charging your Tesla is much more time-consuming than filling a car with gas
Hardly – you don’t have to stand there watching while recharging. You plug it in and go do something else.
Not if the “something else” you want to be doing is heading down the road.
If you are on a trip longer then the range, the charge time affects your effective speed. For Instance you are travelling 500 miles, so a mandatory recharge adds one hour to the trip. Now this is a 8 hour trip anyways, so at 4 hours, you plug in stop for lunch, bathroom, etc, and in an hour are ready to go anyways.
If you can charge at night at home, it’s not a big hit and if you can charge at work, while you are in the office, it won’t be a time hit.
Given the fairly long battery range of the roadster and Model S and the fast Supercharge time, one can maintain a pretty good speed.
This won’t work at something like a 24 hour rally, where you are switching drivers and working a closed course and speed matters but for 95% of users, i think they will be happy
now that said, it’s a pricy car and it’s in the luxury market.
For people with means, it’s a lifestyle choice, much like a BMW, Mercedes, cadillac or Lincoln is a lifestyle car.
As these things go, the price points will drop and people who like technology seem to buy them. I’ve met 3 Model S owners, they are very happy and like the attention.
With the continuing price drops in battery, this class of vehicle will become more affordable.
You probably can’t do a cross country trip in a Tesla. According to the article, you need a 240v source to charge it – and that takes 8 hours at home. Public charge stations take 4 hours. Only the Tesla-specific stations take one hour. And there are none outside the coasts. It’s a commuter car at this point.
One of our local, green grocers has a public charge station in the parking lot, but it seems to be out of order now.
So you can’t even use a regular outlet for even a slow charge (say, overnight?)
Yipes, this thing is even more of a piece of crap than I thought.
I think the article is wrong — Tesla claims you can charge from a 110v outlet, but they recommend 240v.
If you Google “tesla cross country” you’ll see that people have driven Teslas from coast to coast. Apparently there are 240v outlets in RV parks, which helps. It takes much, much more planning than a gas-powered drive, but it isn’t impossible.
It’s not impossible to ride across the country on a donkey if you plan well enough.
actually, there is a pretty clever trick, most RV campgrounds have 240 V 50 Amp plugs out there, you can also tinker up a twin tap from 2 30 amp outlets.
It requires a little planning, but with a laptop and a cell phone, it can be worked out every evening.
Your one hour charge time during a 500 mile trip is based on one mighty huge assumption; that there just happens to be a high capacity charging station (one that’s compatible with Tesla, which most aren’t) en route. If there isn’t, the delay becomes significantly larger, due to involving a tow truck and a $70,000 brick.
I can’t recall ever seeing an EV charging station except at a couple of places in Europe, and I noticed no more of them a few months ago than I did two years ago. I haven’t seen one in the US, at all. (Caveat; though I do a fair amount of interstate driving, it’s been limited to the non-coastal west in recent years, and I do not live in a city or a town, and avoid cities when I can.)
The only reason EVs have any market share at all in subsidies. So, the USA happily subsidies what are almost always toys for millionaires. This is a ripoff of enormous proportions.
Right now EV driving is much like driving a car in 1920. It’s a high skill, activity going cross country. It’s not impossible, but it’s work.
Lets hope Elon’s math is a little more mathy and less bs for SpaceX.
The Model S sounds like a great car for people in that market who don’t do a lot of cross-country driving. It’s a shame that the Tesla marketing department feels the need to gild the lily with dubious cost-of-ownership math.
If it really was a great car for that market, I don’t think they’d be gilding the lilly (or in this case, polishing the turd) to such a degree.
I also note just how much of the cost of ownership is at taxpayer expense, to buy toys for millionaires (Even the lower end lemon, the Chevy Volt, has an average buyer income of over 150K per year!)
Tesla needs to solve a chicken-and-egg problem: without a lot of public charging infrastructure people will be leery of electric cars, and until people buy a lot of electric cars there won’t be much public charging infrastructure. That argues for hyping the product to quickly build a critical mass of vehicles on the road, without over-promising so much that they lose credibility with customers.
Musk has over-promised for SpaceX as well, e.g. on schedule, but what he’s actually delivered has been so much better than his competitors that it doesn’t seem to have hurt him much.
I’m in the admittedly awkward position of being a huge fan of SpaceX and a huge critic of Tesla.
I agree on the SpaceX schedule issues. I’ve also found some of their strategic choices… disquieting. For example, Stratolaunch. I really don’t see that ever happening.
But, that said, I’m very fond of SpaceX because they have done a very great deal. For one thing, they have a space capsule and flown it for far less than the yet-to-fly Orion, and even if you count the entire SpaceX launcher family, the development cost is still way less than Orion, by a factor of 3 (and Orion still hasn’t flown).
Tesla… I just don’t like electric cars, so I don’t care much for Tesla. I do have to admit that they are probably the best electric car out there (awesome acceleration and they handle and ride very well IMHO – I’ve driven one, though only once, briefly, and that was the roadster, not the S class.) So I’ll concede that Tesla might be the best of a bad lot, but it’s still a bad lot.
I don’t think charging stations are the core of the problem. For example, I wouldn’t be interested in an electric even if there was a charging station at every gas station. The reason is time; I can be in and out of a gas station in 5 minutes if I’m getting gas. If I have to charge, it’ll take what, at least an hour, at best? No thanks.
Sure, an electric might cut down on my gasoline bill, but frankly, if I was going to shell out 70 grand or more on a car, saving a few bucks on fuel would not be one of my concerns. I’d be better off buying a 60k conventional car and not having to deal with electric hassles.
Plug in hybrids, however… They aren’t on my shopping list, but I see the attractiveness; run on either gas or electric. Very handy in case of a shortage of one or the other. So, I see the concept as having merit, I just find the implementation greatly lacking; the only one I’ve even sat in is a Chevy Volt, and it has a cheap car ride and feel at luxury car prices. No thanks.
One way around the EV range issue I’ve heard of is towing a generator. That might have merit; for trips past EV range, just tow the generator and fuel supply. That might work for some who want EVs. A big drawback; from what I hear, most EVs can’t tow a trailer (and if so, that’s another reason I’d never have one; I sometimes need to tow a trailer).
Yeah, the lack of towing is a concern. I have a honda insight, it’s a great car, but it’s a subcompact, I have friends who can’t get in it, and the lack of a towing bracket sure is a limit at times, but, i average 45 MPG in it, hacking around town and i’ve averaged 57 MPG when i draft aggressively.
Hybrids have some decent market penetration it’s about 3% right now and will continue to grow, the plug ins will likely move down the cost curve as the volumes ramp up. Ford has 2 plug in hybrids out, I’ll take a test drive sometime.
Hybrids make good taxi’s, that start stop, energy recovery system is a great advantage in the city. Driver adoption has been pretty good.
Full electric vehicles are trying to find their niche, they look good for predictable commutes, but until the Level 3 charger networks settle out, it’s going to be work to go long range.
Eh? Full electric vehicles already their niche: “Fore!”
Finding a charging station is hard because there aren’t enough electric cars. Once there are, the problem will be finding an unoccupied charging station.
But it gets worse. If somehow electric cars penetrated to 30% market share, and they all needed 4 hours of charging to handle the daily commute to work, then about 15% of all parking spaces would need to be charging stations. Obviously that means most charging stations will be outside, and thus in sophisticated all-weather enclosures placed beside parking spaces. So with alarming frequently people will be backing into enclosures with high voltage, high current feeds. Those of us who drive carefully will just have to carefully step across all the high-voltage, high current cables strung between the parking lot charging stations and the parked cars – in the rain.
I don’t think this plan has been thought out very well.
Won’t most charging happen at home?
Many places have electricity tiers–if you charge at home you end up in a higher tier and pay more for your electricity. If I had a Tesla I’d try to park where the company officials park and charge it at one of their stations during the work day. If I had two maybe I’d siphon electricity from work to home (charge one at work while the other is powering my house, then switch).
This of course ends up exacerbating the load leveling problem.
Of course, most people don’t work at companies run by executive with green guilt.
A number of areas are switching to Time of Use charging schemes.
it’s why they are swapping in smart meters, to help enable that
George is correct. It’s a logistical nightmare. Battery-powered EVs will not be replacing ICE vehicles as the standard mode of personal transportation, sorry. It’s not even close.
most parking lots have medium voltage, medium current devices across them. Light poles, block heater plug ports, advertising signs. they usually have a concrete pole near them to protect them, we can figure this out.
good point about needing lots of chargers, it’s going to need a lot of terminal installs
Personally, I wish Elon would forget about Tesla and concentrate on SpaceX. That’s much more important, in my opinion.
On the other hand, maybe it might be shrewd to have all the design and infrastructure in place to manufacture electric cars if and when a major breakthrough in battery technology happens.
It occurs to me that I’m actually the perfect demographic for electric cars. I’m a bit of a hermit, and I don’t like traveling. Probably 99% of my driving is strictly local, going back and forth to work and to stores. And I live only 15 minutes from work.
I could probably drive all week without recharging.
I don’t understand where the guy is coming from. Elon is marketing his product and of course he is going to make it look sweet. I expect I will one day own an electric car. The engineering simplicity and the power of them just makes the internal combustion engine look like a hayburner. All I am waiting for is the battery technology to cross the price performance threshold that gives us about 300-400 mile range and rapid charging. I think that crossover point will happen around the end of this decade or the middle of the next at latest. Beyond that, can anyone tell me *anything* about an internal combustion engine that is superior to a pure electric vehicle? (No reference to politics, greens, global warming, gas and coal industry, jobs allowed: just the engineering facts.)
Parameter Electric Vs Gasoline
Torque Excellent adequate
Peak RPM Excellent good
Power density Good Better.
Fuel energy density adequate Good
Specific Power cost marginal Good.
Specific Energy cost Marginal Good.
Unit Energy Cost Good-Exc Marginal-Adq
recharge time Good-exc Marginal-adq
Maintenance Excellent Adequate
Reliability Excellent Good
basically, Internal combustion is relatively cheap to buy Horsepower and fuel tank capacity and it has a decent energy dense fuel and you can refuel fast.
Battery Electric has excellent technical specs, great acceleration and is simple, reliable, but you pay a price for the power ratings and battery capacity and the recharge time.
if Ultra-Caps work out things may change or if the volumes scale up.
I think the transport game is changing, and we will see a lot happen
but it’s a funny game. All the big manufacturers are rolling out hybrids of some flavor (Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, BMW, Hyundai, Porsche, VW, Peugeot, Ferrari, McLaren) and a half dozen other major manufacturers are looking hard.
I agree with your estimates… which is why I think the turning point is 2020-2025 when the next generation of power technology moves from R&D to mass production. The current generation is not quite there but it has made the electric car marginally useful. Once the energy density gets there… and it will… the contest is over.
of course, it all depends upon the price of Gasoline too. At $5-6/gallon, a commuter with a 50 mile one way commute may buy an electric sooner. So it’s sort of a 2-D decision space between Gas Price and battery price. Given how gas prices keep spiking up, i think it will be sooner, but, we seem to be in the same zone.
I suspect range extended hybrids like the Volt or Ford ENERGI will be rapidly followed by Electrics with small trunk mounted generators.
put a 10 KW generator back there and let the front end get clean and light.
i actually think the issue isn’t the energy density but the $/KWH,
the energy density of batteries is enough to let a Tesla Model S get 250 mile range and let electric drag racers set records.
The problem is batteries are still about $5-600/KWH, which means you need a KWH for 3-4 Miles of range, so say you want a 100 mile electric range, you need about 30 KWH of battery plus a capacity decay factor of 20-40% to allow a good service life. So say you need 42 KWH, that’s a 25 grand battery.
The cost should drop to $250-$300/KWH once volumes scale, that’s the real blocking factor. Ultra caps and the like would be amazing, but, the real trick is a cheaper battery in Li-Ion. If the battery for a 100 mile range vehicle is ten grand you could sell the vehicle for about 24 grand.
Battery prices are dropping at a pretty good clip. If trends hold, we get there in about 3 years.
Its kinda fun reading this thread and seeing the length people have to go to suggest the EV is really good.
1) Exaggerate the charging time
2) Assume charging station are ubiquitous or will be
3) Assume its no problem to wait for the charge or find a station
4) Don’t worry about the additional load on the power grid
5) Don’t worry about cost of electricity or replacement part of batteries
6) Don’t worry that the average cost per unit is priced beyond the reach of average consumer
Other than that, and a few more things; they’re great!
Still think Top Gear had the best answer for EV’s, put a wire mesh above city streets and raise your pantograph to charge as you drive leaving the battery for “offroad” driving. Look for overhead powerlines above California HOV lanes in the coming decade.
1) Exaggerate the charging time
How is the Level 3 charging time exxagerated ? the Tesla Supercharger is rated at 90 KW, and people are using them. the CHADEMO Level 3 charger are rated at 62KW, and they are in use. I stopped for a coffee and sandwich on I-95 at the Delaware rest stop and actually talked to a Tesla owner. He was very happy with the product and the charging.
2) Assume charging station are ubiquitous or will be
One has to be optimistic with new technologies. The same could have been said about Cell Phones, Gas Stations, Motels, PC Repair dealers, TV Broadcast. It’s a bet, if it pays off you look brilliant, if it fails you look like an idiot.
3) Assume its no problem to wait for the charge or find a station
Having driven across Nevada at night, it’s no fun either hunting for gas, and I would recommend not crossing montana without a plan.
4) Don’t worry about the additional load on the power grid
The Utility companies view this as a new market, they sell something called
Electricity for a profit. If the demand ramps up, they’ll cope. It’s what’s called a good problem. Far worse if people started demanding far less electricity.
5) Don’t worry about cost of electricity or replacement part of batteries
These are lifecycle cost items. People will cope.
6) Don’t worry that the average cost per unit is priced beyond the reach of average consumer
New Technologies usually start as Premium Products. If these companies want to grow, they will drive unit costs down, it grows markets and margins.
From a manufacturing perspective, Electric vehicles should be very affordable. The Battery modules are easily automated, the motor production is easily automated, the systems complexity is very low, in the future you will see these made as “Skateboards” with all the batteries, motors, steering integrated into the frame and a chassis kit will be shipped out to a dealer, and the customer will order an interior that is installed out in the dealership.
People will cope.
LOL If they can cope, then we can cut the subsidies now.
charging your Tesla is much more time-consuming than filling a car with gas
Hardly – you don’t have to stand there watching while recharging. You plug it in and go do something else.
Not if the “something else” you want to be doing is heading down the road.
If you are on a trip longer then the range, the charge time affects your effective speed. For Instance you are travelling 500 miles, so a mandatory recharge adds one hour to the trip. Now this is a 8 hour trip anyways, so at 4 hours, you plug in stop for lunch, bathroom, etc, and in an hour are ready to go anyways.
If you can charge at night at home, it’s not a big hit and if you can charge at work, while you are in the office, it won’t be a time hit.
Given the fairly long battery range of the roadster and Model S and the fast Supercharge time, one can maintain a pretty good speed.
This won’t work at something like a 24 hour rally, where you are switching drivers and working a closed course and speed matters but for 95% of users, i think they will be happy
now that said, it’s a pricy car and it’s in the luxury market.
For people with means, it’s a lifestyle choice, much like a BMW, Mercedes, cadillac or Lincoln is a lifestyle car.
As these things go, the price points will drop and people who like technology seem to buy them. I’ve met 3 Model S owners, they are very happy and like the attention.
With the continuing price drops in battery, this class of vehicle will become more affordable.
You probably can’t do a cross country trip in a Tesla. According to the article, you need a 240v source to charge it – and that takes 8 hours at home. Public charge stations take 4 hours. Only the Tesla-specific stations take one hour. And there are none outside the coasts. It’s a commuter car at this point.
One of our local, green grocers has a public charge station in the parking lot, but it seems to be out of order now.
So you can’t even use a regular outlet for even a slow charge (say, overnight?)
Yipes, this thing is even more of a piece of crap than I thought.
I think the article is wrong — Tesla claims you can charge from a 110v outlet, but they recommend 240v.
If you Google “tesla cross country” you’ll see that people have driven Teslas from coast to coast. Apparently there are 240v outlets in RV parks, which helps. It takes much, much more planning than a gas-powered drive, but it isn’t impossible.
It’s not impossible to ride across the country on a donkey if you plan well enough.
http://teslamodelsxc.wordpress.com/
actually, there is a pretty clever trick, most RV campgrounds have 240 V 50 Amp plugs out there, you can also tinker up a twin tap from 2 30 amp outlets.
http://blog.microbattery.com/
It requires a little planning, but with a laptop and a cell phone, it can be worked out every evening.
Your one hour charge time during a 500 mile trip is based on one mighty huge assumption; that there just happens to be a high capacity charging station (one that’s compatible with Tesla, which most aren’t) en route. If there isn’t, the delay becomes significantly larger, due to involving a tow truck and a $70,000 brick.
I can’t recall ever seeing an EV charging station except at a couple of places in Europe, and I noticed no more of them a few months ago than I did two years ago. I haven’t seen one in the US, at all. (Caveat; though I do a fair amount of interstate driving, it’s been limited to the non-coastal west in recent years, and I do not live in a city or a town, and avoid cities when I can.)
The only reason EVs have any market share at all in subsidies. So, the USA happily subsidies what are almost always toys for millionaires. This is a ripoff of enormous proportions.
http://www.teslamotors.com/supercharger
Tesla has 9 superchargers in it’s network and is planning 100.
There are 160 Level 3 Chademo chargers in the US, with
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=http:%2F%2Fwww.chademo.com%2Fkml%2FCHAdeMO_map_in_130321.kml&hl=pl&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.963048,86.572266&t=m&z=2 this map you can see, a decent route up I-5 in OR and WA and SoCal, and some decent routes on the east coast and around Phoenix.
Right now EV driving is much like driving a car in 1920. It’s a high skill, activity going cross country. It’s not impossible, but it’s work.
Lets hope Elon’s math is a little more mathy and less bs for SpaceX.
The Model S sounds like a great car for people in that market who don’t do a lot of cross-country driving. It’s a shame that the Tesla marketing department feels the need to gild the lily with dubious cost-of-ownership math.
If it really was a great car for that market, I don’t think they’d be gilding the lilly (or in this case, polishing the turd) to such a degree.
I also note just how much of the cost of ownership is at taxpayer expense, to buy toys for millionaires (Even the lower end lemon, the Chevy Volt, has an average buyer income of over 150K per year!)
Tesla needs to solve a chicken-and-egg problem: without a lot of public charging infrastructure people will be leery of electric cars, and until people buy a lot of electric cars there won’t be much public charging infrastructure. That argues for hyping the product to quickly build a critical mass of vehicles on the road, without over-promising so much that they lose credibility with customers.
Musk has over-promised for SpaceX as well, e.g. on schedule, but what he’s actually delivered has been so much better than his competitors that it doesn’t seem to have hurt him much.
I’m in the admittedly awkward position of being a huge fan of SpaceX and a huge critic of Tesla.
I agree on the SpaceX schedule issues. I’ve also found some of their strategic choices… disquieting. For example, Stratolaunch. I really don’t see that ever happening.
But, that said, I’m very fond of SpaceX because they have done a very great deal. For one thing, they have a space capsule and flown it for far less than the yet-to-fly Orion, and even if you count the entire SpaceX launcher family, the development cost is still way less than Orion, by a factor of 3 (and Orion still hasn’t flown).
Tesla… I just don’t like electric cars, so I don’t care much for Tesla. I do have to admit that they are probably the best electric car out there (awesome acceleration and they handle and ride very well IMHO – I’ve driven one, though only once, briefly, and that was the roadster, not the S class.) So I’ll concede that Tesla might be the best of a bad lot, but it’s still a bad lot.
I don’t think charging stations are the core of the problem. For example, I wouldn’t be interested in an electric even if there was a charging station at every gas station. The reason is time; I can be in and out of a gas station in 5 minutes if I’m getting gas. If I have to charge, it’ll take what, at least an hour, at best? No thanks.
Sure, an electric might cut down on my gasoline bill, but frankly, if I was going to shell out 70 grand or more on a car, saving a few bucks on fuel would not be one of my concerns. I’d be better off buying a 60k conventional car and not having to deal with electric hassles.
Plug in hybrids, however… They aren’t on my shopping list, but I see the attractiveness; run on either gas or electric. Very handy in case of a shortage of one or the other. So, I see the concept as having merit, I just find the implementation greatly lacking; the only one I’ve even sat in is a Chevy Volt, and it has a cheap car ride and feel at luxury car prices. No thanks.
One way around the EV range issue I’ve heard of is towing a generator. That might have merit; for trips past EV range, just tow the generator and fuel supply. That might work for some who want EVs. A big drawback; from what I hear, most EVs can’t tow a trailer (and if so, that’s another reason I’d never have one; I sometimes need to tow a trailer).
Yeah, the lack of towing is a concern. I have a honda insight, it’s a great car, but it’s a subcompact, I have friends who can’t get in it, and the lack of a towing bracket sure is a limit at times, but, i average 45 MPG in it, hacking around town and i’ve averaged 57 MPG when i draft aggressively.
Hybrids have some decent market penetration it’s about 3% right now and will continue to grow, the plug ins will likely move down the cost curve as the volumes ramp up. Ford has 2 plug in hybrids out, I’ll take a test drive sometime.
Hybrids make good taxi’s, that start stop, energy recovery system is a great advantage in the city. Driver adoption has been pretty good.
Full electric vehicles are trying to find their niche, they look good for predictable commutes, but until the Level 3 charger networks settle out, it’s going to be work to go long range.
Eh? Full electric vehicles already their niche: “Fore!”
Finding a charging station is hard because there aren’t enough electric cars. Once there are, the problem will be finding an unoccupied charging station.
But it gets worse. If somehow electric cars penetrated to 30% market share, and they all needed 4 hours of charging to handle the daily commute to work, then about 15% of all parking spaces would need to be charging stations. Obviously that means most charging stations will be outside, and thus in sophisticated all-weather enclosures placed beside parking spaces. So with alarming frequently people will be backing into enclosures with high voltage, high current feeds. Those of us who drive carefully will just have to carefully step across all the high-voltage, high current cables strung between the parking lot charging stations and the parked cars – in the rain.
I don’t think this plan has been thought out very well.
Won’t most charging happen at home?
Many places have electricity tiers–if you charge at home you end up in a higher tier and pay more for your electricity. If I had a Tesla I’d try to park where the company officials park and charge it at one of their stations during the work day. If I had two maybe I’d siphon electricity from work to home (charge one at work while the other is powering my house, then switch).
This of course ends up exacerbating the load leveling problem.
Of course, most people don’t work at companies run by executive with green guilt.
A number of areas are switching to Time of Use charging schemes.
it’s why they are swapping in smart meters, to help enable that
George is correct. It’s a logistical nightmare. Battery-powered EVs will not be replacing ICE vehicles as the standard mode of personal transportation, sorry. It’s not even close.
most parking lots have medium voltage, medium current devices across them. Light poles, block heater plug ports, advertising signs. they usually have a concrete pole near them to protect them, we can figure this out.
good point about needing lots of chargers, it’s going to need a lot of terminal installs
Personally, I wish Elon would forget about Tesla and concentrate on SpaceX. That’s much more important, in my opinion.
On the other hand, maybe it might be shrewd to have all the design and infrastructure in place to manufacture electric cars if and when a major breakthrough in battery technology happens.
It occurs to me that I’m actually the perfect demographic for electric cars. I’m a bit of a hermit, and I don’t like traveling. Probably 99% of my driving is strictly local, going back and forth to work and to stores. And I live only 15 minutes from work.
I could probably drive all week without recharging.
I don’t understand where the guy is coming from. Elon is marketing his product and of course he is going to make it look sweet. I expect I will one day own an electric car. The engineering simplicity and the power of them just makes the internal combustion engine look like a hayburner. All I am waiting for is the battery technology to cross the price performance threshold that gives us about 300-400 mile range and rapid charging. I think that crossover point will happen around the end of this decade or the middle of the next at latest. Beyond that, can anyone tell me *anything* about an internal combustion engine that is superior to a pure electric vehicle? (No reference to politics, greens, global warming, gas and coal industry, jobs allowed: just the engineering facts.)
Parameter Electric Vs Gasoline
Torque Excellent adequate
Peak RPM Excellent good
Power density Good Better.
Fuel energy density adequate Good
Specific Power cost marginal Good.
Specific Energy cost Marginal Good.
Unit Energy Cost Good-Exc Marginal-Adq
recharge time Good-exc Marginal-adq
Maintenance Excellent Adequate
Reliability Excellent Good
basically, Internal combustion is relatively cheap to buy Horsepower and fuel tank capacity and it has a decent energy dense fuel and you can refuel fast.
Battery Electric has excellent technical specs, great acceleration and is simple, reliable, but you pay a price for the power ratings and battery capacity and the recharge time.
if Ultra-Caps work out things may change or if the volumes scale up.
I think the transport game is changing, and we will see a lot happen
but it’s a funny game. All the big manufacturers are rolling out hybrids of some flavor (Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, BMW, Hyundai, Porsche, VW, Peugeot, Ferrari, McLaren) and a half dozen other major manufacturers are looking hard.
I agree with your estimates… which is why I think the turning point is 2020-2025 when the next generation of power technology moves from R&D to mass production. The current generation is not quite there but it has made the electric car marginally useful. Once the energy density gets there… and it will… the contest is over.
of course, it all depends upon the price of Gasoline too. At $5-6/gallon, a commuter with a 50 mile one way commute may buy an electric sooner. So it’s sort of a 2-D decision space between Gas Price and battery price. Given how gas prices keep spiking up, i think it will be sooner, but, we seem to be in the same zone.
I suspect range extended hybrids like the Volt or Ford ENERGI will be rapidly followed by Electrics with small trunk mounted generators.
put a 10 KW generator back there and let the front end get clean and light.
i actually think the issue isn’t the energy density but the $/KWH,
the energy density of batteries is enough to let a Tesla Model S get 250 mile range and let electric drag racers set records.
The problem is batteries are still about $5-600/KWH, which means you need a KWH for 3-4 Miles of range, so say you want a 100 mile electric range, you need about 30 KWH of battery plus a capacity decay factor of 20-40% to allow a good service life. So say you need 42 KWH, that’s a 25 grand battery.
The cost should drop to $250-$300/KWH once volumes scale, that’s the real blocking factor. Ultra caps and the like would be amazing, but, the real trick is a cheaper battery in Li-Ion. If the battery for a 100 mile range vehicle is ten grand you could sell the vehicle for about 24 grand.
Battery prices are dropping at a pretty good clip. If trends hold, we get there in about 3 years.
Its kinda fun reading this thread and seeing the length people have to go to suggest the EV is really good.
1) Exaggerate the charging time
2) Assume charging station are ubiquitous or will be
3) Assume its no problem to wait for the charge or find a station
4) Don’t worry about the additional load on the power grid
5) Don’t worry about cost of electricity or replacement part of batteries
6) Don’t worry that the average cost per unit is priced beyond the reach of average consumer
Other than that, and a few more things; they’re great!
Still think Top Gear had the best answer for EV’s, put a wire mesh above city streets and raise your pantograph to charge as you drive leaving the battery for “offroad” driving. Look for overhead powerlines above California HOV lanes in the coming decade.
1) Exaggerate the charging time
How is the Level 3 charging time exxagerated ? the Tesla Supercharger is rated at 90 KW, and people are using them. the CHADEMO Level 3 charger are rated at 62KW, and they are in use. I stopped for a coffee and sandwich on I-95 at the Delaware rest stop and actually talked to a Tesla owner. He was very happy with the product and the charging.
2) Assume charging station are ubiquitous or will be
One has to be optimistic with new technologies. The same could have been said about Cell Phones, Gas Stations, Motels, PC Repair dealers, TV Broadcast. It’s a bet, if it pays off you look brilliant, if it fails you look like an idiot.
3) Assume its no problem to wait for the charge or find a station
Having driven across Nevada at night, it’s no fun either hunting for gas, and I would recommend not crossing montana without a plan.
4) Don’t worry about the additional load on the power grid
The Utility companies view this as a new market, they sell something called
Electricity for a profit. If the demand ramps up, they’ll cope. It’s what’s called a good problem. Far worse if people started demanding far less electricity.
5) Don’t worry about cost of electricity or replacement part of batteries
These are lifecycle cost items. People will cope.
6) Don’t worry that the average cost per unit is priced beyond the reach of average consumer
New Technologies usually start as Premium Products. If these companies want to grow, they will drive unit costs down, it grows markets and margins.
From a manufacturing perspective, Electric vehicles should be very affordable. The Battery modules are easily automated, the motor production is easily automated, the systems complexity is very low, in the future you will see these made as “Skateboards” with all the batteries, motors, steering integrated into the frame and a chassis kit will be shipped out to a dealer, and the customer will order an interior that is installed out in the dealership.
People will cope.
LOL If they can cope, then we can cut the subsidies now.