> "In a few months from now, the last diesel-powered Volvo car will have been built, making Volvo Cars one of the first legacy car makers to take this step," the Swedish company said in a statement.
> In August 33% of Volvo's sales were fully-electric or hybrid models. The company did not break out how many of the remaining 67% combustion-engine models were diesel and how many ran on petrol.
> Diesel vehicles comprised more than 50% of Europe's new car sales in 2015, but accounted for just over 14% of sales in July.
Delightfully, we are almost at the combustion->EV tipping point.
That is typically how the manufacturing curve and the innovation curve works. Upper-middle-class people and richer have disposable income and purchasing power which funds expensive goods until manufacturing of those goods scales up to be cheap for people without significant amounts of disposable income and purchasing power.
EVs will continue to get cheaper, faster, as global auto manufacturers scale up their production. If you can take a bus, a train, or an ebike, definitely do that. But consumers will not stop buying cars (global light vehicle market is ~83M units/annually), so sell them EVs, making them as inexpensive and quickly as possible. China EV sales are already at 9M units/year, more than half total US light vehicle sales in 2022 (~14M units).
TLDR Volume is misleading, pay attention to velocity.
Has anyone looked at the fact most people are too poor to buy new vehicles? Here in the UK the average vehicle age is 11 years old, most vehicles are second hand and the EV battery warranties top at 8 years. The financial risk of an out of warranty EV vs ICE vehicle is much much higher and the second hand price is higher. There is also zero bangernomics model for EVs either, which is really what a hell of a lot of people who drive vehicles are running.
The problem is not solved and may not be which is what I think the original poster is considering. The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport.
Edit: I know everyone is blinded by EV hype at the moment but the entire financial model is drastically different and that will impact people heavily. Even the infrastructure and housing here doesn't necessarily mean it's viable.
> The bottom rung of society is going to lose their transport.
And in many cases, they're also going to lose their jobs. Politicians are incapable of thinking beyond the M25, so are probably expecting everyone to just hop on the Tube or frequent London bus services instead.
People can't move closer to workplaces (or better public transport links), as the #1 goal of every UK government seems to be pumping up property prices to ever more ridiculous levels. (You can't allow the supply of housing to increase when rich people are getting richer from the rising prices!)
We're incapable of building transport infrastructure in the UK. Look at the state of HS2. Something like £500 million per mile of railway (largely down to those property prices), and it might not even reach London at the current rate, let alone be extended north of Birmingham.
Even for those that can afford an EV, huge numbers of people are unable to charge them at home (living in flats, relying on on-street parking, etc). There's hardly any visible growth of public charging infrastructure, and you just know that public chargers will be a huge bait+switch, eventually charging extortionate amounts compared to home charging (if only to minimize the queues...)
Crossrail has just been an incredibly success in terms of public infrastructure. But outside of London its true. There are cities that are huge from a European perspective without even a basic S-Bahn tunnel.
The UK is the perfect place for High Speed rail, and part of the problem with it is the idiotic bending over backwords for NIMBYs and the generally terrible rail planning practices. Not having built this in like the 80s is insanely dumb.
If we are talking about poor people then bus reduction in bus service is actually by far the biggest deal.
Transport becoming more expensive and housing becoming more expensive is linked at the hip.
Where is the most expensive property in the world? For the most part, next to ports, next to railways, next to subways, next to anything that makes makes it cheap to move people and things.
Demand for housing and transport is rising beyond the means of the infrastructure to actually sustain this. Most of the whinging I see against governments surrounds their unwillingness to restrict investment and immigration, which they won’t do because their books are balanced around the notion that they will “grow out of debt”. Likely we will arrive at a point where we have a bunch of infrastructure we built that’s infeasible to maintain that will turn into ruins when the population gets around to contracting.
IF you have lots of railways and subways then almost everywhere is gone be next to those things. And it also leads to a situation where your combined transport and housing cost are actually small. That is the right way to improve society. In Switzerland there are tons of really cheap places with fantastic rail connections.
The idea that rail infrastructure isn't sustainable is kind of nonsense, even with smaller population. Road infrastructure maintenance is far more expensive and in a bad economic situation you can run 30 year old trains. Its simply a matter of what your society puts priority on.
Main part of Britain specifically is so densely populated that even with massive collapse in population most of the rail network would still be vital.
I agree, so it will be the infrastructure connected by no better means than roads which will turn to ruins first.
Yet we are still building up such infrastructure, even if emphasis is gradually shifting to more sustainable infrastructure. I still am sceptical that much of what is being built now can survive a century. It seems most plausible that transport costs are going to climb up every year over the next few decades and I don't see how that doesn't break the back of many many communities.
All that. And also, the environmental cost of producing batteries is terrible. That cost is hidden (in the mining and making of batteries, and probs the disposal) as opposed to during the lifetime in the fuel that is burnt. This is to say, it's that the environment justification doesn't hold either.
So why are governments committing to these non-sensical goals?
Why is the expectation that "most people" should buy new vehicles? Seems likely we're addicted to 0% rates and consuming.
The financial reasonable thing for the wealthy has always been to buy off lease, at a steep depreciation discount, excellent service records, a dealer warranty, and 2 years and 20k miles.
I'm cheap, I last bought a 7 year old car for ¼ of its sticker price and 100k miles with detailed service records. I still drive it 13 years later at 20 years old, though, I only put 5-10k miles on a year. My most common trip is 150 miles in a neighboring state. That and track and autocross. I get 32mpg on mid grade gasoline.
I did consider a Tesla recently, a 2016 model s is about ⅓ of it's original sticker price, though Tesla is one of the few companies that the new car is cheaper than it was 6 years ago. With a 20% price drop.
There's obviously lots of reason why "most people" want a new. An unblemished interior, the newest self driving features, the longest range. But you'll find the 2-6 year olds still have 80% of the range, the same safety features, and some form of self driving that your old car (that as rates increase you should keep 7 years instead of 4) didn't have.
I think you are right and that the financial model is a total blind spot to the lawmakers. Never mind the fact that Volvo (or any other be maker) makes the bulk of its money from new car sales.
Volvo used to make a lot of money from spares and repairs but that company was divested many many years ago. Now all the money is coming from new vehicle sales.
Average price of a new car in the US is almost $48k, regardless of powerplant. Your concern is extremely valid, but the only solution is a combination of engineering our way to cheaper EVs and targeted subsidies. We have the wealth, simply need to shift away from fossil fuel subsidies and redirect towards EVs.
> The median new-car price among Cars.com dealers was approximately $42,500 in December — a 10% increase from December 2021 and 18% higher than December 2020.
You are looking at new car price which factors in all models of vehicle. I am only considering what they defined as "car" here vs suv or trucks. From the article:
"The segment median for cars ($25,745) is $8,450 less than small SUVs, $17,325 less than small pickups and $33,925 less than EVs."
That is a crazy statistic . This past spring I bought a hybrid toyota corolla LE (the lowest end model). It lists for $23K (of course the dealer added various markups that I couldn't opt out of).
What does $23K get? I drive the car like a normal person with no attempt to eek out extra mileage. I'm averaging 48 mpg over the past seven months since I got the car. Even though it is a low end model, it is amazing what technology it comes with. It shows me the speed limit and indicates when I'm over -- not by having a map of the speed limit, but by reading the signs as I drive. It has lane keeping and adaptive cruise control, and warns me when my closing speed is too great.
My ego isn't attached to my car so I don't care it is not flashy. I can't imagine paying twice as much unless I had some specialty need (eg, had to buy a heavy duty truck).
The average US car is actually an SUV or pick-up truck. But the average BEV is closer to being a Corolla competitor. A like-to-like comparison will still find a $15-20k gap in price.
I suspect they'll be a large market for aftermarket batteries (which should be a lot cheaper in 10 years time when this starts to become relevant). In the meantime, people can continue to buy second hand ICE vehicles.
Battery pack cost has been cut in half over the past 10 years. The trend is expected to continue even without a revolutionary discovery that is suitable for the mass market.
I've read it can cost over 10 thousand dollars to replace a battery in a model 3. That is a total nonstarter for the used market. Plenty of Teslas will probably just end up driven until the battery is totally shot then scrapped.
But my comment was about third party options with lower range. $6-10k depending on the range selected, IIRC. For a car with high mileage already, that'd be a good way to turn it into a commuter.
In practice, I'm not seeing a significant difference between the way the 3 is being treated and the way similarly sized vehicles are treated.
You are buying the tesla for what like maybe $10k or so used lets say. Are you really going to pump $6-10k into a car that's only worth $10k? I mean people walk away from cars when they get a $2000 quote for a transmission.
If the Tesla has a shot battery are you really buying it for $10k or are you probably going to pay less? If a car with a shot transmission isn't selling for $10k when it just needs $2k worth of work, why would you assume the Tesla with a shot battery would still be $10k? Do Teslas with broken batteries actually sell for $10k+?
And even if it is $10k, plus another $10k for a new battery, and from at least a drive train perspective that's practically a new Tesla for $20k that'll last another 100,000+mi.
There's going to be a point where every tesla has a shot battery just like how that happens for literally all our technology with a battery in it. EV isn't any less prone to degradation than any other lithium battery, same old tech as your phone battery or power drill. At that point either you throw 10k into the car or its a 4000lb paperweight. Basically, these cars are going to be totaled and scrapped a lot sooner than traditional cars.
I certainly would think twice about an old car with over 100k on the clock for $20k. There are plenty of other components besides the drivetrain that can go south on you and are expensive to fix relative to the value of the car. Some ICE cars are notorious for the drivetrain going 350k+ miles while the rest of it might rot apart. Honestly modern cars are terrible to drive when they are old. My old 20 year old honda had a leaky sunroof, leaky tail light seals, slow window motors that cut out in the cold winter, every hydraulic line corroded and leaked at one point or another sometimes multiple times, frame rust, shot rubber in the suspension components, shot brake system, rubber and plastic body trim that was just cracking and sloughing off from 20 years of UV bombardment, blown speakers, and a motorized radio antenna that never once worked. The drivetrain on the other hand was flawless being a honda, just needed an oil change with synthetic once a year ($35 or so and 15 minutes of my time mostly passive waiting for it to drain) and it was still on the original clutch.
With a tesla you still have suspension components with rubber. You still have rubber gaskets and seals around windows and doors. You still have hydraulic brake lines. You still have steel components that will rust. You still have electric motors controlling things like windows (and presumably the sexy door handle release) that probably have plastic gearboxes. You aren't out of the woods, far from it.
I definitely meant "a new Tesla" from the perspective of the drive train. Obviously an old car is gonna be an old car. And if the car is otherwise falling apart with the interior plastics crumbling from uv damage, replacing the battery is the least concern. Most would just consider the car dead at that point.
But that's why I don't understand why you seem to assume a Tesla needing a new battery and a worn out interior/exterior/suspension is going to be $10k. Where's the data? Do you actually have listings of Teslas with dead batteries for $10k?
Sure but EV's require significantly less maintenance than ICE vehicles, if a 10k battery gets you a car which runs like new for 10 more years (or more depending on future tech) and you like your car why wouldn't you?
Theres a lot more than the drivetrain that goes bad on an old car. In fact depending on the sort of car you have the drivetrain is the absolute least of your problems and might be able to go around the world 10 times.
I'm OK with that. Big picture, EVs are just sweeping the fossil fuel problem under the rug, and I've yet to see a response to this problem that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched.
And the cost of (often obligatory, in places like the USA) private transportation is almost like a crony capitalist regressive tax. It disproportionately harms the purchasing power of working-class individuals. Before I broke into the middle class, it was absolutely infuriating how much of my hard-earned money I had to spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car. But there was no way around it, because the city I lived in was structured such that not owning a car was tantamount to not even having a chance at improving my economic opportunity. The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.
> that doesn't rely on counting chickens before they've hatched.
Its simple really. There are 2 problems, both need to be solved. We can't wait on 1 to be solved until we start addressing the other.
And EV now are way cleaner then ICE cars even in West Virgina. If you are in France, Switzerland or a country lie that, they are incredibly low carbon.
> spend on owning, maintaining, and operating my car.
Yes, society would do much better to invest in walking, biking and trains (of various kinds) then EV and to discourage car usage, EV or not.
This is pretty clear to anybody who has studied the issue. Housing and transportation cost combined are a huge part of avg peoples lives, well over 50% in many cases. Better land use and zoning policies, combined with proper transport policy can make this much, much better.
The US ironically has so many access road lanes that establishing a bike network is actually easy. In Switzerland most cities roads are very narrow so its much harder to add an extra mode in.
Or in parts of Canada; Where I am all my power is Nuclear, Hydro, or Solar. Literally near 100% of it, with something between 0 and 5% of it supplemented with natural gas generation for dips.
> The sooner governments are forced to stop making infrastructure decisions that further siphon money out of the pockets of individuals and into the pockets of big automakers and oil companies, the better.
I'm afraid it's not going to be anytime soon. What you are doing is government acting in service harder for the benefit of big corporations.
"We can't make it illegal to go around poisoning people until we've found new jobs for all the poisoners"?
More restrictions on road and car use shouldn't surprise anyone at this point, it's been coming down the pipe for years. At some point you have to make the status quo painful, because no-one's willing to change anything if they're not feeling the pain yet.
You're literally saying 'we should inflict more pain on the relatively poor'. And it's not just about transport. With ever-rising energy prices, people are literally forced to choose 'between heating and eating'
Meanwhile, the people in charge of solving the problem of climate change are still flying around the world on private jets.
> You're literally saying 'we should inflict more pain on the relatively poor'.
The poorest already don't own or use cars. Getting cars off the road will make buses faster and more reliable, and the poorest will benefit the most from that.
We need fewer cars on the road, so any way you slice it some people have to be pushed out of driving, and any way you slice it the rich will find a way to pay to continue to drive. Either we let them pay directly, and spend that money in public-directed ways that improve transit and help the poor, or we adopt some other system and they'll find more wasteful ways to use money to "solve the problem" that just mean everyone loses out. (e.g. some cities have a rule that each car is only allowed into the city a few days a week depending on its numberplate - so the result is that rich people buy two cars).
> Meanwhile, the people in charge of solving the problem of climate change are still flying around the world on private jets.
And they'll continue to do that until we adopt a carbon tax system so dumb that there's no way around it. But if you try to just "ban private jets" then they'll buy private prop planes, or private trains, or fly around in private full-size airliners...
That's because some states love enacting laws that say things like "You can only have one voting place per county". Which is fine if you have 100,000 people in a county and untenable if you have 1,000,000. Oddly enough that affects one of the parties more than the other.
We do plenty of that stuff. Even the poorest states in the country have regular highway work. If most people shifted to other forms of transit instead of putting such demand on the roads investment will shift accordingly to deal with the wear and tear increasing in this one sector while decreasing in another.
If most people shifted to other forms of transit instead of putting such demand on the roads
I'd say this is an example of putting the cart before the horse. Why would you expect people to shift to other forms of transit before the road network supports these other forms of transit?
Well, they shifted to the car before networks could handle that to be fair. Grade separated highways only appeared after widespread car ownership. We generally build capacity for what exists not what would be nice to have in the future, so if people want to see a world of transit investment maybe they should think about waiting for the bus that shows up twice an hour, which might put pressure to make that come once every 15 minutes, then even sooner, and eventually upgraded to a rail line.
Broke AF people are still buying ridiculously expensive new trucks, I don't think this will be as much of a problem as you are thinking. Also, some EVs can be downright cheap if you qualify for incentives. It was theoretically possible to get a Bolt for like $3000 after government incentives in certain states before Chevy stopped making them.
You can buy a used bolt with maybe 20,000 miles on it for about $18k. If you're in certain counties in California you can get a couple of grand worth of incentives towards that.
> Sales of EVs surpass sales of diesel models for the first time in Europe, with battery-electrics holding a 15.1% share of the market, while diesels hold 13.4%. (Audi e-tron GT pictured above.)
> Plug-in hybrids have seen gains and losses over time in different European countries, but hold 7.9% market share on the continent overall.
> The Tesla Model Y has been Europe's best-selling model in any vehicle category in the first six months of 2023.
Which proves there was no tipping point! Diesel are losing sales despite being dominant at one point. BEVs will probably go down the same route. Some newer idea will drive BEVs out of the market just like it did with diesel cars.
For ic there's the tipping point where the engine is common enough that 'enough' fuel forecourts have the fuel. There's the tipping point where the fuel is in every forecourt.
For EVs there's the tipping point where it becomes normalised, not something that just sandal wearers use. There's the TCO tipping point, there's the purchase price parity tipping point, there's the tipping point where there are 'enough' chargers, there's the tipping point where chargers are everywhere.
I don't object to all these being combined into one grand tipping point, they're all fuzzy anyway.
But I don't think you can put an exact figure on it, and I also don't think tipping point implies it will completely take over the market.
For a start, diesel and petrol both come from oil, using more of one is going to increase supply of the other so if it isn't used prices will fall.
Second petrol and diesel have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why you don't tend to see petrol lorries or diesel scooters.
I think an ev tipping point has more potential to be self reinforcing though. As less of the electorate has ic cars, it's more politically acceptable to increase taxes on it. People will become less accepting of the externalities of IC cars, and ultimately you don't have petrol / diesel piped to your house so as the market shrinks, finding fuel is going to become harder.
The moment we can make an alternative zero emissions car for less, it will probably be the end of the BEV. Cost per mile is wildly exaggerated as an argument since all vehicles will eventually face road taxes.
It's gonna be hilarious when all the new EV buyers find out about the broken chargers and start fighting over the few that work (chargers are backed up against a wall so "waiting in line" doesn't work). My prediction is we'll see massive drops in car trips due to range anxiety. Will be interesting to see the second and third order effects. Maybe public transit will make a comeback, and automakers will stay afloat with more government handouts trying to juice an EV revolution.
Cities are gonna be littered with aging cars in a few years since there are virtually no chargers in cities with street parking. Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to work on EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.
> Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to work on EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.
I’m so glad you said this. No one understands how big an issue this is. They only have to look at historical examples like how motor vehicles failed to establish as a market because no carriage workers knew how to work on engines
And the funny thing is I bet ICE repair and maintenance skills are a lot more transferrable to BEVs than carriage -> ICE. Most shops have already been servicing hybrids for 20 years now.
It really bothers me when people point to perfectly solvable problems as reasons why we can't have electric cars.
A dead battery cell is unfixable. At best, you have a few dead cells and a mechanic can replace them. But if replacement cells can't be found, or too many cells have died, then it is a full battery pack replacement. This is going to be a big problem for old BEVs.
Just anecdotal but: I bought a new European suv in 2017 drove 68,000 miles, very very gently. Turbo blew and sent debris into the engine, engine lost compression, needs full replacement, dealer quoted $35,000 job. Car was 6 years old, just out of warranty, was 60k new.
An ICE replacement is usually just a few thousand dollars. And that's the worse case scenario. Well maintained ICE cars can last for decades. A mandatory, $10-20k battery replacement for every BEV at some point in its lifetime is a big problem.
Consumeraffairs review of battery pack replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) implies that this costs $13k-$17k, so much more than engine replacements for old cars, as long as we're talking about battery packs which have appropriate capacity for full EV, not a hybrid or simply putting in a much smaller capacity than originally installed.
I know mechanics, they have been on EV training courses. The dealerships clearly have trained mechanics working on the EVs they've been selling for years.
I live in the countryside, I see plenty of EVs. Range anxiety is only for people doing long distance 200+ mile journeys every day, as those that commute in the suburbs day to day have the common (and financial) sense to charge at home and leave every morning with a 'full tank'
Judging from your prose, admittedly, I suspect you are North American and as such have a distinctly different worldview from mine.
For an EV car, the vast majority of work needed has no relation to the drivetrain (which is relatively low-maintenance on an EV), so it doesn't really matter if half of mechanics don't know how to work on EVs; fixing suspension or doing bodywork doesn't change.
“inevitable”? hardly. how many first-year Leafs are out there on the original battery? a lot, i’d reckon most. how many dead Leafs are out there which were totalled because of needing a new battery? certainly less than those which were totalled due to rust, collision, etc., ie the things that kill gas cars too.
Thing is, first-year Leaf really isn't an old car.
Outside of the richest countries there are whole communities who'd never buy a new car, because the car they can afford to buy is a much-used cheap car that's the same age as the first-year Leaf is now; the rich countries/communities drive the first 10 years of a car, buy a new car, and the used car gets sold in poorer areas where most people don't ever buy new cars, because even the entry level new cars are like twice the cost they would afford. The ICE market provides a significant quantity of such used cars, which are cheap because of the wear and tear of being 10-15 years old but are still likely to be usable for a very long time if you maintain them properly.
Are 15 year old Leafs a comparable alternative to 15 year old ICE Hondas? If after the EV revolution buying a 15 year old car ceases to be an affordable option because it will need an unreasonably expensive replacement (compared to the value of such an old car) to be usable for 10 more years, then that's a major societal change in the affordability of transport.
So you imply refurbishing a car battery pack will be unreasonably expensive? Why?
And real world data does not suggest that will be needed at all. Sure there are outliers like someone damaging battery by doing only supercharging but that's exception like not changing oil in ICE.
Batteries cost a significant fraction of a new EV cost (something like 30%) - in the context of populations who want/need vehicles which are affordable because they're used for 10-15 years and should cost a fraction of what a new vehicle costs, that's unreasonably expensive; that replacement costs more than that whole used car should cost.
For example, the first reasonable site I googled for replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) asserts that the battery replacement for a Leaf would cost on average $17,657 - but I'm talking about a target audience who currently would buy a $10,000 car and expect to use it for many more years; current ICE cars enable that, but if getting a usable range from a Leaf when they'll be 15-20 years old will require a replacement battery, that's not going to work out. The replacement batteries for full EVs (as opposed to hybrids with smaller capacity) are more expensive than even full engine replacements or full transmission replacements for old ICE cars, and even very old ICE cars usually don't need a full engine replacement but can work (with usable range!) with much cheaper repairs.
In essence, my doubts are about the longevity of EV cars - what proportion of EVs will be usable/used when they will be 15, 20 or 25 years old (or after 100k / 200k miles), and how that compares to the same metric for the current ICE cars; a downgrade there won't be a big difference for the relatively wealthy buyers of new cars now, but it can be a kick in the balls for the poorer communities in a few decades if the affordable used (and I mean significantly used, not those which were just leased for a few years) cars cease to exist.
There's also a huge population of people who pay even less for a car, like around $5k or less still. Go to the LA county craigslist, average car is $13k but the largest bin by far on the pricing histogram is the sub 5k bin. You set the price interval to be between $2-$5k you get about 2600 ads. You set it at 3k and you still get about 1500 ads, and these are "true" ads with that $2 start cutting off the people who don't list prices on more expensive cars.
You assume that everything will cost exactly as much as now. While the trends are clear, batteries keep getting cheaper and gas more expensive. Which is inevitable when production shrinks. And expensive gas is even bigger "kick in the balls".
The car may be maintained properly, but I see problem getting batteries and other components. When old batteries are no longer being made, the car becomes useless. Similarly, when you cannot get the electric and electronic components, the car is heading for a scrap yard. I'd love to hear from someone who is closer to the matter and knows is third-party battery or electronic component replacements for old EVs are a thing?
Not sure about leafs, but with teslas the batteries are only warrantied for 8 years and 150k miles. If you live somewhere with winters it probably diminishes a lot faster. With a gas car there are things you have to do around this mileage too e.g. timing belt and water pump but thats a fix thats an order of magnitude cheaper than an ev battery replacement.
Tesla's warranty also guarantees 70% minimum of original battery life. That is similar to the degradation you'll see in a gas car. My 10 year old Mazda has lost about 12% of its fuel economy from new and it's never had engine trouble. Low income people will probably continue to buy used cars like they do now.
Well if EV battery prices continue to decline at a similar rate - and there’s no reason not to expect this - then in 8-10 years the cost of the batteries is going to be about ¼ of today’s cost. So it doesn’t really seem like it will be such a burden.
Are the current replacement costs for batteries of 8-10 year old cars 1/4 of the cost that they used to be? The part costs for replacing batteries on 2014 Teslas or Leafs seem to be far more than that (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...).
It means you can have a battery subscription rather than buying the battery. A subscription keeps your battery new and also lets you swap between higher and lower capacity batteries as needed.
Nio has 70, 75, 100, and 150 kWh packs in the same physical pack dimensions:
> there are virtually no chargers in cities with street parking
I suspect this will be relatively easy to build out. They installed them in my neighbourhood over a few weeks. There is already electricity supply to residential streets, so all that's required is installing chargers. Which can be quite simple if they're not fast chargers.
I've also seen people simply running extension cables out of their houses. Which isn't ideal, but it works.
I don’t want cities to build stupid EV charging crap everywhere. They could invest that in public transport instead. EVs have all the same social problems as cars.
Stupid charging crap is easy to do piecemeal. A bus line that only covers two blocks doesn't make sense. A bus line that only covers the major street doesn't help a lot of people. A public transit system that can get most people where they want to go is hugely expensive in time, money, and space, and can't replace the public roads + private car transit system until it's nearly complete.
I'd be concerned if a neighborhood block's electrical infrastructure is fragile enough where even 12kW shared across multiple chargers poses a hazard.
I don't like how these concerns only get raised about EVs and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize far greater power over longer periods of time like individual air conditioning units
> I'd be concerned if a neighborhood block's electrical infrastructure is fragile enough where even 12kW shared across multiple chargers poses a hazard.
The US power grid is run down to the point it's a regular contributor in wildfires. People make memes about how bad the situation is. There are numerous YouTube videos detailing just how old a lot of the equipment and lines are. Besides, the problem is the continuous load. An air conditioner doesn't run the pump continuously for hours, while a charging post constantly consumes peak load.
> I don't like how these concerns only get raised about EVs and are seldom raised over appliances that utilize far greater power over longer periods of time like individual air conditioning units
FWIW yes people are talking about air conditioning, and it's already a massive hassle for grid operators to balance loads when it's extremely hot as a result.
No matter what, electrical grids - and not just in the US - need a serious overhaul over the next few decades. Other than being generally old and poorly maintained, electric vehicles are just one issue... decentralized power generation, distributed battery storage, more demand for heat pumps (particularly in winter) and AC (in summer), the existing grid can't handle all that.
The average US driver commutes about 30 miles per day. At Tesla mileage that’s about 7.5KWh per day. Assume the car is parked and charging for 22 hours out of the day, that works out to a continuous consumption of 341W. Obviously these numbers are all averages, but over enough vehicles that’s roughly what we’re looking at.
You cannot generalize the entirety of the US electrical system. This baseless pessimism runs counter to having any productive discussion on the issue. Each region is run differently and it’s incorrect to assume the same issues in parts of the west coast apply to the Midwest, Northeast, or Mid-Atlantic.
While this may not be the case for all electric grid operators in the US but the one I am under has planned for increased electrical usage by electric vehicles, datacenters, and a move from natural gas.
It’s funny how waiting times and availability of charging infrastructure are often give as a reason EVs will somehow fail, yet in the regional Australian town where I live, the constant long lines and very high cost for fuel at our very small local fuel station were a driver for me to get an EV.
It’s far easier to build an EV charging station than a fuel station, they can be installed just about anywhere, and they are only going to get faster and better with time.
I drive a lot, and don’t have much disposable income at the moment, and EVs are great.
Also an EV charging station only needs regular maintenance when things (sadly inevitably) break. Whereas a fuel station needs not just maintenance but also constant refueling, so trucks need to come out, which can be a looooong drive depending on how rural the station is.
At least in the US, those are almost exclusively problems for people who didn't buy a Tesla. Given the proliferation of NACS support, that will soon change to being a problem for noone.
Europe is completely different, but I get the feeling the charging infrastructure isn't so bad throughout most of Europe.
It is indeed. Cities are extremely diverse. But the majority of persons in the USA live in metro areas, and there is no simple method of providing power or billing for vehicle charging in all those locations. If it's an extension cord run out a window, that's quickly going to become a zoning issue. Actual physical chargers are not only more expensive to install, but fail often. I'm not even addressing the lack of generation and distribution capacity, because that's even more complex.
BEVs mirror the obsession with diesel cars in Europe in more than one way. It was just a partial solution with many of its own downsides. In diesel's case, the problems drove the abandonment of diesel, even though it made up more than 50% of car sales at one point. BEVs are headed in a similar direction.
At some point, the need for something new, whether it's e-fuels or hydrogen or whatever, will become undeniable. We simply won't be building millions of charging stations and place them at every parking spot. If adblue is inconvenient enough to stop diesel cars, then the charging problem will be even more fatal. We must have something that refuels like a conventional car, period.
A “charging station” is a 240V AC outlet with a few amps on it and an inexpensive digital controller for billing. Yeah it’ll cost money to build those, just like it cost money to install parking meters. People get hung up on the weirdest things.
It's part where 270 million people charge their EVs every day and the load on the grid that is the problem. Also, ripping up tens of millions of park spacings and install all of these charging stations is not easy either. It is certainly nothing like a parking meter.
Upgrading the grid is already baked into the cake. Given the rapid ocean temperature warming, surging heat waves and general acceleration of bad climate outcomes it isn’t like “do nothing and keep burning gas” is on the table. We either electrify, stop driving, or suffer increasingly calamitous environmental consequences that are much more economically dire than being forced to improve our grid.
As far as the idea that we can’t install AC wiring in public and private parking spaces, that isn’t even worth discussing. Do you know how much money it costs to build and maintain a parking space? At least chargers will come with a revenue stream that can be leveraged to pay for the construction.
That's a delusional viewpoint. "Doing nothing" is absolutely on the table. In fact, it is the most likely outcome for a very long time to come. Pretty soon, you will hear about geoengineering solutions. Whether you like it or not, it will be seen as the most realistic solution on the table, if not the only one.
This is mitigated with OpenADR and V2G technology. Consumers can set when they charge (or discharge) based on utility incentives. So its not like everyone goes home and charges their car at the same time..
People aren't going to put up with the grid taking power away from your car. If we fear battery life today, this will amplify that problem significantly.
> In August 33% of Volvo's sales were fully-electric or hybrid models. The company did not break out how many of the remaining 67% combustion-engine models were diesel and how many ran on petrol.
> Diesel vehicles comprised more than 50% of Europe's new car sales in 2015, but accounted for just over 14% of sales in July.
Delightfully, we are almost at the combustion->EV tipping point.