Lack of infrastructure didn't stop the adoption of internal combustion engine vehicles. The infrastructure was built as demand for it increased.

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.

There was a demand for the internal combustion engine because it was a massive step-change from horses. Electric vehicles represent a marginal gain for people who aren't primarily concerned about the environment.

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.

I happen to have a number of gas station owners cousins. Their sentiment is, if there is demand for something, they’ll supply it. Charging stations, replaceable batteries, whatever. If there is profit to be made, they’ll do it.

As long as they can recharge in under 10 minutes, I'm happy.

The original cars were electric and gas won out as a better solution because it was more portable and less dangerous in the event of an accident. Those things are still true today.

Edit: why the downvote? Sources cited below. HN, you judge too fast.

Eh? Where is the source that today's electric vehicles are more dangerous in the event of an accident?

Source? I'm curious, as I don't know much about the state of rechargeable battery technology in the late-1800's.

On May 1, 1899, La Jamais Contente was the first car to break the 100kph barrier. It was an electric car. Competition was fierce to gain the Paris market which was fond of electric cars due to their numerous advantages. This was a tipping point though, and gasoline won during the early 20th century because road infrastructure allowed for long haul trips and electric cars couldn't make it, as well as the ease of operation, reliability, general comfort (vibrations, noise, fumes) and cost of ICE cars significantly improving.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jamais_Contente

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

"In 1884, over 20 years before the Ford Model T, Thomas Parker built the first practical production electric car in London in 1884, using his own specially designed high-capacity rechargeable batteries."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

Hmm...the Ford Model T wasn't exactly the first car with a combustion engine. Credit to that generally goes to Carl Benz, who got his patent in 1886.

There were earlier self-propelled vehicles.

> I don't know much about the state of rechargeable battery technology in the late-1800's

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.

>> Credit to that .. Carl Benz, .. patent in 1886.

> 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.

> digital cameras didn’t required a huge network of infrastructure to succeed.

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 was probably too imprecise. I meant new infrastructure. I just want to point out where the analogy breaks down.

Point taken but since they rolled out around the same time, they did re-enforce each other. More pictures lead to more demand for internet, lead to internet being faster and more widely available, which lead to more pictures. Digital photographs were not the only driver of the internet's rollout, but I'm sure that they contributed.

Yes, then the question remains when an analogy loses its value. In this case I‘d say it’s a big stretch. I’m all for electric vehicles, I just don’t buy the analogy

You print them, same as film. Either at home, or put them on a CD-ROM or thumb drive and take them to the printer’s.

Also infrastructure.

Electricity is already everywhere, you just need to install lots of boxes with charge cables and billing mechanisms. Not that hard.

Although electricity is already everywhere, it’s still not going to be an easy transition. Globally, electricity production in 2012 was somewhere around 20 PWh/year, while transport used around 30 PWh/years.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

It takes, conservatively, 6.5kwh of power to refine 1 gal of gas. My Volt travels around 27 miles on that much electric power.

Basically, if you stop refining gas you'll have pretty much enough power for all EVs.

This article disagrees with the factoid that it takes 6.5 kWh of electric power to refine a gallon of gas. It says it's a few tenths of a kWh of electric power.

https://www.cfr.org/blog/do-gasoline-based-cars-really-use-m...

Maybe electric cars will be the solution to the duck curve?

They are one of the four main reasons why I don’t worry about the duck curve.

What are the other three?

1) Non-car storage (including but not limited to immobile batteries, pumped hydro, and hydrogen electrolysis)

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).

Electric vehicles use roughly a third of the energy so that 30 PWh only needs to be an extra 10 PWh for the grid. We need to increase overall capcity by 50%.

10 PWh / year (just over 1 TW average) is currently a half-trillion dollar installation cost, assuming $0.23/W PV with a 50% duty cycle.

Yes, this is still an improvement; yes it should be done; it’s just not trivial.

Also, most charging will happen at home, at night.

I doubt that; PV is cheap compared to storage, so it makes more sense to install twice as much PV as needed and include the charging plugs in existing car parks (and waste some power during commuting and lunch breaks), than to add enough immobile storage to allow most car charging to happen at night.

The thing about nighttime is that thats when the car isn't moving around much. Best time to charge.

Only when the power doesn’t come from PV. If it does, you need (three?) times as much battery capacity: the car’s battery, the immobile battery that the car charges from, and the battery which powers your houses (and some industry and commerce) overnight. If you charge your cars during the day, you can use some of the battery capacity in the electric cars, partially discharging some of them overnight to supply your nighttime needs.

Yeah I see what you mean. Maybe everyone will need to commute nocturnally once we're running everything on solar!

So one year the defense budget.

Seems possible

Chances are the network isn’t used at full capacity, so if people are willing to charge their cars outside peak hours (e.g, between midnight 7 AM, we wouldn’t need 50% more, network wise.

It may be different but it doesn't mean that it's impossible to achieve. Building the EV infrastruture is relatively cheap (compared to say building a gas-powered or hydrogen infrastructure). Tesla has already built its own (not perfect, but "good enough"), and the other car makers have joined alliances to build their own. Also new companies have appeared whose sole reason to exist is to build such infrastructures. Plus, power companies are getting in on the action, too, finally realizing that this could be big business for them in the future.

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.

> The EV infrastructure should be mostly complete by 2025.

All the people witgout off-road parking will have charging points outside their house?

Many streets have these things called 'lamp posts', into which electricity is being supplied. All you need to do is work out how to bill it.

Having had a quick look at our street, there is a lamp-post for about every 10 cars.

The infrastructure for digital cameras to succeed was already in place.

That’s exactly my point

That's a very weak excuse, especially when there are tons of money to be made building that infrastructure.

I’m not excusing anything, I’m just pointing out where the analogy breaks

Actually, they did. Film manufacture, distribution and developing.

Sorry I don’t understand. Digital cameras require film manufacturing, distribution and developing?

No, film cameras required film manufacturing, distribution and developing. Being able to drop all that was a huge factor in the success of digital.

We are supposed to stay on oil because we can't build infrastructure? Humans... Are we the dumbest species or what?

Digital cameras required a huge network - electricity. It's easy to forget, but for most of the history of photography, electricity was not everywhere a camera could go.

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.