Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 458168 times)

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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2500 on: December 13, 2018, 08:44:47 am »
It’s been proposed but no need for a Pi and circuitry it’t Tesla’s wireless charging.  Same technology that sort of works for your phone and cordless tooth brush, has been proposed for cars.

But why?  Takes more time to find the key for my house in my pocket and unlock my front door than it takes to plug-in the cable to charge my car.   And it sure beats haveing to find a gas station an waste tine wining for the car to be filled with gas.  I will say that is a huge plus with an EV,


Because people forget or have their hands full of groceries or use that as an excuse as to why EV's won't work.

And, BTW I don't brush my cordless tooth, I use a cordless toothbrush, spaces matter in compound words :)

Safari doesn't know from compound words. ;D

Exactly   I’vre Also found Safari autocorrects prosecution to prostitution somtoimes.  But then again maybe the folks at Apple think the two words have the same meaning.

I'm getting a bit sick of the iPad, with all of that nonsense, & the fact that it's so easy to lose a whole posting by the unwary brush of a "pinkie" finger.
I think I will have to fix one of the dead Windows laptops, or do everything on the desktop.

Of course, if the laptops weren't so bloody fragile, I wouldn't have started using iPad.
One thing in its favour,though----- it is quite a bit more solid than the two crappy laptops.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2501 on: December 13, 2018, 04:44:16 pm »
I haven't really found laptops to be all that fragile. I've never actually had one break, I've only replaced them because of technological obsolescence. My partner is still using the Lenovo I bought in 2011.

I have an old iPad somebody gave me and the only thing I've ever really found it useful for is viewing PDF manuals. Typing on a touchscreen is hopeless.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2502 on: December 13, 2018, 05:33:50 pm »
I haven't really found laptops to be all that fragile. I've never actually had one break, I've only replaced them because of technological obsolescence. My partner is still using the Lenovo I bought in 2011.

I have an old iPad somebody gave me and the only thing I've ever really found it useful for is viewing PDF manuals. Typing on a touchscreen is hopeless.

iPad is only usefull if you buy a "real" keyboard.  I have two iPads and the screens are both cracked.  My laptop on the otherhand is just fine. 
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2503 on: December 13, 2018, 06:33:02 pm »
The walled garden software ecosystem is another insurmountable obstacle to me. I tolerate it on my phone because I use very few apps on my phone. It's useless for anything I want to do any real work on though. The internet is unusable without an adblocker so the older iPads that lack that are useless for browsing too.
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2504 on: December 13, 2018, 11:51:43 pm »
I think my partner's Prius will go at least 400 miles, 500 may be possible. To be honest I've never tried to see how far it will go, we typically top up the tank when it is convenient to do so rather than waiting until it's almost dry and needing to fill up. This habit may be why in nearly 25 years of driving I've never run a car out of gas.
Some years ago, the hypermiling nut-jobs were going for a 1000 mile tank on a Prius.  I remember they got REAL close, at least 970 miles.  There's a guy who
flew in for a competition and did 180 MPG in somebody else's random Prius.  From what people described, doing this day in and day out would be likely to get you arrested (or killed).

A while ago, somebody was selling their original Honda Insight hybrid, and they showed the dashboard display, where they'd gotten a lifetime of 87 MPG over something like 85 -95K miles running total.  I was REALLY impressed.

Jon
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2505 on: December 14, 2018, 03:28:24 am »
I think my partner's Prius will go at least 400 miles, 500 may be possible. To be honest I've never tried to see how far it will go, we typically top up the tank when it is convenient to do so rather than waiting until it's almost dry and needing to fill up. This habit may be why in nearly 25 years of driving I've never run a car out of gas.
Some years ago, the hypermiling nut-jobs were going for a 1000 mile tank on a Prius.  I remember they got REAL close, at least 970 miles.  There's a guy who
flew in for a competition and did 180 MPG in somebody else's random Prius.  From what people described, doing this day in and day out would be likely to get you arrested (or killed).

A while ago, somebody was selling their original Honda Insight hybrid, and they showed the dashboard display, where they'd gotten a lifetime of 87 MPG over something like 85 -95K miles running total.  I was REALLY impressed.

Jon

You are looking at just a couple of data points.  There are web sites where people compete to get the most MPGs they can.  In my ICE I can get well over 100 MPG when the force is with me.  Gravity threat is.  And just because someone flew around the world in a ballon and in a solar powered airplane doen’t mean it’s for everyone.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2506 on: December 14, 2018, 06:20:31 am »
You are looking at just a couple of data points.  There are web sites where people compete to get the most MPGs they can.  In my ICE I can get well over 100 MPG when the force is with me.  Gravity threat is.  And just because someone flew around the world in a ballon and in a solar powered airplane doen’t mean it’s for everyone.

What are you driving that you're getting 100MPG? I think I got 56 once in the Prius driving very carefully, but not so crazy as to hold up traffic.

In my own car I'm doing well to get 25MPG but I don't care, I love the car and I don't drive that much anyway. I work from home 3 days a week and when I do commute to the office I take the bus.
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2507 on: December 14, 2018, 09:46:49 pm »
You are looking at just a couple of data points.  There are web sites where people compete to get the most MPGs they can.  In my ICE I can get well over 100 MPG when the force is with me.  Gravity threat is.  And just because someone flew around the world in a ballon and in a solar powered airplane doen’t mean it’s for everyone.

What are you driving that you're getting 100MPG? I think I got 56 once in the Prius driving very carefully, but not so crazy as to hold up traffic.

In my own car I'm doing well to get 25MPG but I don't care, I love the car and I don't drive that much anyway. I work from home 3 days a week and when I do commute to the office I take the bus.
Well, if you drive up Pike's Peak and then reset your mileage meter, you can get infinity MPG pretty easily on the way down.  Your average up AND down won't be that good!

One of my kids drove from St. Louis to Bloomingtom IN for a basketball conference and did 57 MPG for the whole trip.  He was not an expert hypermiler, either, just a conservative driver.  That run is pretty much dead flat once you get out of the Mississippi valley, which really helps.  We had 4 people in the car plus luggage for an overnight stay.

The hypermiling competition I mentioned before was a 20 mile pre-arranged course.

Jon
« Last Edit: December 15, 2018, 06:43:47 pm by jmelson »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2508 on: December 15, 2018, 12:50:26 am »
That could be what's going on, I forget sometimes how flat some regions are. There are hills everywhere here, some big ones, others gentle enough that it looks flat, but you're still gaining and losing significant elevation over several dozen miles of highway. IIRC the (first gen) Prius does best going about 45mph on flat ground.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2509 on: December 15, 2018, 07:51:15 am »
If we all drove EV’s tomorrow, can the grid provide?  Here’s the answer we all want to know.

https://youtu.be/w_OYbZzWk5E
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2510 on: December 15, 2018, 01:48:03 pm »
VW’s is going to clobber Tesla.  Might you soon be able to buy a VW made in Tesla’s Gigafactory?  Are EVs really better than ICE?  Why yes, but no.

https://youtu.be/STWlx_k-YvQ
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2511 on: December 15, 2018, 06:16:54 pm »
If we all drove EV’s tomorrow, can the grid provide?  Here’s the answer we all want to know.


Why do we all want to know that? We're not all going to be driving EV's tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now. This is not an all or nothing thing, not everybody will be well served by EVs so they will exist in conjunction with vehicles powered by other fuel sources. Silly people seem to think it has to be 100% one thing or another. If 100% of cars were electric we'd be in the same mess as having 100% of cars ICE powered, all our eggs in one basket, too much dependance a single limited resource.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2512 on: December 15, 2018, 06:30:59 pm »
If we all drove EV’s tomorrow, can the grid provide?  Here’s the answer we all want to know.


Why do we all want to know that? We're not all going to be driving EV's tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now. This is not an all or nothing thing, not everybody will be well served by EVs so they will exist in conjunction with vehicles powered by other fuel sources. Silly people seem to think it has to be 100% one thing or another. If 100% of cars were electric we'd be in the same mess as having 100% of cars ICE powered, all our eggs in one basket, too much dependance a single limited resource.

It's a claim anti-EV conspiracist and the oil companies are using.  The tobacco companies used the same tactic when the evidence was overwhelming linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer.  The tobacco companies hired a PR firm to cause confusion with the public with the motto everyday we cause doubt and controversy with the public is another day of profits.

Just as petrol and Hydrogen fueling stations did not appear overnight it's going to take a bit of time for EV chanrging stations and the grid to catch-up.  And with VW's announcement about investing billions in EV it might take much less that 20 years.

 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2513 on: December 15, 2018, 06:59:40 pm »
If we all drove EV’s tomorrow, can the grid provide?  Here’s the answer we all want to know.
Why do we all want to know that? We're not all going to be driving EV's tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now. This is not an all or nothing thing, not everybody will be well served by EVs so they will exist in conjunction with vehicles powered by other fuel sources.
Either way the grid updates will be needed and paid for by someone if there are more EVs than the grid can handle. That moment will occur long before EV penetration is 100%.
Basically the whole 'at home charging' idea is flawed from the start. The grid hasn't been designed to deal with that many large loads.

Recently Porsche & BMW have demonstrated a 450kW fast charger station which is a much better solution IMHO. The more people you can share a piece of infrastructure with, the cheaper it gets. https://newatlas.com/porsche-450-kw-fastcharge-prototype/57659/ The charge time is still too long though. Putting 400km of range in a typical EV (250Wh/km) still takes 15 minutes. Things will get interesting when chargers get a power output of around 1.5MW . In that case battery capacity will be much less of an issue.


Quote
Silly people seem to think it has to be 100% one thing or another. If 100% of cars were electric we'd be in the same mess as having 100% of cars ICE powered, all our eggs in one basket, too much dependance a single limited resource.
Well that is what the governments in Europe try to sell to the public. We should all drive EVs! That would magically make the whole CO2 problem go away. I wonder how because over here cars account for 12% of the CO2 emissions.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2018, 07:51:38 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline fsr

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2514 on: December 15, 2018, 08:22:22 pm »
Well, hybrids can be a first step, because the main issue with EVs is the range, but it's NOT an issue most of the time, when the car is used inside the city. I wonder if manufacturers will start to use supercaps to enhance the regenerative braking, as they seem to have excellent characteristicts for that kind of use. Probably too expensive right now, however.
A pluggable hybrid with enough range to cover normal city use would be driving 100% electric most of the time, and if you need to travel longer distances, it has an ICE for that.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2515 on: December 15, 2018, 08:26:15 pm »
But don't expect to be allowed to charge a hybrid anywhere else than at home in the near future: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/105449/ban-plug-in-hybrids-from-ev-charging-bays-say-experts
In the Netherlands PHEVs sales are dead anyway. Nobody buys them. In the end a hybrid is the worst of both worlds due to the extra weight and extra complexity.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2018, 08:30:27 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2516 on: December 15, 2018, 08:33:18 pm »
If we all drove EV’s tomorrow, can the grid provide?  Here’s the answer we all want to know.
Why do we all want to know that? We're not all going to be driving EV's tomorrow, or next year, or 20 years from now. This is not an all or nothing thing, not everybody will be well served by EVs so they will exist in conjunction with vehicles powered by other fuel sources.
Either way the grid updates will be needed and paid for by someone if there are more EVs than the grid can handle. That moment will occur long before EV penetration is 100%.
Basically the whole 'at home charging' idea is flawed from the start. The grid hasn't been designed to deal with that many large loads.

Recently Porsche & BMW have demonstrated a 450kW fast charger station which is a much better solution IMHO. The more people you can share a piece of infrastructure with, the cheaper it gets. https://newatlas.com/porsche-450-kw-fastcharge-prototype/57659/ The charge time is still too long though. Putting 400km of range in a typical EV (250Wh/km) still takes 15 minutes. Things will get interesting when chargers get a power output of around 1.5MW . In that case battery capacity will be much less of an issue.


Quote
Silly people seem to think it has to be 100% one thing or another. If 100% of cars were electric we'd be in the same mess as having 100% of cars ICE powered, all our eggs in one basket, too much dependance a single limited resource.
Well that is what the governments in Europe try to sell to the public. We should all drive EVs! That would magically make the whole CO2 problem go away. I wonder how because over here cars account for 12% of the CO2 emissions.


Seems like if Europeans, especially the Germans, would drink less beer, and eat less bread it would greatly cut down on CO2 levels.  I suspect just having Germans stop drinking beer would reduce CO2 levels more so then having everyone drive EVs.  I think I need funding for a research project.  I'd like to know how much CO2 is released in Munich durning Octoberfest.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2517 on: December 15, 2018, 08:51:59 pm »
 :palm: There is no need for that. If you use Google you'll find that information which shows industry is the largest contributor to CO2 emissions by far. But since industry is driving the economy of many countries not much is going to happen to that sector.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline fsr

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2518 on: December 15, 2018, 09:53:21 pm »
But don't expect to be allowed to charge a hybrid anywhere else than at home in the near future: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/105449/ban-plug-in-hybrids-from-ev-charging-bays-say-experts
Well, that seems reasonable. Easy to implement, also: just refuse to charge at slower rates. What's the point of a fast charge station, if you are charging slowly?

In the Netherlands PHEVs sales are dead anyway. Nobody buys them. In the end a hybrid is the worst of both worlds due to the extra weight and extra complexity.
In some aspects, yes, but you could still get to drive in 0 emissions mode in the city and have a long range on the same car, and neither an ICE vehicle nor a pure EV will allow that right now. But of course, they're more expensive, so that doesn't help. At some point the government must be involved, with tax reductions, or some incentives like that, as it's clearly desirable to have 0 emission vehicles on the cities.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2519 on: December 15, 2018, 10:05:10 pm »
In the Netherlands PHEVs sales are dead anyway. Nobody buys them. In the end a hybrid is the worst of both worlds due to the extra weight and extra complexity.
In some aspects, yes, but you could still get to drive in 0 emissions mode in the city and have a long range on the same car, and neither an ICE vehicle nor a pure EV will allow that right now. But of course, they're more expensive, so that doesn't help. At some point the government must be involved, with tax reductions, or some incentives like that, as it's clearly desirable to have 0 emission vehicles on the cities.
But the problem with that is that you can't make new technology cheaper for the masses. Incentives can only help to bring technology to pre-mass production. Otherwise the people with less money are paying taxes to allow the happy few to buy more expensive products. If EVs need to catch on then they need to be intrinsically cheaper to buy, own & run compared to ICE vehicles. Increasing taxes on fuel or ICE cars isn't the solution to make that happen because increasing those taxes will just increase inflation and have no effect (*). The Dutch government has been trying increasing taxes for several decades and it doesn't work to get people out of their cars. That is only logical because for many a car is the best (fastest) form of transportation despite traffic jams. Oddly enough public transport often doesn't get to places where many people work.

* Or mass riots may happen as you can see in France currently.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2018, 10:07:06 pm by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2520 on: December 15, 2018, 10:14:21 pm »
A PHEV is just another option, with advantages and disadvantages. It will fill the needs of some very well, for others the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. If you have space for only one car, do mostly short trips but need to go further more often than is practical to rent a car, it could be the way to go.

Personally if I were going to buy a new car I'd just get a pure EV since we already have multiple cars but that also has advantages and disadvantages. Once again it seems some people are incapable of comprehending a reality where their own needs and situation differ from those of someone else.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2521 on: December 16, 2018, 02:53:33 am »
This is crazy.  For around $10,000 and an hour or two any car can be converted to EV.  Or a two wheel drive EV can be made 4WD EV with 1n extra 200 HP.  Very clever design.

https://youtu.be/iQ4lTPVR3qc
 

Offline eugenenine

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2522 on: December 17, 2018, 02:29:40 pm »
Way back in the 80's when i was a kid and JC Whitney still send out a big thick catalog I would page through them dreaming of buying a fiberglass jeep body and then make an aluminum frame and 4 motors for the wheels to make a nice 4x4 EV.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2523 on: December 17, 2018, 03:09:26 pm »
Putting motors in the wheels is a really bad idea. The wheels and the parts attached to them should be as light as possible for optimal performance of the suspension system.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #2524 on: December 17, 2018, 04:02:40 pm »
Putting motors in the wheels is a really bad idea. The wheels and the parts attached to them should be as light as possible for optimal performance of the suspension system.

Did you watch the video?  Far less weight than the original wheels.
 


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