Electricity is scary! [Transportation Thread]

[OrangeAfroMan]

After the off-tooic discussion in other threads about EVs, I wanted to make a new thread to discuss it further.

Some decent points have been made, mostly regarding range, and I can say we won't be 100% electric for a while, because we like to travel ~200 miles out of town pretty regularly, to places that there aren't chargers.

That said, battery and electronic regulation is improving constantly, and it is only a matter of time until range is a non issue for even the most fringe cases.

More importantly, it doesn't matter if some of us have special fringe needs and dont want electric cars to become ubiquitous and eventually lead to the banning of petrol vehicles. 200 mile range is sufficient for 99% of drivers, and cars like the Tesla Model 3 will continue to push the market more in favor of consumers every year. There is no reason that an electric car with the same functionality as a petrol car should cost more, once they're established. Their drive trains consist of ~20 moving parts, versus >2000 moving parts for a petrol drive train. They don't require nearly as much maintenance (no oil changes, no transmissons), and the technology at their core is cheap and has existed for decades. EVs are superior to petrol cars in literally every way, and are the way forward. Electricity is extremely cheap and environmentally friendly in many parts of the US (we pay $0.07/kWh here, over half of it is hydroelectric) and increasing implementation of renewables will only make it cheaper and better.

Within ten years (probably less), EVs will be so common that demand for petrol will fall to the point that it is prohibitably expensive for the average person to even drive a Camry. Every EV on the road makes petrol just a hair more expensive.

[RazoR]

Within ten years (probably less), EVs will be so common that demand for petrol will fall to the point that it is prohibitably expensive for the average person to even drive a Camry. Every EV on the road makes petrol just a hair more expensive.

That is exactly what i heard 10 years ago.

Internal combustion will never die.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Within ten years (probably less), EVs will be so common that demand for petrol will fall to the point that it is prohibitably expensive for the average person to even drive a Camry. Every EV on the road makes petrol just a hair more expensive.

That is exactly what i heard 10 years ago.

Internal combustion will never die.

We are nowhere near where we were ten years ago.

[Don Rumata]

[Aea]

Don Containment Thread. I approve.

[OrangeAfroMan]

Don Containment Thread. I approve.

:]

[erichkknaar]

tbf, we were trying to fly nuclear powered aircraft at that point.

[Don Rumata]

Don Containment Thread. I approve.

[Don Rumata]

...the technology at their core is cheap and has existed for decades...

also OrangeAfroMan:

...We are nowhere near where we were ten years ago...

[OrangeAfroMan]

...the technology at their core is cheap and has existed for decades...

also OrangeAfroMan:

...We are nowhere near where we were ten years ago...

Yep, and unlike ten years ago we have people like Elon Musk actually making excellent vehicles with that technology. Also note that I said "at its core" - there has been a lot of ancillary development and invention that was needed to make a functioning product. The point is that the motors and controls are well established.

It really did take someone like Musk that was willing to dump money into something that wasn't going to be profitable in the short term (Tesla's first profitable year was 2016) to advance the technology

[Zeekar]

>excellent vehicles

Mfw

[Bombcrater]

200 mile range is sufficient for 99% of drivers, and cars like the Tesla Model 3 will continue to push the market more in favor of consumers every year.

I can't see how anyone thinks EVs are not the future, and the near future at that. They should become completely dominant within 10 years, at least everywhere that has a temperate climate and relatively short distance travel - western Europe being the obvious candidate to lead the switch. But it'll take significant advances in battery technology to make them viable in environments with extreme temperatures, or long distances between cities. Most parts of Europe can ban ICE cars quite easily, but some US states, Canada, etc, will struggle. Kinda feel sorry for people living in places where EVs don't work well, the cost of driving is going to jump horribly not so many years from now.

[OrangeAfroMan]

200 mile range is sufficient for 99% of drivers, and cars like the Tesla Model 3 will continue to push the market more in favor of consumers every year.

I can't see how anyone thinks EVs are not the future, and the near future at that. They should become completely dominant within 10 years, at least everywhere that has a temperate climate and relatively short distance travel - western Europe being the obvious candidate to lead the switch. But it'll take significant advances in battery technology to make them viable in environments with extreme temperatures, or long distances between cities. Most parts of Europe can ban ICE cars quite easily, but some US states, Canada, etc, will struggle. Kinda feel sorry for people living in places where EVs don't work well, the cost of driving is going to jump horribly not so many years from now.

I'm really curious to see what is hiding in Tesla's long haul truck

[Alistair]

Mass Transit or gtfo.

[RazoR]

Kinda feel sorry for people living in places where EVs don't work well, the cost of driving is going to jump horribly not so many years from now.

Can anybody explain to me how this would work?

[Don Rumata]

I'm really curious to see what is hiding in Tesla's long haul truck

Kittens and puppies and unicorns!!!

What I am curious about, does OrangeAfroMan (or other EV cheerleaders) have any background in physical chemistry (particularly electrochemistry), so they can explain how exactly all those "constant improvements" are going to happen?

Because I get the feeling that they have no fucking clue about how batteries work at all.

[Elriche Oshego]

Don containment thread indeed.

[Don Rumata]

Who needs electric cars?!? The future is electric luggage!

[Alistair]

The solution is modern cities built around modern, walkable, infrastructure, supported by deep and broad mass transit systems linking centralized city areas, supported by a reliable long-distance national transit system for intercity travel.

The solution is to understand that these investments are not ever going to be "profitable" on their own, and to be ok with that, and still invest in them, and support them.

The solution is to limit investment in outdated technology like cars/trucks/roads, electric or not, and start building for a sustainable, environmentally friendly, transit driven future.

[Aea]

I’m going to trigger Don but I don’t think those changes are going to come right away.

Self driving cars will be an excellent stop gap for many. Especially urban residents who may choose to commute for work but don’t have access to the same level of public transport to other common destinations. We’re already seeing this evolution taking place with Uber.

Electric cars would be a great candidate for this use case as they are cleaner and the inconveniences can be abstracted away from the consumer when it’s treated as a service rather than a direct purchase.

The same ideas can be scaled up for busses and other ‘ride sharing’ variants.

More efficient usage of automobiles, especially in an automated self driving system will mean fewer cars on the road, lower road wear, fewer accidents, etc.

US cities are built around cars, and that isn’t going to change on a fundamental level for decades.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk