Electric cars/hybrids - a dead end?
Discussion
Trabi601 said:
The box and rack are not the point here - they're an example of people making what they have work for them, when hiring would be a better option. People don't want to hire - they want their car to work for every eventuality. You can't stick an extra battery pack on the roof to do a long journey.
I'm on a track day tomorrow, but been chatting to fellow attendees in the bar tonight.
One comment... "We go skiing once or twice a year - I leave at 10pm and can be in the Alps by 6am. Show me an electric car that can do that."
This is why we need proper research into zero (at the point of use) emissions hybrids.
Why are we still doing corner cases?I'm on a track day tomorrow, but been chatting to fellow attendees in the bar tonight.
One comment... "We go skiing once or twice a year - I leave at 10pm and can be in the Alps by 6am. Show me an electric car that can do that."
This is why we need proper research into zero (at the point of use) emissions hybrids.
I wouldn't buy a BEV now. If in 5 years time battery tech has improved to the point where range anxiety and recharge time are no longer an issue, I might. But there is no point in arguing that BEV's have a limited future because of where battery tech is right now in 2017. The technology will improve....it just will.
Evanivitch said:
rxe said:
No it isn't a useless corner case.
It is. Average mileage in the UK is less than 8000 miles per annum. That's near enough one charge a week on a Leaf/Zoe in summer conditions. You could quite literally charge at the supermarket once a week with an increase in infrastructure.Range Extenders exist for those that need to routinely go further than battery range or have fears about range anxiety.
But on the whole annual mileage is decreasing, business mileage is decreasing and new licenses are decreasing!
Evanivitch said:
It is. Average mileage in the UK is less than 8000 miles per annum. That's near enough one charge a week on a Leaf/Zoe in summer conditions. You could quite literally charge at the supermarket once a week with an increase in infrastructure.
Range Extenders exist for those that need to routinely go further than battery range or have fears about range anxiety.
But on the whole annual mileage is decreasing, business mileage is decreasing and new licenses are decreasing!
OK, lets move the discussion to supermarket. Range Extenders exist for those that need to routinely go further than battery range or have fears about range anxiety.
But on the whole annual mileage is decreasing, business mileage is decreasing and new licenses are decreasing!
Lets assume that the local population (who do short journeys) charge at Tesco on Saturday while they shop. They shop for an hour, so the car needs a significant chunk of power in that time. So we're looking at 20 or maybe 50 kW chargers.
How many slots in your local big Tescos? Mine has about 500. Density of chargers to make it work - because it won't work if you can't get a charging slot. Maybe 50%?
Concurrency - 100%. You arrive, you charge, you leave, someone else takes the slot.
250 chargers at 20 kW is 5000 kW. That's a 5 megawatt installation .... .in a Tesco's car park.
Again, not impossible. Just really expensive. And you still have to provide the chargers on the street for people who don't shop at Tescos.
rxe said:
OK, lets move the discussion to supermarket. They shop for an hour, we're looking at 20 kW chargers. Concurrency - 100%. You arrive, you charge, you leave. 250 chargers at 20 kW is 5000 kW. That's a 5 megawatt installation .... .in a Tesco's car park.
20kW charge is about 60 miles of charge. Why would you need that? Wouldn't it be better to slow charge at home at 7kWh on existing infrastructure whilst waiting for Ocado to deliver? Or slow charging overnight is an extra 200 miles of top-up available every night.That's 70,000 miles driving per year only using one slow home charger point <= corner case, agreed, but shows what can be done on pre-existing infrastructure.
The reality is that the average driver does 25 miles per day, or less than 2 hours of slow charging. No need for multi-megaWatt installations, mythical fast charging or 250 dedicated posts at Morrisons. Simple charging, available at destinations and at home will do the trick just nicely.
Most of the time, cars are parked. Once we get to the point where most of the time they are parked they can be plugged in, a very low rate of charging will be adequate. The idea that they need fast charging is really a petrol car mindset, and it's going to take a while for both the way we think of using cars and the infrastructure to catch up.
otolith said:
MarshPhantom said:
Why has PH become overrun with evangelical EV types?
This is a topic on the EV and alternative fuels forum discussing hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles versus battery electric vehicles - do you expect it to be about V8s?Personally I like EV's as a replacement for my daily driver, the quieter and simpler the better. I also want one that drives its self so I have a Tesla on order. It won't change my outlook on fun cars one bit.
This thread, having started so promisingly, has gone wildly off the rails.
However, I was looking at some data yesterday which included a forecast for BEV and PHEV sales in 2016, which was made in 2013. It was for around 1.5m units globally. I think the number was more like 1.1m so we're off track so far. But to my mind, the reason has been the lack of product available. That is about to change in a big way and by 2018 every major manufacturer is going to have choice (not just one model, or a compliance model that is more common here in the US). My own firm is forecasting a move from about 1% of vehicles in 2016 to 5% in 2023. I think this wildly underestimates what is about to happen.
Yes, BEV is not for everyone, and PHEV should always be more expensive than ICE, as you have duplicated systems. But PHEV will help with economy and even max power headlines (look at the new Panamera Turbo Hybrid although I'm only guessing that it has a plug, rather than being a conventional hybrid). But to argue that it's not going anywhere because it doesn't work once a year misses the massive change that is happening in ride-sharing.
I owned 4 vehicles in the UK, before I emigrated to the US a little under 2 years ago. I now live in a city and don't own a car at all. I'd have been looking at $1,000/month in parking and insurance, before even considering lease costs (petrol is cheap). I don't need it day to day, and now have accounts with Hertz and Zipcar for when I need to use a car. It takes a mindset adjustment to realise that you can jump in a hire car to go to [insert superstore of your choice] as it seems mad to pay to drive there. But in the grand scheme of things, it's far more sensible than owning/leasing.
When I am back in the UK in late-2018, I will undoubtedly have a BEV as a main car. Running costs will pay for the car hire of ICE cars when I need to go a long way in a day. I'm reconciled to this model. Other people will become so. Hell, I'm almost at the point when I'd start thinking about being in an ownership pool, but I think that needs autonomous driving. But with an average car being idle for 94% of the day, why on earth do I need 100% access to that. If I can find 10 families locally that want to buy 5 cars and who will all treat them as their own, then as long as the car brings itself to me when I need it, then I'm sorted. Apart from school runs, anyway ...
As to charging infrastructure. We're not going past 50% penetration for many years yet, so infrastructure will have time to catch up. And if the average daily mileage is a little over 20 miles, and cars are idle for 94% of the time, then charging is easy (apart from when you want to run it to max range of 200 miles EVERY day). Now I know this contradicts some of the above on sharing, but we have time to adjust and adapt.
Anyway, for posterity. My guess is that by 2023 over 25% of all new cars sold will be BEV or PHEV (and even then, I think PHEV will be dying out by then apart from in supercars - I expect BEV with REx to supplant PHEV).
Jez
However, I was looking at some data yesterday which included a forecast for BEV and PHEV sales in 2016, which was made in 2013. It was for around 1.5m units globally. I think the number was more like 1.1m so we're off track so far. But to my mind, the reason has been the lack of product available. That is about to change in a big way and by 2018 every major manufacturer is going to have choice (not just one model, or a compliance model that is more common here in the US). My own firm is forecasting a move from about 1% of vehicles in 2016 to 5% in 2023. I think this wildly underestimates what is about to happen.
Yes, BEV is not for everyone, and PHEV should always be more expensive than ICE, as you have duplicated systems. But PHEV will help with economy and even max power headlines (look at the new Panamera Turbo Hybrid although I'm only guessing that it has a plug, rather than being a conventional hybrid). But to argue that it's not going anywhere because it doesn't work once a year misses the massive change that is happening in ride-sharing.
I owned 4 vehicles in the UK, before I emigrated to the US a little under 2 years ago. I now live in a city and don't own a car at all. I'd have been looking at $1,000/month in parking and insurance, before even considering lease costs (petrol is cheap). I don't need it day to day, and now have accounts with Hertz and Zipcar for when I need to use a car. It takes a mindset adjustment to realise that you can jump in a hire car to go to [insert superstore of your choice] as it seems mad to pay to drive there. But in the grand scheme of things, it's far more sensible than owning/leasing.
When I am back in the UK in late-2018, I will undoubtedly have a BEV as a main car. Running costs will pay for the car hire of ICE cars when I need to go a long way in a day. I'm reconciled to this model. Other people will become so. Hell, I'm almost at the point when I'd start thinking about being in an ownership pool, but I think that needs autonomous driving. But with an average car being idle for 94% of the day, why on earth do I need 100% access to that. If I can find 10 families locally that want to buy 5 cars and who will all treat them as their own, then as long as the car brings itself to me when I need it, then I'm sorted. Apart from school runs, anyway ...
As to charging infrastructure. We're not going past 50% penetration for many years yet, so infrastructure will have time to catch up. And if the average daily mileage is a little over 20 miles, and cars are idle for 94% of the time, then charging is easy (apart from when you want to run it to max range of 200 miles EVERY day). Now I know this contradicts some of the above on sharing, but we have time to adjust and adapt.
Anyway, for posterity. My guess is that by 2023 over 25% of all new cars sold will be BEV or PHEV (and even then, I think PHEV will be dying out by then apart from in supercars - I expect BEV with REx to supplant PHEV).
Jez
Edited by Z3MCJez on Thursday 9th March 15:26
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
I think this is exactly right (apart from the robots bit). My view is that we are still in the early adopter stage, but it needs to be recognised that there is a stage before that, where the true pioneers suffer high cost, poor product performance, and plenty of compromises just to be part of the new technology. You don't get to early adopter unless many of those things are sorted out. I also believe that the jump into the early majority stage is not very far away.Look at it this way. 32 million cars in the UK, spread across 20 million car-owning households. Very roughly, 50% of those households own one car, so that's 22 million cars that are second, third, or even fourth cars. If the average car is idle for 94% of its time, and has an average daily journey of 28 miles, and we assume that second, third etc. cars in a household are even more lightly utilised on average than in one-car households, then the driver value proposition of EVs is already good enough to be considered by a significant proportion of that market. Let's say for conservatism that you could today meet the needs of 10% of single-car households, and 20% of the multiple-car households. That's a target market of 5.4m vehicles, which at an average £20k purchase price gives you a market of £108 billion. Average vehicle age is 7.5 years, so £14.4 bn per year to attack. Sneaking 0.05% of market share from the Astra to the Clio is interesting for Renault, but how about grabbing 10% of the EV market with the Zoe? And that's just the UK - multiply those numbers tenfold to get to the European potential.
Those kind of numbers will drive massive investment, which will improve the product proposition, which increases the number of people for whom it is a realistic option, which increases the market size, and round you go in a virtuous circle of investment. If you were standing in front of the board at VW tomorrow, with in one hand an investment case for completely redesigning and relaunching their diesel proposition, and in the other a case for massively focusing on EVs, which would you rather present?
The arguments on here from people who drive 500 miles every day on rural backroads while peeing into bottles so they never have to stop are completely irrelevant. Those drivers are about the same target market size as sports car owners, I should think. Sure, there will be products available for them, but their needs are in no way going to hold up the huge growth of EV and hybrid vehicles.
To answer MarshPhantom's point, this isn't evangelising, it's economics.
Edited by ajcj on Thursday 9th March 17:44
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
^^^^ This.Completely concur and this is the point I've been trying to make. Pure economics will drive the change when technology facilitates it. And yes...40-50% of us are going to be automated out of existence and unemployed in 10 years time too. Another eminent future challenge.
I've enjoyed this thread. I had kind of vaguely wondered what had become of the hydrogen cars that, 15 years ago, we would all be driving around in within 5-10 years. The excellent post on page 1 really helped me understand that.
I also get the need for a fast recharge by some people. If you really can get down to 5-10 minutes for a 300 mile charge, then that's great, but it seems a long way off, and I'm not sure having Samsung in the vanguard is filling me with much confidence. For me, the Tesla superchargers don't yet make battery swapping a moot technology; the mass of vehicles out there doesn't yet drive standardisation, but I don't get the 'unknown providence' argument - we manage to regulate the other stuff we put in our cars, and the battery packs could get tested at every charge and retired if they had deteriorated.
But, in general, there's only one way the wind is blowing, and it's not hydrogen.
I also get the need for a fast recharge by some people. If you really can get down to 5-10 minutes for a 300 mile charge, then that's great, but it seems a long way off, and I'm not sure having Samsung in the vanguard is filling me with much confidence. For me, the Tesla superchargers don't yet make battery swapping a moot technology; the mass of vehicles out there doesn't yet drive standardisation, but I don't get the 'unknown providence' argument - we manage to regulate the other stuff we put in our cars, and the battery packs could get tested at every charge and retired if they had deteriorated.
But, in general, there's only one way the wind is blowing, and it's not hydrogen.
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
Well, the tech industry is both a good and bad example - and it illustrates inertia pretty well. We all know mainframes are dead and everything is in the cloud. Only IBM still have a pretty tidy System Z business, and they're screwing in z13s at the moment. It's far from a growth business, but it posts good numbers all the same, especially when they release a new one. Pretty good for an antiquated technology that no one uses. The problem is that it is staggeringly expensive to get off them, so people stay until they absolutely have to go. And, if you're honest, they have some pretty compelling features as well.
Another data point - x86 processors. The processor architecture in your PC is probably x86, it dates from the 80s, and really is a bit of a bag of spanners. Intel have tried to kill it off a few times, but compatibility has ensured its survival, and with sufficient investment, it continues to rule the roost and probably will for the foreseeable future.
I'd be very wary of comparing software changes (fast, easy to roll out) with hardware changes - because hardware hasn't actually changed that much. It's got a boat load faster, cheaper and smaller, but many aspects are remarkably unchanged.
rxe said:
DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.
Well, the tech industry is both a good and bad example - and it illustrates inertia pretty well. We all know mainframes are dead and everything is in the cloud. Only IBM still have a pretty tidy System Z business, and they're screwing in z13s at the moment. It's far from a growth business, but it posts good numbers all the same, especially when they release a new one. Pretty good for an antiquated technology that no one uses. The problem is that it is staggeringly expensive to get off them, so people stay until they absolutely have to go. And, if you're honest, they have some pretty compelling features as well.
........................
There may always be some situations where the ICE will be more appropriate (just like mainframes), for example poorer countries where average car age is 20 years+ and the atypical road warrior doing 50,000 miles a year (though autonomous vehicles are their doom)
babatunde said:
Above is precisely the point, ICE's aren't going to die overnight, what will happen is EVs will dominate the mass market for new cars. ICEs will be marginalized and become mainly toys that we keep in the back of our garages and bore our grandchildren about.
There may always be some situations where the ICE will be more appropriate (just like mainframes), for example poorer countries where average car age is 20 years+ and the atypical road warrior doing 50,000 miles a year (though autonomous vehicles are their doom)
Pretty much.There may always be some situations where the ICE will be more appropriate (just like mainframes), for example poorer countries where average car age is 20 years+ and the atypical road warrior doing 50,000 miles a year (though autonomous vehicles are their doom)
Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff