I remember having a discussion with a few people here on Tildes about the future of alternative energy cars, some people were advocating hard for hydrogen fuel cell cars and referenced these...
I remember having a discussion with a few people here on Tildes about the future of alternative energy cars, some people were advocating hard for hydrogen fuel cell cars and referenced these filling stations as the future of gas stations in America. It seems like that will probably no longer be the case as Shell has now closed them down, probably losing hundreds of millions on the cost of installing the infrastructure.
Hydrogen has many significant hurdles to jump before it begins to approach viability and frankly I don't see it getting there soon enough to be relevant. Especially after this news. While hydrogen...
Hydrogen has many significant hurdles to jump before it begins to approach viability and frankly I don't see it getting there soon enough to be relevant. Especially after this news.
While hydrogen does solve the (tailpipe) emissions problem, it fails to tackle any other problem in a meaningful way while requiring a whole new infrastructure and logistics network.
BEVs solve more problems than hydrogen and solve them better. Plus the hurdles aren't nearly as high.
And as far as long range shipping goes, the clear winners are cargo ships and electrified rail. With final mile delivery via electric trucks, the transportation emissions end up being completely...
And as far as long range shipping goes, the clear winners are cargo ships and electrified rail. With final mile delivery via electric trucks, the transportation emissions end up being completely manageable.
I think long haul trucking can be entirely replaced by better rail networks. Failing that though, something like this seems like a better solution to me.
I think long haul trucking can be entirely replaced by better rail networks. Failing that though, something like this seems like a better solution to me.
The problem in the USA boils down to the issue of sprawl that was enabled by cars and trucks, paired with the current demands for JIT shipping. The degree of amount of rail networks that would...
The problem in the USA boils down to the issue of sprawl that was enabled by cars and trucks, paired with the current demands for JIT shipping. The degree of amount of rail networks that would need built out in order to give it remotely the same responsiveness of long-haul trucking is huge.
Also, frieght trains suuuuccckkk to live near. Sister lives across the street from an old, but still in-use frieght rail line. She's learned to live with 10 minutes of warning whistle blowing at 90db at 10 PM, 12 AM, 2 AM, and 4 AM as it passes through.
Comment box Scope: information, discussion Tone: neutral Opinion: a little Sarcasm/humor: no Train horns are only necessary in places with at-grade crossings. In theory, a fully access-limited...
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Scope: information, discussion
Tone: neutral
Opinion: a little
Sarcasm/humor: no
Train horns are only necessary in places with at-grade crossings. In theory, a fully access-limited track does not require the train to make any noise at all because it has no reason to alert anyone of its presence. But depending on the intersection, retrofitting grade separation can cost $5 million or $50 million.
I can't say I'm especially fond of the other mechanical noises freight trains make when traveling along a poorly maintained section of track (that is to say, quite a lot of track). Rattling, screeching, clanking. But to be honest, the literally non-stop sound of truck traffic is not any better.
Like I said, old track. My sister's home used to be a brothel during Reconstruction for the mining town. It's fun facts like that that make ancient homes worth living in. I figure it'd be much...
Like I said, old track. My sister's home used to be a brothel during Reconstruction for the mining town. It's fun facts like that that make ancient homes worth living in.
I figure it'd be much closer to that $50 million, for a very small town. They thankfully do things better in more populous areas. Part of the problem is just exacerbated by a tired conductor just wailing on the horn for 10 minutes instead of minding the 3 spots its needed in that stretch.
And, horn aside, I generally agree. There's a reason land by the interstate is dirt cheap.
What's the long-term, serious solution for how long it takes to charge car batteries? I always thought of this as a problem that will be solved, eventually, but somehow it's still a thing. I heard...
What's the long-term, serious solution for how long it takes to charge car batteries? I always thought of this as a problem that will be solved, eventually, but somehow it's still a thing. I heard about battery-swapping, is that feasible?
Last I read, battery swapping does not seem to be feasible as the manufacturer trend seems to be achieving space savings in the build by integrating the battery more tightly into the chassis (ex....
Last I read, battery swapping does not seem to be feasible as the manufacturer trend seems to be achieving space savings in the build by integrating the battery more tightly into the chassis (ex. industry pioneer Tesla), which is in contrast to previous “flat”, large battery packs fully located in a single rectangle towards the bottom, which might’ve enabled something like this.*
Also, I view charging times as a solved non-issue, to be frank. Anything under 15 minutes – and I’m sure the industry will push this down to like 10 eventually – for 80% of the capacity is completely fine, even for long distance routes.
Sure, there will always be one single traveller who never takes a break in 500 miles of road driven, and drives those distances on a weekly basis too, but that’s borderline dangerous (full, actual zero-supervision self-driving won’t be a thing for at least two, three more decades either, if ever).
The real bottleneck in my opinion is the availability of functioning, high-performance charging stations, plus accurate, real-time information about operational status (stall broken) or availability (stall in use/all stalls reserved for the next 45 minutes). But battery technology has increased in performance so drastically over the past 10ish years, while battery prices per kWh have fallen pretty massively, I’m not too worried about that aspect.
Finally, as I try to in- and conclude with every of my comments on the electrification of cars/transport industry: This does not influence the fact western societies need to become less car-dependent, or absolve them of action now, if it’s about adoption-positive news.
*P.S. Even back then with the “simpler” style of battery blocks, it was never going to happen – imagine the effort of propping up hydrogen stations like in this article, in sufficient numbers, everywhere there are currently cars, but for a machine with presumably robot arms, precise and smart enough to use screws or some other also secure mechanism to remove any car make and model’s expensive batteries? Yeah nah. They couldn’t even agree on a charger format, so there might have been a proprietary solutions for 1-2 vendors, after copious amounts of R&D costs which’d have gotten passed on to the purchasing consumers, for a process which might’ve saved half the time, five versus ten minutes or whatever. I tend to classify that as a pipe dream from back when charging times were actually an issue for anyone not an EV/tech enthusiast.
I could only really see battery swaps being viable for long-haul trucking, but even then it'd probably be reserved for autonomous vehicles. That's if they could do swaps quicker than it'd take to...
I could only really see battery swaps being viable for long-haul trucking, but even then it'd probably be reserved for autonomous vehicles. That's if they could do swaps quicker than it'd take to just recharge the battery.
Interesting, it seems to be the opposite. Small vehicles are where battery swaps are practical, not large vehicles. See the network in Taiwan. Battery swapping is just always going to be a really...
Interesting, it seems to be the opposite. Small vehicles are where battery swaps are practical, not large vehicles. See the network in Taiwan.
Battery swapping is just always going to be a really expensive process. A single human is not going to be able to lift and maneuver the battery for an ordinary electric car, let alone one for a semi truck. So instead, you need some a very robust, very adaptable, very complex robot to do the job instead. But scooter batteries are small enough to be easily lifted by one person. So no expensive robot needed.
Now, I suppose you could in theory power a car with this sort of small user-replaceable battery. But it would be pretty silly. Some googling suggests those scooter packs weigh 9 kg and have a capacity of 1.3 kwHr. A Tesla 3 has a capacity of about 58 KwHr. So if you were willing to replace 40-50 9 kg cartridges, I suppose a hot-swap car of battery packs like this would be possible. Plus, you get a workout whenever you need to fill up the tank!
My logic is that, for passenger vehicles, the recharge time is likely faster than the time it would take to physically swap a battery. I could see a potential future where autonomous EV container...
My logic is that, for passenger vehicles, the recharge time is likely faster than the time it would take to physically swap a battery. I could see a potential future where autonomous EV container trucks are standardized enough that they could pull into a robotic garage, the old battery drops out and a new one drops in.
Here's an example of a robot-swapped BEV battery in action. I remember Tesla demoing something like that many, many years ago and then quietly dropping it. It solves the quick-recharge and (to...
I just looked at some random website, which said a supercharger takes 0.27 hours to charge a model 3. My diesel takes about 6 minutes to fill, and i get over 700 miles. What is the timeframe for...
I just looked at some random website, which said a supercharger takes 0.27 hours to charge a model 3.
My diesel takes about 6 minutes to fill, and i get over 700 miles.
What is the timeframe for that refuel time to distance option availability on electric?
Edit: granted driving 700 miles straight is impractical. But: That half hour is only for a supercharger station, which are way fewer than other, slower stations. And you may have to drive extra to find one. And, if everyone was driving full electric, you need like 5x-10x or more the number of stations as we have pumps currently.
That's the wrong measure to use. At 700 miles you're stretching the limits of the human body more than any vehicle or refueling infrastructure. It's illegal for truckers to drive that long without...
That's the wrong measure to use.
At 700 miles you're stretching the limits of the human body more than any vehicle or refueling infrastructure. It's illegal for truckers to drive that long without a break. And coincidentally, if you stop for a 30-minute health break you've recharged that Tesla at the same time.
I don't think that's really an issue though, is it? I doubt there's many people that would even want to drive 700 miles without stopping. My car can go around 500 miles on a tank, and despite...
I don't think that's really an issue though, is it? I doubt there's many people that would even want to drive 700 miles without stopping.
My car can go around 500 miles on a tank, and despite doing a lot of long distance driving, I've never sat in the car and driven for 8 hours straight without stopping. That doesn't seem comfortable or safe.
I usually stop for 15 or so minutes every couple of hours already to stretch my legs and maybe grab a snack. I think once you're at the 300+ mile range, range sort of ceases to be much of an issue as long as the charging infrastructure exists, and you can get charging down to 15ish minutes.
Its not just that you have to stop more frequently, you are at the mercy of the charger locations. When you drive an ICE, you know a fill is going to be 6 minutes, so you dont care where it is,...
Its not just that you have to stop more frequently, you are at the mercy of the charger locations. When you drive an ICE, you know a fill is going to be 6 minutes, so you dont care where it is, gas stations are ubiquitous and the fill time is short. You fill and then go do whatever else you want to do. Driving a gas vehicle gives you freedom to travel where you want, when you want, stopping where you want and when you want.
An EV forces your route and your time for each stop: you must take this route and you must stop here and you must stay this long or the car can't continue. That's a big step backward in the "freedom of the open road" I think people buy a car to make travel more convenient not less.
The thing that seems to be missing from a lot of this discussion is that, with an electric car, you don't usually charge from 0-100%. In fact, for road trips, I believe it's more time-efficient if...
The thing that seems to be missing from a lot of this discussion is that, with an electric car, you don't usually charge from 0-100%. In fact, for road trips, I believe it's more time-efficient if you're along a route that has plenty of good chargers (which, unfortunately, at this point basically means you're driving a Tesla) to just charge from 10-80%. Battery charging really slows down when you get towards the end of the total capacity.
How Much Range Does a Fast-Charger Add in a Half-Hour?
Generally speaking, when an EV battery's SoC is below 10 percent or above 80 percent, a DC fast charger's charging rate slows considerably; this optimizes battery life and limits the risk of overcharging. This is why, for example, manufacturers often claim that fast-charging will get your EV's battery to "80 percent charge in 30 minutes." Some vehicles have a battery preconditioning procedure that ensures the battery is at optimum temperature for rapid charging while en route to a DC fast charger. So long as you utilize the in-car navigation system to get you there, that is.
Maximum Charging and Driving Range
That last 20 percent of charge may double the time you're hooked up to the fast charger. The time-consuming affair of completely filling the battery via a DC charger makes these units best utilized on those days when you are traveling a long distance and need additional electricity to reach your destination. Charging at home overnight–sometimes called top-up charging–is a better solution for getting the juice you'll need for daily, local driving.
On my volt, even with its very slow “fast” charging, it gives time estimates for charging as to how long it will take to get to 80% because of this. I don’t need to use them very often but I can...
On my volt, even with its very slow “fast” charging, it gives time estimates for charging as to how long it will take to get to 80% because of this. I don’t need to use them very often but I can swear one of them that I used had actually stopped charging at 80%, presumably as a way to encourage you to leave and let others use the charging terminal.
You're right that the refueling duration for an electric car these days is less good than that for an ICE engine, but it's not so bad as to outweigh the other advantages, to me at least. I've gone...
You're right that the refueling duration for an electric car these days is less good than that for an ICE engine, but it's not so bad as to outweigh the other advantages, to me at least. I've gone on a few long trips in a model 3, indeed you have to stop and wait and that's annoying, but the trip as a whole went just fine.
The vast vast majority of all car traffic is not long distance. 95% of personal car trips are less than 30 miles, I imagine that number climbs closer to 99% when you get to 250 miles. Charge times...
The vast vast majority of all car traffic is not long distance. 95% of personal car trips are less than 30 miles, I imagine that number climbs closer to 99% when you get to 250 miles. Charge times are only an issue when someone needs to drive more than 250~ miles at a time, which is rare for most people. For those who do need to do regular long hauls, a 20-30 minute break every 4 hours is probably a worthwhile trade for the reduced cost of filling up.
I'll caveat that a little bit. Charge times are an issue for other situations; namely the one where you live somewhere with parking that doesn't have charging infrastructure. I think it would be...
I'll caveat that a little bit. Charge times are an issue for other situations; namely the one where you live somewhere with parking that doesn't have charging infrastructure. I think it would be doable to live somewhere like that with an EV, but it would require you topping up at superchargers or work regularly. Charging times is definitely a factor there too.
The solution to this is to require landlord to install chargers in all of their parking spaces. Really, chargers aren't that expensive. If you rent, your landlord could add chargers to every spot...
The solution to this is to require landlord to install chargers in all of their parking spaces. Really, chargers aren't that expensive. If you rent, your landlord could add chargers to every spot in the lot and expect you to cover all the cost. A wall-mounted level 2 home charger can be had for $400. If you spread the cost out over five years, that's $8.33 per month. And this is the cost if the tenants need to pay 100% of the cost and no subsidies of any kind are available.
Charging in apartments really seems to be a trivial issue to solve. You might need to make the cost higher for the cost of installation. But if you're installing a bunch of them at once, those costs decrease. Maybe $1000 per spot? The point is that if you can afford an electric car, you can also afford the tiny bit extra rent increase to cover the cost of a charger.
Alternatively, we could pass a bill and take care of the problem in one fell swoop. There are about 23 million apartments in the US. We could wire all of them up with chargers for $23 billion or so. Honestly, this is cheap enough that we should just do it and be done with it. Have some program where if anyone in an apartment building wants to charge their car in a lot, they can apply and the landlord will be required to install chargers. The cost will be covered by a grant, but the apartment owner doesn't get a say in it. If any of you tenants request a charger, your whole building gets chargers installed on Uncle Sam's dime.
Comment box Scope: response Tone: neutral Opinion: yes Sarcasm/humor: no Good point, but $1400 total would still only bring the five-year per-charger cost to $23.30/month. While non-zero, that is...
Comment box
Scope: response
Tone: neutral
Opinion: yes
Sarcasm/humor: no
Good point, but $1400 total would still only bring the five-year per-charger cost to $23.30/month. While non-zero, that is an amount many (perhaps most) automobile owners would consider acceptable or even negligible. And as stated, once power is in a particular area, it would be cheap to connect multiple EVSEs.
Is that the cost of installing just one? Because that sounds to me like the cost of hiring an electrician to install just one of these in your garage. But these installs are done in bulk. You do...
Is that the cost of installing just one? Because that sounds to me like the cost of hiring an electrician to install just one of these in your garage.
But these installs are done in bulk. You do an entire building's worth of parking spots at once. If you need to dig a trench, you don't dig a trench for just one parking spot. You did a trench down the length of the lot and wire up every spot in one go.
It's the same thing for everything in the building trades. A tract home builder can wire up their houses for far cheaper per house than it would cost you to hire an electrician to rewire your house (even if you stripped it down to the studs first.) You gain a lot of efficiencies when working at scale.
As u/coolmos said once you have to wire in dozens of them, the cost is significant. The charger isn't the only issue. The major issue is that you can service a normal suite with 100 amp service...
As u/coolmos said once you have to wire in dozens of them, the cost is significant. The charger isn't the only issue. The major issue is that you can service a normal suite with 100 amp service and 100 amp wire. But if you are going to put in an EVSE for every suite, 100 amps is not enough. So now every suite needs 200 amp service on an upgraded panel and wiring. eg. 100a wire is $18/metre, 200a wire is $52/metre. Panels are 50% to 80% more for 200a.
My friend just installed a 1200a service to a building and just the switch gear and 3 breakers was $20,000 without labor. That's just the parts to get the wiring to the building. Then you have to do the wiring to each panel and each EVSE and add a significantly higher amount for the labor.
Then the question for the builder becomes, will there be enough buyers with EVs to justify adding that cost onto the financing? Maybe.
On a new build this is a reasonable cost/benefit question. To retrofit an existing building? Not likely that it would be worth it financially to upgrade.
The problem with that is that it would require a significant investment that landowners would generally not be willing to shoulder. If they were they would have done it by now. The only hope for...
The problem with that is that it would require a significant investment that landowners would generally not be willing to shoulder. If they were they would have done it by now. The only hope for such a thing would be legislation to force it, and I don’t think there will be enough momentum to do that for quite a while.
Ezra Klein of the New York Times talked about this on his podcast and in his column a few times last year. I'm struggling to find the exact conversation in the podcast, but this bit from his...
Ezra Klein of the New York Times talked about this on his podcast and in his column a few times last year. I'm struggling to find the exact conversation in the podcast, but this bit from his column sums up part of the problem:
The center of our decarbonization strategy is an almost unimaginably large buildup of wind and solar power. To put some numbers to that: A plausible path to decarbonization, modeled by researchers at Princeton, sees wind and solar spanning up to 590,000 square kilometers — which is roughly equal to the land mass of Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Ohio, Rhode Island and Tennessee put together. “The footprint is very, very large, and people don’t really understand that,” Danny Cullenward, co-author of “Making Climate Policy Work,” told me.
The electrical infrastructure of the United States is woefully unprepared for us to convert all of our transportation needs over to BEVs. Doubly so if we want all of it to be powered by clean energy. (Though there are environmental benefits even from BEVs charged by "dirty" electricity.)
He touched on it again here, and I think it bears quoting.
The environmental movement is dealing with a bit of dog-that-caught-the-car confusion these days. Hundreds of billions of dollars are pouring into infrastructure for clean energy, and decarbonization targets that were once out of the question are being etched into law. That’s particularly true in California, which has committed to being carbon neutral and to running its electricity grid on 100 percent clean energy by 2045.
Hitting these goals requires California to almost quadruple the amount of electricity it can generate — and shift what it now gets from polluting fuels to clean sources. That means turning huge areas of land over to solar farms, wind turbines and geothermal systems. It means building the transmission lines to move that energy from where it’s made to where it’s needed. It means dotting the landscape with enough electric vehicle charging stations to make the state’s proposed ban on cars with internal combustion engines possible. Taken as a whole, it’s a construction task bigger than anything the state has ever attempted, and it needs to be completed at a speed that nothing in the state’s recent history suggests is possible.
California has become notorious not for what it builds but for what it fails to build. And Newsom knows it. “I watched as a mayor and then a lieutenant governor and now governor as years became decades on high-speed rail,” he said. “People are losing trust and confidence in our ability to build big things. People look at me all the time and ask, ‘What the hell happened to the California of the ’50s and ’60s?’”
That's the issue right now with the current infrastructure, not a limiting factor of the technology itself. Ideally we will live in a world with much greater electric vehicle infrastructure...
That's the issue right now with the current infrastructure, not a limiting factor of the technology itself. Ideally we will live in a world with much greater electric vehicle infrastructure investment as sales continue to climb. Change takes time, but I think it's pessimistic to believe that it'll always be this hard to charge your EV where you work/live.
Somewhat reduced cost of filling up. Charging rates continue to climb and it would be foolish to think that once the charging market is cornered (probably by Tesla) that those charge rates won't...
Somewhat reduced cost of filling up. Charging rates continue to climb and it would be foolish to think that once the charging market is cornered (probably by Tesla) that those charge rates won't keep rising to come close to gas costs.
So when taking in the added cost of buying an EV, and in some cases higher insurance, it takes quite a few years to equal the same total cost of ownership.
I would argue gas prices are going to skyrocket over the next few decades as subsidies are reduced/removed and oil gets more difficult to economically pump. The insane investment into renewables...
I would argue gas prices are going to skyrocket over the next few decades as subsidies are reduced/removed and oil gets more difficult to economically pump. The insane investment into renewables will help keep cost of electricity more reasonable hopefully.
That doesnt seem to be bearing out where I live in Alberta. Our price for electricity is only 0.09/kW. However the electrical utility has found ways to add numerous fees and charges onto our...
That doesnt seem to be bearing out where I live in Alberta.
Our price for electricity is only 0.09/kW. However the electrical utility has found ways to add numerous fees and charges onto our electricity bills so now the actual cost per kW is the minor part of the bills.
We run a fairly frugal household but our November bill was still $280. Out of that the actual cost of electricity was only $66. The other $214 was admin, distribution, rider, service, supplier, transmission and distribution fees if you can believe it.
North America is a capitalist economy. If there's a way to hose consumers for more money - especially as they switch to more EVs and less gas vehicles - I have no doubt that electrical utilities will continue to raise fees as high as they can. The only consolation being that you can install solar and charge your own car, thank goodness.
It will always be a thing. The more capacity, the longer it will take to charge. The faster you want to charge it, the higher voltage and/or amperage needs to be used. The higher those go, the...
It will always be a thing. The more capacity, the longer it will take to charge. The faster you want to charge it, the higher voltage and/or amperage needs to be used. The higher those go, the more logistics problems arise.
Plus the faster you charge, the worse it is for the battery.
Is it really a problem though for the majority of car use? In the sense that it really needs to be solved before electric cars can be the dominant type of cars used? I am adding the last bit...
Is it really a problem though for the majority of car use? In the sense that it really needs to be solved before electric cars can be the dominant type of cars used?
I am adding the last bit because I realize there are of course various edge cases for regular car use. Also for transport (delivery fans, trucks, etc) it is a real issue.
Range anxiety is one of the biggest perceived issues with BEV adoption. Electric cars will only be the dominant type of cars used when people are satisfied with the solutions. IMO, that problem is...
Range anxiety is one of the biggest perceived issues with BEV adoption. Electric cars will only be the dominant type of cars used when people are satisfied with the solutions. IMO, that problem is not even close to being solved between generally poor range relative to a gas vehicle and lack of charging infrastructure. It's why even in 2023, less than 1 in 10 cars sold were electric.
IMO, PHEV is a better solution than BEV... or at a minimum, a stepping stone in that direction. I'd love to buy one of those, but there just aren't very many options in that space. So my next vehicle is likely to be ICE (hopefully the last one).
I think cost is the primary issue. EVs cost significantly more up front, sometimes even with government subsidies. Manufacturers haven't really done a good job of illustrating the true costs of...
I think cost is the primary issue. EVs cost significantly more up front, sometimes even with government subsidies.
Manufacturers haven't really done a good job of illustrating the true costs of car ownership of an EV vs ICE car, honestly. When someone is comparison shopping getting a BEV vs an ICE car, they don't have great metrics for what the TCO over the next five years will be. I don't even know myself, but I would imagine not having to pay for gas or oil changes, having far fewer moving parts leading to increased reliability, having regenerative breaking, and running at much more manageable temperatures tips the scales a little bit, but few people really know by how much.
I don't think they illustrate those costs because they're not going to help them sell electric vehicles. I'm going to use the F150 as an example, since that's been making the news that Ford keeps...
I don't think they illustrate those costs because they're not going to help them sell electric vehicles. I'm going to use the F150 as an example, since that's been making the news that Ford keeps cutting back on F150 Lightning production due to softening demand. A base F150 XLT (middle of the road) is $46k. An extended-range Lightning model (nobody wants the short range of the standard one) at the same trim is $70k. Without the rebate (because I don't qualify for it), the cost difference is $24k. At $4/gal for gas and 22 mpg (average between city and highway on that truck), you need to drive 132k miles to make up the up-front cost difference, assuming 100% of your electricity is free. A $50 oil change here and there is a rounding error when you're talking about that kind of price difference, and is probably balanced out by decreased tire life anyway.
Granted, it's not as dramatic for passenger vehicles. A Volvo XC40 (crossover) is $40k for the standard model and $52k for the full electric. But at $12k price difference, $4/gal gas and 26mpg combined, it's still 78k miles until you break even assuming free electricity.
The cost savings of a BEV over a similar ICE vehicle today are overstated, and is why car manufacturers jump through hoops to manipulate numbers to show the savings in the best light, or more often, don't show the eventual-savings at all because that story is very difficult to sell long-term. The price difference between ICE and Electric vehicles needs to close in order for stories about better pricing to actually be effective. It's also why selling people on solar panels for cost savings is often ineffective.
Good comparison. And as you said, thats if your charging is free. Its obviously quite a bit lower at home, but if you're road tripping in that Lightning, the charging costs can be substantial. The...
Good comparison. And as you said, thats if your charging is free. Its obviously quite a bit lower at home, but if you're road tripping in that Lightning, the charging costs can be substantial.
The other unfortunate issue with the Lightning is that it doesnt do well the one thing that people need a truck for - pulling a trailer. Multiple tests show that usable range pulling a holiday trailer is only about 90 miles before needing a charge. That's barely out of town for many city dwellers. And no ones like trying to charge pulling a trailer as there are very few pull thru charge stations so far.
Also particularly damning is when you compare the break-even time to warranties. As you noted, you need to drive the F150 lightning 132k miles before you reach break-even cost. For warranties its...
Also particularly damning is when you compare the break-even time to warranties. As you noted, you need to drive the F150 lightning 132k miles before you reach break-even cost. For warranties its batteries for 8 years or 100,000 miles.. They'll replace your battery if it falls under 70% of its original range, if that occurs before 8 years or 100,000 miles. Meanwhile, the power train warranty is only 5 years/60,000 miles.
Now, there is an argument to be made that electric vehicles require little maintenance and should have very long service lives. And while there is some reason to think that based on the number of moving parts, the warranties really don't reflect this. If these electric cars really are that maintenance free and bulletproof, then shouldn't the new ones come with a 500,000 mile power train warranty or similar? Because currently Ford seems to be arguing that you'll make up the higher cost over time. However, they're not willing to legally and financially stand behind these vehicles long enough to make up that difference.
Gas and oil changes are still only a fraction of the cost differences, though. ICE vehicles are also massively more complex than BEVs, so there is additional cost for the problems that will rise...
Gas and oil changes are still only a fraction of the cost differences, though. ICE vehicles are also massively more complex than BEVs, so there is additional cost for the problems that will rise from that complexity. There are also smaller things like antifreeze and higher brake consumability.
The F150 is also a particularly bad example to compare because it’s possibly the worst EV out there. It’s huge and power hungry with terrible efficiency. The consumption is almost double compared to a Tesla Model 3. It’s very much a show off car built to let people pretend it is good for the environment. It’s not even good for the kinds of stuff you need a truck for!
A very large fraction. The other smaller items are indeed expenses, but we're talking about things that cost a couple hundred bucks every few years / after tens of thousands of miles. It makes no...
Gas and oil changes are still only a fraction of the cost differences, though
A very large fraction. The other smaller items are indeed expenses, but we're talking about things that cost a couple hundred bucks every few years / after tens of thousands of miles. It makes no sense to say that spending $12-24k extra on a BEV is somehow worth it because you save a few hundred dollars on maintenance. My vehicle is 8 years old, has 70k miles and I've done one coolant change and am about to have my first brake pad replacement. Using the math I calculated on the Volvo car, I still wouldn't have made up for the increased upfront costs over the entire lifetime of my vehicle by this point.
Additionally, BEVs are much more expensive to repair, and that fact is reflected in the significantly increased insurance premiums for those vehicles. Let's not forget about the inevitable battery replacements that BEVs will need as well. I'm curious as to what will happen to the EV market in general once the masses who bought them are quoted with $20k battery replacements.
I also realize that the F150 comparison isn't ideal, but it's one that's been in the news a lot lately so it came to mind. I included the Volvo example because they're one of the few manufacturers I could find who had the same exact vehicle in ICE and BEV in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison on the true cost of electrifying a vehicle.
I'll also add here that I'm not anti-EV or anything. I think the technology is cool, and there's a lot to like about them. But I do heavily consider both the financial cost and practicality of a vehicle during purchase, and for my use case, BEV fails both of these compared to ICE. The tech will hopefully only get better, though, and I'm looking forward to a time when the scales on these two platforms are more balanced.
I think you are underestimating the costs of ICE vehicle maintenance and overestimating the cost of maintenance on a BEV, and it’s a result of not considering the entire lifespan. Though yes, the...
I think you are underestimating the costs of ICE vehicle maintenance and overestimating the cost of maintenance on a BEV, and it’s a result of not considering the entire lifespan. Though yes, the fuel costs will obviously be the majority of cost. Oil changes are notably missing from your calculations and are needed with increasing frequency as the vehicle ages and accumulates mileage. Every car comes with a schedule of maintenance, which in some cases may be required to maintain the warranty, but the schedule for BEVs is basically a footnote in comparison to ICE cars.
The necessity of battery changes in EVs is somewhat mythical. For the most part a battery pack is going to be serviceable; you can just replace the cells or modules inside the pack. If you need to replace the whole pack something has gone catistrophically wrong. They don’t generally “fail”; they are much more likely to degenerate into lower capacity. The necessity of replacement is also arguably not real either because batteries ended up preforming much better than expected. My first generation Leaf from 2013 was at around 80% capacity when I sold it about a decade later. Newer cars have improved chemistry and systems to maintain them and will last longer as a result. Some parts of a BEV might be expensive to repair but one should also keep in mind that they are dramatically less likely to need them to begin with, which is why the TCO is still so low.
For what it's worth, I think the current generation of Prius Prime is pretty great. Car and Driver even named it as one of their 10 Best cars last year. My current daily driver is a 2012 Toyota...
IMO, PHEV is a better solution than BEV... or at a minimum, a stepping stone in that direction. I'd love to buy one of those, but there just aren't very many options in that space. So my next vehicle is likely to be ICE (hopefully the last one).
It speaks to the magnitude of the Prius’s reinvention that it took us this long to mention its fuel economy, which is, of course, still superb. Efficiency was once the primary (and sometimes only) reason to buy a Prius, but now it’s more like a delightful Easter egg hidden in a package that appeals on plenty of other merits. The Prius earns an EPA combined rating as high as 57 mpg, and doing our worst—you know, driving the way we drive—we observed 45 mpg in the Prius Limited. We saw 49 MPGe in the Prime, which also returned 33 miles of electric-only range at 75 mph. That could be enough range to realize the promise of fully electric daily driving, depending on your routine, while still allowing spur-of-the-moment 500-mile adventures.
My current daily driver is a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid, but I would love to trade up to the current Prius Prime.
As a car nut, it's kind of crazy to me to see what kinds of cars people by based upon what they prioritize. I hate SUVs for a variety of reasons, but they are super-popular in large part because...
As a car nut, it's kind of crazy to me to see what kinds of cars people by based upon what they prioritize. I hate SUVs for a variety of reasons, but they are super-popular in large part because potential buyers see them as a "car" that can do everything. And that's what people want: something that is capable of doing every possible thing they can think they might ever do with their vehicle. (Case in point: my sister traded in her third generation Toyota Prius for a Highlander because her and her husband are trying to have a second child. Yep, the second baby hasn't even been born yet, but they thought they needed a three-row SUV instead of a hatchback that easily seats five.) The sedan is dying as a type of car because potential buyers don't see it as versatile enough for all of their potential needs.
So it's not surprising that people are afraid to buy BEVs because they don't want to have any sort of limitations if they ever decide to take it on a road trip. Even if that's not a rational concern for their actual needs.
It's like people who buy a pickup truck because they needed to go to the dump a few times a year or take it to Home Depot once in a while. Even though it would make more sense to simply rent a truck on those rare occasions.
I think the solution is "grab a bite to eat while your car spends 20 minutes charging back up to 80%" Fast charging slows down past 80%, and it wears out the battery faster to always be topping it...
I think the solution is "grab a bite to eat while your car spends 20 minutes charging back up to 80%"
Fast charging slows down past 80%, and it wears out the battery faster to always be topping it off. You will actually spend less time total making slightly more frequent stops to charge up to 80% than always charging back up to 100%. So for those occasional long road trips, I think people just need to get used to the idea of stopping for 20 minutes instead of 10. It's not a huge inconvenience.
That entirely depends on where you live, your charging infrastructure and what EV you own. I just did a comparison of my regular 1000 km trip between two cities in Alberta: EV: 12.6 hours total...
That entirely depends on where you live, your charging infrastructure and what EV you own.
I just did a comparison of my regular 1000 km trip between two cities in Alberta:
EV: 12.6 hours total trip, 5 charging stops, 1.5 hrs charge time in Tesla 3 Long Range or 13.5 hours total trip and 2.4 hrs in a regular Tesla 3, with speed warning limited to 90 kph for the first leg because the range is maxed out.
Gas: 10.5 hours, 2 fill stops, 20 minutes refueling time
Adding 2 hours and 5 long stops to an already very long day is indeed a huge inconvenience when you actually need to get somewhere far. If its leisurely vacation travelling it doesnt matter much.
Long trips are not as frequent for many, true, but road trips are not exactly an anomaly. But for mass adoption to take place, a vehicle has to be superior to what it's replacing. No one had to...
Long trips are not as frequent for many, true, but road trips are not exactly an anomaly.
But for mass adoption to take place, a vehicle has to be superior to what it's replacing. No one had to convince consumers that a smartphone was superior to a brick phone. But when the gov and EVangelists are trying to convince people to buy an EV they have to overcome multiple hurdles: a) purchase cost, b) immature charging system with multiple payment systems, c) loss of range in extreme temperatures AND the fact that they take much longer for road trips.
So there are some significant hurdles to convince people to give up what already works well, for something thats more expensive, less easily 'fuelled', has less range AND slows down their long trips. For a lot of people a PHEV or just a hybrid makes far more sense than an EV if they only own one car.
For the record, I have a small EV and love it, but its definitely not a road trip vehicle.
I think smartphones are a great analogy, because they actually do have many deficiencies compared to the dumbphones they replaced. Expensive data plans, the lack of physical buttons, and needing...
No one had to convince consumers that a smartphone was superior to a brick phone.
I think smartphones are a great analogy, because they actually do have many deficiencies compared to the dumbphones they replaced. Expensive data plans, the lack of physical buttons, and needing to charge your battery every night were regularly touted by detractors as dealbreakers that would slow or prevent mass adoption.
But it turned out that soft keyboards are "good enough", and actual use-cases requiring a 5-day battery are pretty niche. People eventually gave up on these things so they could enjoy the benefits of a larger screen and the more complex software that enables.
I think EVs could be similar. The benefits can be significant. Cheaper "gas", potentially cheaper maintenance thanks to fewer moving parts, not needing to ever stop and "fuel up" except on road trips. Not to mention the reduced environmental impact as electric grids around the world continue to trade fossil fuels for renewables.
For the record, I have a small EV and love it, but its definitely not a road trip vehicle.
What's the range? Because I would certainly agree that something like a Nissan Leaf would be terrible to ever use on a road trip. But something with a 250-300 mile range would be fine as long as there is adequate fast charging infrastructure along your route.
Except that a smartphone is a quantum leap ahead in technology. A brick can only make calls, and maybe awkwardly text. Your smartphone is on an entirely different level. It can search anything on...
Except that a smartphone is a quantum leap ahead in technology. A brick can only make calls, and maybe awkwardly text. Your smartphone is on an entirely different level. It can search anything on the web. It can provide GPS guidance. It can take photos, videos and shoot them around the world in seconds. It can livestream. It can be your payment device, do your banking. It streams music. It calculates. Does Zoom meetings, reads bar codes, it has millions of apps and uses.
But the EV? It essentially still does what a gas car does - drives on a road and gets you from A to B. It uses a different method of propulsion, and it does have lower maintenance costs, but its not a quantum leap forward that instantly makes a gas car look primitive. Its better at some things, worse at others - but not SO much better that everyone who tries one says, 'Im getting rid of my gas car'
Smartphones really weren't a quantum leap in technology; they were a quantum leap in interface design and marketing. People tend to forget what the phone market actually before the iPhone, because...
Smartphones really weren't a quantum leap in technology; they were a quantum leap in interface design and marketing. People tend to forget what the phone market actually before the iPhone, because there were many great smartphones available before it came out. Feature phone could do all of the things you mentioned, to the extent that they existed at the time. That includes downloading and running programs from the internet. The biggest "innovation" smartphones had going for them was that they had browsers that weren't garbage. Though in some cases you could just download a better browser like Opera.
EVs are the same. It does the same stuff, but better. Is it drammatically better than an ICE car? There are some places where it's yes, some places where there is barely any difference, and a handful of places that are worse.
It's not a quantum leap forward, but the downsides also aren't nearly as egregious as losing physical buttons or weeklong battery life. It amounts to adding an hour or so to the 1-2 road trips I...
It's not a quantum leap forward, but the downsides also aren't nearly as egregious as losing physical buttons or weeklong battery life. It amounts to adding an hour or so to the 1-2 road trips I take every year.
The solution is for people to get used to it. Charging speed will gradually improve as the tech gets better, but it's only really an issue on long road trips where people will just get used to...
The solution is for people to get used to it. Charging speed will gradually improve as the tech gets better, but it's only really an issue on long road trips where people will just get used to taking a 20 minute break every 2-3 hours.
Until things change, I think characterizing it as a 20 minute break every few hours really undersells things. Last summer I flew into a city for a week and rented a car. A bunch of flights had...
Until things change, I think characterizing it as a 20 minute break every few hours really undersells things.
Last summer I flew into a city for a week and rented a car. A bunch of flights had been diverted, so even though I had a reservation, they were functionally out of vehicles. All they had left were electric cars that weren't fully charged. The people in front of me kept turning the cars down because the car with the most range remaining was 70 miles. Well, I only needed to go 20 miles, so I took the car. Critically, they forgot to include the charging cable. So even though I was starting at a house with a 240v plug in the carport, I had to rely on public chargers.
It was horrible. I didn't have s Tesla so couldn't use those charging stations which are by far the most numerous. Of the rest, I tried all the different charging station apps just to find that the level 2 chargers were offline, broken, or disabled, even the ones you should be able to pay for. I had to use free chargers I found just a few of at a grocery store. I spent hours parked there while I went and had a coffee, and puttered around, just to barely get enough charge to keep going.
I would be perfectly happy with an electric at home where I can charge it at night and use it to putter around or commute. But a road trip, or camping well out in the back country, etc? Heck no. Not until there is a fast charger at every gas station. Maybe some places and some routes would be manageable. But I'm not ready to take that leap.
This was similar to my first experience with an EV. Rental companies are, overall, completely incompetent. They treat them just like gas cars despite the lack of infrastructure. You can't just...
This was similar to my first experience with an EV. Rental companies are, overall, completely incompetent. They treat them just like gas cars despite the lack of infrastructure.
You can't just toss someone the keys to an EV if they've never driven one before and expect things to go well.
I've since purchased an EV. I take it camping. If I'm on a longer trip I plan stops in advance and take the opportunity to eat, stretch my legs, etc. For me the occasional trade-off of an extra 15 minutes on a road trip is worth the time savings of never having to interrupt my daily activities to stop at a gas station
We are literally right in the middle of that change you were working for. Tesla has already opened up its charging network to other cars and there is already a company selling adaptors for use in...
We are literally right in the middle of that change you were working for. Tesla has already opened up its charging network to other cars and there is already a company selling adaptors for use in cars with CCS charging ports.
Battery swapping (at least for anything larger than a scooter) is technically possible but not really economically viable due to the complexities involved. The real solution is to simply accept...
Battery swapping (at least for anything larger than a scooter) is technically possible but not really economically viable due to the complexities involved. The real solution is to simply accept that charging might take 20 minutes when you're on a road trip and working to get home chargers installed in homes, apartment parking garages, and on-street parking spaces. Chargers aren't like gas stations; they can be put anywhere pretty cheaply.
If everyone is charging at home, whether their home be a single family home or apartment, then chargers only need to deal with long-haul travel. And the solution to charging times for road trips is to simply acknowledge that you actually don't need to charge your car that fast on a trip. If you're traveling at 70 mph in a car with a range of 300 miles, then your car will go 4 hours between recharges. And you SHOULD be taking a 20 minute break every 4-5 hours or so while taking a road trip.
There is a culture of people being very irresponsible on road trip, but we really shouldn't feel the need to plan our public infrastructure around people driving recklessly.
If Shell wasn't also one of the largest oil companies out there I'd be more concerned. I won't write hydrogen off till Toyota does. Hydrogen probably won't take off until it does for commercial...
If Shell wasn't also one of the largest oil companies out there I'd be more concerned.
I won't write hydrogen off till Toyota does.
Hydrogen probably won't take off until it does for commercial trucking and construction equipment. Electric rail is a good idea which should totally be done, but last mile trucking is a fact of life in the USA. After it takes off for trucking, it'll be relatively trivial to piggyback private vehicles. Ironically big pickup trucks will be a great target market.
I don't see any electrified garbage trucks. My utility uses natural gas. But processing natural gas down to hydrogen at dedicated facilities would do a lot to eliminte leaks at point-fuse.
Busses will function better as hydrogen vehicles instead of batteries, because there won't need to be as many 'down' for charging.
And at the end of the day, anything we can do to lower weight of vehicles will pay dividends for energy use. Both in daily operation and in road maintainence needs.
Edit: I do see some electric utility vehicles have started hitting ground last year in some places. I'd be curious to know charging times and costs.
Tangential: do you happen to know about the status of hydrogen for freight ships? Personally I’m not quite sure if the hydrogen trucking option has not already, uh, departed, unfortunately. The...
Tangential: do you happen to know about the status of hydrogen for freight ships?
Personally I’m not quite sure if the hydrogen trucking option has not already, uh, departed, unfortunately. The complete lack of infrastructure is one thing, but there isn’t even mature tech ready now, let alone on the roads, as far as I know…
Edit: Toyota is in somewhat of a weird spot as already mentioned in this thread, due to the domestic electric grid situation in their home Japan market. Also, they massively blew EV adoption, so they sort of have an unreasonable incentive to push the “other” somewhat opposing alternatives to combustion engine cars.
I was never a big proponent of hydrogen in the near term, but it might be appealing in 50-100 years. In the short term simply getting more electric cars on the road and increasing our production...
I was never a big proponent of hydrogen in the near term, but it might be appealing in 50-100 years.
In the short term simply getting more electric cars on the road and increasing our production of renewable electric is important, and I don't think we have the time to wait for hydrogen to get figured out. However, batteries aren't exactly easy on the environment to produce or salvage.
In a future where we have largely switched to renewables to power our grid there are a few things we might want to use excess capacity on during periods of peak generation. One is hydro batteries, where during peak period we pump water into large reservoirs high up, and we can convert that to power by releasing it through a series of turbines. Another would be to convert excess electric to hydrogen since that creates a portable dense power source that is relatively clean to make, if you have the infrastructure to use it.
So hydrogen might make a comeback eventually. I don't know. But I don't think it's the right technology for the present moment.
I've always been more interested in LPG than Hydrogen as we've got lots of it around produced from fossil sources currently with a established supply chain alongside a large market base of LPG...
I've always been more interested in LPG than Hydrogen as we've got lots of it around produced from fossil sources currently with a established supply chain alongside a large market base of LPG vehicles in some nations and LPG being a lot easier to store than hydrogen. Non fossil sources of LPG are currently an expanding market (a small one currently but there's a lot of money going into it with promising results so far).
I haven’t thought about it really until your post. An upside is that a gasoline ice can be converted to lpg. Some can apparently run on both. Not sure what this does for co2 emissions, but should...
I haven’t thought about it really until your post. An upside is that a gasoline ice can be converted to lpg. Some can apparently run on both.
Not sure what this does for co2 emissions, but should greatly reduce toxic emissions.
It used to be a common thing around here (western Canada) in the 70s and 80s. Lots of people, especially pickup trucks and taxis converted to using LPG. Many of our school busses still run on...
It used to be a common thing around here (western Canada) in the 70s and 80s. Lots of people, especially pickup trucks and taxis converted to using LPG. Many of our school busses still run on them. The upside is lower cost of operation. The downside is less power than on gas, and at extreme low temperatures, they're very difficult or impossible to start as the gas won't liquify. Not a bad thing if you're a student, not so good if you own the bussing company.
I know a Toyota Mirai owner that owns one because it's a very nice car that they got for $10k with a $10k free hydrogen card. It was essentially a free car.
I know a Toyota Mirai owner that owns one because it's a very nice car that they got for $10k with a $10k free hydrogen card. It was essentially a free car.
There are still non-shell hydrogen stations out there. This may be an acknowledgment that shell doesn’t believe the future is in hydrogen, but there’s still a small market where money can be made...
There are still non-shell hydrogen stations out there. This may be an acknowledgment that shell doesn’t believe the future is in hydrogen, but there’s still a small market where money can be made for smaller companies.
They are in the Bay Area. There’s still a decent amount of stations around. They already had to go out of their way to fill up, so a few less stations doesn’t change that.
They are in the Bay Area. There’s still a decent amount of stations around. They already had to go out of their way to fill up, so a few less stations doesn’t change that.
I remember having a discussion with a few people here on Tildes about the future of alternative energy cars, some people were advocating hard for hydrogen fuel cell cars and referenced these filling stations as the future of gas stations in America. It seems like that will probably no longer be the case as Shell has now closed them down, probably losing hundreds of millions on the cost of installing the infrastructure.
Hydrogen has many significant hurdles to jump before it begins to approach viability and frankly I don't see it getting there soon enough to be relevant. Especially after this news.
While hydrogen does solve the (tailpipe) emissions problem, it fails to tackle any other problem in a meaningful way while requiring a whole new infrastructure and logistics network.
BEVs solve more problems than hydrogen and solve them better. Plus the hurdles aren't nearly as high.
And as far as long range shipping goes, the clear winners are cargo ships and electrified rail. With final mile delivery via electric trucks, the transportation emissions end up being completely manageable.
Hydrogen is in a very weird place and only seems to make sense in oddly specific scenarios like Japan's fucked up electrical grid or maybe long haul trucking? Germany tried hydrogen trains for only a year before shuttering them.
I think long haul trucking can be entirely replaced by better rail networks. Failing that though, something like this seems like a better solution to me.
The problem in the USA boils down to the issue of sprawl that was enabled by cars and trucks, paired with the current demands for JIT shipping. The degree of amount of rail networks that would need built out in order to give it remotely the same responsiveness of long-haul trucking is huge.
Also, frieght trains suuuuccckkk to live near. Sister lives across the street from an old, but still in-use frieght rail line. She's learned to live with 10 minutes of warning whistle blowing at 90db at 10 PM, 12 AM, 2 AM, and 4 AM as it passes through.
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Train horns are only necessary in places with at-grade crossings. In theory, a fully access-limited track does not require the train to make any noise at all because it has no reason to alert anyone of its presence. But depending on the intersection, retrofitting grade separation can cost $5 million or $50 million.
I can't say I'm especially fond of the other mechanical noises freight trains make when traveling along a poorly maintained section of track (that is to say, quite a lot of track). Rattling, screeching, clanking. But to be honest, the literally non-stop sound of truck traffic is not any better.
Like I said, old track. My sister's home used to be a brothel during Reconstruction for the mining town. It's fun facts like that that make ancient homes worth living in.
I figure it'd be much closer to that $50 million, for a very small town. They thankfully do things better in more populous areas. Part of the problem is just exacerbated by a tired conductor just wailing on the horn for 10 minutes instead of minding the 3 spots its needed in that stretch.
And, horn aside, I generally agree. There's a reason land by the interstate is dirt cheap.
What's the long-term, serious solution for how long it takes to charge car batteries? I always thought of this as a problem that will be solved, eventually, but somehow it's still a thing. I heard about battery-swapping, is that feasible?
Last I read, battery swapping does not seem to be feasible as the manufacturer trend seems to be achieving space savings in the build by integrating the battery more tightly into the chassis (ex. industry pioneer Tesla), which is in contrast to previous “flat”, large battery packs fully located in a single rectangle towards the bottom, which might’ve enabled something like this.*
Also, I view charging times as a solved non-issue, to be frank. Anything under 15 minutes – and I’m sure the industry will push this down to like 10 eventually – for 80% of the capacity is completely fine, even for long distance routes.
Sure, there will always be one single traveller who never takes a break in 500 miles of road driven, and drives those distances on a weekly basis too, but that’s borderline dangerous (full, actual zero-supervision self-driving won’t be a thing for at least two, three more decades either, if ever).
The real bottleneck in my opinion is the availability of functioning, high-performance charging stations, plus accurate, real-time information about operational status (stall broken) or availability (stall in use/all stalls reserved for the next 45 minutes). But battery technology has increased in performance so drastically over the past 10ish years, while battery prices per kWh have fallen pretty massively, I’m not too worried about that aspect.
Finally, as I try to in- and conclude with every of my comments on the electrification of cars/transport industry: This does not influence the fact western societies need to become less car-dependent, or absolve them of action now, if it’s about adoption-positive news.
*P.S. Even back then with the “simpler” style of battery blocks, it was never going to happen – imagine the effort of propping up hydrogen stations like in this article, in sufficient numbers, everywhere there are currently cars, but for a machine with presumably robot arms, precise and smart enough to use screws or some other also secure mechanism to remove any car make and model’s expensive batteries? Yeah nah. They couldn’t even agree on a charger format, so there might have been a proprietary solutions for 1-2 vendors, after copious amounts of R&D costs which’d have gotten passed on to the purchasing consumers, for a process which might’ve saved half the time, five versus ten minutes or whatever. I tend to classify that as a pipe dream from back when charging times were actually an issue for anyone not an EV/tech enthusiast.
I could only really see battery swaps being viable for long-haul trucking, but even then it'd probably be reserved for autonomous vehicles. That's if they could do swaps quicker than it'd take to just recharge the battery.
Interesting, it seems to be the opposite. Small vehicles are where battery swaps are practical, not large vehicles. See the network in Taiwan.
Battery swapping is just always going to be a really expensive process. A single human is not going to be able to lift and maneuver the battery for an ordinary electric car, let alone one for a semi truck. So instead, you need some a very robust, very adaptable, very complex robot to do the job instead. But scooter batteries are small enough to be easily lifted by one person. So no expensive robot needed.
Now, I suppose you could in theory power a car with this sort of small user-replaceable battery. But it would be pretty silly. Some googling suggests those scooter packs weigh 9 kg and have a capacity of 1.3 kwHr. A Tesla 3 has a capacity of about 58 KwHr. So if you were willing to replace 40-50 9 kg cartridges, I suppose a hot-swap car of battery packs like this would be possible. Plus, you get a workout whenever you need to fill up the tank!
My logic is that, for passenger vehicles, the recharge time is likely faster than the time it would take to physically swap a battery. I could see a potential future where autonomous EV container trucks are standardized enough that they could pull into a robotic garage, the old battery drops out and a new one drops in.
Here's an example of a robot-swapped BEV battery in action.
I remember Tesla demoing something like that many, many years ago and then quietly dropping it.
It solves the quick-recharge and (to some extent) battery degradation problems well, but it comes with a lot of its own issues.
I just looked at some random website, which said a supercharger takes 0.27 hours to charge a model 3.
My diesel takes about 6 minutes to fill, and i get over 700 miles.
What is the timeframe for that refuel time to distance option availability on electric?
Edit: granted driving 700 miles straight is impractical. But: That half hour is only for a supercharger station, which are way fewer than other, slower stations. And you may have to drive extra to find one. And, if everyone was driving full electric, you need like 5x-10x or more the number of stations as we have pumps currently.
And what happens when the grid goes down?
That's the wrong measure to use.
At 700 miles you're stretching the limits of the human body more than any vehicle or refueling infrastructure. It's illegal for truckers to drive that long without a break. And coincidentally, if you stop for a 30-minute health break you've recharged that Tesla at the same time.
I don't think that's really an issue though, is it? I doubt there's many people that would even want to drive 700 miles without stopping.
My car can go around 500 miles on a tank, and despite doing a lot of long distance driving, I've never sat in the car and driven for 8 hours straight without stopping. That doesn't seem comfortable or safe.
I usually stop for 15 or so minutes every couple of hours already to stretch my legs and maybe grab a snack. I think once you're at the 300+ mile range, range sort of ceases to be much of an issue as long as the charging infrastructure exists, and you can get charging down to 15ish minutes.
Its not just that you have to stop more frequently, you are at the mercy of the charger locations. When you drive an ICE, you know a fill is going to be 6 minutes, so you dont care where it is, gas stations are ubiquitous and the fill time is short. You fill and then go do whatever else you want to do. Driving a gas vehicle gives you freedom to travel where you want, when you want, stopping where you want and when you want.
An EV forces your route and your time for each stop: you must take this route and you must stop here and you must stay this long or the car can't continue. That's a big step backward in the "freedom of the open road" I think people buy a car to make travel more convenient not less.
The thing that seems to be missing from a lot of this discussion is that, with an electric car, you don't usually charge from 0-100%. In fact, for road trips, I believe it's more time-efficient if you're along a route that has plenty of good chargers (which, unfortunately, at this point basically means you're driving a Tesla) to just charge from 10-80%. Battery charging really slows down when you get towards the end of the total capacity.
As Car and Driver observes here…
On my volt, even with its very slow “fast” charging, it gives time estimates for charging as to how long it will take to get to 80% because of this. I don’t need to use them very often but I can swear one of them that I used had actually stopped charging at 80%, presumably as a way to encourage you to leave and let others use the charging terminal.
You're right that the refueling duration for an electric car these days is less good than that for an ICE engine, but it's not so bad as to outweigh the other advantages, to me at least. I've gone on a few long trips in a model 3, indeed you have to stop and wait and that's annoying, but the trip as a whole went just fine.
The vast vast majority of all car traffic is not long distance. 95% of personal car trips are less than 30 miles, I imagine that number climbs closer to 99% when you get to 250 miles. Charge times are only an issue when someone needs to drive more than 250~ miles at a time, which is rare for most people. For those who do need to do regular long hauls, a 20-30 minute break every 4 hours is probably a worthwhile trade for the reduced cost of filling up.
I'll caveat that a little bit. Charge times are an issue for other situations; namely the one where you live somewhere with parking that doesn't have charging infrastructure. I think it would be doable to live somewhere like that with an EV, but it would require you topping up at superchargers or work regularly. Charging times is definitely a factor there too.
The solution to this is to require landlord to install chargers in all of their parking spaces. Really, chargers aren't that expensive. If you rent, your landlord could add chargers to every spot in the lot and expect you to cover all the cost. A wall-mounted level 2 home charger can be had for $400. If you spread the cost out over five years, that's $8.33 per month. And this is the cost if the tenants need to pay 100% of the cost and no subsidies of any kind are available.
Charging in apartments really seems to be a trivial issue to solve. You might need to make the cost higher for the cost of installation. But if you're installing a bunch of them at once, those costs decrease. Maybe $1000 per spot? The point is that if you can afford an electric car, you can also afford the tiny bit extra rent increase to cover the cost of a charger.
Alternatively, we could pass a bill and take care of the problem in one fell swoop. There are about 23 million apartments in the US. We could wire all of them up with chargers for $23 billion or so. Honestly, this is cheap enough that we should just do it and be done with it. Have some program where if anyone in an apartment building wants to charge their car in a lot, they can apply and the landlord will be required to install chargers. The cost will be covered by a grant, but the apartment owner doesn't get a say in it. If any of you tenants request a charger, your whole building gets chargers installed on Uncle Sam's dime.
The EVSE is $400. Getting power to the spot can extremely easily go over $1000 depending on how far the wires go and what they have to do to get there
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Good point, but $1400 total would still only bring the five-year per-charger cost to $23.30/month. While non-zero, that is an amount many (perhaps most) automobile owners would consider acceptable or even negligible. And as stated, once power is in a particular area, it would be cheap to connect multiple EVSEs.
Is that the cost of installing just one? Because that sounds to me like the cost of hiring an electrician to install just one of these in your garage.
But these installs are done in bulk. You do an entire building's worth of parking spots at once. If you need to dig a trench, you don't dig a trench for just one parking spot. You did a trench down the length of the lot and wire up every spot in one go.
It's the same thing for everything in the building trades. A tract home builder can wire up their houses for far cheaper per house than it would cost you to hire an electrician to rewire your house (even if you stripped it down to the studs first.) You gain a lot of efficiencies when working at scale.
As u/coolmos said once you have to wire in dozens of them, the cost is significant. The charger isn't the only issue. The major issue is that you can service a normal suite with 100 amp service and 100 amp wire. But if you are going to put in an EVSE for every suite, 100 amps is not enough. So now every suite needs 200 amp service on an upgraded panel and wiring. eg. 100a wire is $18/metre, 200a wire is $52/metre. Panels are 50% to 80% more for 200a.
My friend just installed a 1200a service to a building and just the switch gear and 3 breakers was $20,000 without labor. That's just the parts to get the wiring to the building. Then you have to do the wiring to each panel and each EVSE and add a significantly higher amount for the labor.
Then the question for the builder becomes, will there be enough buyers with EVs to justify adding that cost onto the financing? Maybe.
On a new build this is a reasonable cost/benefit question. To retrofit an existing building? Not likely that it would be worth it financially to upgrade.
The problem with that is that it would require a significant investment that landowners would generally not be willing to shoulder. If they were they would have done it by now. The only hope for such a thing would be legislation to force it, and I don’t think there will be enough momentum to do that for quite a while.
Ezra Klein of the New York Times talked about this on his podcast and in his column a few times last year. I'm struggling to find the exact conversation in the podcast, but this bit from his column sums up part of the problem:
The electrical infrastructure of the United States is woefully unprepared for us to convert all of our transportation needs over to BEVs. Doubly so if we want all of it to be powered by clean energy. (Though there are environmental benefits even from BEVs charged by "dirty" electricity.)
He touched on it again here, and I think it bears quoting.
That's the issue right now with the current infrastructure, not a limiting factor of the technology itself. Ideally we will live in a world with much greater electric vehicle infrastructure investment as sales continue to climb. Change takes time, but I think it's pessimistic to believe that it'll always be this hard to charge your EV where you work/live.
Somewhat reduced cost of filling up. Charging rates continue to climb and it would be foolish to think that once the charging market is cornered (probably by Tesla) that those charge rates won't keep rising to come close to gas costs.
So when taking in the added cost of buying an EV, and in some cases higher insurance, it takes quite a few years to equal the same total cost of ownership.
I would argue gas prices are going to skyrocket over the next few decades as subsidies are reduced/removed and oil gets more difficult to economically pump. The insane investment into renewables will help keep cost of electricity more reasonable hopefully.
That doesnt seem to be bearing out where I live in Alberta.
Our price for electricity is only 0.09/kW. However the electrical utility has found ways to add numerous fees and charges onto our electricity bills so now the actual cost per kW is the minor part of the bills.
We run a fairly frugal household but our November bill was still $280. Out of that the actual cost of electricity was only $66. The other $214 was admin, distribution, rider, service, supplier, transmission and distribution fees if you can believe it.
North America is a capitalist economy. If there's a way to hose consumers for more money - especially as they switch to more EVs and less gas vehicles - I have no doubt that electrical utilities will continue to raise fees as high as they can. The only consolation being that you can install solar and charge your own car, thank goodness.
It will always be a thing. The more capacity, the longer it will take to charge. The faster you want to charge it, the higher voltage and/or amperage needs to be used. The higher those go, the more logistics problems arise.
Plus the faster you charge, the worse it is for the battery.
Is it really a problem though for the majority of car use? In the sense that it really needs to be solved before electric cars can be the dominant type of cars used?
I am adding the last bit because I realize there are of course various edge cases for regular car use. Also for transport (delivery fans, trucks, etc) it is a real issue.
Range anxiety is one of the biggest perceived issues with BEV adoption. Electric cars will only be the dominant type of cars used when people are satisfied with the solutions. IMO, that problem is not even close to being solved between generally poor range relative to a gas vehicle and lack of charging infrastructure. It's why even in 2023, less than 1 in 10 cars sold were electric.
IMO, PHEV is a better solution than BEV... or at a minimum, a stepping stone in that direction. I'd love to buy one of those, but there just aren't very many options in that space. So my next vehicle is likely to be ICE (hopefully the last one).
I think cost is the primary issue. EVs cost significantly more up front, sometimes even with government subsidies.
Manufacturers haven't really done a good job of illustrating the true costs of car ownership of an EV vs ICE car, honestly. When someone is comparison shopping getting a BEV vs an ICE car, they don't have great metrics for what the TCO over the next five years will be. I don't even know myself, but I would imagine not having to pay for gas or oil changes, having far fewer moving parts leading to increased reliability, having regenerative breaking, and running at much more manageable temperatures tips the scales a little bit, but few people really know by how much.
I don't think they illustrate those costs because they're not going to help them sell electric vehicles. I'm going to use the F150 as an example, since that's been making the news that Ford keeps cutting back on F150 Lightning production due to softening demand. A base F150 XLT (middle of the road) is $46k. An extended-range Lightning model (nobody wants the short range of the standard one) at the same trim is $70k. Without the rebate (because I don't qualify for it), the cost difference is $24k. At $4/gal for gas and 22 mpg (average between city and highway on that truck), you need to drive 132k miles to make up the up-front cost difference, assuming 100% of your electricity is free. A $50 oil change here and there is a rounding error when you're talking about that kind of price difference, and is probably balanced out by decreased tire life anyway.
Granted, it's not as dramatic for passenger vehicles. A Volvo XC40 (crossover) is $40k for the standard model and $52k for the full electric. But at $12k price difference, $4/gal gas and 26mpg combined, it's still 78k miles until you break even assuming free electricity.
The cost savings of a BEV over a similar ICE vehicle today are overstated, and is why car manufacturers jump through hoops to manipulate numbers to show the savings in the best light, or more often, don't show the eventual-savings at all because that story is very difficult to sell long-term. The price difference between ICE and Electric vehicles needs to close in order for stories about better pricing to actually be effective. It's also why selling people on solar panels for cost savings is often ineffective.
Good comparison. And as you said, thats if your charging is free. Its obviously quite a bit lower at home, but if you're road tripping in that Lightning, the charging costs can be substantial.
The other unfortunate issue with the Lightning is that it doesnt do well the one thing that people need a truck for - pulling a trailer. Multiple tests show that usable range pulling a holiday trailer is only about 90 miles before needing a charge. That's barely out of town for many city dwellers. And no ones like trying to charge pulling a trailer as there are very few pull thru charge stations so far.
Also particularly damning is when you compare the break-even time to warranties. As you noted, you need to drive the F150 lightning 132k miles before you reach break-even cost. For warranties its batteries for 8 years or 100,000 miles.. They'll replace your battery if it falls under 70% of its original range, if that occurs before 8 years or 100,000 miles. Meanwhile, the power train warranty is only 5 years/60,000 miles.
Now, there is an argument to be made that electric vehicles require little maintenance and should have very long service lives. And while there is some reason to think that based on the number of moving parts, the warranties really don't reflect this. If these electric cars really are that maintenance free and bulletproof, then shouldn't the new ones come with a 500,000 mile power train warranty or similar? Because currently Ford seems to be arguing that you'll make up the higher cost over time. However, they're not willing to legally and financially stand behind these vehicles long enough to make up that difference.
Gas and oil changes are still only a fraction of the cost differences, though. ICE vehicles are also massively more complex than BEVs, so there is additional cost for the problems that will rise from that complexity. There are also smaller things like antifreeze and higher brake consumability.
The F150 is also a particularly bad example to compare because it’s possibly the worst EV out there. It’s huge and power hungry with terrible efficiency. The consumption is almost double compared to a Tesla Model 3. It’s very much a show off car built to let people pretend it is good for the environment. It’s not even good for the kinds of stuff you need a truck for!
A very large fraction. The other smaller items are indeed expenses, but we're talking about things that cost a couple hundred bucks every few years / after tens of thousands of miles. It makes no sense to say that spending $12-24k extra on a BEV is somehow worth it because you save a few hundred dollars on maintenance. My vehicle is 8 years old, has 70k miles and I've done one coolant change and am about to have my first brake pad replacement. Using the math I calculated on the Volvo car, I still wouldn't have made up for the increased upfront costs over the entire lifetime of my vehicle by this point.
Additionally, BEVs are much more expensive to repair, and that fact is reflected in the significantly increased insurance premiums for those vehicles. Let's not forget about the inevitable battery replacements that BEVs will need as well. I'm curious as to what will happen to the EV market in general once the masses who bought them are quoted with $20k battery replacements.
I also realize that the F150 comparison isn't ideal, but it's one that's been in the news a lot lately so it came to mind. I included the Volvo example because they're one of the few manufacturers I could find who had the same exact vehicle in ICE and BEV in order to make an apples-to-apples comparison on the true cost of electrifying a vehicle.
I'll also add here that I'm not anti-EV or anything. I think the technology is cool, and there's a lot to like about them. But I do heavily consider both the financial cost and practicality of a vehicle during purchase, and for my use case, BEV fails both of these compared to ICE. The tech will hopefully only get better, though, and I'm looking forward to a time when the scales on these two platforms are more balanced.
I think you are underestimating the costs of ICE vehicle maintenance and overestimating the cost of maintenance on a BEV, and it’s a result of not considering the entire lifespan. Though yes, the fuel costs will obviously be the majority of cost. Oil changes are notably missing from your calculations and are needed with increasing frequency as the vehicle ages and accumulates mileage. Every car comes with a schedule of maintenance, which in some cases may be required to maintain the warranty, but the schedule for BEVs is basically a footnote in comparison to ICE cars.
The necessity of battery changes in EVs is somewhat mythical. For the most part a battery pack is going to be serviceable; you can just replace the cells or modules inside the pack. If you need to replace the whole pack something has gone catistrophically wrong. They don’t generally “fail”; they are much more likely to degenerate into lower capacity. The necessity of replacement is also arguably not real either because batteries ended up preforming much better than expected. My first generation Leaf from 2013 was at around 80% capacity when I sold it about a decade later. Newer cars have improved chemistry and systems to maintain them and will last longer as a result. Some parts of a BEV might be expensive to repair but one should also keep in mind that they are dramatically less likely to need them to begin with, which is why the TCO is still so low.
For what it's worth, I think the current generation of Prius Prime is pretty great. Car and Driver even named it as one of their 10 Best cars last year.
My current daily driver is a 2012 Toyota Camry Hybrid, but I would love to trade up to the current Prius Prime.
As a car nut, it's kind of crazy to me to see what kinds of cars people by based upon what they prioritize. I hate SUVs for a variety of reasons, but they are super-popular in large part because potential buyers see them as a "car" that can do everything. And that's what people want: something that is capable of doing every possible thing they can think they might ever do with their vehicle. (Case in point: my sister traded in her third generation Toyota Prius for a Highlander because her and her husband are trying to have a second child. Yep, the second baby hasn't even been born yet, but they thought they needed a three-row SUV instead of a hatchback that easily seats five.) The sedan is dying as a type of car because potential buyers don't see it as versatile enough for all of their potential needs.
So it's not surprising that people are afraid to buy BEVs because they don't want to have any sort of limitations if they ever decide to take it on a road trip. Even if that's not a rational concern for their actual needs.
It's like people who buy a pickup truck because they needed to go to the dump a few times a year or take it to Home Depot once in a while. Even though it would make more sense to simply rent a truck on those rare occasions.
I think the solution is "grab a bite to eat while your car spends 20 minutes charging back up to 80%"
Fast charging slows down past 80%, and it wears out the battery faster to always be topping it off. You will actually spend less time total making slightly more frequent stops to charge up to 80% than always charging back up to 100%. So for those occasional long road trips, I think people just need to get used to the idea of stopping for 20 minutes instead of 10. It's not a huge inconvenience.
That entirely depends on where you live, your charging infrastructure and what EV you own.
I just did a comparison of my regular 1000 km trip between two cities in Alberta:
EV: 12.6 hours total trip, 5 charging stops, 1.5 hrs charge time in Tesla 3 Long Range or 13.5 hours total trip and 2.4 hrs in a regular Tesla 3, with speed warning limited to 90 kph for the first leg because the range is maxed out.
Gas: 10.5 hours, 2 fill stops, 20 minutes refueling time
Adding 2 hours and 5 long stops to an already very long day is indeed a huge inconvenience when you actually need to get somewhere far. If its leisurely vacation travelling it doesnt matter much.
Such long trips make up < 0.5% of all trips. I would think the convenience of never having to gas up for the > 99.5% trips would more than compensate.
Long trips are not as frequent for many, true, but road trips are not exactly an anomaly.
But for mass adoption to take place, a vehicle has to be superior to what it's replacing. No one had to convince consumers that a smartphone was superior to a brick phone. But when the gov and EVangelists are trying to convince people to buy an EV they have to overcome multiple hurdles: a) purchase cost, b) immature charging system with multiple payment systems, c) loss of range in extreme temperatures AND the fact that they take much longer for road trips.
So there are some significant hurdles to convince people to give up what already works well, for something thats more expensive, less easily 'fuelled', has less range AND slows down their long trips. For a lot of people a PHEV or just a hybrid makes far more sense than an EV if they only own one car.
For the record, I have a small EV and love it, but its definitely not a road trip vehicle.
I think smartphones are a great analogy, because they actually do have many deficiencies compared to the dumbphones they replaced. Expensive data plans, the lack of physical buttons, and needing to charge your battery every night were regularly touted by detractors as dealbreakers that would slow or prevent mass adoption.
But it turned out that soft keyboards are "good enough", and actual use-cases requiring a 5-day battery are pretty niche. People eventually gave up on these things so they could enjoy the benefits of a larger screen and the more complex software that enables.
I think EVs could be similar. The benefits can be significant. Cheaper "gas", potentially cheaper maintenance thanks to fewer moving parts, not needing to ever stop and "fuel up" except on road trips. Not to mention the reduced environmental impact as electric grids around the world continue to trade fossil fuels for renewables.
What's the range? Because I would certainly agree that something like a Nissan Leaf would be terrible to ever use on a road trip. But something with a 250-300 mile range would be fine as long as there is adequate fast charging infrastructure along your route.
Except that a smartphone is a quantum leap ahead in technology. A brick can only make calls, and maybe awkwardly text. Your smartphone is on an entirely different level. It can search anything on the web. It can provide GPS guidance. It can take photos, videos and shoot them around the world in seconds. It can livestream. It can be your payment device, do your banking. It streams music. It calculates. Does Zoom meetings, reads bar codes, it has millions of apps and uses.
But the EV? It essentially still does what a gas car does - drives on a road and gets you from A to B. It uses a different method of propulsion, and it does have lower maintenance costs, but its not a quantum leap forward that instantly makes a gas car look primitive. Its better at some things, worse at others - but not SO much better that everyone who tries one says, 'Im getting rid of my gas car'
Smartphones really weren't a quantum leap in technology; they were a quantum leap in interface design and marketing. People tend to forget what the phone market actually before the iPhone, because there were many great smartphones available before it came out. Feature phone could do all of the things you mentioned, to the extent that they existed at the time. That includes downloading and running programs from the internet. The biggest "innovation" smartphones had going for them was that they had browsers that weren't garbage. Though in some cases you could just download a better browser like Opera.
EVs are the same. It does the same stuff, but better. Is it drammatically better than an ICE car? There are some places where it's yes, some places where there is barely any difference, and a handful of places that are worse.
It's not a quantum leap forward, but the downsides also aren't nearly as egregious as losing physical buttons or weeklong battery life. It amounts to adding an hour or so to the 1-2 road trips I take every year.
The solution is for people to get used to it. Charging speed will gradually improve as the tech gets better, but it's only really an issue on long road trips where people will just get used to taking a 20 minute break every 2-3 hours.
Until things change, I think characterizing it as a 20 minute break every few hours really undersells things.
Last summer I flew into a city for a week and rented a car. A bunch of flights had been diverted, so even though I had a reservation, they were functionally out of vehicles. All they had left were electric cars that weren't fully charged. The people in front of me kept turning the cars down because the car with the most range remaining was 70 miles. Well, I only needed to go 20 miles, so I took the car. Critically, they forgot to include the charging cable. So even though I was starting at a house with a 240v plug in the carport, I had to rely on public chargers.
It was horrible. I didn't have s Tesla so couldn't use those charging stations which are by far the most numerous. Of the rest, I tried all the different charging station apps just to find that the level 2 chargers were offline, broken, or disabled, even the ones you should be able to pay for. I had to use free chargers I found just a few of at a grocery store. I spent hours parked there while I went and had a coffee, and puttered around, just to barely get enough charge to keep going.
I would be perfectly happy with an electric at home where I can charge it at night and use it to putter around or commute. But a road trip, or camping well out in the back country, etc? Heck no. Not until there is a fast charger at every gas station. Maybe some places and some routes would be manageable. But I'm not ready to take that leap.
This was similar to my first experience with an EV. Rental companies are, overall, completely incompetent. They treat them just like gas cars despite the lack of infrastructure.
You can't just toss someone the keys to an EV if they've never driven one before and expect things to go well.
I've since purchased an EV. I take it camping. If I'm on a longer trip I plan stops in advance and take the opportunity to eat, stretch my legs, etc. For me the occasional trade-off of an extra 15 minutes on a road trip is worth the time savings of never having to interrupt my daily activities to stop at a gas station
We are literally right in the middle of that change you were working for. Tesla has already opened up its charging network to other cars and there is already a company selling adaptors for use in cars with CCS charging ports.
Battery swapping (at least for anything larger than a scooter) is technically possible but not really economically viable due to the complexities involved. The real solution is to simply accept that charging might take 20 minutes when you're on a road trip and working to get home chargers installed in homes, apartment parking garages, and on-street parking spaces. Chargers aren't like gas stations; they can be put anywhere pretty cheaply.
If everyone is charging at home, whether their home be a single family home or apartment, then chargers only need to deal with long-haul travel. And the solution to charging times for road trips is to simply acknowledge that you actually don't need to charge your car that fast on a trip. If you're traveling at 70 mph in a car with a range of 300 miles, then your car will go 4 hours between recharges. And you SHOULD be taking a 20 minute break every 4-5 hours or so while taking a road trip.
There is a culture of people being very irresponsible on road trip, but we really shouldn't feel the need to plan our public infrastructure around people driving recklessly.
If Shell wasn't also one of the largest oil companies out there I'd be more concerned.
I won't write hydrogen off till Toyota does.
Hydrogen probably won't take off until it does for commercial trucking and construction equipment. Electric rail is a good idea which should totally be done, but last mile trucking is a fact of life in the USA. After it takes off for trucking, it'll be relatively trivial to piggyback private vehicles. Ironically big pickup trucks will be a great target market.
I don't see any electrified garbage trucks. My utility uses natural gas. But processing natural gas down to hydrogen at dedicated facilities would do a lot to eliminte leaks at point-fuse.
Busses will function better as hydrogen vehicles instead of batteries, because there won't need to be as many 'down' for charging.
And at the end of the day, anything we can do to lower weight of vehicles will pay dividends for energy use. Both in daily operation and in road maintainence needs.
Edit: I do see some electric utility vehicles have started hitting ground last year in some places. I'd be curious to know charging times and costs.
Tangential: do you happen to know about the status of hydrogen for freight ships?
Personally I’m not quite sure if the hydrogen trucking option has not already, uh, departed, unfortunately. The complete lack of infrastructure is one thing, but there isn’t even mature tech ready now, let alone on the roads, as far as I know…
Edit: Toyota is in somewhat of a weird spot as already mentioned in this thread, due to the domestic electric grid situation in their home Japan market. Also, they massively blew EV adoption, so they sort of have an unreasonable incentive to push the “other” somewhat opposing alternatives to combustion engine cars.
I was never a big proponent of hydrogen in the near term, but it might be appealing in 50-100 years.
In the short term simply getting more electric cars on the road and increasing our production of renewable electric is important, and I don't think we have the time to wait for hydrogen to get figured out. However, batteries aren't exactly easy on the environment to produce or salvage.
In a future where we have largely switched to renewables to power our grid there are a few things we might want to use excess capacity on during periods of peak generation. One is hydro batteries, where during peak period we pump water into large reservoirs high up, and we can convert that to power by releasing it through a series of turbines. Another would be to convert excess electric to hydrogen since that creates a portable dense power source that is relatively clean to make, if you have the infrastructure to use it.
So hydrogen might make a comeback eventually. I don't know. But I don't think it's the right technology for the present moment.
I've always been more interested in LPG than Hydrogen as we've got lots of it around produced from fossil sources currently with a established supply chain alongside a large market base of LPG vehicles in some nations and LPG being a lot easier to store than hydrogen. Non fossil sources of LPG are currently an expanding market (a small one currently but there's a lot of money going into it with promising results so far).
I haven’t thought about it really until your post. An upside is that a gasoline ice can be converted to lpg. Some can apparently run on both.
Not sure what this does for co2 emissions, but should greatly reduce toxic emissions.
It used to be a common thing around here (western Canada) in the 70s and 80s. Lots of people, especially pickup trucks and taxis converted to using LPG. Many of our school busses still run on them. The upside is lower cost of operation. The downside is less power than on gas, and at extreme low temperatures, they're very difficult or impossible to start as the gas won't liquify. Not a bad thing if you're a student, not so good if you own the bussing company.
Huh, I suppose I should reach out to the one Toyota Mirai owner I know and see what they plan to do about that one.
I know a Toyota Mirai owner that owns one because it's a very nice car that they got for $10k with a $10k free hydrogen card. It was essentially a free car.
How are they gonna refill the car now though?
There are still non-shell hydrogen stations out there. This may be an acknowledgment that shell doesn’t believe the future is in hydrogen, but there’s still a small market where money can be made for smaller companies.
Its gotta be a much smaller number now, I'm assuming they live in LA? Is it difficult to find a convenient station to fill up?
They are in the Bay Area. There’s still a decent amount of stations around. They already had to go out of their way to fill up, so a few less stations doesn’t change that.