I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still can't fathom how electric cars are going to make more than a dent in NYC where most cars are stored streetside.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/07/08/every-new-ho...
You're thinking about this from the wrong way around. The people who buy the first electric cars mainly don't live in places they can't charge them, they live in single family homes where they can install a charging port.
That allows enough electric cars to accumulate that the lobby for installing charging ports on city streets can form and get a few of them installed. But with more charging ports you get more people buying electric cars and so the lobby for installing even more charging ports grows, until they're all over the place.
There just needs to be a demand for the initial infrastructure to be built.
So we pay roughly the same amount per mile with electricity as for gas — and I'm in CA, where gas is expensive. We do save a tiny bit when we get to charge for free or at a subsidized rate somewhere. But I think most of the savings comes from not wearing down our brake pads on the hills in our neighborhood, and not having so many moving parts to wear out. These savings are not huge when amortized over the number of miles driven.
That actually made me laugh. It might cost more than in other US states, but is almost free comparing to most of Europe [1]. Average size of cars and engines, larger car with larger engine use more gas, also tell a lot of price compared to income, and it you compare traffic in Europe and America you will also see that Americans pay way to little for gas
[1]https://www.statista.com/statistics/221368/gas-prices-around...
I think you're likely still saving money on the electric portion of your driving, as CA rates seem to be slightly lower than MA rates from a cursory Google search.
But most of the difference is that our vehicle is nowhere near as efficient as yours. The 9kW/h battery only goes about 18-20 miles on a charge, and it costs more than the $1 that you pay to get that many miles.
Snark aside, when we got our Chevy Spark EV in 2013, we switched to the EV rate plan and it has saved us a lot. I work at home too, and but the peak hour use on the EV plan is quite small, so the higher rate is balanced out by having the car automatically charge during off-peak.
Perhaps solar would help solve your daytime rate problem? Or a car with more battery?
The batteries are likely to survive 500k miles and there's a lot less moving parts so less things to go wrong.
Not that the people working in infrastructure maintenance waste the money.
Not necessarily, see this document from the UK National Grid which discusses the options: https://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/articles/electric-dreams-fut...
A gas car refills to max range almost instantly. It just so happens this Camry example has particularly good range on one tank of gas by virtue of being a hybrid, but the point is no more diminished with any other ICE car. Many non-hybrid models will also comfortably manage 500+ miles on a single tank.
All that said, I suspect there is a “good enough” tipping point for EVs, especially now that we are seeing some manage ~300 miles on one charge, which is more than enough for many commutes/weekly shopping trips etc.
I do agree that there's a ton of evidence that Tesla's S/X have plenty of range for most people to not be bothered by it. And it doesn't appear to matter to these folks that a hybrid would fill up faster, which brings us back to hybrids.
https://andrew.london/2018/01/solving-the-electric-car-on-st...
An employer with a parking garage. That's a very funny concept.
But I do think between now and then we need more infrastructure for tenants to charge at home.
Consumer/taxpayer demand for a solution, like most problems in a capitalist democracy.
I imagine streets where every nth parking spot has something that looks like a beefy parking meter, but will allow thick-ish extension cords to run from a car to it. Turn it on with an RFID tied to which house you belong to on the street (ensures only locals can use it, charges the electrical costs to the right house).
It's technically doable with the technology in our hands today and not very complicated to install. Give in 10 more years, there'll be even smarter ideas.
Take 15K miles/year at 4 miles/kWh or 30 miles/gal. 3750kWh or 500 gallons of gas.
At MA electric rates, the electricity is $750, the gas is about $1500. It's unlikely that an electric car consumer would pay more than the $750 delta for the electric charging spot, and would likely be willing to pay only a smaller figure because they are unlikely to do all of their charging in that space or network of spaces.
That premium/willingness-to-pay won't even cover the all-in cost of installing a single EVSE in the first year.
Barring significant over-subscription, that's still a ~10 year payback. With massive over-subscription, it doesn't become a reliable charging source. (My prior post, which I'll leave unedited, was unclear/insufficient in stating it was longer than a one-year payback.)
Anyway we have most of the infrastructure we need for electric vehicles already, it's called the grid. All that is missing is the connection points. And for many people that is also not a problem because we can plug the car in at home. So electric vehicles have a massive advantage at this stage of the process compared to what ICE vehicles had at the beginning of their adoption.
To be clear, I would like an electric vehicle, but I lack off-road parking so I don't see myself getting one for a decade.
Edit: why the downvote? Sources cited below. HN, you judge too fast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
There were earlier self-propelled vehicles.
This link has some info about rechargeable batteries in the context of electric vehicles. Basically in 1881 key improvements to the original 1859 lead-acid design made batteries practical on board a vehicle at an industrial scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...
> Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886.
The above link reiterates the date of 1884 for a production vehicle by Thomas Parker, two years before the Benz patent.
Also, earlier than that, a tricycle was successfully demoed along a Paris street in April 1881, following a 1867 two-wheeled prototype that did work but wasn't quite drivable for production use.
EVs got a slight head start to ICEs but they subsequently developed alongside each other from the late 19th to early 20th.
> date of 1884 for a production .. two years before the Benz patent.
The car was produced in 1885, the patent was granted in 1886.
The way I understood the OP's "The original cars were electric..." comment was that these electric cars (plural!) were dominant for some time until they were replaced quite some time later ("over 20 years before the Ford Model T") by cars with internal combustion engines.
As far as I know, that didn't happen. Electric cars and cars with internal combustion engines happened essentially simultaneously, with steam a century earlier (1769). From the Wikipedia article the OP quoted (section Golden age):
"In the United States by the turn of the century, 40 percent of automobiles were powered by steam, 38 percent by electricity, and 22 percent by gasoline. "
So even during the "golden age", >60% of cars were not electric. I have to admit I was surprised that steam-powered cars were that widespread.
Yes, of course they do. What are you going to do with some .jpegs without the internet? Literally a huge network, and it was rolled out around the same time.
I’m optimistic about cheap solar — a one or two meter wide strip of PV next to every interstate, highway, motorway, Autobahn etc. should suffice — but it’s still not trivial.
Basically, if you stop refining gas you'll have pretty much enough power for all EVs.
https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-m...
2) Non-solar renewables (including but not limited to wind, geothermal, and tidal)
3) Inter-time-zone power grids (because PV is getting so cheap that 67% losses, 1000 watts at source being 330 watts at the plug, isn’t totally insane).
Yes, this is still an improvement; yes it should be done; it’s just not trivial.
Seems possible
The EV infrastructure should be mostly complete by 2025. Most car makers won't start invading the market with EVs until 2023, or so anyway.
All the people witgout off-road parking will have charging points outside their house?
And before the digital camera, came the Internet which made it possible for you to show someone the pictures.
Imagine digital cameras of the specs of the first popular wave, but without Internet. Many downsides! The images would be low quality, you'd have to charge the camera, to show someone the images you'd still have to go to the lab for printed pictures.
No, I firmly believe electrical vehicles is about to crush the competition.
If that's true of EVs (I have no idea, but it is/was true of the batteries in digital cameras), then it's very odd that EVs are so popular in Norway.
Incentives can only get you so far if the product doesn't work well in local conditions.
I was spotting Teslas in Oslo in mid 2018, and it was +28C.
But seriously, -10C on a winter night is what I expected, and is cold enough to seriously affect camera batteries.
To expand on that, electric cars in Norway has so extreme incentives...
That price-wise Tesla Model S is not competing with Ferrari, Lambourghini, BMW M3, Mercedes Amg’s or anything like that.
It’s competing with a mid range Audi A4.
Basically, regular petrol cars are so heavily taxed that EVs (which are exempt from all these taxes), can be a luxury car in any country on earth and still come out relatively cheap in Norway.
The electric car revolution is going to come at the same time as the self-driving revolution. That will change the calculus of parking significantly. No longer does your car need to be parked right next to your building to be convenient: it can be anywhere a short drive away and summoned at the touch of a button. So charging infrastructure doesn't have to be at every on-street location; it can be centralized to parking lots or garages on a neighborhood basis.
I think electric car revolution will be at least two decades earlier than self-driving.
As far as electric goes we are starting to reap benefits of vast investment in better tech, manufacturing and vehicles purpose built for it.
Self-driving is very far away and the best publicly available systems only do slightly more than lane-assist, the by far simplest part of self-driving.
Couldn't self driving cars in the very near future follow this same path? Find a very densely populated area. Get self driving cars to work very well in that area for short trips. Slowly expand to similar areas?
I haven't followed either of these very closely, so please correct me where I'm wrong.
A special "autonomous park/return mode", say, capped to 10kph, only following a single preprogrammed route, with a complete lead foot on the brake. Nobody would want to ride in an everyday self-drive that had those restrictions, but it's perfectly acceptable for an empty trip to a central parking structure.
The roads around where I live are /already/ at nose to tail capacity at the times I might actually want such a service. What do you think is going to happen when you add electric cars travelling from wherever they're being stored to the customer?
Like what exactly? You will have to assume that I am a modern man who don't give two shits about the environment, when deciding to buy a car. So can you give me one significant advantage that an electric car will give me over an ICE car, right now?
Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
Better performance - Electronically-controlled electric motors have much better, more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE. Not just a matter of "accelerates faster", but more torque available at nearly every speed/driving condition.
That's just a few off the top of my head.
Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
> Lower cost of ownership - electric cars are mechanically much simpler than ICE cars, which means better reliability and less money spent for maintenance/repairs.
I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough. Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car? I am not sure how reliable this is, but [1]
> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
[1] https://www.policygenius.com/blog/how-much-does-it-actually-...
>Nullified by the fact that charging stations are scarce AND that it takes a lot of time to finish a charge. People drive cars so that they can get somewhere faster. It does not help if they have to hunt around for a charging stations and have to wait an hour to get charged.
> We can consider the cost difference to be a concrete advantage, when and only when the infra for electric charging is on par with a fuel refill.
You're really shifting the goalposts. It is much cheaper to drive electric if you can charge at home. It's true a significant number of people can't charge at home, but if they can, it's usually 25-35% of the cost of a gasoline car. I've owned BEVs for 6 years and have probably charged away from home 10 times or less and mostly it was just to get a better parking spot.
>> more controllable torque curves than even the best ICE
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
If you've already decided there are no benefits to BEVs for you personally, then it doesn't matter what others say because it doesn't benefit you. Why bother asking for the benefits?
Not really. Its just that I (and most people today) see a car as something that can take them mostly anywhere, across the country. If you see or limit the definition of a car as something that takes you anywhere within a very limited fixed radius (the range of your car on a single recharge), then your argument is fine. With a car, If you have to think of "Can I refuel where I want to go", then that car is lost the race against ICE's by a long mile.
>So because you don't think it's an improvement, then it's not an improvement for anyone?
Who said I am speaking for everyone here? I was only speaking of my case.
No, a related disadvantage doesn't nullify the fact of an advantage. Yes, charging stations are scarce and it takes longer to charge. It still costs less to fuel the car.
> I don't think this is a given. Even though more complex, I think ICE cars of today are quite reliable enough.
Well, good, I guess? Your opinion on how reliable cars ought to be isn't the subject of discussion. For what it's worth, I agree that you think ICE cars are reliable enough.
> Are there any studies that compare both and say Electric cars are indeed more reliable than an average ICE car?
Probably not; in general a (far) less complex mechanism is going to be more reliable. Electric cars are new and doubtless suffer from the growing pains of a new technology. Teslas in particular are full of little fit and finish issues that result in a lot of warranty work. But hey, I'll give you this one. Improved electric car reliability is not a proven fact at this point. I can't see any way a mechanism with orders of magnitude fewer moving parts won't be more reliable once it matures, but maybe there's some sort of terrible unforeseen issue. Who knows?
> Oh I am perfectly fine with the torque curve of an ICE. I am not racing on the roads, you know. With automatic transmissions, this is even less of an issue.
I agree that you hold this opinion. Others do not. Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
I'm not really interested in discussing this further; I suspect you're going to keep moving the goalposts. You should purchase the type of car that most closely fits your needs and wants.
Sure it does in some cases. Having a lot of gold is an advantage. Having to keep from being stolen is a disadvantage. That disadvantage does not nullify the advantage of having it. But if no one wants gold anymore, then that nullify the advantage of possessing it.
>Doesn't change the fact that this is an advantage.
Maybe, but I think it is an advantage very few real world car users care..
> I'm not really interested in discussing this further;
Cool. I hope you don't mind my reply though.
* No gears - acceleration is linear
* No chance of diesel fumes in your cabin (like with my VW Sharan)
* Lots of tax rebates, subsidies, depending on where you live
* Charge at home
* More room! (No bulky drivetrain)
* Less maintenance, less things to go wrong
* Lower fuel costs
* Simpler to own and drive
Since the environment is a collective problem rather than an individual problem, the transition wouldn't ever happen without government intervention.
Hence, I think the moment of inflection is entirely down to government policies, and very little down to consumer desires.
Nissan did a great commercial at the launch of the Leaf [1] showing a world where a lot of our electric appliances were powered by gas. It's obviously absurd, but that's part of the point. I think we'll look back on this period 30-50 years from now and wonder in amazement that we drove such obviously inferior polluting dinosaurs for so long.
While I don't own an electric car, any argument that there's no consumer benefit to electric car is just silly on its face. ICE engines need just so much maintenance in comparison.
I think they will start around cities and dense suburbs, partly because of the reduced mileage demands and benefits of regenerative braking in stop start traffic, and partly because of democratic intervention to lower air pollution.
That will concentrate demand and seed the building out of infrastructure, which can then migrate outwards. The more rural you, the longer the switch will take, and some areas may not switch for decades.
1.26*3.8=$4.788/1.30=$3.68 a gallon in the US.
I can just think of insane acceleration (which is irrelevant for actual use).
* No local emissions from burning fuel.
* Noise greatly reduced.
* Much less energy consumed (and CO2 generated) per mile overall.
* The car is always topped up when I leave to work in the morning.
* Great driving experience; instant silent torque is very convenient, and hard to give up once you've gotten used to it.
* More space left for cargo.
* Middle seat in the back has actual leg room.
* potentially better all-wheel drive
* better crash-security (no massive engine crushing your legs or flying around)
Possible benefits: Simpler engines should lead to lower production costs, more reliability and simpler, cheaper repairs.
Plus all the "nice" features of EVs like rapid acceleration, no noise, feeling super-modern/futuristic, etc.
Hopefully you’re right, and those driving forces will parallel the adoption of digital cameras. If so however, it’s going to be gradual barring some kind of miracle breakthrough battery tech.
Until the average electric car is at least as useful and no more expensive than the average ICE car there is no contest. That might be a good argument for imposing the cost of the externalities of ICE on people, but without that, dream on. “Good enough” isn’t what a “significant” fraction of people today give a shit about, unless they’re paying less for it.
Did you consider that your experience with ICE cars does not apply directly to BEV cars?
https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-Tesla-perform-on-a-track
https://insideevs.com/expected-tesla-model-s-fails-lap-nurbu...
http://www.thedrive.com/news/5207/this-video-reminds-us-that...
To be clear: I think the Model S is a fine, if overpriced, road car. I daily a LEAF and like it; I am no electric hater.
However, performance of all-battery cars is compromised as compared to lighter cars; it's that pesky physics thing...
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-p85d-drag-race...
A plain Jane 911 is neither $200K nor a purpose-built track car.
I see the same arguments being made about electric cars. "The batteries are no good in really cold climates", "They'll not a good replacement as I cannot drive 1000 km in one stetch", "I live in an apartment, I can't charge one, on the street".
There are so many obvious benefits of electric cars, as soon as they are close to cost competitive, I bet the transition for new car sales will happen much quicker than many people realize and the infrastructure will quickly follow once the market has spoken.