Drivers who can charge at home or work don’t spend 20% of their travel time charging (averaged out over a year).
For most drivers, the time saved by not needing dozens of 5-10 minute fillups during a year easily makes up for a few extra hours needed during a handful of road trips. It’s actually a net time savings, not a cost.
EVs do have one interesting threshold effect: once you reach roughly 600 miles, charge time becomes almost irrelevant, because all charging will be done overnight. Even truck drivers are not legally allowed to drive more than 11 hours in a day. Once you have covered a day’s worth of driving, then you just have to ensure you can get a full charge during the rest period (which is presumably at least 8 hours). Yes, I am ignoring the case of college-age stunts where you drive continuously by rotating through drivers while the others sleep.
If you could make a fuel cell which ran on gasoline, then you could store the fuel in the exact same way that we do now (which is actually quite good, considering the energy density and safety of a gas tank). Now, there aren’t any practical gasoline fuel cells right now, but there’s no inherent reason there couldn’t be. Like I said, the technology is far from that point right now, and I won’t even pretend to know how long it’ll stay far, but it’s at least theoretically possible.
Right now electric vehicles account for a tiny fraction of miles driven. As the fraction rises, the loss of gasoline taxes will start to affect the bottom line for the governments that collect them and there will be adjustments made. You can count on it. Whether by a per mile road use fee or higher taxes on electricity used for transportation, they will attempt to collect the average $0.50 per gallon taxes currently collected on gasoline.
Those adjustments are going to affect the calculations, and although you can predict they will come, it’s hard to predict the form it will take.
This has already been tried, in a small country with a temperate climate.
It didn’t work.
A company in Israel with the wonderful name of “Better Place” tried to make the world, well…a better place. They raised almost a billion dollars from investors, produced an electric mid-size family car (the Renault Fluence)…and went bankrupt.
(possibly due to bad management, but, I think, mostly due the the fact that it was a bad idea, and a mediocre product.)
For me it would have to be more than 1000 miles since I’ve done Central Florida to DC well over a dozen times in one day and have even driven to NYS in one day around a dozen times, not to mention all the times I’ve done similar stuff out West. Now, once you get to 1000 miles, you can assume another couple hundred miles of extensions if you assume charge stations at all rest stops and convenience stores, especially since I’d be taking extended breaks, but not needing to sleep for 8 hours until I’ve reached at least 1000 miles.
Do you have figures for the indirect government costs of gasoline that don’t apply to electricity? I am not disputing you, but I would like to know exactly to what you refer.
If you just mean we should subsidize renewable ways of generating electricity vs. fossil fuels -
As long as not all electricity is produced CO2 neutral, electric cars don’t make sense in combatting global warming; in fact they are a net negative influence. ICE’s are quite efficient and hugely clean compared to a coal fired electrical plant.
Want to do something for the environment?
Eat less meat, drive less. Live closer to your work, fly less.
Electric cars don’t solve any problem except air quality in city’s. From the global viewpoint they just move pollution around.
Gee, I must have missed the part where the OP said “Hey, I’d like to see a laundry list of all the reasons that you can come up with for why you think EVs are a bad idea.” because that’s what this discussion has devolved into.
Can we get back on topic, please? The question being asked is when (if ever) will EVs be cost competitive? My answer is that we have ALREADY reached the point where the difference in Total Cost of Ownership between an ICE and an EV is about 10%, which is easily within the margin of error between one ICE and another ICE. Does any one else have something to contribute on this topic?
If you want to complain about some other aspect of EVs that you don’t like, go start your own thread and stop hijacking this one.
Don’t you think we should add the cost of our middle eastern defense spending to those oil subsidies? We spend a lot of money ensuring oil keeps flowing.
The difficulty of answering this question directly is two-fold: electric vehicles are not yet a mature technology, and the ultimate baseline cost for an electric vehicle comparable to a mid-sized commuter/fleet car has not yet been demonstrated (I think). Moving from Li-Poly to Li-S batteries will offer a cost reduction per unit energy and a higher energy density, which will drive costs down lower. The other issue is that electric vehicles are not a one-for-one replacement for internal combustion engine powered vehicles in many applications where range, temperature, or other considerations favor liquid fuels.
That being said, given the low costs of maintenance (almost no fluids, no filters or fuel distribution systems, et cetera) I’d be surprised if a lower cost, short range vehicle like the Leaf isn’t already cost competative over a presumptive seven to ten year lifespan even notwithstanding government subsidies and ‘free electricity’ available by charging at work or elsewhere. The Tesla Model S does not represent a cost-optimized electric vehicle; it is specficially catering to the upper middle class of owners who desire high performance and a cachet. The Model 3, when and if it actually goes into production (I am not sanguine about Tesla’s estimates) may represent something that is closer to an average commuter car, but given the teething problems Tesla has had with other vehicles it is not what I’d suggest as the baseline.
a) Someone told me that Tesla recharging stations has swappable battery packs for a fee if you didn’t want to wait for a recharge. Based on your post, this is not true? I’m asking as a Tesla fan, but one with range anxiety – I regularly take 400 mile trips.
b) Can you say more about EVs in cold climates? I live in Wisconsin. It isn’t North Dakota, but it’s not California either.
ICE is a century-old technology that has been through two or three massive revolutions, the last when the makers quit having tantrums about high-efficiency pollution control and managed to build engines that met those standard while turning out phenomenal, unprecedented HP/l numbers.
EVs are perhaps in their second major iteration, if we ignore the 80 or so years of the fairly crude implementations. They have a long way to go to compete head to head with ICE vehicles economically, especially without lavish subsidies. (Yes, petroleum is subsidized in various ways all down the chain, but that’s a legacy system fully integrated into our economy, not Unca Sam writing a check for around a quarter of a vehicle’s sales price.)
I don’t think anyone is saying EVs are bad. Only that the game is rigged and it’s going to take time to even start leveling the playing field. For now and the next decade, EVs will sell for many good reasons other than net [ETA: individual/consumer] economic sense.
This is 100% false on every count. Power plants are much more efficient than internal combustion engines (if they weren’t, they’d switch the plants over). They’re so much more efficient that even if all of our electricity came from fossil fuels, which it doesn’t, and even if all of those fossil fuels were coal, the most carbon-intensive fuel, and even counting all of the other losses at various stages of the pipeline, an electric vehicle still contributes less carbon dioxide than a gasoline-powered one.
They do still produce some, and in fact in most of the US a significant amount. And we should definitely work to improve that, especially since electric cars are unusually tolerant of the drawbacks of alternative energy. But they’re still definitely a step in the right direction.
No, neither the Tesla Roadster nor the Model S has swappable batteries, and as far as I have seen, the Model 3 and proposed Model X will not have station-swappable battery packs. Given the mass and degree of structural stiffness provided by the battery cell pack and support structure, this is probably not practicable; currently swapping packs in the Model S is a major service operation requiring several hours, and there are many reasons why swappable batteries are probably not fiscally or technically desireable even if it were a practicable option.
Electrochemical batteries are fundamentally electrochemical systems operating at moderate temperatures (>100 °C for dry cell polymer and typically >40 °C for gelled electrolyte cells). A rule of thumb for chemical reaction rates is that they reduce by a factor of 2 for every -10 Kelvin reduction in temperature. A battery does have some internal resistance that helps to warm the internal cells during operation, but the reduction from a rated 27 °C operating power output to that at 0 °C (water freezing temperature) is substantial, which not only reduces available power but the amount of energy that can be extracted at useful rates. In essence, it is as if at cold temperatures you can only use half the fuel (or less at colder temps) in your tank. Internal combustion engines don’t suffer this issue (after initial starting) specifically brcause of all of that “wasteful” heat they produce, which by the way is also used to heat the passenger cabin. An electric vehicle in Wisconsin in summer will be fine; in winter, it would be, well, challenging to say the least.
In fact, an advantage of electric vehicles is that they are fundamentally fungible with regard to the source of electrical energy used to charge the batteries or power the motors. To an electric car, electricity is purely a commodity, so if you transition from coal and natural gas to solar, wind, or electric, there is zero adaptation for electric vehicles. This isn’t true for any liquid fuel infrastructure; even for liquids like ethanol, methanol, or cryogenic dimethyl ether, certain modifications have to be made to both the distribution infrastructure and the vehicles using them. Reduced carbon footprint and renewable liquid hydrocarbon fuels should still be a consideration due to the issues with electrochemical batteries mentioned above, but in terms of being able to transparently change basic energy sources, electric is the most simple.
Uh-huh. I’ve seen enough ‘controlled demonstrations’ to know the difference between how things work in a staged demo vice reality. Dollars to donuts the demonstration used the lightweight (offloaded) battery pack that was also used in early performance runs, for safety if no other reason, and of course, it doesn’t address the logistics of warehousing and moving batteries around to get to the load point, nor how many depots would be required to provide even regional coverage. When Tesla starts offering depots where a normal driver can drive in and swap a battery without arranging a service appointment and waiting several hours (and paying tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege) I’m sure you’ll let me know.
The battery swap works and does complete in a few minutes (unless you have an older car, which requires about an extra 10 minutes for a one-time fastener upgrade). It is by appointment only, but doesn’t require hours of waiting around. There are some comments here.
The reality is that no one cares. The extra 20-25 minutes is not worth $80 for most people. I’m sure Tesla will keep the station open as long as they get the tax benefits from it, but it has no practical reason for existence.
It sounds like a good idea in theory, but when you look at the behavior of actual Tesla owners, the business proposition doesn’t hold up. Musk has said as much, too.
Based on this and links others supplied, I guess swappable battery packs as a viable alternative to charging stations is somewhere off in the future. If ever.
I am sincerely bummed about the EV difficulties in the Great Lakes region in winter. I don’t see many Teslas around here, and maybe they’re only used during the summer. I know of a friend-of-a-friend who picked up a Model S. I’ll have to see what the actual experience is.
Something else is going on. Teslas are great winter cars. Due to EVs not being subject to a heavy tax penalty in Norway, Tesla is a best seller there (a Tesla Model S costs about the same as a VW Passat. Which would you rather have?). I’ve watched quite a few youtube videos made by happy Tesla owners in Norway where they are driving around in the winter. They say they lose about 20% range in the cold. Not bad.