Problem for bus charging - they need to be charged and recharged at peak demand times.
That’s not the case for individual use EVs in typical usage. Even today most users charge during hours that match up better with troughs in demand not peaks, periods of time that grid has plenty of extra capacity.
IF one assumes ideal charging timing then capacity isn’t really a problem, even in California, up to very high penetration rates (like 100%). Apps that allow for charging up to a predetermined target (most try to avoid going over 80% unless the next day is going to be an unusually high needs day) based on optimizing rates which would be optimized to match with most excess capacity are trivial to create. Many EVs already do that crudely now.
More interesting is that EVs plugged into the grid during peak hours can be used to help stabilize the grid. This gets referred to as vehicle to grid (V2G). In a simple concept such can accomplish “peak shaving”/“load levelling” in which EVs buy electricity when it is cheap (at night) and sell it back when it is high (peak daytime), keeping their battery within an owner specified predetermined range. Vehicles so networked can also help even out the intermittency of some renewables, buffering power than demand by wind or solar and feeding it back as the cloud cover picks up or wind dies down.
A still smarter grid that has the EV and it connected bidirectionally can use EVs to stabilize elements of the grid in a more granular manner, preventing transformer overloads and handing sudden spikes in supply or demand with small buffering corrections smoothing out distribution challenges, which is often a bigger issue than generation is.
As I understand it the “cost” in terms of impact on battery longevity by renting out your EV’s battery in that way is not so huge as long as the cycling so imposed is kept within near the mid-point state of charge. Going down from 55 to 45% and back up again multiple times has fairly little impact - keeping a car near 100% for prolonged periods of time, almost depleting and recharging (as close to full cycles as the batteries allow) more so. But I defer to those more expert than I am about that.
Scroll down a bit to the Small & Midsize Luxury cars and the Small + Midsize Luxury cars, as that is more representative of the Model 3s competitors. The Model 3 is dominating that category. The conclusion I draw is that people with the money to spend $50k+ on a car are choosing the Model 3 at very high rates.
Maybe, unless they only need to charge overnight. Unlike regular people who randomly have to make 200 mile trips to a country house without electricity over rough roads, transit authorities are going to have a good idea of how many miles per day their buses drive. Then they can have a mix of 100, 150, and 200 mile buses (or whatever) to cover the different routes.
The data I found said transit buses average 34,000 miles per year, so that’s about 130 miles a day if the bus is in service 260 days. So, I don’t think it will be necessary for all of the buses to charge all of the way during the day. For every bus with a long airport route, there are going to be some that just go 60 miles in a 5 mile loop all day.
Er, if you can charge your car sufficiently en route or at your destination, then “ludicrous” describes your complaints. I was adding the stipulation because without it your entire argument collapses in flames.
I get that pointing out the limits on your doom scenario makes you unhappy because you’re doing your damnedest to blow this all ridiculously out of proportion, but the fact is that that are people who would need an ICE (or hybrid) to make the trips they make, and there are those that wouldn’t, and the difference between the two is defined by their circumstances.
A bus that makes frequent stops in an urban environment could be a good application of supercapicitors. Rather than a battery electric vehicle with hundreds of miles of range and a long charging time, a transit bus could utilize a supercapacitor system with maybe only a mile or two of actual range and get a quick recharge at every stop. And a bus that’s making frequent stops is going to benefit a lot from regenerative braking, too. The biggest obstacle would probably be the need to install charging stations at every stop.
Also, one of the issues with passenger car EVs is where to put the battery. A battery that can take the car a long distance is large. But buses are also large, and have plenty of space to tuck a hefty battery. They also don’t accelerate very fast, so the cost of dragging the extra weight is less.
That’s long-term. But short-term, how much must an operator or jurisdiction spend up-front on viable electric infrastructure and its real estate? I’m not talking plug-in personal EVs here, but (probably urban) facilities for mass commercial and public fleets of BIG vehicles. And the power plants to juice them. Who pays for all that NOW?
And whose oxen are gored in the conversion process? Which major players will object strenuously to being cut out of the New World Order? Sure, turn all petrol fuel stations into charger spots. Who pays to have the pumps and tanks torn out, and powerlines and chargers installed?
IMHO Big Gas would do well to push steam-powered vehicles that burn anything flammable with little emissions or noise. Then they can keep gas stations running.
How long did the US petrol infrastructure take to build? (Hint: the first gas station dates from 1905). When will we see an adequate electric build-up that replaces the current petrol network? Petrol is handy because it packs much energy in a small volume. How many ergs do US vehicles consume annually? What’s that in petawatts?
Electric buses are perhaps the best infrastructure idea I’ve seen in the thread. America should start with them immediately.
But right now, subsidies for the purchase of personal electric vehicles subsidize suburban sprawl because they’re most convenient for single homeowners, like a lot of our poorly-thought-out transportation choices over the last century. There are environmental costs to suburban sprawl that we need to factor in as well.
I would not mind subsidies for electric build-out for basically anywhere but single homes: apartments, interstates, cities, workplaces. Heck, even superchargers at convenience stores, because the only people who would be able to regularly use them like they would a regular gas station are those who have already made the commitment to live within a few miles of work.
But we shouldn’t reward suburban sprawl with more subsidies geared to perpetuate it.
Yes, my thought that most need to recharge during the day was apparently wrong and you are correct. The issue of the City Lab article was that a sudden transition of a fleet (which is apparently the way they do it in China, for example) brings sudden new impacts on infrastructure. Even in the Phillie case the issue was the upfront investment to suddenly charge 20 electric buses at the same time in one depot.
Thing with buses in America is the upfront investment, not just for the buses but (once over some threshold anyway) on the infrastructure (cost of space for charging stations and/or of the substation required to charge them all at one place at one time, so on), while buses are already a pretty efficient item compared to individual transportation in ICE vehicles, so the ROI in terms of GHG and energy use is less than getting more individual vehicles switched to using electricity for daily commuting. More electric buses replacing diesel ones do not get more passengers using those buses and does not decrease suburban sprawl, and facilitating more individual use vehicles to be EV for commuting rather than ICE does not encourage more sprawl. It just mitigates its damage.
No, it is completely ludicrous to count ‘can possibly find a charger anywhere’ as a reasonable solution. There’s virtually always going to be some way to find some kind of charger some distance from the destination. But if you’re adding an hour to a trip to locate a charger and get transport to and from the charger to what you’re doing, that’s a major inconvenience and not just someone being nitpicky. For example, if I go to a concert and can park in the event lot with an ICE, but with an EV have to park miles away and get a ride or Uber from the charger I found to the actual event, that’s not a reasonable solution.
And I don’t understand what’s at all unclear - I’m objecting to the false claim you’ve presented as fact. Look at eastern North Carolina on that map and the entire super-chargerless triangle between US 64 and I40. If I drive along US 264, which is a freeway I often use, there are zero superchargers along any route that I can get to without a diversion of 30-40 minutes one way. Look at the supercharger locations near Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill - if you’re driving I40 (the major through route) there aren’t any directly off of its exits. The closest one to I40 is 11 minutes away, so would require a 22 minute diversion if traffic is good, and would hit the 30 minute mark at high traffic times. I don’t really consider something over 20 minutes a ‘negligible’ diversion.
Of course some will claim that I’m cherry picking by using an actual trip route that I drive and looking at the locations of supercharging stations near me. Glancing around a bit, Richmond, VA seems to have similar badly placed chargers if you’re going through the E-W routes instead of N-S on I-95, and the whole area of Western NC/Eastern TN also has a distinct lack of chargers directly on your route unless you’re on I-40, so it’s not just one location, and in any event using ‘where I drive’ is hardly unreasonable.
Where there is a Supercharger, it is virtually always just a minute or two off a freeway exit. That does not mean that there are Superchargers near every freeway/freeway exit.
That’s an interesting statistic from before I started reading the thread, that seems like a reasonable number to use. I wish there was better info that I could find on people’s traveling patterns, it’s fascinating to me and I wonder how many of the people that don’t travel are the ‘I am too infirm to travel’ vs ‘I live in a small town and don’t see a need to leave the area’ vs ‘I live in a big city and don’t see a need to leave the area’. The 50% not traveling seems high to me, but it’s certainly not anything unbelievable.
I definitely know a lot of people in this category, and I think it’s the area where current EVs are very weak. People are definitely talking past each other on this point, I think that a lot of people here find the idea of driving an hour and a half to a concert and then the same back home completely alien and that it’s a ‘not worth considering’ scenario, while people like me think it’s commonplace.
How exactly is an EV faster? When I gave an example of an actual trip, EV proponents told me that I would have to drive the trip SLOWER in an EV than I did in an ICE, and the general tone was that driving 80mph was simply ludicrous and irresponsible. Also, the speeds that I drive at currently are the speeds I am comfortable driving at, so even if the ICE was faster, I wouldn’t be driving it faster. I also don’t see any evidence that an EV is smoother or more comfortable than a corresponding luxury-model ICE vehicle (so this is a wash) - and I don’t care enough about luxury car comfort to pay the exorbitant price it commands anyway (so this is an ICE advantage, as I have that option). Quieter is true, but turning up the radio during a trip isn’t a big deal to me.
Arranging a twice a year oil changes is not inconvenient for me at all, and I find the amount that EV proponents talk about something that takes roughly one hour per year confusing. I really don’t understand why this keeps getting brought up as a major deciding point when it’s so minor and infrequent. (And if you think changes should be more frequent, you can take it up with the person who was really intense about oil change frequency).
Of course, the other thing that’s hard to understand is why EV critics make arguments that assume that battery technology is static, and the present state is as good as it’s ever going to get. There is also the assumption that charging infrastructure is static, and there will be no more chargers added anywhere, at any time in the future.
Many of the arguments boil down to:
An EV will not work for my situation, therefore they are useless for anyone else.
Or
An EV will not work for my situation, they will never improve, therefore they are useless.
I see two challenges here; An inability to visualize the needs of others, and an inability to project technological improvement into the future.
A better term would be that EVs accelerate better than an ICE. Even a BMW i3 with a pretty whimpy motor for an EV is faster to 30 mph than a BMW M3 sports sedan.
EVs don’t have gears, so the acceleration is completely smooth from zero to whatever. In an ICE, typically around 15 mph there’s a bump as you go from first to second gear, then another around 25, another around 40, etc. Those literally do not occur in an EV. The reason you don’t have evidence of this is probably that you have never been in one.
Your whole case of criticism of EVs is based on things we keep telling you that, for EV owners, are even more minor and infrequent than oil changes. The actual, real life inconvenience of oil changes/annual maintenance gets hand-waved away because it is the inconvenience of several hours out of the year that everyone is familiar with; and yet, the even more minor inconvenience of waiting 10-15 more minutes for a charge during an infrequent road trip is blown out of proportion.
I think it’s commonplace, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant to this discussion. I have to drive 90 minutes (75 miles) to get to Seattle if I don’t take a ferry. I do it frequently. With most EVs you can do that without a second thought. I can come home from that trip, “forget to recharge,” and easily get to work and back the next day. And the day after that.
A car that can’t go 150 miles without stopping to refuel would work for some people, but not very many.
Note: There is also a supercharger at Seatac airport (in the cell phone waiting lot) and one at the Tacoma Mall. If I needed to charge up for some reason, I could easily do so.
The point that current EVs can handle driving an hour and half to a concert and back with no range anxiety at all is not even of importance here.
The point is that with technology and charging infrastructure where is right now EVs do in fact compromise ones ability to take long distance road trips. You know lots of people for whom that compromise would be a huge big deal and for who the advantages of EVs do not seem so big. And it may be a big deal for some sizable fraction. There is plenty of room for growth in the space with those people buying ICE vehicles. Is that 30% of new car sales or 60%? We can debate based on how much you believe that people are to be trusted to know what matters to them, but we can agree it is minimally an order of magnitude above current sales.
Right now the issue is price. Manufacturers are claiming that within two to three years economies of scale will be allowing near cost parity on purchase for comparable mass market level EVs and ICEs with EVs having significantly lower total cost of ownership over 5 if not 3 years. That will be when the growth to whatever that number is happens with slow build in the number of EVs on the road (even 20% of new car sales would take a while - the average car is driven a long time now). As that happens the infrastructure will gradually adjust to the demand and the improvements in the technology that occur along the way.
what irritates me is that when I’ve mentioned to a few people that my next vehicle is very likely to be an EV, they basically tell me I’m nuts and think they’re doing me a “favor” by telling me all sorts of reasons why it won’t work.
Well, on another board I hang out on, someone is asking for advice in buying a commuter car (she’s looking for cheap & reliable) Three people have suggested various used electric vehicles. I recommended a used Civic. :lol: