Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 460042 times)

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Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #325 on: April 14, 2018, 09:42:31 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.

The best scenario is walkable cities with good public transportation systems and EVs for those outside the city centers. 

And BTW there is no reason why fee based low power charging stations could not eventually be made commonplace on residential streets where private parking is not available.  Low power charging stations for overnight charging would not be a hugely expensive or complicated infrastructure change.



 

Online 2N3055

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #326 on: April 14, 2018, 10:05:22 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.

The best scenario is walkable cities with good public transportation systems and EVs for those outside the city centers. 

And BTW there is no reason why fee based low power charging stations could not eventually be made commonplace on residential streets where private parking is not available.  Low power charging stations for overnight charging would not be a hugely expensive or complicated infrastructure change.

True. Problem is that exactly people living rural areas are those that do have range anxiety...

Best technology would be EV with 150 km range with small backup generator on board for "limp home mode".
And aggressive buildup of public parkings with chargers in cities.... In rural areas people would charge at home, and would be sure that they will always come home.

Regards,

Sinisa
 

Offline b_force

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #327 on: April 14, 2018, 10:14:39 pm »
True. Problem is that exactly people living rural areas are those that do have range anxiety...

Best technology would be EV with 150 km range with small backup generator on board for "limp home mode".
They already exist, they are called plugin hybrids.
So you can always charge your batteries with a little combustion engine.

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #328 on: April 14, 2018, 10:18:47 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.
No. In the NL suburbs are also densely populated. The problem is that public transport goes from city centre to city centre and doesn't reach the outskirts where the companies are (typicall) located. In the NL only 15% of the people use public transport to travel to work and 75% uses a car. After all: public transport takes you from a place you are not at to a place where you don't need to go. Public transport is therefore very slow and I only use it to go to places which are hard to reach by a car due to traffic jams. For example: every now and then I have to go to a customer in Amsterdam. If I use the train it takes 50 minutes door-to-door. If I use the car it takes 25 minutes (without traffic jams). For shorter distances a bycicle (or even walking) is faster than public transport.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2018, 10:20:59 pm by nctnico »
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Online 2N3055

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #329 on: April 14, 2018, 10:35:09 pm »
True. Problem is that exactly people living rural areas are those that do have range anxiety...

Best technology would be EV with 150 km range with small backup generator on board for "limp home mode".
They already exist, they are called plugin hybrids.
So you can always charge your batteries with a little combustion engine.
Not all of them are series hybrid type. Most of them are standard mechanic/electric parallel or power split hybrid.

Series type are only ones that have simple drivetrain of EV, and generator is simply range extender. You could make it a large suitcase sized module, that you could put into your car only if you need it..

Regards,
Sinisa



 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #330 on: April 14, 2018, 10:46:36 pm »
Maybe this will help  :-DD

A small generator won't cut it because of the power needed to move a car. For that the generator would need to have an engine which is the size of a car engine.
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Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #331 on: April 14, 2018, 11:04:05 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.
No. In the NL suburbs are also densely populated.

Are you seriously arguing that people who have homes with private parking do not drive any more on average than those who don't?
 

Online 2N3055

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #332 on: April 14, 2018, 11:17:08 pm »
Maybe this will help  :-DD

A small generator won't cut it because of the power needed to move a car. For that the generator would need to have an engine which is the size of a car engine.
Old Fiat 126 had 18KW engine and could go more than 100 km/h. I remember Porsche commercial saying it was so aerodynamic it neded only 32 HP to go 120 km/h.

There are miniature gas turbine generators available, that are suitcase sized and have power in 100 kW range... Way more than enough...

But it would be nice if you could charge the phone too :-))

 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #333 on: April 14, 2018, 11:48:49 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.
No. In the NL suburbs are also densely populated.
Are you seriously arguing that people who have homes with private parking do not drive any more on average than those who don't?
There are two categories of people with private parking spaces in the NL:
1) People with free standing homes are usually rich enough to buy a home close to their company so they don't need to travel far to work.
2) People who have the car parked in the garden of their townhouses (they got suckered into buying a house without a public parking space).
Either way neither have a reason to travel shorter or longer based on what kind of home they have. Keep in mind that the NL is anything like the US. A one hour drive gets you (literally) halfway through the country.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2018, 12:25:23 am by nctnico »
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #334 on: April 14, 2018, 11:51:49 pm »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.

The best scenario is walkable cities with good public transportation systems and EVs for those outside the city centers. 

And BTW there is no reason why fee based low power charging stations could not eventually be made commonplace on residential streets where private parking is not available.  Low power charging stations for overnight charging would not be a hugely expensive or complicated infrastructure change.

True. Problem is that exactly people living rural areas are those that do have range anxiety...

Best technology would be EV with 150 km range with small backup generator on board for "limp home mode".
And aggressive buildup of public parkings with chargers in cities.... In rural areas people would charge at home, and would be sure that they will always come home.

Regards,

Sinisa

There are huge numbers of people living in suburbs with private parking that are not exactly rural. I can look out my window and see the neighbor's EV parked in their driveway plugged in right now, it's literally right outside, they drive it to work every day, it's so strange to have people denying that this situation exists when it's in my reality. Until a majority of these people have EVs we don't even need to discuss those for whom a conventional car or plugin hybrid are a better option, why are we still fixated on those situations?
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #335 on: April 15, 2018, 12:06:43 am »
It should be an obvious point that even in a country that has only 10% of  the population living in the suburbs or rural areas (and hence have private parking) - those 10% are going to account for far greater than 10% of auto miles/kilometers driven. 

Those who live in highly populated cities tend to walk or use public transportation often (a good thing).  And those in densly populated cities who do own cars are likely to drive far less than suburb/country dwellers.
No. In the NL suburbs are also densely populated.
Are you seriously arguing that people who have homes with private parking do not drive any more on average than those who don't?
There are two categories of people with private parking spaces in the NL:
1) People with free standing homes are usually rich enough to buy a home close to their company so they don't need to travel far to work.
2) People who have the car parked in the garden of their townhouses (they got suckered into buying a house without a public parking space).
Either way neither have a reason to travel shorter or longer based on what kind of home they have. Keep in mind that the NL is anything unlike the US. A one hour drive gets you (literally) halfway through the country.

You are generalizing your experience in the NL which is a very small country. It is not typical of Europe in general (I know from first hand experience).  And of course it is not typical of many other places in the world besides Europe and the USA. 

The point stands: Those who have private parking available will on average drive much more than those who live in densely populated areas and do not.

Also - in general,  being rural does not mean one would have range anxiety. For example, I live in a rural area but my daily work commute is 12 miles round trip.  The closest large city - Seattle - is  60 miles drive away.  There are literally millions of people living in rural locations that are within 100 miles of Seattle.   I know from first hand experience, the same is true for many rural areas in the US, Canada, and throughout Europe.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #336 on: April 15, 2018, 12:14:43 am »
There are huge numbers of people living in suburbs with private parking that are not exactly rural. I can look out my window and see the neighbor's EV parked in their driveway plugged in right now, it's literally right outside, they drive it to work every day, it's so strange to have people denying that this situation exists when it's in my reality.
Nobody is denying that such a situation can exist somewhere. But it isn't a defacto standard. If I look out of my window I see no EVs at all in the entire street.

The point stands: Those who have private parking available will on average drive much more than those who live in densely populated areas and do not.
Without numbers to back it up this is just your opinion. I see no reason why a group of people with their cars parked on their driveway or a group of people with their cars parked in public parking spaces (IOW along the street) should drive a different distances. There is no logic to that.

Besides that I'm not projecting the situation in the NL. Look at the population density of Europe and you'll see several very large areas with high densities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe
« Last Edit: April 15, 2018, 12:23:18 am by nctnico »
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Online Marco

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #337 on: April 15, 2018, 12:20:07 am »
There are miniature gas turbine generators available, that are suitcase sized and have power in 100 kW range... Way more than enough...

Mazda is doing a small rotary engine as a range extender, but you'll probably get screwed on subsidies here if you actually buy it.
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #338 on: April 15, 2018, 12:24:21 am »

The point stands: Those who have private parking available will on average drive much more than those who live in densely populated areas and do not.
Without numbers to back it up this is just your opinion. I see no reason why a group of people with their cars on their driveway or a group of people with their cars parked in public parking spaces (IOW along the street) should drive a different distances. There is no logic to that.

Here is the obvious logical point which you keep doing contortions to avoid:

People who live in densely populated areas drive on average much less than those who live in typical (not NL dense) suburbs or rural areas.

Add:  A quick google search gives this hard data for my state of Washington:

"Residents in Rural areas drive the most: 22,243 miles per year for the
average household, followed by Suburban households (18,368). Residents
in Urban areas drive the least: 13,206 miles for the average household"
« Last Edit: April 15, 2018, 12:51:10 am by mtdoc »
 

Offline mtdoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #339 on: April 15, 2018, 12:32:18 am »
Besides that I'm not projecting the situation in the NL.

You absolutely are. It has nothing to do with the fact that many parts of Europe have high population density. Many parts of the US do as well. It has to do with your generalizing and implying that because a typical NL suburb in your experience does not have private parking this is true througout Europe. It is not  - based on my first hand experience in several European countries.

All one has to do is use Google maps or do a Google search of UK suburbs or French suburbs or German suburbs to see photos and see for oneself.

BTW - I just used Google maps to look at suburbs around Amsterdam and apparently your assertion is not universally true in the NL.  Many  houses with private parking.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2018, 12:38:18 am by mtdoc »
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #340 on: April 15, 2018, 12:43:08 am »
If charging an EV at home would be so easy in the NL then why are only 0.29% of the cars EVs? Numbers talk... A single observation not so much.
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Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #341 on: April 15, 2018, 05:17:37 am »
Pretty compelling evidence about EV cars in our future. Facts are well researched.

https://youtu.be/ns_0UTOc6X4

https://youtu.be/jntsT0BdxDw

 

Offline radar_macgyver

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #342 on: April 15, 2018, 05:17:56 am »
Sad truth is that you cannot extrapolate any conclusion from existing EV ownership. Current EV owners are enthusiasts and those that are lucky to be in position to be able to afford and operate EV.
They are more anomaly than something that can be used to extract plans how to go forward.

As you yourself say topic was "mainstream use of EV". Not so soon, not until infrastructure is built. And that is something that will be really hard somewhere and not so much somewhere else..
The question, in my opinion, is if the reason most EV owners today are enthusiasts (I wouldn't call myself that, but I see your point) is for any real reason, or due to lack of information. Take the two biggest sellers of EVs in the US, Tesla and Chevy. Tesla almost single-handedly raised the level of awareness of EVs, but have a reputation of being very expensive. Chevy on the other hand built two superb cars, but did little to nothing to advertise them.

Infrastructure won't take off unless there's adoption, and adoption won't take off unless there's infrastructure. The usual short cut is government incentives, but I do think some evangelism can go a long way.

A lot of scattershot ideas with basically zero meat (private charger sharing, for example). The only half way reasonable one was DCFC (think ChaDeMo, not death cab for cuties...) on city properties and that hasn't happened. In fact, instead of requiring that apartment construction include EV charging in parking spaces (or at least wiring for it) they have now allowed apartments to be built with no parking at all. And the extent of their support is adding a handful of Level 2 chargers in random on-street places. (It's been shown that L2 chargers get approximately 1 use every two days, FAIL.).

That sucks, I was hoping for better results. As for L2 charging, I live in a medium sized city of 150,000 and all the city-owned parking structures have free L2 chargers, with free parking on Sundays. I get brunch and some shopping done for a couple of hours and get about $1 of free charging, or 45 miles added range. It's a nice incentive and the city probably made more money in taxes than they spent on my free charge. They are also providing subsidies to businesses that would like to install L2 and L3 chargers. Sadly, very few takers for L3 charging so far.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #343 on: April 15, 2018, 05:57:54 am »
If charging an EV at home would be so easy in the NL then why are only 0.29% of the cars EVs? Numbers talk... A single observation not so much.

Perhaps there are a lot of guys like you who have a deep emotionally based belief that they won't work, aren't easy, etc?

I know people who flat out insist that LED bulbs don't save money compared to old fashioned incandescent lamps, refute this and they'll spout off edge cases that LED bulbs won't work well with, change the subject, deflect, bring up the same edge cases over and over again, despite the fact that almost every light in my house has been LED for years. Buuut but but they won't work in an oven! Ok yeah, sure, that's why I have an incandescent bulb in my oven, so what? It's the same attitude. It's a religious belief of sorts, not possible to sway with logic or fact.

10 years ago I think it would be generous to estimate that 0.29% of domestic lighting was LED, "numbers talk" so that means that LEDs are completely unsuitable for lighting obviously doesn't it? Well except that clearly this isn't the case because at least out here they have caught on big and are now widely available and widely used. Doesn't stop a certain type of person from hoarding old fashioned incandescent bulbs because they believe them to be cheaper but whatever. 
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #344 on: April 15, 2018, 06:02:15 am »
While I'm not as worldly as some, I have traveled to much of the two Western provinces of Canada, and I've been to the UK and in both places I saw a very similar situation to home, mostly houses with driveways and/or garages. The UK was the most different as a large number of the houses were duplexes and of course much smaller than the houses I'm used to but houses none the less with private parking.
I don't know which parts of the UK you went to, but off street parking is only available for a small percentage of UK homes.

I went to Manchester, there were suburbs there not unlike the suburbs here. Smaller, flatter, a lot fewer trees, the houses were overwhelmingly made of brick rather than wood and people drove on the "wrong" side of the road but otherwise it felt not entirely unfamiliar. I'm sure the numbers are available if one was inclined to look them up, and I'd be shocked it more than 5% of the people for whom an EV would be a good match already have one, which means there's a huge potential market that has not been saturated.
 

Online paulca

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #345 on: April 15, 2018, 07:56:25 am »
The UK has pledged to ban the sale of new ICE only cars by 2030 (IIRC).  Given the mentioned issues of charging a large number of those will be ICE charged hybrids.

Also, wanted to mention, I watched "10 Billion" last night.  Figures from think tanks suggest that our global population will be at least 10 billion and our energy demands will be doubled by 2050.  That will require something like 23,000 nuclear power plants to be built or 40,000 coal/oil plants.  Depressingly the hard knock truth summary the film gives is "We are fucked.", EVs et. al. are just token gestures because the scale and momentum of the problem will require a LOT more to fix.  Renewables just isn't going to expand fast enough or even be all that practical on a large scale, as large as we need to get off fossil fuels.  Not to mention there are still trillions and trillions of dollars of fossil fuels to be extracted and more is found every day.  Who honestly believes that big oil will stop and leave that money in the ground?

The only advice the think tanks can give is:  Consume less.  Less energy, less food, less stuff and have less kids.... or we are fucked.
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Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #346 on: April 15, 2018, 11:26:16 am »
While I'm not as worldly as some, I have traveled to much of the two Western provinces of Canada, and I've been to the UK and in both places I saw a very similar situation to home, mostly houses with driveways and/or garages. The UK was the most different as a large number of the houses were duplexes and of course much smaller than the houses I'm used to but houses none the less with private parking.
I don't know which parts of the UK you went to, but off street parking is only available for a small percentage of UK homes.

I went to Manchester, there were suburbs there not unlike the suburbs here. Smaller, flatter, a lot fewer trees, the houses were overwhelmingly made of brick rather than wood and people drove on the "wrong" side of the road but otherwise it felt not entirely unfamiliar. I'm sure the numbers are available if one was inclined to look them up, and I'd be shocked it more than 5% of the people for whom an EV would be a good match already have one, which means there's a huge potential market that has not been saturated.
Sure, Manchester has affluent suburbs like Woodford which are very open, with reasonably large front gardens and driveways for most houses. That represents a few percent of the houses in Manchester.

If you consider the market by numbers, there are certainly still plenty of opportunities to sell electric cars to people with off road parking. If you consider the market by the percentage needed to make a significant difference to the environment in the UK (i.e. to make a useful change), things are more problematic.
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #347 on: April 15, 2018, 12:05:53 pm »
The UK has pledged to ban the sale of new ICE only cars by 2030 (IIRC).  Given the mentioned issues of charging a large number of those will be ICE charged hybrids.
It won't be the first time a government changes their heading if an idea turns out to be not that good after a while. With diesel-gate fresh in mind politicians are likely to pitch all kind of ideas to make them look good. 2030 is still far away.
Quote
Renewables just isn't going to expand fast enough or even be all that practical on a large scale, as large as we need to get off fossil fuels.  Not to mention there are still trillions and trillions of dollars of fossil fuels to be extracted and more is found every day.  Who honestly believes that big oil will stop and leave that money in the ground?
The idea seems to be to catch CO2 at power plants and store it underground. I'm principally against that because putting large amounts of CO2 in the ground creates toxic gas pockets (a few % of CO2 is enough to kill you) which stay dangerous forever (forever as in until the earth falls apart). Compared to that even storing radioactive material is a more sensible bad idea because radioactive material will stop radiating at some point in time.

Consuming less is a good idea and I think most countries got the message now. Unfortunately Mr Trump has set the US back a couple of decades by turning the EPA into the IPA (industy protection agency). Since the US is a major contributor to CO2 emissions (the world's second largest in absolute numbers) that is a real problem for the world.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2018, 12:08:55 pm by nctnico »
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Online coppice

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #348 on: April 15, 2018, 12:23:41 pm »
The UK has pledged to ban the sale of new ICE only cars by 2030 (IIRC).  Given the mentioned issues of charging a large number of those will be ICE charged hybrids.
It won't be the first time a government changes their heading if an idea turns out to be not that good after a while. With diesel-gate fresh in mind politicians are likely to pitch all kind of ideas to make them look good. 2030 is still far away.
Quote
The whole 2030 thing in the UK is a knee jerk reaction. The UK heavily promoted the lower CO2 output of diesels, to the extent that many luxury cars were not even offered with a gasoline engine option in the UK. Now they are waking up to the higher NOx levels this has caused in cities, they are suddenly turning against diesels. Taxation rules no longer favour them, and gasoline versions of luxury cars are being launched. Its a typical dumb populist move. The majority of the NOx comes from older diesels, even though most of the Euro 6 ones are obviously cheating to some extent. Instead of tightening up on the diesel emissions, diesels have suddenly become the bad guys, and the higher CO2 from petrol engines is no longer the hot topic of the week.
 

Offline DougSpindler

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #349 on: April 15, 2018, 05:00:15 pm »
I have an electric cars and it seems to me it’s the bickering between the electric car manufactures on charging stations types and plugs which is impeding the adaptation of electric cars.

I just drove to a very large mega shopping cente near Palm Springs California.  There are over 200 stores and they advertise free car charging for electric cars while shopping.

Pulled in hoping to get a charge and some shopping done.  Took me 20 minutes to find the charging station.  No one knew where the charging station was.  Finally found it....  There were only two spaces for electric cars yest ona busy weekend this mall would see well over 10,000 shoppers.

Had to wait for one of the two spaces, finally was able to get a space.  Pulled in, only to find the charging station plug does not work with a Chevy. 

As a consumer this is BS.  Why isn’t there just one standard plug for electric cars? So I called the phone number on the chargaing station to see where the nearest Chevy charger was.  It was over 2 miles away at a hotel.  I was told to part there and take a Taxi or maybe a Uber to get to and from the shopping center.

So here you folks are talking about infrastructure, the electric car companies are fighting over what infrastructure to install.  I’m a correct that Tesla makes it so only Tesla cars car be charged in Tesla Chargers?  And then aren’t there three other types of electric car plugs which are all different?

Yes it’s the chicken and egg question, but if the electric car companies can’t agree on what type of plug to use I can see why there’s reluctance to install electric car infrastructure.  What happens if Tesla goes out of business or changes the plug?  Same question about Chevy?  Ever see the GM Sequel?
 
GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz said in a TED talk Cheverlot GM produce hydrogen powered Sequels.  Not sure what happened by after this announcement was made unveiled Volt in 2008 instead of hydrogen powered cars.

Back to the chicken and the egg.  What’s a city/business/home owner to do?  Do you install hydrogen, natural gas or electric refueling station.  If you install electric which plug do you support?  Or do you support all?  And then what happens if the industry/technology changes the plug?  Or one of the car companies goes out of business/stops making electric cars a lot of money would have be wasted on an infrastructure which might never be used. 

Heck even for my home charger I have to select between 6 different AC plugs configurations.  Why are there no standards in the electric car industry?  Or if there are, why aren’t they being followed?

 


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