Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 458137 times)

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Offline EEVblog

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #25 on: December 29, 2017, 12:03:32 am »
He is right. Solid state lithium battery is just around the corner, and that will reduce the battery cost significantly. First we see a drop around 50%, in about 2-3 years, then some due to the optimization.
Yes, I am saying, that in 2-3 years, EV will cost less than ICE

Without government subsidies?
I'll take that bet.
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #26 on: December 29, 2017, 12:30:14 am »
Copied from the other thread:

Quote
Last month was another record month for the country [Norway] with electric cars representing 42% of its new vehicles being registered.

https://electrek.co/2017/07/04/electric-car-norway-tesla-model-x/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

Sure its subsidized like crazy, but it tells you something about how usable it is as a primary vehicle there (~60% of households only own one car).
US and AUS driving distances are probably a lot further, so you might want to have two vehicles as pointed out above.

Maybe 4+ years for costs to come down: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/25/electric-cars-will-be-cheaper-than-conventional-vehicles-by-2022
But you can still get a hell of a deal on a used electric before then.
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Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #27 on: December 29, 2017, 01:29:08 am »
Maybe 4+ years for costs to come down: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/25/electric-cars-will-be-cheaper-than-conventional-vehicles-by-2022
But you can still get a hell of a deal on a used electric before then.
This greatly depends on how you calculate TCO and I assume these numbers only look at purchase price and maintenance costs during the first few years and not the entire usefull life of a car. If you calculate TCO over the first 100k km (the typical lease period over here) then the depreciation is a large chunk. If I take my own car as an example. It cost nearly 28k euro when new and when I bought it with around 140k km I paid 5k euro. That means that the previous owners paid over 16 cents per km for just the depreciation. I OTOH pay around 3 cents per km in depreciation. It is unclear how that equation works out for an EV. If a used EV is going to need a new battery pack it may be worth a negative number by the time the first owner is going to buy a new car.
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Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #28 on: December 29, 2017, 02:39:21 am »
It´s sad that the range extender (aka plug-in hybrid) doesn´t find as much traction as it should. It does combine the best of both and can even solve some issues by having the ICE run in practical ideal conditions all the time.
PHEV have the drawbacks of both technologies :
- Cost is high, you have to pack both techs.
- Efficiency in long rage is as bad or worse as pure ICE
- Weight is high, you schlepp that ICE engine around every day for no benefit
- Not much space left in the car
- Maintenance costs are high, especially on ICE engines that are not regularily used

It's clearly a stop gap measure, or for some niche drive profiles.
I would even say it's a stop gap measure designed for keeping the actual car makers in buisiness, not for saving costs.
There are many use cases where a hybrid vehicle would make a good fit and overcome the higher initial cost, but even that point is already trying to tie down the discussion. The Prius sizes both the electric and petrol engines too small for either to completely operate the vehicle within "normal" performance that customers demand, so they've not added two duplicate systems but pared both down to minimal cost/weight/size to complement each other.

Breaking out the other points:
- Efficiency in long rage is as bad or worse as pure ICE
This is unfounded, even cruising steadily on a highway a hybrid vehicle can out perform the fuel efficiency of a pure ICE as it can:
Run the engine at the most efficient power point and store excess energy before turning off the engine
Recover energy on downhill sections

- Weight is high, you schlepp that ICE engine around every day for no benefit
The benefit is that you need a whole lot less batteries than a pure electric vehicle, or a smaller ICE engine than otherwise. Weight would be higher than a pure ICE vehicle but offset by the ability to recover energy in deceleration (the major efficiency penalty of weight).

- Not much space left in the car
Batteries to make up a similar range would be far more voluminous than the addition of a compact ICE and fuel source. Also the interior space of a car is an independent parameter, few vehicles are limited on their exterior sizing!

- Maintenance costs are high, especially on ICE engines that are not regularily used
Only if you are used to the historical xxx km or yyy years servicing intervals, modern ICE units are now running on longer timed maintenance and dynamically determined usage based periods.

Hybrids are the exact answer to people who believe they need to own a car that can travel hundreds of km and refuel rapidly, its a real use case of vehicles and will continue to be demanded. Battery cars are unlikely to meet those requirements any time soon and could be much more effectively targeted at what they do well, which is small cars with short 100-200km range for moving around town/shopping/etc which is radically different to how people see cars at the moment.

One of the most common arguments I see against electric cars is that they're not suitable for ALL of many people's needs, people really get hung up on the assumption that one car has to do it all.
My wife and I have equivalent cars which both need to be able to drive far and I think that is the same for many people.
How often are you needing to use both of them at the same time for trips too far to use an electric alternative? And then the follow up of for those few times when it really is needed to have multiple long distance vehicles how much would a rental cost?

I live in a household with 2 cars, one for long distance trips, and one for around town. Its never ever been necessary to drive long distances in the around town car and we wouldn't want to as its just too uncomfortable for that.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 02:42:48 am by Someone »
 

Offline phil from seattle

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #29 on: December 29, 2017, 03:51:30 am »
Interesting discussion. Not sure how many BEV owners there are in this discussion but, as one, I thought an owner's perspective would be of value.

I own a Tesla Model S, since 2013. It gets about 270 miles range on a full charge. For around town and the occasional 100+ miles trips locally, it's super convenient. I spend maybe 30 seconds every few days plugging/unplugging. If I want, I can start every day with full range. I've been to a gas station maybe once a year since getting the car and find it a disgusting experience now. The whole "filling station" mindset has been wiped from my brain.

On the occasion that I take a road trip - maybe 3-4 times a year, I have to do a little planning. For major roadways (Freeways in the USA), there are Tesla owned Superchargers that charge up to 120 KWatts per hour.  I can drive several hours and stop at an SC. Charge the car, take a bathroom break, get a little food or coffee and then 20-30 minutes later back on the road to the next SC or destination. The car will tell you when you can continue. For those of us that bought early, SC use is free.  I can drive cross country from Seattle to New York City on SCs alone and pay $0.00 out of pocket for charges.  Lots of hotels now have chargers. They are slower than SCs but plugging in over night is no hardship. When I go farther off grid, it takes more planning but there are lots of chargers out there and some of them are pretty fast (50 KWatts for example). I can even plug into a wall outlet for a very slow charge (3-4 miles per hour) in the worst case. I'll never be bricked. The charger situation is getting better all the time. There are 1100 Superchargers world wide, almost 500 in the US and Canada. With more being added all the time. Roads trips are the worst aspect of EV ownership and they aren't bad.

Also, a lot of the new SCs are being added in urban areas to support apartment dwellers. These are being added in shopping areas so you plug in your car, go shopping for an hour, have dinner, see a movie, whatever and get a full charge.

Yeah, I paid a lot more for my car but I still love it. It's responsive, fast, reliable and beautiful. You'd have to pry it out of my cold, dead fingers to take it away from me.
 

Offline SparkyFXTopic starter

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #30 on: December 29, 2017, 03:35:11 pm »
He is right. Solid state lithium battery is just around the corner, and that will reduce the battery cost significantly. First we see a drop around 50%, in about 2-3 years, then some due to the optimization.
That also means to stay competitive, all other variants will go down in cost, squeezing the last bits out. A manufacturer with a unique selling point will try to make as much money as possible before production is able to deliver targeted amounts and take a premium on that unique selling point.

Anyway, storing more energy per volume/mass is a step forward, but it is not the whole truth. Safety and long term stability are very important factors too, they might as well change the outcome of some equations or be a complete showstopper. I would not be that optimistic that some announcement means a new technology outright fulfills all requirements to a mass marketable product. When talking about solid state electrolytes, does that mean that they are vulnerable to vibration? Good luck using them in a vehicle then. And that´s just one example.

Quote
Yes, I am saying, that in 2-3 years, EV will cost less than ICE, though we will also see a range increase.
One has to be an really desperate to buy a ICE car, when the electric is cheaper to buy, cheaper to run and serves 99% of use cases.
Just as much one shouldn´t sell all possessions because someone said "the end is near" same applies for "a better future awaits you". It might not be selling all possessions in this case, but spending quite some resources.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 11:25:50 pm by SparkyFX »
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Offline janoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #31 on: December 29, 2017, 04:33:27 pm »

The charge time is a complete non-issue, they plug in the car when they get home from work and it's fully charged the next morning.


You need to consider that a lot of people in the 1st world countries don't live in the US-style suburbs where everyone lives in a house that has a convenient outlet and a garage for (at least) two large cars, so plugging in their Tesla overnight is no problem.

I do wonder what are you going to do with the apartment dwellers living in the cities? Most of them are lucky to have place to park (outdoors, not a garage). A charge port there? Dream on. Ain't happening in most places, at least not unless you pay for it out of your own pocket.

And two or more cars per family? Again dream on - given the costs of owning a car in Europe, this is rare. Most families have only one car, two are an absolute maximum most people will ever have in one household at a time.

Unfortunately cities with lots of people living in the blocks of flats also happen to be the place where an electric car would make the most sense (pollution reduction, low range isn't a problem, etc.). 

So the range and charging time/possibility to charge issues are very much a large part why these cars aren't going to be massively popular any time soon. There is also the issue of price - right now a tiny electric car costs as much as a large gasoline one, with much less useful value. But that will probably change quicker than the other issues.
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 04:42:59 pm by janoc »
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #32 on: December 29, 2017, 06:11:36 pm »
High density housing will pretty much soon mean you will be doing some form of public transport, or uber or other such non metered taxi service, where the supplier will have the infrastructure to charge an EV in off peak periods, and thus you will not really need the personal vehicle but will time share. Here where there are long distances, the electric vehicle or hybrid is still a good match, as most people typically do up to 100km in a day maximum, and for longer rare trips you are frankly a lot better off renting a vehicle for that.

If I need to move something big I will just go to the Whynott service station 15km away from me, and rent a "Whynott Rent a Bakkie" for a hourly rate or daily rate. No associated costs with depreciation, servicing, insurance and all you have is the well used Toyota/ Isuzu or Nissan with a full tank of fuel, and when you are finished you drive it back, fill up again at the garage, park it literally 5m away from the pump, go pay with your credit card and away you go. Rent for a month a year and still come out ahead on a rental vehicle.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #33 on: December 29, 2017, 06:23:26 pm »
This is unfounded, even cruising steadily on a highway a hybrid vehicle can out perform the fuel efficiency of a pure ICE as it can:
Run the engine at the most efficient power point and store excess energy before turning off the engine
In ICEs there is the trend of downsizing the engines and using a turbocharger to make the engine have a very wide range where it operates very efficiently which does save a considerable amount of fuel in real driving circumstances. When comparing pure ICE to hybrid it is hard to compare apples with apples. Often the 'average car' is used however what the 'average' car consumes depends very much on where you look. In the US the average car consumes way more fuel compared to the average car in Europe.

One of the most common arguments I see against electric cars is that they're not suitable for ALL of many people's needs, people really get hung up on the assumption that one car has to do it all.
My wife and I have equivalent cars which both need to be able to drive far and I think that is the same for many people.
How often are you needing to use both of them at the same time for trips too far to use an electric alternative? And then the follow up of for those few times when it really is needed to have multiple long distance vehicles how much would a rental cost?
I live in a household with 2 cars, one for long distance trips, and one for around town. Its never ever been necessary to drive long distances in the around town car and we wouldn't want to as its just too uncomfortable for that.
[/quote]
I has proven to me that having one lesser car means that you rely on the good car to always work. Cars do break down and the difference between getting them fixed the next day or next week is usually a couple of hundred euro. Worse if a car needs replacing. For example: 'my' car is near end of life so we use that for short trips so we can postpone the purchase of a car to 2019. Also smaller cars are not comfortable to drive and seem unsafer to me because they have less body to wreck.

The charge time is a complete non-issue, they plug in the car when they get home from work and it's fully charged the next morning.
You need to consider that a lot of people in the 1st world countries don't live in the US-style suburbs where everyone lives in a house that has a convenient outlet and a garage for (at least) two large cars, so plugging in their Tesla overnight is no problem.
Not just that but charging a large number of cars in a suburban area is going to overload the electricity distribution network big time. These have not been designed for this kind of usage. When EVs become widely used then going to a fast charging station just like going to petrol station is the only option. This in turn means that in order to allow wide adoptation of EVs the batteries need to be charged within a few minutes maximum and thus a better battery technology needs to become mainstream first.
Quote
And two or more cars per family? Again dream on - given the costs of owning a car in Europe, this is rare. Most families have only one car, two are an absolute maximum most people will ever have in one household at a time.
That is a bit overly dramatic. On average it may be true but my wife and I aren't the exception in the street for having two cars. Generally speaking people with a job have a car to go to work unless the job happens to be near a train station but usually that is not the case. Worse, in the NL public transport to areas where the companies are located is generally speaking the worse of all. Public transport is also slow. In some cases I can beat the bus on foot and most certainly with my bycicle when it comes to travel time.  -End of rant-
« Last Edit: December 29, 2017, 09:00:24 pm by nctnico »
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Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #34 on: December 29, 2017, 10:15:37 pm »
The charge time is a complete non-issue, they plug in the car when they get home from work and it's fully charged the next morning.
You need to consider that a lot of people in the 1st world countries don't live in the US-style suburbs where everyone lives in a house that has a convenient outlet and a garage for (at least) two large cars, so plugging in their Tesla overnight is no problem.

I do wonder what are you going to do with the apartment dwellers living in the cities? Most of them are lucky to have place to park (outdoors, not a garage). A charge port there? Dream on. Ain't happening in most places, at least not unless you pay for it out of your own pocket.

And two or more cars per family? Again dream on - given the costs of owning a car in Europe, this is rare. Most families have only one car, two are an absolute maximum most people will ever have in one household at a time.

Unfortunately cities with lots of people living in the blocks of flats also happen to be the place where an electric car would make the most sense (pollution reduction, low range isn't a problem, etc.). 

So the range and charging time/possibility to charge issues are very much a large part why these cars aren't going to be massively popular any time soon. There is also the issue of price - right now a tiny electric car costs as much as a large gasoline one, with much less useful value. But that will probably change quicker than the other issues.
Price is always going to be a big determinant of market share, there is little incentive for people to personally change to electric unless they will see direct benefits (congestion charge or registration exemption, etc).

But I think you're missing the new ways of using vehicles in cities, for many people they don't need a vehicle day to day, or a vehicle capable of long range operation, or the second vehicle for the household, or a truck for moving house/bulky goods. Its common to rent a vehicle for the last case but renting for the others is also cost effective and practical for many people. This works well in cities where car sharing spaces can be equipped with electric charging infrastructure and the entire community benefits. Even if there is demand on a specific day for more vehicles than there are spaces they can be shuffled in (easier with self driving vehicles) from another storage facility and scheduled to be available when required so the inner city storage problem is largely solved with what appears to be just a few parking spaces on the street.

This is unfounded, even cruising steadily on a highway a hybrid vehicle can out perform the fuel efficiency of a pure ICE as it can:
Run the engine at the most efficient power point and store excess energy before turning off the engine
In ICEs there is the trend of downsizing the engines and using a turbocharger to make the engine have a very wide range where it operates very efficiently which does save a considerable amount of fuel in real driving circumstances. When comparing pure ICE to hybrid it is hard to compare apples with apples. Often the 'average car' is used however what the 'average' car consumes depends very much on where you look. In the US the average car consumes way more fuel compared to the average car in Europe.
That only helps so much, typically a 20-30% reduction in fuel which a hybrid can then save another 30% or so again on top of that. Much of the NEDC (and real world driving) is down in the inefficient band of low torque demand which downsizing and adding a turbo doesn't really address. There is a good paper here showing the driving cycles overlaid on the BSFC plots for a hybrid and non-hybrid vehicle:
"Energy Efficiency Comparison between Hydraulic Hybrid and Hybrid Electric Vehicles"
http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/6/4697/htm
A battery (or other energy storage device) does not need to be large to get these benefits, a few kWh is sufficient to make a big difference.

One of the most common arguments I see against electric cars is that they're not suitable for ALL of many people's needs, people really get hung up on the assumption that one car has to do it all.
My wife and I have equivalent cars which both need to be able to drive far and I think that is the same for many people.
How often are you needing to use both of them at the same time for trips too far to use an electric alternative? And then the follow up of for those few times when it really is needed to have multiple long distance vehicles how much would a rental cost?
I live in a household with 2 cars, one for long distance trips, and one for around town. Its never ever been necessary to drive long distances in the around town car and we wouldn't want to as its just too uncomfortable for that.
I has proven to me that having one lesser car means that you rely on the good car to always work. Cars do break down and the difference between getting them fixed the next day or next week is usually a couple of hundred euro. Worse if a car needs replacing. For example: 'my' car is near end of life so we use that for short trips so we can postpone the purchase of a car to 2019. Also smaller cars are not comfortable to drive and seem unsafer to me because they have less body to wreck.
Car reliability is exceptional and there is a well developed industry around providing rapid assistance should they fail, a rental car is probably even more reliable as they have strong monetary incentives to not have the vehicles fail.

Jumping to car safety and size is another pointless discussion, you can have plug in electric vehicles of any size and shape and they don't have different safety ratings to other cars (the increased mass hasn't been fully explained away).

That you've ignored the simple point that its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric says enough, we know its a very unusual event.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #35 on: December 29, 2017, 11:22:06 pm »
I has proven to me that having one lesser car means that you rely on the good car to always work. Cars do break down and the difference between getting them fixed the next day or next week is usually a couple of hundred euro. Worse if a car needs replacing. For example: 'my' car is near end of life so we use that for short trips so we can postpone the purchase of a car to 2019. Also smaller cars are not comfortable to drive and seem unsafer to me because they have less body to wreck.
Car reliability is exceptional and there is a well developed industry around providing rapid assistance should they fail, a rental car is probably even more reliable as they have strong monetary incentives to not have the vehicles fail.
But you pay for that rapid assistance and you pay for depreciation + interest on invested money when you rent a car so it is going to be more expensive quickly compared to owning a car. If you buy a second hand car you pay way less for depreciation and if you can do without one car for a week then things become even cheaper. TCO is the key word here.

Also availability of rental cars isn't guaranteed. In the summer millions of people in Europe use their car to go on a holiday. If all those cars would be rented then they will be more expensive to rent than to own because the cars need to be stored outside the holiday season and there has to be a return on invested money. The same goes for car sharing. It is a solution which is useful for a very limited number of people.
Quote
Jumping to car safety and size is another pointless discussion, you can have plug in electric vehicles of any size and shape and they don't have different safety ratings to other cars (the increased mass hasn't been fully explained away).
Safety ratings are based on predefined laboratory tests which can be cheated. IIRC the Renault Megane was the first car to score 5 stars. However if you crash it with like 5km/h more than the speed used during the test it will kill you. More stuff and distance between you and whatever hits you equals a slower decelleration and more stuff to absorb the impact energy which equals a higher chance of survival.
Quote
That you've ignored the simple point that its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric says enough, we know its a very unusual event.
I'm not ignoring it but an EV or small car wouldn't work for us at all for various reasons. I don't think it is wise to push people into having a certain kind of car depending on what you think is right for them so the point is rather moot. People will choose what works best for them given functionality versus price.
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Offline tszaboo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #36 on: December 30, 2017, 12:27:15 am »
He is right. Solid state lithium battery is just around the corner, and that will reduce the battery cost significantly. First we see a drop around 50%, in about 2-3 years, then some due to the optimization.
Yes, I am saying, that in 2-3 years, EV will cost less than ICE

Without government subsidies?
I'll take that bet.
Actually, I've just checked the prices.
EV: Old Nissan Leaf, 110 HP Automatic, 24KWH battery, price is reduced now to 18100 EUR (with subsidy), comes with a charger, which normally costs 860 EUR.
ICE: Nissan Pulsar, 115HP CVT Automatic, price is 17700 EUR.

So with subsidy, the same car is already the same price?

Still better post a link because I can't find it and Google only comes up with marketing BS from Musk making promises.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/tesla-finally-launches-a-trucksemi/175/
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #37 on: December 30, 2017, 12:54:41 am »
Still better post a link because I can't find it and Google only comes up with marketing BS from Musk making promises.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/tesla-finally-launches-a-trucksemi/175/
Well the article that post is linking to is one the articles I found myself. I'm wondering how you come to the conclusion that solid state batteries will be in volume production within 2 or 3 years by reading that article. It is one of the many marketing BS stories Musk has spread to drive stock value up. The same article quotes various specialists from Bloomberg which have serious doubts about Musk's claims combined with the timeframe. Musk's ideas usually need way more time to become reality. In an article I linked to a few posts earlier the inventor of a solid state Lithium battery (Mr. Goodenough) says 15 years is more likely before we see solid state Lithium batteries for mainstream usage.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #38 on: December 30, 2017, 01:30:43 am »
Jumping to car safety and size is another pointless discussion, you can have plug in electric vehicles of any size and shape and they don't have different safety ratings to other cars (the increased mass hasn't been fully explained away).
Safety ratings are based on predefined laboratory tests which can be cheated. IIRC the Renault Megane was the first car to score 5 stars. However if you crash it with like 5km/h more than the speed used during the test it will kill you. More stuff and distance between you and whatever hits you equals a slower decelleration and more stuff to absorb the impact energy which equals a higher chance of survival.
That you've ignored the simple point that its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric says enough, we know its a very unusual event.
I'm not ignoring it but an EV or small car wouldn't work for us at all for various reasons. I don't think it is wise to push people into having a certain kind of car depending on what you think is right for them so the point is rather moot. People will choose what works best for them given functionality versus price.
Except you jumped in on this thread to explain how it wouldn't work for you when the comments weren't directed at you and then wander off with straw man arguments like trying to link the safety of arbitrary small cars to the safety of electric cars. Seems you're the one looking to find problems and we aren't here trying to convince you but you came trying to tell us how it'll never work (and failing to convince us in the process).
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #39 on: December 30, 2017, 02:56:34 am »
Sorry but it is you comming up with statements like its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric. Please provide some solid numbers to back that up! I don't care about your opinion.
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Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #40 on: December 30, 2017, 03:29:15 am »
Sorry but it is you comming up with statements like its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric. Please provide some solid numbers to back that up! I don't care about your opinion.
The data is easy to find, daily travel distances per vehicle/person are not pushing the limits of an electric car with a 200km range. We can find well presented data with distributions of the daily travel distance:
https://chartingtransport.com/2011/06/19/travel-variations-across-victoria/
https://evobsession.com/best-electric-car-for-the-average-american/
So the probability that two people in the same household require on the same day separate vehicles each with a range exceeding 200km is tiny. You can even find comprehensive analysis here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X16000371
One 400km range electric car would satisfy as a substitute for 80% of the households with multiple cars without any adaption or change in their behaviours. With small and infrequent changes in behaviour or fewer households the battery range can be reduced substantially. Oh they also looked at overall cost savings etc if you really want to get into the details.

I'm not even trying to get to those lofty goals but pointing out that with just a little change to the existing transport plans the majority of people could replace one of their multiple cars with an electric vehicle, yes there will be some changes and the occasional rare day/event that can't be covered but rental cars, borrowing vehicles, or changing behaviours are possible solutions.

Over to you to provide the data which says otherwise. Even if you have some particular cases where you can recall your specific requirement I doubt they are even a routine occurrence. Once people live in remote areas which require long distance travel they are attuned to the costs and plan very carefully to share as much transport as possible but thats coming from a perspective of a country where people do live hours away by car from the nearest town which is not typical and a tiny proportion of the population.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2017, 07:49:09 am by Someone »
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #41 on: December 30, 2017, 06:32:47 am »
This greatly depends on how you calculate TCO and I assume these numbers only look at purchase price and maintenance costs during the first few years and not the entire usefull life of a car. If you calculate TCO over the first 100k km (the typical lease period over here) then the depreciation is a large chunk. If I take my own car as an example. It cost nearly 28k euro when new and when I bought it with around 140k km I paid 5k euro. That means that the previous owners paid over 16 cents per km for just the depreciation. I OTOH pay around 3 cents per km in depreciation. It is unclear how that equation works out for an EV. If a used EV is going to need a new battery pack it may be worth a negative number by the time the first owner is going to buy a new car.

When the original Prius came out I predicted a catastrophe. I was certain that within 10 years there would be piles of them in junkyards with nothing more than dead batteries which cost $10k at the time. Turns out I was wrong, the batteries in the Prius turned out to be very reliable, I know of multiple 1st gen models still running the original battery and replacement batteries have dropped down to around $2k. The battery replacement cost is a concern for pure electrics but I'm not going to be too quick to predict doom and gloom, the last time I did that I was wrong.

Whatever the case I know several people with electric cars now and I've seen the numbers, they are far cheaper to run in the current economic climate. Our electricity is cheap and gasoline is relatively expensive compared to other parts of the US.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #42 on: December 30, 2017, 06:51:43 am »
My wife and I have equivalent cars which both need to be able to drive far and I think that is the same for many people.


That only works if people can charge their cars at home. In densely populated areas that is impossible and people will depend on 'fast' charging stations. I have to park my car in the street. If I want to charge an EV from home I'd need an extention cord which is at least 50 meters long.


That greatly depends on how many miles you drive and how you value your own safety. My current car (a Ford) is near the 320k km/ 200k miles mark. What is needed to get another 160k km/ 100k miles out of it are: a new timing belt, new clutch, new shock absorbers (safety), airco overhaul (safety) and some other stuff like brake fluid and new power steering hydraulic lines. That will set me back around 1700 euro which is way more than the car is worth.  OTOH the car starts to rust at the wheel arches, the engine is using some oil, the gas mileage isn't that great and there is no guarantee nothing else vital will break down (over here we have annual mandatory vehicle checks which a car must pass to be road legal). All in all it is more sensible for me to stretch usage into 2019 and look for a different car then (which brings me back to my wife having an equivalent car we can use the same way so no hurry). I'm eyeballing a newer model with a 1 litre turbocharged engine but I need more info on reliability and issues. A newer car is likely to have safety improvements like ESP.



Ok so electric probably won't work for you, but as with the solar road thread I've noticed you are prone to assuming that because something doesn't work for you, it can't possibly work for most other people. There are tens of millions of people who do primarily short trips, and even more who could get by with one short range car. 50 years ago most families had only one car and yet somehow they survived, surely most families today could make a few lifestyle adjustments to get by with one long range car? Again maybe it won't work for you, but that doesn't mean it won't work for most people, but like you, most people excel at making excuses for why something wouldn't possibly work for them.

Impossible? I think not. If there is space to park a car, there's space to plug it in somewhere. If they live in such a densely populated area that they have nowhere to plug in their car then an even better solution would be to use public transit as millions of urban dwellers already do. You might be surprised at the number of people who own no car at all, and again, not everyone lives in a dense urban environment. Have a look on google earth, there are massive sprawling suburbs all over the world, many tens of millions of people live in single family homes and duplexes, millions more in condos or apartments with dedicated parking. There are millions and millions of people who can simply plug in at night, even if you can't.

I value my safety quite a lot, it's the reason I drive a Volvo. My '87 got rear ended by a tanker semi that was going ~50 mph while I was stopped, once everything came to a stop I opened the door, got out and walked away without so much as a scratch. Despite being 30 years old the car performed absolutely flawlessly, the crumple zones and reinforced cage did exactly what they were designed to do. Being old doesn't mean unsafe. They generally don't salt the roads out here so rust is not an issue. Unlike most people I repair all the little stuff as needed so my cars never become dilapidated beaters. I've never understood the "spent more than the car is worth" argument, what the car is worth is irrelevant unless you intend to sell the car. When I bought my '90 wagon I paid $2250 for the car, then I spent another $2500 on all the maintenance and cosmetic restoration, that adds up to well over the book value of the car but so what? It's in excellent condition now and drives like a brand new car. Where can I buy a 1990 model that's in perfect condition with all the maintenance done? The reason the book value is less is because nobody sells old cars that are in perfect shape. Either you pay the money fixing up and older car or you pay a whole lot more money in the depreciation of a newer car. Nothing newer than mid-late 90s does anything for me. Whenever I have to drive a new car it always feels so nice to get back into one of my classics. I hate modern cars.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2017, 07:03:11 am by james_s »
 

Offline janoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #43 on: December 30, 2017, 10:09:27 am »
High density housing will pretty much soon mean you will be doing some form of public transport, or uber or other such non metered taxi service, where the supplier will have the infrastructure to charge an EV in off peak periods, and thus you will not really need the personal vehicle but will time share. Here where there are long distances, the electric vehicle or hybrid is still a good match, as most people typically do up to 100km in a day maximum, and for longer rare trips you are frankly a lot better off renting a vehicle for that.

If I need to move something big I will just go to the Whynott service station 15km away from me, and rent a "Whynott Rent a Bakkie" for a hourly rate or daily rate. No associated costs with depreciation, servicing, insurance and all you have is the well used Toyota/ Isuzu or Nissan with a full tank of fuel, and when you are finished you drive it back, fill up again at the garage, park it literally 5m away from the pump, go pay with your credit card and away you go. Rent for a month a year and still come out ahead on a rental vehicle.

That's very much a fantasy. Yes, you may not need a car to commute to work everyday if the public transport works because you live in the middle of a large city and have a good paying job (so you can afford renting  the car occasionally too).  But we are far from public transport being ubiquitous, going everywhere where needed (and not only where there are enough paying clients to make it profitable) and it still doesn't cover long distance travel.

Using "Uber" or renting a car works great in theory - if you are rich enough to be able to afford it. I suggest you visit e.g. one of the Parisian suburbs (which I live some 40minutes from) and tell the people there they should get rid of their old polluting cars and call a taxi/Uber or rent a car. These suburbs or "banlieues" are usually full of blocks of flats, being typically homes of low income families.

Only few of these suburbs are served by train/public transport, so the car is often the only option how to actually get the 10-20km to work. There is also little to no infrastructure there (schools, hospitals, shopping, etc., certainly no car rental or even self-service car sharing - that is only downtown), so again, without a car you are screwed. And most people living in the blocks of flats there are low wage laborers (if they have work at all), so very ill suited to renting a car or taking a taxi to work every day. I guess you haven't checked how much would that actually cost you if you had to take e.g. a 10km commute every day by calling a taxi (or Uber).

The above still doesn't take into account the ubiquitous delays and problems on the public transport, the trains (go to a business meeting after spending 30-40 minutes hanging from an overhead strap on a jam-packed train!), etc.

And that is an example from Paris, where there actually is a fairly dense public transport system already (metro, surface trains, trams & buses), there is also an electric car sharing system (Autolib'), bike sharing (Velib'), taxi service and Uber. There are plenty of cities which have the same problems - and don't have that level of public infrastructure in place.

E.g. in Compiegne (a town of about 40k people, some 80km north of Paris where I live) we have free buses, going about once/twice per hour. If the bus isn't going where or when you need to go, you are on your own. So a car is pretty much a necessity if you live or work in an outlying part of the town. There is no Uber (too small town for it), there is no car sharing, at best you can book a taxi. Electric car charge ports are only at large shopping centers outside of the town, so useless to actually recharge your car overnight (unless you have two - one charging and another one driving).

Please do a bit of research before you say stuff like this next time because it makes you very much sound like that infamous aristocrat who, when told that people don't have bread and are starving, replied with "they should eat cake instead".


« Last Edit: December 30, 2017, 10:11:59 am by janoc »
 

Offline janoc

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #44 on: December 30, 2017, 10:26:02 am »

That is a bit overly dramatic. On average it may be true but my wife and I aren't the exception in the street for having two cars. Generally speaking people with a job have a car to go to work unless the job happens to be near a train station but usually that is not the case. Worse, in the NL public transport to areas where the companies are located is generally speaking the worse of all. Public transport is also slow. In some cases I can beat the bus on foot and most certainly with my bycicle when it comes to travel time.  -End of rant-

Please, keep in mind that not everyone lives in the relatively rich Western Europe, with a good salary that can afford it. Someone did mention this here before already - for many people a car is a huge expenditure, both buying it and running it and can ill-afford to have a second vehicle in the household. Once you pass the former West Germany border you will discover that people buy a car for 10-15 years, often longer. For many buying a car is the second largest expense in their life after buying a home and will maybe change it once or twice in their lifetime.

I cannot speak about Netherlands, but e.g. in France where I live, a lot of people struggle with day to day expenses already. I have never said that it is impossible to own multiple vehicles, only that it is comparatively rare. Especially people who earn low to average wages would struggle with it. And if you go to e.g. Denmark or Sweden, there the state makes owning a car prohibitively expensive with crazy taxes and fees. I have lived there and a lot of people simply couldn't afford to own a car there due to this. On the other hand, the public transport and general infrastructure is much better adapted to a "car-less" life there than elsewhere.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #45 on: December 30, 2017, 10:56:44 am »
High density housing will pretty much soon mean you will be doing some form of public transport, or uber or other such non metered taxi service, where the supplier will have the infrastructure to charge an EV in off peak periods, and thus you will not really need the personal vehicle but will time share. Here where there are long distances, the electric vehicle or hybrid is still a good match, as most people typically do up to 100km in a day maximum, and for longer rare trips you are frankly a lot better off renting a vehicle for that.

If I need to move something big I will just go to the Whynott service station 15km away from me, and rent a "Whynott Rent a Bakkie" for a hourly rate or daily rate. No associated costs with depreciation, servicing, insurance and all you have is the well used Toyota/ Isuzu or Nissan with a full tank of fuel, and when you are finished you drive it back, fill up again at the garage, park it literally 5m away from the pump, go pay with your credit card and away you go. Rent for a month a year and still come out ahead on a rental vehicle.

That's very much a fantasy. Yes, you may not need a car to commute to work everyday if the public transport works because you live in the middle of a large city and have a good paying job (so you can afford renting  the car occasionally too).  But we are far from public transport being ubiquitous, going everywhere where needed (and not only where there are enough paying clients to make it profitable) and it still doesn't cover long distance travel.

Using "Uber" or renting a car works great in theory - if you are rich enough to be able to afford it. I suggest you visit e.g. one of the Parisian suburbs (which I live some 40minutes from) and tell the people there they should get rid of their old polluting cars and call a taxi/Uber or rent a car. These suburbs or "banlieues" are usually full of blocks of flats, being typically homes of low income families.

Only few of these suburbs are served by train/public transport, so the car is often the only option how to actually get the 10-20km to work. There is also little to no infrastructure there (schools, hospitals, shopping, etc., certainly no car rental or even self-service car sharing - that is only downtown), so again, without a car you are screwed. And most people living in the blocks of flats there are low wage laborers (if they have work at all), so very ill suited to renting a car or taking a taxi to work every day. I guess you haven't checked how much would that actually cost you if you had to take e.g. a 10km commute every day by calling a taxi (or Uber).
The low wage workers around these parts have figured out how to avoid needing the cost of owning multiple cars per household, they ride share with other employees to the work site. Each morning you see the planned pickups occurring on their sharp little schedules, stopping no more than a few seconds for the waiting worker before heading off again. Sharing all the costs of fuel, parking, etc makes it much more affordable while still retaining most of the benefits of a direct journey at the required time.

Through my life I've car pooled, caught public transport, used the company bus, walked, cycled, and combined all of those travel modes in various combinations to get to and from work. Not everyone can access public transport but it sure is convenient (and usually cheap) when you can, thats all part of the decision making which should be going in to deciding where to live and work. I wouldn't want to live in an environment where I'm dependent on having a car but some people are happy to choose that for their own reasons.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #46 on: December 30, 2017, 10:59:20 am »
Sorry but it is you comming up with statements like its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric. Please provide some solid numbers to back that up! I don't care about your opinion.
The data is easy to find, daily travel distances per vehicle/person are not pushing the limits of an electric car with a 200km range. We can find well presented data with distributions of the daily travel distance:
https://chartingtransport.com/2011/06/19/travel-variations-across-victoria/
https://evobsession.com/best-electric-car-for-the-average-american/
So the probability that two people in the same household require on the same day separate vehicles each with a range exceeding 200km is tiny. You can even find comprehensive analysis here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X16000371
One 400km range electric car would satisfy as a substitute for 80% of the households with multiple cars without any adaption or change in their behaviours.
So it doesn't work for 20% (1 out of 5). That isn't extremely rare like you told us.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #47 on: December 30, 2017, 11:07:21 am »
My wife and I have equivalent cars which both need to be able to drive far and I think that is the same for many people.

That only works if people can charge their cars at home. In densely populated areas that is impossible and people will depend on 'fast' charging stations. I have to park my car in the street. If I want to charge an EV from home I'd need an extention cord which is at least 50 meters long.

That greatly depends on how many miles you drive and how you value your own safety. My current car (a Ford) is near the 320k km/ 200k miles mark. What is needed to get another 160k km/ 100k miles out of it are: a new timing belt, new clutch, new shock absorbers (safety), airco overhaul (safety) and some other stuff like brake fluid and new power steering hydraulic lines. That will set me back around 1700 euro which is way more than the car is worth.  OTOH the car starts to rust at the wheel arches, the engine is using some oil, the gas mileage isn't that great and there is no guarantee nothing else vital will break down (over here we have annual mandatory vehicle checks which a car must pass to be road legal). All in all it is more sensible for me to stretch usage into 2019 and look for a different car then (which brings me back to my wife having an equivalent car we can use the same way so no hurry). I'm eyeballing a newer model with a 1 litre turbocharged engine but I need more info on reliability and issues. A newer car is likely to have safety improvements like ESP.
Ok so electric probably won't work for you, but as with the solar road thread I've noticed you are prone to assuming that because something doesn't work for you, it can't possibly work for most other people.There are millions and millions of people who can simply plug in at night, even if you can't.
But now you are doing what you are accusing me for doing: because it works for you, it can work for many. All I'm saying is that you have to be carefull because the situation varies a lot by area and country so you can't have a one-size-fits-all solution.

Quote
I value my safety quite a lot, it's the reason I drive a Volvo. My '87 got rear ended by a tanker semi that was going ~50 mph while I was stopped, once everything came to a stop I opened the door, got out and walked away without so much as a scratch. Despite being 30 years old the car performed absolutely flawlessly, the crumple zones and reinforced cage did exactly what they were designed to do. Being old doesn't mean unsafe.
Volvo is known for their safety in the pre-Ford years. Still features like ABS and ESP do make a difference. A couple of months ago I nearly ran into someone who ignored a red light at an intersection. Thanks to ABS I could brake hard and still steer the car around the other car.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2017, 11:09:27 am by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #48 on: December 30, 2017, 11:33:09 am »
Sorry but it is you comming up with statements like its extremely rare for a multi vehicle household to use all their vehicles simultaneously in a way that is incompatible with one of them being electric. Please provide some solid numbers to back that up! I don't care about your opinion.
The data is easy to find, daily travel distances per vehicle/person are not pushing the limits of an electric car with a 200km range. We can find well presented data with distributions of the daily travel distance:
https://chartingtransport.com/2011/06/19/travel-variations-across-victoria/
https://evobsession.com/best-electric-car-for-the-average-american/
So the probability that two people in the same household require on the same day separate vehicles each with a range exceeding 200km is tiny. You can even find comprehensive analysis here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0968090X16000371
One 400km range electric car would satisfy as a substitute for 80% of the households with multiple cars without any adaption or change in their behaviours.
So it doesn't work for 20% (1 out of 5). That isn't extremely rare like you told us.
Thats 20% would need to make some changes to their routine on some days of the year, which brings me back to the point I keep making:
pointing out that with just a little change to the existing transport plans the majority of people could replace one of their multiple cars with an electric vehicle, yes there will be some changes and the occasional rare day/event that can't be covered but rental cars, borrowing vehicles, or changing behaviours are possible solutions.
That excellent research I pointed you to noted that 80% of households could replace their 2nd car with an electric vehicle of only 220km range and still have at worst 12 days a year requiring an "adaption". Or with the 300km range electric vehicle 80% of households could operate without any adaption to their vehicle use. Since you don't appear to have read the paper you know what an adaption could include? Charing a vehicle during the day....   as if no one ever fills their petrol car with fuel during the day and the car would never be parked anywhere it could be charged. You could find arbitrary points of XX% of households for particular range vehicles and rates of adaption but the paper only reports up to 80%.

Having a few days a year that might have to be planned differently for a minority of households are extremely rare events, not a routine challenge that prevents the uptake of electric cars, and not something that is impossible to plan around. You can flip it around and say that an electric car owner wouldn't want to replace their vehicle with a petrol engine because they don't want to travel to petrol stations, with either type of vehicle there is some planning required to operate it within its capabilities and you plan journeys around that.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #49 on: December 30, 2017, 11:45:18 am »
This greatly depends on how you calculate TCO and I assume these numbers only look at purchase price and maintenance costs during the first few years and not the entire usefull life of a car. If you calculate TCO over the first 100k km (the typical lease period over here) then the depreciation is a large chunk. If I take my own car as an example. It cost nearly 28k euro when new and when I bought it with around 140k km I paid 5k euro. That means that the previous owners paid over 16 cents per km for just the depreciation. I OTOH pay around 3 cents per km in depreciation. It is unclear how that equation works out for an EV. If a used EV is going to need a new battery pack it may be worth a negative number by the time the first owner is going to buy a new car.
When the original Prius came out I predicted a catastrophe. I was certain that within 10 years there would be piles of them in junkyards with nothing more than dead batteries which cost $10k at the time. Turns out I was wrong, the batteries in the Prius turned out to be very reliable, I know of multiple 1st gen models still running the original battery and replacement batteries have dropped down to around $2k. The battery replacement cost is a concern for pure electrics but I'm not going to be too quick to predict doom and gloom, the last time I did that I was wrong.
True but it is something to consider when purchasing a used EV. It would make life easier if there is some way to read the state of health of a battery pack. Unfortunately that technology is still under development. I had a similar issue when buying my current car. My previous cars had diesel engines and the last one suffered quite a few engine related issues common for that model. All in all modern diesels have become relatively unreliable beyond the first 150k km and expensive to repair so I didn't want to take the risk and bought a car which runs on gasoline. It is more expensive to run but I don't risk needing to spend several thousands on engine repairs which cannot be predicted. Just like a battery you can't see how far an engine is worn and what is about to fail from the outside. You can only go by looking at problems which happen often and choose to take the chance or not.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2017, 11:51:39 am by nctnico »
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 


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