By all accounts, battery technology sure looks like it's about to hit the fastest-growth portion of the usual "S" adoption curve -- "gradually then suddenly," to paraphrase Hemingway. By implication, demand for fossil fuels sure seems to be at risk of falling, also "gradually then suddenly," in a mirror "Ƨ" curve.
As an aside, EV doesn't mean renewable. In Germany the nuclear reactors have been turned off due to the influence of the Green party, and natural gas transfer from Nord Stream I was stopped by Russia due to the Ukraine war. As a consequence, more energy is now created from coal, since renewables like wind and solar are too volatile to replace nuclear and natural gas.
By this logic, using diesel-powered haul trucks to Mike uranium, and building nuclear reactor facilities with massive amounts of steel rebar and concrete, both of which we don't even know how to decarbonize, means that nuclear is not low emissions either.
The only valid argument is a quantitative one, and in that regime, EVs powered with a tiny fraction of coal, like the grid in Germany, are a massive win.
But I will say that I'm not surprised to see yet another pro-nuclear, anti-other-clean-tech take. These two things seem to go hand in hand.
I'm not sure why this comment is being down voted. All it is stating is facts.
Most of the lithium needed for electric vehicles is going to be mined and that is not an environmental friendly process.
No one's talking about how they're going to power electric vehicles in the United States... It's a ticking time bomb for energy infrastructure in the United States. They should be pursuing everything all at once,not reducing because you always need a backup.
Coal is a minor component of Germany's power, and even if it were bigger, EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal.
And as for lithium being "dirty" have you bothered to even compare it to other sources of mining? Such as for the massive amount of stew that goes into cars? Or the absolutely massive amounts of waste and destruction that happens to extract oil to power cars?
Citing "environmental damage" but not acknowledging right away that it's far far far less than the alternatives is simply playing rhetorical games.
We must be far more logical and realistic and pragmatic if we want to take care of the environment. Above all, factuality is important.
> More than a third (36.3%) of the electricity produced and fed into the grid in Germany in the third quarter of 2022 came from coal-fired power plants (third quarter of 2021: 31.9%).
Yeah, I suggest you start posting some facts because that's quite a claim. Lithium uses a f** load of water to be mined, more so than copper more so than gold or zinc.
(Water Use in Industries of the Future: Mining Industry" by the U.S. Department of Energy)
The water footprint of lithium production" by M. Northey, T. Mudd, and D. Werner, published in ScienceDirect: This research article provides a detailed analysis of the water requirements for various forms of lithium mining, including both brine-based and hard rock mining. The authors estimate that the water footprint of lithium production can range from 100 to 20,000 liters of water per kilogram of lithium, depending on the specific extraction method used.
"EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal."
This is a common misconception because the power generation for these cars has to come from somewhere... If the power generation for these cars is coal or oil where that energy is being generated is polluting those people. You are correct that it is way better for the environment in terms of driving emissions, but the emissions used to generate the power are often ignored and unless it's done, the healthy mix of alternatives such as wind, hydro, solar geothermal and nuclear, it's absolutely Ludacris suggest that EVs are cleaner without taking into account where the power is being generated.
Depends on how supply performs relative to demand… price is just a function of the balance between these two. Fossil fuel consumption is still growing globally, and faster than production.
So prices currently look set to rise. Higher oil prices make renewables look relatively more attractive though, so its a bit reflexive
Would be interesting to see expert analysis, but I imagine it's really hard to know how every player will react.
As (if?) likelihood of a demand collapse increases, I imagine some fraction of potential suppliers with ~easy/cheap oil left would have a healthy incentive to open up the supply for as long as it takes to force everyone with ~hard sources to wind down, leaving them to price-set the long-tail?
Hopefully the price of any PoW crypto is sufficiently low that it doesn't make marginal economic sense for any players to extract-and-mine?
They will try, and it'll work for a while, but they won't be able to maintain it, and doing so would speed the death of oil
As EVs get cheaper to buy, and more importantly, to run, the petrol-fueled vehicles start to become uneconomical. As use declines, availability of fuel declines, as petrol stations become more unprofitable. Further encourages EV adoption. Range anxiety now comes to petrol-powered vehicle owners as it is now for EV owners, further incentivizing the switch.
While the general impression is that this will be gradual, I think it will be a gradual decline, then sudden, as the overall inconvenience and cost levels cross. Then some minor precipitating event changes the overall mindset, and petrol-powered cars become a perceived liability, and those still stuck with them will barely be able to unload them.
As the decline happens, OPEC will surely try to manage the price of oil, but with demand declining, one of two things will happen. To the extent that they keep the price high, they speed the transition away from oil. They are also much more likely to fail, as the US is now a major producer, and has every incentive to work against OPEC. Plus, their friends are gone. Teh car companies figured out in the 2008 price spike that the oil industry is NOT their friend as that economic crash and oil price spike forced them to look over the cliff of doom as auto sales nearly stopped dead. Then we saw Russia's blatant attempt to use their oil & gas supply to blackmail the world into yielding to their genocidal invasion of Ukraine. No rational businessman now thinks that the oil industry is a reliable supply partner, and will cut them out of the equation at the first opportunity. The oil industry and countries may have some good days ahead, but beyond the intermediate term, they are absolutely screwed.
Oil benefits from scale of demand and excess demand. I don't see how reducing oil demand down to only those who can't switch from oil would do anything except increase the price. Making oil more niche of an application can only increase its price in the long term.
This is of course assuming the current price is somewhat competitive.
I doubt this is going to play out as optimistically as the pro-EV crowd thinks.
No personal bias against EVs, but there are still issues with range for towing/hauling, and longer duration "road trip" style commutes that make it impossible to be "pure EV" on the roads any time soon.
Also, the marine and aviation industries don't have viable EV options in the short term (10 years), same with heavy equipment (CAT, Deere, etc.), this will keep at least enough of a market for gas/diesel engine production that they won't go away.
Do you think the shift to EV will affect long style of commute lifestyles? Or, will the combination of long commutes / EVs / remote work combine to fix this?
For marine, it seems that cargo ships could have large solar arrays for energy regeneration, perhaps strapped to their top layer of containers? I think aviation will lean towards hydrogen cells given the need to rapidly refuel and energy density.
For marine, it seems that cargo ships could have large solar arrays for energy regeneration
I do not think there is any practical scenario where a vehicle can be self-solar powered for long distance journeys. The energy demand scales up with the size of the vehicle. This is why you don't see EV's with solar panels for primary power (I am aware of some like Fisker that have essentially novelty solar panels). A cargo ship loaded with solar panels would be highly impractical on a number of levels, and would not be able to gather enough energy to make it worthwhile without a massive increase in panel efficiency.
You are right, the hauling and aviation industries will probably stick to burning fuel for a while. Maybe eFuel someday but still burning fuel.
But this don't mean that average Joe transportation (which incidentally makes up 99%ofprivate vehicle travel) cannot be realistically electrified.
Sure, even there people will keep running their classic cars and probably even some sports and muscle cars but for the biggest majority of casual commuters the writing is on the wall. There just is no real upside to sticking with ICEs even today.
There's wisdom in what you say. At the same time, technology adoption curves only get to 100% at the asymptote. For example, one still encounters a need to send a fax from time to time, and some people still have landlines.
That said, the auto market at 50% or 70% EV adoption will still be a big deal! And we might find out that some of the issues that folks see with EVs are solvable and/or aren't that important anyway. For example: the average American summer road trip is under 300 miles, so the range anxiety might be ameliorated by wider availability of faster chargers than are available today. Similarly, we might learn that users of heavy equipment are in the habit of taking breaks during which they could charge their equipment, etc.
My bigger concern is just how damn reliable new vehicles are. The average age of a car on the road today is like 12 years. Even if we start selling 100% electric cars tomorrow, the curve is a lot fatter and the cut over slower. On the other hand, this is a great thing because it will smooth out the transition
Gas stations going under may really accelerate the tail end of the process. Their business model is going to break down, and then range anxiety for gas/diesel will make them less viable.
Maybe. Range anxiety is less of an issue. A 2021 Toyota Camry has a 15.8 gallon tank. Functionally 500 miles of range. Even to reserve a few gallons we're at 400 miles per tank.
Probably what would happen if this was a real concern is they'd just make the gas tanks bigger. It's not that hard to do so.
I've seen estimates that cars in the US are scrapped at approximately the same rate new cars are being sold. Somewhere around 12M - 15M per year. That's less than 10% of the estimated fleet, but still consequential.
I'm not sure how to reconcile these figures with the apparently growing average age of the fleet. I suppose it means there are a lot of early deaths for relatively new cars due to accidents and other calamity.
While I think this is largely pretty true, I think in the longer run that if you get to a place where the average consumer is no longer exposed to the price of gas, you can get into a political reality where you could start pricing in the remediation cost of the fuel.
An analogy might be ethanol-free gas. Many motors out there still require it, and you have to go out of your way to find it, and you will pay a premium for it. But it is at least there if you need it.
Yes and it will take decades to replace the millions of fuel burning fuel machines that exist. I have a 5 year old gasoline car that I don't drive much. From an EROI (Energy Return on Investment) perspective I wouldn't be helping by replacing it with an EV any time soon.
I would say it would be a clear win to replace your car with an EV even if you don't drive it much. You help bring down the price of EVs, demonstrate their utility, and your old car will likely be resold and push an even less fuel-efficient old car off the road.
There are already niches where EV aircraft will be likely wins - right now for frequent takeoff/landing, short hop travel it looks like some form of EV aircraft will take up that space.
Very heavy construction and marine equipment is already electric propulsion. The question is what will be the source for that electric. Even if diesel fuel is much more energy dense, IC engines thermodynamically lose a majority of that energy. So the gap to make up is smaller than a superficial look.
> Also, the marine and aviation industries don't have viable EV options in the short term (10 years)
With high enough energy density, I suppose it's possible for short haul aviation to go electric. If they can overcome the energy density difficulties, I'm sure it'll be great for reliability and cost. And maybe even noise.
I have serious doubts that it'll ever be feasible for long haul aviation to run on anything but hydrocarbons. Although I suppose it's theoretically possible.
Actually, EV drivetrains are more suitable for heavy equipment than are ICE drivetrains. They are far less sensitive to weight, and operating costs are far more of a factor than initial purchase costs. Not to mention the incredible torque and power of electric motors.
Additionally, solar charging is far easier to get out to a remote jobsite than is diesel. If you've never seen diesel logistics for e.g. remote mines, you'd have no idea. And even for the far north (or far south) where solar is not an option, often they'll have provisions for electricity or alternative methods of generating it on site.
Buc-ees somehow manages to have gas stations with over 100 pumps[1]. I am usually skeptical of claims that the free market will sort it out, but it is easy to underestimate how powerful financial incentives can be. I don't think it will take long for EV "gas" stations to exist.
I believe that CATL battery is supposed to hit 1kwh/kg in the next 5 years. That's enough to quadruple range of current EVs if maintaining the same weight. I would be interested in this, or at double the range with half the weight (so about 800mi in an EV truck).
I don't think production will ever go away. But I do think that if you hit densities 500wh-1kwh and at a cheaper price, it will be relegated to niches. Maybe that will take 20 years.
This is great and all, but still really stupid if you stop and think a lot of EV use is just replacing ICE use that shouldn’t exist in the first place. A lot of daily commute isn’t necessary, or not necessary by car with public transportation, but the economic incentives aren’t there to build cities for that - need to keep selling cars.
Slowing it is how you get to halting it. These things can run on purely renewable energy, so if we get to a 100% EV fleet it will be relatively easy to go carbon-neutral on vehicle transport.
No one claimed it was. But vehicles are the largest GHG emitting sector, so zeroing out emissions from it is crucially important. We just have to go sector-by-sector do this. Plus, technology developed for EVs helps stationary grid storage and electrification of other products and industries.
For the fuel definitely. But we have to solve the problem for other components anyway. EV batteries in particular are great because they are 99% recyclable, so that's going to be the long term strategy.
Powering a 100% carbon neutral EV "fleet" would require lots more (solar/wind)+battery or nuclear that is unlikely to be developed as quickly as the consumption.
That's what's great about electricity! It abstracts the power generation technology. If we need to temporarily use natural gas to power it, for example, we can just do it and still achieve better efficiency than ICE cars. But we're going to have to develop that renewable power infrastructure anyway. And renewables are now cheaper in many cases than polluting alternatives.
So if Jevon's Paradox holds true for transportation as it did for steam power, we may need lots of fossil-fuel electric plants just to meet demand. Maybe that's "temporary", but so was coal.
Whatever percentage of all vehicle use you think will potentially replaced, lets give you a generous 50%. A lot of remaining percentage would still be of benefit to transition from ICE to EV.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Public transit is great in many respects, but realistically the people who are in place to push EV adoption aren't meaningfully involved with public transit and vice versa. It's the collective consumers who influence both sides with their preferences. Planners could induce demand with better, more useful transit systems, but that's not hindered by increased EV adoption.
As somebody who doesn't want to drive as much as I have to, advocates locally and vocally for permitting life with out cars by enhancing bike trails, building housing close to jobs, eliminating parking minimums, and increasing density, it's a slow route.
It seems like small changes in regulations should be easy to accomplish, but it's actually far far harder than inventing entirely new technology and building entire industries around it.
Social change is the hardest change to accomplish, despite it getting the most attention from so many.
I'm glad people like you are advocating for this sort of thing! Very important for quality of life and helps the environment tremendously.
I also worry about the pace that you mention, it's unfortunate that social change is so slow. It's also good that we have potential solutions that do not require it.
I think the right framing on this might be to treat it as a "friendly competition". Can urban planning enthusiasts beat the electric car industry at reducing carbon by 2050? Or something like that.
After five years of beating my head against the wall, and making a good number of friends in the process, but having zero concrete change, I think that the problem is the system.
Our system is set up for maximum local control to prevent any non-car infrastructure, but with top-down enforced car infrastructure that's unstoppable.
Local advocacy has been pointless, instead, state level laws that limit cities, and pull back undemocratic local control processes is the way to go.
Nobody pays attention to local politics except a few wealthy homeowners, and so politicians only respond to these very few opinion makers. It's a losing game unless you're in your 60s, retired, and loaded with money. State level legislators have broader constituencies that try to serve every one.
I’m not sure quite certain I understand your viewpoint. It seems like you are hinting at remote work obviating much of the daily commute. The issue I’ve seen with that is that public transport becomes useless since it’s largely oriented towards getting people into metro/city centers - not running errands or entertainment - which becomes the primary reasons you leave the house. While not true in HCOL urban areas - which probably includes much of NYC proper and probably half of SF proper, at most this is especially true in urbanized suburbs in or near those places. Beyond that, it’s generally hopeless.
Probably most of European citizen live in 6-story high cities, aka Paris, Barcelona, Lausanne… and 6-story is the optimal density for having a lot of choice of officrs (second floors), a lot of commerce (ground floors), and a lot of housing (the rest). With that, you walk or bike to work while still working for a high pay.
1) The differences between transit and car oriented places aren't as great as you think. Poland has 7% fewer cars, France 20% fewer cars, Germany has 24% fewer cars, etc. Poor countries have much fewer cars, people with money generally like personal vehicles.
2) Public Transit will benefit immensely from car electrification. Batteries for busses will get better because of investments and economies of scale made for car battery manufacturing.
3) Buildings and cultural habits have generations-long duration. Even the shittiest houses last 100 years. Cars last 10-15 years, so the vehicle stock will be renewed many many times faster than memes like "rebuild our cities"
4) Autonomous EVs will likewise also arrive far sooner than "rebuilding cities". Cruise operates 24/7 in SF. Their "Origin" EV will be the basis for surface-level public transit in the future.
That's lithium metal batteries, which are not rechargeable. Most EVs use lithium-ion batteries.
Lithium-ion batteries were invented by M. Stanley Whittingham [1] and John B. Goodenough [2] who are both still alive (81 and 100 years old, respectively).
He is Tesla shill who earned 120k USD in Tesla stock sales without disclosing it while he was holding it, but later bragging about money he made on video.
It will be interesting how this develops. Right now EVs are just starting to become affordable. I wonder what would happen, once they reach the second hand market. What about people who live in apartments with only street parking available? Cars are parked bumper to bumper. Will there be a charging dock every 2 meters on every single street?
Majority of housing in the US is single family homes. Some jurisdictions have mandated EV charging installs at multi family/apartments. More can. Tesla places superchargers in lots of places at grocery stores (conveniently allowing you to charge while you shop). Walmart is rolling out charging at thousands of stores. Power is everywhere, this is straightforward to solve for.
20% of EV sales in California this year, so far, are EVs. They are the 4th-5th largest economy in the world. Extrapolate accordingly.
> Walmart already has nearly 1,300 EV fast-charging stations through a partnership with Electrify America installed across over 280 US retail locations. The new initiative will promote a coast-to-coast network across thousands of Walmart and Sams Club Stores by 2030, according to the retailer.
> With a Walmart store or club located within 10 miles of roughly 90% of Americans, the EV fast-charging network will help increase access to affordable charging solutions as demand grows.
Indeed. In my city I see plenty of Teslas parked on street parking with no charging connected. People just use the charging at grocery stores, downtown parking, their apartment building and seem to manage fine.
Charging is slower than gas but the charging locations also seem to be more abundant which maybe balances out the time spent.
You don't even need fast charging at some locations. 120V 20A outlets are sufficient at say, long term airport parking, as you'll charge to full over days before returning to your vehicle (and can get ~40-50 miles of range per 24 hours charging). Match charge rate infra to dwell time. Longer dwell = less infra needed as you can slow charge. Not every charging location needs to be able to draw MWs of current on demand.
> Majority of housing in the US is single family homes. Some jurisdictions have mandated EV charging installs at multi family/apartments. More can. Tesla places superchargers in lots of places at grocery stores (conveniently allowing you to charge while you shop)
The US is so backward on EVs it can't even agree on a plug standard for fast charging and there's nothing convenient about incompatible chargers.
If the US wants to be serious about EVs then all chargers must charge all brands all the time on a common plug standard. Tesla's goofy "magic dock" is a half step available on some US Tesla chargers. It would be much better if Tesla switched to CCS type 1 Combo altogether in the US.
The European Teslas are better cars purely because they're on the common plug standard and can charge on any charger with no adapters.
There will be edge cases not covered. Fortunately, society and the economy are very good at adjusting to them. Buildings that don't offer charging stations will eventually be unable to find tenants unless they do something about it. They will find options.
I think the incentives are well-structured for both public utilities and private industry to offer solutions for EV charging for apartment dwellers. A power connection with app-based billing (or something) on most streets seems perfectly doable. The electricity is probably already right there, relatively simple equipment, relatively easy to manage charging times and speeds for grid stability. I'm excited to see these solutions roll out, but I don't think it's going to be a big hurdle at all.
> Will there be a charging dock every 2 meters on every single street?
This exists on my street (residential neighbourhood in London) right now! Some of them are coming out of lampposts, others sprout from the floor. It's just a pilot scheme, so this doesn't exist in many places in the UK yet, but it seems to work pretty well. And the works to put them in didn't take very long.
> Right now EVs are just starting to become affordable.
We're lucky ("lucky") that the bar for affordable changed a whole bunch in the last few years. Used ICE cars getting wildly more expensive has made EVs seem like a less-terrible deal.
I think the biggest gain is actually EV in commercial vehicles. Like delivery vans, construction vans and work vans in the bigger cities. Those vans are quieter, NEVER IDLES!!!, less polluting, and don't required 300 miles range (I read average miles driven is 75 miles per day), usually return to shops where they can be charged. Given the right incentive and competitive pricing, I definitely see a huge win there both in global warming and quality of life in neighborhoods.
Work vans and cargo vans are two of the best markets here, since work vans spend a lot of time parked at jobsites and cargo vans spend a lot of time parked loading/unloading. Ford has even had some brilliant marketing on their electric transit: it's got an inverter built in, so you can just plug your tools into the van.
Issues are the same as always, though: up-front sticker shock, and even at the too-high up-front prices, they just can't manufacture enough of them to meet demand. That type of incentive can help with the former, but have a limited effect on the latter. This is why some of these new battery technologies are so exciting, even though we all know most of them won't pan out.
Just to add on, many of these vehicles actually get a lot more daily mileage than a there-and-back commuter. Their effective usage can be much much higher, which makes any efficiency/pollution savings proportionally more prevalent.
People buy long range cars not for commutes but because they want to be able to go on trips. If we can right-size EV's for commercial usage, the up front expense might be lessened even more.
Serious question, how would we charge these new high density batteries? Just to charge our current EV's, we need to run dedicated circuits at max capacity and it still takes a couple hours. Are we going be running 1000v circuits in our homes? How do we upgrade the local grids to have this amperage in each home? I'm not an EE, but are our current batteries just poor at "absorbing" this energy while our chargers just waste tons? While these new solid state batteries will hold it all? There's high power fast chargers, but I want to come home and plug in my car after work.
It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity.
ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is.
In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient. Simply mean we need to spin it more, and with more energy.
We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more?
It really depends where your energy comes from. If your energy comes from dams/solar/wind, those have low impacts and can be an efficient way to "wind up your spring" but they generally aren't extremely reliable and cannot power an entire city of EVs. If your energy is from coal, those are horribly inefficient. They run around 33% efficency [0].
All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else.
I like the idea of EV. There's many pros, but far too many cons still. And it's not the cars fault. It's already maximizing what it can do with what it can get.
Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal.
It seems like EV is a nice option for rich people at the moment but if the majority switch over, the concept really falls on its face.
Although, high capacity cell phone/laptop batteries would be pretty sweet. However, we already have problems with phones being pretty dangerous.
I love the idea of solar panels, and being fully independent without reliance on government systems. Not to mention, the sun hitting your roof is energy you don't even want. Why not convert that back into electricity?
But that price tag is brutal. I assume to solar panel your roof would be around $20k+. Plus the price of an EV. These aren't items you can really buy used either. Old/weak EV batteries aren't "repairable" like an old car is.
It just comes back to my point of it being a nice luxury for rich people. I keep my budget for my vehicles at $5k max. I will never see a new/used EV & solar panel system for that price.
We do 95+% of our charging at home on 120VAC at 12 amps, which is about 1500 watts. For our mileage use we're charging perhaps 75% of the time.
I found at 1200W panel on Amazon for less than $400.
Various realities will substantially increase that number, but it's still not too expensive just to solar charge your car at home if you don't have a substantial commute.
Do you only recharge during the day? How do you think that solar energy gets to your car at night? You rely on the network to consume your solar power during the day AND charge your car at night.
Average commute pre-pandemic was 40mi. Two cars x 40mi round trip is a low enough draw to charge overnight with no rewiring of anything - grid draw is already much lower an night anyway. Mostly this is a grid issue of providing night time power. Ideally as storage offsets from daytime renewable generation.
For a commute of 40mi, yeah it makes sense. I've always liked the idea of EV for short commutes. But we're talking about high density batteries to fix the range issue.
An EV city would probably flip to high draw at night, when everyone charges. It would be like your whole neighborhood turning on a welder on max settings for 2 hours. You could probably turn down the fast charging to slow charging over night (so you can spare the grid) if you only commute 40mi but if they're talking about high density batteries you won't be doing a slow charge when you drain it. Especially in the case of semis/work equipment/planes, you will need that fast-fast-fast charger to charge your new high density batteries at the same rate.
40 miles is a long commute, most people commute less.
People who commute longer can still easily charge their cars overnight. Since most commutes are less than 40mi, we don't need to design the grid for an average over 40mi.
We don't need to design for the draw for fast-charging for everyone, just for those that need it. What we will likely find is that temporary storage at sites to allow for short, super high power draw will solve that problem.
And along interstates, if we build new, necessary transmission along that existing right or way, we will be able to tap into massive power easily.
What's more likely is that these sites with fleets of vehicles will become fleets of batteries, that can be charged when energy is cheap, and perhaps even feed back into the grid when it's profitable to do so.
Don't forget your gas bill. My 2013 truck gets 13 MPG. An EV plugged into my house with 100 KWH costs about $14 to fully recharge -- roughly 3 gallons (39 miles!) of gas' worth.
What is your cost per mile? My 2017 Honda Accord Hybrid is running at 9 cents per mile at current gas prices ($3.30 per gallon) and that is purely city driving. Maybe 6 cents per mile on the highway.
If the biggest problem is energy distribution, then we've won. Sure, it's not an easy problem, but it's a problem we've solved in the past. Yes, EV's will require grid expansion, but it's a similar problem in terms of scale and rate as the adoption of air conditioning.
Every year you hear about the rolling black outs in California[0][1]. It gets bad with heat waves and AC systems running. An AC unit is no where near the power draw of a fast charger.
Average AC power use is 8-27 kWh per day. Average milage is 38 miles per day. At 4 miles per kWh, that's 9.5 kWh.
Numbers get even better if you use kW per neighborhood rather than kWh, since charging is well distributed and mostly happens off-peak and AC use is concentrated during peak periods.
Why would that be the case? When people are at work, the power usage will drop but then spike when they come back. They get home, plug in the EV, turn on the stove/microwave, lights, turn on/up the AC. The power spikes are directly corelated to people being at home. Even if you schedule your EV to charge at night, your AC doesn't stop working because youre sleeping. This applies to the entire neighborhood.
Electricity is expensive in California. Virtually all EV owners will be taking advantage of the cheaper off peak rates when air conditioners don't need to offset the sun's heat.
> Just to charge our current EV's, we need to run dedicated circuits at max capacity and it still takes a couple hours
No, you can use a standard clothes dryer hookup and charge overnight. You can even arrange it so that the car charger only consumes power when other high-powered appliances are not (e.g. water heater, dryer, stove).
> It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity.
They may not be "the" bottleneck, but they definitely are one of them. With increased density comes either longer range or lighter vehicles. The lighter the vehicle, the more efficient it becomes.
> ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is.
So you do understand why denser battery packs are useful then? Also, ICE is not a "rotational energy" and more or less than "EV" is. I don't understand why this is included.
> In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient.
We didn't make the spring bigger. We made it smaller and lighter and got the same output. That is more efficient.
> We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more?
Yes, we no longer have to improve efficiency in the motor itself. It's already many times more efficient than an ICE.
> All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else.
And yet, after all those transformations and power losses, an EV is still a net gain in efficiency in most cases. An ICE sends about 20% of the energy to the wheels. An EV triples that in the worst case. This means the infrastructure that you get your energy from can lose a lot along the way and you still end up net positive. And it concentrates further efficiency improvements. That abstraction is huge.
> Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal.
This is also something we all need to keep in mind. You continuing to drive that truck is a benefit to the environment. I'm not trying to say you should scrap it and go get an EV. But for someone who doesn't own any vehicle, choosing an EV today is better than going with a new combustion car.
>No, you can use a standard clothes dryer hookup and charge overnight.
These are also high power, special circuits. The outlet your TV is plugged into isn't near that power level. Most appliances run off 110v.
>With increased density comes either longer range or lighter vehicles. The lighter the vehicle, the more efficient it becomes.
Yeah, that's certainly an inefficiency. Not as big of an issue to its power source inefficiency. Heavy EVs aren't it's main flaw.
>So you do understand why denser battery packs are useful then? Also, ICE is not a "rotational energy" and more or less than "EV" is. I don't understand why this is included.
I should have said "it uses an extreme dense form of energy". You can make bigger springs on a wind up car, but you need a better source of energy to wind it up. Gas goes from, "fuel -> combustion -> rotational energy". There's too many steps to go from "coal -> rotational energy" to even list. All of which, have losses.
>We didn't make the spring bigger. We made it smaller and lighter and got the same output. That is more efficient.
Sure, but doesn't fix the real issue of production and transportation. The weight is a lesser issue.
>Yes, we no longer have to improve efficiency in the motor itself. It's already many times more efficient than an ICE.
In a small scope, yes. In the whole picture, no. There's no more efficiency gain on the EV. That's it. It's at it's max efficiency and the only way to improve its efficiency is to redesign the entire system and create new technology to produce and transport electricity. Mean while, ICE is still getting improvements such as the Freevalve [0]. Not to mention how much more efficient diesel is compared to gas.
>And yet, after all those transformations and power losses, an EV is still a net gain in efficiency in most cases. An ICE sends about 20% of the energy to the wheels. An EV triples that in the worst case. This means the infrastructure that you get your energy from can lose a lot along the way and you still end up net positive. And it concentrates further efficiency improvements. That abstraction is huge.
Depends on your source. If you have wind powering your EV from a turbine, you generally don't care about the losses as much since it's all "free" anyways. Your EV is still wind powered though, it's no different than compacting that wind and using it to blow you down the street. It would take A LOT of wind to do that, so does generating electricity out of it. If your source of power is coal, you start at 66% loss, then 8-15% for powerlines, then you got charger losses, DC-AC losses, drive train losses. It's not as efficient as you think. You cannot create more power than you put in, no matter how much you try. Don't forget how much more efficient diesel is as well.
> In a small scope, yes. In the whole picture, no. There's no more efficiency gain on the EV. That's it. It's at it's max efficiency and the only way to improve its efficiency is to redesign the entire system and create new technology to produce and transport electricity. Mean while, ICE is still getting improvements such as the Freevalve [0]. Not to mention how much more efficient diesel is compared to gas.
I'm focused here on tons of CO₂ per mile driven. After a century of eeking out improvements in ICE efficiency, it's still far below what we're doing with EVs. Unless you think the Freevalve is going to literally double efficiency, it's not a replacement for electric cars.
Only in the most extreme places in the US (West Virginia, Wyoming, Missouri) does the EV advantage start to wane. And even in those places, it still beats gasoline!
Burning coal for the electricity gets you 66%. Line losses and charging losses can cut that in half, and you're still beating the gasoline by a huge margin. Especially if you also ignore the costs of extracting, refining, and transporting all that fuel.
Sorry, misread. So the worst case is roughly par with an ICE, and the average case is much better.
I plugged in an old EV (2012 Model S) and a Wyoming ZIP code to the DOE's calculator¹, and I'm getting half the CO₂. 220 g/mi for the Tesla, and 410 g/mi for the new gasoline car.
I'm sure you can find an electrical outlet somewhere in the heart of coal country that fares worse for the EV, but that's not really helpful for the general analysis here. If you find yourself reliant on pure coal for your electricity, then you have a good individual use-case to remain on ICE. But for the vast majority of drivers in the U.S., EVs are tremendously more efficient than ICE when weighing CO₂ emissions per mile.
Biggest battery on a Tesla Model Y is 81 kwh. To charge fully in 8 hours you need 10kw of power. Sounds like a lot. Central AC is about 4kw. An electric stove is 3kw, and another 3kw for the electric oven. A microwave is 1kw. Can you run your ac, oven, stove and microwave at the same time? If so, you have more than enough to charge an electric car. And that's if you drive 330 miles per day. If you drive 36 like the average driver, you can charge your car for the same amount of power as running your AC for 2 hours / day. Power just isn't an issue.
It possibly could work, but we would be pushing our system beyond its already maxed out limit. We can hardly handle AC units in the summer. Imagine your entire neighborhood has their AC systems cycling. While stoves/microwaves come on (because people come home from work and cook food), then everyone decided to run an Arc welder in their garage at full power for 2 hours. It's a big issue of timing. If you split up these actions and only do some at a time, you can make it work. Barely. But in reality these power draws are corelated.
These high density batteries are going to allow you to have the same range with fewer batteries. Most Americans will find an upper bound of 500 miles to be pretty reasonable for a car. Most American's don't drive 500 miles per day and thus won't be charging a full battery pack every day.
You should consider upgrading your car solely for the fact that newer cars are significantly safer in crashes.
The ICE will probably go the way of the Stanley Steamer for cars and trucks in the relatively near future. Those fossil-fueled steam engines were surprisingly capable, incidentally:
> "A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record (127 mph or 204 km/h) was not broken by any automobile until 1911" (wiki)
I really doubt the analysis of Munro when they praise the Tesla 4680 as it seems a failure compared to the cell to pack batteries of CATL and BYD that have better pack density, thermal and price. He seems to be very biased for Tesla.
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[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 200 ms ] threadhttps://omny.fm/shows/odd-lots/what-so-many-people-get-wrong...
They also cite the Jevons paradox in a discussion of the possible counterintuitive outcomes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
The only valid argument is a quantitative one, and in that regime, EVs powered with a tiny fraction of coal, like the grid in Germany, are a massive win.
But I will say that I'm not surprised to see yet another pro-nuclear, anti-other-clean-tech take. These two things seem to go hand in hand.
Most of the lithium needed for electric vehicles is going to be mined and that is not an environmental friendly process.
No one's talking about how they're going to power electric vehicles in the United States... It's a ticking time bomb for energy infrastructure in the United States. They should be pursuing everything all at once,not reducing because you always need a backup.
Coal is a minor component of Germany's power, and even if it were bigger, EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal.
And as for lithium being "dirty" have you bothered to even compare it to other sources of mining? Such as for the massive amount of stew that goes into cars? Or the absolutely massive amounts of waste and destruction that happens to extract oil to power cars?
Citing "environmental damage" but not acknowledging right away that it's far far far less than the alternatives is simply playing rhetorical games.
We must be far more logical and realistic and pragmatic if we want to take care of the environment. Above all, factuality is important.
> More than a third (36.3%) of the electricity produced and fed into the grid in Germany in the third quarter of 2022 came from coal-fired power plants (third quarter of 2021: 31.9%).
https://www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_518_433.html
And that number is from before the last nuclear reactors were turned off.
Yeah, I suggest you start posting some facts because that's quite a claim. Lithium uses a f** load of water to be mined, more so than copper more so than gold or zinc.
(Water Use in Industries of the Future: Mining Industry" by the U.S. Department of Energy)
The water footprint of lithium production" by M. Northey, T. Mudd, and D. Werner, published in ScienceDirect: This research article provides a detailed analysis of the water requirements for various forms of lithium mining, including both brine-based and hard rock mining. The authors estimate that the water footprint of lithium production can range from 100 to 20,000 liters of water per kilogram of lithium, depending on the specific extraction method used.
"EVs are a big win on pollution even when largely powered by coal." This is a common misconception because the power generation for these cars has to come from somewhere... If the power generation for these cars is coal or oil where that energy is being generated is polluting those people. You are correct that it is way better for the environment in terms of driving emissions, but the emissions used to generate the power are often ignored and unless it's done, the healthy mix of alternatives such as wind, hydro, solar geothermal and nuclear, it's absolutely Ludacris suggest that EVs are cleaner without taking into account where the power is being generated.
So prices currently look set to rise. Higher oil prices make renewables look relatively more attractive though, so its a bit reflexive
As (if?) likelihood of a demand collapse increases, I imagine some fraction of potential suppliers with ~easy/cheap oil left would have a healthy incentive to open up the supply for as long as it takes to force everyone with ~hard sources to wind down, leaving them to price-set the long-tail?
Hopefully the price of any PoW crypto is sufficiently low that it doesn't make marginal economic sense for any players to extract-and-mine?
As EVs get cheaper to buy, and more importantly, to run, the petrol-fueled vehicles start to become uneconomical. As use declines, availability of fuel declines, as petrol stations become more unprofitable. Further encourages EV adoption. Range anxiety now comes to petrol-powered vehicle owners as it is now for EV owners, further incentivizing the switch.
While the general impression is that this will be gradual, I think it will be a gradual decline, then sudden, as the overall inconvenience and cost levels cross. Then some minor precipitating event changes the overall mindset, and petrol-powered cars become a perceived liability, and those still stuck with them will barely be able to unload them.
As the decline happens, OPEC will surely try to manage the price of oil, but with demand declining, one of two things will happen. To the extent that they keep the price high, they speed the transition away from oil. They are also much more likely to fail, as the US is now a major producer, and has every incentive to work against OPEC. Plus, their friends are gone. Teh car companies figured out in the 2008 price spike that the oil industry is NOT their friend as that economic crash and oil price spike forced them to look over the cliff of doom as auto sales nearly stopped dead. Then we saw Russia's blatant attempt to use their oil & gas supply to blackmail the world into yielding to their genocidal invasion of Ukraine. No rational businessman now thinks that the oil industry is a reliable supply partner, and will cut them out of the equation at the first opportunity. The oil industry and countries may have some good days ahead, but beyond the intermediate term, they are absolutely screwed.
This is of course assuming the current price is somewhat competitive.
(Instead, right now that oil is just more profitable to extract as the consumer price pays for extracting even the more expensive oil.)
No personal bias against EVs, but there are still issues with range for towing/hauling, and longer duration "road trip" style commutes that make it impossible to be "pure EV" on the roads any time soon.
Also, the marine and aviation industries don't have viable EV options in the short term (10 years), same with heavy equipment (CAT, Deere, etc.), this will keep at least enough of a market for gas/diesel engine production that they won't go away.
For marine, it seems that cargo ships could have large solar arrays for energy regeneration, perhaps strapped to their top layer of containers? I think aviation will lean towards hydrogen cells given the need to rapidly refuel and energy density.
Using wind power on the other hand seems like a better fit in this case.
I do not think there is any practical scenario where a vehicle can be self-solar powered for long distance journeys. The energy demand scales up with the size of the vehicle. This is why you don't see EV's with solar panels for primary power (I am aware of some like Fisker that have essentially novelty solar panels). A cargo ship loaded with solar panels would be highly impractical on a number of levels, and would not be able to gather enough energy to make it worthwhile without a massive increase in panel efficiency.
But this don't mean that average Joe transportation (which incidentally makes up 99%ofprivate vehicle travel) cannot be realistically electrified.
Sure, even there people will keep running their classic cars and probably even some sports and muscle cars but for the biggest majority of casual commuters the writing is on the wall. There just is no real upside to sticking with ICEs even today.
That said, the auto market at 50% or 70% EV adoption will still be a big deal! And we might find out that some of the issues that folks see with EVs are solvable and/or aren't that important anyway. For example: the average American summer road trip is under 300 miles, so the range anxiety might be ameliorated by wider availability of faster chargers than are available today. Similarly, we might learn that users of heavy equipment are in the habit of taking breaks during which they could charge their equipment, etc.
Probably what would happen if this was a real concern is they'd just make the gas tanks bigger. It's not that hard to do so.
I'm not sure how to reconcile these figures with the apparently growing average age of the fleet. I suppose it means there are a lot of early deaths for relatively new cars due to accidents and other calamity.
An analogy might be ethanol-free gas. Many motors out there still require it, and you have to go out of your way to find it, and you will pay a premium for it. But it is at least there if you need it.
Very heavy construction and marine equipment is already electric propulsion. The question is what will be the source for that electric. Even if diesel fuel is much more energy dense, IC engines thermodynamically lose a majority of that energy. So the gap to make up is smaller than a superficial look.
With high enough energy density, I suppose it's possible for short haul aviation to go electric. If they can overcome the energy density difficulties, I'm sure it'll be great for reliability and cost. And maybe even noise.
I have serious doubts that it'll ever be feasible for long haul aviation to run on anything but hydrocarbons. Although I suppose it's theoretically possible.
Additionally, solar charging is far easier to get out to a remote jobsite than is diesel. If you've never seen diesel logistics for e.g. remote mines, you'd have no idea. And even for the far north (or far south) where solar is not an option, often they'll have provisions for electricity or alternative methods of generating it on site.
Not at the size/scale you need to recharge and power a fleet of earthmovers and dump trucks. The energy density of diesel fuel is pretty high.
1: https://www.archpaper.com/2018/08/gas-stations-steroids-tota...
I don't think production will ever go away. But I do think that if you hit densities 500wh-1kwh and at a cheaper price, it will be relegated to niches. Maybe that will take 20 years.
s/halt/slow/
For the fuel maybe. Probably not as easy on other components.
So if Jevon's Paradox holds true for transportation as it did for steam power, we may need lots of fossil-fuel electric plants just to meet demand. Maybe that's "temporary", but so was coal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
It seems like small changes in regulations should be easy to accomplish, but it's actually far far harder than inventing entirely new technology and building entire industries around it.
Social change is the hardest change to accomplish, despite it getting the most attention from so many.
I also worry about the pace that you mention, it's unfortunate that social change is so slow. It's also good that we have potential solutions that do not require it.
I think the right framing on this might be to treat it as a "friendly competition". Can urban planning enthusiasts beat the electric car industry at reducing carbon by 2050? Or something like that.
Our system is set up for maximum local control to prevent any non-car infrastructure, but with top-down enforced car infrastructure that's unstoppable.
Local advocacy has been pointless, instead, state level laws that limit cities, and pull back undemocratic local control processes is the way to go.
Nobody pays attention to local politics except a few wealthy homeowners, and so politicians only respond to these very few opinion makers. It's a losing game unless you're in your 60s, retired, and loaded with money. State level legislators have broader constituencies that try to serve every one.
Rapidly changing now
2) Public Transit will benefit immensely from car electrification. Batteries for busses will get better because of investments and economies of scale made for car battery manufacturing.
3) Buildings and cultural habits have generations-long duration. Even the shittiest houses last 100 years. Cars last 10-15 years, so the vehicle stock will be renewed many many times faster than memes like "rebuild our cities"
4) Autonomous EVs will likewise also arrive far sooner than "rebuilding cities". Cruise operates 24/7 in SF. Their "Origin" EV will be the basis for surface-level public transit in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Urry
Lithium-ion batteries were invented by M. Stanley Whittingham [1] and John B. Goodenough [2] who are both still alive (81 and 100 years old, respectively).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Stanley_Whittingham
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Goodenough
https://twitter.com/TheSmokingTire/status/138849456233148416...
So whatever this guy says can be put into ballpark of other Tesla fan-fic videos on YouTube.
20% of EV sales in California this year, so far, are EVs. They are the 4th-5th largest economy in the world. Extrapolate accordingly.
My previous comment on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463224
https://electrek.co/2023/04/06/walmart-to-launch-coast-to-co...
> Walmart already has nearly 1,300 EV fast-charging stations through a partnership with Electrify America installed across over 280 US retail locations. The new initiative will promote a coast-to-coast network across thousands of Walmart and Sams Club Stores by 2030, according to the retailer.
> With a Walmart store or club located within 10 miles of roughly 90% of Americans, the EV fast-charging network will help increase access to affordable charging solutions as demand grows.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-07-29/biden-has... (Biden Has a $5 Billion Plan to Eliminate America's EV Charging Deserts)
https://supercharge.info/map
https://www.plugshare.com/
(scope to your location on above maps)
Charging is slower than gas but the charging locations also seem to be more abundant which maybe balances out the time spent.
The Nissan Leaf owners get longer range than that here I think.
Here has 240v
The US is so backward on EVs it can't even agree on a plug standard for fast charging and there's nothing convenient about incompatible chargers.
If the US wants to be serious about EVs then all chargers must charge all brands all the time on a common plug standard. Tesla's goofy "magic dock" is a half step available on some US Tesla chargers. It would be much better if Tesla switched to CCS type 1 Combo altogether in the US.
The European Teslas are better cars purely because they're on the common plug standard and can charge on any charger with no adapters.
I bet it's a lot closer to 100%.
There will be edge cases not covered. Fortunately, society and the economy are very good at adjusting to them. Buildings that don't offer charging stations will eventually be unable to find tenants unless they do something about it. They will find options.
This exists on my street (residential neighbourhood in London) right now! Some of them are coming out of lampposts, others sprout from the floor. It's just a pilot scheme, so this doesn't exist in many places in the UK yet, but it seems to work pretty well. And the works to put them in didn't take very long.
We're lucky ("lucky") that the bar for affordable changed a whole bunch in the last few years. Used ICE cars getting wildly more expensive has made EVs seem like a less-terrible deal.
https://youtu.be/T71cVhxG_v4 https://youtu.be/5r-yN8SugWM https://youtu.be/_8YClwsWTyU https://youtu.be/tnNqBgOeCUQ
Might be a few things to iron out...
Batteries that store vast amounts of potential energy are a fire risk, duh!
Just like tanks of petroleum.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-electric-vehicles-involve...
Issues are the same as always, though: up-front sticker shock, and even at the too-high up-front prices, they just can't manufacture enough of them to meet demand. That type of incentive can help with the former, but have a limited effect on the latter. This is why some of these new battery technologies are so exciting, even though we all know most of them won't pan out.
People buy long range cars not for commutes but because they want to be able to go on trips. If we can right-size EV's for commercial usage, the up front expense might be lessened even more.
It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity.
ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is.
In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient. Simply mean we need to spin it more, and with more energy.
We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more?
It really depends where your energy comes from. If your energy comes from dams/solar/wind, those have low impacts and can be an efficient way to "wind up your spring" but they generally aren't extremely reliable and cannot power an entire city of EVs. If your energy is from coal, those are horribly inefficient. They run around 33% efficency [0].
All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else.
I like the idea of EV. There's many pros, but far too many cons still. And it's not the cars fault. It's already maximizing what it can do with what it can get.
Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal.
It seems like EV is a nice option for rich people at the moment but if the majority switch over, the concept really falls on its face.
Although, high capacity cell phone/laptop batteries would be pretty sweet. However, we already have problems with phones being pretty dangerous.
[0] https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems#:~:....
Anecdote alert: The solar panels on my roof generate more power than I use driving my EV. Maybe the future is distributed.
But that price tag is brutal. I assume to solar panel your roof would be around $20k+. Plus the price of an EV. These aren't items you can really buy used either. Old/weak EV batteries aren't "repairable" like an old car is.
It just comes back to my point of it being a nice luxury for rich people. I keep my budget for my vehicles at $5k max. I will never see a new/used EV & solar panel system for that price.
I found at 1200W panel on Amazon for less than $400.
Various realities will substantially increase that number, but it's still not too expensive just to solar charge your car at home if you don't have a substantial commute.
Instability seems to happen at times of peak demand. Which is notable in that it pretty much never overlaps with times I charge my car.
An EV city would probably flip to high draw at night, when everyone charges. It would be like your whole neighborhood turning on a welder on max settings for 2 hours. You could probably turn down the fast charging to slow charging over night (so you can spare the grid) if you only commute 40mi but if they're talking about high density batteries you won't be doing a slow charge when you drain it. Especially in the case of semis/work equipment/planes, you will need that fast-fast-fast charger to charge your new high density batteries at the same rate.
People who commute longer can still easily charge their cars overnight. Since most commutes are less than 40mi, we don't need to design the grid for an average over 40mi.
We don't need to design for the draw for fast-charging for everyone, just for those that need it. What we will likely find is that temporary storage at sites to allow for short, super high power draw will solve that problem.
And along interstates, if we build new, necessary transmission along that existing right or way, we will be able to tap into massive power easily.
What's more likely is that these sites with fleets of vehicles will become fleets of batteries, that can be charged when energy is cheap, and perhaps even feed back into the grid when it's profitable to do so.
That being said, it's not great how gas is very expensive. It's a much better conversion, and wastes less in the whole grand scheme.
[0]https://apnews.com/article/health-california-heat-waves-stre... [1]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/california-heat-blackout-risk-p...
Numbers get even better if you use kW per neighborhood rather than kWh, since charging is well distributed and mostly happens off-peak and AC use is concentrated during peak periods.
No, you can use a standard clothes dryer hookup and charge overnight. You can even arrange it so that the car charger only consumes power when other high-powered appliances are not (e.g. water heater, dryer, stove).
> It just seems like batteries aren't the bottle neck. It's our efficiency to produce and distribute this electricity.
They may not be "the" bottleneck, but they definitely are one of them. With increased density comes either longer range or lighter vehicles. The lighter the vehicle, the more efficient it becomes.
> ICE isn't perfect, but it's an extreme dense form of energy and the output of it rotational energy. Which is exactly what our end goal is.
So you do understand why denser battery packs are useful then? Also, ICE is not a "rotational energy" and more or less than "EV" is. I don't understand why this is included.
> In electricity production we outsource it, then store it. Basically the same concept as winding up a spring loaded toy then letting it go when we want to use it. The spring isn't the source of power, it's just the energy storage. Just because we made the spring bigger and output more doesn't make it more efficient.
We didn't make the spring bigger. We made it smaller and lighter and got the same output. That is more efficient.
> We cannot even make the electric motors more efficient, we already run at 80-90% efficiency. What will we see? 1% more? 2% more?
Yes, we no longer have to improve efficiency in the motor itself. It's already many times more efficient than an ICE.
> All this electricity needs to transported but the power lines waste power, the charger wastes power, the AC-DC converters waste power, the EV motor wastes power. It's so many little losses outsourced to someone else.
And yet, after all those transformations and power losses, an EV is still a net gain in efficiency in most cases. An ICE sends about 20% of the energy to the wheels. An EV triples that in the worst case. This means the infrastructure that you get your energy from can lose a lot along the way and you still end up net positive. And it concentrates further efficiency improvements. That abstraction is huge.
> Personally, the battery pack prices are the biggest killer for me. I drive a 90s Toyota pickup. It's been problem free. I've driven it for years. Unless it rots to the ground, I'll never see a surprise bill in 10-20 years saying I need a new battery pack. My motor could entirely fail and it would be a $500 fix. Not to mention, it's entirely recyclable. People will give me money just for the metal.
This is also something we all need to keep in mind. You continuing to drive that truck is a benefit to the environment. I'm not trying to say you should scrap it and go get an EV. But for someone who doesn't own any vehicle, choosing an EV today is better than going with a new combustion car.
These are also high power, special circuits. The outlet your TV is plugged into isn't near that power level. Most appliances run off 110v.
>With increased density comes either longer range or lighter vehicles. The lighter the vehicle, the more efficient it becomes.
Yeah, that's certainly an inefficiency. Not as big of an issue to its power source inefficiency. Heavy EVs aren't it's main flaw.
>So you do understand why denser battery packs are useful then? Also, ICE is not a "rotational energy" and more or less than "EV" is. I don't understand why this is included.
I should have said "it uses an extreme dense form of energy". You can make bigger springs on a wind up car, but you need a better source of energy to wind it up. Gas goes from, "fuel -> combustion -> rotational energy". There's too many steps to go from "coal -> rotational energy" to even list. All of which, have losses.
>We didn't make the spring bigger. We made it smaller and lighter and got the same output. That is more efficient.
Sure, but doesn't fix the real issue of production and transportation. The weight is a lesser issue.
>Yes, we no longer have to improve efficiency in the motor itself. It's already many times more efficient than an ICE.
In a small scope, yes. In the whole picture, no. There's no more efficiency gain on the EV. That's it. It's at it's max efficiency and the only way to improve its efficiency is to redesign the entire system and create new technology to produce and transport electricity. Mean while, ICE is still getting improvements such as the Freevalve [0]. Not to mention how much more efficient diesel is compared to gas.
>And yet, after all those transformations and power losses, an EV is still a net gain in efficiency in most cases. An ICE sends about 20% of the energy to the wheels. An EV triples that in the worst case. This means the infrastructure that you get your energy from can lose a lot along the way and you still end up net positive. And it concentrates further efficiency improvements. That abstraction is huge.
Depends on your source. If you have wind powering your EV from a turbine, you generally don't care about the losses as much since it's all "free" anyways. Your EV is still wind powered though, it's no different than compacting that wind and using it to blow you down the street. It would take A LOT of wind to do that, so does generating electricity out of it. If your source of power is coal, you start at 66% loss, then 8-15% for powerlines, then you got charger losses, DC-AC losses, drive train losses. It's not as efficient as you think. You cannot create more power than you put in, no matter how much you try. Don't forget how much more efficient diesel is as well.
[0]https://www.freevalve.com/
I'm focused here on tons of CO₂ per mile driven. After a century of eeking out improvements in ICE efficiency, it's still far below what we're doing with EVs. Unless you think the Freevalve is going to literally double efficiency, it's not a replacement for electric cars.
Only in the most extreme places in the US (West Virginia, Wyoming, Missouri) does the EV advantage start to wane. And even in those places, it still beats gasoline!
Burning coal for the electricity gets you 66%. Line losses and charging losses can cut that in half, and you're still beating the gasoline by a huge margin. Especially if you also ignore the costs of extracting, refining, and transporting all that fuel.
No no, it's 33%. 66% gets wasted as heat.
I plugged in an old EV (2012 Model S) and a Wyoming ZIP code to the DOE's calculator¹, and I'm getting half the CO₂. 220 g/mi for the Tesla, and 410 g/mi for the new gasoline car.
I'm sure you can find an electrical outlet somewhere in the heart of coal country that fares worse for the EV, but that's not really helpful for the general analysis here. If you find yourself reliant on pure coal for your electricity, then you have a good individual use-case to remain on ICE. But for the vast majority of drivers in the U.S., EVs are tremendously more efficient than ICE when weighing CO₂ emissions per mile.
[1]: https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?year=2012&vehicleId=...
You should consider upgrading your car solely for the fact that newer cars are significantly safer in crashes.
https://www.electrive.com/tag/solid-state-batteries/
In particular, more on the sodium-ion battery discussed by Munro:
https://www.electrive.com/2023/02/23/hina-launches-sodium-io...
The ICE will probably go the way of the Stanley Steamer for cars and trucks in the relatively near future. Those fossil-fueled steam engines were surprisingly capable, incidentally:
> "A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record (127 mph or 204 km/h) was not broken by any automobile until 1911" (wiki)
"The record high level of finished motor gasoline consumption was about 392 million gallons per day in 2018."[1]
"Petroleum liquids–12.69 kWh/gallon"[2]
So, that's 12.96 * 392 Million kWh/day --> 5.08 Billion kWh/day
Smoothed out to the same rate every hour --> 211 Million kW
"At the end of 2021, the United States had 1,143,757 MW—or about 1.14 billion kW—of total utility-scale electricity generating capacity"[3]
So, in theory, we could run everything, and charge the cars when the demand was lower, at night.
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[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10#:~:text=In...).
[2] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=6#:~:text=Co...
[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
That's a lot of batteries, and that's only if they were perfectly sized, in reality it's going to be 2-10 times as much.
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[1] https://lawnlove.com/blog/lithium-ion-battery-cost/