet needed a repair of this kind).
5. Tesla Roadsters still hold their value very well, considering. But this may be in part due to the fact that it's a rare car. I am not sure about the Leaf, etc.
6. Maybe, yeah.
2. Again, Tesla is a luxury car, so describing it when talking about replacing common cars is pointless. Even the cheapest one is sitting on very top of what common middle-class car could cost, and it's not even released. If you want to replace common cars, you can't have cheapest model to cost $35K. There's literally no possibility most people would be able to afford that.
3. Charging from 110V would require whole night and even more. My house has one (1) dryer socket, which surprisingly is occupied by the dryer. Which leads one to think to have such car one has to undertake a costly (min. hourly rate in CA is about $100) project requiring a contractor, licensed electrician, permits, etc. And if one lives in an apartment which doesn't have built-in charging station - no chance.
4. Great to hear it, but again that was Tesla, as I understand. Can I expect the same from a car that doesn't cost six figures? I don't know. And the fact that it's simpler doesn't help much if the mechanic doesn't know it. Well, maybe it'll break down less, but we need to find out if that's still true for cheap models used in mass-driving conditions.
5. That's exactly my point - there's no developed market, so very little can be said about how it would look like. Sure, luxuries are always valued by people who are into luxuries and have money to spend. But about non-luxury market, that's different.
2. See 1.
3. Actually charging from 110v would take more than overnight -- several days at least if you are empty! It's very slow (it's a lot slower than half a 220v because a certain amount of power goes to overhead like cooling the batteries during charging). Even so, I got by on 110v for years. As for having (1) dryer socket ... buy a splitter cord for 5 bucks? I am not sure why you think you need a contractor and permits, unless you are just trying to fabricate reasons why electric cars are a problem.
4. See 1.
5. The market today is tremendously more developed than it was in 2008 when Tesla started selling their first car, and everyone thought electric cars were just golf carts that were completely infeasible. Why do you think this trend would stop now? On the luxury point ... see 1.
3. I am speaking from experience of what doing non-trivial stuff takes. E.g., installing AC requires permits. Maybe installing proper (not "more than overnight") charger does not, if it's just using a splitter cord then it's good news.
5. I do not think it will stop now. I think it's still far from where we could see mass transition from ICE to electrical cars. In 10 years? Sure, why not. Right now? Don't see it.
The thing about an electric if you park at home the tank is always full in the morning. No more stopping for gas in the daily commute. Long road trips are a different story.
Also when we go all self-driving and we don't need parking lots anymore.
1. Range: There are cars on the market now for $35k that have 200+ mile range. Range will continue to go up and price will continue to come down for the next few decades. Whether 200 miles is enough depends on your point no. 2 so...
2. Generally, you plug your car in at night and start each day with 100% range. For most European lifestyles 200 miles in a day will deal with 95% of days. Granted, the US is more spread out so people drive further. But the crucial point is that 'going to the gas station' doesn't really have an equivalent with electric. On a long journey you recharge at highway stops, but the rest of the time you just charge at night. Highway chargers are fast and charge times are generally 20 to 40min to get to 80% range. I generally find that by the time I've got the kids out the car, had a wee, had a snack, the car is ready to go.
3. Yes ideally you need a charging station at home. In my country you get a 500 GBP grant from the government which covers the cost of installation in most cases. chargers are fairly simple to install. Granted, houses with no off-street parking are tricky.
4. Generally there are a lot fewer moving parts and less to go wrong but yes we will need mechanics. As more electric cars are sold, I expect more electric mechanics will appear.
5. True, resell for say Nissan Leaf is not that good, due to rate of improvement of new models over the old ones. Teslas hold their value quite well I hear, it remains to be seen how the Tesla model 3 will go. A lot of people buy their cars on 3 year PCP contracts in which the manufacturer offers to re-buy the car at 50% price after 3 years, I guess a lot of people might do that?
6. Yeah a bit, e.g. my 2016 Leaf isn't as good as the 2017 or 2018 one. But now that we've cracked 200 mile range (Bolt and Tesla Model 3) I think we're in the 'good enough' space. Chargers are fairly settled, there are 2 or 3 standards that are widely supported and are not expected to change that much over the next few years. Adapters are generaly available to make most cars fit most chargers. Speeds and power of chargers will increase but the existing standards allow for that.
1. Turn it on
2. Drive off
Optionally, step 0: Use the app on your phone to tell the car to warm up, defrost the windscreen etc while you are in the house having breakfast.
Range does suffer in cold temperatures; similarly ICE engines are less efficient in cold temperatures.
If you live in a newer apartment building, you might get lucky and they'll have chargers in the parking garage. But when I lived in such a building in Chicago, the chargers were ALWAYS full. It was a large building, and there were probably 40 or 50 of them across a five-story garage.
Overall, I think I made about $500 on this install.
Best part, I haven't been to a gas station more than a dozen times in the last four years. I love not going to gas stations.
Where do you buy your Andy Capp Hot Fries?
So now that this is (almost) out of the way, their biggest problem will be making batteries fast enough. I predict that once there are enough models on the market and the prices are much more competitive compared to ICE cars, which should happen around 2022, there will be an explosion in demand. And it's going to take them off-guard because they won't have enough battery supply planned out for the short 1-2 year term. They'll have to "drop everything" and start building battery factories like crazy. I'm talking a total demand of close to 1 TWh year, by 2025, for EVs alone (which should be maybe around 15-20 million EVs a year, globally).
The only one that will sale through smoothly will be Tesla at that point, which by 2023 will likely have a second gigafactory close to finished, and even Tesla may struggle a bit to keep up with the demand, because they'll have not only their customers, but the customers of all the other carmakers that failed to supply enough EVs to their loyal base.
Chinese manufacturers may also have a better time, because China is already seeing an explosion in EV demand, backed by the government, so they will have a much better feel for the EV demand by then.
Meanwhile, most European and Japanese carmakers will be left wondering why no one is coming to check out their latest "breakthrough in diesel technology" at trade shows anymore.
Even the most anti-green buyers will prefer electric vehicles in ~10 years (if no sooner)
> Therefore, the study has calculated that a fossil fuel vehicle can currently drive for more than eight years before it reaches the same environmental impact of a Tesla. For the Nissan Leaf, with its smaller capacity battery, this figure comes in at three years.
Both Teslas and Leafs will be on the road beyond the eight and three years you quoted, putting their production at a net positive even before the above mentioned improvements take place.
I have restored the original comment.
You are severely underestimating the cost of replacing the batteries for an electric car. Batteries are still the most expensive part of electronic cars—and are a consumable.
And, last year we bought a new ICE Civic for $22k it averages 33mpg according to its computer.
I have friend who bought a Leaf in Seattle. She was always jonesing for a charge because her apartment didn't have access to power in the parking lot. Nor did her workplace. Not sure what she was thinking.
But if you factor in Tesla's plans for the next 24 months or so, which they seem capable of pulling off, then no-one else is going to be able to catch up with them for five years or so.
If Tesla are moving faster than everyone else backwards looking metrics should pick up on it soon enough.
And that for me is the real risk. Too much herd mentality, too little thinking. There is likely just one chance in our lifetime to get such a big transition right. It’s still an open discussion if electric cars really do provide the needed environmental breakthrough (even if they are fueled with green energy). I believe there should have been, e.g., more investment in alternatives such as hydrogen before committing the world to electric cars
Perhaps this explains why traditional auto manufacturers seem to be constantly announcing exciting electric models that are still 3 to 5 years away - they can appear to be staying in the game without doing too much.