I still believe that a strong part of an EV economy will be replaceable battery packs that can be exchanged in a few minutes. “Service stations” will be commercial charging centers with attendants to do the swap and send you on your next 400 mile way.
I see a couple of ways for the economics to work, but the idea of owning the car and leasing the battery pack makes the most sense.
I think the technology has hurdled past the need for that. Sometimes it works that way. Reminds me of how Nintendo had these mall kiosks where you could load games onto a floppy disk you brought in.
Lithium iron packs can be rapidly charged and they can easily last the lifetime of the entire vehicle. If the batteries don’t die like flies, you might as well buy them, and you can replace expensive petrol stations with charge mats in parking lots. No meter, nothing - just drive over the mat, your car negotiates with the mat, you’d set it to auto-purchase if the price per kilowatt hour is below a certain threshold.
So instead of those fancy gas station, there’s just these beige mats in most parking lots. Each is fed by a small underground box the size of a residential transformer that includes the control electronics and the remote purchase negotiation stuff.
Gas stations would gradually disappear like video rental stores. There would be some big ones left on the major highways, combo truck stop, fueling and supercharger stations.
One idea that might have some traction would be some kind of industry standard addon module that would go in the trunk or frunk. There’d be an empty socket there. You could socket in either another battery or a microturbine engine. The socket would have an exhaust port, and there would be standardized connectors and a standardized method to exchange high voltage DC power.
I’m not so sure about that. Tesla recently did a pilot program with a quick swap station located between LA and the Bay Area and only about six people used it and nobody used it more than once. The thing is that the supercharger stations can get the car up to 80% charge in about 30 minutes and most people are ready to take a break anyways at that point.
Maybe battery swap stations will be used for commercial vehicles or hardcore road trippers, but it looks like the fast chargers are going to be the solution to the range issue for most regular drivers.
Maybe. But the parallel between data transfer and electricity transfer isn’t all that close. Nothing is going to eliminate the time needed for a full recharge, and I think the idea that people will just get used to hanging out somewhere for an hour to get most of a fillup is not going to be popular. Nor will the notion of perpetually driving around on a quarter-charge, with only 50-75 miles range.
The whole notion is still waiting on a radical breakthrough in “battery” technology that hasn’t happened yet. Until then, we’re going to have to deal with the weight, cost and charging limits of what we have.
ETA: people in large quantities are not going to give up the gas’n’go unlimited flexibility of cars very easily. Any aspect of EVs that imposes limits on when and how they can be driven, including long(ish) waits for recharge and limits on range, is going to hold back acceptance for all but the early-adopter mindset. Envision fuel cars that either take 30 minutes to fuel, or having to drive around buying one gallon of gas at a time. PITA to the max.
Also, Tesla is NOT a model for general acceptance, so a pilot program completely contrary to the way their model and market works is pretty meaningless. IMHO.
I was surprised by this, so I decided to run some numbers.
According to Wikipedia, a recent-ish Chevy Volt has about 11kWh of useful battery, and goes 40 miles on that. The average price per kWh is about $0.12 (though in many states it’s around $0.08), so that’s about 3.3c/mile (or 2.2) electric cost for that car.
Looking at Chevy’s lineup, I think the most similar vehicle is the Malibu (I might be way off on this. I don’t know cars. I had to pick something), which gets 36mpg. With gas at $3/gallon that gives 8.3c/mile fuel costs.
Someone with a 40+ mile commute each way (basically, enough that they can max the battery twice each workday) is going to spend about $800 less a year with the Volt than the other car on fuel.
That leaves the Volt owner about $4k in the red after 10 years (ignoring capital costs).
However, if they’re lucky enough to live in a state with ~8c kWh electricity, the gap narrows to $2k, and if you assume the average gas price over the next 10 years is probably going to be closer to $4/gal, then the Volt owner is saving a few thousand.
Add in weekend trips and it looks like there are people for whom this would be a breakeven (or better) purchase. Not everyone, certainly, but someone who does a lot of daily driving.
And that’s before considering the $7500 federal tax credit, which should make this a win for lots more people.
Batteries thatcharge in 5 minutes have existed for at least a decade. The “nothing” is you simply increase cathode and anode area enough so you charge the whole cell in parallel. You would need some monstrous cables to connect it to an electric car, and some high voltages (I’m talking about basically an “ultra-charger”, a machine that’s at least 5 times the charge rate of the Tesla supercharger).
You’ve been able to buy these cells for a decade. Like the problem with lithium iron batteries, they are expensive and complex to manufacture and need to be made on a large enough scale for the cost to come down. They also have a drawback that if most of the battery is the anode/cathode, there’s less room for electrolyte, and you get less capacity per kilogram. This is one of the reasons they are not seen in many applications, because the lower power density is a bigger drawback than slow charging.
Is the Nissan Leaf, with it’s short range pack and $200/month leasing cost, worth it? Assume the owners are a 2-car family who keep a gasoline car for longer trips. (so, every day, the Leaf is used for trips that it’s range is appropriate for)
Batteries that charge instantly have existed longer - they’re called capacitors. Every battery technology has tradeoffs, and I don’t know of any that solve all EV problems while bringing none of their own. For the long run, EVs are going to need batteries that have huge capacity, charge quickly, hold that charge efficiently, can deliver it at high current, don’t overheat or fume, are not excessively dangerous in accidents, and preferably weigh as little as possible while not costing a comparative fortune.
If there was a candidate for that model, Tesla would be offering it. They have a good product… but on cost and charge times alone it’s short of the necessary perfection.
Why exactly isn’t Tesla a model for general acceptance? Because rich people? And contrary to your rectally-derived numbers, the supercharger stations that are* already* installed all over the place will do an 80% charge (good for 170-200 miles) in about 30 minutes. That is absolutely not going to be a problem for most drivers.
Yes. They are high-end models for people who are self-selecting for a vehicle that is going to be more demanding than, say, a Lexus, and many of them use them only as weekend or very specific-service cars, not a general driver.
When Tesla starts churning out a $35k familymobile and sells 5,000 of them a month, it will be a different situation.
Really, it drives me nuts how folks on this board are not able to see how selective, tech-ween early implementations of technology just might not represent a wide-market, real-world solution. That a technology or techno solution gives a small, self-selected, highly-empowered user base with a narrow range of use/needs the ululating squees does not mean a single mother in Topeka is going to be able to afford, use or trust it.
So you routinely spend 30 minutes filling up your car? Does anyone? No. What you’re saying is that it’s “absolutely not a problem for the drivers who have self-opted to put up with a special level of inconvenience because.” That’s not that single mom who needs to get to work by 8:30 am. And there are a lot more single moms, Joe Sixpacks, middle managers, and folks who don’t get all car-squee who wouldn’t put up with a Tesla’s special needs if you gave them one.
Nice cars. I’d like a roadster and a sedan. I’m in the “self-select” category. But while I’ll spend $100k on a summer car, I won’t do it on a driver any more. And while I’ll spend twenty minutes warming up that summer car for a weekend drive, I need a driver that goes with the first turn of a key and won’t make me wait around the mall for an hour before I can get home.
All of the above is true for the Roadster. The Model S, though, is basically just a 4-door luxury sedan. Very comparable to the equivalently-priced models made by BMW, Lexus, etc. Just like those, the vast majority are used as daily drivers. Right now the only reason why that single mom in Topeka is because they’re expensive and there’s no used market yet, plus the charger network isn’t fully up to snuff yet. Both of those things are in the process of changing though.
That’s only an issue on long road trips though. For regular use, you just plug the car in when it’s parked and you never get even remotely close to out of juice.
So, to answer your question, no I don’t spend 30 minutes filling up but I do routinely take breaks every few hundred miles on long road trips. Unless you’re in the “pee in a bottle” school of road tripping, doing it in an electric car wouldn’t be that different (assuming there’s fast charge stations along the way.)
What do I look like, an electric car spreadsheet?! 
I agree with Amateur Barbarian on this one. It’s not that you can’t make the Tesla charging requirements work, but it’s not as seamless as Tesla would like you to think.
Sure, I take breaks when driving long distance. But I take them when I need to stretch, or eat, or pee, or when I am near a nice view. Not when my car needs to. And, when planning a trip, I can put zero thought into fuel-based routing. Because there’s always gas. If you’re ever more than about 10 miles from a gas station, there’s usually a freeway sign alerting you to that fact.
I’d fully expect that long-ish road trips in a Tesla would end up taking an extra 30-60 minutes per day of driving, or would require compromises in other ways. Like, I guess I’ll eat at whatever restaurant is next to the charging station, rather than the one I might otherwise prefer. None of that’s insurmountable, and it’ll get better over time. But it’s not nothing, either.
These days, yeah, you’re stuck taking your break wherever there happens to be a supercharger. But in the future, the things are going to be pretty much anywhere that’s hooked up to the electric grid. That’ll be a major advantage over battery swap stations, or even gas stations for that matter. A battery-swap station is going to have to be something resembling an old school service station, and so is going to be more real-estate and labor intensive than a self-service gas station. Expanding the network of fast chargers is going to be way easier.
The battery swap idea I think is appealing because it seems like a very simple solution to the electric car range problem, but when you really get down to how it would work in practical terms I think it becomes very hard to imagine a way that it would be any less of a hassle than the alternatives. I think the major issue with it is that, as mentioned, the batteries are the bulk of the cost of an electric car AND they do wear out or break. If the battery swap model is adopted, who’s responsible? How does the company operating the swap station make sure the battery you hand in is in the same condition as the one you get back? It seems like the only way it’d be workable is if you basically buy a battery subscription instead of actually owning the battery that is the most valuable part your car. That could certainly be workable, but it’d represent a pretty radical departure from the traditional car ownership model.
He’s right. An 80 kilowatt charger needs just 36 amps electric at 220V, probably more like 40 amp service when you include losses. That’s the same as a house. You could stick these vending machine sized chargers all over the place, tucked in various corners of parking lots and so on, and eliminate the service stations.
Sorry, but it was reliability and fuel efficiency that sold Japanese cars. Easy to fix and cheap to fix wasn’t a selling point. How about a 1985 Honda - Run away screaming: 1985 Honda CVCC vacuum hose routing diagram (sorry, Safari on my iPad crashes when I try to insert links).
Electric vehicles, the infrastructure used to charge them, the infrastructure in which they are driven, and generally the same for much of infrastructure and consumer goods, involve significant oil inputs in terms of energy and petrochemicals. The need for oil inputs in mining, manufacturing, shipping, and even food production is one of the reasons why the U.S. consumes almost 20 Mb/d of oil daily.
In addition, that’s 20-25 pct of world oil production for only 5 pct of the world’s population. For the rest of the world to have the same:
incredible amounts of not only oil but also copper, iron ore, fresh water, and many other resources will be needed. This drive for growth and meeting demand cannot be avoided because the global economy is capitalist, and thus involves profits and returns on investment driven by increasing sales of goods and services to expanding markets.
Because such needs are growing and are more energy-hungry, then high energy returns and quantity are needed. Either or both are not available for all energy sources, from oil to nuclear power.
For more details, such as sources, see the peak oil thread.
Personal computers are rich men’s toys. They’ll never be affordable for the masses.
Now, to be fair, Amateur has a point. It’s over a century since the first electric cars…and the batteries have only gotten a small factor better than the Alkaline batteries that Edison put in his prototype electric cars. It’s a really hard problem.
The “solution” to it, that I mentioned in this very thread, involves loading an electric vehicle sedan with about 2 to 3 thousand pounds of batteries. 30 to 50 percent of vehicle weight. That’ll get you a range of about 300 miles.
It’s a heavier battery pack than the Tesla uses, but the type of batteries you’d want have 3 desirable characteristics :
And that’s the best you can do.
What I’m saying is, a century of development has gotten batteries from being useless compared to gasoline to just barely adequate for a passenger sedan.
Contrast this with gasoline/diesel. If you made 30-50% of the mass of a passenger sedan gasoline/diesel tankage, you’d have a range of thousands of miles. Gas/Diesel is still a vastly superior method in many ways. It’s just that there’s now a possibility that in another 5-10 years, the overall package will favor battery powered cars, with respect to total cost of ownership, fuel costs, reliability, maintainability, convenience, and aesthetics.
It drives me nuts when people downplay serious advantages of a new technology and pretend that their own uncommon use-case is universal.
The range thing is just not an issue when you get to 250 miles or so and have fast-ish charging. What kind of user is going to be impacted by the range on a Model S?
Obviously it’s not a problem if all your driving is commuting, but that should go without saying.
It’s also not a problem if you take long road trips, but not too many. If it’s less than perhaps 15% of your annual driving, then the time you save charging at home 85% of the time outweighs the time you save charging on the road the other 15% of the time.
It’s not a problem if you want or need regular breaks. I recall going on lots of trips with my grandparents, and they needed way more than 30 min per 3 hours of break time.
It’s not a problem if you value your time on road trips much less than during the week.
It’s not a problem if most of your road trips are within a 200 mile radius, since you don’t lose time charging at your destination.
And it’s not a problem if several of these conditions are at least partially true, even there isn’t one that’s 100% true. Basically, all of these conditions have to be completely false for range to actually be a net loss for a user.
A typical Tesla owner would say: “You routinely spend 5 minutes filling up your car? I just charge at home most of the time.”
Seriously, one thing I routinely hear from Tesla owners is essentially the complete opposite of what you said: it’s the fact that they always start their mornings with a freshly charged battery, whereas with gas car it might be anything. They never have to wonder if they should get going 10 minutes early to stop at the gas station first.