That does not have anything to do with nuclear power. France is a net-importer from Germany which is abolishing its nuclear power, while it is a net-exporter to Switzerland which has plenty of nuclear and water power: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Echg_int...
Net use doesn't seem to be very informative. France could be exporting at crucial times to cover base load while importing when Germany's wind farms have nowhere to dump their electricity because it's too windy.
> Germany's wind farms have nowhere to dump their electricity because it's too windy.
That's not how it works though. Electricity isn't 'dumped' other than by lowering the price of the producers. It's not as if there is a giant resistor somewhere that gets connected in parallel to get rid of unwanted electrons.
And if there are no consumers that want the power at any price what happens instead is that windmills will simply be furled. Depending on in which country this happens if the contract between the consumers and the producers stipulates it the windfarms that are requested to shut down will still get paid as if they're operational.
This situation has occured in Scotland, Germany and China in the last year or so. If France can buy power from Germany at rates that are lower than what it costs them to produce the power themselves then that's actually great news for renewables.
It is often said that windpower can not be used to provide base load power but that's not the whole story, you actually can provide base load power but you'll have to install a huge surplus in windpower to be able to do so with some regularity and you may end up transporting energy across distances too large to be economic.
The bigger problem with this is that even if windpower generated can fluctuate quite rapidly the only plants capable of matching those fluctuations fast enough are hydro and gas turbines. Neither coal nor nuclear has the capability to follow that quickly.
According to that graph, France is still a net exporter by a margin of 39 TWh. Germany has power that can be spun up and down faster than nuke, so it makes sense to bring that in on-demand.
Let me know if you can spot any time when France is a net importer with any of its neighbours.
Not only does it constantly export to Germany, the CO2 intensity of its production is also 5 times less per kWh, and of course that is thanks to nuclear power.
Going nuclear-free is a noble mid-long term goal, nobody can disagree with that.
But the German decision of doing so a couple of decades before renewables were ready to take over was completely demagoguery. It is one of the most bonkers environmental stances in the face of the actual immediate threat that is global warming.
The source to the claim is just about the change from february 2011 to february 2012. Energy use and production varies throughout months (cold vs. hot, windy or not, sunny or not) and years (cold year, hot year, etc.). This is a terrible analysis.
Raising the price of gas in the mid 70s made it possible to get very sober vehicles, so this might work as well. Of course, it's far enough in the future that it can be canceled and amended enough to become useless. I do appreciate the move (India has a more aggressive target - 2030 - but the landscape is totally different.)
That's at least 10 years too late for sales of new cars, unless they means hybrid. I don't think any new car should be gas-powered after 2030. And Volvo is already doing it 11 years earlier. I guess they may change that goal later, and it could be just a "signal" that these governments are taking banning of gas-powered cars seriously, but at the same time they don't want the car makers to freak out.
> it could be just a "signal" that these governments are taking banning of gas-powered cars seriously, but at the same time they don't want the car makers to freak out.
This is also a signal to consumers, as the government casts a definite vote of confidence towards electric vehicles, which may help drive EV sales up today, instead of making them freak out over a short deadline and reject EV out of it.
Hybrids, in my opinion, are the next logical step for the masses. A pure electric vehicle has range and charge time issues that keep many of us from considering them. Plug in hybrids make the transition even easier.
Sure but that will surely help make it happen significantly faster. Time is of the essence when it comes to decarbonification of the economy and climate change.
Laws often last much longer than elected politicians that passed the law. Car manufacturers need stable and long term guidance to get investors and banks to follow them.
Our ecology minister Nicolas Hulot is a known French environmental activist.
I wouldn't qualify him as the typical politician and I think most would agree.
He has been trying to influence our politics for some time now, from advising politicians, threatening to run for president unless environmental strategies get adopted, to refusing to become Ecology Minister without proper power (ecology minister has mostly been a powerless position with no real drive).
Him accepting to join the current government was a sign that he would be able to influence the country's environmental strategy. While it is probably too early to see if he will have the right impact, it is good to see him drive positive change.
While I would understand criticizing Nicolas Hulot's methods or his work at the ministry, his motivations are clearly the betterment of France's approach to ecology.
Blaming his policies as "Typical politician promise for an event to happen long after their term is over..." shows a clear misunderstanding of our minister and French politics.
Nicolas Hulot is a known French environmental activist, AND a politician and a media producer. He survived in politics much longer than most "écologistes" politicians.
I think French government decided to use more regulation and less funding (see les echos [0]). But as most regulations come from EU, its regulation power is quite limited as well, hence curious statements like this one by N. Hulot.
In the CAE administration note [0] which is mentionned in the article cited above there is the following text "Environmental policies are an emblematic case. In theory, they should not weigh on the budget since it is a matter of correcting an externality problem: the solution for this is to introduce an incentive price signal, through eco-taxation or quota"
I would say this is atypical. Most politicians care about short-term decisions as this is the easiest way to win the next election, leading to huge problems —laws and processes ever-changing.
This is the way politicians should operate, legislate for the future.
and the reasoning is worrying : if representatives won't project behind their term we won't do much as a society. Even a a simple highway takes more than a mandate to build (and let's not start about issues like global warming ...)
This is a good thing. Most politicians refuse to do anything that will have an effect beyond their term because it won't help them get re-elected. It's why infrastructure in the US is such a heap of crap.
Nuclear will be capped to 50% of France production. Coal will close. Natural gas is comparatively expensive in Europe. Large hydro is almost saturated (no more mountains).
So renewables (wind and solar) will have to grow as a mechanical consequence which is good because will get cheaper and cheaper and a large park of car batteries will give opportunity for large scale demand management and therefore help with the integration of new renewables.
France has long coasts to develop offshore wind, especially if floating offshore wind becomes a thing.
Why wind and solar but not nuclear? Fields and field full of noisy and ugly windmills when nuclear requires far less land. Windmills and solar kill birds at a much larger rate than activists would seem to care about.
>Fields and field full of noisy and ugly windmills when nuclear requires far less land.
Terrestrial wind turbines can be sited in otherwise usable land. Or offshore.
>Windmills and solar kill birds at a much larger rate than activists would seem to care about.
A rate which is many orders of magnitude lower than killed by buildings, cats, coal plants, etc. This becomes a complex discussion when localized, sensitive populations are relevant, but on the whole it isn't a big issue.
France already has enormous nuclear capacity. They won't want to add much more; as it is, they're one of the few places to use nuclear energy for load-following.
Wind turbines and solar don't kill a significant number of birds; this is an old myth recently revived by Trump. In the US, wind turbines kill about 300k birds per year, power lines kill 30 million (mostly through collision), cars kill 200 million, and collision with buildings kills _600 million_.
While there's certainly room to improve on bird-wind turbine interactions, it's just not a major problem, and any resources used would be better spent improving the safety of buildings for birds.
> wind turbines kill about 300k birds per year, power lines kill 30 million (mostly through collision), cars kill 200 million
Statistics like that have to be adjusted "per capita" in some fashion. It's going to difficult to pick the right units for comparison. Maybe the basis could be birds killed per kilowatt-hours or joules worth of electricity generated (windmills), carried (power lines), and consumed (cars).
I think the GP was just trying to make a point that the "what about the birds?" argument against wind power is a convenient talking point/straw man for people who actually don't really care about the welfare of birds, since they face far greater dangers than flying into turbines. Bringing up hundreds of thousands of birds dying in a debate against more wind turbines is more sympathetic than, "I think they're ugly and I don't want them in my yard," which to me is the primary reason people oppose them.
I mean, you could do this, certainly, but is it necessarily useful? The point of the numbers was just to show that turbines are very small compared to other bird hazards. Even if there were 1000 times as many turbines as they are, they'd still kill fewer birds than building collisions, and no-one but ornithologists is really calling for anything to be done about buildings as a hazard to birds.
No it doesn't. Uranium is super cheap as a proportion of production costs; it can be bought on the market no problem. Additionally, breeders mean you need even less. With breeders burning otherwise-useless waste, France could probably not have to buy any more uranium for hundreds of years.
>The Netherlands will ban it 15 years before France.
Will is far, far too strong a word. This was a Labour (PvdA) initiative, and after the recent election PvdA is in shambles. They likely will not be a part of the (yet non-existing) coalition government. The main party to the coalition government (VVD) is opposed.
So we can fairly surely guess that this ain't happening.
A good percentage of the Dutch holidays in France or Spain and they take their caravan with them. That sort of trip will be hard on an EV.
I also wonder what kind of exception they intend to make for cargo transport because those vehicles (especially the smaller ones) are extremely price sensitive.
This announcement goal is to change the mentalities and set a direction, people in this thread are taking it way too literally. The public (even the younger generation) currently thinks electric cars are a kind of joke, putting 2040 makes it far away enough that people will think it's possible to go into another direction. It does not matter if it can be done by 2030, the public would just dismiss the announcement as unrealistic.
Quite the opposite. The fact that ICE sales are expected to drop long before that makes it a "safe" promise because it's happening anyway - a politician's dream - but it still has value: it is likely to cause further acceleration of the drop of ICE sales.
And that's good for the environment (doubly so in France, where a lot of electricity is not generated by carbon-emitting methods).
Considering the German and French governments were found to have lobbied for continued lax emissions testing during Dieselgate, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/sep/24/uk-franc... , it shouldn't be a surprise. Non-corrupt beacons of democracies my ass...
Is there a site that tracks these initiatives? As pointed out here, the Netherlands has a similar plan, and I think Norway might. China has aggressive plans for the electric vehicle percentage.
just a few notes. this by no means a system entirely based around battery EV technology. there is still time for ample replacements of traditional combustion engines with fuel cells or similar. In many industries it is a near requirement.
I am still not a fan of battery technology with regards to transportation in its current state. nearly a half ton in weight to go less than three hundred miles, usually a lot less, in optimal conditions. Coupled with charge times that even the best are only down to an hour for a full charge.
the other initiatives he mentioned likely will get smacked by the WTO unless it morphs into some kind of environmental policy with ever changing rules about what is sustainable or not with regards to harvesting of crops. if anything it would require subsidies to nations who crops are deemed unacceptable.
Platinum is a nice speculative play on your first note.
"Replace diesels with batteries on timeline x-y-z. Bam, just like that. Problem solved."
The platinum price has been dropping for many years, because Mr Market is thinking 5 steps ahead of where we actually stand with this. With above ground reserves likely dwindling, platinum has still managed to drop below gold again (and rhodium has dropped below platinum).
But batteries are not yet ready to take over everything. Diesels or at least combustion engines will keep improving for some time to come. In the meantime, plenty of room for alternatives like the discredited fuel cell, which can also use loads of platinum. (And on the supply side, you have the vulnerability that the country supplying 70% of the world's platinum is looking increasingly unstable.)
And for the record: I totally agree we should get rid of the combustion engine as soon as possible.
That's too late! Doesn't even make sense. By 2040 they will be banned in nearly all developed world. Volvo doesn't plan to build any of them starting 2020 by the way (while they will still build mild hybrids, which are 80% ICE vehicles). Germany is planning a ban from 2030 and that seems spot on, by this time technology will be definitely up to it.
Doing it by 2040 is same as doing nothing, because gasoline cars will be clearly competed away by that time without any legislative action.
That's now, this is because they are not massively produced yet.
Every high tech product follows a law that it gets 20% cheaper when volumes of production double, and electric cars make up about 1.2% of the market now. So, they are going to fell 3x by the time production volumes reach 36% of the current car production, or about 25% of then-current car production.
But, they will actually own the market before then because cost of owning and operating an electric car is much lower than comparable gasoline powered one.
Easy to see that this curve converges to 100% of market share with quite a bit of margin. At least 2x margin.
There is nothing inherently costly in producing an electric car. Transmission is simpler because it doesn't need a gearbox. It has much lower center of gravity due to heavy battery so little mechanical trickery is needed to make it stable on the road. Electric motor is much cheaper than a complex ICE which also requires a lot of service. Only stumbling block is the battery - and they are getting cheaper every month. Most of the existing cost of electric cars is due to low production volumes as they eat away market share - there is a limit on speed of market adoption as well as factory retooling and business acceptance of the fact that electric cars are the future - but these are just technicalities, there is absolutely nothing preventing making a $15,000 mass market Ford Focus-like electric car, if built in Ford Focus-like volumes, that is.
Not at all. There are about 250M cars in the U.S., each drives about 12K miles per year. Tesla makes 400 miles on a 100kwh charge, add 86% charger efficiency, 115kwh. That makes 860 TWh per year to replace all U.S. cars and light trucks with electric cars. U.S. produces 4060 TWh per year, so that's just about 21%. Sizeable increase, but that's fine: most of the charging will be by night when the car is parked at home, and by night, there is a big drop in electricity consumption so grid won't be overloaded at all. It will be the cheapest electricity in the world - just adding the variable cost.
Same thing now, with about 24 average mpg an existing car makes, eats 10 million barrels of oil per day (counting 81.5% average oil refining efficiency), or more than 20% of entire U.S. energy use - all kinds of energy, that is 7x more energy (ok, about 3.5x more given average efficiency of electricity production).
Even if that electricity was produced from oil on old-style single-stage thermal plants (a crazy idea - that would be the most expensive electricity in the world and no one is going to do that for sure), it would mean 2.7x savings. In reality, because most of that will be cheap coal and natural gas and renewables, there will be more than 10x savings.
Nothing but all those things just mentioned - the weight and cost of the battery, complexity of electronics and software, resistance to market adoption.
The price has a large intractable stone in it - the battery cost. It won't go down very fast until new technologies are adopted. And it take a giga-factory to adopt a new technology. Rule of thumb: battery tech has to double the charge and halve the weight or nobody is interested in building the factory.
The center of gravity argument depends upon the current heavier batteries - but e-cars can't take off until something like metal-air batteries are working. And they weigh just about as much as a gas tank does.
As for complexity, sure compared to the mechanical engine it's simpler - 100's of parts vs a dozen. But the software has just exploded by orders of magnitude. Millions of lines of code instead of thousands. We mustn't underestimate this.
Then, there's a core of car buyers that have to grow old and die, and be replaced by e-car enthusiasts before the market moves significantly. Beta-Max was better than VHS (for the old videotape guys out there) but it died simply by being too late.
Tesla hit $190 per kwh last year and some speculators claim that they are now at $125 per kwh, while that is debatable (i don't buy that claim). Anyway, $100 per kwh after 5 years should be easy and that already makes battery+drivetrain for an average electric car cheaper than ICE engine+transmission, at about $9000.
>But the software has just exploded by orders of magnitude. Millions of lines of code instead of thousands.
Maybe its only one order of magnitude -- if I remember correctly, there were about 300,000 lines of code running on the main processor of the Toyotas that were investigated for unintended acceleration, with functions like "throttle angle control" that took several thousand lines.
This is plausible, but I still have a few concerns. EV will need battery replacement on some routine basis. How will that effect the TCO and lifetime of the vehicle? One of the advantages of gas vehicles is that I can buy a vehicle very cheap and operate it for many many years. Furthermore, I can park it outside (it doesn't need to be in a garage). I expect and usually see lifespan of 20 years and 200,000 miles on gas vehicles.
It seems like there are still too few EVs to fully understand their lifespan and long-term maintenance costs (including battery replacement).
I also want to see how fast "fast charging" will be and what kind of adverse impact it has on the battery. Is it acceptable to the usability and lifespan of the vehicle to routinely charge on fast chargers? I don't want to sit at the charging station for 45 minutes when a gas car can be fully fueled in 5 or less.
At home, my expectation is that a vehicle does not need a garage, so charging at home may present a logistical challenge (OR, weather-proof outside charging stations might also be deployed). Likewise for apartments and condos with shared parking.
I think all these issues can be overcome, but they will need some thoughtful approaches to ensure that EVs are reasonable for as many people as possible to own and use, not just the wealthy.
Tesla's existing batteries are expected to be more or less good for 500,000 miles, some already made it to 190,000 miles - average lifespan of a car - with under 10% degradation. 200K miles - easily, nearly every battery will do that with at worst 20% degradation. No, almost no car will ever need a battery replacement unless battery was bricked by gross mishandling (equivalent of fueling a gasoline car with diesel or something like that).
It looks like the 2015 Leaf has a 24 kWh battery. The current entry-level Model S has a 75 kWh battery and it can have up to a 100 kWh battery.
That matters because battery capacity fade increases non-linearly with depth of cycling. If both a Leaf owner and a Model S owner drive 40 miles per day, I'd expect the Leaf battery capacity to fade more than 3x as fast as the Model S capacity, because of the deeper battery cycling. That's true even of the Model S 60/60D that had a 75 kWh battery software-locked to 60 kWh of usable capacity. The capacity fade is linked to the physical characteristics of the battery; the software unlock to a full 75 kWh just bought the option to discharge the battery more deeply for longer uninterrupted driving.
A real Soviet hero, with good training and some vodka, can do almost everything comrade... No fool proof is a real proof, people manage to break all kind of things. But, that is not a wear and tear - it is about as easy to brick a new battery as a 10 year old one.
So the main emission reduction will be from the much less number of cars produced and used. Almost all big cities in the world have plans to reduce the number of cars.
> Volvo doesn't plan to build any of them starting 2020 by the way
"Around 2024" is what they said yesterday.
"Volvo’s transition will be gradual. It plans to still produce existing models with conventional engines after 2019, but it will no longer introduce new models with the older technology. Depending on demand, Volvo will completely phase out cars powered solely by gasoline or diesel by around 2024."
Thanks for clarification. That doesn't change whole picture though. By 2040, there won't be gas cars on sale in developed countries (and they will be a minority even in the developing ones).
Unless there will be a breakthrough in batteries with 10x capacity and 0.1 price, I won't change my car to electric, neither will many of people I know. May be as a second car for short city trips. Or oil price will skyrocket, but that's unlikely too.
What about fast charging stations becoming more widespread? For example: legislation that requires all apartments to have charging outlets, or charging available on street parking.
The way I see it -- plugin hybrids with a minimal 50 mile electric range will start to become the norm, then with fewer people buying gas, many gas stations go out of business. Electric charging pops up at work and at the big box stores. Possibly metered, or subsidised by purchases. Then plugin hybrids become electric only once the gas stations disappear.
Plugin hybrid will be too costly soon, because it is unavoidably more costly than an ICE car (because it is an ICE car plus a lot more stuff) and will become more expensive than a pure BEV soon too as price of larger battery will no longer be more as price of gas engine and generator. That moment is already very close, most likely, it is already too late to build a mass market plug-in hybrid.
I've thought of a plugin hybrid as the same as a regular hybrid, but with a bigger battery. And a regular hybrid does have a somewhat simpler transmission (simple in the mechanical sense -- only one planetary gear system, plus two motor/generators, but quite a bit of software control is needed). Take a look at one of the videos of a Ford or Toyota ECVT transmission teardown. These things are a beautiful in the mechanical sense.
10x? Right now a Tesla has 250 miles of range, and an ICE car has 400 miles. You might want more because of the faster refill time of gas, but recharge time is coming down for electric.
The Model 3 coming off the lines in the next few days is the same price as a Honda Civic.
So... 2x in range and 1.0 in price sound good? That's probably 3-4 years out at the current rate of improvement in battery technology.
The Model 3 starts at $35K without incentives and they expect the average sticker price to be $42K. Honda Civics start at $18K.
The Model 3 has an estimated 215 mile range where as a 2017 Civic is estimated a 521 miles. The annual improvement in capacity for Lithium batteries is 8%. So in 4 years you can expect battery packs of equivalent size to go for 293 miles.
So 1.95x the price for .4x the range today and if all things except battery price remain the same, then 1.95x the price for .56x the range.
The biggest problems for electric car is fast charger availability and the fact that DC Fast charging degrades the batteries over time. Deploying DC Fast chargers to homes isn't feasible so charging a 200+ mile battery from 10% to full would take hours using a Level 2 charger.
You don't need a DC faster charger however Level 2 charging will take hours to complete. A Leaf takes 4-8 hours at LEAST, a Tesla will be twice that at least.
And yet everyone who has a home charger has an L2 charger. So, apparently, you don't understand how people who currently own electric cars & can charge at home do charging.
The way they do it:
* Charge overnight, start every day full
* Supercharge on long trips
* If you have a Leaf, the definition of "long trip" is a bit short
I think what you don't understand is that it isn't feasible for everyone to install a L2 Charger in their home. 240v connectors in garages might be an option for new construction but aren't common in older construction. The installation cost isn't a fixed number and there are several factors that can raise that cost into the thousands of dollars. That's even assuming you own a home, if you rent then it's probably not an option. If you live in an apartment or condo then it's even less a possibility.
If owning an electric car requires access to an L2 Charger to be feasible then there will have to be serious infrastructure changes before most ICE car owners will consider them practical. Charging stations will have to be readily available everywhere, not just in your home garage assuming that's even an option. Sure your office parking garage might have two or four charging stations today that were easily installed but what will it take to install 20, 40, or 100? Can our grid even support that scale?
Most people can't afford new cars let alone 200+ mile EVs and ~100 mile EV has a number of caveats that will necessitate lifestyle and behavior changes for a lot of people. My Leaf typically reports 93-96 miles range at 100% charge and I commute ~25 miles one way. That should leave me with around 40 miles of overhead and yet that's rarely the case. Driving in excess of 55 miles an hour for prolonged periods of time quickly depletes the battery as does rapid acceleration. If I'm not paying attention to my driving then I can easily arrive at work with a battery at 40% capacity.
EVs are currently practical for a small subset of the population however there will need to be significant changes in the electrical grid, charging infrastructure, EV range, and EV cost before mass adoption is even possible.
You just completely changed the subject. I've had several friends who've had to go back and forth a few times with their electrician to get a L2 charger installed at their house. I live in an apartment, and after 3 years of lobbying, my complex installed a charger. New construction in my area is required to install chargers. City parking garages where I live have chargers, and there are even a few chargers for street parking.
I say all of this not to claim that charger access is not an issue -- it is -- but to point out that solutions exist.
Also, I hope this is a good illustration of why you should not tell other people on HN that they don't understand something.
How so? The OP said that by 2040 there wouldn't be ICE vehicles on sale and the reply we're on remarked about the need for dramatic improvements in battery. I stated that I felt charger availability and battery degradation would be limiting factors. We're discussing charger availability and two of the key factors to availability are infrastructure and cost.
> So, apparently, you don't understand how people who currently own electric cars & can charge at home do charging.
> Also, I hope this is a good illustration of why you should not tell other people on HN that they don't understand something.
I think you should heed your own advice because as I stated before, I own an electric car, charge from home, and don't have a L2 Charger.
> I've had several friends who've had to go back and forth a few times with their electrician to get a L2 charger installed at their house.
Are you implying I didn't try hard enough to get a L2 Charger? I can get one installed, I haven't and you have literally no idea why nor have you asked.
> I live in an apartment, and after 3 years of lobbying, my complex installed a charger.
That's great, what happens when 10 tenants at your apartment all buy EVs? Do you have to petition for another 3 years to get additional chargers installed? Or does your complex implement fines to encourage sharing? The parking deck at my office has 4 spots for 2 chargers and charges you $20 if your car occupies a spot for more than 4 hours because the demand exceeds the capacity and they're not about to shell out for additional capacity.
Things like requiring new construction to offer chargers is great but it will only take us so far. How many L2 or DC Fast Chargers can be supported by the transmission lines being installed with that new construction? As soon as 50% of the parking spaces in that new construction demand access to chargers there will be a reckoning because the cost to install the necessary equipment will be significant. Eventually we're going to run into a situation similar to what happened in Australia with solar deployments, the demand for charging stations will put such a demand on the grid that a moratorium will be imposed.
Do you have a link to an official statement on DC Superchargers from Tesla? The best I could find was them stating that use of Superchargers will not affect the pack warranty.
Tesla seems to be very coy and dances around the subject because they don't want to attach any stigma to fast charging while EVs are still in their infancy as it might negatively impact their adoption rates.
Every time you charge a battery it helps to throttle charging if the temperature is out of range. Tesla has always done this; there's an extra fan that's Extremely Loud and I only hear it when I'm supercharging on a hot day.
In the article you linked, the customer appears to have noticed a slight decrease in the peak charging rate. It doesn't sound significant to me. There are certainly other Teslas out there which are supercharged 100% of the time, Tesloop is one example.
> Every time you charge a battery it helps to throttle charging if the temperature is out of range. Tesla has always done this; there's an extra fan that's Extremely Loud and I only hear it when I'm supercharging on a hot day.
That's one of the three reasons Tesla gives for throttling the charge rate.
> In the article you linked, the customer appears to have noticed a slight decrease in the peak charging rate.
From 120kW down to 90kW peak charging rate is only slight? I realize it's peak and not average but a 25% reduction is only considered slight?
Also you said that Tesla disagrees with me about the affect of DC fast charging on battery life. The statements from Tesla seem to agree with me and they have implemented technologies to mitigate those effects in the form of peak rate throttling over time.
You seem to misinterpret Tesla saying it's fine to DC Fast Charge to mean that it has no detrimental affects when they really mean that they have protocols in place to ensure the pack will not degrade to the point that a warranty replacement is necessary.
It won't be on the same price as Civic, but it is also not on the same class as Civic. Closer to BMW 3-series. Entry level luxury. 5.6s to 60mph is definitely not in the family car category.
The interior of the Model 3 (and even the Model S) aren't anywhere near the interior of a luxury car. They are closer to the interior of upper trim Mazda or Honda. Also the V6 Accord is a family car and can do 0-60 in 5.6s.
Edit: I will say 5.6s is pretty darn quick. I would consider anything quicker than ~7s to be more a fun thing to have than a practical, neccessary acceleration.
I think your main experience is with European vehicles made for Europe. These simply have better interiors. Model S has a luxury interior in the U.S. sense. I driven a U.S. Porsche Cayenne - definitely a luxury car - and while it's cool it's interior plainly sucks, i was surprised - that is what a medium-cheap family car in Europe have.
You're not doing any favors to Tesla when you pull numbers out of your ass like that.
"Right now a Tesla has 250 miles of range"
If you buy that model, sure. But the base Model 3 only has a range of 215 miles, and that's assuming you're not using the heater or A/C.
"The Model 3 coming off the lines in the next few days is the same price as a Honda Civic."
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? The Civic starts at a little over $18k, whereas the Model 3 starts at $35k. Even the Civic Type-R is only $32k, but that's a different beast than a regular Civic.
I don't know many people who have off road parking, charging them is always going to be an issue. I fill my car every 10 days or so and it takes about 5 minutes. How will electric cars match that?
I'm going to assume you're American; apologies if I'm wrong. Americans tend to assume that infrastructure is something that happened in the 20th century, and that nobody has the money, need, or capability for that kind of thing any more. But in fact, the world is spending over $3 trilion per year on upgrading and expanding its infrastructure (and for the most part, is much more efficient at this than America). Incrementally incorporating inductive charging systems into a small fraction of that expenditure will not be a major deal.
You need a 2500 mile range? That's also a >600kWh battery, and even at 1/10th the price it's a $15,000 element.
Lithium ion car batteries will get to 1/2 or 1/3 the price within a decade. By that point, electric cars will always be cheaper (edit: than current ICE TCO)
When we're at 1/10th the cost (which may happen!) it seems quite likely that fossil fuels will all be more expensive than storage backed renewable energy. As the demand for fossil fuels shrinks to a tiny fraction of its previous size, prices will also go down, as only the cheapest to extract oil will still be profitable.
In this hypothetical future, it may be possible for gas cars to be as cheap as an electric car, but it remains to be seen. In any case, the cost of energy will be lower than it is now.
As they always say. Please don't give volvo any credit or publicity for issuing the same old "three of four years from now we will have some more bolted-on hybrid models and some electric-clown-car[1] that nobody wants."
BMW and Audi and Merc (and now Volvo) can just recycle these press releases every few years - nothing changes but the three-years-off date.
2040 is a long time away from now!
It is a bet made that by then there will be no need to rely on diesel for transport trucks. It looks more like virtue signaling at the moment.
> What started off as a clever way to win arguments has become a lazy put down. It’s (Virtue Signaling) too often used to cast aspersions on opponents as an alternative to rebutting their arguments. In fact, it’s becoming indistinguishable from the thing it was designed to call out: smug posturing from a position of self-appointed authority.
:) you might be correct. My point is that showing up in 2017 to tell how great you're going to be in 2040 does not have any practical reason other than to make nice for the moment of today.
I would love to hear your argument as to why you think this is something newsworthy and relevant.
The underlying message was in fact to show that the French respect the Paris agreement, whereas US just pulled out of it.
So, what better way for the new French president and his administration to show how great they are at promising 23 years into the future?!
Sure, sorry to be slow in replying - busy day. So it goes further than that. It sets an expectation for industry that they will need to develop technology to make the 2040 deadline.
If auto firm A makes the deadline and is able to sell awesome EV vehicles and auto firm B and C have only so-so, because they didn't take the law seriously, A is going to sell a lot more vehicles. So autofirms have to start considering these sorts of government regulations in their R&D budgets today. The investments made today will help determine their outcomes in 2040.
Well, electric cars are technically superior when the range / time to charge problems have been solved. Less noise, less pollution in cities, faster accelerations. They will replace gas cars like CDs replaced Vinyl.
> Please stop perpetuating this myth- started by Eric Raymond and happily encouraged by SV "thought leaders"- that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I do none of those things, because I recognize that many times regulations are vital for ensuring human health and happiness, and think that free-for-all capitalism leads mostly to misery for all but a few in the plutocracy. "We can do beter" implies not settling for a world like that.
> Other people don't have to agree with my politics, but if they want to say I'm "not a hacker" because of that, they can take their very-politically-motivated prescriptivism and... well, I got told by dang the other day and I'm trying to cut down on the angry HN posts because of it, but you get the idea.
> that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself.
I implied none of the above. It's not because you believe in bottom to top action that it means you are an anarchist, and not many libertarians want to see the actual State gone, so don't caricature things either.
There's a lot of ground to cover between "the State banning stuff on a whim" and "Doing things in the dark by breaking the law". Let's not pretend every action is binary.
Government == Initiation of Force, or threat of same.
So yeah, I'd say that historically, many (albeit not all) hackers have felt like we can do better than a system built on force/violence.
The problem is, too many people assume that seeking such a model rules out any kind of collective / communal action or coordination. That's just a strawman though. People can, and do, collaborate on a voluntary basis all the time. What is needed is to encourage and facilitate more of that, not seek more application of Ultimate State powers.
And I would think that somebody who considers themselves a hacker would look at a problem like that and think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this", not think "meh, let's just put up some huge State apparatus and call it good".
> think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this"
The transition to Electric vehicles is progressively happening already, it's not like nobody is working on it. There are still numerous problems with electric cars that won't be solved in any reasonable timeframe unless there are major breakthroughs. So a "ban" is easy to do, but it does not make the technical challenges go away by itself.
Completely ignoring for a moment the parallels and long established links between hacker/tech culture and libertarianism, you don't need to be seasteading, Ayn Rand worshipping Peter Thiel protégé to see something wrong with the idea that the State outright banning a product that contemporary society uses every single day, that many people need to survive for which there are currently no affordable and/or reasonable alternatives. Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often.
My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
> Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved to the point where cost won't be an issue and maybe we will have charging stations everywhere, or maybe not, maybe the innovation plateaus as happens often.
Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly.
> My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
> Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly.
So you seem to be advocating for wide, sweeping bans and regulations, and then working backwards if the technology doesn't pan out.
I'm advocating the opposite: tax credits, incentives, etc. to move the technology forward and when it's ready, perhaps make the big shift to all electric.
> You mean like by the election they just had?
I guess we differ on the authority that elections that for out should have. But that is a more ideological issue, so I'll concede the point.
I think we've got plenty of corporate welfare in place already.
If people are pissed about the upcoming regulations, they can vote in a new government that'll revoke it. They've got several five year periods in which to do so. From what I know of French politics, this ban shouldn't be very controversial.
Many bans have been announced in advance while the alternatives were still in development stages or more expensive. Think CFCs, leaded gasoline, scrubbing sulfur from smokestacks etc.
How is this any different? The government is not blind, they can make projections and at this point the must have concluded that alternatives are likely to be ready in time.
Plus cities are moving to ban ICE cars anyway due to particulate pollution instead of CO2.
> My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
If the goal looks more and more impossible as time goes on it can be adjusted, the more important aspect is making it a national goal in the first place. It's not much different than the US and CAFE standards, there's something quite powerful about a far off mandate that can make the impossible gradually doable.
> ...banning a product that contemporary society uses every single day, that many people need to survive for which there are currently no affordable and/or reasonable alternatives. Sure, maybe in 20 years battery tech will have improved...
If in 20 years battery-powered cars are still not feasible for most people, do you think the French government will forget that they have power to modify or repeal the law?
Because a number of us recognize that market failures, and pollution is a prime example, are best solved by entities outside the market, such as governments, and that a doctrinaire approach to governing is antithetical to solving problems.
I admit I don't know much about economy, but how do we identify market failures? Do we have better information processing process than the market? This is honest question, not trying to nitpick or something.
Markets can only do one thing well - determine the clearing price of a good.
That clearing price has absolutely nothing to do with the cost to produce a good - especially if that cost is borne by someone not involved in the transaction.
The only people who think otherwise are Marxists - who believe that, on an equal playing field, the cost of a good is solely determined by the costs to produce it.
I won't pretend to be a world expert on market failures, but I can take you through how we come to the conclusion pollution is a result of market failure: It all comes down to negative externalities.
In general, an externality is something which happens to an unrelated third party due to some activity. An example of a positive externality is if someone waters their grass using a sprinkler, and there's enough excess spray from that sprinkler to keep your flowers sufficiently watered as well. A negative externality is, well, pollution: A truck drives by, belching toxic gasses, and you get to breathe them.
The problem with externalities is that they're not priced into the activity, because the cost is not borne by the person doing the thing which causes the externality. The owner of the truck which belched fumes near you isn't going to pay for your next asthma attack. Therefore, there's no incentive to stop doing those externality-causing activities, so they continue to happen.
The other half of the market failure at the heart of pollution is game theory, in this case a Prisoners' Dilemma: Say a company wants to stop polluting, but it can't be the only one, because not polluting is more expensive than polluting, so if it's the only one to stop, it gets out-competed. Thus we have the cooperate-defect choice: Cooperation means agreeing to not pollute as much, and then taking the steps to reduce pollution, and defection means agreeing with your fingers crossed, and then not reducing pollution at all. The best strategy for any individual actor in this system is to defect while everyone else cooperates, so you get to be the big economic winner in a cleaner environment because all the other suckers cooperated and reduced their pollution.
So. What's the solution? We need an entity which can make the polluters internalize the costs of pollution, so they're more likely to want to stop polluting for real, and can punish defectors who say they want to stop polluting and then don't. That entity, something which can levy and enforce punishments to pursue a policy, is a government, no matter what else it's called, and it can do those things because it's not bound to the same incentive structures which caused the market failure.
Because the climate doesn't care what form of government you have. Because the free market has consistently, and utterly failed to price in the cost of pollution. Because people will not do the right thing that will inconvenience them.
If I start dumping my soda cans in the trash bin, the City of Seattle will fine me. Instead of complaining about authoritarians, I put them in the recycling bin. No, you won't be personally rewarded for every correct decision you make. Society doesn't owe anyone a gold star for not doing the wrong thing.
Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy.
That aside, I think a smarter solution is taxing the actual thing you don't want (carbon in the air via a carbon tax) rather than second order things (gasoline cars).
It's much more effective. For example, if your Tesla is being powered by coal, you're doing almost nothing for the environment by switching to electric. So we need to set up the incentives thoughtfully, rather than being reactionary.
> Actually, that law in Seattle that allowed trash collectors to rummage through your trash was ruled unconstitutional under the state constitution as a violation of privacy.
This is a peculiarity of Washington state. In much of the US, and the world, once your garbage is on the curb, there is zero expectation of privacy.
(And yes, I agree that we want to punish the real externality, which can be done by taxing, or banning coal, petroleum...)
However, forcing a switch to electric, without banning fossil fuels would still be a net gain - an electric vehicle powered by fossil fuels produces fewer GHGs per mile driven then a gasoline one.
You don't need the free market to factor in the externalities of ICE pollution. If we are into government decrees, why doesn't the government just decree that you can drive whatever you want, but if you drive an ICE you will pay for your externalities? I'd imagine if gas was priced at it's true cost(including externalities), the switch to electric would be much easier.
I'm at a loss here. Why is this authoritarian decree being cheerleaded on this site?
It wasn't always like this. At one time there were a LOT more of traditional hacker-mindset types here, the ones who held to ideals like:
Mistrust authority.
Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative.
Promote decentralization.
But things have shifted over the past few years and authoritarian / big government ideas have gained a lot of currency here. I attribute it to something like the "Eternal September" phenomenon. As more and more new users flood in, the percentage of old-skool "hackers" who hold to those ideals falls.
Yeah, its only by casual observation, but I've noticed the same trend. I remember when our community was about the tech and anti-authoritarian rabble-rousing in general. Nowadays its like our community is more interested the percentages and genders of the community and ROI/productivity/disruption/etc of the latest and greatest chat app that will be gone in a few years...
Sure, because those things are trendy in this space. It's a real shame - I wish we as a subsection of society decided we had more interesting things to talk about than gender and racial equality, but that is the dominant topic for the day.
Oooooor, HackerNews has become more international and as a result has moved further left since as far as political axes go, the US is to the right of almost any other country on this planet, especially among the developed ones ;)
Mistrust of authority and aversion to bureaucracy isn't really a "left" OR a "right" thing though. That's why libertarians, for example, are often referred to as "left of left and right of right".
I'd go as far as to say that "left" and "right" don't even really mean anything anymore. Those terms now are just pejoratives that refer to a perceived group that "doesn't agree with me". I mean, who in this day and age has a strong stake in the preservation of the French monarchy?
> I'd go as far as to say that "left" and "right" don't even really mean anything anymore. Those terms now are just pejoratives that refer to a perceived group that "doesn't agree with me".
I can see that being the case in the US, and in other countries with de jure or de facto bipartidism. But left and right still retain their economic meaning.
Again, see my reply to ekianjo. The idea that "old-school hackers" were all libertarians and that the "hacker ethos" always consisted of the three things you mentioned above is mostly a myth that certain people are determinedly trying to turn into fact by rewriting history.
For instance, see ESR's rewrite of the Jargon File, which was condemned and disavowed by the actual old-school hackers precisely because it injected so much libertarian thinking where previously there was none.
That "old-school hackers" were all libertarians and that the "hacker ethos" always consisted of the three things you mentioned above is ...
Nobody is saying that all "old-skool hackers" were libertarians, or that the "hacker ethic" is composed of nothing but those three things. But as long as I've been involved in what you could call "the hacker community" - a period of time that dates back more than 20 years now - I've observed that many self-described "hackers" did, indeed, adopt somewhat (albeit not exclusively) libertarian attitudes, and did adhere to principles like the ones mentioned above.
Whether the mind-set of self-described "hackers" has changed over the years, or whether this site is simply made up of a lower percentage of "hackers" now is a question I can't really answer. Or maybe it's a combination of both. But in either case, it seems clear to me that there has been a shift in the overall tone of the community here, towards more acceptance of authoritarian approaches.
And frankly I find that disturbing, but what can ya do?
> But as long as I've been involved in what you could call "the hacker community" - a period of time that dates back more than 20 years now - I've observed that many self-described "hackers" did, indeed, adopt somewhat (albeit not exclusively) libertarian attitudes, and did adhere to principles like the ones mentioned above.
20 years isn't nearly long enough to cover the phenomenon I'm describing. Part of my thesis is that, starting in the 80's, a vocal minority began attempting to redefine the "hacker ethos" to conform with their specific libertarian views, and that in the 90s, venture capitalists and SV "thought leaders" eagerly co-opted and encouraged this redefinition so that their drones would oppose any regulations that might get in the way of profit. So the fact that you've seen lots of libertarians in hacker spaces from the 90's onward doesn't disprove my point.
> And frankly I find that disturbing, but what can ya do?
You could start by realizing that calling your opponent's views "disturbing" does not automatically give you any moral weight. For example, I find it disturbing that people
- equate "banning plastic bags" with tyranny
- refuse to accept that coordination problems and externalities are a real thing and that not only is government the most efficient way to fix these issues, but, empirically, the only one that reliably works at all
- are fine with widespread environmental destruction, for the sake of avoiding things they think are tyranny but really aren't
but I just have to accept that you don't care about any of that.
but I just have to accept that you don't care about any of that.
Or you may be mis-understanding the positions that actual libertarian leaning people hold, or at least painting with an overly broad brush. That is, there probably is at least one self-identified "libertarian" who represents each of those positions, but I will argue that none of those is an accurate depiction of what it means to hold libertarian ideals in any general sense.
Part of my thesis is that, starting in the 80's, a vocal minority began attempting to redefine the "hacker ethos" to conform with their specific libertarian views,
May be. But at least some of the anti-authority stuff as part of the hacker ethos dates back to the 1960's and the origins of this "scene", at least if I'm remembering some bits of Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution correctly.
You're the one equating support for environmental regulations with support for authoritarianism (which is ridiculous), so I'm not really moved by your complaint that I'm misrepresenting your views.
actually i don't care at all about the climate and want to drive my vintage car. Rich people will still be able to pollute much more than me by flying in their planes.
Because fossil fuel consumption is synonymous to a computer program that heats up server components and gobbles up finite system memory without relinquishing it ever again. Sometimes you do want a sys. admin to put a stop to stuff like that.
Why is this even news? This is similar to not doing anything and letting time pass-by. Where's the urgency? Most of the polar ice caps will have been melted by then.
Well, if (big IF ?!) Tony Seba is right, it'll all be over by 2030 anyway for traditional ICE cars (private ownership of ICE cars to be replaced by fleets of autonomic electrically powered taxis): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0
Speaking of electric, how efficient are those solar panels on the top of some priuses? Is there any way of getting to the point of them having a significant impact on the battery charge? Is Tesla thinking of adding this sort of thing to their cars?
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 359 ms ] threadAlso curious if the electric grid in France is on some plan to accommodate this as well.
That's not how it works though. Electricity isn't 'dumped' other than by lowering the price of the producers. It's not as if there is a giant resistor somewhere that gets connected in parallel to get rid of unwanted electrons.
And if there are no consumers that want the power at any price what happens instead is that windmills will simply be furled. Depending on in which country this happens if the contract between the consumers and the producers stipulates it the windfarms that are requested to shut down will still get paid as if they're operational.
This situation has occured in Scotland, Germany and China in the last year or so. If France can buy power from Germany at rates that are lower than what it costs them to produce the power themselves then that's actually great news for renewables.
It is often said that windpower can not be used to provide base load power but that's not the whole story, you actually can provide base load power but you'll have to install a huge surplus in windpower to be able to do so with some regularity and you may end up transporting energy across distances too large to be economic.
The bigger problem with this is that even if windpower generated can fluctuate quite rapidly the only plants capable of matching those fluctuations fast enough are hydro and gas turbines. Neither coal nor nuclear has the capability to follow that quickly.
Here is a entertaining live map of electricity trade across Europe : https://www.electricitymap.org/
Let me know if you can spot any time when France is a net importer with any of its neighbours.
Not only does it constantly export to Germany, the CO2 intensity of its production is also 5 times less per kWh, and of course that is thanks to nuclear power.
Going nuclear-free is a noble mid-long term goal, nobody can disagree with that. But the German decision of doing so a couple of decades before renewables were ready to take over was completely demagoguery. It is one of the most bonkers environmental stances in the face of the actual immediate threat that is global warming.
Germany actually had to replace 80% of its nuclear power with... coal ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_phase-out#German...
Good job, Die Grüne.
Germany did not replace the nuclear power with coal. Just look at the graphic of the energy mix in Germany: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Energiemix_Deutschland.s...
The source to the claim is just about the change from february 2011 to february 2012. Energy use and production varies throughout months (cold vs. hot, windy or not, sunny or not) and years (cold year, hot year, etc.). This is a terrible analysis.
[0] (in french) http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2017/07/06/nicolas-hul...
This is also a signal to consumers, as the government casts a definite vote of confidence towards electric vehicles, which may help drive EV sales up today, instead of making them freak out over a short deadline and reject EV out of it.
They're not getting rid of petrol/diesel engines completely, since they'll still be selling hybrids.
Mine is "get rid of the politicians altogether".
He has been trying to influence our politics for some time now, from advising politicians, threatening to run for president unless environmental strategies get adopted, to refusing to become Ecology Minister without proper power (ecology minister has mostly been a powerless position with no real drive).
Him accepting to join the current government was a sign that he would be able to influence the country's environmental strategy. While it is probably too early to see if he will have the right impact, it is good to see him drive positive change.
While I would understand criticizing Nicolas Hulot's methods or his work at the ministry, his motivations are clearly the betterment of France's approach to ecology.
Blaming his policies as "Typical politician promise for an event to happen long after their term is over..." shows a clear misunderstanding of our minister and French politics.
I think French government decided to use more regulation and less funding (see les echos [0]). But as most regulations come from EU, its regulation power is quite limited as well, hence curious statements like this one by N. Hulot.
[0] https://www.lesechos.fr/economie-france/budget-fiscalite/030...
[0] http://www.cae-eco.fr/IMG/pdf/cae-note043.pdf
This is the way politicians should operate, legislate for the future.
and the reasoning is worrying : if representatives won't project behind their term we won't do much as a society. Even a a simple highway takes more than a mandate to build (and let's not start about issues like global warming ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
So renewables (wind and solar) will have to grow as a mechanical consequence which is good because will get cheaper and cheaper and a large park of car batteries will give opportunity for large scale demand management and therefore help with the integration of new renewables.
France has long coasts to develop offshore wind, especially if floating offshore wind becomes a thing.
Terrestrial wind turbines can be sited in otherwise usable land. Or offshore.
>Windmills and solar kill birds at a much larger rate than activists would seem to care about.
A rate which is many orders of magnitude lower than killed by buildings, cats, coal plants, etc. This becomes a complex discussion when localized, sensitive populations are relevant, but on the whole it isn't a big issue.
Wind turbines and solar don't kill a significant number of birds; this is an old myth recently revived by Trump. In the US, wind turbines kill about 300k birds per year, power lines kill 30 million (mostly through collision), cars kill 200 million, and collision with buildings kills _600 million_.
While there's certainly room to improve on bird-wind turbine interactions, it's just not a major problem, and any resources used would be better spent improving the safety of buildings for birds.
Statistics like that have to be adjusted "per capita" in some fashion. It's going to difficult to pick the right units for comparison. Maybe the basis could be birds killed per kilowatt-hours or joules worth of electricity generated (windmills), carried (power lines), and consumed (cars).
The whole bird thing is a complete red herring.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/18/netherlan...
(Passed the lower house, just needs to pass through the Dutch senate to become legally binding)
Will is far, far too strong a word. This was a Labour (PvdA) initiative, and after the recent election PvdA is in shambles. They likely will not be a part of the (yet non-existing) coalition government. The main party to the coalition government (VVD) is opposed.
So we can fairly surely guess that this ain't happening.
I also wonder what kind of exception they intend to make for cargo transport because those vehicles (especially the smaller ones) are extremely price sensitive.
And that's good for the environment (doubly so in France, where a lot of electricity is not generated by carbon-emitting methods).
If anything it signals to the auto industry "don't worry you still have time to produce combustion engines"
What European has ever said that of their government?
Different states in the USA have different plans.
I am still not a fan of battery technology with regards to transportation in its current state. nearly a half ton in weight to go less than three hundred miles, usually a lot less, in optimal conditions. Coupled with charge times that even the best are only down to an hour for a full charge.
the other initiatives he mentioned likely will get smacked by the WTO unless it morphs into some kind of environmental policy with ever changing rules about what is sustainable or not with regards to harvesting of crops. if anything it would require subsidies to nations who crops are deemed unacceptable.
"Replace diesels with batteries on timeline x-y-z. Bam, just like that. Problem solved."
The platinum price has been dropping for many years, because Mr Market is thinking 5 steps ahead of where we actually stand with this. With above ground reserves likely dwindling, platinum has still managed to drop below gold again (and rhodium has dropped below platinum).
But batteries are not yet ready to take over everything. Diesels or at least combustion engines will keep improving for some time to come. In the meantime, plenty of room for alternatives like the discredited fuel cell, which can also use loads of platinum. (And on the supply side, you have the vulnerability that the country supplying 70% of the world's platinum is looking increasingly unstable.)
And for the record: I totally agree we should get rid of the combustion engine as soon as possible.
Doing it by 2040 is same as doing nothing, because gasoline cars will be clearly competed away by that time without any legislative action.
Every high tech product follows a law that it gets 20% cheaper when volumes of production double, and electric cars make up about 1.2% of the market now. So, they are going to fell 3x by the time production volumes reach 36% of the current car production, or about 25% of then-current car production.
But, they will actually own the market before then because cost of owning and operating an electric car is much lower than comparable gasoline powered one.
Easy to see that this curve converges to 100% of market share with quite a bit of margin. At least 2x margin.
There is nothing inherently costly in producing an electric car. Transmission is simpler because it doesn't need a gearbox. It has much lower center of gravity due to heavy battery so little mechanical trickery is needed to make it stable on the road. Electric motor is much cheaper than a complex ICE which also requires a lot of service. Only stumbling block is the battery - and they are getting cheaper every month. Most of the existing cost of electric cars is due to low production volumes as they eat away market share - there is a limit on speed of market adoption as well as factory retooling and business acceptance of the fact that electric cars are the future - but these are just technicalities, there is absolutely nothing preventing making a $15,000 mass market Ford Focus-like electric car, if built in Ford Focus-like volumes, that is.
Where to read more about this law?
Same thing now, with about 24 average mpg an existing car makes, eats 10 million barrels of oil per day (counting 81.5% average oil refining efficiency), or more than 20% of entire U.S. energy use - all kinds of energy, that is 7x more energy (ok, about 3.5x more given average efficiency of electricity production).
Even if that electricity was produced from oil on old-style single-stage thermal plants (a crazy idea - that would be the most expensive electricity in the world and no one is going to do that for sure), it would mean 2.7x savings. In reality, because most of that will be cheap coal and natural gas and renewables, there will be more than 10x savings.
The price has a large intractable stone in it - the battery cost. It won't go down very fast until new technologies are adopted. And it take a giga-factory to adopt a new technology. Rule of thumb: battery tech has to double the charge and halve the weight or nobody is interested in building the factory.
The center of gravity argument depends upon the current heavier batteries - but e-cars can't take off until something like metal-air batteries are working. And they weigh just about as much as a gas tank does.
As for complexity, sure compared to the mechanical engine it's simpler - 100's of parts vs a dozen. But the software has just exploded by orders of magnitude. Millions of lines of code instead of thousands. We mustn't underestimate this.
Then, there's a core of car buyers that have to grow old and die, and be replaced by e-car enthusiasts before the market moves significantly. Beta-Max was better than VHS (for the old videotape guys out there) but it died simply by being too late.
No, we won't see a $15,000 focus for decades.
The advances you are apparently dismissing as incremental have been enormous.
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n4/abs/nclimate256...
Maybe its only one order of magnitude -- if I remember correctly, there were about 300,000 lines of code running on the main processor of the Toyotas that were investigated for unintended acceleration, with functions like "throttle angle control" that took several thousand lines.
It seems like there are still too few EVs to fully understand their lifespan and long-term maintenance costs (including battery replacement).
I also want to see how fast "fast charging" will be and what kind of adverse impact it has on the battery. Is it acceptable to the usability and lifespan of the vehicle to routinely charge on fast chargers? I don't want to sit at the charging station for 45 minutes when a gas car can be fully fueled in 5 or less.
At home, my expectation is that a vehicle does not need a garage, so charging at home may present a logistical challenge (OR, weather-proof outside charging stations might also be deployed). Likewise for apartments and condos with shared parking.
I think all these issues can be overcome, but they will need some thoughtful approaches to ensure that EVs are reasonable for as many people as possible to own and use, not just the wealthy.
https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/tesla-battery-degradation/
That matters because battery capacity fade increases non-linearly with depth of cycling. If both a Leaf owner and a Model S owner drive 40 miles per day, I'd expect the Leaf battery capacity to fade more than 3x as fast as the Model S capacity, because of the deeper battery cycling. That's true even of the Model S 60/60D that had a 75 kWh battery software-locked to 60 kWh of usable capacity. The capacity fade is linked to the physical characteristics of the battery; the software unlock to a full 75 kWh just bought the option to discharge the battery more deeply for longer uninterrupted driving.
So, a net price of about $1K/kWh of battery seems to be the going rate.
How would that be possible? Charge and discharge cycles are closely monitored and controlled by computers.
The charging protocol is pretty well-designed for electrical safety already.
"Around 2024" is what they said yesterday.
"Volvo’s transition will be gradual. It plans to still produce existing models with conventional engines after 2019, but it will no longer introduce new models with the older technology. Depending on demand, Volvo will completely phase out cars powered solely by gasoline or diesel by around 2024."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/05/business/energy-environme...
The way I see it -- plugin hybrids with a minimal 50 mile electric range will start to become the norm, then with fewer people buying gas, many gas stations go out of business. Electric charging pops up at work and at the big box stores. Possibly metered, or subsidised by purchases. Then plugin hybrids become electric only once the gas stations disappear.
The Model 3 coming off the lines in the next few days is the same price as a Honda Civic.
So... 2x in range and 1.0 in price sound good? That's probably 3-4 years out at the current rate of improvement in battery technology.
The Model 3 has an estimated 215 mile range where as a 2017 Civic is estimated a 521 miles. The annual improvement in capacity for Lithium batteries is 8%. So in 4 years you can expect battery packs of equivalent size to go for 293 miles.
So 1.95x the price for .4x the range today and if all things except battery price remain the same, then 1.95x the price for .56x the range.
The biggest problems for electric car is fast charger availability and the fact that DC Fast charging degrades the batteries over time. Deploying DC Fast chargers to homes isn't feasible so charging a 200+ mile battery from 10% to full would take hours using a Level 2 charger.
The way they do it:
* Charge overnight, start every day full * Supercharge on long trips * If you have a Leaf, the definition of "long trip" is a bit short
Done. No DC fast charger needed at home.
I think what you don't understand is that it isn't feasible for everyone to install a L2 Charger in their home. 240v connectors in garages might be an option for new construction but aren't common in older construction. The installation cost isn't a fixed number and there are several factors that can raise that cost into the thousands of dollars. That's even assuming you own a home, if you rent then it's probably not an option. If you live in an apartment or condo then it's even less a possibility.
If owning an electric car requires access to an L2 Charger to be feasible then there will have to be serious infrastructure changes before most ICE car owners will consider them practical. Charging stations will have to be readily available everywhere, not just in your home garage assuming that's even an option. Sure your office parking garage might have two or four charging stations today that were easily installed but what will it take to install 20, 40, or 100? Can our grid even support that scale?
Most people can't afford new cars let alone 200+ mile EVs and ~100 mile EV has a number of caveats that will necessitate lifestyle and behavior changes for a lot of people. My Leaf typically reports 93-96 miles range at 100% charge and I commute ~25 miles one way. That should leave me with around 40 miles of overhead and yet that's rarely the case. Driving in excess of 55 miles an hour for prolonged periods of time quickly depletes the battery as does rapid acceleration. If I'm not paying attention to my driving then I can easily arrive at work with a battery at 40% capacity.
EVs are currently practical for a small subset of the population however there will need to be significant changes in the electrical grid, charging infrastructure, EV range, and EV cost before mass adoption is even possible.
I say all of this not to claim that charger access is not an issue -- it is -- but to point out that solutions exist.
Also, I hope this is a good illustration of why you should not tell other people on HN that they don't understand something.
How so? The OP said that by 2040 there wouldn't be ICE vehicles on sale and the reply we're on remarked about the need for dramatic improvements in battery. I stated that I felt charger availability and battery degradation would be limiting factors. We're discussing charger availability and two of the key factors to availability are infrastructure and cost.
> So, apparently, you don't understand how people who currently own electric cars & can charge at home do charging.
> Also, I hope this is a good illustration of why you should not tell other people on HN that they don't understand something.
I think you should heed your own advice because as I stated before, I own an electric car, charge from home, and don't have a L2 Charger.
> I've had several friends who've had to go back and forth a few times with their electrician to get a L2 charger installed at their house.
Are you implying I didn't try hard enough to get a L2 Charger? I can get one installed, I haven't and you have literally no idea why nor have you asked.
> I live in an apartment, and after 3 years of lobbying, my complex installed a charger.
That's great, what happens when 10 tenants at your apartment all buy EVs? Do you have to petition for another 3 years to get additional chargers installed? Or does your complex implement fines to encourage sharing? The parking deck at my office has 4 spots for 2 chargers and charges you $20 if your car occupies a spot for more than 4 hours because the demand exceeds the capacity and they're not about to shell out for additional capacity.
Things like requiring new construction to offer chargers is great but it will only take us so far. How many L2 or DC Fast Chargers can be supported by the transmission lines being installed with that new construction? As soon as 50% of the parking spaces in that new construction demand access to chargers there will be a reckoning because the cost to install the necessary equipment will be significant. Eventually we're going to run into a situation similar to what happened in Australia with solar deployments, the demand for charging stations will put such a demand on the grid that a moratorium will be imposed.
I did however find this article (https://electrek.co/2017/05/07/tesla-limits-supercharging-sp...). This seems to imply that the packs are damaged by repeated Supercharger use and will automatically throttle themselves to lessen the damage being done.
Tesla seems to be very coy and dances around the subject because they don't want to attach any stigma to fast charging while EVs are still in their infancy as it might negatively impact their adoption rates.
In the article you linked, the customer appears to have noticed a slight decrease in the peak charging rate. It doesn't sound significant to me. There are certainly other Teslas out there which are supercharged 100% of the time, Tesloop is one example.
That's one of the three reasons Tesla gives for throttling the charge rate.
> In the article you linked, the customer appears to have noticed a slight decrease in the peak charging rate.
From 120kW down to 90kW peak charging rate is only slight? I realize it's peak and not average but a 25% reduction is only considered slight?
Also you said that Tesla disagrees with me about the affect of DC fast charging on battery life. The statements from Tesla seem to agree with me and they have implemented technologies to mitigate those effects in the form of peak rate throttling over time.
You seem to misinterpret Tesla saying it's fine to DC Fast Charge to mean that it has no detrimental affects when they really mean that they have protocols in place to ensure the pack will not degrade to the point that a warranty replacement is necessary.
Edit: I will say 5.6s is pretty darn quick. I would consider anything quicker than ~7s to be more a fun thing to have than a practical, neccessary acceleration.
"Right now a Tesla has 250 miles of range"
If you buy that model, sure. But the base Model 3 only has a range of 215 miles, and that's assuming you're not using the heater or A/C.
"The Model 3 coming off the lines in the next few days is the same price as a Honda Civic."
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? The Civic starts at a little over $18k, whereas the Model 3 starts at $35k. Even the Civic Type-R is only $32k, but that's a different beast than a regular Civic.
Battery swap sounds reasonable.
Lithium ion car batteries will get to 1/2 or 1/3 the price within a decade. By that point, electric cars will always be cheaper (edit: than current ICE TCO)
When we're at 1/10th the cost (which may happen!) it seems quite likely that fossil fuels will all be more expensive than storage backed renewable energy. As the demand for fossil fuels shrinks to a tiny fraction of its previous size, prices will also go down, as only the cheapest to extract oil will still be profitable.
In this hypothetical future, it may be possible for gas cars to be as cheap as an electric car, but it remains to be seen. In any case, the cost of energy will be lower than it is now.
As they always say. Please don't give volvo any credit or publicity for issuing the same old "three of four years from now we will have some more bolted-on hybrid models and some electric-clown-car[1] that nobody wants."
BMW and Audi and Merc (and now Volvo) can just recycle these press releases every few years - nothing changes but the three-years-off date.
[1] BMW i3, Merc B class ...
> Depending on demand, Volvo will completely phase out cars powered solely by gasoline or diesel by around 2024.
They aren't killing gas engines, they are just moving to Hybrid drive trains.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/20/virtue...
I would love to hear your argument as to why you think this is something newsworthy and relevant.
The underlying message was in fact to show that the French respect the Paris agreement, whereas US just pulled out of it.
So, what better way for the new French president and his administration to show how great they are at promising 23 years into the future?!
If auto firm A makes the deadline and is able to sell awesome EV vehicles and auto firm B and C have only so-so, because they didn't take the law seriously, A is going to sell a lot more vehicles. So autofirms have to start considering these sorts of government regulations in their R&D budgets today. The investments made today will help determine their outcomes in 2040.
Not exactly a glowing recommendation.
With a lot of help of public funding for research, development, and adoption.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_incentives_for_plug... * http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britain-has-tw... ...
> Please stop perpetuating this myth- started by Eric Raymond and happily encouraged by SV "thought leaders"- that hackers must, by definition, be laissez-faire capitalists who love Ayn Rand and treat breaking laws as a noble goal in and of itself. I do none of those things, because I recognize that many times regulations are vital for ensuring human health and happiness, and think that free-for-all capitalism leads mostly to misery for all but a few in the plutocracy. "We can do beter" implies not settling for a world like that.
> Other people don't have to agree with my politics, but if they want to say I'm "not a hacker" because of that, they can take their very-politically-motivated prescriptivism and... well, I got told by dang the other day and I'm trying to cut down on the angry HN posts because of it, but you get the idea.
I implied none of the above. It's not because you believe in bottom to top action that it means you are an anarchist, and not many libertarians want to see the actual State gone, so don't caricature things either.
There's a lot of ground to cover between "the State banning stuff on a whim" and "Doing things in the dark by breaking the law". Let's not pretend every action is binary.
So yeah, I'd say that historically, many (albeit not all) hackers have felt like we can do better than a system built on force/violence.
The problem is, too many people assume that seeking such a model rules out any kind of collective / communal action or coordination. That's just a strawman though. People can, and do, collaborate on a voluntary basis all the time. What is needed is to encourage and facilitate more of that, not seek more application of Ultimate State powers.
And I would think that somebody who considers themselves a hacker would look at a problem like that and think "Yeah, let's get too it and find a way to do this", not think "meh, let's just put up some huge State apparatus and call it good".
The transition to Electric vehicles is progressively happening already, it's not like nobody is working on it. There are still numerous problems with electric cars that won't be solved in any reasonable timeframe unless there are major breakthroughs. So a "ban" is easy to do, but it does not make the technical challenges go away by itself.
My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
Upon which the regulations will be adjusted accordingly.
> My point is, these things are unknowable and uncertain and the state should stop issuing these authoritarian decrees and let the technology catch up and work itself out and then maybe we can collectively as a democratic society vote on and decide what we want the laws to be in 2040.
You mean like by the election they just had?
So you seem to be advocating for wide, sweeping bans and regulations, and then working backwards if the technology doesn't pan out.
I'm advocating the opposite: tax credits, incentives, etc. to move the technology forward and when it's ready, perhaps make the big shift to all electric.
> You mean like by the election they just had?
I guess we differ on the authority that elections that for out should have. But that is a more ideological issue, so I'll concede the point.
If people are pissed about the upcoming regulations, they can vote in a new government that'll revoke it. They've got several five year periods in which to do so. From what I know of French politics, this ban shouldn't be very controversial.
How is this any different? The government is not blind, they can make projections and at this point the must have concluded that alternatives are likely to be ready in time.
Plus cities are moving to ban ICE cars anyway due to particulate pollution instead of CO2.
If the goal looks more and more impossible as time goes on it can be adjusted, the more important aspect is making it a national goal in the first place. It's not much different than the US and CAFE standards, there's something quite powerful about a far off mandate that can make the impossible gradually doable.
If in 20 years battery-powered cars are still not feasible for most people, do you think the French government will forget that they have power to modify or repeal the law?
That clearing price has absolutely nothing to do with the cost to produce a good - especially if that cost is borne by someone not involved in the transaction.
The only people who think otherwise are Marxists - who believe that, on an equal playing field, the cost of a good is solely determined by the costs to produce it.
In general, an externality is something which happens to an unrelated third party due to some activity. An example of a positive externality is if someone waters their grass using a sprinkler, and there's enough excess spray from that sprinkler to keep your flowers sufficiently watered as well. A negative externality is, well, pollution: A truck drives by, belching toxic gasses, and you get to breathe them.
The problem with externalities is that they're not priced into the activity, because the cost is not borne by the person doing the thing which causes the externality. The owner of the truck which belched fumes near you isn't going to pay for your next asthma attack. Therefore, there's no incentive to stop doing those externality-causing activities, so they continue to happen.
The other half of the market failure at the heart of pollution is game theory, in this case a Prisoners' Dilemma: Say a company wants to stop polluting, but it can't be the only one, because not polluting is more expensive than polluting, so if it's the only one to stop, it gets out-competed. Thus we have the cooperate-defect choice: Cooperation means agreeing to not pollute as much, and then taking the steps to reduce pollution, and defection means agreeing with your fingers crossed, and then not reducing pollution at all. The best strategy for any individual actor in this system is to defect while everyone else cooperates, so you get to be the big economic winner in a cleaner environment because all the other suckers cooperated and reduced their pollution.
So. What's the solution? We need an entity which can make the polluters internalize the costs of pollution, so they're more likely to want to stop polluting for real, and can punish defectors who say they want to stop polluting and then don't. That entity, something which can levy and enforce punishments to pursue a policy, is a government, no matter what else it's called, and it can do those things because it's not bound to the same incentive structures which caused the market failure.
If I start dumping my soda cans in the trash bin, the City of Seattle will fine me. Instead of complaining about authoritarians, I put them in the recycling bin. No, you won't be personally rewarded for every correct decision you make. Society doesn't owe anyone a gold star for not doing the wrong thing.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/judge-seat...
That aside, I think a smarter solution is taxing the actual thing you don't want (carbon in the air via a carbon tax) rather than second order things (gasoline cars).
It's much more effective. For example, if your Tesla is being powered by coal, you're doing almost nothing for the environment by switching to electric. So we need to set up the incentives thoughtfully, rather than being reactionary.
This is a peculiarity of Washington state. In much of the US, and the world, once your garbage is on the curb, there is zero expectation of privacy.
(And yes, I agree that we want to punish the real externality, which can be done by taxing, or banning coal, petroleum...)
However, forcing a switch to electric, without banning fossil fuels would still be a net gain - an electric vehicle powered by fossil fuels produces fewer GHGs per mile driven then a gasoline one.
It wasn't always like this. At one time there were a LOT more of traditional hacker-mindset types here, the ones who held to ideals like:
But things have shifted over the past few years and authoritarian / big government ideas have gained a lot of currency here. I attribute it to something like the "Eternal September" phenomenon. As more and more new users flood in, the percentage of old-skool "hackers" who hold to those ideals falls.I'd go as far as to say that "left" and "right" don't even really mean anything anymore. Those terms now are just pejoratives that refer to a perceived group that "doesn't agree with me". I mean, who in this day and age has a strong stake in the preservation of the French monarchy?
I can see that being the case in the US, and in other countries with de jure or de facto bipartidism. But left and right still retain their economic meaning.
For instance, see ESR's rewrite of the Jargon File, which was condemned and disavowed by the actual old-school hackers precisely because it injected so much libertarian thinking where previously there was none.
Nobody is saying that all "old-skool hackers" were libertarians, or that the "hacker ethic" is composed of nothing but those three things. But as long as I've been involved in what you could call "the hacker community" - a period of time that dates back more than 20 years now - I've observed that many self-described "hackers" did, indeed, adopt somewhat (albeit not exclusively) libertarian attitudes, and did adhere to principles like the ones mentioned above.
Whether the mind-set of self-described "hackers" has changed over the years, or whether this site is simply made up of a lower percentage of "hackers" now is a question I can't really answer. Or maybe it's a combination of both. But in either case, it seems clear to me that there has been a shift in the overall tone of the community here, towards more acceptance of authoritarian approaches.
And frankly I find that disturbing, but what can ya do?
20 years isn't nearly long enough to cover the phenomenon I'm describing. Part of my thesis is that, starting in the 80's, a vocal minority began attempting to redefine the "hacker ethos" to conform with their specific libertarian views, and that in the 90s, venture capitalists and SV "thought leaders" eagerly co-opted and encouraged this redefinition so that their drones would oppose any regulations that might get in the way of profit. So the fact that you've seen lots of libertarians in hacker spaces from the 90's onward doesn't disprove my point.
> And frankly I find that disturbing, but what can ya do?
You could start by realizing that calling your opponent's views "disturbing" does not automatically give you any moral weight. For example, I find it disturbing that people
- equate "banning plastic bags" with tyranny
- refuse to accept that coordination problems and externalities are a real thing and that not only is government the most efficient way to fix these issues, but, empirically, the only one that reliably works at all
- are fine with widespread environmental destruction, for the sake of avoiding things they think are tyranny but really aren't
but I just have to accept that you don't care about any of that.
Or you may be mis-understanding the positions that actual libertarian leaning people hold, or at least painting with an overly broad brush. That is, there probably is at least one self-identified "libertarian" who represents each of those positions, but I will argue that none of those is an accurate depiction of what it means to hold libertarian ideals in any general sense.
Part of my thesis is that, starting in the 80's, a vocal minority began attempting to redefine the "hacker ethos" to conform with their specific libertarian views,
May be. But at least some of the anti-authority stuff as part of the hacker ethos dates back to the 1960's and the origins of this "scene", at least if I'm remembering some bits of Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution correctly.