But I think the peak of that opportunity has passed. The market in Europe and China is going to flip to pure electric in 5-8 years, with the US 5 years later. The window for developing new models that fit into that transition is shrinking. There will be long term demand for range extended vehicles, still in 15 or 20 years, but it will be niche.
That's way too optimistic for Europe. Maybe with the exception of Norway and Europe's largest metros like London, most of Europe will stay on ICE for a long time.
The price of electric cars here is too high for most incomes and the cheaper ones have too little range compared to ICEs. Not to mention the charging infrastructure is still lacking.
Right now they're still toys for the rich man with a house and not tools for the average joe.
I'd rather we invest the money in public transport and cycling infrastructure to rid the cities of cars but unfortunately the auto industry lobbies too strong in Europe for that to happen.
I don't know if it'll require upgrades to the power grid. You've already got 240v in Europe, so that's only ~10 hours to charge a Tesla. But could it handle thousands of EVs charging simultaneously?
If there's any place in the world that can do this it's Europe.
From top to bottom, it would fit about 40 cars - but there's only 6-8 street lamps? Ok, so maybe the council could fit a new charging post every 10 metres or so - but then the question is, with what money? There's hardly any cash to keep maintaining the roads at all, where would they find the money to dig up every single street in the city and put in charging posts? Even if they are paid, you'd wait a very long time to make your money back, and then there's another issue I have - at home, I can charge my car at about £0.12/kWh during the day and £0.05/kWh during the night. But public charging points I can see around at crazy expensive - like £0.30-£0.40 per kWh. At that point, it's literally cheaper to drive a good diesel.
The wires aren't the problem; you've already got a power grid carrying kilovolts along the same streets to power the buildings. The cost is the charging ports. So start with one, reserve the space for EVs and make it expensive.
Then people won't want to use it. Most of the time they'll charge at work or some restaurant that installed a charging port to drive customers to its business. Which is why you only have to start with one -- the first one on the street is just for emergencies. You might have ten EVs in the area and one charging port because at any given time only one person is willing to pay that much to use it. Which also means that it's regularly in use and can recover its costs quickly. But then it's there if you really need it, so more people can feel comfortable buying EVs.
Then once there are more EVs, you can install more charging ports -- they're paying for themselves, after all, as long as you don't install so many they don't stay in use.
Then once you've paid off the capital cost you can lower the price, so more people use them, so you can build even more. When you have 10 charging ports but 9 are already paid off, you only have to charge 10% of the original premium to pay off the 10th. So in the long term you still end up with plenty of charging ports on the street at only a slightly higher price than they are in other places.
Lots of European cities are broke at this point and have much bigger problems to fix right now than EV charging stations and if private companies would install them across the cities, the charging costs would be high enough to make EVs ownership unappealing.
Add the fact that EVs here are more expensive than in the US and you have the reason why most EVs right now are only owned by upper class people who can afford to have their own private charging station on their own property.
There's a reason diesel ICEs, as dirty as they are, are still so popular in Europe. They're cheap to run.
Ironically, as green as it may be, Europe will fall behind China and the US at mass EV adoption.
Unless they'd be given away for free, expecting EVs to take over the market here in 5 to 8 years is dreaming at best.
"The number of battery charge-points will be tripled to 100,000 by the end of next year."
These European city planners should have listened to Strongtowns and other New Urbanists, and instead of encouraging suburban development style which makes prohibitively expensive for cities to maintain streets, instead followed the dense urban pattern of American cities.
Rest assured it will, and not only on the power grid.
Back of the envelope calculation.
A modern lamp post (one every 30 mt or so) is (led based) 60-80-100W, if infrastructure (cables) are not so recent, previous generation of street lightning were 150-250W per post.
Cables are dimensioned accurately to carry that kind of current/power.
A charging every 30 mt needs to serve 6-7 cars, we are talking of 7-10KW, i.e. 7000-10000 W, something like 40 times the power the infrastructure was designed for.
And each 300 mt stretch of street will need something in the order of magnitude of 70-100KW, and since all cars will be charged at night, there are very little to be spared for non-contemporaneus power usage.
In areas where the street lights are set onto the property side of the sidewalk (or even into lawns) rather than on the sidewalk abutting the street (most NA residential areas I think) I don't see this idea gaining a lot of traction. Or at least not remaining for long past the sidewalk turning into an obstacle course for the elderly and others with limited movement.
The first customers are people who can install a charging port where they normally park their car. That's probably more than half of car owners, and gets you to at least a double digit percentage of cars as electric.
At that point there are enough electric cars that a charger starts getting installed anywhere there's a lot of parking. Then more people can buy EVs, and do, so more chargers get installed. By the time most cars are electric they'll be everywhere.
Lots of essential infrastructure is cheap because of competition, like for example electricity generation. There is no reason to believe EV charging will be different.
Of course, it might also turn out that while electricity costs are low, other costs of running charging business are high. If that’s the case, that doesn’t bode well for EV adoption in among people who don’t live in houses.
I've been reading HN for years and people from the USA keep writing that this didn't happen there for fiber and other telecommunication service. Is it going to happen for EV chargers?
This is exactly what I'm saying though - motorway petrol stations are insanely expensive, because they have no competition - a company wins a contract to run the only petrol station on a given stretch of the A1, so they can charge obscene prices for petrol. Same is already happening with electricity - some providers along motorways charge an insane £0.69 per kWh, it would be cheaper to fill up another car with premium unleaded and use it to charge the electric car at that point.
There is zero elemental hydrogen on Earth. 99% of the one we use is a byproduct of fossil fuel industry. Yes, you can produce it from electrolysis, but not only the hydrogen produced this way will never "break even" it's actually much worse than "even" since you then need to spend a whole load of energy to compress it and bottle it. Why not...just put the electricity into the existing grid and charge automotive batteries directly? After all, fuel cell cars are electric cars, direct combustion of hydrogen was experimental and extremely inefficient.
That brings me to my next point - hydrogen has the smallest molecule of all, which means that it evaporates naturally through any container you put it in. 70kg lead bottle only holds 1L of hydrogen, and it naturally loses all of it in 2-3 weeks. So no underground carparks, garages etc because of the explosion risks.
But finally - there is no infrastructure for hydrogen. It's like trying to build a network of petrol stations....from scratch.
And batteries are definitely good enough to power larger trucks, it's just the cost that's prohibitive(enough cells for a large semi would cost many times more than the truck itself).
> There is zero elemental hydrogen on Earth.
Not actually true. As I understand it, reserves of natural hydrogen do exist underground, similar to how helium is sometimes trapped underground in certain formations. These could potentially be huge source of hydrogen, although right now it's just speculation.
> Yes, you can produce it from electrolysis, but not only the hydrogen produced this way will never "break even" it's actually much worse than "even" since you then need to spend a whole load of energy to compress it and bottle it.
Since we live in a world of zero priced, and sometimes negatively priced renewable electricity, this is a non-issue. In fact, it's irrelevant. The biggest motivation for green hydrogen right now is the fact that we have far more green energy that we can use for large stretches of time on the grid. We're currently "curtailing" that electricity, which is a fancy word meaning that we're throwing it away. Turning what is in effect a waste product into a valuable new fuel is a big gain.
> Why not...just put the electricity into the existing grid and charge automotive batteries directly? After all, fuel cell cars are electric cars, direct combustion of hydrogen was experimental and extremely inefficient.
Largely because we can't match production with demand. As I mentioned above, we have huge surpluses during parts of the day, but also we have huge shortages at other times. Using hydrogen as a load balancer is an excellent idea right now. We can do this to a certain extent using batteries or pumped water, but we quickly run into the limits of these technologies. Hydrogen can be stored in far larger quantities than any battery in the form of underground salt caverns.
> That brings me to my next point - hydrogen has the smallest molecule of all, which means that it evaporates naturally through any container you put it in. 70kg lead bottle only holds 1L of hydrogen, and it naturally loses all of it in 2-3 weeks. So no underground carparks, garages etc because of the explosion risks.
Carbon fiber tanks have long since solved this problem. We know this since you can buy FCEVs right now, and they are perfectly fine vehicle with none of the above issues. Indeed, I've seen quite a few hydrogen skeptics review these cars, and while they maintain their skepticism of the idea of hydrogen, they seem to be at a loss at describing any kind of real shortcoming in the technology itself.
> But finally - there is no infrastructure for hydrogen. It's like trying to build a network of petrol stations....from scratch.
This is changing. There are now hundreds of hydrogen refuel stations around the world, and many more being built. This is particularly true in Asia, where governments in that region have sponsored huge hydrogen infrastructure buildouts.
> And batteries are definitely good enough to power larger trucks, it's just the cost that's prohibitive(enough cells for a large semi would cost many times more than the truck itself).
There many problems with battery powered semi-trucks. Cost is one of them, and weight is another big one. Furthermore, recharging them in a few minutes is a huge selling point, and batteries cannot deliver on that need. FCEVs are a much better answer for long-haul trucking than BEVs.
You can charge while you get groceries (or a haircut, or dinner, or whatever) and then go on with your day. Certainly not as convenient as charging at home, but not impossible.
Charge infrastructure is expanding rapidly due to current rates of adoption which further makes electric cars more appealing every year.
A lot of people can't drop $40k on a car, but they can spend $25k up front and another $15k over the life of the car.
I think the major changeover will be when I can buy the equivalent of a Honda Accord, but fully electric, and for the same price.
The Tesla Model 3 was supposed to be that, but in reality, it still costs more.
Unless you’re referring to the psychological sticker shock only and not the actual cash flow implications.
I think if Tesla had better leasing, you'd see way more of them
Fiat-Chrysler did it with the 500e, and back in the day the big 3 did it with subsidized Cavaliers and Escorts.
All of this is only happening because of the pressure from EU regulators.
To see how these norms are effectively impossible to meet with ICEs, note that these translate to fuel efficiency of 4, 3, and 2 liters/100 km, or for American folks, 58, 78, and 117 mpg respectively.
€23.000 ID.3 vs €20.000 ICE Golf in Germany, from what I understand the Golf is one of the best selling cars in Europe. Also I believe many European countries exempt or greatly reduce emissions taxes on EVs, so that difference could probably be made up quickly.
Might even be worse we're on the verge of the big global warming panic. At the same time the current pandemic has been showing that the world under a semi command economy is more resilient than neoliberals gaslighted everyone into believing. And thus governments have a lot more wiggle room than they thought. One might find that the resale value of your ICE car is zero.
EVs are better cars for the majority of people. Once drive out price unequivocally beats ICE, EV adoption will skyrocket.
Electric cars are vastly more than just a battery and electric motor. Regenerative breaking, power distribution, heat management, possibly a simple transmission etc etc. The amount of innovation in this space dwarfs what’s happening in the IC space because the problems are so new.
EV’s hit 2.5% of total sales in 2019. 2020 is likely going to be odd, but scaling production still seems to be the bottleneck.
So sure the Roadster can hold what, 6 gallons? Like an econo-box. And weighs 2 1/2 - 3 tons. Much of that in battery.
Yes, weight is still the big issue.
For the most extreme comparison, a Bugatti Chiron gets an EPA 11 MPG so the roadster is arguably the equivalent of a 56 gallon fuel tank where the Chiron is stuck with 26 gallons.
PS: A better comparison would be a similar ~200,000$ two seater but none of them are optimized for fuel efficiency.
A bit of a tangent but it'll be interesting to see what effect an all electric vehicle future has on the design of roadways, bridges, etc. I imagine that many things will need to be rebuilt to handle the additional load.
Raising the average vehicle weight from 1.5 to 3 tons will definitely have an effect.
I would guess electric cars are still negligible in that metric, though.
Where is 'here'?
Here in Australia the price of pure electric cars is way too high - and not helped by federal government (lack of) subsidies, tariffs, policy preferences for fossil fuel, lack of charging infrastructure, etc.
I recently scoped out comparable ICE vs full electric new vehicles, and 'around the same' quality/comfort/range/size we were looking at roughly 3.5x the cost for electric. A 5y cost projection for an ICE that does 4.5 litres / 100 km, even with anticipated (higher) servicing costs, doesn't get us to a compelling proposition.
Let's face it, pure EV adoption is a lot slower than we'd like to and lying to ourselves about it doesn't help.
Hybrids are easy to justify buying as you don't depend on charging infrastructure or lack thereof but once you switch to pure EV that becomes your bottleneck which rules out drivers who don't have chargers available at their home or at work or who want to drive long distances on vacations with family or who don't have too much money to spend on a car.
In other words, I can't prove with certainty that the market will flip, but I wouldn't bet on the contrary.
Actually, they're more likely to prefer a car free lifestyle unless of course they have a six figure job in finance or at FAANG but that's like 1% of Millennials and GenZ in Europe, the rest are broke AF.
What you're looking for is a series hybrid, like the Chevy Volt. In a series hybrid the only thing the ICE powertrain does is run a generator to keep the battery topped up. This allows the ICE to run in its ideal power band range permanently, reducing its size and making gasoline only travel much more efficient while lowering vehicle cost.
When the Volt runs out of battery, it's almost not noticeable apart from engine noise. The performance characteristics in hybrid mode are almost identical to EV mode in terms of torque/acceleration.
It's an engineering marvel. I love mine. Shame GM killed it.
Both have a planetary gearset with engine on one gear, output on another, and an electric motor on the third. The difference lies on which gear the second electric motor is placed (motor shaft on the Volt, output shaft on the Prius), as well as some additional clutches and brakes in the Volt.
More info here: https://gm-volt.com/2015/02/20/gen-2-volt-transmission-opera...
The Volt has basically the same engine as in the Chevy Sonic or Cruze, and the i3 range extender option uses the same engine as their C600 series scooters. Those engines are designed with a quick throttle response and a wide power band to operate over an RPM range sufficient to drive a vehicle through a regular transmission.
I don't doubt that for the same time and money, it was far better for GM and BMW to take advantage of the economies of scale around those products than to design an engine specifically to function as a range extender, but if they really took this as a core function or started from scratch I expect they might select a medium-speed industrial diesel engine instead: something optimized for a particular speed and power output that does that one thing optimally.
C'mon, can people research before opining?
"While it shares many parts with the new 1.5L I-4 used in other GM products, the Gen II engine’s combustion process and calibration are specific to the Volt. Its larger displacement not only improves fuel efficiency but also provides more torque, which contributes to the Gen II Volt’s surprising quietness."
https://www.wardsauto.com/engines/gen-ii-chevy-volt-propulsi...
Tow your own generator.
And it's normally at home, so if the power goes off for a week you can still run your house and charge your car.
Like other commentators have mentioned, if a u-haul like network of these were made, if you ran out of charge somewhere, they could drop one of these off to get you going again, as a depleted battery pack will charge slowly, making the van full of batteries potentially more expensive (you would have to pay for an extra 15-30m of their time).
If anyone did this, they probably would offer 15kW and 30kW versions, so both passenger cars and light trucks would be covered.
I suspect that would really mess with the load dynamics on most passenger type cars, as the generator would be pretty heavy. I don't think you'd be able to lift a big enough one into the trunk area, and attaching it to the back of the car would be a pain too. I think towing solves a lot of issues for the idea.
Li-metal batteries [edit: still an immature tech] are at around 14 MJ / kg, and gasoline is at 47.5 MJ / kg.
Moreover, suppose that you are really "off-grid". Meaning, you are off any fuel supply network!! In this case precisely, you would be saved by electric-related techs, such as photovoltaic.
Do you have a link to back this number? Are these batteries rechargeable? Does the measurement include wiring, cooling, cell connections and overall structure of the battery pack?
For comparison, Tesla's (Li-ion) battery pack energy density is 160 Wh/kg, which is 0.576 MJ/kg:
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/02/11/energy-density-advanc...
Comparing just the gas tank to several subsystems of a battery electric vehicle is not really an interesting comparison. The closest comparison at that level is just gas vs just cells.
Overall electric is still lower energy density per weight, but is also far more efficient. The whole Tesla pack has the energy of just a couple gallons of gas but can go 400 miles.
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/ee/c9ee0...
Gas still wins with a short refuel time.
My own initial experiences have been mixed. Overall advantage still goes to gas. But I think we're very close to getting this battery thing figured out. Just a few years away. When we look back it will seem like it happened overnight.
By that logic, you could say that there is absolutely no difference, because if you can imagine a car where the battery can be swapped, you should be able to imagine a car where the entire fuel tank is swapped. A tractor arrives at a station, and instead of filling up 500 litres of diesel, the entire tank is simply replaced with a full one. It wins again since fuel tanks are cheap - they are just metal and plastic after all, you can have several just sitting there, full or empty.
The fact that no one has done it yet suggests that this really isn't an issue - commercial diesel filling stations usually run at much higher pressure than your regular pumps, a truck/tractor tank fills in minutes because of a much higher flow rate.
Swapping gas tanks provides no advantage and you conveniently ignore the whole point of the batteries which is that you don't need any fuel infrastructure to fill your tanks!
A fuel infrastructure costs magnitudes less than just one battery pack. You just need a large tank and pump.
Farmers have machines and equipment for almost everything. Swapping out a flat pack? POC
Swapping batteries implies either having multiple batteries, which adds to you costs significantly, or it implies adding yet another proprietary service company putting the screws to you in your supply chain.
For instance, don't forget the fuel suppliers, tank inspectors, etc, in the supply chain on the other side.
I was just commenting on the point of refuel time.
Also, it's possible to use extended swapable batteries for such cases.
> Li-metal batteries top at around 14 MJ / kg, and gasoline is at 47.5 MJ / kg.
Wouldn’t this gap actually be very close considering that the efficiency of an ICE on gasoline is what, 30-40% at best (IIRC)?
1kg * 14 MJ/kg * 95% = 13 MJ mechanical
1kg * 47 MJ/kg * 30% = 14 MJ mechanical
It comes out pretty close!
If you want mechanical power and also heat (for keeping people, animals, or equipment warm, decreasing the viscosity of fluids, etc), ICE is definitely the way to go.
-- edit --
/u/ash points out Tesla's energy density is is 0.576 MJ/kg
1kg * 0.58 MJ/kg * 95% = 0.55 MJ mechanical
...not even slightly close.
1 kg * 142 MJ / kg * 50% = 71 MJ mechanical
The dominant solution above all else.
All those require huge amounts of energy, and batteries are not yet nearly there (as others point out, your numbers for battery energy density are out by a factor of 30).
They are also quite weight sensitive, requiring additional induced drag to be overcome at heavier weights.
Albeit in theory true, here in the outskirts of the Sahara, I have yet to find a village where I can get an electrician to fix my solar panels, though a few bottles of gasoline can be found everywhere.
If I want to burn dead leaves to run my car... well that sucks right now (moreover that isn't anymore 0 emission).
If I run off to start a farm, and I buy an existing OTS used tractor, it will have a tank that I can pour almost any flammable liquid into to make it run. If I want to plug the tractor in... well, that'll get the engine to turn over, but it won't get it moving anywhere.
If I build myself a cabin in the woods, I can burn wood or wood pellets to keep cook food, or keep warm during the winter. Alternatively, I could purchase batteries, PV panels, and the necessary charge control electronics, in order to run an electric heater.
Burning recently-alive biomass does release carbon, but it's carbon that was in the atmosphere as recently as a few months ago. It isn't zero emission, but it doesn't contribute a long-term increase to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
A forest is a carbon store. Burning trees puts carbon from this store to the atmosphere.
To count it as carbon neutral is an accounting mistake, that could be very costly...
Burn the dead leaves and you shrink humus (or annihilate it, depending on how much you do it), another huge carbon store. So that makes it yet another accounting mistake.
More generally, it is good practice to separate well atmospheric carbon (CO2) and captive carbone (anything in solid/liquid state). Just show that faithfully in the accounting method, and a lot of good will follow.
https://wood-energy.extension.org/is-burning-wood-carbon-neu...
But burning a preexisting forest is cancelling an existing carbon store and converting lots of solid carbon into atmospheric carbon.
The fact a forest is a carbon store is precisely why a startup such as Pachama exists: they help grow new forests to capture carbon.
Would you then just unnoticingly burn them for energy, and keep telling the customers that you just captured a net amount of carbon?
PS: oh you are jacquesm! :) didn't notice. How are you?
PPS: some critic about the link you sent me ("wood-energy.extension"): I disagree with what they say, in that fallen wood too is a carbon store, and in a forest at equilibrium the amount decomposed by fungi/bacteria is roughly compensated by the newly fallen wood. So that's just a carbon store, and if you begin to burn it you shrink this store.
It seems obvious that if you want the density of liquid fuels, hydrogen is the answer. Compromising yourself with a lower energy density substance stands as a very difficult problem to solve.
If there was a Nobel Prize for understatement, this comment would take it hands down.
New "breakthroughs" in battery energy density are a dime a dozen. They're proving incredibly difficult to bring to commercial viability, and there's no evidence that that's going to change.
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Under the worst possible conditions (not considering temperature), on the shortest day of the year, with 100% clouds and a thick layer of snow, PV panels would produce 14% as much power per day as on the longest day of the year with 0 cloud cover.
Also, electric offers you the plethora of choices in methods to produce your energy. If it's not photovoltaic, you still have many solutions. Could as well be eolian, or a dam, or hundred of people riding generator-bikes (half-kidding), or etc.
I've wondered if it makes sense for gyms to be paying for electricity.
Free energy (but maybe only an epsilon), and no more deep vein thrombosis!!
So even though you're carrying around a huge amount of potential energy in the form of gasoline, your engine can only covert about 20% of that into motion.
The weight of combustible tank goes down as it become empty, while a battery weight remains constant.
This must have a huge decisional impact when manufacturing aircrafts.
Electric drivetrains open up an interesting potential for range-extenders which charge the batteries. The constraints are different than conventional engines - lower peak power, more-or-less continuous power output operation, no sudden torque changes. Different constraints generally mean a different optimal solution.