The electric car future - problems

In My Humble Opinion
21

These threads are always very amusing!

Sam Stone is … seriously? … worrying about escaping from a city frozen in by a winter storm disaster which the complete city has lost power and finding a warm place to stay requires a hundreds miles drive. These sorts of imaginings are actual factors in a next vehicle purchase? Wow.

Hari Seldon, you are trying to imagine a world in which EVs were the vast majority of cars suddenly popping into existence with current infrastructure. Of course even under unrealistically optimistic adoption rates the reality is that ICE vehicles will be the majority of vehicles on the road for a long long time.

You are a math person so you can crunch the numbers much better and faster than I can I am sure. Today the average vehicle on the road is almost 12 years old. That’s not the average lifespan, that’s the average age. New cars can very reasonably be expected to last over 200K and over 16 years. So let’s use 16 years. Imagine that within 5 years prices drop so that sticker price of BEVs is less than ICE vehicles and suddenly half of all new vehicles sold are BEV - how many years until BEVs are even a third of all cars on the road?

I don’t know the details of their math but the most optimistic prediction, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), has it hitting 32% of the world’s passenger vehicles by 2040. (The low end predictions, by Exxon, have it down near 10% in that year.)

So at least 20 years for the infrastructure to adapt to one out of three cars being EV, at the most optimistic. Also note, most of us with the newer 200+ mile range EVs do not charge every night. My wife plugs in about twice a week in winter, for example (drives about 40 miles a day). It will be less frequently in summer. She has replaced the energy she’s used in three days of driving in under 5 hours on the charger and she drives more than the average commuter. So at least 20 years to adapt to one of three vehicles needing to charge maybe twice a week? Can you see how that can work?

FWIW in our 28 unit building parking facility the EV owners have each had an outlet or dedicated charger run to their spots that got connected to their own meter. The family with a Bolt and a Volt prefer to charge in public location on Sundays (enough for her weekly needs, she’s retired and drives local only) … it’s free and the parking structure is solar powered.

22

When people decide what car to buy, performance during an emergency isn’t that high on the list. It doesn’t top “color”, for one.

23

I would disagree with this as performance during an emergency can be lumped in the consumer’s mind with capability and range and availability of fuel which are factors people decide on, as does my other point ‘road trip’ also hit on these exact same point. Those things people do care about, if just so happens that for ICE cars those factors are in general always available no matter the model or make, though I know people who would not like a car with a small gas tank (and thus small range), or would not buy a diesel due to limited availability. Those issues however are coming to light now with the EV’s which do have some apparent deficiencies in those categories, at least currently and is in the current debate of ICE vs EV’s, so it is in the mind of consumers.

24

Yes consumers who place a high priority on relatively frequent long road trips with that vehicle are better off with an ICE vehicle.

For those of us who very rarely need to travel more than 150 to 200 miles or so daily in that vehicle, and who are not so worried about a winter storm knocking out power to the whole metro area forcing a hundreds miles no warning road trip to warmth, range and fuel availability are non-issues, and the advantages of EVs, like never having to stop at a gas station again, place much higher.

Truly YMMV.

25

I was thinking about this because we just got through a very, very cold spell here. Temps between -30 and -45 C for several weeks straight. The province issued several blackout warnings, as the electric grid was being highly stressed. Luckily, it didn’t go down. If the NDP had managed to shut down a couple more fossil plants before being kicked out of office, it might have been a different story.

So I was thinking, “well, at least if the power goes out we’ll still have heat.” Then it occurred to me that if the NDP government got its way, we’d have to rely on electricity for heat as well, as they had a plan to phase out all fossil fuels. A blackout would mean massive damage and deaths in weather that cold.

We haven’t faced this situation yet precisely because we have a multiply-redundant energy system. Gasoline for cars, natural gas for heat (or electrical, or both), and electricity for other power.

Think about it. You are in Ft. MacMurray. Everything is powered by electrical. The power blacks out, and it’s -45. What are you going to do? Have you ever been in that kind of cold? Your house will drop below zero in maybe an hour at best. Your pipes will freeze and burst. If you are healthy, you’ll probably survive by huddling under blankets in the house for a while, but it will be miserable.

I haven’t seen any tests of electric cars in that extreme temperature, but my guess is that they’ll lose a huge amount of range, if they run at all.

Compounding all this is that if we expect to get our power from wind and solar, well…Solar output during the cold snap would have been very low. For one thing, Ft. Mac in January only gets a few hours of real daylight, and it’s been overcast and snowing. Wind power would also be shut down in these temperatures - wind turbines operate efficiently down to -20, and don’t operate at all below -30. Also, icing of turbine blades becomes a big problem.

So this would be a ‘perfect storm’ - a cold snap that not only shuts down energy production, but shuts down everything that relies on it (since there are no alternatives), and at the same time drastically reduces the ability of vehicles to move out of the disaster zone.

We get such cold snaps almost every winter. This one was unusually harsh, but long stretches of -30 and below are not uncommon at all across large portions of Canada.

I’m not against electric cars, btw. In fact, I think they could have been designed to help the problem, and not hurt it. For example, in the case of a power failure it would be awesome if you could use your electric car as a backup energy source. But that’s not allowed. Rooftop solar could have been a great backup energy source when the grid fails, but that’s been disallowed as well.

My main beef is really about getting rid of natural gas for heat. I think that’s crazy. Natural gas is a highly efficient source of heat, and it has half the greenhouse gases per BTU as other fossil fuels. We should be switching our coal plants out for natural gas, not for pie-in-the-sky wind and solar, which is never going to be efficient in Canada. For baseload we should be building nuclear plants, as Saskatchewan and Manitoba are planning to do.

26

It might move up the list after they get stranded.

to the Op. The charging infrastructure will improve as the number of EV’s increase. There will be gaps in it going forward until equilibrium is reached. Stations will probably have battery backup for emergencies but that’s conjecture. If stations don’t then the grid system would need to provide some measure of backup for emergencies.

27

This works quite well for me, except instead of a subcompact I have a midsize or sports car or other SUV. I’ve had the Expedition since 2008. It’s great for Home Depot runs, pulling my camping trailer, etc. I’ve put no more than 20,000 miles on it in that time (it’s an '04 with 88k when I picked it up for a song when everyone was panicking over fuel prices). I expect to have it at least another 10 years. I’m hoping my next daily driver can be a Mach E.

28

Let me add my support for electric cars.

From a pure engineering standpoint, electric cars make all kind of sense. Far fewer moving parts, no transmission, no fussing with messy fuels, and electric motors have a torque curve that much better matches the meeds of drivers. Maintenance costs should be lower, no more oil changes every 5k, etc.

For performance, electric cars give better throttle response and they place the mass of the car lower in the chassis, making it more stable in corners and minimizing body roll. The nature of the vehicle means you don’t burn energy idling in traffic, and you can reclaim some of your energy through regenerative braking, which not only increases efficiency but saves brake pads.

Also, no transmission means no big tunnels taking up legroom in the interior without having to go to the complexity of a front-wheel drive drivetrain. Weight can be balanced more easily. Electric cars drive more quietly and smoothly.

If it weren’t for range and battery issues, electric would be far superior to gas engines in pretty much every way. Range has improved dramatically in the past two or three years, and batteries now last longer snd are cheaper. I expect those trends to continue.

The last issue is cost, but that’s improved as well. We are almost at the point where electric cars are cost-competitive with gas powered vehicles without government subsidy when you consider the full lifetime costs.

I believe we could see maybe 25% of new car sales going to electrics in the next 5 years. Due to fleet lifetime, we won’t see 25% of cars on the road being electric for at least a decade, though.

The early adopters are upper middle class families with two cars and a garage. For people like that, making the second, commuter car electric is already a no-brainer if you can afford one. And I’ll bet that’s where the majority of electric car sales are currently going, with the possible exception of California and Tesla.

29

In my area (southern seacoastal NH/Maine), EV infrastructure is essentially nonexistent, the only fast charging system close to me is a Chevy dealership in Somersworth, NH, nothing else, I don’t have a garage, and no place to set up a L2 charging system, for my purposes, EV is not economically or technically viable.

Also, my current daily driver has a range of 460-510 miles per tank of fuel, gets 36-45 MPG, has a 2 year/unlimited and 4/120 powertrain warranty, and cost me a mere $9,000, EV has a long way to go before it reaches that price/performance ratio

the car? Certified Preowned 2012 VW Golf TDI with 50,000 miles on it at purchase

the only cars close to that price range in the used market are first-gen Nissan Leafs, and VW E-Golfs, and both of them are well under 250 miles of range, I consider hybrids a “band aid” fix, when I do intend to switch to EV, i’ll be going all-in, no hybrid half-steps, it’s just not there yet for me, but give it time.

30

On https://www.plugshare.com/ it appears there are many on the seacoast. But once you start moving inland from there yes they drop off a lot.

31

Did you buy your car from Volkswagen (paywall warning) after they bought it back from the original owner after the giant scandal, removed the illicit software and then offered it for sale, along with thousands of other such cars? If so, it’s not a situation likely to recur.

32

Ft. MacMurray is surrounded by boreal forests. You just get a woodstove. Cutting your own wood is going to provide good exercise…

33

The problem with electric cars has been well known since 1993. If it stops in front of the T. Rex paddock during a power outage, you’re screwed. :smiley:

Seriously though, I have the same problem with electric cars that I do with the Internet of Things. Even leaving aside the enormous privacy/data/hacking issues, it involves reliance on the power grid staying stable, which is hardly a guarantee in a future with increasing natural disasters due to climate change - or the potential for an EMP attack. All it takes is a prolonged blackout or loss of electricity in some way and all your fancy technology will cease to work. But old fashioned cars with no computer chips that run on gasoline = still working. Actual locks that use an old fashioned key = still working. And so on. The real future isn’t digital, it’s analog. It will just take a major disaster for most people to realize that.

34

Except that gas pumps use electricity … no electricity means no gas.

35

A problem is that there are still, and will still be, so many cars on the road. Lots of traffic jams. More cars stuck in traffic. And if some of the cars aren’t electric, they’re sitting there in traffic jams burning gas.
And needing to devote a lot of space to parking, which is a problem today as well.

Many people seem to miss the fact that improving other forms of transport involving transporting more people at once, could lead to a lot of people’s personal time saved, and be good for the environment as well.

36

Why would a blackout require evacuation??

When’s the last time you had to drive >150km to evacuate from an emergency?

Are you really going to choose a car based on such a rare event?

37

Personally, my Tesla would serve me far better in an emergency than a gas car would. It basically never goes below 200 miles range unless I’m coming back from a long road trip, which is somewhat rare. My evacuation destination is my parent’s place, at 140 miles off. Somewhat ironically, low speeds will increase the effective range even further, so the margin actually improves as the traffic situation gets worse.

A gas car in comparison would just have whatever it had. I’d probably have a 40% probability of needing more to make it to my parents. But gas stations can’t pump if the power is out, and can easily run out of stores themselves, and in any case are going to be packed. This isn’t theoretical, either.

Whereas my car will already have plenty of range on it. Even holed up at home with the power out, it’s not like I’ll be going to work or anything, so the range is there if and when I decide to use it.

The link above mentioned using state troopers to escort fuel trucks to stations. I imagine we’ll see the same kind of thing once EVs become a big percentage of vehicles. Have big mobile charging trucks, and if a state is going to be hit by a hurricane or whatever, bring them in. They can top off cars right on the road if necessary. Tesla already has portable Supercharger stations that can be brought in. They can use big, dirty diesels if necessary; this is a rare case.

Not everyone’s situation is the same, and really evacuations are so rare that they’re barely worth thinking about, but for a big category of people EVs will be the superior option here, too.

38

Except you can run a tiny gas generator to power the pumps. States like Louisiana and Florida mandate it.

All it takes to do it is pull the main breakers and wire the pump breakers to a generator. It’s like 5 minutes with a screw driver. the fuel source for the generator would be the fuel from the station.

39

:confused: An EMP attack is a nuclear war. The entire supply chain for gasoline is going to be smoke in the stratosphere if that happens. To the extent that EMP is a real thing to worry about and not largely a fantasy created to boost defense contractors, it will be the least bad part of the war.

40

Do EV cars like Teslas require internet connectivity? Will they continue to run if offline? Can owners even take them offline?

I remember being surprised that Tesla could push updates apparently without customer consent during one of the hurricanes. At that time, they were the good guys, increasing all customer’s range. Could it go the other way though? Like the Nest hub shutdown in '16? I would be worried about some corporate ownership spat rendering my car inoperable while the lawyers figured out who owned the company or the software.