Really is. . . Read an article just the other day about how if it hadn't been for the *ahem* issues . . . of the Cobra on the road, we likely wouldn't have been graced with the Shelby Daytona (and it doing amazing things at Le Mans), which in turn led to Mr. Carroll Shelby being contacted to help develop the GT40.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: I'm a yank, and I've definitely heard of WhatCar, as well as a number of other overseas auto publications. But then, I AM a bit of an oddball petrolhead in the US in that I prefer proper sports cars (as in cars that are designed to make high speed turns, unlike most US "sports" cars that are designed for the standing 1/4 mile)
What US "sports cars" are you talking about? The classic US sports cars are the Chevy Corvette and Dodge Viper (if it returns) and they both go round corners pretty fast. The Mustang and Camaro are "pony cars", not sure if they fall under the "sports car" heading, but modern variants of the Mustang and Camaro get praised as being pretty good track cars, even tracks that have corners.
I think it's mostly the Dodge muscle cars that aren't too good through the twisties and seem to be focusing on 1/4 mile times with the Hellcat and Demon.
When you look at the street versions of cars, a lot of the US sports cars get panned heavily by motoring journalists for their handling (when compared to their Euro/Asian counterparts). Sure, the purpose-built Corvettes competed fairly well at Le Mans. It wasn't until the most recent generation of Vettes (with the ZR.1 variant) that nearly everyone loved the handling abilities of the Vette. When the Corvette first came out in the 50s and 60s yeah, it was certainly one of the top sports cars around, and one of the better "weekend warrior" racers out there. . . Then technology moved on and by the 70s, 80s and through the early 2000s, the Corvette continued on with the same mindset of those early years. As a result, you may see them on a track day event, but they weren't major contenders for major races (a la, Le Mans, 24 hours of Daytona, etc)
And yeah, Dodge has for quite a while been all bout that pure straight line speed. And while Pony Cars are certainly a type of car, I personally would consider them to be a subset under the "sports car" umbrella because they were originally designed to be the "poor man's racer" and helped kick off the muscle car 'thing' in the US.
I think you and I have slightly different views on Corvettes of the past (and I'm sure I'm not biased by the fact I own a '71 ), I think they've always been reasonably fast relative to the competition. They've always been low to the ground, had close to a 50/50 weight distribution, relatively big tyres and decently fast suspension set ups.
What happens in races like Le Mans and 24 hours Daytona doesn't really mean much because the cars are so heavily modified (if not built from the ground up) that they don't bear much resemblance to their street going counterparts. Even going back to the C2 Corvette Grand Sport (that was entirely built from the ground up, even had a thinner fibreglass body to save weight) and the C3 L88 Corvette that raced at Le Mans in the late 60's (which was reasonably similar to the street version, but still had a stiffer chassis and some 200hp more than street variants).
The late 60's and early 70's vettes had 4 wheel disk brakes and independent rear suspension (which was an oddity for a high powered street car back then), the late 70's were a bit sluggish but so were all sports cars in the late 70's, the 80's saw the C4 which could go round corners like crazy (though did have a somewhat spongy chassis, it was still competitive and even now doesn't take much modification to turn it in to a car that will tear up a race track), the C5 and C6 again had pretty impressive cornering ability, fixed a lot of the issues the C4 had and the LS engines provided some good reliable power (I've gotten to drive a C5 Z06 and loved it).
Even now if you ask the question "What are the best track cars you can get on a budget?", the C4, C5, C6 and C7 Vettes will inevitably make the list. The low centre of gravity, 50/50 weight balance and small block chevy make any of them a good starting platform (if not good out of the box).
One gripe I've heard over the years that has been fixed more recently with the C7 is the steering ratio, older C5's had passenger-car-like steering ratios so you had to turn the wheel a long way relative to other sports cars. But that didn't really slow them down, and was something you'd get used if you actually owned one, it's just the steering felt a bit laborious if you'd just jumped out of another sports car. You could of course just throw a faster steering rack in one of those older Corvettes and it was problem solved.
People have long complained Corvettes are unrefined, I think half of that is because of the muscle car engine maybe gives people more than they're expecting and partly the cheaper construction compared to significantly more expensive Euro cars.
I haven't been a Corvette lover all my life, but I started to notice them when they were getting harshly reviewed versus Euro cars only to find the Euro cars were significantly more expensive. I think it says good things when you can't find cars in the same price range to compare it against.
But I digress, I think Muricans make decent sports cars when they want to make sports cars. Shoving a big motor in a sedan isn't really a "sports car" in my book, but even the modern pony cars handle pretty damned good.
I haven't been a Corvette lover all my life, but I started to notice them when they were getting harshly reviewed versus Euro cars only to find the Euro cars were significantly more expensive. I think it says good things when you can't find cars in the same price range to compare it against.
But I digress, I think Muricans make decent sports cars when they want to make sports cars. Shoving a big motor in a sedan isn't really a "sports car" in my book, but even the modern pony cars handle pretty damned good.
For the bits I didn't directly quote: I must've been mentally mixing up cars and car reviews because for some reason I was "remembering" that Vettes had solid axles throughout the 80s and into the 90s, but clearly I am wrong on that point.
IMO, the latest generation of Vette (especially the ZR1) and the Vettes from around 1967 and earlier look the best. . . A little while ago I was playing around on the Chevy website, and "built" a Corvette ZR1 in the 3ZR trim, which rounded out to about 145k USD. I then went to the Porsche website doing the same with the 911, and I personally cannot help but think, if I'm gonna drop over 140 grand on a brand new car meant for track day events/amateur races, that I would rather spend it on a Porsche. Now don't get me wrong, I'd still love to have this latest gen Vette, so if the deciding factor was delivery time or something like that, I'd be more than happy with the decision.
IMHO, Le Mans is still extremely important to the auto industry. Yes you are right that most cars, even the GT classes are often built from the ground up for those races. However Le Mans is still sort of the world's prototype testing grounds: the vast majority of automotive improvements have come out of endurance racing. I think it was a commentator during this years race, or maybe last years, who said something like "with the exception of heated and massaging seats" (because obviously, how does a heated or massaging seat help a car go faster, run longer or anything like that?). At the same time, I was already saying that we can discount the exact specimens we saw on track as they are not 100% the one you buy off the showroom floor of the local dealer
And I somewhat agree with you on the mere shoving a bigger engine thing. . . An "M-Line" BMW isn't a sports car, while IMO an M5 is.
I haven't been a Corvette lover all my life, but I started to notice them when they were getting harshly reviewed versus Euro cars only to find the Euro cars were significantly more expensive. I think it says good things when you can't find cars in the same price range to compare it against.
But I digress, I think Muricans make decent sports cars when they want to make sports cars. Shoving a big motor in a sedan isn't really a "sports car" in my book, but even the modern pony cars handle pretty damned good.
For the bits I didn't directly quote: I must've been mentally mixing up cars and car reviews because for some reason I was "remembering" that Vettes had solid axles throughout the 80s and into the 90s, but clearly I am wrong on that point.
IMO, the latest generation of Vette (especially the ZR1) and the Vettes from around 1967 and earlier look the best. . . A little while ago I was playing around on the Chevy website, and "built" a Corvette ZR1 in the 3ZR trim, which rounded out to about 145k USD. I then went to the Porsche website doing the same with the 911, and I personally cannot help but think, if I'm gonna drop over 140 grand on a brand new car meant for track day events/amateur races, that I would rather spend it on a Porsche. Now don't get me wrong, I'd still love to have this latest gen Vette, so if the deciding factor was delivery time or something like that, I'd be more than happy with the decision.
IMHO, Le Mans is still extremely important to the auto industry. Yes you are right that most cars, even the GT classes are often built from the ground up for those races. However Le Mans is still sort of the world's prototype testing grounds: the vast majority of automotive improvements have come out of endurance racing. I think it was a commentator during this years race, or maybe last years, who said something like "with the exception of heated and massaging seats" (because obviously, how does a heated or massaging seat help a car go faster, run longer or anything like that?). At the same time, I was already saying that we can discount the exact specimens we saw on track as they are not 100% the one you buy off the showroom floor of the local dealer
And I somewhat agree with you on the mere shoving a bigger engine thing. . . An "M-Line" BMW isn't a sports car, while IMO an M5 is.
In full disclosure I am a Challenger owner and enthusiast, but all around car guy, so if any bias shows through its not intentional
Not to go too far off topic here but:
Dodge is putting out exactly what they advertise, a muscle car. It goes fast in a straight line, handles "ok" when you start throwing the new wide body models around the corners, and stuffing big V8 Hemi engines between the front wheels.
Chevrolet has done wonders with the Camaro in both speed and cornering capabilities but I wouldn't call it a muscle car any more, more of a purpose built sports car. I don't know what the hell Ford is doing with the Mustang. The GT does ok in a straight line and ok in the corners but it seems to be a more all around car, and of course the GT350/500 variants are quick, but it feels like they are trying to play catch up to the Camaro ZL1. Don't get me started on the turbo 4 cylinder models, it just doesn't sound right (both literally and figuratively).
Meanwhile Dodge is over here making cars that are crazy fast on the strip with the Demon and Hellcat, with the Hellcat being faster than the Demon with minor mods (other than needing to buy/install a cage as soon as they dip into the 9's). There is, of course, the exception for the Dodge Viper ACR, which ran a 7:01.3 on the Nürburgring (yeah I know the ring isn't the end all be all, but a great benchmark none-the-less when talking about cars that can take a corner), which is about 4 seconds faster than the Porsche 911 GT3 RS which is pretty astounding. I read a story about a guy that had to transport his ACR on an open trailer because his enclosed trailer had some issue, and his mpg dropped by about 3 due to the downforce the aero kit on the Viper was generating while at freeway speed lol. This isn't to say that the Camaro and Mustang cant hold their own at the strip, but they seem to be more at home on a road course and driving around town respectively.
Anyway, more on topic, my wife has fallen in love with the electric VW throwback bus they are talking about releasing in 2022, so in a few years we may own one of those if the cost isn't astronomical... Edit: The I.D. Buzz
Anyway, more on topic, my wife has fallen in love with the electric VW throwback bus they are talking about releasing in 2022, so in a few years we may own one of those if the cost isn't astronomical... Edit: The I.D. Buzz
Pardon the pun, but the buzz around automotive media with the VW bus is rather impressive. I tried doing a project on them during my final semester of MBA because of the amount of financial press coverage they are getting right now, for a vehicle that will not be released as a general public passenger vehicle for a few years yet. . . Though, unless they've changed things, VW is apparently releasing a "Transit Van" version of the new bus specifically aimed at work vehicles. Frankly, I think that is a near perfect place to be getting an EV in. In my area, I don't think the typical work van would get anywhere near its single-charge range, and they generally are parked in a lock-up/facility of some kind, so the business would 'simply' need to add charging points. As more charging points are installed all over urban areas, the usefulness of an electric work-van increases as well. Especially if they are being purchased by companies wherein you're parking the vehicle and doing work for an hour or more (ie, most of the skilled trades)
When I bought my Leaf, the dealership had a fleet of 15 electric Nissan vans sitting in their back lot waiting to be delivered to a local government department. I think that department had come to the same conclusion about the usefulness of electric for their purposes. The vans would likely travel no more than 50 miles a day on average, have secure parking overnight and also tend to be used in local council facilities during the day, so the council is committing to adding extra charging points in those locations, which is helpful for regular EV owners too. I'd expect to see more local government departments doing the same in the near future and if I were a business owner with a fleet of vans I'd be considering the benefits too.
American Muscle cars are notorious for chasing 0-60 times and not handling the best. At one time this could be blamed on poor tire technology.....but not anymore. The newest corvettes are more of and exception as they perform pretty well.
You make it sound like it is an unintended consequence of a badly written software upgrade.
It is not, it is a deliberate software patch to solve a hardware issue, namely that Tesla batteries develop a fire risk if you push them too hard or supercharge them too often.
In the past Tesla would have reached out to you and just replaced the battery pack proactively like on the famous 400.000 mile Tesla that had its pack replaced twice under warranty.
That was a completely abused battery,,,,even the source admits it. You can not run a Tesla 24 hour a day and just fully charge it for 400K miles and not expect to see some battery degradation. That problem is caused by continuous running of the battery to a very low state of charge and then charging it to 100% on a supercharger....its pure abuse and something not seen except in exceptionally heavy fleet use such as Tesloop. What is amazing is that Tesla still honors the warranty far after ICE cars would have run out of miles. The best warranty out there right now is VW with 72K miles......Tesla guarantees its batteries for 10 years. Tesloop estimates they will get to 1 million miles on some of their cars before the 10 year warranty expires!......thats incredible!
That is not the same issue as the Model S update which is just a software bug, and if it isn't......thats what warranty and recalls are for. It still only affected a very small percentage of one model of their cars.....you are blowing this out of proportion.
Lets see how your average ICE engine is after 400K miles....how much horsepower do they lose? Now how about an abused ICE engine?
Mate, his veiws aren't really all that valid even considering the US-Centric views. . . I mean, lets take his favorite "unbiased" source. It's straight up a pro-tesla site, and they make no bones about it.
I've used quite a lot of sources....the only one I really don't use is seeking Alpha....they are all short garbage all the time.
You make it sound like it is an unintended consequence of a badly written software upgrade.
It is not, it is a deliberate software patch to solve a hardware issue, namely that Tesla batteries develop a fire risk if you push them too hard or supercharge them too often.
In the past Tesla would have reached out to you and just replaced the battery pack proactively like on the famous 400.000 mile Tesla that had its pack replaced twice under warranty.
That was a completely abused battery,,,,even the source admits it. You can not run a Tesla 24 hour a day and just fully charge it for 400K miles and not expect to see some battery degradation. That problem is caused by continuous running of the battery to a very low state of charge and then charging it to 100% on a supercharger....its pure abuse and something not seen except in exceptionally heavy fleet use such as Tesloop. What is amazing is that Tesla still honors the warranty far after ICE cars would have run out of miles. The best warranty out there right now is VW with 72K miles......Tesla guarantees its batteries for 10 years. Tesloop estimates they will get to 1 million miles on some of their cars before the 10 year warranty expires!......thats incredible!
I don't think you're following the conversation. My point is Tesla in the past would honor their battery warranty despite the battery being abused.
Nowadays they'll cut range though software and tell you to go pound sand. Your battery is perfectly normal thank you very much. Even on cars run on perfectly normal use patterns.
You make it sound like it is an unintended consequence of a badly written software upgrade.
It is not, it is a deliberate software patch to solve a hardware issue, namely that Tesla batteries develop a fire risk if you push them too hard or supercharge them too often.
In the past Tesla would have reached out to you and just replaced the battery pack proactively like on the famous 400.000 mile Tesla that had its pack replaced twice under warranty.
That was a completely abused battery,,,,even the source admits it. You can not run a Tesla 24 hour a day and just fully charge it for 400K miles and not expect to see some battery degradation. That problem is caused by continuous running of the battery to a very low state of charge and then charging it to 100% on a supercharger....its pure abuse and something not seen except in exceptionally heavy fleet use such as Tesloop. What is amazing is that Tesla still honors the warranty far after ICE cars would have run out of miles. The best warranty out there right now is VW with 72K miles......Tesla guarantees its batteries for 10 years. Tesloop estimates they will get to 1 million miles on some of their cars before the 10 year warranty expires!......thats incredible!
I don't think you're following the conversation. My point is Tesla in the past would honor their battery warranty despite the battery being abused.
Nowadays they'll cut range though software and tell you to go pound sand. Your battery is perfectly normal thank you very much. Even on cars run on perfectly normal use patterns.
Ha, look The company delivered 95,200 vehicles, producing 87,048 cars. You can't sell what isn't available to sell. They actually sold more cars then they produced this quarter, there are over 7500 already sold in transit that will go to Q3 numbers! Once the Chinese factory is built they wont have to ship cars to china, which means more for everyone else. For everyone that says my views are American centric (they are not they are global) yours are completely focused only on Europe.
Tesla will still honor the warranty, if they believe they need to. Right now they are planning on handling it with updates that will restore the performance back to normal once they figure out how to do it safely. They are already going well above and beyond what other car manufacturers offer. Do you have any data as to how many cars were even affected? And whether they were being abused or not......I don't think you do. Try not to make stuff up.
Whats the I pace and Etron numbers looking like in Q2?
You make it sound like it is an unintended consequence of a badly written software upgrade.
It is not, it is a deliberate software patch to solve a hardware issue, namely that Tesla batteries develop a fire risk if you push them too hard or supercharge them too often.
In the past Tesla would have reached out to you and just replaced the battery pack proactively like on the famous 400.000 mile Tesla that had its pack replaced twice under warranty.
That was a completely abused battery,,,,even the source admits it. You can not run a Tesla 24 hour a day and just fully charge it for 400K miles and not expect to see some battery degradation. That problem is caused by continuous running of the battery to a very low state of charge and then charging it to 100% on a supercharger....its pure abuse and something not seen except in exceptionally heavy fleet use such as Tesloop. What is amazing is that Tesla still honors the warranty far after ICE cars would have run out of miles. The best warranty out there right now is VW with 72K miles......Tesla guarantees its batteries for 10 years. Tesloop estimates they will get to 1 million miles on some of their cars before the 10 year warranty expires!......thats incredible!
I don't think you're following the conversation. My point is Tesla in the past would honor their battery warranty despite the battery being abused.
Nowadays they'll cut range though software and tell you to go pound sand. Your battery is perfectly normal thank you very much. Even on cars run on perfectly normal use patterns.
Ha, look The company delivered 95,200 vehicles, producing 87,048 cars. You can't sell what isn't available to sell. They actually sold more cars then they produced this quarter, there are over 7500 already sold in transit that will go to Q3 numbers! Once the Chinese factory is built they wont have to ship cars to china, which means more for everyone else. For everyone that says my views are American centric (they are not they are global) yours are completely focused only on Europe.
Tesla never ran out of stock in Europe, and this is the first quarter where the model 3 was available for the whole quarter. Yet deliveries fell and average price plunged.
Wait until Q2 earnings and you'll see.
Tesla will still honor the warranty, if they believe they need to. Right now they are planning on handling it with updates that will restore the performance back to normal once they figure out how to do it safely. They are already going well above and beyond what other car manufacturers offer. Do you have any data as to how many cars were even affected? And whether they were being abused or not......I don't think you do. Try not to make stuff up.
Check the thread at TMC where they're preparing a class action. You can also check the class action going on at #Teslapaintissues
Whats the I pace and Etron numbers looking like in Q2?
iPace sold roughly the same units as S & X combined.
E-tron comfortably outsold S & X combined (btw, average price for etron was higher than model S, lower than model X). In some countries like the Netherlands e-tron sold twice as much as S&X combined.
Lets see since the last update Tesla has gotten back its Consumer report rating, has finished a factory in China, is planning on building one in Germany. Demand is still high everywhere, stock is going crazy! YEP TESLA IS DOOMED......HA HA HA!
I see someone needs to collect his Tesla Advertising check requirements for this quarter...
I'm going to assume we'll ignore the report of all the issues coming from the Texas plant? I'd link, but you'd just ignore every source that isn't paidforbytesla.com
Yeah. . . because that is one metric we should ever consider for what is/isn't a decent vehicle. Working in the automotive industry, I will tell y'all point blank that supply chain is a huge huge issue. We'll see over time how much that issue weighs on Tesla, because supply chain is definitely having a negative impact on where I work.
About that. Does Musk know that workers in the automotive sector over here have relatively strong unions? I mean, with how allergic he seems to unionisation, I have to wonder. Because it seems to me like he'd quickly scrap those plans if he knew that unions actually work over here and have negotiating power. He might try to push his "vision" though over here but would end up like Walmart: Giving up and closing down once he can't bully his opinion through because there are laws that make it much harder or impossible for him to do so.
Andrew1975 wrote: Lets see since the last update Tesla has gotten back its Consumer report rating, has finished a factory in China, is planning on building one in Germany. Demand is still high everywhere, stock is going crazy! YEP TESLA IS DOOMED......HA HA HA!
Elbows wrote: Just checking in...andddddd yep...Andrew still doing his thing.
Yeah, I literally just check in with this thread once in a while to see if anything interesting is being discussed but it's still just relentless Tesla propaganda from that guy. I've never seen anyone ride a cause that hard before.
It takes a special kind of fanboy to resurrect a 4-month old thread to act as cheerleader for a multinational company. So congrats...I guess? What's even more bizarre about this whole thing is I don't think many people are saying Teslas are bad cars, just a bit pricey and not always the best option, while also pointing out some possible problems with repairs, servicing and the much-lauded supercharger network. Very few are rabidly anti-Tesla, certainly not to the extent a certain user seems to be ludicrously pro-Tesla.
Since the thread has been resurrected though, here's an update from me regarding both Tesla and my own Nissan Leaf. My Leaf is great - ridiculously easy to drive and almost enjoyable to drive around a busy city. We've had it for just over a month and it's been a brilliant experience, barring the slightly dodgy app that Nissan uses. Performance is very good too, more than enough for the driving we do. Not had an electricity bill yet to see how it's affected our monthly costs but we've done a lot of research on the budget side of things so hopefully there won't be a big surprise there.
As it happens, my wife's friend bought a Tesla at about the same time we got our Nissan and they love the car, with similar feelings to us about driveability and ease of use. However, they had a bit of a nightmare with getting a charger installed and dealing with the Tesla sales infrastructure. Tesla doesn't operate a traditional dealership network, with its showrooms being more like high street advertising, so all sales are done through their website rather than the dealership. This caused a lot of problems for them because there was no local dealership they could speak to to get advice about the various government grants and procedures we have in the UK for getting your home charger installed. This resulted in them not having a home charger when they took delivery of the car.They didn't even get informed about the huge interest-free loan you can get from the Scottish government towards the cost of your car, potentially missing out on £35k towards the cost of their car.
In contrast, our experience was fantastic. The dealership walked us through every step of the process and was really helpful and on-hand when required. I know Tesla caused some upset with the traditional US manufacturers when they came out with their different approach to selling cars and I can see there are some advantages to it but it does seem there are also some pitfalls, many of which are specific to the EV market in some areas.
So end result: we're both happy with our cars. Our buying experience was stress-free and theirs wasn't so great. In 6 months that will all be fairly irrelevant as we'll have forgotten about it but it's probably something Tesla could do with improving.
OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand. Pretty much every issue from quality to maintenance has been addressed and tucked up. Customer service....yep still and issue in some places i guess. Almost as fun as watching shorts have to cover their bets. "China factory is never going to get built".....or really? interesting. Now it appears "German factory is going to be a problem" lets watch and find out.
I'd like to see how the New ford mustang works....it might actually be good...have to see. I'm not sure why you would use the name of your marquee sports car on a crossover EV....but whateves. I wish it more luck than the I pace and e Tron. The mustang being almost a carbon copy of the Y I think is very flattering.
I am a bit worried about todays truck launch though. Truck drivers tend to be pretty conservative.....and I don't think CYBERTRUCK (terrible call) is going to win them over.
Slip..its too bad your friends had a poor experience with customer service....it is one of the issues of not having enough service centers and well trained staff. I live about 100 miles between 2 service centers, but I found them to be pretty helpful, but it was done over the phone and internet for the most part. I did find them informative and helpful with both state and federal programs.....but I asked about them and was already familiar....would they have been as helpful if I hadn't known....i guess the jury is out on that one.
I like the e-mustang, but I bet the price will be stupid high. I had to get a new car recently and went with a jeep compass. It's a 3 year lease so I'm hoping when it's up there will be some more electric options out there. I still think the VW bus is gonna be the one for me.
Necros wrote: I like the e-mustang, but I bet the price will be stupid high. I had to get a new car recently and went with a jeep compass. It's a 3 year lease so I'm hoping when it's up there will be some more electric options out there. I still think the VW bus is gonna be the one for me.
Its will cost about the same as a model Y, and very similar specs. So in the $40-50k range.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The dealerships could be a huge Ford advantage.....but it comes at a price in the sticker for the customer and profit to the dealership. However the Ford is also still eligible for the full EV discount.
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Just Tony wrote: I see someone needs to collect his Tesla Advertising check requirements for this quarter...
I'm going to assume we'll ignore the report of all the issues coming from the Texas plant? I'd link, but you'd just ignore every source that isn't paidforbytesla.com
What Texas Tesla Plant? There are issues in a non existent plant?
Yeah. . . because that is one metric we should ever consider for what is/isn't a decent vehicle. Working in the automotive industry, I will tell y'all point blank that supply chain is a huge huge issue. We'll see over time how much that issue weighs on Tesla, because supply chain is definitely having a negative impact on where I work.
well you don't appear to like any of the other metrics. Like sales figures, quality figures, customer satisfaction figures, consumer reports figures, range figures, charging figures, performance figures....so......
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gorgon wrote: There's a guy on a Steelers board promoting Mason Rudolph about that hard. Which seems like a more unfortunate cause...
Rudolf is a jerk who writes checks he can't cash. Don't start problems there wont be any.
About that. Does Musk know that workers in the automotive sector over here have relatively strong unions? I mean, with how allergic he seems to unionisation, I have to wonder. Because it seems to me like he'd quickly scrap those plans if he knew that unions actually work over here and have negotiating power. He might try to push his "vision" though over here but would end up like Walmart: Giving up and closing down once he can't bully his opinion through because there are laws that make it much harder or impossible for him to do so.
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand. Pretty much every issue from quality to maintenance has been addressed and tucked up. Customer service....yep still and issue in some places i guess. Almost as fun as watching shorts have to cover their bets. "China factory is never going to get built".....or really? interesting. Now it appears "German factory is going to be a problem" lets watch and find out.
.
It has had a TTM net loss of $827mm, EBITDA loss of nearly $2Bn. Its still issuing equity to fund cash flow. Wake me up when it becomes a going concern.
Yeah. . . sorry, but stock price is just one of the worst metrics to use as a measure of any company. Looking at other manufacturers in the auto sector, if you look at investment articles around the time of the NY Auto Show, you'll see lots of prognosticators talking about "what's wrong" with Ford. . . They routinely (always) meet or exceed sales goals. They move tons of cars, are hit with relatively few recalls, etc. . . And yet, they are being "beaten" by GM in the stock market.
My issues with Tesla have nothing to do with the quality or tech of the cars themselves. . . It's that Musk is basically artificially propping his own company up because it would have otherwise long since run out of capital. The company does have, and continues to have supply chain issues. For a young company like Tesla, that is normally a death sentence by itself
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand.
What would you call a 39% reduction of YoY revenue in the US then?
Reno Gigafactory, sorry. Yahoo just ran a story on their frontpage tail end of last week or beginning of this week showcasing all the problems involved. I'm at work, so no link hunt for me. Google is there for those who need it.
Just Tony wrote: Reno Gigafactory, sorry. Yahoo just ran a story on their frontpage tail end of last week or beginning of this week showcasing all the problems involved. I'm at work, so no link hunt for me. Google is there for those who need it.
Whats wrong with the Reno factory....I mean i know its causing headaches becasue the cities infustructure just wasnt ready. But besides that?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so like I said Cybertruck would be different.....and boy is it. looks like a delorean and and aztec got drunk one night. The specs for the price are amazing though.
I don't see this going over well with the NASCAR crowd, which is the truck market.....but i get the feeling it wasnt meant to. I've never been a truck guy so you guys might have more input.
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand.
What would you call a 39% reduction of YoY revenue in the US then?
Did they sell all their cars? Do they have months and months of inventory stacked up somewhere? They are selling everything they produce, its not demand issue, or a production issue. They just cant build enough. When you start shipping your inventory to the rest of the world....thats what happens. THats why they just finished the chinese factory and are building one in germany.
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Ensis Ferrae wrote: Yeah. . . sorry, but stock price is just one of the worst metrics to use as a measure of any company. Looking at other manufacturers in the auto sector, if you look at investment articles around the time of the NY Auto Show, you'll see lots of prognosticators talking about "what's wrong" with Ford. . . They routinely (always) meet or exceed sales goals. They move tons of cars, are hit with relatively few recalls, etc. . . And yet, they are being "beaten" by GM in the stock market.
My issues with Tesla have nothing to do with the quality or tech of the cars themselves. . . It's that Musk is basically artificially propping his own company up because it would have otherwise long since run out of capital. The company does have, and continues to have supply chain issues. For a young company like Tesla, that is normally a death sentence by itself
I guess...but they appear to be doing well. As far as supply chain, im not sure i understand. They are pushing out cars and not stopping production because they are out of parts.....do you mean as far as the repair and maintenance aspect? And how did he prop up his own company? Was he swindling people?
Look I like ford.....i love the GT....but what compelling cars is ford making? The Mach E may bring them into significance again...but ford just quite the sedan market. So truck and SUVs is about all they will make, oh and a bunch of different mustangs. They are almost in as bad a position as Chrysler. Chrysler makes what 3 automobiles now? The 300 (which I like and own) is how old now? I do like the pacifica hybrid minivan a lot, but apparently nobody else does...and their dealers certainly dont know how to sell them.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so like I said Cybertruck would be different.....and boy is it. looks like a delorean and and aztec got drunk one night. The specs for the price are amazing though.
I don't see this going over well with the NASCAR crowd, which is the truck market.....but i get the feeling it wasnt meant to. I've never been a truck guy so you guys might have more input.
It's like they borrowed the "worst" lamborghini stylist, hired the person who did the Aztek, they got drunk/high, or something. . . and just went to town.
If that truck gets produced that way, I think there will be a new "ugliest production car ever" award winner, dethroning the Aztek, or that Fiat van from europe (the Euro guys know which one I'm talking about)
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so like I said Cybertruck would be different.....and boy is it. looks like a delorean and and aztec got drunk one night. The specs for the price are amazing though.
I don't see this going over well with the NASCAR crowd, which is the truck market.....but i get the feeling it wasnt meant to. I've never been a truck guy so you guys might have more input.
It's like they borrowed the "worst" lamborghini stylist, hired the person who did the Aztek, they got drunk/high, or something. . . and just went to town.
If that truck gets produced that way, I think there will be a new "ugliest production car ever" award winner, dethroning the Aztek, or that Fiat van from europe (the Euro guys know which one I'm talking about)
The only question is "can I get it in uncoated steel." The ugliness appeals to the urban warrior in me.
Ford is not going to have EVs until 2023. I'd like one now, the cost is just about right, and I don't think this would stop me from buying a Ford when it becomes available. I'm sure the resale market will be similar to their sedans.
I think it is important to note, I am not against EVs. . . I'm not necessarily against Tesla, I just don't think they are as great as they are being touted. I work at an auto dealer, and on my route from home to work, I see a half dozen teslas sitting on "lemon" lots, and several of the manufacturer new lots have used Teslas on them, most of them are fairly new models/model years. Seeing the various lots these cars are on suggests to me that there are reasons why people are unhappy with their vehicle and there's probably a "good" reason why they traded at a dealership.
Not really a fan of the truck, it feels like sci fi for sci fi's sake. I would have preferred they built off of the designs they already have for the cars and just truckified them.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: I think it is important to note, I am not against EVs. . . I'm not necessarily against Tesla, I just don't think they are as great as they are being touted. I work at an auto dealer, and on my route from home to work, I see a half dozen teslas sitting on "lemon" lots, and several of the manufacturer new lots have used Teslas on them, most of them are fairly new models/model years. Seeing the various lots these cars are on suggests to me that there are reasons why people are unhappy with their vehicle and there's probably a "good" reason why they traded at a dealership.
I don't know...I've got the model 3, had it for a year, it is hands down the best car ive ever had...havent had to put a dime into it maintenance wise and I can refill it for $8 for 310 miles....I think its amazing. I know they had problems with the some of the early model S's. Not denying you've seen them, I jus thtink they have come a long way.
The design philosphy behind the cybertruck is bold, no paint, not difficult stamping....producing them should be super easy. In a way I think he desgned a real functional concept and threw it out like a kickstarter campaign to see what happens.....already 200,000 reservations. It will sell.....will it sell millions like an f150.......nope, but i get the feeling it wasn't intended to be. Its bulletproof...literally.....I bet you see police rocking this thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so like I said Cybertruck would be different.....and boy is it. looks like a delorean and and aztec got drunk one night. The specs for the price are amazing though.
I don't see this going over well with the NASCAR crowd, which is the truck market.....but i get the feeling it wasnt meant to. I've never been a truck guy so you guys might have more input.
It's like they borrowed the "worst" lamborghini stylist, hired the person who did the Aztek, they got drunk/high, or something. . . and just went to town.
If that truck gets produced that way, I think there will be a new "ugliest production car ever" award winner, dethroning the Aztek, or that Fiat van from europe (the Euro guys know which one I'm talking about)
The only question is "can I get it in uncoated steel." The ugliness appeals to the urban warrior in me.
Ford is not going to have EVs until 2023. I'd like one now, the cost is just about right, and I don't think this would stop me from buying a Ford when it becomes available. I'm sure the resale market will be similar to their sedans.
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand.
What would you call a 39% reduction of YoY revenue in the US then?
Did they sell all their cars? Do they have months and months of inventory stacked up somewhere? They are selling everything they produce, its not demand issue, or a production issue. They just cant build enough. .
Read the numbers. Tesla's own quarterly reports contradict your claims.
Tesla's revenue is declining on record unit sales. That's a textbook case of weakening demand. Unprofitable at record deliveries with declining revenue.... The numbers are just awful and the absolute opposite of the unlimited demand growth story they want to sell.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: I think it is important to note, I am not against EVs. . . I'm not necessarily against Tesla, I just don't think they are as great as they are being touted. I work at an auto dealer, and on my route from home to work, I see a half dozen teslas sitting on "lemon" lots, and several of the manufacturer new lots have used Teslas on them, most of them are fairly new models/model years. Seeing the various lots these cars are on suggests to me that there are reasons why people are unhappy with their vehicle and there's probably a "good" reason why they traded at a dealership.
I don't know...I've got the model 3, had it for a year, it is hands down the best car ive ever had...havent had to put a dime into it maintenance wise and I can refill it for $8 for 310 miles....I think its amazing. I know they had problems with the some of the early model S's. Not denying you've seen them, I jus thtink they have come a long way.
The design philosphy behind the cybertruck is bold, no paint, not difficult stamping....producing them should be super easy. In a way I think he desgned a real functional concept and threw it out like a kickstarter campaign to see what happens.....already 200,000 reservations. It will sell.....will it sell millions like an f150.......nope, but i get the feeling it wasn't intended to be. Its bulletproof...literally.....I bet you see police rocking this thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so like I said Cybertruck would be different.....and boy is it. looks like a delorean and and aztec got drunk one night. The specs for the price are amazing though.
I don't see this going over well with the NASCAR crowd, which is the truck market.....but i get the feeling it wasnt meant to. I've never been a truck guy so you guys might have more input.
It's like they borrowed the "worst" lamborghini stylist, hired the person who did the Aztek, they got drunk/high, or something. . . and just went to town.
If that truck gets produced that way, I think there will be a new "ugliest production car ever" award winner, dethroning the Aztek, or that Fiat van from europe (the Euro guys know which one I'm talking about)
The only question is "can I get it in uncoated steel." The ugliness appeals to the urban warrior in me.
Ford is not going to have EVs until 2023. I'd like one now, the cost is just about right, and I don't think this would stop me from buying a Ford when it becomes available. I'm sure the resale market will be similar to their sedans.
It only comes in RAW stainless steel!
A friend in Seattle has one of the higher end ones with auto drive. He uses that to and from work.
The truck looks really strange, like 80s TRASH SciFi movies, not BladeRunner. When they started to damage windows it feels like spoof joke and Musk now will show REAL truck...
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand.
What would you call a 39% reduction of YoY revenue in the US then?
Did they sell all their cars? Do they have months and months of inventory stacked up somewhere? They are selling everything they produce, its not demand issue, or a production issue. They just cant build enough. .
Read the numbers. Tesla's own quarterly reports contradict your claims.
Tesla's revenue is declining on record unit sales. That's a textbook case of weakening demand. Unprofitable at record deliveries with declining revenue.... The numbers are just awful and the absolute opposite of the unlimited demand growth story they want to sell.
But if you look at the data revenue per car is down because they are selling more of the economy priced cars. Its not that they are having problems selling everything they make. They are just selling less profitable cars. The new build architecture on the 3 and y are supposed to cut costs dramatically, some say they will be at 20% profit per car....which is unheard of.
Tesla stock always goes down after a reveal for some reason. Dropped pretty harsh after the Y reveal..... Im kind of surprised its not down more.....that truck is..... well, unorthodox is being kind.
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Freakazoitt wrote: The truck looks really strange, like 80s TRASH SciFi movies, not BladeRunner. When they started to damage windows it feels like spoof joke and Musk now will show REAL truck...
Tesla reveal are always poorly done....I remember after the Y reveal....asking why they didnt show a bunch of features. That glass thing was not good, you would have thought they would have tried that out first.
What happened? The previous Tesslas had pretty cool body styles. This reminds me of the first boxcars the kids made for soapbox rallies.
It doesn't appear to have actual bumpers. Who is the target audience for this?
Motortrend has actually had this car for awhile and goes into great depth about the design philosophy. Its a very interesting read...i think I posted it already. The design is completely utilitarian and made to be rugged but build using no complex stampings so production will be cheap, fast and easy. Who the audience is........i guess people who value the specs of a utilitarian vehicle over looks. In comparison the rivian for the same specs will be almost double the cost. That is a huge value dilemma. If you are buying fleet vehicles.....I don't know, do you care what they look like?
I'm odd though, I find appreciation in some ugly cars.....I like VW thinks as swiminvagons. Your average Joe sport truck guy who uses this to haul heavy loads from Walmart is pretty obviously not the target market. Time will tell if this was a good call or not.
Interesting enough, Tesla MUST be using new battery tech in this truck. 3mm stainless steel is heavy, yet it can still go 0-60 in 2.9 seconds and go 500 miles (obviously not at full out speed the whole time), that is some incredible battery tech. Its going to be interesting to see how this thing does.
Frazzled wrote: I don't see how thats utilitarian. It has a fake marble dash board.
Would have been better to go with a Tessla front, and El Camino style rear. The Wife would have loved that.
Imagine this as a Tessla.
Also where are the cupholders?
So the specs are utilitarian, to achieve those specs at that price they cut out every bit of manufacturing complexity they could. No difficult sheet metal stampings, no paint. it hauls 14000 punds and has a 6 and a half foot bed.
I agree on the el camino part. but it would be more expensive.
It doesn't appear to have actual bumpers. Who is the target audience for this?
Just a guess, but the "target" market is soccer moms and other people who think they "need" 4x4, but will NEVER EVER EVER in a million years drive on even so much as a gravel driveway.
And to be somewhat fair of the bumper thing, at least on the front end of things, have you seen the 2020 GM line up? It's a constant parade of ridiculous trucks at my dealership, and they are giant apartment block bricks across the nose. No bumper other than a panel line/piece difference. . . nothing really juts out as a bumper per se.
Freakazoitt wrote: The truck looks really strange, like 80s TRASH SciFi movies, not BladeRunner. When they started to damage windows it feels like spoof joke and Musk now will show REAL truck...
Agreed. It looks like an APC on the set of a b-grade sci-fi movie or TV show. And not one of the "so bad, its good" kind either.
A major issue I think could be the case is its wedge shape. In an accident, either a collision to the front or from the rear, the vehicle has a good angle to wedge itself under other vehicles that aren't small passenger cars.
I also do not believe the claim of it being bullet resistant. Not at that price tag. It takes a lot of $ to armor a car, and it results in an extremely heavy and fuel inefficient vehicle. No way is it bullet resistant at that price tag and claimed performance. Unless Musk is selling it below cost for some reason.
I also do not believe the claim of it being bullet resistant. Not at that price tag. It takes a lot of $ to armor a car, and it results in an extremely heavy and fuel inefficient vehicle. No way is it bullet resistant at that price tag and claimed performance. Unless Musk is selling it below cost for some reason.
Lol. . . Given how strong the unbreakable glass was. . . .
3mm can't be bulletproff. 9mm thick armour is minimal and it doesn't give guaranty. 6mm can protect from explosion fragments and some bullets. And only 15mm armour gives good bullet protection. 3mm is not enough even for pistol bullets. It only gives protection from car crashes, but using frame is more weight-effective way
Freakazoitt wrote:The truck looks really strange, like 80s TRASH SciFi movies, not BladeRunner. When they started to damage windows it feels like spoof joke and Musk now will show REAL truck...
Tesla stock always goes down after a reveal for some reason. Dropped pretty harsh after the Y reveal....
Not specific to Tesla either for what it's worth. The investment strategy for Apple has always been to buy on the rumor, sell on the reveal. I don't know why that is, but it is.
Freakazoitt wrote: 3mm can't be bulletproff. 9mm thick armour is minimal and it doesn't give guaranty. 6mm can protect from explosion fragments and some bullets. And only 15mm armour gives good bullet protection. 3mm is not enough even for pistol bullets. It only gives protection from car crashes, but using frame is more weight-effective way
More importantly is what the metal is made of. And I doubt they used any type of hardened steel that might have a chance.
I absolutely LOVE the new Cybertruck, so much so, I have put a deposit down for it. At the start of the presentation, Musk was so right that every truck has essentially looked the same for the last 70/80 years. I also feel this way about cars generally, they all look so "safe" and boring, trying to not offend and appeal to as many people as possible. I'm not surprised that it has created such a stir, as 'the masses' generally like to cling to what they are familiar with.
Watching some of the snippets online of it driving around and I think it looks fantastic! Minimalism, brutalism, 80's futurism and cyberpunk had a baby and it's Cybertruck. It's an EV that is faster, stronger, bigger and cheaper than anything in it's class. I think it will look amazing in a matt black finish.
With a single motor, maximum tow capacity will be about 7,500 pounds and payload about 3,500 pounds. Mid-level dual-motor Cybertrucks can carry 3,500 pounds in the bed and tow 10,000 pounds. Cybertrucks with the larger, stacked battery and three-motors should be able to tow about 14,000 pounds and haul 3,500 pounds. Notably, both of those figures beat the aluminum-bodied F-150's current maximums of 13,200 and 2,309 pounds.
It probably has cameras hidden in the rear that then feed to a display on the dash for that.
Honestly I think it looks like something someone made with a really cheap set of lego. It's got no refinement to its design; no heart or soul. Even its "space age design" is really rather boring and bland.
I'm sure its loaded with high performance everything, it just looks ugly.
It probably has cameras hidden in the rear that then feed to a display on the dash for that.
Honestly I think it looks like something someone made with a really cheap set of lego. It's got no refinement to its design; no heart or soul. Even its "space age design" is really rather boring and bland.
I'm sure its loaded with high performance everything, it just looks ugly.
I agree, though to be fair it's not like the other Teslas are jaw-dropping in terms of looks and most of the effort with the styling seems to have gone on the interiors rather than exteriors. They're not bad, just a bit dull. The truck, on the other hand, just looks really weird, but not in a good way.
Honestly the more I look at it the more I tihnk its one of those designs that probably looked ok in the artists rendition of it. An example of where drawn styles don't necessarily match up to the same impression in reality.
I also wonder about its overall ruggedness and function. It sounds powerful but I wonder how durable it is and how functional it is going offroad or taking any kind of abuse during use. Sometimes really simple tech might appear crude, but your reflective side mirrors won't get a hissyfit because they got a little wet; or start wobbling or causing odd issues because the battery is getting a bit old.
Heck we've owned cars where the warning lights start to become useless because the main central cable bundle is getting worn every time you open and close the boot.
Freakazoitt wrote: 3mm can't be bulletproff. 9mm thick armour is minimal and it doesn't give guaranty. 6mm can protect from explosion fragments and some bullets. And only 15mm armour gives good bullet protection. 3mm is not enough even for pistol bullets. It only gives protection from car crashes, but using frame is more weight-effective way
Well they showed it get shot by 3 9mm rounds and it didnt scratch it, the body is made of 3mm Ultra-Hard 30X Cold-Rolled stainless-steel. I don't know what it would take to stop a 9mm, but this worked in the video.
"The Tesla Cybertruck's skin will be made of the same stainless steel that is used by sister company SpaceX for its coming Starship spacecraft. That means 301 stainless steel and, in the Cybertruck, 3mm thickness. Tesla claims this makes it bulletproof to 9mm rounds but does not mention any armor rating certification.
"If fully hardened, 3mm of 301 stainless is more than adequate to stop any 9mm Luger round I can think of, apart from exotic stuff like dedicated armor piercing bullets, which you're not going to find on gun store shelves," said Iain Harrison, editor-in-chief of Recoil as well as a competitive shooter and former British Army captain."
Look I don't think Tesla is actually marketing this as a certified "bulletproof car" they are saying its skin is strong enough to take a bullet. But they did show the shots bouncing off of it during the reveal. I'm sure someone will take it far too literally and claim Elon is a fraud because its not certified bullet proof....so there are the facts
The glass ahhh. the glass. From what I've read.....they performed the test multiple times on the same windows before the reveal....this is apparently the problem. Engineers are saying there really is no such thing as bullet proof glass, but bullet resistant glass and that after multiple test micro fractures built up making the glass fragile......I guess the lesson is use fresh glass for demonstrations.
So far 150k reservations...mostly for the higher tier 3 motor.....so not bad. Now the reservation is only a $100 and is refundable, so they are not hard orders.
I think its bold and its gonna make people make decisions on what is important.
It doesn't appear to have actual bumpers. Who is the target audience for this?
Just a guess, but the "target" market is soccer moms and other people who think they "need" 4x4, but will NEVER EVER EVER in a million years drive on even so much as a gravel driveway.
And to be somewhat fair of the bumper thing, at least on the front end of things, have you seen the 2020 GM line up? It's a constant parade of ridiculous trucks at my dealership, and they are giant apartment block bricks across the nose. No bumper other than a panel line/piece difference. . . nothing really juts out as a bumper per se.
I don't know...if you are a fleet purchaser....do you go with the very functional, cheaper model that costs less to run.....do you care what it looks like? If it attracts alot of attention to your logo.....even better.
If you are the police, I think this could almost be a no brainer. What are police driving now suped up challengers and ford SUVs? I bet for the cybertruck has better specs and "bulletproof" or at least more bullet resistant than what the police are currently driving.
Andrew1975 wrote: OH I love it, I do. I've just been a bit busy to come on here and address all the issues. I just love seeing all the people who said Tesla would be bankrupt or out of business in a couple months seeing that they were wrong. My favorite were the "No demand" people.....yep no demand.
What would you call a 39% reduction of YoY revenue in the US then?
Did they sell all their cars? Do they have months and months of inventory stacked up somewhere? They are selling everything they produce, its not demand issue, or a production issue. They just cant build enough. .
Read the numbers. Tesla's own quarterly reports contradict your claims.
Tesla's revenue is declining on record unit sales. That's a textbook case of weakening demand. Unprofitable at record deliveries with declining revenue.... The numbers are just awful and the absolute opposite of the unlimited demand growth story they want to sell.
But if you look at the data revenue per car is down because they are selling more of the economy priced cars. Its not that they are having problems selling everything they make. They are just selling less profitable cars. The new build architecture on the 3 and y are supposed to cut costs dramatically, some say they will be at 20% profit per car....which is unheard of.
Tesla reports 1.6 billion of finished goods. Even accounting for a bit of solar equipment that's some 40k cars there.
So no, they don't sell all they make. Otherwise they wouldn't have dramatically reduced prices all along 2019.
Is 40k cars a lot of inventory for a global company to have in stock or transit? Many of the legacy car makes have six months of backstock sitting in lots, not even in dealers lots yet. I'm not sure if you can find numbers for who has what percentage of stock sitting in lots, but I'd bet Teslas by percentage is very low. Probably mostly Xs and Ss. People are waiting for them to get upgrades.
When I looked it up, there were lots of articles about how worried the legacy automakers are about the amount of inventory they are sitting on.
And lets not pretend that Tesla is the only company that changes and drops pricing on cars. Trying to buy a car the traditional always feels like you are haggling at a bazaar, and you know in a month there is going to be some new rebate, or incentive. Legacy car makers change the pricing on their cars all the time.
This is one of those remarks I don't understand. "Tesla has a problem" Not really, not compared to what everyone else is doing. Why point these things out like they are exclusively issues for Tesla?
Andrew1975 wrote: Is 40k cars a lot of inventory for a global company to have in stock or transit? Many of the legacy car makes have six months of backstock sitting in lots, not even in dealers lots yet.
It is a lot because, for starters, they only make 3 models with very limited trim options.
And of course, because no other manufacturer out there claims to be supply constrained.
Andrew1975 wrote: Is 40k cars a lot of inventory for a global company to have in stock or transit? Many of the legacy car makes have six months of backstock sitting in lots, not even in dealers lots yet.
It is a lot because, for starters, they only make 3 models with very limited trim options.
And of course, because no other manufacturer out there claims to be supply constrained.
So, that claim is demonstrably BS.
Ha, lets look at it 40k cars to put it in perspective. Even if that was stock only in the US that on average 800 cars per state unsold, thats 267 of each car on average. On average each state has what 5 major cities, thats 54 of each car per metro area. Break it down further by trim level as each tesla has at least 3 trim levels or more and we have 18 of each car per trim level......yep thats a ton. I can go down the street to any of the dealerships in my area and I most likely find more than that in my podunk nothing of a city (Sharon PA) And again thats if all 40k are in just the US. Thats nothing.
in q2 The company delivered 95,200 vehicles, producing 87,048 cars.
Every quarter since q3 2018 tesla has been hovering just below 100k cars sold. So 40K cars represents less than a one month supply. Other manufacturers are sitting on 3 to six months of supplies. How long does it take to get a product from factory to customer?
Andrew1975 wrote: Is 40k cars a lot of inventory for a global company to have in stock or transit? Many of the legacy car makes have six months of backstock sitting in lots, not even in dealers lots yet.
It is a lot because, for starters, they only make 3 models with very limited trim options.
And of course, because no other manufacturer out there claims to be supply constrained.
So, that claim is demonstrably BS.
Ha, lets look at it 40k cars to put it in perspective.
BYD, a Chinese manufacturer which makes both electric and ICE cars, with a similar yearly production of 300-somethingK but several more models and substantially more engine options has less than those units in stock (or at least used to, I don't have data for the last quarters and the Chinese market has been rough)
The perspective is Tesla doesn't sell all they make, simple as that.
You can find new Teslas for sale which were manufactured in early '19, that Tesla can't find buyers for despite selling them for substantially less that their price last year.
Andrew1975 wrote: Is 40k cars a lot of inventory for a global company to have in stock or transit? Many of the legacy car makes have six months of backstock sitting in lots, not even in dealers lots yet.
It is a lot because, for starters, they only make 3 models with very limited trim options.
And of course, because no other manufacturer out there claims to be supply constrained.
So, that claim is demonstrably BS.
Ha, lets look at it 40k cars to put it in perspective.
BYD, a Chinese manufacturer which makes both electric and ICE cars, with a similar yearly production of 300-somethingK but several more models and substantially more engine options has less than those units in stock (or at least used to, I don't have data for the last quarters and the Chinese market has been rough)
The perspective is Tesla doesn't sell all they make, simple as that.
You can find new Teslas for sale which were manufactured in early '19, that Tesla can't find buyers for despite selling them for substantially less that their price last year.
Yes please I would like to see some data. please account for vehicles in shipment and freight containers as I'm not if they ship their products around the world. I mean i just showed you a quarter where Tesla actually sold more cars than it produces...so I would really enjoy seeing some actual supported data.
I'm not sure exactly what older cars you are talking about.....I was able to get a showroom car with 2800 miles on it, they dropped 7800 off the price. Is this what you are talking about? Or are you talking exclusively about model X and S...which make up a very small percentage of what Tesla sells anymore. The demand for x and s are not that high people don't want the older none Raven versions. The Model 3 however sells as fast as they can make them.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
So Tesla has stepped up and asked Ford to do the competition and Ford has been absolutely silent.....so OPPPS on Ford. They need to back up the talk or shut up. Sounds like a Ford exec bit off more than he can chew.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
Come on, surely the Tesla fanboys won't selectively ignore data...
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
So Tesla has stepped up and asked Ford to do the competition and Ford has been absolutely silent.....so OPPPS on Ford. They need to back up the talk or shut up. Sounds like a Ford exec bit off more than he can chew.
What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
So Tesla has stepped up and asked Ford to do the competition and Ford has been absolutely silent.....so OPPPS on Ford. They need to back up the talk or shut up. Sounds like a Ford exec bit off more than he can chew.
Here's how Ford competes: show Tesla it's income statement and say "companies that made a profit last year, raise their hand."
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Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
So Tesla has stepped up and asked Ford to do the competition and Ford has been absolutely silent.....so OPPPS on Ford. They need to back up the talk or shut up. Sounds like a Ford exec bit off more than he can chew.
Here's how Ford competes: show Tesla it's income statement and say "companies that made a profit last year, raise their hand."
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market.
Humvee?
nope Humvees max out around 10,000 pounds for towing.
Meh, Tesla is in growth stage, they just built a couple of factories this year. We could play this game all day
Who didn't shut down a factory this year?
Who still makes sedans? (Ford has publicly stated they can not compete with the accord or camry, they will no longer make sedans)
Who outsold The honda accord or Toyota Camry this year? (no telsa did not outsell Honda civic or Toyota Camery in total.....but in California the largest automobile market in the US they did!)
Who released and marketed and advertised an EV and got 15,000 reservations total?
Who released with no marketing or advertising an EV and got 250,000 reservation in a week?
Ensis Ferrae wrote: We really only need look at the number of delivered vehicles to see the winners here.
Shhhh, only certain metrics are allowed. The Ford pull was a one sided contest set up specifically to fluff the Tesla, it's why other large trucks aren't even being challenged in this.
Just Tony wrote: https://finance.yahoo.com/video/cybertruck-faced-off-ford-f-183338252.html
Ooooops.
That won't affect the fanbois at all. . . . And at any rate, doesn't Ram currently boast about having "best in class" towing/torque/horsepower and all that? . . funny how Tesla doesn't touch them.
So Tesla has stepped up and asked Ford to do the competition and Ford has been absolutely silent.....so OPPPS on Ford. They need to back up the talk or shut up. Sounds like a Ford exec bit off more than he can chew.
Here's how Ford competes: show Tesla it's income statement and say "companies that made a profit last year, raise their hand."
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market.
Humvee?
nope Humvees max out around 10,000 pounds for towing.
Meh, Tesla is in growth stage, they just built a couple of factories this year. We could play this game all day
Who didn't shut down a factory this year?
Who still makes sedans? (Ford has publicly stated they can not compete with the accord or camry, they will no longer make sedans)
Who outsold The honda accord or Toyota Camry this year? (no telsa did not outsell Honda civic or Toyota Camery in total.....but in California the largest automobile market in the US they did!)
Who released and marketed and advertised an EV and got 15,000 reservations total?
Who released with no marketing or advertising an EV and got 250,000 reservation in a week?
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
All of what you say is true. . . but one would think that if Tesla actually wanted to be remotely taken seriously, they would've chosen a better example than a stripped down base model that only has 2WD, and the smallest engine offered by the company.
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
All of what you say is true. . . but one would think that if Tesla actually wanted to be remotely taken seriously, they would've chosen a better example than a stripped down base model that only has 2WD, and the smallest engine offered by the company.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
All of what you say is true. . . but one would think that if Tesla actually wanted to be remotely taken seriously, they would've chosen a better example than a stripped down base model that only has 2WD, and the smallest engine offered by the company.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
I think the type of person that buys one is the type of person that would scream if you dropped masonry blocks into its bed.
EDIT: Your fanboyism is making me want to trash them.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
When the 6.7L Turbo-Diesel engine is under the hood of the 2018 Ford Super Duty F-350 SRW its maximum towing capacity with 4WD or 2WD and either the 3.31 or 3.55 axle ratio is 18,000 pounds and its max payload rating is 4,710 pounds when equipped with 4WD.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
When the 6.7L Turbo-Diesel engine is under the hood of the 2018 Ford Super Duty F-350 SRW its maximum towing capacity with 4WD or 2WD and either the 3.31 or 3.55 axle ratio is 18,000 pounds and its max payload rating is 4,710 pounds when equipped with 4WD.
in what world is 18,000 almost twice 14,000. and again in order to do that it must be equipped with the with the dual rear wheels....as I said "Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?"
also in order to get the 6.7 turbodeisel.....you are STARTING at $83,600. Far above even the most expensive Tesla Truck.
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
All of what you say is true. . . but one would think that if Tesla actually wanted to be remotely taken seriously, they would've chosen a better example than a stripped down base model that only has 2WD, and the smallest engine offered by the company.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
I think the type of person that buys one is the type of person that would scream if you dropped masonry blocks into its bed.
EDIT: Your fanboyism is making me want to trash them.
Most people who drive an f150 or any truck would scream if you dropped masonry blocks in the bed. The 3mm stainless stainless steel bed of the Tesla truck laughs at your masonry blocks by the way, or sledgehammers...pretty much whatever you want to throw in it.
The major issues i see with towing large loads with the Tesla truck could be range. Every truck loses range when towing heavy loads, but over long distances it will be easier to find a diesel station, also I don't know how accomodating most tesla chargers are to trucks towing a long load.....I've not seen one that would really accommodate a giant trailer.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
When the 6.7L Turbo-Diesel engine is under the hood of the 2018 Ford Super Duty F-350 SRW its maximum towing capacity with 4WD or 2WD and either the 3.31 or 3.55 axle ratio is 18,000 pounds and its max payload rating is 4,710 pounds when equipped with 4WD.
in what world is 18,000 almost twice 14,000. and again in order to do that it must be equipped with the with the dual rear wheels....as I said "Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?" also in order to get the 6.7 turbodeisel.....you are STARTING at $83,600. Far above even the most expensive Tesla Truck.
No, My link was very specifically to the SINGLE REAR WHEEL F350. That would be what the SRW in the link stands for. And at https://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/cybertruck/2021/tesla-cybertruck-electric-pickup-photos-info/ I see the towing capacity of the Tesla listed at "With a single motor, maximum tow capacity will be about 7,500 pounds and payload about 3,500 pounds. Mid-level dual-motor Cybertrucks can carry 3,500 pounds in the bed and tow 10,000 pounds. Cybertrucks with the larger, stacked battery and three-motors should be able to tow about 14,000 pounds and haul 3,500 pounds. " I used the mid range of 10k pounds when I said almost twice. I figured if I couldn't max out the Ford and go the DRW route, why should I max out the Tesla?
As for price? Did I mention the cost? No, I disputed your statement that no SRW truck could out tow a Tesla. You are wrong. Move the goal posts all you want. The SRW F350 out tows the even the maxed out Tesla by 2 tons.
Interestingly enough, I have a DRW, not because of added towing capacity, but because the DRW gives a lot more stability when towing. Love to see the Tesla with a 30ft goose neck flat trailer with 250 hay bales stacked on it. The shorter and narrower wheel base is gonna make towing that load a bitch, and weight has nothing to do with it. My F350 towed that easily two weekends ago.
Interestingly enough, I have a DRW, not because of added towing capacity, but because the DRW gives a lot more stability when towing. Love to see the Tesla with a 30ft goose neck flat trailer with 250 hay bales stacked on it. The shorter and narrower wheel base is gonna make towing that load a bitch, and weight has nothing to do with it. My F350 towed that easily two weekends ago.
Face it, no one who is going to be towing hay bales and other long trailers around is going to be doing it with a Tesla. . . . But at the same time, you or I will never be heard by the Tesla fanbois
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
When the 6.7L Turbo-Diesel engine is under the hood of the 2018 Ford Super Duty F-350 SRW its maximum towing capacity with 4WD or 2WD and either the 3.31 or 3.55 axle ratio is 18,000 pounds and its max payload rating is 4,710 pounds when equipped with 4WD.
in what world is 18,000 almost twice 14,000. and again in order to do that it must be equipped with the with the dual rear wheels....as I said "Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?"
also in order to get the 6.7 turbodeisel.....you are STARTING at $83,600. Far above even the most expensive Tesla Truck.
Andrew1975 wrote: What data am I missing. Ford called Teslas test unfair....Tesla offered Ford any test they want.....Ford went silent. Sounds like you are missing something.
The Tesla Cybetruck will also out tow any truck with 4 wheels on the market. The most powerful 4 wheel truck right now I believe is the f-150 at around 13,000 pounds. Cybertruck is 14,000 pounds. There are trucks that can tow more....but they all require duallies to accomplish it.
Engineering Explained did an interesting video on the Tesla tow which shows that all it really proves is which truck is heavier. They break down the maths behind it in quite a bit of detail. I mean, it should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that this is just a publicity stunt, exactly like the one with the F-150 pulling 1,000,000 of railway cargo containers. It's a meaningless PR stunt along the lines of Sony saying the PS2 would let us jack into the Matrix (or was that the PS3?).
All of what you say is true. . . but one would think that if Tesla actually wanted to be remotely taken seriously, they would've chosen a better example than a stripped down base model that only has 2WD, and the smallest engine offered by the company.
Publicity stunts work...shocking. I think it was brilliant. Tesla got ford to mouth off, then back down. Tesla said bring it on, I'm sure they will take on any takers. The reason they chose the f150 is its the best selling truck in the US. Man you haters are hilarious.
Do any of you actually think any truck besides a dually will be able to out pull the Tesla?
I think the type of person that buys one is the type of person that would scream if you dropped masonry blocks into its bed.
EDIT: Your fanboyism is making me want to trash them.
Most people who drive an f150 or any truck would scream if you dropped masonry blocks in the bed. The 3mm stainless stainless steel bed of the Tesla truck laughs at your masonry blocks by the way, or sledgehammers...pretty much whatever you want to throw in it.
The major issues i see with towing large loads with the Tesla truck could be range. Every truck loses range when towing heavy loads, but over long distances it will be easier to find a diesel station, also I don't know how accomodating most tesla chargers are to trucks towing a long load.....I've not seen one that would really accommodate a giant trailer.
Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
I'm not a fan of EVs. Most of the pure electrics that have been hyped and released into the mass market have been busts. Tesla has been the main exception to this.
And while I'm supportive of Elon Musk's ventures in the commercialization of space and space exploration, I'm not sold on his cars and trucks. It will be decades before self driving becomes a thing, and his electric vehicles have a tendency to burst into flames from battery fires. Even when cold, not charging, and at rest. Tesla defenders will point out the fires that sometimes happens in both hybrids and ICE vehicles. But when looked at proportionally, the black mark goes to the Tesla. And the company isn't fessing up that there might be a problem with their cars and SUVs (which are made in the People's Republic of China, by the way).
Add to that, there has been one death attributed to the computer-controlled, automated crap on higher end Teslas (a man in the United States was killed by his car's automatic doors).
When it comes to electric powered cars, hybrids are the best compromise right now, in terms of safety, practicality, and costs.
Either way, I'll stick with my gas burning cars and SUVs for the time being. I'm getting old and set in my ways.
When it comes to electric powered cars, hybrids are the best compromise right now, in terms of safety, practicality, and costs.
While I don't want to get too much into the other parts of your post (I think we've long since passed the point of reasonable debate about Tesla thanks to a certain poster's attitude) I do want to say that the above is not entirely accurate. Hybrids are certainly more practical. Not sure about safer, unless you're talking about Teslas, as every other EV, as far as I can tell, has had a vanishingly small number of battery-related safety issues. Hybrids aren't cheaper though. We looked into this when we were looking at getting an EV and hybrids are in this weird place where they're more expensive than ICE cars (not quite on the same level as EVs. though) and also have the running costs associated with both. We weren't 100% decided on getting an EV, hybrid or regular ICE car but once we started looking seriously the very first option we discounted was a hybrid.
That's what I am seeing.
Hybrids have both sets of parts to go wrong. Batteries add weight and complexity, while only adding a bit of benefit.
The pros do not weigh enough to balance the cons, for me at the moment.
It depends on how much you drive. For me, when I bought my Honda Insight this year, I ran the numbers. In under five years I will save the difference in price between the Insight and the Civic in savings on gas. But then, I drive 15000-20000 miles a year.
Every quarter since q3 2018 tesla has been hovering just below 100k cars sold. So 40K cars represents less than a one month supply. Other manufacturers are sitting on 3 to six months of supplies. How long does it take to get a product from factory to customer?
Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
And that makes the data on towing inaccurate?
The whole Tesalas catching on fire thing is overplayed. Does it happen, sure. Does it happen more than Ice cars, NO.
Hybrids have all the problems of both cars. The main one being that they have the thousands of extra moving parts that break in an Ice Engine.
Every quarter since q3 2018 tesla has been hovering just below 100k cars sold. So 40K cars represents less than a one month supply. Other manufacturers are sitting on 3 to six months of supplies. How long does it take to get a product from factory to customer?
BMW has 71, but other multinational groups like Renault or Subaru have 52.
We're talking groups with significantly more models, trims and operations in more countries than Tesla.
Your data is accurate....what you are forgetting is that Classic manufacturers don't sell to buyers, they sell to franchised dealerships. Which means inventory does not sit on the manufacturers sheets sheets but the dealers. Which means FCA is sitting on 44 days of inventory, while dealers are sitting on months of inventory.
Tesla sells directly to customers meaning inventory sits on their sheets until the car is actually delivered to the customer. That's really a huge difference.
I'm not a fan of EVs. Most of the pure electrics that have been hyped and released into the mass market have been busts. Tesla has been the main exception to this.
And while I'm supportive of Elon Musk's ventures in the commercialization of space and space exploration, I'm not sold on his cars and trucks. It will be decades before self driving becomes a thing, and his electric vehicles have a tendency to burst into flames from battery fires. Even when cold, not charging, and at rest. Tesla defenders will point out the fires that sometimes happens in both hybrids and ICE vehicles. But when looked at proportionally, the black mark goes to the Tesla. And the company isn't fessing up that there might be a problem with their cars and SUVs (which are made in the People's Republic of China, by the way).
Add to that, there has been one death attributed to the computer-controlled, automated crap on higher end Teslas (a man in the United States was killed by his car's automatic doors).
When it comes to electric powered cars, hybrids are the best compromise right now, in terms of safety, practicality, and costs.
Either way, I'll stick with my gas burning cars and SUVs for the time being. I'm getting old and set in my ways.
Do you even know how many Teslas have caught fire?
That’s only true for the US. Whilst most dealers do hold inventory, mostly of the best selling cheap models, they don’t hold the vast number that the US do. My understanding is that US customers expect to walk in to a dealership and walk away with a new car. In the rest of the world, unless you want one of a tiny handful of specifications, you have to wait weeks or months for a car to be built and shipped. Sometimes from the manufacturers national stock, sometimes from the factory.
Andrew1975 wrote: Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
And that makes the data on towing inaccurate?
Your data on towing may be accurate (may, because until production Tesla trucks hit the road we don't really know), but your opinion on towing is not. What makes your opinion on towing inaccurate is the fact you believe nothing but a dual rear wheel gad/diesel can out tow a Tesla, and I easily proved you wrong.
Every quarter since q3 2018 tesla has been hovering just below 100k cars sold. So 40K cars represents less than a one month supply. Other manufacturers are sitting on 3 to six months of supplies. How long does it take to get a product from factory to customer?
BMW has 71, but other multinational groups like Renault or Subaru have 52.
We're talking groups with significantly more models, trims and operations in more countries than Tesla.
Your data is accurate....what you are forgetting is that Classic manufacturers don't sell to buyers, they sell to franchised dealerships. Which means inventory does not sit on the manufacturers sheets sheets but the dealers. Which means FCA is sitting on 44 days of inventory, while dealers are sitting on months of inventory.
Tesla sells directly to customers meaning inventory sits on their sheets until the car is actually delivered to the customer. That's really a huge difference.
Why does Tesla have over a billion $ in accounts receivable then?
By default they should have close to 0.
But the question is moot, Tesla sells cars to their customers, whoever they are, FCA, Renault, etc. sell cars to their customers, whoever they are. FCA, Renault, Suzuki, etc. inventory days are lower.
Steve steveson wrote: That’s only true for the US. Whilst most dealers do hold inventory, mostly of the best selling cheap models, they don’t hold the vast number that the US do. My understanding is that US customers expect to walk in to a dealership and walk away with a new car. In the rest of the world, unless you want one of a tiny handful of specifications, you have to wait weeks or months for a car to be built and shipped. Sometimes from the manufacturers national stock, sometimes from the factory.
Andrew1975 wrote: Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
And that makes the data on towing inaccurate?
Your data on towing may be accurate (may, because until production Tesla trucks hit the road we don't really know), but your opinion on towing is not. What makes your opinion on towing inaccurate is the fact you believe nothing but a dual rear wheel gad/diesel can out tow a Tesla, and I easily proved you wrong.
No you didn't, which truck that didn't have a dual rear set up was out towing the Tesla?
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Steve steveson wrote: That’s only true for the US. Whilst most dealers do hold inventory, mostly of the best selling cheap models, they don’t hold the vast number that the US do. My understanding is that US customers expect to walk in to a dealership and walk away with a new car. In the rest of the world, unless you want one of a tiny handful of specifications, you have to wait weeks or months for a car to be built and shipped. Sometimes from the manufacturers national stock, sometimes from the factory.
So, let me get this straight, the huge amount of cars sitting in US lots that are sold to dealerships don't count at all......I'm sorry but the article I posted clearly shows it does. Those cars are no longer manufacturer inventory, they are dealer inventory, sold to dealerships, not customers. I've also seen huge new car lots in other countries.
https://electrek.co/2019/04/20/tesla-model-3-new-inventory-immediate-delivery/ Hmm, I didn't see any old vin numbers when I was looking. Obviously Tesla must be up to something and not showing all their stock for sale. By your argument there has to be hundreds of thousands of unsold stock from early in the year...amybe even last year just sitting around somewhere.....but where is it?
https://www.tesla.com/inventory/new/m3 Maybe you can find the huge inventory glut here.....look in your area...or any area and see where they have inventory sitting around.
Maybe its here https://teslainventory.teslastats.no/........nope didn't see it there either. Oh, I know its Tesla so it must all be on fire somewhere.......seriously you guys are reaching so hard, its laughable.
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-tesla-model-3-cars-are-sitting-in-california-parking-lots-2018-7 oh, i found some huge lots of telsas........already sold, heading for ships to be delivered to customers. Still on their sheets until customers actually pick them up......i wonder how long it takes to get those from production to customer hands? You have to produce them, stock them, wait until you have enough to put on the ship, move them to the docks, load them on the ship, and how long is the journey, probably a while to ship them to China. If they were smart they would build a factory in China and one in Europe somewhere to speed up deliveries......oh wait they did...and they are.
By the way which one of you was predicting the chinese factory would never get built, would take years, would bankrupt Tesla and would eventually fall back into the hands of China?
Oh, big bummer, a car caught on fire at Tesla supercharger and burns down much of the station. Talk about Irony, don't i feel like a silly goose, here I was saying that Teslas don't catch on fire much and here we have a car catching on fire and taking out the whole station. Its super ironic because the car was an .......ICE car. I guess now you guys will switch the narrative to how unsafe supercharger stations are...I mean they apparently light ICE cars on fire. AM I RIGHT?https://electrek.co/2019/12/10/tesla-supercharger-station-destroyed-car-engine-fire/
Andrew1975 wrote: Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
And that makes the data on towing inaccurate?
Your data on towing may be accurate (may, because until production Tesla trucks hit the road we don't really know), but your opinion on towing is not. What makes your opinion on towing inaccurate is the fact you believe nothing but a dual rear wheel gad/diesel can out tow a Tesla, and I easily proved you wrong.
No you didn't, which truck that didn't have a dual rear set up was out towing the Tesla?
Now you're being dishonest. I very clearly linked to a SRW F350. And then I re-pointed it out when you claimed I showed a DRW. It out towed the high end Tesla by a couple of tons.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Heck, the SRW Ram 3500 diesel can tow 17,900 pounds.
Andrew1975 wrote: Did you NOT see that the author to your vaunted Dodge vs Tesla article is a freaking TESLA SHAREHOLDER?!?!?!?!? Starting to see a trend with your "unbiased" sources...
And that makes the data on towing inaccurate?
Your data on towing may be accurate (may, because until production Tesla trucks hit the road we don't really know), but your opinion on towing is not. What makes your opinion on towing inaccurate is the fact you believe nothing but a dual rear wheel gad/diesel can out tow a Tesla, and I easily proved you wrong.
No you didn't, which truck that didn't have a dual rear set up was out towing the Tesla?
Now you're being dishonest. I very clearly linked to a SRW F350. And then I re-pointed it out when you claimed I showed a DRW. It out towed the high end Tesla by a couple of tons.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Heck, the SRW Ram 3500 diesel can tow 17,900 pounds.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Heck, the reality is the high end Tesla only our tows low and mid level Fords and Dodges.
Yes but again, im not seeing where it says if these have 6 wheels or not, every truck that I have looked up can only do this when you have 2 axels and six wheels. They need the extra traction to tow the huge weights.
(Edit...ok I see your charts. took me a minute to figure out how to read them.)
But lets say you are correct. Whats the cost of these beasts, how much will they cost after 5 years.....I bet they are not competitive at all there. Not to mention other areas like 0-60 times.
The bar that is being set that EVs have to beat every single competitor at every single spec is a pretty high bar to reach. 14,000 pound towing is a very respectable number especially considering the other benefits of the truck. Its not a weak truck by any means.
And in other news Porsche Tycant get an EPA official rating of 201 miles per charge! Thats the number they have to put on the sticker! Yep its a Tesla killer. Tesla model s at about half the cost gets almost twice the range at 373 miles per charge while also giving you better access to charging! This is probably the most forgiving post i could find https://jalopnik.com/the-porsche-taycan-turbos-epa-range-of-201-miles-is-so-1840366884
Could you imagine if Tesla promised 300 miles of charging and only delivered 201......the knives would be out! Elon would be labeled a con artist.
Most EVS are good in many ways, but there is no doubt that Teslas are better and pushing the technology farther while giving customers better value, performance and utility for their money.
The bar that is being set that EVs have to beat every single competitor at every single spec is a pretty high bar to reach. 14,000 pound towing is a very respectable number especially considering the other benefits of the truck. Its not a weak truck by any means.
The bar YOU set was 'you need a DRW to out tow a Tesla.'.
I've shown you are very wrong. You can now move the bar anywhere you want.
Shame I don't have a spare 2.2 million quid really.
Ohh, I cant wait for it to develop an oil leak!!!
Bad british car jokes aside, that does look like it would be fun to drive, and it will probably be better than the original Lotus EV released to the market
The bar that is being set that EVs have to beat every single competitor at every single spec is a pretty high bar to reach. 14,000 pound towing is a very respectable number especially considering the other benefits of the truck. Its not a weak truck by any means.
The bar YOU set was 'you need a DRW to out tow a Tesla.'.
I've shown you are very wrong. You can now move the bar anywhere you want.
Fine, so how much does it cost to out tow a Tesla cybertruck?
I model x which is a mini van can outow most ice trucks. I can post a video of you need it.
Dude, serious question: why? Why do you seem to care so much about telling us all how great Tesla are doing, on a wargaming forum, in such a way that nobody who's even still reading this thread likely cares what you're saying now anyway because you're approaching cartoon villain levels of dedication to your singular cause? This was an interesting and useful thread for a little while, until we ended up with the pro-Tesla banner-waving that drowned out everything else and now we're getting weekly updates about Tesla's business dealings for some reason. You like Tesla, we get it. Not everyone does and it's not your job to act as their PR on this forum, unless they have a very, very overstaffed marketing department. As a general rule of thumb, if every post you're going to make in a particular thread is so single-minded that people don't need to actually read the contents to know the substance of it you're probably not helpfully contributing.
Speaking of helpfully contributing, I was thinking about using this thread to let people know about my experiences of driving an electric car form the POV of someone who's never owned one before and is essentially an informed newbie. Seems that might not be so useful now this thread has been hijacked and turned into Tesla News.
Dude, serious question: why? Why do you seem to care so much about telling us all how great Tesla are doing, on a wargaming forum, in such a way that nobody who's even still reading this thread likely cares what you're saying now anyway because you're approaching cartoon villain levels of dedication to your singular cause? This was an interesting and useful thread for a little while, until we ended up with the pro-Tesla banner-waving that drowned out everything else and now we're getting weekly updates about Tesla's business dealings for some reason. You like Tesla, we get it. Not everyone does and it's not your job to act as their PR on this forum, unless they have a very, very overstaffed marketing department. As a general rule of thumb, if every post you're going to make in a particular thread is so single-minded that people don't need to actually read the contents to know the substance of it you're probably not helpfully contributing.
Speaking of helpfully contributing, I was thinking about using this thread to let people know about my experiences of driving an electric car form the POV of someone who's never owned one before and is essentially an informed newbie. Seems that might not be so useful now this thread has been hijacked and turned into Tesla News.
Why? Because he has spent £70k or whatever it is on a Tesla and wants to vindicate his decision. You are not going to be able to tell someone who has spent that amount of cash on a car that they are wrong. No-one likes to be told that they have bought a lemon, whether it's true or not.
Speaking of helpfully contributing, I was thinking about using this thread to let people know about my experiences of driving an electric car form the POV of someone who's never owned one before and is essentially an informed newbie. Seems that might not be so useful now this thread has been hijacked and turned into Tesla News.
Electric vehicle entrepreneur Henrik Fisker has unveiled his first purportedly mass-market EV, an SUV called the Fisker Ocean, ahead of the 2020 Consumer Electronics show. Starting at $37,500, Fisker says the electric SUV will get between 250 and 300 miles per charge, and it will feature solar panels on the roof. Fisker and his eponymous company, Fisker Inc., plan to put the Ocean on the road sometime around the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022.
Fisker started Fisker Inc. in 2016, three years after his first company — Fisker Automotive — went bankrupt, thanks to the failure of his hybrid sports car known as Karma. The Karma was ultimately revived by a Chinese company after Fisker Automotive’s bankruptcy auction; that company is now called Karma Automotive, and the car is called the Revero. (Got all that?) Known for designing icons like the Aston Martin DB9 and the BMW Z8, as well as a brief stint at Tesla, Fisker originally intended to start his new company with an all-electric sports car known as the EMotion, which he unveiled at CES in 2018. But Fisker announced he was suspending the project in favor of the Ocean in March 2019.
Fisker Inc. has spent much of the time since then teasing more information about its electric SUV, like when it announced in November that it plans to lease the Ocean starting at $379 a month with no long-term contract, or when it said its EVs will be able to use Volkswagen’s Electrify America charging network. But Fisker himself showed off the first Ocean prototype in the flesh on Sunday at an event in Los Angeles, California, and the company will have it on display at CES where it plans to share more information about the EV.
"Fisker’s boldly calling it the “world’s most sustainable vehicle”"
Save for the solar roof, the Ocean doesn’t seem to break any SUV conventions. Fisker only released one new image of the prototype on public roads, but from that limited view it appears to have similarities to Volvo’s XC40 in its profile, and Land Rover’s SUVs in its nose, though in more of a Hyundai-level package.
One technical spec Fisker teased on Sunday is that there will be a performance version of the Ocean that can go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 2.9 seconds. He also said there will be multiple powertrain configurations, likely meaning that the base version of the Ocean will come with one electric motor. The company said on Sunday that the base version will also be powered by a battery pack that is approximately 80kWh.
Fisker Inc. also says it plans to develop two other models that will use the Ocean’s technological platform. The startup also teased features like a karaoke mode (which Tesla added to its cars late last year) and a “California mode” where all the windows will roll down at the touch of a button.
I like the idea of a solar roof, I dunno why more EVs haven't done that yet. I read somewhere that solar doesn't charge fast enough... but still, if your car is gonna sit out all day, why not get some free juice?
Solar roofs weren't popular because up until "relatively" recently solar panels were expensive. Now they're not. A major and very legitimate concern with modern cars is building them in a fashion that the car is not immediately total'ed when in an accident because of ultra-expensive components which are difficult to replace. That's not an issue limited to electric cars, of course.
Ever seen those show-cars will cool sloping glass roofs which go from the dash up and halfway across the roof of the car, etc? Looks neat right? Now imagine having a small rock put a hole in your windshield...and suddenly you're paying $5K for a windshield as opposed to $200-300 (or free, depending on your state).
Elbows wrote: Solar roofs weren't popular because up until "relatively" recently solar panels were expensive. Now they're not. A major and very legitimate concern with modern cars is building them in a fashion that the car is not immediately total'ed when in an accident because of ultra-expensive components which are difficult to replace. That's not an issue limited to electric cars, of course.
Ever seen those show-cars will cool sloping glass roofs which go from the dash up and halfway across the roof of the car, etc? Looks neat right? Now imagine having a small rock put a hole in your windshield...and suddenly you're paying $5K for a windshield as opposed to $200-300 (or free, depending on your state).
its cost, but also usability. Solar panels on cars are so small they dont charge very much, and only in direct sun. Solar is improving all the time, but it will be a while before it is really workable for cars. Its also about efficiency, when you add a solar system to a car you are adding weight, considering how much benefit current solar tech provides most people would be better off taking that extra weight in batteries. Not to mention additional maintenance and complexity, regions that don't get much sun, parking garages that dont get sun.....yadda, yadda, yadda and you have a formula that doesnt make sense....yet. Unitl it imporves its basically an expensive and ineffective gimmick. You are better off getting solar at your house and using that to charge.....if its available. Where I live, I have too many trees to power my house with solar, and even if I could I'm not sure how useful it would be as thats where my research ended. I would assume snow, leaves and dirt affect home solar panels, and I have all that in spades.
Many newer production cars, not just show cars have one or two piece panoramic roofs now.
Dude, serious question: why? Why do you seem to care so much about telling us all how great Tesla are doing, on a wargaming forum, in such a way that nobody who's even still reading this thread likely cares what you're saying now anyway because you're approaching cartoon villain levels of dedication to your singular cause? This was an interesting and useful thread for a little while, until we ended up with the pro-Tesla banner-waving that drowned out everything else and now we're getting weekly updates about Tesla's business dealings for some reason. You like Tesla, we get it. Not everyone does and it's not your job to act as their PR on this forum, unless they have a very, very overstaffed marketing department. As a general rule of thumb, if every post you're going to make in a particular thread is so single-minded that people don't need to actually read the contents to know the substance of it you're probably not helpfully contributing.
Speaking of helpfully contributing, I was thinking about using this thread to let people know about my experiences of driving an electric car form the POV of someone who's never owned one before and is essentially an informed newbie. Seems that might not be so useful now this thread has been hijacked and turned into Tesla News.
That's pretty simple really. When I first came on here people listed reasons why electric cars are not good...many of them were valid arguments when you look at EVs with small batteries, low end performance, and poor access to fast charging. Teslas dont have those issues. I would say for the most part EVs are great second cars, but if you want a main car that can be a daily driver and feel comfortable taking long trips without range anxiety, or worrying about the maintenance of the next charging destination....I think your best and really only option right now is a Tesla. I've read a lot of articles about how poorly maintained, unreliable and difficult other charging networks can be, and I'm not saying its terrible, but range anxiety is a real thing, there is nothing like being low on charge and finding that you cant use the charger you plotted because it is not being maintained, it requires a different membership...whatever. Tesla chargers from my research are very well maintained, now sometimes there is a wait on holidays, but new faster chargers are rolling out quite aggressively, more aggressively than the competition.
Of course then came all the Tesla is a fraud company and Tesla is going bankrupt talk....so, I just really responded to that.
But again the biggest point is that for true EV adoption IE replacing ICE cars, EVs in general are not up to the task, they don't outshine ICE cars in most ways....Teslas however do, they have the range, efficiency, fueling, performance, and price to be competitive on every level with new ICE cars. Other car makers are coming along, but I haven't seen one that has as good of a combination. 300 miles minimum charge, large and expanding fast charging network, performance comparable or better than an ICE car. If you can name one I'd be more than happy to look at it.
And how is your EV working out for you by the way? What experiences good or bad have you had with it?
Don't forget the part where you dismiss any legitimate data that isn't from one of your preferred outlets, even going so far as defending a skewed report written by a Tesla shareholder and dismissing the journalistic conflict of interest and credibility of said piece.
Dude, serious question: why? Why do you seem to care so much about telling us all how great Tesla are doing, on a wargaming forum, in such a way that nobody who's even still reading this thread likely cares what you're saying now anyway because you're approaching cartoon villain levels of dedication to your singular cause? This was an interesting and useful thread for a little while, until we ended up with the pro-Tesla banner-waving that drowned out everything else and now we're getting weekly updates about Tesla's business dealings for some reason. You like Tesla, we get it. Not everyone does and it's not your job to act as their PR on this forum, unless they have a very, very overstaffed marketing department. As a general rule of thumb, if every post you're going to make in a particular thread is so single-minded that people don't need to actually read the contents to know the substance of it you're probably not helpfully contributing.
Speaking of helpfully contributing, I was thinking about using this thread to let people know about my experiences of driving an electric car form the POV of someone who's never owned one before and is essentially an informed newbie. Seems that might not be so useful now this thread has been hijacked and turned into Tesla News.
Why? Because he has spent £70k or whatever it is on a Tesla and wants to vindicate his decision. You are not going to be able to tell someone who has spent that amount of cash on a car that they are wrong. No-one likes to be told that they have bought a lemon, whether it's true or not.
Thats not it at all. I know what I got, and I didnt have to pay 70K for it. Thats the thing. I was very skeptical of purchasing an EV, I had gone through all the arguments as I looked at what was available. This one drives like garbage, this one doesnt have range, this one is too small, this one doesnt charge well, this one is known for not having good batteries......it can make you think that EVS are not a solution. My car was the solution. I've had it almost a year and I can say its been awesome. So when I hear people, who quite honestly don't know what they are talking about and are just spreading the same junk stories....yeah, I'm going to tell then they are wrong.
Its like the whole cobolt thing.....the rumor is that EVs use of cobalt makes them worse for the environment than ICE cars......now in production that might be true as the batteries of EVs have cobalt in them and ICE cars don't, this is an absolutely true statement, and its used all the time to beat up EV driver over their Environmentally clean claims.....but whats interesting is this. All oil had sulfur in it, do you know what they use to get the sulfur out...........cobalt! The average ICE car goes through many many times as much cobalt as an EV does in it lifetime.
Ive seen every form of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) expressed in this forum....its the same stuff legacy manufacturers are trying to spread to slow down the implementation of EVs and its true with a lot of other EVs....they don't have the stats to replace ICE cars yet, thats not true with Teslas.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just Tony wrote: Don't forget the part where you dismiss any legitimate data that isn't from one of your preferred outlets, even going so far as defending a skewed report written by a Tesla shareholder and dismissing the journalistic conflict of interest and credibility of said piece.
and which piece was that again that I dismissed.....was it the one written by someones neighbor who is an "expert" in the field, but their paper was never submitted for review and full of typos and inaccuracies? Ypu'll have to remind me, there have been so many garbage articles tossed at me here, that any research at all will show are BS.
was my article this one? It appears to be the one you were going on about. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/12/03/tesla-cybertruck-vs-ram-1500/ Which is essentially a list of car stats? I wasn't aware that partisanship affected publicly available statistics? Can you show where they were wrong? If so, I'll admit it. But if you can't find inaccuracies......then you have to admit it....deal? So go ahead....show me the Skew?
This is the type of crap i've been dealing with the whole topic. Which is what appears to be frustrating the OP, the fact that I actually respond to this garbage.
Necros wrote: I like the idea of a solar roof, I dunno why more EVs haven't done that yet. I read somewhere that solar doesn't charge fast enough... but still, if your car is gonna sit out all day, why not get some free juice?
From what I know about solar panels, they either give a lot of power or none at all. IE: even a small amount of shade on the panels will kill any ability to generate power. So while it sounds like a cool idea to get some free power, realistically most cars get parked in the shade or are shaded for some portion of the day. Which means next to no power generation.
You'd basically have to park your car somewhere with no shade at all to get much use out of the solar cells. This is one reason why solar doesn't work on a lot of homes, especially if you have any trees nearby. It doesn't take much shade to stop a solar panel from generating power.
From what I know about solar panels, they either give a lot of power or none at all. IE: even a small amount of shade on the panels will kill any ability to generate power. So while it sounds like a cool idea to get some free power, realistically most cars get parked in the shade or are shaded for some portion of the day. Which means next to no power generation.
You'd basically have to park your car somewhere with no shade at all to get much use out of the solar cells. This is one reason why solar doesn't work on a lot of homes, especially if you have any trees nearby. It doesn't take much shade to stop a solar panel from generating power.
As I understand things (from people who have recently installed them on their homes), this is no longer really the case. I don't know whether the vehicle mounted solar panels are to the same level as homes/building installed units, but the most recent generations of solar panels are able to still draw power even under indirect sunlight (obviously with degraded collection capacity, if its pouring rain and twilight outside, things arent gonna be getting the solar rays at that point)
So necros, Hows your EV? Do you live somewhere where it gets really cold in the winter? Do you have a home charger if so What Level? Hows it working out for you?
Slipspace, What about you? Hows the Leaf, you happy with it?
As there seems to be some interest, here's a brief summary of my EV experiences so far. I'll probably continue to update this as we use the car more. First a quick recap of some stuff I've already mentioned in this thread.
My wife and I have never owned a car before and decided it was about time to get one. We researched throughout the summer and the key things we were looking for were:
1. Price. It had to be affordable for us up-front. Yes, you save money in the long-run on an EV over an ICE but there's no getting away from the initial cost being quite high
2. Range. We live in the central belt of Scotland, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. We weren't planning any long road trips any further than probably 250 miles. Anything more than that we'd likely fly (if going to London, for example). Still, we wanted something with at least 150 miles of range, ideally. Unfortuantely, as with most things car related, getting reliable info about things like range is difficult and this proved a bit of a sticking point. The vast majority of our journeys would be in the 20-50 mile range
3. Space. We would sometimes need to transport family members and friends and we're planning to start a family ourselves too, so we needed something with a bit of space and luggage capacity.
4. Reliability. We're jumping though a lot of hoops to get on the EV bandwagon and it's also our first car so we needed something we were confident in
So after looking at all the options we narrowed it down to 2 possibilities: the Nissan Leaf and the BMW i3. Why those? Well, the eGolf has pathetic range, the Zoe is too small and the Kona and e-Niro weren't actually available in the UK this summer (orders are backed up until March this year). We considered the Model 3 but, while it was available, the only Model 3s Tesla were selling at that point were the very expensive versions and even those weren't immediately available. Also, we have personal knowledge of 2 different families who have recently bought a Tesla and the process they described was anything but smooth. After test drives we settled on the Leaf because the i3 was ultimately too weird, impractical and expensive - and the BMW dealer was a donkey-cave while the Nissan dealer was genuinely helpful.
We took delivery in October - a bit later than we would have liked. We've now done about 1300 miles and so far are very happy. We have a home charger installed which, other than one glitch where it didn't charge overnight, has been excellent. The car itself has had no issues at all. We've done 1 medium distance trip (about 70 miles each way) and one longer trip of 120 miles each way. This is where we first encountered a couple of quirks with EV ownership. First, in the UK, there are lots of different EV charging networks and each operates a slightly different system for accessing their chargers. Some take a simple debit/credit card payment, others you access using an app and others require a special card from the company. We were vaguely aware of this but it was quite frustrating that you need to know ahead of time which of the various options are open to you at your destination and along your route. This is, frankly, a stupid system as all these chargers should accept debit/credit card payment. We had a bit of an issue on our first trip when we got to the chargers and found out the local council had changed the access policy to require an RFID card rather than app. That sucked. We sorted ourselves out with a slower charger in a supermarket car park while we ate but it was a little annoying all the same. Our second trip of 120 miles each way went much better. We identified a fast charger halfway along the route, stopped for breakfast and a quick electric top-up and then charged in a car park in Newcastle while we met family in the city, then did the same on the way back, stopping for food while charging. Not sure what the situation is like in other countries but I think if the UK government wants EVs to really take off they need to start doing something to make accessing the charging networks easier. We also encountered an interesting practical issue when looking for chargers in car parks, especially multi-storeys. The charging stations are never signposted so you spend your time crawling around the car park, scanning avidly for those charging points. In one car park we drove past them because they were right at the entrance and there was a one-way system in operation so we couldn't technically go back to them (this didn't actually stop us!) As EVs become more common I think practical considerations like displaying where your charging points are located will become more important. Of course, at some point we may have charging points become so common they don't need to be pointed out.
Lessons learned so far: real-world range is heavily affected by driving style and slightly less so by temperature. On our return from the 70-mile trip I was somewhat heavy-footed on the motorway and it had a noticeable drain on the battery. Driving less like a teenager in a Golf GTi on our longer trip saw huge efficiency savings on the battery. That was a bit of an eye-opener, but we're glad we found it out early. I'd say range anxiety has massively decreased in just the few months we've owned the car. In 99% of cases it's never an issue because round trips of 120+ miles are just not something we routinely do and I think this is true for the vast majority of people in the UK. Performance wise I'm also pretty happy. As with all EVs the Leaf accelerates very quickly, especially from a standing start and it's actually quite pleasant to drive. The absolute best thing so far has been 1-pedal driving. I complete pretty much every journey in and around the city without even needing to touch the brakes and driving in heavy, slow-moving traffic is, if not actually relaxing, certainly not an unpleasant experience. We've also easily got into the habit of plugging the car in at home when the battery gets below 70%, so most journeys are done with the charge between 60-100% but we have had the state of charge as low as 8% once. We were literally a mile from home at the time though so not unduly worried.
That's a brief summary so far. I'll keep updating as we get more experience if people are interested. It's easy to pore over all the technical specs, prices and so on but I think most people considering getting an EV are more concerned about the practicalities on a day-to-day basis given how big a change it is from the norm.
The Leaf is what we'll probably get, and I have tried one at work. Cost and charging are the only issues we have so far.
Charging on trips is a later concern. I've been hassling the local councils to pull their fingers out and get some points installed, but they have to dicuss amongst themselves first (and next, and later...).
Andrew1975 wrote: So necros, Hows your EV? Do you live somewhere where it gets really cold in the winter? Do you have a home charger if so What Level? Hows it working out for you?
Slipspace, What about you? Hows the Leaf, you happy with it?
I didn't get an EV. I needed to get a new car back in August, and didn't really have the funds to make an EV happen so I went with a Jeep Compass. It's a 3 year lease, so I'm hoping when it's up there will be more options available. I'm most interested in the VW ID Buzz just on looks alone and I don't think they will be out till next year anyway.
The Leaf is what we'll probably get, and I have tried one at work. Cost and charging are the only issues we have so far.
Charging on trips is a later concern. I've been hassling the local councils to pull their fingers out and get some points installed, but they have to dicuss amongst themselves first (and next, and later...).
How far are you looking to travel, both on average and in more exceptional circumstances? If a home charger is an option you absolutely want to go with that. If it isn't, unless you can charge at work or wherever the car will most often be left, I'm not sure the practicalities of EVs work out so well. If you can charge at home you'll find you basically never have to worry about charging except when you're going on longer distance journeys. After 3 months of ownership we've plugged our Leaf in away from home a grand total of 4 times.
This is a 2nd car, and my wife's is used for bigger journeys.
I'm 15 miles from my main office, but work county-wide. A day's round trip could be >100 miles.
As long as there's a McDs near one of the sites, I should be OK.
I have a drive to park it on, so that should be OK for a charger. How long did it take to get the charger installed? You need a car already to get the goverment grant?
Skinnereal wrote: This is a 2nd car, and my wife's is used for bigger journeys.
I'm 15 miles from my main office, but work county-wide. A day's round trip could be >100 miles.
As long as there's a McDs near one of the sites, I should be OK.
I have a drive to park it on, so that should be OK for a charger. How long did it take to get the charger installed? You need a car already to get the goverment grant?
100 miles is well within the range of the 40kWh Leaf. 130ish is a realistic range provided you're not doing purely motorway driving at speeds above the actual speed limit. Even if you find you're getting a bit tight on range you'd literally need 10 minutes at a rapid charger for a top-up to be safe. There's also a 60kWh Leaf which has longer range but is a bit more expensive and only comes in the highest trim level which, ironically, I think is worse than the mid-level trim we went for.
The government grant is applied at the point of purchase. Be aware, this can lead to some confusion about what you're actually paying for the car as some dealers/websites take the money off the price you see in the showroom and others show the full price before the grant comes off. The charger was installed pretty quickly. Once I was in contact with the installers it took maybe a bit less than two weeks for them to come out and the installation itself took less than a day.
The Leaf is what we'll probably get, and I have tried one at work. Cost and charging are the only issues we have so far.
Charging on trips is a later concern. I've been hassling the local councils to pull their fingers out and get some points installed, but they have to dicuss amongst themselves first (and next, and later...).
How are Nissan to deal with in the UK? Here in the US, it hasn't mattered which region/state/city I've been in, all Nissan dealers have been utter gak to try and deal with.
Honestly, the Nissan dealer we dealt with was amazing. Extremely knowledgeable, helpful throughout the process - which is a major plus due to the slightly more complicated factors involved in buying an EV - and great with communication. Granted, this is all from the buying side of things and we haven't had to deal with any problems yet so I can't say how good they are if something goes wrong or with longer term customer service but so far I've nothing bad to say about the dealer at all.
Eh they also said by 2020 we'd all be using electric cars anyway. I'll believe it when I see it. A 2035ban is one of those things they can talk about for the next 10 years and pose about. A bit like how Germany a few years back was going to go fully green energy only and then stopped because wind and solar can't meed modern industrial and consumer demands for power (at least not without covering so much land in glass and windmills that you've generated another environmental problem).
I can see consumers shifting to electric, especially if the cars are reliable; affordable (which will take time since you need both a new and secondhand market since many can't afford the big costs of a new car and are bumbling around in cheaper secondhand ones); well supported etc....
However farmers, lorries and such are areas where I can see pushback or at least a slower adoption rate. Basically your industrial workers and machines.
I think it also hinges on energy prices for electricity. It's one thing to push people toward another fuel source, but its quite another to push them toward one that might end up costing them more and more. In addition we've not even got round to building Sizewell C so there's questionmarks over if we'll have enough domestic production to meet a massive rise in electrical demand.
Don't get me wrong, I do think that electric is currently looking like the future. Even if it makes cars even harder to fix by a mechanic (heck even now many are just swapping parts not fixing parts); and even if the batteries are loaded with environmentally damaging chemicals and such. I just think that it might not happen by a specific date as smoothly as some might like.
The big problem I see with the electric car targets from most governments is the lack of improvement of infrastructure. I think affordability of the cars themselves will naturally start to improve as they become more common and manufacturers start genuinely competing with one another and the second hand market will continue to grow as EV adoption rises so hopefully those problems will sort themselves out within the next 10 years.
However, infrastructure is going to require more input from governments. In terms of electricity generation countries will need to increase their capacity in line with EV uptake and our ever-expanding cities too. There may be some difficult discussions to be had about where that supply comes from given many government's resistance to nuclear power. The bigger problem I'm seeing, though, is at the local consumer level. The EV charging infrastructure in the UK, for example, is fine...for now. But we're already seeing situations where the 2-4 charging points in an area are in use, leaving vehicles owners in a tough spot. We're also seeing no forward thinking from businesses. I've mentioned it before in this thread, I think, but recently a major shopping centre near my work did a substantial amount of work in their car park but there is still not a single EV charger across the whole site. Similarly at the biggest supermarket near my home, the renovated car park includes no facility to charge.
We're going to need an attitude change across the board to accommodate an increase in EVs. It needs to become commonplace for chargers to be installed every time a new large retail or commercial development is planned and the numbers of those chargers in a given place needs to go up too. We're going to need to have multiple chargers on every floor of a multi-storey, for example, rather than the 6-10 we see at the moment if you're lucky.
I think the problem for businesses is that because there's no government incentive nor mass market appeal yet; the costs are probably high for installing charging points. Plus there's probably considerations toward if its worth adding one now when the technology or connector shapes might change in 3 years time meaning further investment to get "up to standard". So why invest now in something that might not only be hardly ever used, but also outdated.
If you're going to start putting dozens into carparks and the like then its also a major local infrastructure consideration as now it might require new mains powerlines to be installed to supply a suitable level of power.
When it comes to the secondhand market there's one big pitfall as I see it - batteries. Possibly the most expensive part of the car and the one thing you can't operate it without. Whilst the actual car itself will devalue over time, the batteries won't. Plus safety considerations will likely mean that there will be strict limits on how old they can be before they have to be replaced. It's one thing to have a cheap car market, but if the batteries that make it work are still high priced then it might price people out.
I can see battery rental being a thing, which is going to add to costs as people would still have to put electricity into them.
Of course rental assumes standard battery designs etc.... So we swing back toward issues of scale.
I do agree that if government wants it to happen in a big way then the only way is if they do what they've done for solar and wind and introduce intensives to grow the market. Of course the risk is that, just like with things like solar, once the government money dries up the market could dry up as well - I don't think that will happen with electric cars though. More companies are going electric only whilst demand for cars will never go down so long as society continues to operate as it does
Overread wrote: When it comes to the secondhand market there's one big pitfall as I see it - batteries. Possibly the most expensive part of the car and the one thing you can't operate it without. Whilst the actual car itself will devalue over time, the batteries won't. Plus safety considerations will likely mean that there will be strict limits on how old they can be before they have to be replaced. It's one thing to have a cheap car market, but if the batteries that make it work are still high priced then it might price people out.
I can see battery rental being a thing, which is going to add to costs as people would still have to put electricity into them.
Batteries degrade, and fast-charges damage them the most. Most electric cars come with a battery warranty. I have seen one for 100,000 miles or 70% loss of charge.
As for rental, Renault does that already. It costs half as much to rent as I spend in a month's fuel. Add recharging costs to that, and it doesn't save much, if anything. The car is expensive anyway, so that's not an option for me.
Renewable electricity is now significantly cheaper than nuclear.
The production process for conventional fuel uses a lot of electricity which could be repurposed directly into the grid.
The key difficulty is to provide enough charging points. This is an area where government on a national or local level needs to get involved. Charging points for cars need to be as common as street lights.
Overread wrote: When it comes to the secondhand market there's one big pitfall as I see it - batteries. Possibly the most expensive part of the car and the one thing you can't operate it without. Whilst the actual car itself will devalue over time, the batteries won't. Plus safety considerations will likely mean that there will be strict limits on how old they can be before they have to be replaced. It's one thing to have a cheap car market, but if the batteries that make it work are still high priced then it might price people out.
I can see battery rental being a thing, which is going to add to costs as people would still have to put electricity into them.
Batteries degrade, and fast-charges damage them the most. Most electric cars come with a battery warranty. I have seen one for 100,000 miles or 70% loss of charge.
As for rental, Renault does that already. It costs half as much to rent as I spend in a month's fuel. Add recharging costs to that, and it doesn't save much, if anything. The car is expensive anyway, so that's not an option for me.
Honestly I still think that the best idea for batteries would be to have garages slowcharge a bank of batteries and then car owners drive their car until the battery is near flat. Then they stop in at the garage and swap their batteries over for fresh charged ones and continue on. In theory that gives you maximum life and very fast charging. Of course the downsides are it would likely require a massive bank of extra batteries to make it work (which is an environmental and production problem of its own); plus it would likely take a good while to sort out supply and demand so that garages in high pressure areas have enough and those in low pressure areas aren't sitting on a mountain of batteries doing nothing. Plus there'd be issues with getting all the different manufacturers to agree upon a design and standard feature set. Which considering how fast the technology in this market is advancing, could be near impossible.
Cars would also have to have a separate emergency battery within them with limited range to get you to the garage in the event that the replaceable batteries are drained. Simply setting it up so that the internal battery can only charge off the replacement battery (ergo that you can't charge it at home) to stop people not renting a battery and living off the internal and charging at home (which would be possible for those only doing short runs all the time).
You'd then have to pay a standard rental fee or payment upon collection at the garage for your batteries.
Kilkrazy wrote: Renewable electricity is now significantly cheaper than nuclear.
Thats not possible. Not in large scale. Renewable electricity sources are so inefficient in terms of land use, and require certain geological features, that they will never compete with a nuclear reactor. The only reason nuclear isn't used is because people have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
If we really really cared about the environment, we would switch 100% to nuclear power and use the many thousands of years of cheap electricity that it would buy us to develop better methods. Which would most likely take the form of further developing alternative nuclear fuels that are much more abundant in the universe. And simultaneously we would be opening up mineral deposits in the rest of the solar system, which probably includes more nuclear fuel to extend our reserves for many thousands of more years.
If renewable energy is somehow cheaper...California would like to find out how. They're shutting their last nuclear power plant without an actual capacity to replace its output.
Yeah sadly as eco friendly as we want to be, nuclear is really the only option we currently have for the majority of countries with our current and expanding energy needs. Renewables have their place, but they just can't compete for the volume of output required and the continual reliability. Wind is great, until there's a few days without an wind. Solar can be great, until its cloudy and production reduces. Tidal is great until there's a huge storm that rips half the facility in half.
Hydro is a great idea in theory but requires vast areas to be flooded in order to build the lake for the dam to function and that has massive knock on effects both up and down river. Heck the Nile delta, which feeds Egypt, is falling apart partly because their hydro dams are blocking sediment and also preventing floods which delivered the sediment into the lands to make them fertile.
Nuclear really only has one major shortfall and that's long term storage of the material. Otherwise it produces a high output that you can control and keep constant. It's not as favoured and its freakishly expensive to build (its well into the region that many power companies basically would go bankrupt trying to build them); but it does at least provide the high continual output that isn't reliant on the whims of nature.
Plus the actual land footfall is very small in contrast to wind or solar farms which have to be utterly huge to deliver the kinds of power level that we require.
Longterm storage of nuclear material isn't really a problem either. Especially if we pursue Thorium reactors. Those produce almost negligible waste and we have mindbogglingly huge amounts of Thorium available. but even with Uranium waste it is relatively simple to store it in underground bunkers in places where it will not cause a problem for millennia, by which point we will have found permanent solutions.
Kilkrazy wrote: Renewable electricity is now significantly cheaper than nuclear.
Thats not possible. Not in large scale. Renewable electricity sources are so inefficient in terms of land use, and require certain geological features, that they will never compete with a nuclear reactor. The only reason nuclear isn't used is because people have an irrational fear of nuclear power..
I have no dog in this fight and it's quiet at work, so I did some googling, because I was curious. Kilkrazy is right in terms of deployment costs: Putting up a wind turbine costs about 2-3 million per megawatt. Putting up a new nuclear power plant costs around 8-9 million per megawatt.
Of course, you're not exactly wrong, either. While on paper wind turbines win, in practice for them to pay off you need to really go big with them, like China did. In the US, your average nuclear plant does about a gigawatt - the smallest is 400 megawatts and the largest is 4 gigawatts. The biggest wind turbine farm in the US has a capacity of 576 megawatts but averages 125 - so lower by an order of magnitude.
But is it really impossible? China built a wind farm that is putting out 8 gigawatts now and will scale to 20 gigawatts. So it can definitely be done - surely there are places in the US as windy and unoccupied as the Gobi desert?
No speaking to solar or anything else, that's enough fast research for one night.
There might be places, but are they near enough to where the electricity is needed is the main question. Sure, you get fast consistent winds in the middle of deserts. But thats in the middle of deserts. Transmitting the electricity over hundreds of miles to the nearest major city means massive loss in power.
Plus there is longevity. Wind turbines last at best 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants can last far beyond that, and maintenance doesn't involve working with stuff that is ludicrously high off the ground. Yes its technical and highly skilled, but you're not dealing with massive 100+ ft long spinning blades.
A nuclear power station can output the same power level continually for much of its lifespan. A windfarm on the other hand might have long periods where production is very slow. Get a warm summer and a nice high pressure band over it and you could have very little wind. The result being that your massive bank of windmills doesn't generate any, or not much, energy for a prolonged period of time.
If that's just propping up your power supply its fine, but if that's now a major part of your power infrastructure then something somewhere has to give. Either you've got to cut power to industry and/or consumers or you've got to get some additional energy from somewhere else.
Plus you can't overlook the massive land area required for windfarms or the added complexity and risk of building them off-shore (which has environmental impacts of its own). Again these are big structures and can cause harm. Especially the case if you build them on windy routs that might be migratory pathways for birds or insects.
Grey Templar wrote: Plus there is longevity. Wind turbines last at best 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants can last far beyond that, and maintenance doesn't involve working with stuff that is ludicrously high off the ground. Yes its technical and highly skilled, but you're not dealing with massive 100+ ft long spinning blades.
I would expect a lot of the cost of wind power is the land. Even if the turbines and blades degrade and fail, the large part of the windill is intact.
Grey Templar wrote: Plus there is longevity. Wind turbines last at best 20-25 years. Nuclear power plants can last far beyond that.
That's a good point too - if a turbine costs 4 million per megawatt to deploy, and nuclear costs 8 million per megawatt, but the turbines last 25 years and the nuclear plant lasts 70, then nuclear wound up being cheaper in the long run.
But if we're being really honest, we should also amortize in the small but present cost of recovering from an environmental catastrophe. I don't know how to calculate that out. Fukishama has cost at least what, 190 billion or thereabouts?
I don't think Electric Vehicles will replace ones with combustion engines within timeframe of 25 years.
unttil cheaper and better batteries are devised. EV won't replace ol' vehicles soon
Lone Cat wrote: I don't think Electric Vehicles will replace ones with combustion engines within timeframe of 25 years.
unttil cheaper and better batteries are devised. EV won't replace ol' vehicles soon
That's the main issue. To make an EV actually replace "the internal combustion engine" in worldwide use, you need a tremendous, world-shattering advancement in technology. Because EV's are a step backwards in most things except emissions. It's a very first-world "global warming guilt" style product, rather than a genuine competent replacement for all internal combustion engined vehicles.
A technology or vehicle which only makes sense in a tiny percentage of the population is not an actual solution if you're concerned about fossil fuel use. Until an EV is a legitimate cost-effective, reasonable solution to the other 95% of the world's population it's just a gimmick.
I think most people aren't thinking outside of their narrow existence with regard to the concept of EVs in a worldwide scale. "Oh it makes sense because I'm a middle class American living in an urban center with a house and garage. I have one or two other vehicles, or I only drive 10-15 miles to work each day. I can rent a car when I want to travel..." etc. That's a shockingly narrow viewpoint and one based on a tiny percentage of the world population which buys cars.
Do I think there is a market for small Japanese style Kei cars with a 100 mile range and a $10-13K pricetag? Absolutely. As a second car for people who live in an environment conducive to owning an EV. That should actually be what they concentrate on, instead of $70K+ mega luxury cars (granted the sales department knows exactly who they're targeting with these vehicles).
Kilkrazy wrote: Renewable electricity is now significantly cheaper than nuclear.
Thats not possible. Not in large scale. Renewable electricity sources are so inefficient in terms of land use, and require certain geological features, that they will never compete with a nuclear reactor. The only reason nuclear isn't used is because people have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
If we really really cared about the environment, we would switch 100% to nuclear power and use the many thousands of years of cheap electricity that it would buy us to develop better methods. Which would most likely take the form of further developing alternative nuclear fuels that are much more abundant in the universe. And simultaneously we would be opening up mineral deposits in the rest of the solar system, which probably includes more nuclear fuel to extend our reserves for many thousands of more years.
Why do people insist that Nuclear power is safe and clean...when we have plenty of data that says it is not. Yeah on percentage its rare there is a problem, but when there is a problem...its pretty massive.
Lone Cat wrote: I don't think Electric Vehicles will replace ones with combustion engines within timeframe of 25 years.
unttil cheaper and better batteries are devised. EV won't replace ol' vehicles soon
That's the main issue. To make an EV actually replace "the internal combustion engine" in worldwide use, you need a tremendous, world-shattering advancement in technology. Because EV's are a step backwards in most things except emissions. It's a very first-world "global warming guilt" style product, rather than a genuine competent replacement for all internal combustion engined vehicles.
A technology or vehicle which only makes sense in a tiny percentage of the population is not an actual solution if you're concerned about fossil fuel use. Until an EV is a legitimate cost-effective, reasonable solution to the other 95% of the world's population it's just a gimmick.
I think most people aren't thinking outside of their narrow existence with regard to the concept of EVs in a worldwide scale. "Oh it makes sense because I'm a middle class American living in an urban center with a house and garage. I have one or two other vehicles, or I only drive 10-15 miles to work each day. I can rent a car when I want to travel..." etc. That's a shockingly narrow viewpoint and one based on a tiny percentage of the world population which buys cars.
Do I think there is a market for small Japanese style Kei cars with a 100 mile range and a $10-13K pricetag? Absolutely. As a second car for people who live in an environment conducive to owning an EV. That should actually be what they concentrate on, instead of $70K+ mega luxury cars (granted the sales department knows exactly who they're targeting with these vehicles).
How are EVS a step backwards? Already the price is comparable to that of an ICE car and will only get cheaper, range is similar, performance is similar, maintenance is far less, fueling is cheaper and is in most ways easier as you just plug in at home and wake up to a fully charged car. What percentage of people don't have access to a parking spot and a power outlet.....thats all you need. Sure if you live in a tower complex or a place with street parking.....its not an ideal solution, but lets not make it sound like thats 75% of people. The Toyota Corrola is the number 1 selling car in the world, there are EVS that are similar and once you do a bit of math the EVs come put cheaper in just a short amount of time. If you are buying a new car, I don't see many reasons to buy anything but an EV, (Sure there are legitimate reasons, but not many) especially considering what I believe will be a melt down in the value of ICE cars in just a few years. New Ice cars will be a terrible investment very soon. The average person keeps a car for six years......if you buy a new ICE car today, I guarantee that in six years that its value will be negatively effected by the rise of the electric car.
Listen Andrew, you have read the following issues before, but you ignore them:
1) An average EV is heavier than a normal ICE powered car. This is a step backwards. (bad for tires, bad for road infrastructure, bad for shipping costs, more fuel spent to ship them around the world)
2) An average EV is still more expensive than an ICE powered car. They're nowhere near as close as you're making them out to be, and less so when you remove the government assistance in reducing the purchase price. This is a step backwards for a car that does less.
3) An average EV car has nowhere near the "similar" range to a normal ICE car. My old car can do 380 miles on a tank of fuel...and it's not a particularly fuel efficient one. I'm not sure what cars you're comparing them to...but most ICE cars are now limited to 200-ish miles of range. A turbo-diesel vehicle can run upwards of 650-700 miles on a tank of fuel. This is a step backwards.
4) An average EV at the very best charges how fast? 30-45 minutes? An average ICE car is refueled with ease, anywhere on the planet (with an active road network) in 3-4 minutes tops. This is a step backwards.
These are not small issues. They're massive. You like to hand-wave them as if they're suddenly going to be fixed by some tremendous leap in technology. Build me a $16K new car with 400 mile range that re-charges in 3-4 minutes and doesn't damage the battery pack in any appreciable way. Seriously, make that car and then when the entire country's infrastructure is set up to support it...then try to sell it to me.
As for people who don't have access to a parking space with a power source suitable? A ton of people. You do realize that plenty of places in the world people will steal your electricity if it's plugged into your car, right? There are people who live in ghetto neighborhoods who are likely going to wake up with their charge equipment stolen, broken, or simply cut up. There are plenty of people who live in apartment complexes where they have large parking lots that are not going to be revamped for electric cars anytime soon. There are people who live in countries with poor or minimal electrical grids. Why should they embrace an EV? In some countries electricity is far more expensive than the US. In places where renewable energy is being pushed, electricity costs have gone up about 20-30% in the past ten years. What if the electricity demand goes up and prices increase? That shouldn't be an issue here, but could be in many places.
What about people who travel more than the range of your EV? What's the support network like for them? Here are three simple scenarios from my personal life - what's your answer for them as a single guy who possesses one vehicle?
1) My buddy lives 225 miles from me. I visit him frequently, and he is in a life situation where he could feasibly call me and need help with his wife/kids at a moment's notice. (1.5 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
2) My sister lives 525 miles from me. I can drive there in around 7-7.5 hours, easily. (3 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
3) My grandmother lives 165 miles from me. I can do the drive in 2.5 hours easily. I've had to drive out there unexpected on several instances when she's had issues. Drop of a hat. (less than one tank of fuel in my vehicle)
These are not extraordinary distances. These are easy drives, though Maryland isn't great. None of these trips are worth a plane ticket (Maryland maybe if there is a crazy medical emergency with my nephews - even then, the total time to fly up there would be similar to simply leaving the house).
In any one of these situations, what do I need to do in order to make that drive? Answer: check the tires and oil in my car and leave. Maybe take a piss before I head out. These are simple, economical drives and require zero planning, no rental cars, no time charging, etc. In all of these drives an EV (even one with 200 mile range) would be a no go. I've gone to my grandmother's house to check on her after a fall and driven home the same afternoon so I could go to work. It doesn't matter how long ago I drove my car or what my charge level is at. That's not a consideration. It shouldn't be. Owning a car or personal vehicle shouldn't require that.
I don't need to worry about charging a car at my buddy's, my sister's or my grandmother's house. I don't have to worry about stopping anywhere on the highway to simply refuel and keep going. I can tackle any of these road trips minutes after getting back from any other one of them. In an extreme situation I could toss a couple of 5-gallon tanks in the back of my car and drive for thousands of miles without issue).
Would it be nice if I owned several vehicles and one could be a cheap efficient EV? Maybe (and I mean "cheap", not your definition of it). I don't. I own one car. It gives me the freedom to tackle any driving situation with zero concern. Why would I go backwards into an EV and change all of that? I don't care about EV's performance specs. I don't care about the costs. Car maintenance is cheap on my car. My car has been paid off for six years now. I don't care about the environment. My car is a simple basic vehicle, I'm not blasting a V8 diesel everywhere I drive.
Explain to me how your magical EV suddenly solves this? For the same price as a basic ICE car?
You seem to have an exceptionally biased and narrow view of EV cars. If you presented yourself by saying "Man, I think EVs in the future are going to be a contender"...sure, maybe. Bu tthey're not right now. They're an answer for a very small demographic. I think you can't see outside of your own living situation. Have you considered how an EV benefits a person in South Africa? Venezuela? (good luck they get fuel for free basically...), a random town in Ukraine, or Romania? Under-developed portions of China and India? Or are middle-class/first world drivers and consumers the only thing you're happy to consider?
I'm not sure how else to present this other than: if I were to replace my car with an EV....it would be worse. I'm not sure why that's a difficult thing to understand, or why you don't grasp the backwards move the average EV presents to an average consumer. Buying a product that does less things for more money? It's just been a hugely premature market move. The tech isn't there. Now if you're happy being a test run for the eventual development of a useful and worthwhile EV - grand. Just stop pretending it's an answer for things it can't tackle.
Elbows wrote: Listen Andrew, you have read the following issues before, but you ignore them:
1) An average EV is heavier than a normal ICE powered car. This is a step backwards. (bad for tires, bad for road infrastructure, bad for shipping costs, more fuel spent to ship them around the world)
None Issue, A model 3 weighs 3552 pounds, a chrysler 300 weighs 4380 pounds.....so non issue. Already starting off with a real reach. a toyota corrolla weighs 3000 dry with another 14 gallons of gas at 6 pounds a gallon. HUGE WEIGHT DIFFERENCE THERE!
2) An average EV is still more expensive than an ICE powered car. They're nowhere near as close as you're making them out to be, and less so when you remove the government assistance in reducing the purchase price. This is a step backwards for a car that does less.
Non issue, You can get a model 3 for 35K in the US before any government incentives. All costs considered the cost to own is less then a Toyota corolla after 5 years. except you never see the government incentives included in a Toyota corolla. Gasoline is heavily subsidized and included lots of government incentives. I do love when people talk about EV incentives like ICE cars don't get any. Not to mention the other ways ICE cars cost taxpayers. We go to war for the oil that drives your ICE car. Who pays for that, tax payers!
3) An average EV car has nowhere near the "similar" range to a normal ICE car. My old car can do 380 miles on a tank of fuel...and it's not a particularly fuel efficient one. I'm not sure what cars you're comparing them to...but most ICE cars are now limited to 200-ish miles of range. A turbo-diesel vehicle can run upwards of 650-700 miles on a tank of fuel. This is a step backwards.
None issue According to the BMV the average car ICE car can go 300-400 miles, many EVs can go 300-400 miles. Very few people drive that much in a day, fueling up their car a few times a week. EVs can be charged at home giving you the full charge every morning when you wake up. Not perfect for 100% of the people but more than good enough for most. I guess it depends on what you mean by average, almost half the EVs in the world now are Tesla Model 3s...they are kind of driving the average up i guess.
4) An average EV at the very best charges how fast? 30-45 minutes? An average ICE car is refueled with ease, anywhere on the planet (with an active road network) in 3-4 minutes tops. This is a step backwards.
Again for the most part non issue. I wake up, my car is fully fueled. On long trips use fast charging after a 310 miles its time to take a lunch slash potty break anyway. Its a matter of perspective, I think its backwards to have to look at the gas gauge and wonder if I have to stop for gas today....how much is gas today?
These are not small issues. They're massive. You like to hand-wave them as if they're suddenly going to be fixed by some tremendous leap in technology. Build me a $16K new car with 400 mile range that re-charges in 3-4 minutes and doesn't damage the battery pack in any appreciable way. Seriously, make that car and then when the entire country's infrastructure is set up to support it...then try to sell it to me.
The average price of a new car is slightly over 36K. Evs easily fit in that average.....and are actually cheaper after only 5 years and many times cheaper in the long run, less maintenance, cheaper fuel...and by all accounts should last at least twice as long as an ICE car. I don't care what ICE car you buy, in the end I guarantee you that (barring a collision) at the end of the life of the cars my EV will be many times cheaper that any ICE car you can buy. Its just math and mechanics, less parts. Its like comparing a disk drive to a solid state drive. There are people that still like records, and they have their arguments......the market has shown what happened there.
As for people who don't have access to a parking space with a power source suitable? A ton of people. You do realize that plenty of places in the world people will steal your electricity if it's plugged into your car, right? There are people who live in ghetto neighborhoods who are likely going to wake up with their charge equipment stolen, broken, or simply cut up. There are plenty of people who live in apartment complexes where they have large parking lots that are not going to be revamped for electric cars anytime soon. There are people who live in countries with poor or minimal electrical grids. Why should they embrace an EV? In some countries electricity is far more expensive than the US. In places where renewable energy is being pushed, electricity costs have gone up about 20-30% in the past ten years. What if the electricity demand goes up and prices increase? That shouldn't be an issue here, but could be in many places.
Yes currently some people live in places where an EV wont work for them.....but many more do. As far as vandalism, Teslacam is dealing with that pretty effectively, I would also say most people that live in those situations are not buying New vehicles....but rather used, so its kind of a moot point. By the time these EVs make it to the secondary market in large numbers (they are hardly currently being produced in large numbers) there will be solutions to these issues. If you cant charge at home, by the time EVS really hit mass market.....there will be plenty of options for it.
What about people who travel more than the range of your EV? What's the support network like for them? Here are three simple scenarios from my personal life - what's your answer for them as a single guy who possesses one vehicle?
1) My buddy lives 225 miles from me. I visit him frequently, and he is in a life situation where he could feasibly call me and need help with his wife/kids at a moment's notice. (1.5 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
So your car gets 225 miles in a tank and a half of fuel.....and somehow that is better than and EV? At 310 miles you will get there, plug your car in, or fuel it up, the way batteries work you get about half the range from empty in about 15 minutes.
2) My sister lives 525 miles from me. I can drive there in around 7-7.5 hours, easily. (3 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
And Im sure as you drive you dont stop for lunch or anyting? Charge the car at stops.
3) My grandmother lives 165 miles from me. I can do the drive in 2.5 hours easily. I've had to drive out there unexpected on several instances when she's had issues. Drop of a hat. (less than one tank of fuel in my vehicle)
So Drive there, im not understanding the problem...and i get it. People who don't drive EVs really think this is some kind of hassle, you get over it pretty quickly when you have an EV with a good charging network and a good starting range. The issue is that there are lots of EVs that have bad performance and these have been whipping posts for EV issues. But for every instance where an EV might have a weakness there are scenarios where they are better too.
These are not extraordinary distances. These are easy drives, though Maryland isn't great. None of these trips are worth a plane ticket (Maryland maybe if there is a crazy medical emergency with my nephews - even then, the total time to fly up there would be similar to simply leaving the house).
In any one of these situations, what do I need to do in order to make that drive? Answer: check the tires and oil in my car and leave. Maybe take a piss before I head out. These are simple, economical drives and require zero planning, no rental cars, no time charging, etc. In all of these drives an EV (even one with 200 mile range) would be a no go. I've gone to my grandmother's house to check on her after a fall and driven home the same afternoon so I could go to work. It doesn't matter how long ago I drove my car or what my charge level is at. That's not a consideration. It shouldn't be. Owning a car or personal vehicle shouldn't require that.
I guess don't limit yourself to an ev that only gets 200 miles of range, Or don't get an EV until battery tech gets better which is constantly is, every year they get more range.
I don't need to worry about charging a car at my buddy's, my sister's or my grandmother's house. I don't have to worry about stopping anywhere on the highway to simply refuel and keep going. I can tackle any of these road trips minutes after getting back from any other one of them. In an extreme situation I could toss a couple of 5-gallon tanks in the back of my car and drive for thousands of miles without issue).
Look you can come up with any scenario you want. For the driving habits of the average person a good EV works just fine. I am an extreme case, I live 80 miles from my job, 160 round trip, usually with some errands required for work.....my EV works out just fine. If I have to charge it I go to the charger pop on netflix watch an episode of....whatever, grab a snack, talk on the phone whatever.....usually only need 15 minutes to get a charge of 150 miles to get where I need to go. that charge will cost me about $4 at the charger. I'll admit when I first got my EV i was worried about all sorts of stuff.....but that dissapears. I havn't been to a gas station in almost a year, i rarely use fast charging.....do you know how much time that has saved me over the year?
Would it be nice if I owned several vehicles and one could be a cheap efficient EV? Maybe (and I mean "cheap", not your definition of it). I don't. I own one car. It gives me the freedom to tackle any driving situation with zero concern. Why would I go backwards into an EV and change all of that? I don't care about EV's performance specs. I don't care about the costs. Car maintenance is cheap on my car. My car has been paid off for six years now. I don't care about the environment. My car is a simple basic vehicle, I'm not blasting a V8 diesel everywhere I drive.
Ok well, good, keep your car.....ICE cars will be around for quite some time.....and you will be able to get used ones pretty cheap and resale value on them is going to plummet. Scoop them all up for cheap.
Explain to me how your magical EV suddenly solves this? For the same price as a basic ICE car?
I already have and it does for most people that are currently out buying NEW cars and have normal driving habits
You seem to have an exceptionally biased and narrow view of EV cars. If you presented yourself by saying "Man, I think EVs in the future are going to be a contender"...sure, maybe. Bu tthey're not right now. They're an answer for a very small demographic. I think you can't see outside of your own living situation. Have you considered how an EV benefits a person in South Africa? Venezuela? (good luck they get fuel for free basically...), a random town in Ukraine, or Romania? Under-developed portions of China and India? Or are middle-class/first world drivers and consumers the only thing you're happy to consider?
No, you want to find any bizzaro situation where EVs wont work is all I am seeing here. EVS are selling well in China. Its actually going to be great for these people, they will be able to get used ICE cars at bargain basement prices because everyone else who can get the benifits of EVs is going to be buying them. The price of NEW ICE cars will most likely go up especially leasing. I don't need to wait for the future for EVs to be contenders, they are already contenders. I need no other car and my driving habits are far beyond most peoples.
I'm not sure how else to present this other than: if I were to replace my car with an EV....it would be worse. I'm not sure why that's a difficult thing to understand, or why you don't grasp the backwards move the average EV presents to an average consumer. Buying a product that does less things for more money? It's just been a hugely premature market move. The tech isn't there. Now if you're happy being a test run for the eventual development of a useful and worthwhile EV - grand. Just stop pretending it's an answer for things it can't tackle.
Oh no, I understand that for you an EV is not the answer.....however you feel like because it doesn't work for you means that they don't work period...and you'd be wrong. What you have is a exceptionally biased and narrow view based on your own habits and 0 experience with an EV. According to the average driving habits of drivers EVs fulfill the requirements nicely. And look we are still in the first generation of truly mass produced EVs.....The first truly Mass market EV was delivered only a few years ago......do you somehow think that this is the best there is going to be. We are already seeing EVs in development with over 500 miles of range. You like to say EV only work for a tiny percentage....but I bet if we look at driving habits, it is yours that fall into the tiny percentage.
Just because EVs are not perfect in 100% of the situations does not mean they are not contenders, they work exceptionally well in most circumstances. I'm sure when the horseless carriage first came out there were ways that horses were better.....in fact even today I bet there are instances where horses are better, but we know who won that battle.
Elbows wrote: Listen Andrew, you have read the following issues before, but you ignore them:
1) An average EV is heavier than a normal ICE powered car. This is a step backwards. (bad for tires, bad for road infrastructure, bad for shipping costs, more fuel spent to ship them around the world)
None Issue, A model 3 weighs 3552 pounds, a chrysler 300 weighs 4380 pounds.....so non issue. Already starting off with a real reach. a toyota corrolla weighs 3000 dry with another 14 gallons of gas at 6 pounds a gallon. HUGE WEIGHT DIFFERENCE THERE!
2) An average EV is still more expensive than an ICE powered car. They're nowhere near as close as you're making them out to be, and less so when you remove the government assistance in reducing the purchase price. This is a step backwards for a car that does less.
Non issue, You can get a model 3 for 35K in the US before any government incentives. All costs considered the cost to own is less then a Toyota corolla after 5 years. except you never see the government incentives included in a Toyota corolla. Gasoline is heavily subsidized and included lots of government incentives. I do love when people talk about EV incentives like ICE cars don't get any. Not to mention the other ways ICE cars cost taxpayers. We go to war for the oil that drives your ICE car. Who pays for that, tax payers!
3) An average EV car has nowhere near the "similar" range to a normal ICE car. My old car can do 380 miles on a tank of fuel...and it's not a particularly fuel efficient one. I'm not sure what cars you're comparing them to...but most ICE cars are now limited to 200-ish miles of range. A turbo-diesel vehicle can run upwards of 650-700 miles on a tank of fuel. This is a step backwards.
None issue According to the BMV the average car ICE car can go 300-400 miles, many EVs can go 300-400 miles. Very few people drive that much in a day, fueling up their car a few times a week. EVs can be charged at home giving you the full charge every morning when you wake up. Not perfect for 100% of the people but more than good enough for most. I guess it depends on what you mean by average, almost half the EVs in the world now are Tesla Model 3s...they are kind of driving the average up i guess.
4) An average EV at the very best charges how fast? 30-45 minutes? An average ICE car is refueled with ease, anywhere on the planet (with an active road network) in 3-4 minutes tops. This is a step backwards.
Again for the most part non issue. I wake up, my car is fully fueled. On long trips use fast charging after a 310 miles its time to take a lunch slash potty break anyway. Its a matter of perspective, I think its backwards to have to look at the gas gauge and wonder if I have to stop for gas today....how much is gas today?
These are not small issues. They're massive. You like to hand-wave them as if they're suddenly going to be fixed by some tremendous leap in technology. Build me a $16K new car with 400 mile range that re-charges in 3-4 minutes and doesn't damage the battery pack in any appreciable way. Seriously, make that car and then when the entire country's infrastructure is set up to support it...then try to sell it to me.
The average price of a new car is slightly over 36K. Evs easily fit in that average.....and are actually cheaper after only 5 years and many times cheaper in the long run, less maintenance, cheaper fuel...and by all accounts should last at least twice as long as an ICE car. I don't care what ICE car you buy, in the end I guarantee you that (barring a collision) at the end of the life of the cars my EV will be many times cheaper that any ICE car you can buy. Its just math and mechanics, less parts. Its like comparing a disk drive to a solid state drive. There are people that still like records, and they have their arguments......the market has shown what happened there.
As for people who don't have access to a parking space with a power source suitable? A ton of people. You do realize that plenty of places in the world people will steal your electricity if it's plugged into your car, right? There are people who live in ghetto neighborhoods who are likely going to wake up with their charge equipment stolen, broken, or simply cut up. There are plenty of people who live in apartment complexes where they have large parking lots that are not going to be revamped for electric cars anytime soon. There are people who live in countries with poor or minimal electrical grids. Why should they embrace an EV? In some countries electricity is far more expensive than the US. In places where renewable energy is being pushed, electricity costs have gone up about 20-30% in the past ten years. What if the electricity demand goes up and prices increase? That shouldn't be an issue here, but could be in many places.
Yes currently some people live in places where an EV wont work for them.....but many more do. As far as vandalism, Teslacam is dealing with that pretty effectively, I would also say most people that live in those situations are not buying New vehicles....but rather used, so its kind of a moot point. By the time these EVs make it to the secondary market in large numbers (they are hardly currently being produced in large numbers) there will be solutions to these issues. If you cant charge at home, by the time EVS really hit mass market.....there will be plenty of options for it.
What about people who travel more than the range of your EV? What's the support network like for them? Here are three simple scenarios from my personal life - what's your answer for them as a single guy who possesses one vehicle?
1) My buddy lives 225 miles from me. I visit him frequently, and he is in a life situation where he could feasibly call me and need help with his wife/kids at a moment's notice. (1.5 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
So your car gets 225 miles in a tank and a half of fuel.....and somehow that is better than and EV? At 310 miles you will get there, plug your car in, or fuel it up, the way batteries work you get about half the range from empty in about 15 minutes.
2) My sister lives 525 miles from me. I can drive there in around 7-7.5 hours, easily. (3 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
And Im sure as you drive you dont stop for lunch or anyting? Charge the car at stops.
3) My grandmother lives 165 miles from me. I can do the drive in 2.5 hours easily. I've had to drive out there unexpected on several instances when she's had issues. Drop of a hat. (less than one tank of fuel in my vehicle)
So Drive there, im not understanding the problem...and i get it. People who don't drive EVs really think this is some kind of hassle, you get over it pretty quickly when you have an EV with a good charging network and a good starting range. The issue is that there are lots of EVs that have bad performance and these have been whipping posts for EV issues. But for every instance where an EV might have a weakness there are scenarios where they are better too.
These are not extraordinary distances. These are easy drives, though Maryland isn't great. None of these trips are worth a plane ticket (Maryland maybe if there is a crazy medical emergency with my nephews - even then, the total time to fly up there would be similar to simply leaving the house).
In any one of these situations, what do I need to do in order to make that drive? Answer: check the tires and oil in my car and leave. Maybe take a piss before I head out. These are simple, economical drives and require zero planning, no rental cars, no time charging, etc. In all of these drives an EV (even one with 200 mile range) would be a no go. I've gone to my grandmother's house to check on her after a fall and driven home the same afternoon so I could go to work. It doesn't matter how long ago I drove my car or what my charge level is at. That's not a consideration. It shouldn't be. Owning a car or personal vehicle shouldn't require that.
I guess don't limit yourself to an ev that only gets 200 miles of range, Or don't get an EV until battery tech gets better which is constantly is, every year they get more range.
I don't need to worry about charging a car at my buddy's, my sister's or my grandmother's house. I don't have to worry about stopping anywhere on the highway to simply refuel and keep going. I can tackle any of these road trips minutes after getting back from any other one of them. In an extreme situation I could toss a couple of 5-gallon tanks in the back of my car and drive for thousands of miles without issue).
Look you can come up with any scenario you want. For the driving habits of the average person a good EV works just fine. I am an extreme case, I live 80 miles from my job, 160 round trip, usually with some errands required for work.....my EV works out just fine. If I have to charge it I go to the charger pop on netflix watch an episode of....whatever, grab a snack, talk on the phone whatever.....usually only need 15 minutes to get a charge of 150 miles to get where I need to go. that charge will cost me about $4 at the charger. I'll admit when I first got my EV i was worried about all sorts of stuff.....but that dissapears. I havn't been to a gas station in almost a year, i rarely use fast charging.....do you know how much time that has saved me over the year?
Would it be nice if I owned several vehicles and one could be a cheap efficient EV? Maybe (and I mean "cheap", not your definition of it). I don't. I own one car. It gives me the freedom to tackle any driving situation with zero concern. Why would I go backwards into an EV and change all of that? I don't care about EV's performance specs. I don't care about the costs. Car maintenance is cheap on my car. My car has been paid off for six years now. I don't care about the environment. My car is a simple basic vehicle, I'm not blasting a V8 diesel everywhere I drive.
Ok well, good, keep your car.....ICE cars will be around for quite some time.....and you will be able to get used ones pretty cheap and resale value on them is going to plummet. Scoop them all up for cheap.
Explain to me how your magical EV suddenly solves this? For the same price as a basic ICE car?
I already have and it does for most people that are currently out buying NEW cars and have normal driving habits
You seem to have an exceptionally biased and narrow view of EV cars. If you presented yourself by saying "Man, I think EVs in the future are going to be a contender"...sure, maybe. Bu tthey're not right now. They're an answer for a very small demographic. I think you can't see outside of your own living situation. Have you considered how an EV benefits a person in South Africa? Venezuela? (good luck they get fuel for free basically...), a random town in Ukraine, or Romania? Under-developed portions of China and India? Or are middle-class/first world drivers and consumers the only thing you're happy to consider?
No, you want to find any bizzaro situation where EVs wont work is all I am seeing here. EVS are selling well in China. Its actually going to be great for these people, they will be able to get used ICE cars at bargain basement prices because everyone else who can get the benifits of EVs is going to be buying them. The price of NEW ICE cars will most likely go up especially leasing. I don't need to wait for the future for EVs to be contenders, they are already contenders. I need no other car and my driving habits are far beyond most peoples.
I'm not sure how else to present this other than: if I were to replace my car with an EV....it would be worse. I'm not sure why that's a difficult thing to understand, or why you don't grasp the backwards move the average EV presents to an average consumer. Buying a product that does less things for more money? It's just been a hugely premature market move. The tech isn't there. Now if you're happy being a test run for the eventual development of a useful and worthwhile EV - grand. Just stop pretending it's an answer for things it can't tackle.
Oh no, I understand that for you an EV is not the answer.....however you feel like because it doesn't work for you means that they don't work period...and you'd be wrong. What you have is a exceptionally biased and narrow view based on your own habits and 0 experience with an EV. According to the average driving habits of drivers EVs fulfill the requirements nicely. And look we are still in the first generation of truly mass produced EVs.....The first truly Mass market EV was delivered only a few years ago......do you somehow think that this is the best there is going to be. We are already seeing EVs in development with over 500 miles of range. You like to say EV only work for a tiny percentage....but I bet if we look at driving habits, it is yours that fall into the tiny percentage.
Just because EVs are not perfect in 100% of the situations does not mean they are not contenders, they work exceptionally well in most circumstances. I'm sure when the horseless carriage first came out there were ways that horses were better.....in fact even today I bet there are instances where horses are better, but we know who won that battle.
You're really, really good at ignoring everyone else aren't you? Everything Elbows brings up is a completely valid point and the reason the vast majority of people don't even consider EVs yet.
1. Cost: you're wrong. It's that simple. I can tell you this from my experience of less than 6 months ago. The one good thing about most EVs we saw was the equipment spec being quite good but for a similarly specced, similar-sized ICE Nissan it was about 66% of the cost. If we looked further afield and took advantage of other manufacturers and their offers we could have saved even more. EVs are not cheap and it's genuinely puzzling that you consider them anything other than expensive alternatives at the point of sale. I get the argument about the total cost of ownership, but the up-front cost is a huge barrier for most people. Also, outside of the US, Teslas are in no way cheap. The average family in the UK will not spend anywhere near the price of an EV when buying a new car.
2. Range: you're wrong. ICE cars have better range and are much more convenient to refuel than any EV. They also tend to have more consistent range as EVs are more sensitive to things like outside temperature. You cannot deny that anyone wanting to travel 250-300 miles is likely to find an ICE more convenient. It'll get them there faster and they don't need to be concerned about finding a charging point at their destination. Real world EV range is now getting much closer to that 250-mile mark on average but that's still, at best, at parity with ICE cares and still comes with the disadvantage of charging times being much higher than refuelling times.
3. As for charging at home, in the UK roughly 33% of car owners have absolutely no off-street parking and a further large number would have serious problems charging even where they do park. This is not an insignificant issue and is an infrastructure problem that governments need to work to solve.
Your problem is you seem very focussed on what works for you and extremely dismissive of any realistic scenario that doesn't work for EVs. I have an EV but we bought one knowing full well what the advantages and disadvantages were and we're happy with our choice. I don't think it's helpful to take the attitude you do when trying to argue the benefits of EVs because you come across as extremely dismissive and close-minded and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of other people's opinions.
Here's Kelly Blue Books average costs for cars- you'll notice that 36k puts the price not only above most cars, but the average minivan or mid sized SUV. And yes, those are prices for new vehicles.
Electric cars are not cheaper, or comparable to ICE cars to purchase.
Most people these days are buying SUVs, which are heavy.
Range 200 miles is fine. My petrol car will go about 250 to 300 on a tankful depending on conditions.
I've driven a 300+ mile journey twice in the past 30 years, and both times I stopped for a wee, a coffee, and a meal, because it took five or six hours. I could have charged my electric car during those stops.
Elbows wrote: Listen Andrew, you have read the following issues before, but you ignore them:
1) An average EV is heavier than a normal ICE powered car. This is a step backwards. (bad for tires, bad for road infrastructure, bad for shipping costs, more fuel spent to ship them around the world)
None Issue, A model 3 weighs 3552 pounds, a chrysler 300 weighs 4380 pounds.....so non issue. Already starting off with a real reach. a toyota corrolla weighs 3000 dry with another 14 gallons of gas at 6 pounds a gallon. HUGE WEIGHT DIFFERENCE THERE!
2) An average EV is still more expensive than an ICE powered car. They're nowhere near as close as you're making them out to be, and less so when you remove the government assistance in reducing the purchase price. This is a step backwards for a car that does less.
Non issue, You can get a model 3 for 35K in the US before any government incentives. All costs considered the cost to own is less then a Toyota corolla after 5 years. except you never see the government incentives included in a Toyota corolla. Gasoline is heavily subsidized and included lots of government incentives. I do love when people talk about EV incentives like ICE cars don't get any. Not to mention the other ways ICE cars cost taxpayers. We go to war for the oil that drives your ICE car. Who pays for that, tax payers!
3) An average EV car has nowhere near the "similar" range to a normal ICE car. My old car can do 380 miles on a tank of fuel...and it's not a particularly fuel efficient one. I'm not sure what cars you're comparing them to...but most ICE cars are now limited to 200-ish miles of range. A turbo-diesel vehicle can run upwards of 650-700 miles on a tank of fuel. This is a step backwards.
None issue According to the BMV the average car ICE car can go 300-400 miles, many EVs can go 300-400 miles. Very few people drive that much in a day, fueling up their car a few times a week. EVs can be charged at home giving you the full charge every morning when you wake up. Not perfect for 100% of the people but more than good enough for most. I guess it depends on what you mean by average, almost half the EVs in the world now are Tesla Model 3s...they are kind of driving the average up i guess.
4) An average EV at the very best charges how fast? 30-45 minutes? An average ICE car is refueled with ease, anywhere on the planet (with an active road network) in 3-4 minutes tops. This is a step backwards.
Again for the most part non issue. I wake up, my car is fully fueled. On long trips use fast charging after a 310 miles its time to take a lunch slash potty break anyway. Its a matter of perspective, I think its backwards to have to look at the gas gauge and wonder if I have to stop for gas today....how much is gas today?
These are not small issues. They're massive. You like to hand-wave them as if they're suddenly going to be fixed by some tremendous leap in technology. Build me a $16K new car with 400 mile range that re-charges in 3-4 minutes and doesn't damage the battery pack in any appreciable way. Seriously, make that car and then when the entire country's infrastructure is set up to support it...then try to sell it to me.
The average price of a new car is slightly over 36K. Evs easily fit in that average.....and are actually cheaper after only 5 years and many times cheaper in the long run, less maintenance, cheaper fuel...and by all accounts should last at least twice as long as an ICE car. I don't care what ICE car you buy, in the end I guarantee you that (barring a collision) at the end of the life of the cars my EV will be many times cheaper that any ICE car you can buy. Its just math and mechanics, less parts. Its like comparing a disk drive to a solid state drive. There are people that still like records, and they have their arguments......the market has shown what happened there.
As for people who don't have access to a parking space with a power source suitable? A ton of people. You do realize that plenty of places in the world people will steal your electricity if it's plugged into your car, right? There are people who live in ghetto neighborhoods who are likely going to wake up with their charge equipment stolen, broken, or simply cut up. There are plenty of people who live in apartment complexes where they have large parking lots that are not going to be revamped for electric cars anytime soon. There are people who live in countries with poor or minimal electrical grids. Why should they embrace an EV? In some countries electricity is far more expensive than the US. In places where renewable energy is being pushed, electricity costs have gone up about 20-30% in the past ten years. What if the electricity demand goes up and prices increase? That shouldn't be an issue here, but could be in many places.
Yes currently some people live in places where an EV wont work for them.....but many more do. As far as vandalism, Teslacam is dealing with that pretty effectively, I would also say most people that live in those situations are not buying New vehicles....but rather used, so its kind of a moot point. By the time these EVs make it to the secondary market in large numbers (they are hardly currently being produced in large numbers) there will be solutions to these issues. If you cant charge at home, by the time EVS really hit mass market.....there will be plenty of options for it.
What about people who travel more than the range of your EV? What's the support network like for them? Here are three simple scenarios from my personal life - what's your answer for them as a single guy who possesses one vehicle?
1) My buddy lives 225 miles from me. I visit him frequently, and he is in a life situation where he could feasibly call me and need help with his wife/kids at a moment's notice. (1.5 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
So your car gets 225 miles in a tank and a half of fuel.....and somehow that is better than and EV? At 310 miles you will get there, plug your car in, or fuel it up, the way batteries work you get about half the range from empty in about 15 minutes.
2) My sister lives 525 miles from me. I can drive there in around 7-7.5 hours, easily. (3 tanks of fuel in my vehicle)
And Im sure as you drive you dont stop for lunch or anyting? Charge the car at stops.
3) My grandmother lives 165 miles from me. I can do the drive in 2.5 hours easily. I've had to drive out there unexpected on several instances when she's had issues. Drop of a hat. (less than one tank of fuel in my vehicle)
So Drive there, im not understanding the problem...and i get it. People who don't drive EVs really think this is some kind of hassle, you get over it pretty quickly when you have an EV with a good charging network and a good starting range. The issue is that there are lots of EVs that have bad performance and these have been whipping posts for EV issues. But for every instance where an EV might have a weakness there are scenarios where they are better too.
These are not extraordinary distances. These are easy drives, though Maryland isn't great. None of these trips are worth a plane ticket (Maryland maybe if there is a crazy medical emergency with my nephews - even then, the total time to fly up there would be similar to simply leaving the house).
In any one of these situations, what do I need to do in order to make that drive? Answer: check the tires and oil in my car and leave. Maybe take a piss before I head out. These are simple, economical drives and require zero planning, no rental cars, no time charging, etc. In all of these drives an EV (even one with 200 mile range) would be a no go. I've gone to my grandmother's house to check on her after a fall and driven home the same afternoon so I could go to work. It doesn't matter how long ago I drove my car or what my charge level is at. That's not a consideration. It shouldn't be. Owning a car or personal vehicle shouldn't require that.
I guess don't limit yourself to an ev that only gets 200 miles of range, Or don't get an EV until battery tech gets better which is constantly is, every year they get more range.
I don't need to worry about charging a car at my buddy's, my sister's or my grandmother's house. I don't have to worry about stopping anywhere on the highway to simply refuel and keep going. I can tackle any of these road trips minutes after getting back from any other one of them. In an extreme situation I could toss a couple of 5-gallon tanks in the back of my car and drive for thousands of miles without issue).
Look you can come up with any scenario you want. For the driving habits of the average person a good EV works just fine. I am an extreme case, I live 80 miles from my job, 160 round trip, usually with some errands required for work.....my EV works out just fine. If I have to charge it I go to the charger pop on netflix watch an episode of....whatever, grab a snack, talk on the phone whatever.....usually only need 15 minutes to get a charge of 150 miles to get where I need to go. that charge will cost me about $4 at the charger. I'll admit when I first got my EV i was worried about all sorts of stuff.....but that dissapears. I havn't been to a gas station in almost a year, i rarely use fast charging.....do you know how much time that has saved me over the year?
Would it be nice if I owned several vehicles and one could be a cheap efficient EV? Maybe (and I mean "cheap", not your definition of it). I don't. I own one car. It gives me the freedom to tackle any driving situation with zero concern. Why would I go backwards into an EV and change all of that? I don't care about EV's performance specs. I don't care about the costs. Car maintenance is cheap on my car. My car has been paid off for six years now. I don't care about the environment. My car is a simple basic vehicle, I'm not blasting a V8 diesel everywhere I drive.
Ok well, good, keep your car.....ICE cars will be around for quite some time.....and you will be able to get used ones pretty cheap and resale value on them is going to plummet. Scoop them all up for cheap.
Explain to me how your magical EV suddenly solves this? For the same price as a basic ICE car?
I already have and it does for most people that are currently out buying NEW cars and have normal driving habits
You seem to have an exceptionally biased and narrow view of EV cars. If you presented yourself by saying "Man, I think EVs in the future are going to be a contender"...sure, maybe. Bu tthey're not right now. They're an answer for a very small demographic. I think you can't see outside of your own living situation. Have you considered how an EV benefits a person in South Africa? Venezuela? (good luck they get fuel for free basically...), a random town in Ukraine, or Romania? Under-developed portions of China and India? Or are middle-class/first world drivers and consumers the only thing you're happy to consider?
No, you want to find any bizzaro situation where EVs wont work is all I am seeing here. EVS are selling well in China. Its actually going to be great for these people, they will be able to get used ICE cars at bargain basement prices because everyone else who can get the benifits of EVs is going to be buying them. The price of NEW ICE cars will most likely go up especially leasing. I don't need to wait for the future for EVs to be contenders, they are already contenders. I need no other car and my driving habits are far beyond most peoples.
I'm not sure how else to present this other than: if I were to replace my car with an EV....it would be worse. I'm not sure why that's a difficult thing to understand, or why you don't grasp the backwards move the average EV presents to an average consumer. Buying a product that does less things for more money? It's just been a hugely premature market move. The tech isn't there. Now if you're happy being a test run for the eventual development of a useful and worthwhile EV - grand. Just stop pretending it's an answer for things it can't tackle.
Oh no, I understand that for you an EV is not the answer.....however you feel like because it doesn't work for you means that they don't work period...and you'd be wrong. What you have is a exceptionally biased and narrow view based on your own habits and 0 experience with an EV. According to the average driving habits of drivers EVs fulfill the requirements nicely. And look we are still in the first generation of truly mass produced EVs.....The first truly Mass market EV was delivered only a few years ago......do you somehow think that this is the best there is going to be. We are already seeing EVs in development with over 500 miles of range. You like to say EV only work for a tiny percentage....but I bet if we look at driving habits, it is yours that fall into the tiny percentage.
Just because EVs are not perfect in 100% of the situations does not mean they are not contenders, they work exceptionally well in most circumstances. I'm sure when the horseless carriage first came out there were ways that horses were better.....in fact even today I bet there are instances where horses are better, but we know who won that battle.
You're really, really good at ignoring everyone else aren't you? Everything Elbows brings up is a completely valid point and the reason the vast majority of people don't even consider EVs yet.
1. Cost: you're wrong. It's that simple. I can tell you this from my experience of less than 6 months ago. The one good thing about most EVs we saw was the equipment spec being quite good but for a similarly specced, similar-sized ICE Nissan it was about 66% of the cost. If we looked further afield and took advantage of other manufacturers and their offers we could have saved even more. EVs are not cheap and it's genuinely puzzling that you consider them anything other than expensive alternatives at the point of sale. I get the argument about the total cost of ownership, but the up-front cost is a huge barrier for most people. Also, outside of the US, Teslas are in no way cheap. The average family in the UK will not spend anywhere near the price of an EV when buying a new car.
2. Range: you're wrong. ICE cars have better range and are much more convenient to refuel than any EV. They also tend to have more consistent range as EVs are more sensitive to things like outside temperature. You cannot deny that anyone wanting to travel 250-300 miles is likely to find an ICE more convenient. It'll get them there faster and they don't need to be concerned about finding a charging point at their destination. Real world EV range is now getting much closer to that 250-mile mark on average but that's still, at best, at parity with ICE cares and still comes with the disadvantage of charging times being much higher than refuelling times.
3. As for charging at home, in the UK roughly 33% of car owners have absolutely no off-street parking and a further large number would have serious problems charging even where they do park. This is not an insignificant issue and is an infrastructure problem that governments need to work to solve.
Your problem is you seem very focussed on what works for you and extremely dismissive of any realistic scenario that doesn't work for EVs. I have an EV but we bought one knowing full well what the advantages and disadvantages were and we're happy with our choice. I don't think it's helpful to take the attitude you do when trying to argue the benefits of EVs because you come across as extremely dismissive and close-minded and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of other people's opinions.
I didn't say EVS were cheap especially good ones. Yes they have a higher buy in, but they do end up being much cheaper than ICE cares after only a few years of ownership. Is this a bar to ownership......sure....for now. Right now the biggest bar to ownership is availability and production numbers of good/adequate EVs, not the price....good EVs are selling like crazy to the point of needing to be on a waiting list. The price of good EVs will go down quickly as production ramps up....it already has quite a bit actually. When EVs get the same level of government incentive as ICE cars get through subsidized gasoline.....well they are actually about the same price or cheaper. Many people see these benefits already, they also see putting investment in an ICE car as a loss as the resale value of ICE cars will plummet drastically in a few years.....in fact the trend has already started.
ICE cars being more convenient is a toss up, YES they are easier to refuel on the road for long trips.....but more difficult and expensive to refuel on a daily basis. Real word EVs are already capable of almost 400 miles, driving fast or in the cold will effect that sure, but driving fast and in the cold eats ICE cars range too albeit to a lessor extent. I think most people would take daily convenience if that means very rarely being inconvenienced on long trips.....and thats all it is inconvenience, charging of the road is not some crazy act of sacrifice.....its getting some food and going to the bathroom while your car charges, which you should probably do every few hours anyway. Its not lopping off an arm.
Ok so 33% have no off street parking......that leaves 67% that do. Thats a pretty big market. I could survive right now without charging at home. Fueling my car from 0-310 miles cost $8 at the charger......far cheaper than what 310 miles would cost me in gas......at $2.50 a gallon (far below the average price of gas) I'm getting about 130 miles for the same cost. charging at home is easier and even cheaper. no muss, no fuss, just plug it in. Why do governments need to solve the charging issues. I mean it would be nice, but auto manufacturers should be building their own networks with their own money. This unwillingness to create their own networks is massively slowing down EV expansion. Tesla manages and maintains its own extensive network....the largest global network of fast chargers in the industry and has offered its network for others to use as long as they are willing to pay modestly for it. The problem is legacy automakers want to push the expense onto others or turn them into profit centers. I prefer to get my charging nice, cheap and fast. I've sen the rates other networks charge....it makes EVs almost as expensive to charge as ICE cars. FAIL. Now Im not against governments giving some incentives for building a network of chargers, gasoline gets plenty of incentives so its fair, I just rarely see the government really doing a great job at these kind of projects and if they do it wrong the results could be disastrous.
I think about what works for me because I have what most would term extreme driving requirements being 80 miles from work. I havent even installed a high speed outlet at my house yet, havent gotten around to it, haven't really needed it, now granted I installed one at work and let customers use it, just not at the house yet. If I can make an EV work, most people can. The idea is that if right now EVS don't works for you right now thats fine, but lets not act like someone having to make long trips all the time is what is considered average driving. We know from statistics a good EV fits the driving requirements of most people. If EVs don't work for someones particular needs right now.....so be it, buy an ICE car that works for their needs. This isnt even an argument. Obviously get what works for your needs, but to say EVS just are not even contenders is preposterous.
Now here is an interesting company in my own back yard....I'd like to see how they deal with the inherent issues associated with hub motors in full size cars. Thats a lot of unsprung weight and a lot of heavy direct impact on vital components. Being relatively local I'd like to see them succeed, but I have my doubts.
I was thinking about sustainability the other day. How much of a car could be recycled into a new one? And are there developments that can increase this ratio? I ask because I look at the methods needed to make the batteries for EVs and I wonder to myself if that can be kept up. Then I think about hydrogen cars (yes I heard about their problems) and I wonder if hydrogen cars could be close to 100% recyclable?
Future War Cultist wrote: I was thinking about sustainability the other day. How much of a car could be recycled into a new one? And are there developments that can increase this ratio? I ask because I look at the methods needed to make the batteries for EVs and I wonder to myself if that can be kept up. Then I think about hydrogen cars (yes I heard about their problems) and I wonder if hydrogen cars could be close to 100% recyclable?
Honestly with modern technology cars should be lasting a LOT longer as a product anyway. The reason they don't is because the industry is slaved to the concept of selling you a new car. Parts and repairs are insanely expensive and with more and more electronics trapped behind pay walls of official dealers and with designs of components that are far more complex its become increasingly hard to repair modern cars. The irony is that modern equipment is, in general, far more reliable than in the past, but we can't actually repair most of it economically (if at all with the average garage equipment list).
If we were serious about recycling a massive shift in the market attitude toward more expensive purchase, but far cheaper repair and upkeep could easily see cars lasting for decades.
Heck the UK government a few years back mass purchased and crushed a huge number of cars just to prop up the car market by encouraging people to go out and buy new ones.
Future War Cultist wrote: I was thinking about sustainability the other day. How much of a car could be recycled into a new one? And are there developments that can increase this ratio? I ask because I look at the methods needed to make the batteries for EVs and I wonder to myself if that can be kept up. Then I think about hydrogen cars (yes I heard about their problems) and I wonder if hydrogen cars could be close to 100% recyclable?
One of the main points they push in the sales info about the BMW i3 is how it's something like 97% recycled and recyclable. It's certainly possible to make a fairly sustainable car from the point of view of recycling or reusing parts of it. Recycling batteries and the materials in them is possible, but currently very expensive. This may change in the medium term as more EV batteries move towards end of life, but it's worth noting that Nissan currently sends old Leaf batteries to Amsterdam where they form part of the power system for the Amsterdam Arena where Ajax play. The original predictions that EV batteries would have a lifespan of 5-8 years seems to have been wrong. Even after they are of little use in a car they still retain enough charge to be useful in other areas.
Hydrogen certainly seems to me like the most reasonable future tech from almost every point of view save the single most important one: infrastructure. EV charging infrastructure is patchy at best but at least there's always the fallback option of charging at home which is what makes EVs a practical choice at the moment. Hydrogen would need to replace the existing network of petrol/diesel fuel stations in order for it to become practical.
I can forsee some issues with charging from home arising (From a UK angle)
Imagine:
You live In a row of terraced housing, your car has to be parked on the road. Usually there is a public pathway/pavement separating your home from the road. Your charging cable has to come from your home to your car and therefore crosses the pathway.
Are you reasonably allowed to deny access for the duration of any charging.
Is the vehicle/home owner liable for hazards i.e trips that may occur with pedestrians coming into contact with the cable?
Near term, parking spaces are at a premium what if access to your charging point is blocked because someone is parked along your frontage?
is there a case for a parking premium to be paid?
Long term. Are charging points to be distributed along public roads, with access to each residential address. Who pays for this infrastructure? Are the charging points open to all or locked to specific address/owner details?
How are charging points to be integrated into the grid?
Yes, the charging at home is only possible for people who have a car port, which is about 60% of UK homes at most. (I read somewhere, it could be worse than that.)
I am guessing charging points will be plumbed into public infrastcuture like car parks and street furniture. There are already some like this in Oxford.
It's just a matter of doing some government spending.
You could operate the public chargers wtih an app access system.
There's definitely a problems with home charging, as I've mentioned a few times ITT. The lack of people with off-street parking in many countries is a real problem that needs different solutions than we currently have. Making chargers just part of the everyday landscape of modern towns and cities is probably the best way forward. Lampposts with charging points, or charging points at every car parking space in a multi-storey are two good solutions form an engineering point of view.
The bigger problems are who pays for it and will the grid itself have capacity if all the cars currently on the road were changed to EVs? I imagine the infrastructure would be paid for by the companies who control it and the hope is that the rise in popularity of EVs will see an increase in the charging infrastructure. Whether the free market will match demand is something we just don't know yet, and it may be that any countries whoa re serious about increasing EV usage may need to spend government money to improve the charging network. This already happens in some parts of the UK with local councils installing charging points for their fleets of EVs and making those points available to the public as well.
It's been a while but I've been seeing some more EVs in the news lately. I was just reading about GM bringing the Hummer back as an EV truck. And Jeep just announced plug in hybrids that will be coming out in December. I always been a Jeep guy so that has me interested, but I'm kinda scared to see what the price tag will be. But either way I'm stuck with my jeep compass lease for another 2 years. It'll be interesting to see what other new stuff will be out by then.
I like the idea as despite the way some people have to dump on every new idea, they are less polluting that normal cars. They can be recharged thru solar and other clean energy sources.
Tbh I don't care about if they pollute or not, they allow the West to be energetically independent from the middle east and stop spending so much on oil. But we would need a bit nuclear power plants, but what people focus on is "ecology", oh gosh...
Slipspace wrote: This already happens in some parts of the UK with local councils installing charging points for their fleets of EVs and making those points available to the public as well.
Yeah. Councils deal this is very different ways though.
Coventry, with Jag heavily involved in the city, has masses of chargers. The council went EV ages ago, and there are parts of the city with a charger on every street.
Warwickshire, and its local councils, have next to nothing. There are 4 council-owned chargers, and 3 more at council-run business centres, for the whole county. They are sitting on a huge budget for this, and have installed none of the 47 chargers have been installed they secured funding for last year.
I got a 'cheap' MG EV in March (the model was released late last year), with a government subsidy. The wall charger was the same, getting roughly £3,500 in grants. Throw in another ~£2,500 off from the dealer, and it came into the budget for our first car bought from new. We've hardly used the ICE we have, what with lockdown and no long trips planned. My wife's looking at the new ranges, liking this one so much.
I think Target and some other bigger name stores are adding EV parking spaces, though I doubt they're being used too much at the moment. It's a nice gesture I guess, but I think for EV owners you need to charge it up at home for it to be effective. I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes, and more charging stations have to be available. Might be cool if gas stations could also have charging stations that they charge for, and solar panels all over the roof so it doesn't impact the city infrastructure as much.
Necros wrote: It's been a while but I've been seeing some more EVs in the news lately. I was just reading about GM bringing the Hummer back as an EV truck.
Yeah, my work homepage, these clowns are so high on this thing, its not a truck. . . they are calling it a "supertruck"
One thing I know for sure, its made by GM, so it will be, fairly objectively speaking, garbage.
Well, IF human civilization doesn't collapse soon and IF these work out, solid state batteries may pretty much make electric cars a very attractive option with few drawbacks.
Necros wrote: ... I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes, and more charging stations have to be available. ...
Mine is quoted as charging from 0-80% in 40 minutes on a fast charger. That's enough time to have a potter around the shop, and grab a coffee.
Slow charging, like at home, keeps the battery conditioned, and ready to take a fast charge when needed.
More chargers though, yes, that's the current problem. The DVLA says this:
In 2020 Q2, 19,149 ULEVs were registered for the first time in the United Kingdom, an increase of 30% on 2019 Q2 and 21% on 2018 Q2. ULEVs accounted for 7.8% of all new vehicle registrations, up from 2.0% in 2019 Q2.
That was the reasoning I took when dropping the idea of hybrids. There are more things to go wrong with them, and what they have will have compromises like this. A tiny battery won't make the ICE much less a problem.
Yeah, hybrids were something we rejected outright within about 10 minutes of looking when we were considering buying. They make no sense at all to me, especially the plug-in ones that have relatively large batteries and usually have engines too small for the size of the car in order to fit in all the extra electric gubbins. I wasn't surprised to read that article yesterday.
I have now owned an EV for almost 12 months and I can say that the only time I suffered any form of "range anxiety" was our first long-ish trip which was about 150 miles in total. We ended up back home on 8%, mainly due to not appreciating some of the quirks of EVs and the charging network itself. Back then (last Christmas) most charging points needed an app and some needed an account with the company to use them, which left us having to use a slower charger in a Tesco car park rather than the fast charger we'd planned to use. Thankfully, that's now changing and most charging points take debit/credit cards now. Other than that experience, everything's been fine. The furthert we've gone in one trip is about 250 miles, which involved 3 charges: one on the way, one while we were at our destination and one on the way back. Overall it probably added 30 minutes to our journey time since we'd probably have stopped for a coffee or some food anyway.
One thing I think will become an issue is what Skinnereal mentions above. Charging points are usually easy to find and usually available in my experience. However, I don't think it'll take a huge increase in EVs to put more strain on the network so if the government is serious about pushing EVs over ICE cars they need to get the network sorted quickly. Having said that, in the year of driving so far we've only charged away from home about 5-6 times. I suspect a lot of people will be similar. According to our car's trip computer the vast majority of our journeys are under 5 miles (probably because we live about 4.5 miles from the centre of the city).
Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.
The problem with charging batteries from batteries is getting the charge to go the right way. IIRC, serial connections depend on the voltage output matching, but I've not looked far into that.
Plug them in parallel, and you'll confuse the management computer.
That doesn't mean that manufacturers cannot design a seat-replacement or boot-cavity battery pack that is plugged into the system.
Matt Swain wrote: Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.
EVs don't have an external port to plug directly into the batteries other than the charging port. Also, the batteries are heavy so it's not really like you could easily take them in and out of the car. It's something that was talked about by some manufacturers, I think but I suspect price probably put an end to it. The batteries are pretty much the msot expensive single component in an EV.
The BMW i3 used to offer a range extender that was a BMW motorcycle engine in the back, that was used as a generator for the batteries. It was semi popular initially, when ranges were very low, but they phased it out with the most recent version of the i3 because it simply wasn't popular (and it was noisy as hell). With real-world ranges starting at around 150 miles now for most EVs there isn't such a need for range extension. As I said above, we've not really experienced any extra inconvenience in our longer journeys by owning an EV. If we went over 200 miles frequently we probably would, but in that case we likely wouldn't have opted for an EV in the first place.
Necros wrote: I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes
That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.
In my diesel car, I get about 400 miles range, then need to go to a gas station and refuel. Those 400 miles take me 2-3 weeks to do, with lots of 5/10/30 mile runs. I may occasionally do a 100 mile round trip but it's rare.
With electric, it may take 40 minutes to recharge which is awful if I went to a gas station and waited. But there's no need to do that, because you can refuel it just about anywhere. I could recharge from empty on my driveway overnight, so I essentially start every day with a full tank. I could drive 30 miles to work and then have it recharge at work, so I've got a full tank on the way home. Most cars spend most of their time parked, so you'd find with an EV your car will spend most of it it's time charging or full.
I'd only need to fast charge on road trips, which with the current ranges of about 200 miles means I'd need to stop every 3 hours to recharge. I'd need to stop at least as often as that to pee anyway, and can use the parked time to grab food, chill out or whatever.
The only people who EV's don't suit now and those doing huge mileages under time pressure - couriers, taxis and so on. For those people, hybrids will likely save them a fortune in fuel whilst allowing them to fall back onto gas if they can't recharge in time. Or those who need to do a lot of towing.
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Matt Swain wrote: Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.
Not yet, and the weight would make an internal battery a nightmare. There'd be no technical reason that you couldn't have a giant battery pack on a trailer which you could plug in to extend your range, in fact I'd be surprised if EV Semi's didn't fill the trailer floor with batteries.
For more uses, it'd probably easier to just stop and grab a coffee whilst you fast charge.
I've heard some police dislike electric cars because of the dangers of electrocution and burning/exploding batteries. Rendering the car a high hazard if they are involved in a crash or other incident. Granted its not as if petrol cars are safe in a crash; but I think it helps highlight how police and emergency services are likely not yet well trained and equipped to deal with electric cars.
Again its swings back to that aspect of infrastructure support. At least in many regions of the UK there just isn't the structure there to make the electric car superior or at least comparable and that's before we consider both the price and the fact that their secondhand price tends to be very low. Which is understandable given that its "new tech" and thus advances pretty fast. But its a huge issue for many who rely on the previous car to help pay for a new car. If the car price went up and the exchange rate on the old went down then that's a much bigger cost for the average person to have to stump up to keep on the road
Crispy78 wrote: Mmm. Battery in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480kg. It's not something you could just pop the equivalent of into your back seat to double your range...
See if I were into electric car business, I'd be considering making a portion or all of the battery in the car a standard fit and design. The idea being that since you are renting the battery anyway you could roll up to any garage and swap batteries. So instead of having to charge your car you simply swap over the battery for their stock battery and keep going.
I read a while back that Tesla had a plan for batteries being replaceable - you'd park over a service bay type thing and a robot would remove the current battery from the bottom of the car and replace it with a new fully charged one. Not sure what became of that, it may have been slightly wishful thinking.
Crispy78 wrote: I read a while back that Tesla had a plan for batteries being replaceable - you'd park over a service bay type thing and a robot would remove the current battery from the bottom of the car and replace it with a new fully charged one. Not sure what became of that, it may have been slightly wishful thinking.
Aye I was thinking a more hands-on approach rather than something that would require rebuilding the entire garage to function. But its an idea when you consider that the battery is essentially an element that is not affordable and thus already a null cost in the system to make it "work" for the average person. Just have no battery ownership - you own a car shell and simply rent the battery. Either paying for a fresh charge at the garage or simply pay for the electricity yourself at home. Gives you the ability to recharge overnight and also do long haul trips just swapping out batteries.
For the UK one charge might be enough; but for Africa/Europe/America - ergo big places, you need to have a means to charge in minutes not hours.
I don't know if EVs would be very practical for law enforcement.. mostly because they wouldn't have a lot of downtime for charging like people who just plug in at home after work. I worked as a police dispatcher a while back, there were only so many cars available and each shift new officers would be assigned to them, so they were constantly in use. They would have to come up with a way to keep a car down for an hour or 2 a different times of the day to recharge it.
Necros wrote: I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes
That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.
You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.
Necros wrote: I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes
That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.
You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.
True, but except for a certain subset of people, I think the actual change to driving habits is minimal. The "problem" most people have with EVs is often simply not an issue, it's just something people see as "worse" than what they currently have so they home in on it as a problem. We analysed what types of trips we'd make in our car before we bought it and the maximum distance we'd likely travel in it would be 200 miles or so, to see family. Anything longer than that we'd likely fly or take a train. 99% of our journeys are less than 20 miles. Since buying the car we've asked friends to keep track of their driving habits too and the results have been pretty much the same. Some do longer trips more frequently, but even these are more like 40-50 miles one way and those types of journeys invariably involve a longer stop-off at the end of them. I'm aware this varies country-to-country, but I suspect it varies less than people think.
So I'm not sure how true it is that it would be a drastic change, especially as range creeps up towards 250-300 miles.
Necros wrote: I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes
That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.
You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.
I disagree, change is largely inevitable and for most people an electric car is actually more convenient once you get through all the FUD. We're all already familiar with having to charge things like phones, laptops, watches, etc. overnight so a car isn't wildly different. Cars and how they are used have changed drastically over the 100 years we've had them, this is just the next step in the evolution where many people would never need to visit a gas station again. The only real change is in long haul travel where the options are to stop every few hours to recharge (and eat), rent a vehicle with a longer range or use some other form of transport. For most people in the UK, they'd only need to do journeys over an EV range a few times a year.
There are a few use cases where EV's aren't great, like the police one mentioned above and I'm not sure how it could be solved beyond them using hybrids as you couldn't really stop mid pursuit to recharge.
That said, there are a lot of EV/Hybrid taxis around already. It seems mad but somewhere like London they might not cover that many miles over a shift and the fast charging is good enough.
Crispy78 wrote: Mmm. Battery in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480kg. It's not something you could just pop the equivalent of into your back seat to double your range...
See if I were into electric car business, I'd be considering making a portion or all of the battery in the car a standard fit and design. The idea being that since you are renting the battery anyway you could roll up to any garage and swap batteries. So instead of having to charge your car you simply swap over the battery for their stock battery and keep going.
Most manufacturers seem to have considered it but I'm not sure the customer would actually be happy with the idea as it only works if you rent the batteries and what happens if you swap in a bad battery? The range has increased drastically already so we've largely passed the point where a battery swap would be beneficial in terms of time because the fast chargers aren't going to be much worse, assuming a battery swap would take something like 5 minutes to do rather than seconds.
Overread wrote: I've heard some police dislike electric cars because of the dangers of electrocution and burning/exploding batteries. Rendering the car a high hazard if they are involved in a crash or other incident. Granted its not as if petrol cars are safe in a crash; but I think it helps highlight how police and emergency services are likely not yet well trained and equipped to deal with electric cars.
There's some risk that a burning battery can be hard to extinguish, or a leaking battery could be pretty nasty, but they seem to be safer than combustion.
One of the few cases of a Tesla catching fire in use turned out to be because the battery was hit by a bullet coming from the passenger compartment - https://electrek.co/2018/12/16/tesla-fire-bullet-battery/
This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.
The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.
The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).
Ensis Ferrae wrote: This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.
The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.
The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).
Makes sense to me I guess.
There was some article I read somewhere a few weeks ago about the 'battery revolution' and the huge strides made in battery and cell technology in the past few years. I suppose it's not a coincidence the Governor of California picked now to set a 2035 goal for electric vehicles. The way it's being talked about seems like we've had a vague idea of what the future would look like and it's simply been the waiting game as the technology is devised and worked out. Coincides with the rapid expansion of green/renewable energy production too. I suppose if we can't make any sort of meaningful goal for reducing our environmental footprints, we could just do what we've always done as a species and tech our way out of the problem XD
EDIT: Didn't Airbus just come out with a concept for a hydrogen cell passenger aircraft too? Hydrogen is getting to be real popular in elemental the schoolyard XD
The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers).
It's not just a case of moving the pollution; combustion engines are at most about 70% efficient whilst burning the same gas in a power plant may be as much as 99% efficient so you're much better off even with transmission losses. There's also something to be said for moving pollution away from streets into facilities that can filter them better - we get better air quality where the people are.
It's even more important for plant, JCB have an electric digger now which can run indoors without needing extractor fans and to change drivers every hour because it's not filling the room with exhaust emissions. It has an additional bonus that it's almost silent so you don't need a banksman to let you know if you've hit something you shouldn't - you can hear it.
And that's just assuming that we're burning the same fuel in a different location. EV's can be powered by anything that produces electricity - solar, wave, wind, hydro, biomass, nuclear, gas, oil, coal, hamster, and so on.
Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).
Currently (in the UK at least) any van carrying compressed gas needs special warning stickers on the back and have lower speed limits on some roads, because of the additional danger of crashing with compressed gas. I can't see hydrogen being a common thing because of the danger involved in crash and failure.
However, I can see hydrogen being used for specialist applications - that stuff where pure battery isn't viable.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: This past weekend was the Le Mans 24h race, and in the wee hours of the night, they had some "interesting" discussions.
The long and short of it, per these guys who have been interviewing some of the engineers behind the future cars (ie, Peugeot's hydrogen future/show car for the FIA) for years now are saying that the Tesla and other "standard" EVs that we see currently on the road today are merely stop-gaps to the "true" future of the automotive world.
The problem of current EVs, is that they simply move the pollution from point of use (as an ICE car does) to point of creation (power plants creating the electricity for the chargers). Apparently what the hydrogen celled EVs would do is have a tank/cell with hydrogen which through electro wizardry powers some self-charging thing making pit stops for "fuel" ever further apart. And, depending future designs one could imagine it would be a simple thing like swapping propane tanks at your local hardware store (ie, pay at the register, drop the old tank in a cage, pick up a new/full one, and off ya go).
Hydrogen has been the EV-beater for years now and it never seems to get anywhere. The problem seems to be it has even worse infrastructure problems than electric since at least with an EV you can charge at home, or set up a charger pretty much anywhere with the minimum of effort just by connecting it up to the national electrical grid. There's also the issue of getting all that hydrogen - it may technically be very abundant but getting it in the form required to power a car isn't that straight forward. I think if they can overcome these problems hydrogen would replace EVs as the way forward but they may have fallen too far behind, especially as batteries creep up towards the 350-400 mile range and charging times come down. BTW, hydrogen powered cars fill up from a pump, exactly like regular petrol/diesel cars.
As for the pollution aspect, as well as the points mentioned above about shifting where the pollution occurs, it's also the case that we're running out of fossil fuels and all electricity in the future will need to be generated by clean(er) processes anyway. I live in Scotland and we already produce a very high percentage of our electricity from renewable sources and the UK as a whole has had quite a few days in the past year where no fossil fuel was burned to generate our electricity. My current supplier only provides green energy, so it is currently possible to be completely "green" from the power station to the home.
I remember from high school science that hydrogen takes about twice* the energy to produce (via splitting water at least) than you get from burning it. So whilst you can get that energy to do the split for free via renewables, it seems more sensible to just leave the energy as electric.
As you said, you'd then need all the petroleum infrastructure but under might higher pressure.
edit: *google says it's about 70-80% efficient with best techniques at the moment.
The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.
I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.
Slipspace wrote: The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.
I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.
Well that's disappointing. You'd the think the most abundant element in the universe would be easier to get your hands on.
Slipspace wrote: The current industrial scale method for producing hydrogen uses natural gas as the feedstock for the process, which is neither green nor sustainable. It's possible to use methane from any natural source but the problem there is the volume of gas required on an industrial scale if the entire automotive industry switches to it. Also, the process emits carbon dioxide as a waste product, which isn't great for the environment either. Electrolysis works too and is fairly efficient.
I suspect many of these issues are not insurmountable but if EVs become good enough for almost all normal driving I can't see where the impetus to develop the hydrogen infrastructure, from production to transport to delivery to consumers, is going to come from.
Hydrogen may not be developed for car usage, but it could be a viable fuel for airplanes. Going for fully electric planes seems difficult at the moment, while using hydrogen instead of jet fuel isn't such a huge change.
And security isn't a problem since planes are already flying deathtraps anyway
LordofHats wrote: Well that's disappointing. You'd the think the most abundant element in the universe would be easier to get your hands on.
It's not hard to get. If you want, you can start producing hydrogen yourself with a battery, a couple wires and a few glass containers. Industrial methods can reach pretty good efficiency. The problem that really hampers H2 is storing and transporting it.
As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.
Also small, localized recharges could run off solar or wind. Plus if the rest of the west followed the french nuclear model we'd have efficient, safe and cost effective nuclear power all over the place...
As to hydrogen, I know the issues with getting the stuff in a free state, but I wonder of we couldn't set up big hydrogen plants in large open desert areas where there's just lots of unused open space and sunlight. Set up massive solar arrays to power the plant and during daylight it makes hydrogen thru solar powered electrolysis. The liberated oxygen is a useful gas and could be sold to people who have special uses for it .
A rail line could bring in takers of water and take away cargo cars filled with stored hydrogen and oxygen.
I'd like to at least have this concept look into by people without a pro petroleum bias.
Matt Swain wrote: As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.
I've always assumed that most 'green' tech is better than current fossil fuel tech, even if it doesn't 100% solve all problems.
The danger I guess is in people becoming complacent, assuming 'problem solved' and then deciding that's good enough. Projects like the one you describe take lots of investment and involve lots of risk. That doesn't make them bad, but people are a bunch of lazy fethers XD It's easier to take the easy way out and assume it's all better now than to deal with an ongoing problem as an ongoing problem.
Well, with Tesla building its new 4 million something sq ft assembly plant a few miles down the road and 5,000 some-odd jobs and the premise they can establish economies of scale to reduce the price tag and better battery tech, makes me happy - especially for the increase in the neighborhood values!
As to hydrogen, I know the issues with getting the stuff in a free state, but I wonder of we couldn't set up big hydrogen plants in large open desert areas where there's just lots of unused open space and sunlight. Set up massive solar arrays to power the plant and during daylight it makes hydrogen thru solar powered electrolysis. The liberated oxygen is a useful gas and could be sold to people who have special uses for it .
A rail line could bring in takers of water and take away cargo cars filled with stored hydrogen and oxygen.
I think that's what would happen if hydrogen fuel had a suitable uptake (for things like aircraft), albeit they'd probably pipe the water in and gasses out. It's just less efficient and less safe to do that for car fuel than to just pipe the generated electricity away. I understand that solar farms like that already exist.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily say that this is the "EV-beater" . . . but I think that for EVs to truly take off, they do need to be able to run endurance racing events like Le Mans, as that race in particular has been basically the #1 showcase for new/future automotive tech for decades, and this project, IMO, shows promise of being able to deliver an "EV" that can run a 24h event. But with the way things are going, do we really need something that "beats" an EV? If companies buy into the infrastructure to convert petrol stations into hydrogen/plug-in EV stations, wouldn't this negate many of the problems that have been discussed? I would have to think that at some point even the petroleum companies and big oil recognize the fact that they are, as oil companies, on the way out. A rethink could see them become "energy companies" instead, thus pushing their own massive infrastructures into the direction of hydrogen, or plug in electrics.
I dunno, I just don't see Hydrogen taking off, even if it is the best way to go, like the infrastructure you need to make that an option for the general public seems pretty massive. whereas EVs you can just charge from home and it's easier to set up gas stations and highway rest stops with charging stations, since they already have power lines connected it's probably a lot easier to set up than building hydrogen gas pumps and all.
Tesla just announced they have some fancy new batteries that are smaller and better. one article said it could get the Model 3 down to around $25,000 .. I'll believe that when I see it.
EVs are definitely eventually going to be the standard. However that won't happen until they can be fully charged from empty in only a couple minutes and also have a range of a few hundred miles. They'll also have to not cost an arm and a leg, the home charging equipment will need to not cost an arm and a leg, and the home charging equipment will need to be easily installed in any location. It'll need to be practical for not only someone who has a house with a garage, but also someone who has to park on the street or in a communal parking garage. Sure, eventually it might be standard for landlords to have EV charging stations in all the parking spots of their apartments, but that would require a massive majority of renters to have EVs first because otherwise they couldn't afford to do that.
While that will probably happen eventually, its definitely not going to happen for at least a few decades. You need to overcome the technical limitation and then wait for the technology to become more widely used before it can become dominant.
I can't post the pic here but if you do a google search for "Bloom county electric car" you'll see a picture illustrating one definite virtue of a solar charged electric car: The sweet satisfaction of 'refilling" your car at no cost and not giving a cent to foreign countries or big business.
Grey Templar wrote: EVs are definitely eventually going to be the standard. However that won't happen until they can be fully charged from empty in only a couple minutes and also have a range of a few hundred miles. They'll also have to not cost an arm and a leg, the home charging equipment will need to not cost an arm and a leg, and the home charging equipment will need to be easily installed in any location. It'll need to be practical for not only someone who has a house with a garage, but also someone who has to park on the street or in a communal parking garage. Sure, eventually it might be standard for landlords to have EV charging stations in all the parking spots of their apartments, but that would require a massive majority of renters to have EVs first because otherwise they couldn't afford to do that.
While that will probably happen eventually, its definitely not going to happen for at least a few decades. You need to overcome the technical limitation and then wait for the technology to become more widely used before it can become dominant.
Chargers already exist that can charge a 300-mile range battery to full in around 20 minutes (they're currently experimental as no cars are commercially available that can use the connector, though Audi have one about to release, IIRC). The physics and chemistry of how batteries work do put a lower limit on how fast you can charge them but I think the increase in range will simultaneously reduce the requirement to recharge from <10% to 100% in almost all cases.
I think we might eventually see home chargers and on-street chargers become the norm. Around me all of the new housing developments are building houses with integrated solar panels, which wasn't standard until about a year ago and I can see chargers being similar if EVs become popular enough. The problem will then be retrofitting them to other houses and on streets to cater for people who don't have off-street parking, which is still the majority in the UK. A second issue is that many houses with off-street parking may not have their electricity supply routed to a convenient point in the house to allow a charger to be fitted. We were lucky that our supply comes into a cupboard that adjoins the garage so the charger could easily be fitted just by drilling through the wall and running a cable a few metres. In my parents house, for example, their supply comes into the middle of the house so you'd be looking at lifting floorboards and running a much longer cable.
It's also worth noting that if chargers become standard in every parking space in out-of-town shopping centres, for example, they wouldn't need to be the big fast-charging stations we have now. A small 7kW charger takes up very little space and can be connected to the regular supply with no issues. It's slower than the big charging units you see right now but that's not a problem if they're everywhere and you literally plug in whenever you stop somewhere.
As to EVs just moving the pollution, i have to say not quite true. First off the bigger an electrical generation system gets the more efficient it gets, so a huge electrical plant burns fuel more efficiently than a car engine and produced less pollution per amount of power released, so recharging EVs from a huge plant would lessen pollution thru greater efficiency.
That means that your car can only be as green as the grid you're hooking it up.
There was a big study not too long ago which compared well to wheels emissions of EVs vs conventional cars and hybrid and in most countries something in the 50-ish mpg range was enough to cover the gap (in places like Norway or France it obviously was much more, in the hundreds or thousands).
Yes, grids are also getting greener, but putting big heavy batteries on vehicles come with some compromises, and PHEVs with small pure EV range work for most commutes while being much more useful for the occasional long distance trip.
Spartan 117 wrote: I actually am really excited about the prospect of electric cars. Electric engines have crazy amount of torque compared to combustion engines.
The MG ZS EV I got is 0-60 in 8.2 seconds.
The petrol versions are 10.6 and 12 seconds (manual and automatic).
It really likes stopping at the lights
The thing about powering an EV is, as pointed out, easier to do off-grid.
Some of the at-home car chargers with with solar (or other trpes you might have) power, and can be set to charge off that first. The rest (if any) solar power can be pumped back into the grid, and power the rest of your house.
If the grid goes down, and when the pumps dry up, EVs will be the only things still running.
Our roof is on sideways, so solar is not a good option for us. And, being in a housing estate, wild is a bit rude, too.
Our charger run through a wall from the under-stairs loo, through a kitchen cabinet, and out to the drive. The earth spike was a bit fiddly, but they managed to stick one in, as our type of outside charger has to have one of its own.
I'm in favor of EVs and honestly no longer even look at the opposition's points anymore.
In modern society reason is dead. We live in a post truth, post facts and post reason world. Facts, truth and reason don't matter anymore. All that matters is "If that group is for something them I'm against it!" The 'reasons' are made up later and often quite ludicrous.
Look at wind power. 'TURBINES ARE UGLY! THEY CAUSE CANCER! THEY LOWER PROPERTY VALUES! THEY GIVE YOU EPILEPSY! THEY KILL BIRDS!" (The last is really funny considering it's raised by people who generally oppose any form of protection for wildlife from pollution or development of wild lands.)
No matter what change anyone wants to make or how good it would be, it will be opposed automatically by those who are mind-locked to the status quo.
Hell is the impossibility of reason, and we are in hell now. You can't reason with large segments of the population anymore. The best you can do is pick the position you believe is best and stick wit it.
I believe we have a problem with petroleum engines now, we need to change it, and EVs are at least an attempt to move in a good direction and I refuse to even bother trying to engage with the other side or consider their mostly made up 'reasons' to oppose EVs or any other change from the status quo.
Does that seem unreasonable? Maybe it is, but again, hell is the impossibility of reason and we're in hell now. Sometimes when you find you're going thru hell the only thing to do is keep going.
There is the saying:
-If not you, who?
-If not now, when?
Some common answers are:
-Those who can afford it,
-When battery technology improves.
There are things that need doing, and people have reason not to. If you don't have any reason not to, be the change you want to see happen.
I've given up hoping the majority will change.
So, I did.
Yeah, we went into our EV adventure fully acknowledging we could have got a much "better" ICE car for the money we spent and also had the extra convenience of being able to do longer trips, though with the inconvenience of not being able to "fill up" at home.
At least our EV's spec was pretty good - we got pretty much all the gadgets you could ask for in a modern car included in the cost. I think as EV prices come down more and more people will start thinking about them as viable options. I know at least two of our friends are now likely switching when they next get a new car.
I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.
So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?
Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )
I have to admit not mentioning bikes seems like an oversight here.
Bikes are a minority vehicle market but still they are used by a lot of people.
I'd imagine a lot of bikers are the "Rebel who doesn't need a cause" and "Little billy bad types who would never accept an alternative to their big, loud, smoke belching hogs no matter how valid they were so we can just pretty much not try to factor them in.
In some ways bikes are great for EV use as they are often short ranged transports and the small batteries could recharge quickly. To make an EV bike with range and speed equivalent to a current version could be problematic and again, a lot of the people using bikes today like big loud roaring smoke belching and annoying beasts that make them look and sound soooo bad. The virtues of EVs will be irrelevant to them. The people who use scooters around college towns are perfect targets for EVBs, and colleges are most likely receptive to adding in the tech to support them. Large colleges and college towns seem like perfect choices to start EV programs.
I'd imagine a bike's battery would be small enough to make just swapping batteries at a service station viable.
You know one issue we're not taking on here, until now, is the power source for EVs. An EV is only as green as the grid it'g plugged into. Charging them off coal fired generator electricity is at best a minor improvement from running cars off gasoline. The more green and cost efficient a grids is the better EVs get.
So, do we want to expand this topic to green energy sources or spin off a new topic about new, green energy?
IF you want to go there, electric vehicles lend themselves economically only to long commute routes that people predicatably can pour high mile commuting into. Plug in hybrids are both cheaper, less resource intensive (many of the metals for battery production are a potential chokepoint were we to attempt to make a billion electric cars in the next decade) and far more economically effective for most commuters. (The 29 mile plug and play hybrid comes in about 7000 ish cheaper than a very cheap electric car, but suffers no loss of flexibility or long range use and no charge fussiness in a petroleum infastructure world. Even a crappy EV like a leaf with its "tiny" 150 or so mile range batteries adds thousands to the price.
Result, EV's suck. If you increase by 10 grand the cost of every car and make them less useful while making them less convenient, people won't usually pick the stupid option over the ones they can get either very cheaply (ICE) or pretty cheaply (plug in hybrids). (I would argue a 4000 to 8000 per car subsidy on things like the plug in prius hybrid would be a far better idea than any subsidy on EV ever could be.)
However, electric vehicles do have a place. The most obvious use is on long haul trucks (or buses) with a predictable route and the ability to make an all electric truck's batteries tailored to that route's length, rather than one size fits none like current EV batteries for consumer cars. If the truck moves 200 miles each way, with a stop to recharge (or swap bats) and to reload/unload at each end, that's ideal for the truckers, who have a logical build in stage for recharging at their arrival or depatarture points, even if swapo batteries is too complex for the market to secure and manage. Especially if you end up putting 1000 miles a day on the rig, the big, inefficient truck will cut the carbon footprint of something like .. hmm ... average commuter drives only 40 miles in a vehicle that gets probably 10 times the miles per gallon (long haul trucks are typically 5 to 7 mpg, a well built commuter vehicle like a prius plus hybrid, is rated at about 58 ... that one big electric truck will save more gas roughly 250 commuters converting to prius hybrids or electric vehicles. And I am damn sure if you offer someone with a big rig 250 times 36000 dollars to buy an electric rig? They would probably do so for the free truck and early retirement account. The average commuters would (all 250 of them) have to drive their worthlessly overpriced and inefffective "green" electrical vehicles, day in, day out, even if you were to give each of them a free one through some whacky subsidy program, to match the change ONE big haul rig (admittedly 1000 miles a day approaches a theoretical maximum and requires several driver changes, but still, you get the point. at 500 miles of driving, its only 125 or so commutes worth of optimal improvements... Stick subsidies on trucks that are used by their owners as purely economic assets in commercial life, and nobody will be surprised how quickly businesses will tend to the bottom line by using them, as long as those subsidies + the power grid electrical supply actually make sense to use. That means coal at present, but also a necessary nuclear renaissance, lest we brownout more states than just electrically unstable california in summer. Ultra high use spikes of the electric grid at certain times of day could still make such trucks economically unviable -- so even then, not every trucker would want one, need one, or benefit from one.
I will say a good plug in hybrid built along the lines of the old suzuki samurai (a wrangler ripoff tiny little jeep cousin) or even a jeep wrangler (any of them) with the ability to stick a power generator, a power pack, or just plain a plug in the back to load its "light hybrid plug in battery" would be ideal from my perspective. I would buy one, potentially, although I would be very careful not to wreck my budget over something that is itself a vehicle. Probably spec it out to a 40 mile range before the gas kicks in, or the diesel, or whatever electric generator you want to go with, and let a wide aftermarket grow by standardizing the plug and control circuits for the self charger subsystems. I would not care if the things came with little coal fired steam plants driving dynamos in the back, or a wood chipper and slow cooker style of methanol fume generator. (Actually, I sort of like the idea of being able to go out to a small woodpile and throw that days' fuel into the hopper behind my jeep. I suspect however this is not the most practical thing ever, especially in deep winter areas. But I digress. Point is, if its got a giant plug that can take a battery OR a hybrid charging system, consumers can opt for the convenience and flexibility their own situation requires, rather than being subject to the artificed allocation of a central planning committee that thought "meh, 169 miles is enough for anybody, make the battery that size."
The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car. Although if we're talking about a Jeep I guess fuel efficiency is already out the window...
Improvements in battery technology will certainly be the big factor for going full electric in the future. Using sodium instead of lithium seems to be promising and if it becomes viable would lower costs quite a bit.
Look closely at the total electrical consumption of a prius plus hybrid in electrical mode and compare it to any of the major electric only cars currently out there. You haul so much battery to make a stupid EV car, you lose its added efficiency back again, and end up with something only marginally more efficenient -- and USUALLY less efficient, in electric mode.
Example. Prius plug in hybrid in electric mode has a "MPGe" rating of 133 miles per "electric gallon" .. a leaf car (pure EV, and one with a crappy total range) has only a "MPGe" of about 122 (for the 149 mile range package) which drops then to 114 MPGe for the 226 mile "extendobattery" package.
Literally, they get less miles per electron than a good plug in hybrid -- and while current plugins tend to be aroudn 25 to 29 mile full electric range, it wouldn't be hard to up that to maybe 33 to 36.electric only, which would be enough for maybe 90 percent of daily users to more or less never need to go off electric, with only a nightly charge to boost the thing.
I was not facetious in my post -- electric cars suck compared to hybrids, costing more, doing less, and accomplishing less, simply because the people who get them are forced by range considerations to put huge batteries (that they usually need only once in a long while) in the cars. Tesla may be the worst of the lot in a lot of ways, building the equivalent of sports cars lowers their efficiency as well -- they are buying and putting in place an asset (the battery) and then RARELY using it for the full range. Every drive, however, they are both paying a huge premium and a huge energy cost to haul it around. The lighter weight of a hybrid motor and fuel supply wins on efficiency and price, AND convenience.
The one exception currently is one of the cheapest tesla .. the 39000 dollar one, it compares favorably in electric mode to a prius hibrid plugin. 144 mpg in electric only mode, vs prius's 133. .. however, it also costs around 38,000 dollars. As soon as you move into the rarified atmosphere of cars that are over 100 mpg equivalent, small changes in fuel efficiency aren't particularly impressive. at 15000 miles per year, (which is what the average us car drives) a change between 144 and 133 mpgE will only change the apparent fuel used by EIGHT gallons per year. That's so trivial that it's stupid. It won't pay off for spending an extra 10,000 dollars for roughly .. doing the math ... FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF CONSTANT USE.
The reason being, all the metals in that battery that can drive that electric vehicle, we need them for our long haul trucks (see prior post) to save as much fuel as several hundred individual cars. That's why they are so expensive, the batteries, as everything else, the hybrid prius has effectively the same architecture (with active economies of scale, that's about as cheap as it gets.)
Incidentally, the EPA estimate on charging a tesla 144 mpgE car is 8.5 hours. The efficiency of its battery is higher in the higher charge ranges, too, so its not a great idea to run them half down just because you don't have time to charge fully while (I dunno) on the road. So maybe your drive to pittsburg requires multiple long stops to keep it functioning at that level, and basically, the hybrid user just says "meh, I only visit grandma once a year, what's 10 gallons gas for the whole trip? NOTHING.". So again, its not going to beat the prius which will top its own battery off while driving. Even if magic recharging stations were created that could truly fully charge a battery in 20 minutes (for a fee that is on average in a tesla about 14 bucks, according to the net sources I saw, but as high as 34 bucks, depending only on time of day and power price fluctuations in the unstable california marketplace) .. EVEN then, 20 minutes of time for an average american is worth approximately 1/3 of the 25 dollar per hour average wage we get paid at work. So that 14 dollar fill up .. while you tap your fingers bored in the side of the road .. really costs a minimum of 20, and a maximum of 42 (ish). If you are a rich enough person that your time is worth extra high amounts (doctors, for example, charge seveal hundred dollars an hour for their time, ergo, that is what the time of a doctor is worth. This is why you can get paid maids to clean their house, whose time is worth maybe minumum wage only, and the doctor in question may consider it a GREAT deal cheaper than their own time. I digress.) Driving the teslas on the open road (I suspect that charge number is for the more expensive model) ends up a cost to the consumer as high as a simple honda ICE engine car. No kidding.
Point is, being not stuck for 20 minutes a trip is worth actual money to the consumer, if they are smart enough to notice it.
I am not arguing against the existence of electric commuter vehicles and personal vehicles. As a free market fellow, I trust people to eventually figure out for their own selves that these are a poor choice for the country, ecology, and personal finance, but I wasn't facetious about ANYTHING I put in here.
Fair point. An "ideal" EV should be a small, lightweight car with no more range than what you need for your every day commute. For that once in a while long trip, you can always rent a car.
Still, I wonder how much a hybrid gets in extra costs for maintenance. More components means more potential failures and more pieces to replace.
Tiennos wrote: Fair point. An "ideal" EV should be a small, lightweight car with no more range than what you need for your every day commute. For that once in a while long trip, you can always rent a car.
Still, I wonder how much a hybrid gets in extra costs for maintenance. More components means more potential failures and more pieces to replace.
Which is why the 600 mile, recharging in 2 minutes EV that the FUDers keep banging on about is nonsense - noone will pay for it. I think smaller cars will top out at the 150-200 mile range, that's more than enough for most journeys for most people. We may see some smaller courier vans coming with maybe 300-400 mile ranges so that they can do a full shift without needing to charge (even though they'll have stopped for a few breaks).
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Dukeofstuff wrote: IF you want to go there, electric vehicles lend themselves economically only to long commute routes that people predicatably can pour high mile commuting into.
EV's lend themselves to almost everything, except huge range with minimal stopping. Express couriers, emergency services, etc. Fast charging and increased capacity will improve this trade off all the time. Tacho drivers need to take a break every 5 hours in the UK, capped at 60mph means you need to stop every 300 miles at most. The only exception would be the the drivers switch in the same vehicle.
We've got hybrids to deal with this though,where you can use electric first and then fall back to gas if you need it.
For road warriors, it results in huge cost savings at the expense of needing to stop every ~3 hours to recharge. Those road warriors will presumably be able to spend any wasted stop doing admin work at a service station, or charging whilst visiting a customer.
They are ideal for the mid level commuters - charge at home overnight, drive to work and back, recharge. Currently you can commute about 50-100 miles each way on a single charge. Double that if you can charge whilst your car spends 8 hours in your work car park.
It's even better for the low mileage users (though kinda expensive). If you never do a trip of more than 150ish miles, you can potentially always just charge at home and thus never need to waste time with petrol stations or worrying about running out of gas.
Gas is just so outdated. It'd never be introduced today if it didn't already exist, and it's also going to run out at some point.
So, if you look at the energy used by a hyundai electric variant of the ioniq, a full EV, its about 25 kwh per 100 miles, or in an average us citizens hands, its about 280 miles per week, ie, its about a fuel cost of seven bucks in kentucky, 14 bucks in california, and 21 bucks in hawaii. Cause prices vary. Taht's assuming certain things abotu optimal charge time of day in california.
This compares favorably enough to an 18 dollar internal combustion only hybrid without plugin, I guess. For only 8000 dollars more.
Of course, that means you still need 60 to 80 years to recoup costs, and the externalities of the electric vehicle transaction are such that it will be a VERY BAD IDEA to tie up all our batties in lightly used personal automobiles, and not in high use commercial long haul vehicles, such as we could in fact save a lot more fuel with.
This also assumes we will double our existing electricity production, as adding all those cars, would roughly double national electricity demand (per my own back of envelope calculations using 25 kwh / 100 mile efficiency as a benchmark, and the 15000 mile per annum driver average per car.
Tiennos wrote: The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.
Which is also the problem with long range EVs.
You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.
Tiennos wrote: The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.
Which is also the problem with long range EVs.
You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.
It's not that big a difference. At least, if the car is designed properly, I guess.
Here's the weight for the three versions of the Hyundai Ioniq (according to their website):
- Hybrid (not plug-in): 1436 kg
- Plug-in hybrid: 1570 kg
- Electric: 1602 kg
The fully electric one is only 32 kg heavier than the plug-in one.
Tiennos wrote: The problem with a hybrid is that you're carrying at all times one engine and its fuel that you're not using. That's quite a lot of extra volume and dead weight that'll hurt the overall efficiency of the car.
Which is also the problem with long range EVs.
You're carrying half a ton of batteries that you aren't using in 90% of cases.
It's not that big a difference. At least, if the car is designed properly, I guess.
Here's the weight for the three versions of the Hyundai Ioniq (according to their website):
- Hybrid (not plug-in): 1436 kg
- Plug-in hybrid: 1570 kg
- Electric: 1602 kg
The fully electric one is only 32 kg heavier than the plug-in one.
Because it has a reasonably sized 38kWh battery pack.
The Kia Niro/Hyundai Kona with the big battery (64 kWh) weighs over 300kg extra over the petrol version and 200kg over the plug-in hybrid (which has a very respectable 50+ km only electric range)
Long range Tesla's, Audi's, Polestar etc all have battery packs closing in to 100kWh.
Sadly, car design is often based more on coolness and impressive performance than on efficiency. SUVs wouldn't exist otherwise. The Ioniq can afford a much smaller power pack because it's not trying to be a race car and it doesn't have the aerodynamics of a brick...
Anyways, I really hope Sodium-Ion batteries will become good enough to equip cars in a few years. So far they're still much heavier for the same capacity, unfortunately, but if that hurdle can be passed it should solve the problems of both cost and recharge time.
Dukeofstuff wrote: So, if you look at the energy used by a hyundai electric variant of the ioniq, a full EV, its about 25 kwh per 100 miles, or in an average us citizens hands, its about 280 miles per week, ie, its about a fuel cost of seven bucks in kentucky, 14 bucks in california, and 21 bucks in hawaii. Cause prices vary. Taht's assuming certain things abotu optimal charge time of day in california.
This compares favorably enough to an 18 dollar internal combustion only hybrid without plugin, I guess. For only 8000 dollars more.
Like for like? Because the EV's are usually the top of line models.
Of course, that means you still need 60 to 80 years to recoup costs, and the externalities of the electric vehicle transaction are such that it will be a VERY BAD IDEA to tie up all our batties in lightly used personal automobiles, and not in high use commercial long haul vehicles, such as we could in fact save a lot more fuel with.
Absolutely, for the lowish mileage driver and looking at fuel alone then EV's aren't that competitive, especially in the US where fuel is so cheap. In the UK those 280 miles would easily cost $50. Then there's things like car tax, maintenance, residuals and so on. Often if you look at the total cost of ownership then the EV may be cheaper in the long run despite the higher buy in.
That's before considering the other benefits such as the convenience and noise reduction.
This also assumes we will double our existing electricity production, as adding all those cars, would roughly double national electricity demand (per my own back of envelope calculations using 25 kwh / 100 mile efficiency as a benchmark, and the 15000 mile per annum driver average per car.
How much charge are you assuming each car will draw every night, with a relatively even spread? Cars connected to the grid can charge up overnight at a fairly slow rate, or potentially even give charge back to the grid at peak.
Electricity generation will definitely go up (though presumably oil refineries consume a lot of power and moving from gas to EV means less need to run refineries). It's not something that can't be managed with a bit of additional planning and some new power plants.
I compared the price of the ioniq hybrid plug in to the price of the ioniq EV. Same car, maybe a different wrap on the steerign wheel but its basically an economy car design.
25 kwh is the current EPA estimate for the use of that car over 100 miles as an electric only. A much smaller, lighter, shorter ranged EV, the LEAF, is rated at 19 kwh per 100 miles, which is maybe a good estimate of the best an electric car (that isn't just a golf cart) can do. However, the leaf's short range and smaller than average size led me not to use it in the math, as I wanted a like vs like comparison as much as possible.
Anyway, I think I have made my point. I am not hostile to the technology of EV vehicles, I think it has a real place in long haul trucks, where it can have a far more significant economic impact and waste far fewer precious material resources per impact. But for consumer use, hybrids are better, and plug in hybrids a reasonable compromise.
Remember that in the USA, 30 percent of the fuel cost of those inefficient combustion only cars gives an average annual tax of about 300 bucks per driver to keep our roads up. If you were to try to beat a prius that was allowed to ignore the taxes put on gasoline, your prius's annual use of gasoline would mark in under 500 dollars per annum. to fuel a 19kwh per 100 mile car to drive the same distance in the oh so green california market, without any road taxes, would cost you 570 dollars in electricity. Unless you have a COMPELLING source of alternative, green, cheaper than average electric generation that can be rapidly and easily scaled up, that means those 570 dollars of electricity represent extra coal being burned to increase marginal production during nighttime hours. We aren't getting any more hydro power in, we can't solar at night, and you can't easily charge from batteries using solar without taking TWO instead of ONE battery losses, TWO instead of ONE transmission losses and power stepdown losses. Using a fleet of cars as backup batteries for the town is a non starter that way, even if most batteries didn't already lose power over time -- an imperfect storage. Coal to the rescue? That's why kentucky is 10 cent a kwh and hawaii 30 cent, or california 20 cent. I suppose in one sense buying an EV is a token of support for the american coal industry in perpetuity, so that could to some minds justify it. You know, jobs and such, and energy independence for centuries.
EV gets even less favorable when the right weather conditions make battery life drop by 35 or so percent, or when someone has to charge with a fast charge and there is a 40 percent wastage loss. Those factors combined? A fast charge on a winter's day? OUCH -- I don't want to use a car that's marginal efficiency is already down to about 45 percent, when I can just turn on my hybrid motor and put on home -- no power loss on the wires, no charging issues, no excessive premium to buy it.
So this conversation has been useful for me, its firmed up my ideas of what I will likely buy as my next vehicle, which will likely happen in the next 1 to 1.5 years. Probably a prius plus, unless someone happens to give me a free car that runs on something else.
I guess It all comes down to the price of the different energies where you live.
Over here, one liter of gasoline costs about 1.3€ (and that's after it went down because of lockdown, it used to be about 1.6 and will go back up eventually). In 'murican, that's around $6 per gallon. Meanwhile 1 kwh of electricity costs about 0.15€ ($0.18).
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.
A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.
At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.
You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.
Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.
So a top end electric isn't just a big cost initially; it might also be a big cost to maintain the car as well. This immediately pushes it toward people/families who have achieved a higher threshold of income. This will all come down in price over time, but its going to take a long while to get there.
Heck even with petrol engines you can easily get stuck on a lower income where you can't afford a better car and can't afford not to have a car so you end up endlessly repairing an "old banger" or getting a new one every few months/years until it breaks.
Electric cars are also mechanically much simpler - there are apparently only ~20 moving parts compared to ~2000 in a combustion car, with the associated reduction in wear and tear.
Most new cars are heavily computerized too, so any modern car requires specialist software to interface with it and more and more it's just a case of replacing units rather than actually getting a hammer out and repairing something.
It's also worth noting since the Leaf was mentioned; a couple of my coworkers (doing about 20k/year) are finding that the fuel cost savings alone are slightly higher than the finance payments on the cars and thus the cars are essentially "free".
But in the UK, fuel is over £5/gallon (~$7), and there's another £140+ ($200) in a separate tax.
I will concede that the market in the US is different. In the UK our energy is being supplied by an increasing amount of renewables with an all time low coal usage. Now we get more fuel from 'zero emission' sources than fossil fuel:
I'm serious. I hate to give the VW idea credit since hitler came up with it, but a good idea is a good idea no matter how horrible the source and ignoring a good idea is sheer stupidity.
To get EVs going we need an electric car that is built on the original VW paradigm: A reliable, simple to operate, low maintenance vehicle that is affordable to as large a segment of the population as possible. To Hell with looks and fancy features.
I'd be ok with making it modular, allowing advanced features to be options. The design should be open source for third party makers to offer options.
Ideally it should be made of recycled material as much as possible and be made in modern green-certified factories. It should be as recyclable as possible.
I'd be ok with some governments, like, say, the EU to sponsor a design contest among car makers, offer low interest government loans and subsidies to the winning design and other incentives to get these on roads ASAP. A trade in program allowing a conventional car to be traded in for one along with in some cases a cash bonus would be ok with me, think of it as "Cash plus a new car for clunkers." So if you've got a low mileage pollution factory on wheels you have a real good motive to get it off the road.
Tangentially related to electric cars there's yet another news story about a possibly functional fusion reactor on the net. The main story is on the NYT but those holes demand you subscribe to their paper to see it so 'em.
Guys, I know we've been here before many times. There've been a grillion stories about a fusion breakthrough that have fallen thru,we've been 20 years away from fusion for like 60 years now. But hey, someone's got to get it right sometime.
This story comes from MIT and they have released the science data, it's looking good so keep your fingers crossed.
I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.
So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?
Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )
A co-worker of mine keeps mentioning that "X way round" show that Ewan McGregor does every so often with another person. . . first season was a trip from like, NY to Madrid, Spain by way of Alaska and Russia (or some such nonsense). Per my co-worker who's seen some adverts, the latest season with Mr. McGregor is supposed to go from the southernmost city on the tip of South America, riding electric bikes the entire way, up to like, NYC or some northern US city, and they are the Harley EV bikes from what I gather..
As for some comments about switching over. . . I think I've made my stance in this thread fairly clear: I'm NOT against EVs in principle. I am however, against Tesla as a company. If, and when car companies can produce EVs that are capable of the things that say, my Toyota Tacoma (non-American continent folks, the closest would be the Hilux, or the Toyota "pickup" seen in every terrorist propaganda film ever) can do. As someone who lives in basically suburbia, USA, I "need" a vehicle that can have yard junk literally dropped into it, haul trailers, etc. etc. etc. . . At the moment, EVs are currently only good as daily commuters and grocery getters. Which is fine for folks who only have a need for daily commuters and grocery getters. . . Then there's the purely subjective world of aesthetics: I do not (so far) like the styling of basically any EV currently on the market.
In reference to some above comments: I also don't think that things "need" to be fully EV. As Hydrogen cells have been discussed, IMHO, I see a place for them in the world, as they are functionally EVs, but with very quick refueling times, and if the pilot race technology goes mainstream, very safe to handle/move about. fuel celled vehicles could be very useful as long-haul trucks (lorries), as that has become basically the backbone of American commercial movement. Also thinking economically, with the way various environmental laws are written around the world, for most current gas stations, it is basically impossible to make them a business other than "gas station" . . . I think the most economically efficient means of moving forward is to start converting some/all of their capacity to hydrogen cell EV "charging", especially as this type of vehicle would, nominally have a fuel door similar to what is associated with your traditional ICE vehicle. For many gas stations that have convenience stores, there is already parking spots at the building, and thus a ready place to install quick charge outlets. But that leaves the "drive through" pump area either being wasted, or being an economic drag on the person who owns the fueling station, unless there's some alternative fuels being offered.
Tangentially related to electric cars there's yet another news story about a possibly functional fusion reactor on the net. The main story is on the NYT but those holes demand you subscribe to their paper to see it so 'em.
Guys, I know we've been here before many times. There've been a grillion stories about a fusion breakthrough that have fallen thru,we've been 20 years away from fusion for like 60 years now. But hey, someone's got to get it right sometime.
This story comes from MIT and they have released the science data, it's looking good so keep your fingers crossed.
I'm "cautiously hopeful" with that. The tokamak design dates back to the 50s (good old Soviet tech!) and getting the thing to produce more energy than it uses to start the reaction has been an issue ever since. For decades, every new reactor has tried to be the one that could finally do it.
From the articles' abstracts, they kinda claim that they've basically solved every problem and could make a reactor 10 times more effective than anything built so far. That sounds... optimistic to say the least. I can't really judge if they're right or wrong 'cause the in-depth physics are way beyond me. It certainly sounds like a step in the right direction; I just don't know if the step will be as big as they hope.
If someone here happens to be an expert on plasmas, nuclear fusion, or the insanity that is called magnetohydrodynamics, all the papers are freely accessible here.
thats. . . . basically what I've been talking about for the past couple pages. . . Its how the Le Mans "car of the future" project H24 or whatever its called operates. I personally think that it would be a more viable long-term solution than merely relying solely on battery upgrades and performance.
Companies are too full of themselves, there will never be an original VW kind of car again. And society in general is too connected to not have every gadget under the sun under the hood, so anything not supported that's in most other cars will mean it won't sell at all.
I just read apparently Tesla has some kind of $25k EV they are planning to release in like 3 years, so I'll expect it in 6, and by that time it will be $30k instead. But having an EV at that price point would go a long way toward getting more people into one. By the time it comes out, I bet the tax breaks will be over though.
I do kinda like that new VW ID4, but I'd rather wait for the ID Buzz van and see what that will cost and what the range will be. I'm also interested in the hybrid jeep wrangler, but with wranglers costing $40k for the bells and whistles I want right now, I bet the hybrid will be like $50k at least and for that money I'd rather have a nice and sparkly grand cherokee.
Necros wrote: Companies are too full of themselves, there will never be an original VW kind of car again. And society in general is too connected to not have every gadget under the sun under the hood, so anything not supported that's in most other cars will mean it won't sell at all.
I just read apparently Tesla has some kind of $25k EV they are planning to release in like 3 years, so I'll expect it in 6, and by that time it will be $30k instead. But having an EV at that price point would go a long way toward getting more people into one. By the time it comes out, I bet the tax breaks will be over though.
Don't have to wait for Tesla. The Dacia Spring will be a15K Euro EV in a small SUV-ish form and about 200km of range and comes next year.
It will be a version of Renault's entry level EV in China which sells for about 10K there so it makes a lot of sense.
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.
A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.
At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.
You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.
Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.
EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays. That's probably more an indictment of how complex modern cars are than anything else, but the idea that you need to worry about repairs, especially specialist repairs, in an EV are unfounded. For one thing, as you note, modern cars are already at the point where it's increasingly difficult for a mechanic to just open it up and fix the problem without a specialist ECU and a couple of laptops and that applies not just to the electronics but many parts of the engine itself. The things that are likely to go wrong on an EV are the things mechanics can still fix without any fancy computer equipment.
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.
A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.
At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.
You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.
Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.
EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.
Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.
Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.
A new engine will be a good chunk of the new car value, too, and can be wrecked by all sorts of components failing. Snap a $10 belt and you could be looking at a $10k repair. Cars are hideously integrated and complicated these days.
A new engine will be a good chunk of the new car value, too, and can be wrecked by all sorts of components failing. Snap a $10 belt and you could be looking at a $10k repair. Cars are hideously integrated and complicated these days.
I work in a dealership parts department and your example is off. . . no way a $10 belt snapping causes 10k in repairs. . . . Things that DO cause $10k in repairs however: ignoring check engine lights, or service oil life lights for THOUSANDS of miles. Yes, snapping a belt will stop a vehicle dead because you're right in saying that they are integrated, but once the tension is gone from the belt, its not like its flailing around ripping through stuff.
Also. . . belts generally aren't $10 anymore, lol. . . even some of our "basics" are rather expensive if you're not using some kind of warranty/extended warranty contract.
Given the stats of US car ownership suggests that most people don't own a new vehicle beyond its factory warranty life, much of the issues you are bringing up are pretty much moot. The "average" life ownership expectancy for American car owners these days is about 3 years (which means most never pay off a purchase loan, or simply opt for 3 year lease terms) which means that the first owner never has out of pocket expenses beyond standard wear and tear items, which are still present on EVs (brake rotors/pads, tires, various filters/fluids)
Also, the biggest $$ cost repairs that I've seen in my shop thus far are quite literally ALL down to the stupidity of people. . . And there are three separate instances of the "same" issue: 2 ladies put gasoline into diesel trucks (thankfully one was smart enough to not fire it up and got a tow right away, so that one was "cheap"), and 2 guys put DEF in their fuel tanks. . . Those ones were "fun" from a parts perspective because we had to get fuel tanks through injectors, heads, head gaskets/bolts as anything the DEF touched had to be replaced.
IIRC, we've already seen in this thread, some of the issues with certain car companies and their views on "right to repair", which, in the US, is a court protected idea (as in, the courts have repeatedly sided with the consumer and their right to repair an item/assembly, rather than being forced to replace it), so the cost of replacing a sub-component of an EV, and the availability of those parts may not be a huge issue right now, but it certainly will be as they gain more numbers and more prominence on the road.
Hydrogen fuel cells as they exist incidentally are a great idea but crap. They convert electricity to hydrogen and lose 1/4 of it in the process. They convert hydrogen to electricity, and lose 40 percent of that in the process. so... .75x.6= .45... you lose more than half the energy by using this fuel supply, while a battery itself will lose only about 10 percent, 5 going in and 5 coming out. Please don't make me multiply .95x.95 to get nearly .91, k? Its about.
Point is, its an expensive as hell alternative to electric battery cars, that are (in the USA) already as expensive or more to run than a competently built and managed hybrid. Also, in the recent years, there have been several spectacular failures at hydrogen fuel production plants and fueling stations, which were somewhat similar to what happened to the beriut warehouse this year.
Sure, that's maybe not going to be the most common, but H2 blowey uppey real easy. Given it has such a high inefficiency -- and especially given that most industrial processes for producing hydrogen are currently using fossil fuel power to do so -- its actaully likely worse for the environment than EV's are, and FAR worse than comparitively environmentally friendly hybrids and ICE cars.
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.
A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.
At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.
You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.
Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.
EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.
Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.
Ok, see, that's what we need good old yankee ingenuity (it it still exists.) to handle. Engineers look at the most fail prone components and engineer the design to make those parts replaceable as easily and efficiently as possible.
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Dukeofstuff wrote: Hydrogen fuel cells as they exist incidentally are a great idea but crap. They convert electricity to hydrogen and lose 1/4 of it in the process.
They convert hydrogen to electricity, and lose 40 percent of that in the process.
so...
.75x.6= .45... you lose more than half the energy by using this fuel supply, while a battery itself will lose only about 10 percent, 5 going in and 5 coming out.
Please don't make me multiply .95x.95 to get nearly .91, k? Its about.
Point is, its an expensive as hell alternative to electric battery cars, that are (in the USA) already as expensive or more to run than a competently built and managed hybrid. Also, in the recent years, there have been several spectacular failures at hydrogen fuel production plants and fueling stations, which were somewhat similar to what happened to the beriut warehouse this year.
Sure, that's maybe not going to be the most common, but H2 blowey uppey real easy.
Given it has such a high inefficiency -- and especially given that most industrial processes for producing hydrogen are currently using fossil fuel power to do so -- its actaully likely worse for the environment than EV's are, and FAR worse than comparitively environmentally friendly hybrids and ICE cars.
That's why I recommended using solar or nuclear power to produce hydrogen and oxygen vcia electrolysis. The oxygen can be sold as a side hustle to industries that use it and supplied to the medical field to offset the cost. As to repairs and maintenance, let;s look at new technologies and marry them into the new ev designs and overall gestalt. Suppose the EV's were designed to use 'print on demand' parts that could be 3d printed and shipped to a repair shop assuming the shop didn't have a 3d printer of it's own to make it.
We're 20 years into the 21st century, guys. Maybe we need to start rethinking some long held precepts of our economy and other issues.
Getting rid of gas entirely is a lot more attractive with these prices.
Still a long way away. The cheapest electric Hyundai Kona costs just short of 30k Euro.
A petrol Kona with the same equipment costs 15K, 19K for the non-plugin hybrid version.
At roughly 6 l/100km those 15k are pretty much a lifetime of petrol for the car, not even factoring electricity costs.
You also have to consider repairs. Car mechanics already dislike electronics in cars because it can be near impossible to repair components and even replacing whole units can be hard if they dont' subscribe to get the car reprogramming computer. There's a good number of pretty basic repairs and replacements that you can't do without needing access to the propitiatory computer to reprogram things.
Electric cars are even more a world away and it will take decades to get mechanics at all levels (from your top pro dealer through to your local garage) who have the proper skill and equipment set to be able to deliver effective repairs.
EVs are much more reliable than ICE/hybrid cars. There's fewer moving parts in the average EV (taking into account everything from switches and door handles to the motor itself) than there are in the average ICE gearbox nowadays.
Yes and no. Fewer moving parts sure, but when something goes wrong on the drive unit or the battery pack the recipe is a full replacement and those repairs are a good % of the car new value.
Ok, see, that's what we need good old yankee ingenuity (it it still exists.) to handle. Engineers look at the most fail prone components and engineer the design to make those parts replaceable as easily and efficiently as possible.
As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired. It's basically a huge difference in the ethos of design where cars were once built to "last forever" even though they weren't (they used to rust like crazy); but now we have better materials and understanding ,but we don't built them to last forever - we build them to last until we want to sell them another car.
It's a design ethos that has infected design probably since sometime after WWII. It's why we live in a throw-away age. Not only have we insane advance of technology, but we have built in waste within the whole concept of how our economies work. Heck we see the same, if far faster on both advance and waste, with electronics. How many new mobile phones are really "new" and giving users better features and how many are just doin the same things they did last year, but perhaps a little faster (possibly because it has less bloat-ware auto installed onto it)
I work in a dealership parts department and your example is off. . . no way a $10 belt snapping causes 10k in repairs. . . .
Whilst not first hand (I'm a bit fussy about looking after my cars), I see fairly regular posts on a motoring forum where they've ignored a belt change and it's snapped mid journey and taken out a few other components with garages suggesting it's much easier to just replace the engine than replace the broken parts. I may be missing something though.
EV's should fail a bit more gracefully due to the lack of moving parts, though obviously they've got a few pretty expensive parts.
Herzlos wrote: But why go through such a wasteful approach to generate hydrogen from electricity just to turn it back into electricity later?
1. Hydrogen fuel cell technology certainly needs to improve before it becomes truly viable, so it seems to be more of a future prospect than something we can do right now.
2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.
As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired. It's basically a huge difference in the ethos of design where cars were once built to "last forever" even though they weren't (they used to rust like crazy); but now we have better materials and understanding ,but we don't built them to last forever - we build them to last until we want to sell them another car.
It's a design ethos that has infected design probably since sometime after WWII. It's why we live in a throw-away age. Not only have we insane advance of technology, but we have built in waste within the whole concept of how our economies work. Heck we see the same, if far faster on both advance and waste, with electronics. How many new mobile phones are really "new" and giving users better features and how many are just doin the same things they did last year, but perhaps a little faster (possibly because it has less bloat-ware auto installed onto it)
It's true we're now much more of a "throwaway" society than we once were. Back in the 70s or 80s it wasn't unusual to see home appliances and lots of other things lasting for decades. Now a combination of how things are built and the power of marketing makes us much more wasteful. Combine that with the fact we can't repair things like we used to and you get a perfect storm of waste. There used to be 3 TV repair shops in the town where I grew up, usually also doing things like washing machine and fridge repairs as well. Now there's one, but its main business is installing TV aerials and dishes. It's now almost impossible to repair a modern TV because it's effectively a sealed unit with a big PCB and a sealed single-unit screen where replacing a single element often means buying a whole new unit. The same applies to cars.
For a practical example of how this computer-aided approach ot manufacturing and design affects tings just look at any of the more modern GW plastic sprues. All those intricate bits cut at weird angles that require you to only match up arm A with body 1 and weapon B, or weird interlinked parts that slot together like some sort of strange puzzle designed to torture your patience exist because a computer program decided that was the most efficient way to cut up a model and arrange it on a sprue.
I believe the EU has been trying to push some legislation through against these sealed units. Since sealed units are also often designed with entry points only accessible with specific custom tools. Some are even made so that getting inside a plastic unit is nearly impossible without breaking it open
Heck just to clean the scroll wheel on a mouse you have to remove several screws and then almost crack the plastic shell to actually gain entry. Whereas the screws should be enough all on their own without need of the case also being clipped together oddly.
There's belts and there's belts. Most will only deactivate one system, and do minimal damage. But if that belt happens to be the timing belt and your engine happens to be interference, it can take out your pistons, valves, and camshaft- which could cost you about 10,000, if I'm not mistaken. Whenever that thing comes up for maintenance, it gets replaced, because the consequences of it failing are catastrophic.
Yeah, I was primarily talking about timing belts, sorry. Alternator belts can likely snap without causing any problems except for an eventual flat battery.
2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.
It's a hugely flammable gas at normal temperatures though, so much harder to store and transport than gasoline (which is liquid with a flammable evaporate). You need to store it under huge pressure to get it liquid, which means pressurized tanks, valves, venting and so on.
It may make a suitable replacement for the butane gas used in domestic heating, since it burns cleaner and if you're piping it in at low pressures you avoid most of the difficulties. For vehicles it just seems like an extra inefficient step for most things, though I can see the merit in using hydrogen to fuel huge energy guzzling machinery like combine harvesters and mining trucks, because it'll be a lot easier to refuel them with hydrogen than batteries.
2. Hydrogen can just be used as regular fuel. It burns pretty well, after all.
It's a hugely flammable gas at normal temperatures though, so much harder to store and transport than gasoline (which is liquid with a flammable evaporate). You need to store it under huge pressure to get it liquid, which means pressurized tanks, valves, venting and so on.
It may make a suitable replacement for the butane gas used in domestic heating, since it burns cleaner and if you're piping it in at low pressures you avoid most of the difficulties. For vehicles it just seems like an extra inefficient step for most things, though I can see the merit in using hydrogen to fuel huge energy guzzling machinery like combine harvesters and mining trucks, because it'll be a lot easier to refuel them with hydrogen than batteries.
Dihydrogen isn't really more or less dangerous than "natural gas" (methane/butane/propane) that is used everywhere. Yes it is a pain in the fundament to store because liquefying it is difficult and it's literally the least dense gas there is, but there are ways to work around that.
As I understand it the main issue is that with computer design and efficient design you end up with designs which are very intricate and small; but which are ultimately a nightmare to actually get into. Because they are designed to be built on an assembly line once rather than, like most old vehicles, to be accessed to be repaired.
Pretty much. You'd think that a battery pack made of individual cells would lend itself to replacing worn out or otherwise not working cells and not the whole pack but you'd be wrong.
Same with the drive unit. This Merc B class owner was quoted 18K to replace the drive unit (which sadly happened quite often).
Herzlos wrote: There are supposedly 3rd party companies who'll refurbish batteries by replacing the bad cells. I'm not sure why it's not a more common option.
It may be because the batteries don't degrade as badly as many people (manufacturers included) first thought. Initially there was a lot of talk about batteries significantly losing their ability to hold charge over a period of about 3-5 years but that just doesn't seem to be the case. Yes, there is a bit of a reduction in capacity over time but it's nowhere near the level it was first feared to be.
Also, depending on the car, it may not be possible to actually replace the cells. Teslas have what are effectively a huge number of individual cells that look just like regular AA batteries, albeit larger. But many other cars, such as the i3 and Leaf have very different types of battery where it's not really so easy to just replace a cell. You kind of have to replace the whole thing.
Again, it looks like solid state batteries are very close to ready for commercial use, these will be a game changer for electric cars.
As for the temperature issue, i wonder if a plug in heater could gbe linked to the battery compartment for when the car is parked or in a garage.I imagine the battery compartment could be well
insulated too.
Slipspace wrote:
It's true we're now much more of a "throwaway" society than we once were. Back in the 70s or 80s it wasn't unusual to see home appliances and lots of other things lasting for decades. Now a combination of how things are built and the power of marketing makes us much more wasteful. Combine that with the fact we can't repair things like we used to and you get a perfect storm of waste. There used to be 3 TV repair shops in the town where I grew up, usually also doing things like washing machine and fridge repairs as well. Now there's one, but its main business is installing TV aerials and dishes. It's now almost impossible to repair a modern TV because it's effectively a sealed unit with a big PCB and a sealed single-unit screen where replacing a single element often means buying a whole new unit. The same applies to cars.
Fairly recently, I was put in a position where I was replacing my stove/oven range unit in my kitchen. . . Went around to a few places, we had a solid price point where we wanted/needed to be at. . . Every time I mentioned something along the lines of "I don't want to be back here 5 or 6 years from now doing this again," I was invariably told something along the lines of "ohh, in that case you need to get X brand" (usually this was Viking brand). . . which is known for their incredibly longevity, good clean looks and all that. . . but are also $7-15,000 up front.
Gitzbitah wrote:There's belts and there's belts. Most will only deactivate one system, and do minimal damage. But if that belt happens to be the timing belt and your engine happens to be interference, it can take out your pistons, valves, and camshaft- which could cost you about 10,000, if I'm not mistaken. Whenever that thing comes up for maintenance, it gets replaced, because the consequences of it failing are catastrophic.
I can only speak for the dealership I work at, so grain of salt and all that. . . We have very very few vehicles that use timing belts. Get your vehicle in early to get it replaced while its making noise, and its probably gonna run you maybe 5-600 bucks. Wait till it actually goes, and the last tow-in timing belt job we had, I think was still only 3500-5000 bucks. Granted, I work at a chevy dealership, and Chevy is somewhat notorious for "cheap" vehicles that are easier to replace than repair. This is also reflected in the rising prices of the used car market. . . Growing up it was extremely common to see 15-20 year old cars running "strong" and being sold for cheap. Certainly the badge on the nose of the vehicle will play some role in whether a repair is actually 10k or not, as I know that "premium" brands mark up the same exact Continental/Bosch timing belt to 70% higher than another brand would, just because it is on a premium brand.
But the thing with 99% of all of the big problems that come into our shop??? Today's cars will let you know there's an issue BEFORE it becomes a major issue. I mentioned above things like Oil change/service lights. . . we had a customer who voided her warranty because she bought a brand new chevy, drove it to 28,000 miles and NEVER changed the oil. . . So, because not only was the oil level low, it was super sludgy and wrecked most of anywhere that oil touches. Thing is, that car does have all kinds of oil life, service life, and other dashboard indicators to let the driver know that they need to do service.
Also, depending on the car, it may not be possible to actually replace the cells. Teslas have what are effectively a huge number of individual cells that look just like regular AA batteries, albeit larger. But many other cars, such as the i3 and Leaf have very different types of battery where it's not really so easy to just replace a cell. You kind of have to replace the whole thing.
It's actually the other way around. Because Teslas have such a huge number of individual cells with all the associated wiring, cooling, etc. and also considering the battery pack itself is a structural part of the chassis (for weight reasons) no one will touch them as it's so labour intensive and the chance of damaging the pack.
Actually Tesla will remotely forbid you from charging at high speed if it detects you're using a refurbished battery you installed yourself (there are many videos on that issue on Rich Rebuilds channel)
Theoretically the bigger prismatic cells other manufacturers are using should be easier to replace, but all VW, Audi, BMW, etc. are doing is a commitment to recycle them at the end of the life of the battery pack.
Herzlos wrote: But why go through such a wasteful approach to generate hydrogen from electricity just to turn it back into electricity later?
Because the energy density of hydrogen is much better than batteries (still not up there with fossil fuels, but close), and the cycles of energy generation (like renewables or nuclear) can make it very cheap to dispose of excess energy.
Batteries are expensive and heavy, and hydrogen can help where batteries don't work so well like long-distance applications where the power/weight of battery is a liability.
Makes sense. I could also see plenty of merit in using excess renewable energy to split water into hydrogen which could then be burnt to deal with peaks. Kinda like the pumped dam approach but without needing the hill.
Herzlos wrote: Makes sense. I could also see plenty of merit in using excess renewable energy to split water into hydrogen which could then be burnt to deal with peaks. Kinda like the pumped dam approach but without needing the hill.
I believe there are a few experimental power plants doing just that.
I've also heard there is (or soon will be) one in Germany where they use hydrogen and carbon dioxyde to synthetize methane. It could then just be pumped into the existing gas network.
The issue is, excess renewable energy, absent its a hydroeletric plant, doesn't exist. LCOE cost estimates can only show renewable energy sources PEAK production being economically efficient -- and none of those particular renweables are producing that energy 24 hours a day, so the result is that solar and wind both underperform relative to their "levelized" (read "made up by someone who wanted them to win") costs by about 70 percent.
If you add capacity to your system, you are paying triple for it in resources to accompish miniscule amounts of actual energy, and if you then ALSO store it with a waste of 40 percent (hydrgen industrial productions MOST optimistic scenario is 40 percent loss. MOST.) you are now underperforming with your money by an astonishing amount. You get .3 of your purchase price for energy and multiply it by .6 of your storage price for hydrogen.
Right now there's overcapacity in many markets, and prices reflect that. Also countries like France with high percentage of nuclear usually behave negative prices almost every night in certain regions.
I think much more of a challenge due to the battery technology weighing so much. Couple of hundred KG can be managed in the weight of a 1.4 ton car, not so easy if the motorbike only weights less than 200kg to start with.
So perhaps some kind of hydrogen fuel cell technology will be a better route there?
Although I did think the Harley Livewire is the most modern and stylish looking machine that company has ever made (appreciate that there are a fair few Americans here who might not want to shoot me )
A co-worker of mine keeps mentioning that "X way round" show that Ewan McGregor does every so often with another person. . . first season was a trip from like, NY to Madrid, Spain by way of Alaska and Russia (or some such nonsense). Per my co-worker who's seen some adverts, the latest season with Mr. McGregor is supposed to go from the southernmost city on the tip of South America, riding electric bikes the entire way, up to like, NYC or some northern US city, and they are the Harley EV bikes from what I gather..
Thanks a lot, I hadn't heard of that new show but loved the previous ones. I will check it out
When it comes to car dealers and warranties i know a relative of mine had a car under warranty break down and took it in for repairs, and they took a long time.
One of the guys who worked there finally told him that when a warranty job comes in that would cost over a certain amount they are under a policy (orders) to do everything possible to find an excuse to void the warranty.
So he told my relative he'd spent 3 days looking for an excuse to deny the warranty but had to admit there wasnt one, it got fixed the next day as the fix only took a couple hours.
As to EC directly, I just had a thought:
What if we turn madison avenue loose on ECs?
These guys sold cigarettes for decades, and i think we can all agree that ECs are a far better product that cancer sticks. So could they sell ECs to a large enough segment of the public to make them viable?
Get a few hawt celebs to endorse them, a few biological barbie dolls with generous amounts of silicon and collagen to drape themselves over some ECs, maybe have the lead character of a popular show switch to one and watch the sales pile up.
Eh marketing on stuff like that only works so far. Thing is its not like a cigarette in that is a throw-away price tag for many people.
It's a huge price tag and that not only unsettles some, esp when they see that most of the price is batteries and the car itself devalues at an insane speed right now; but also locks out whole segments of the population.
What you really need is a government with the desire and money to subsidise the whole enterprise. To push local infrastructure both in terms of supply of energy at power charging points; but also to fund education and training courses for mechanics and technicians; they also need to have a means to subsidise sales. That might be giving grants to customers to buy them or giving grants to manufacturers or retailers. However it works the idea being to push sales hard by lowering the price to the consumer.
A really smart move would lower the price of one (electric cars) whilst steadily raising the price of the other at least in the mid-range market (you don't want to raise the low end because you'd have to seriously lower the EC market value to then touch that market segment - but if you can do it go for it).
A handful of years doing that would be a huge investment, but would likely pay off in way more actual sales and uptake than simply getting skimpy/famous people to endorse them.
Plus once you've got people onto and in the system it should, in theory allow the market to steadily take over since you'll have them helped ramp up production and production workflows and factories and the like. So the price would naturally come down and you could steadily do away with the support packages to encourage sales.
Of course this assumes a government who wants a high car ownership rate. Others might want to encourage public transport systems and might instead sink that same money into better and cheaper public transport to lower the overall demand and use of cars.
That's pretty much what the government has been doing here. Depending on how much CO2 a car emits, it gets either a subsidy or an extra tax. So hybrids and electrics end up being not much more expensive than a middle-range car, cheap cars aren't affected much and big gas-guzzlers get a huge markup.
One bonus to advancing industry is it removes a casual excuse of "Oh I don't need it, my car is tiny compared to all the lorries/busses/trains/aircraft.
Indeed eco-friendly aircraft being used as a majority would remove a massive amount of pollution.
Overread wrote: One bonus to advancing industry is it removes a casual excuse of "Oh I don't need it, my car is tiny compared to all the lorries/busses/trains/aircraft.
Indeed eco-friendly aircraft being used as a majority would remove a massive amount of pollution.
Clean airplanes would be great, but road transport is by far a greater source of pollution. Sure, one plane may pollute like a hundred cars, but there's just a stupidly big amount of cars and trucks driving around...
Automatically Appended Next Post: wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars. Not "like a hundred" .. that is what a truck does. More like 10^4 of them, two orders of magnitude higher.
That is incidentally why (especially with fuel weight issues) you ain't seeing battery planes crossing the atlantic any time soon, and why it might just barely be economically viable to create a dynosoar plane after all.
In one year of constant use, a big jet will therefore (to be clear) consume 3.65^2 x 1.5^4 or roughly 5.4 million litres of fuel, compared to the annual car use of an average american car (25 mpg, so not that very efficient) of merely 1.5^3 gallons (or 600 L). So its literally 4 orders of magnitude, and then a trippling or so.
The downside of this is, we don't have a battery technology other than actual jet fuel capable of this level of energy concentration and release, unless you want to start messing with E=Mc^2 conversions.
Automatically Appended Next Post: OOps, error, I was off by an order of magnitude. 1.5^5 per day, not 4, means as much as 100,000 cars per annum would consume per annum.
You want to save the world? Build a better jet.
Sadly, not likely, so converting the worlds cargo trucks is a much likelier solution.
Or we could just go back to earlier forms of international travel, like boats. Most bulk shipping is done via cargo ships anyway. And heck, with COVID killing off so many airline companies we might see fewer air travel in general going forward.
Speaking of trucks which I presume means the 18 wheeler trailer types that carry cargo. i remember some commercials that had a tree lifting cargo off them and putting them on trains, then explaining how trains for rapid cargo transport were vastly must fuel efficient and less polluting than trucks. Lemme see if i can find that commercial somewhere...
Couldn't find the one i was thinking of, but there's this...
Matt Swain wrote: Speaking of trucks which I presume means the 18 wheeler trailer types that carry cargo. i remember some commercials that had a tree lifting cargo off them and putting them on trains, then explaining how trains for rapid cargo transport were vastly must fuel efficient and less polluting than trucks. Lemme see if i can find that commercial somewhere...
In the US for sure, rail-load freight is a very good option for a load that needs to travel a LOONG distance uninterrupted. . . In my locality, one of the major auto manufacturers uses trains to move the vehicles that come off the boat to the next hub, depending on final location of a given vehicle (IIRC, there are 3 or 4 hubs that a given car can be loaded onto, tho if its closer than any of those three hubs, it goes out on a truck). . . It's also a pretty efficient way of getting large quantities of goods from an origin to a hub. Rail doesn't eliminate the need for trucks, it just changes the means and distances at which trucks operate.
wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars.
You need to compare by miles travelled per person. A big jet on a 10 hour flight may consume a huge amount of fuel, but then so would the same 300 passengers making the same 5000 mile journey.
Grey Templar wrote: Or we could just go back to earlier forms of international travel, like boats. Most bulk shipping is done via cargo ships anyway. And heck, with COVID killing off so many airline companies we might see fewer air travel in general going forward.
The problem is travel time - cargo can take weeks to arrive somewhere if it's planned for appropriately, but if people only have a 2 week vacation they don't want to spend 12 of those 14 days travelling to/from their destination, unless it's part of a cruise (and cruise liners use a lot of fuel too, but obviously will be easier to run on electric than an aircraft). I'd never get approved to travel across Europe to visit a customer site by train when I can do it in a 2 hour flight.
I'd love to see a lot of investment in high speed rail, to at least displace car travel.
I'm sure there was also somewhere in the US that was experimenting with airships for slow cargo transport - pretty fuel efficient and can go more or less anywhere, but incredibly slow. So it may be ideal for moving logs from where they are felled back to a depot.
Automatically Appended Next Post: wow, wo, wo. Airplanes use so much power in fuel as to make TRUCKS look thrifty. A truck may consume as much fuel as 125 or so cars PER YEAR. A big jet flying internationally, however, can consume 150,000 liters in a 10 hour flight, which is closer to the amount (if you are in a fairly fuel inefficient vehicle) of some 10,000 cars.
Not "like a hundred" .. that is what a truck does. More like 10^4 of them, two orders of magnitude higher.
That is incidentally why (especially with fuel weight issues) you ain't seeing battery planes crossing the atlantic any time soon, and why it might just barely be economically viable to create a dynosoar plane after all.
In one year of constant use, a big jet will therefore (to be clear) consume 3.65^2 x 1.5^4 or roughly 5.4 million litres of fuel, compared to the annual car use of an average american car (25 mpg, so not that very efficient) of merely 1.5^3 gallons (or 600 L). So its literally 4 orders of magnitude, and then a trippling or so.
The downside of this is, we don't have a battery technology other than actual jet fuel capable of this level of energy concentration and release, unless you want to start messing with E=Mc^2 conversions.
Automatically Appended Next Post: OOps, error, I was off by an order of magnitude. 1.5^5 per day, not 4, means as much as 100,000 cars per annum would consume per annum.
You want to save the world? Build a better jet.
Sadly, not likely, so converting the worlds cargo trucks is a much likelier solution.
A plane doesn't fly quite as much as 10 hours per day every day, although it's not that far. A decent estimate seems to be about 3000 hours of flight a year.
Now the fuel burned per hour varies a lot on the size of the plane but let's say the average is 10 000 L per hour, that'd be 30 million L per plane per year, or as much as 50 000 cars with your estimate of 600L/year.
There are about 20 000 commercial airplanes in service in the world, so the equivalent of about 1 billion cars.
Meanwhile, there are actually an estimated 1.4 billion cars, trucks and buses in the world.
So yes, better airplanes (or less airplanes) are definitely needed, but ground transport needs to improve just as much.
Don't know if anyone has watched that series of David Attenborough (A life on our planet) on Netflix but crikey was that a painful watch.
None of it was strikingly new to me as I've always taken an interest in environmental science and the like, but seeing it portrayed in that way was certainly very powerful.
I currently drive a hybrid (self-charging) but think my next one is probably going to be an electric.
Have been thinking about investing in solar panels as well for a while, might be the time now to start thinking of that more seriously.
I like the idea of them but they are not yet practical for me. I live in a very rural area and gas stations are not off of every highway exit. Going from town to town, even for a commute, I'm not sure how well an electric vehicle would do here because of the miles being driven. The effective range would have to be increased prior to me purchasing one. I'm a 4x4 truck / suv guy and the market for electric powered vehicles in this class is still in its infancy. I am excited about the torque electric engines offer over diesel engines. However, most people that drive vehicles such as these live in rural areas where gas stations are already sparse. I don't foresee someone investing in charging stations in areas such as mine in the near future.
Why does everyone think electric cars must replace regular ones completely or not at all? Why do so many people have an all or nothing mentality?
if EVs reduces fossil fuel cars by maybe 2/3 or eve just half, isn't that a success?
I think people may be unknowingly practicing "the nirvanna falacy", I.E. the fallacious belief that unless a solution to a problem is utterly perfect and beyond any criticism it is not worth implementing.
Matt Swain wrote: Why does everyone think electric cars must replace regular ones completely or not at all? Why do so many people have an all or nothing mentality?
if EVs reduces fossil fuel cars by maybe 2/3 or eve just half, isn't that a success?
I think people may be unknowingly practicing "the nirvanna falacy", I.E. the fallacious belief that unless a solution to a problem is utterly perfect and beyond any criticism it is not worth implementing.
That's very true, although I think things are already travelling along that route (at least in the EU) even without electric vehicles. Legislation relating to emissions, as well as costs of petrol, have pushed people towards more economical alternatives (which are usually more ecologically friendly) too.
Look at all of the new, small-engine supercharged 3-cylinder cars coming onto the market - really good MPG, very low road tax (in the UK), still easily fast enough and fun to drive.
I was even lucky enough to have a go in a new Porsche Boxster recently - 4 cylinder version! I know purists will dislike it because it's not a 6 cylinder but it does 35mpg, tax is very low on it but if you want to you can still drive like a nob and it will pull your arms off.
Manufacturers are getting really good at creating vehicles that allow for ecological legislation, are economically viable and give potential customers what they want.
Hybrids and electric cars are an extension of that - they are only going to get cheaper, batteries are only going to get better, the inconvenience is only going to get reduced.
And the market will (I think) choose with its feet.
A company like Honda wouldn't have made it's current announcements (two thirds of vehicle sales to be hybrid/electric by 2030) if it wasn't serious about which direction things are going.
Matt Swain wrote: Why does everyone think electric cars must replace regular ones completely or not at all? Why do so many people have an all or nothing mentality?
if EVs reduces fossil fuel cars by maybe 2/3 or eve just half, isn't that a success?
I think people may be unknowingly practicing "the nirvanna falacy", I.E. the fallacious belief that unless a solution to a problem is utterly perfect and beyond any criticism it is not worth implementing.
Well at some point the oil is going to run out. Current known reserves are going to last about 50 years at current usage rates.
I don't think it could be all or nothing. Maybe in 100 years? who knows. There are some vehicles where it just isn't practical but I guess for EVs to be successful it has to be adopted by the majority of the general population, and that means auto makers need to produce more and they won't if there's not enough demand. Most of them are just dabbling in EVs. VW seems to be the first one that is investing more into EVs than the other old auto brands, so it will be interesting to see how it goes with them. I think in 5 years if the new VWs sell well we will start seeing a lot more auto makers maybe more EVs. I think it will be a very slow process. I really think for the public to want them, they need to get the charging speed like quadrupled, and crank up the range you can drive with the AC on full blast on a hot summer day to be a lot higher than it is now. Charging at home is great if you have a garage, but people living in urban areas need easy ways to charge, so that's why I think they need the charging process to be as fast as gassing up. Not everyone will be able to have a charger at home.
Speaking of VW, they have that new ID4 EV coming out soon, but the range on that is only 250 miles, where a Tesla model 3 can get over 300, and also costs I think $2000 less. I really think that's a big ball drop for VW, they should have tried to at least match Tesla especially if they are gonna cost more.
Speaking of VW, they have that new ID4 EV coming out soon, but the range on that is only 250 miles, where a Tesla model 3 can get over 300, and also costs I think $2000 less. I really think that's a big ball drop for VW, they should have tried to at least match Tesla especially if they are gonna cost more.
Unless they've drastically changed course, the latest official statements from VW was that the first model year or 2 of their new bus will be aimed squarely at the "transit van" market, and as such the 250 mile range is perfect in the "domestic commerce" area of life (what I mean is, a lot of these vans are your local plumber, electrician, delivery service, etc. and as such are locked up in a yard each night after work, and are driven from a yard to various job sites, rarely, if ever reaching their 250 mile range).
We will see, but perhaps that baby steps approach may work better for an established brand than it would for Tesla, and at the same time, will get users, and eventually personal customers, used to the altered life flow that comes with the EVs.
Matt Swain wrote: Why does everyone think electric cars must replace regular ones completely or not at all? Why do so many people have an all or nothing mentality?
if EVs reduces fossil fuel cars by maybe 2/3 or eve just half, isn't that a success?
I think people may be unknowingly practicing "the nirvanna falacy", I.E. the fallacious belief that unless a solution to a problem is utterly perfect and beyond any criticism it is not worth implementing.
Its not a Nirvanna fallacy, its just practical limitations.
If Joe needs, or wants, a car that realistically needs to drive 300 miles between fill-ups and doesn't want/can't have the annoyance of those fill-ups taking 30+ minutes then he isn't going to get an electric vehicle, especially if the vehicle also has a very large price tag. And frankly, Joe is what most consumers are like.
Electric cars will eventually be the normal. But not till those above issues are addressed.
There are two ways to address them. 1) Change society so completely that people don't need or want a car that can do those things. 2) Make electric vehicles that fulfill those criteria.
2 is infinitely easier than 1, so thats what we should be patient for.
These won't go into anything useful directly, but they might lead better understanding of superconductivity and to a practical RTSC someday.
Superconductor batteries could hold vast amounts of electricity, far beyond any current battery, and recharge almost at once. Also superconductor motors would be far more efficient too.
These won't go into anything useful directly, but they might lead better understanding of superconductivity and to a practical RTSC someday.
Superconductor batteries could hold vast amounts of electricity, far beyond any current battery, and recharge almost at once. Also superconductor motors would be far more efficient too.
I'm not sure a breakthrough in that domain would help batteries all that much. The process that stores and provides energy is chemical, with ions moving through an electrolyte and reacting with the electrodes; that doesn't have much in common with a superconductor.
I wonder how an electric engine would deal with superconductive coiling. Superconductive materials have a very funky reaction to magnetic fields so it may not work as intended but I don't really know.
Still, widespread room-temperature superconductors would be a huge revolution in power production, transportation and electronics.
A superconductor power storage cell won't be a battery as we use the term today, it'll basically be a super capacitor.
A capacitor is limited by its insulator part way more than its conductor part. When you try to pump more energy into it, you eventually reach breakdown when the insulator can't hold the potential difference any more. A superconductor can't fix that.
What could maybe work is superconductive coils, storing energy as a magnetic field instead. Doing that on a large scale is far from easy though.
Speaking of VW, they have that new ID4 EV coming out soon, but the range on that is only 250 miles, where a Tesla model 3 can get over 300, and also costs I think $2000 less. I really think that's a big ball drop for VW, they should have tried to at least match Tesla especially if they are gonna cost more.
The ID4 is on the model Y segment, meaning it's $10.000 less than the equivalent Tesla.
Doesnt matter how much they list these things for. 2 things will always remain true: idiots will buy them because there's a GM badge on it, and they'll be a pile of garbage where any important (and many non-important) parts will remain backordered for incredibly stupid periods of time, thus likely burning any bridges with the customer that had remained standing.
I say this because I work in a GM dealership, and good lord is their supply chain horrendous. Seriously, I cannot stress enough that one should not EVER buy a GM product. Ever.
No lol, absolutely not. In what world do "most consumers" travel 300 miles even within a week's worth of commuting?
~60% of Americans live in cities. Remote working is swinging into full-gear. Long commutes are becoming less relevant by the day.
In 30 years, electric cars will be the norm and gas vehicles will be luxuries for people that care about roadtrips and specialist equipment for workers who's jobs require lots of mileage.
Spartan 117 wrote: I like the idea of them but they are not yet practical for me. I live in a very rural area and gas stations are not off of every highway exit. Going from town to town, even for a commute, I'm not sure how well an electric vehicle would do here because of the miles being driven.
What sort of range do you want from an EV? We're already at 300-400 miles. OK the price is still steep for those cars, but give it a few years and that'll change.
No lol, absolutely not. In what world do "most consumers" travel 300 miles even within a week's worth of commuting?
~60% of Americans live in cities. Remote working is swinging into full-gear. Long commutes are becoming less relevant by the day.
In 30 years, electric cars will be the norm and gas vehicles will be luxuries for people that care about roadtrips and specialist equipment for workers who's jobs require lots of mileage.
Absolutely. I understand there are differences between the UK and US, but I've asked my friends this same question when they ask about how practical our EV is and when they analyse their driving habits the number of trips above 50 miles they do in a year are actually quite small - usually fewer than one a week.
Some people would find EV range too limiting for them but IME, it's not the range itself that's the limiting factor, but access to charging infrastructure. The vast majority of people don't travel far enough to require a recharge every time they make a journey but it is true to say a lot of people would struggle to get convenient, regular access to charging facilities. I think if we solve that problem EVs become much more attractive to a much larger range of people.
If Joe needs, or wants, a car that realistically needs to drive 300 miles between fill-ups and doesn't want/can't have the annoyance of those fill-ups taking 30+ minutes then he isn't going to get an electric vehicle, especially if the vehicle also has a very large price tag. And frankly, Joe is what most consumers are like.
I certainly agree that what's preventing the uptake is what Joe *thinks* he needs. The real challenge for EV adoption is the understanding/mindset change that shows that EV's are suitable for most people with the most minimal routine changes (plugging in at work rather than going to a gas station).
As said, a 100 mile range covers most people most of the time with plenty to spare, so needing 600 miles and a 2-minute fast charge would be nice but is wildly unnecessary. Realistically, an EV is more convenient than gas for most people as they can charge it whilst doing something else and never need to visit a special gas station (which will turn into something more like a Starbucks with some chargers outside).
Realistically, I do 1 or 2 trips of over 100 miles in a leg, every year (usually our summer holiday). I'm sure I could rent a gas hybrid for that week or two and use something like a current gen Leaf for the rest of the time.
The only reason I don't have one yet is towing and cost - the only EV's which can tow are way out of my budget for now, and I can't justify running 2 vehicles.
I am not Joe, and nor are any of the people buying the car I bought.
I'm happy with my <150 mile range, and a >40 minute fill-up. 40 minutes is a sandwich-and-loo break at the motorway services.
For work, as a field engineer, I drive to the main office to collect kit, or work from my desk for a while. I will visit sites around the county, all within the range on my car. If I need to do more miles, I'll drive to work, get a hybrid pool car, and use that for the longer trips. I have very few charging options, so plan ahead.
We still have a petrol car, but that has been used less than a dozen times during Lockdown. We used it to have a couple of holiday day-trips, but seeing family outside the county still fit into the limited range of the EV (with fast chargers on the route if needed).
The stated range around town is more than 200 miles. Who drives 200 miles in one urban trip...?
Joe needs to realise that personal convenience is not a luxury we can afford for much longer, until a technical solution appears letting us go back to the old (now) ways.
No lol, absolutely not. In what world do "most consumers" travel 300 miles even within a week's worth of commuting?
~60% of Americans live in cities. Remote working is swinging into full-gear. Long commutes are becoming less relevant by the day.
In 30 years, electric cars will be the norm and gas vehicles will be luxuries for people that care about roadtrips and specialist equipment for workers who's jobs require lots of mileage.
Up until the pandemic I was driving 500 miles + a week commuting, and know of someone that does over 1500(!). Although those were 50 miles to work and back so a electric vehicle would have been fine, just park up every evening and plug in. Have to say I am quite glad not to behaving to do that though..
Think you are probably right in terms of smaller vehicles and family cars. The last things to be replaced will be diesel-powered vans and vehicles which need non-stop use during the day (delivery vehicles and the like - ironic as those are starting to make up a pretty large % of the traffic that you see on the roads, especially in more remote areas). I would be very surprised if there aren't any stinky old white transit vans on the road in 2050..
Honestly it shocks me that as a nation we went from having Royal Mail deliveries twice a day as normal and doing all your post - to where we've multiple companies that just roam the countryside in white vans delivering at random.
Granted during the Royal Mail days deliveries could be up to 14 days from point of order whereas now Amazon can turn things around in a day or two and if gets to a week out people start complaining about their orders.
When it comes to the range, I don't think there are many people needing to go 300+ mile trips in one day all the time, it's more a perception and comparison kind of thing. On paper, I think if a lot of people see an EV range that's lower than they can currently go on a full tank of gas, they'll think the EV isn't as good. They don't have the charge at home mindset yet. They're maybe also used to driving to work all week and only needing to fill up the tank once. It will take time for stubborn people to figure out it's better. And prices usually $10k higher than something similar in a gas car is another thing that's gonna hold a lot of people back, even if they make that money back in gas savings, a lot of people won't look at it that way when they're shopping around for a new car.
That's kinda why I think the new VW ID4 SUV is gonna miss the mark. They're making tons of them and want to market them to the masses, it's a lot more expensive than a Tiguan or Atlas, it has less range than the gas tanks on those 2 SUVs, and if you're comparing only EVs the Tesla Model 3 and even Model Y seems like a better deal for what you get. VW should have either had a better range, or lower price, or both. I think it's great that they're making tons of them and want to market them to the average joes, but kinda worry it's gonna be a hard sell for a lot of people and it would suck if they just sat around collecting dust on dealer lots while the salesmen ignore them because the gas cars are easier to sell. That said I'm still excided to see what the ID Buzz van will be like when it's done, it's still #1 on my list based on looks alone. But I won't be able to afford it if it costs much more than the ID4.
We've had electric vans for a few years now, albeit with only 100 mile range.
With the exception of long distance couriers, most commerical vehicles don't actually do much mileage. Even delivery vans are often only doing the last 10 miles or so from a depot, and whilst the EV range isn't great yet the fuel savings are huge.
EV's are apparently getting pretty popular for London taxis now because they don't actually do huge range and can generally recharge pretty quickly.
The bulk of vans are probably from tradesfolk who are driving to a few sites a day and parking up.
Ford has got a range-extender transit available here with an electric motor that can be charged from a 1.0 petrol engine if the batter range isn't enough. But where it suffers there is the payload is just under 1000kg which means it won't take a 'ton bag' or pallet of building supplies. It'd still be ideal for mail deliveries though.
Herzlos wrote:We've had electric vans for a few years now, albeit with only 100 mile range.
With the exception of long distance couriers, most commerical vehicles don't actually do much mileage. Even delivery vans are often only doing the last 10 miles or so from a depot, and whilst the EV range isn't great yet the fuel savings are huge.
EV's are apparently getting pretty popular for London taxis now because they don't actually do huge range and can generally recharge pretty quickly.
The bulk of vans are probably from tradesfolk who are driving to a few sites a day and parking up.
Ford has got a range-extender transit available here with an electric motor that can be charged from a 1.0 petrol engine if the batter range isn't enough. But where it suffers there is the payload is just under 1000kg which means it won't take a 'ton bag' or pallet of building supplies. It'd still be ideal for mail deliveries though.
That's really interesting to know Herzlos - goes to show if you don't pay attention to current developments (which I haven't for the last year or two) you can completely miss what is going on, things are changing quickly!
I did see the launch for the new Tesla truck, which looked absolutely mental.
So here's my issue with electric cars that probably was already addressed. Do they know what type of power plant the electricity for that car came from? If it comes from a fossil fuel plant that is highly pointless or less than pointless. Most good power plants are like fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro-electric dams. I'm very much pro-nuclear and my old physics teacher was as well. If you want to go electric that's fine if it works well enough for you but do your research to see if it's even got a point to you using it in your area. I also used to hear about electric cars not being able to run as long as gas or be able to handle as much. This could be a problem if you need to do heavy duty driving.
flamingkillamajig wrote: So here's my issue with electric cars that probably was already addressed. Do they know what type of power plant the electricity for that car came from? If it comes from a fossil fuel plant that is highly pointless or less than pointless. Most good power plants are like fossil fuels, nuclear or hydro-electric dams. I'm very much pro-nuclear and my old physics teacher was as well. If you want to go electric that's fine if it works well enough for you but do your research to see if it's even got a point to you using it in your area. I also used to hear about electric cars not being able to run as long as gas or be able to handle as much. This could be a problem if you need to do heavy duty driving.
This is more and more of a moot point the longer time goes on.
Renewables are rapidly overtaking fossil fuels in most developed and developing nations as a source of energy (exception of India and Australia far as I know). The coal industry is all but dead at this point. The only reason it's profitable at all is billions in government subsidies. OPEC already sees the writing on the wall for oil and that's why prices are so low right now. Fossil fuel is all but dead. We're just waiting for the corpse to be buried.
), I think they've always been reasonably fast relative to the competition. They've always been low to the ground, had close to a 50/50 weight distribution, relatively big tyres and decently fast suspension set ups.
types who would never accept an alternative to their big, loud, smoke belching hogs no matter how valid they were so we can just pretty much not try to factor them in.
