Electric Car Challenges

[Malcolm McLeod]

... make a system that charges the battery and the car is driving.

Tech is simple*. We'll just need your money to pay for installation. ALL of it. ....Sorry.

(*- even my toothbrush can do this.)

[roger wiegand]

The solar panels on our house would easily keep two vehicles charged at our usage levels without adding any need for new power generation or distribution capacity. That won't work for people whose cars are not at home during the day, but there are a lot of us who are (a lot more now than before COVID). I was surprised at my last company how many of our 20-30-something age employees either chose not to have a car or to have one they only used on weekends for non-commute activities. We ended up needing only five parking spots for 22 employees.

For them the shared Zip cars that live at a charging station and can be checked out for their occasional needs are perfect. I strongly suspect this model will continue to gain in popularity, at least in cities.

[Jim Koepke]

I ask where is the electricity to come from. Every Summer seems to bring fear of blackouts when everyone turns the air conditioners on. These cars aren't being "trickle charged".

More solar panels on roofs and windmills in open areas. The industry for this is in its infancy. It will likely grow exponentially in the coming decade or two.

California might be able to continue to impose black-outs because of poor planning but the majority of our country will not welcome loss of electricity in extreme cold or hot seasons.

The poor planing has more to do with wind and lack of tree trimming. Most of the "imposed black-outs" have been to prevent fires, not lack of capacity.

Hopefully new technologies will find solutions to many of the perceived problems with EV.

In the mean time motels, restaurants and retailers with charging stations will have created an incentive for some to choose them for their business.

Currently two of the local grocers also have gas stations on their property. Not sure if both of them have the same policy but my shopping is mostly done at one of them. For every $100 in purchases in one of their stores we get a 10¢/gallon discount on gas. That added up to a little more than $12 off on my last fill up.

When EV gets more established they may do something similar for electric charging.

Then there is always federal and state incentive programs. There could be incentives to build charging stations.

The world is changing. We can choose to change with it or we can fight it.

jtk

[Stan Calow]

Apparently, the major automakers (GM, For, Toyota,VW, etc) have all decided EV is the way to go. They're not known for gambling or for not analyzing the situation thoroughly.

I dont think we should just assume that people and society will act the same as they have in the past. Just like the pandemic has accelerated changes in the way we work (much of that at home, not in offices) and shopping has changed from malls and retail stores to online. Maybe the way we travel will also change, so that we dont see the need for large gas-powered vehicles to commute short distances, or drive everywhere. Range of EV is not an issue if you only need to drive a few miles a day.
I will consider a EV for next daily-use vehicle, and keep a gas-powered vehicle for longer-trips or rent one if I need it.

[Tom M King]

The whole electrical grid infrastructure is going to have to be updated, and not just for electric vehicles. Just around here, I know of 7200 acres of solar farms being planned, and that's on top of whatever is already here, and only the ones I've heard of because I know the people who own the land. But the updating is not just going to be for that. How long will it be before the population doubles again? which brings that much more demand.

We're just going to have to stop burning so much of anything. It might as well be sooner, than later.

EV's are already a fair percentage of the cars that educated people around here drive. Most people that are renting lake houses to work out of, are driving them, as are all my Scientist friends. We almost bought one, this past year, but the range we need wasn't there yet.

[Erik Loza]

My wife and I have talked a lot about this. Even though you can't officially buy a Tesla here in TX, we are seeing more and more of them in our neighborhood as California tech ex-pats come to Austin. We will probably always have a gas-powered 4Runner since it's a lifestyle-enabler for us but can also see ourselves with some small electric car for around-towning.

Erik

[glenn bradley]

Before retirement we had charging stations in many lots on the UC campuses. The first two hours were free to the driver. After that they were direct charged to their credit card for each additional interval (20 minutes I believe). This helped to keep the charging station available although a co-worker got caught in a meeting and paid a lot to park their car more than once ;-)

[Doug Garson]

I find it amusing that some of the arguments against electric vehicles replacing internal combustion cars are the same or inverse of some of the arguments against internal combustion cars replacing horse and buggy. When IC cars were introduced there wasn't a network of gas stations so range was limited. When IC cars were introduced there was concern that they were too noisy and would scare the horses, now a concern with EV's is they are too quiet and pedestrians can't hear them coming.

[Kev Williams]

I have one EV, probably the only one I'll ever have: A Segway nine-bot. For hitting the Walgreens and the bank it works pretty good. And as far as actual driving a car goes, since we work from home, we don't drive much. Haven't put 2500 miles on the wife's Mustang we had for 6 years. We've only put 60,000 miles on the wife's other Mustang we've owned 26 years... My 19 year old bought-new truck has 62,000 miles, less than 4000 per year. Guess I could consider an EV, but why? My carbon footprint from gasoline driving is probably less than an EV car driven 30k miles a year...

Several years ago we starting buying our retirement toys, and we now have quite a stockpile. All of which are IC powered of course...

So I have to ask: what's the future prognosis of electric houseboats and boats in general, electric jumbo jets and other aircraft, electric 40' motorhomes, just for starters-? I can see electric motorcycles and ATV's and such, but vacationing in an electric houseboat or big RV just seems like half the vacation would be spent charging batteries...

[Bruce Volden]

I'm an ICE guy, nothing against EV's.
It's a 80 mile roundtrip for me to get groceries and other necessities so I have an SUV and p/u.
I own stock in an EV company. I don't think they're going away any time soon but I don't think they'll be the next model T either.
Oil will not be going away, even in my grand kids lifetime. It is necessary in building solar and wind energy and a myriad of other "stuff".
If we were dead serious on energy we would be building more nuclear plants, like Europeans have been (France).
EV's are not the solution to clean air, carbon, green etc.
Heck we can't even pick up our own litter/trash from the hiways now we want to try other things? I remember the "crying Indian" from my high school days. Makes no sense to me.
Please don't flame me, I just had to get it off my chest.

Bruce

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

A company I once did some legal work for recently put in those high power charging stations for use by employees. They can charge their cars while they work. There is a new electric motorcycle that has a range of 120 miles and can go 160MPH. Takes a hour at a public charging station. Not exactly a no hassle cross country road trip vehicle, but if your weekend place is under 100 miles, or you need to commute, it seems it may be the ticket. I understand some big city parking garages already have charging stations, for customers, (a premium parking fee of course) I remember seeing an electric car (a Sparrow) in rush hour traffic in DC for a few years back in the 1980's or 1990's. I also knew a guy that put solar panels on his English racing bike and on a very bright sunny day on flat terrain, it would do a constant 8 to 10 miles per hour. The time is coming for electric vehicles. Whether there will be interchangeable batteries, or quick charge technology, the one thing, it that what we currently view as a limitation, will be either overcome or solved by some other means. When automobiles first ran around the USA, there were only a few places to purchase gasoline. If you ran out of gas, you paid a farmer or teamster to haul your car to gas. Whether reduced charge times will become available, quicker charge vehicles, better batteries, more efficient motors, gamma ray electrical production (one of Nikolai Tesla's ideas) charging stations at employees, charging stations mandated to be supplied by landlords, like electricity, cable and heat. A solution will occur.

[Dave Lehnert]

Wonder how it will work if everyone goes to Grandma house for thanksgiving
1) there will only be one charger to use if she has on at all
2) If she does have a charger, she not going to want everyone to run up her electric bill to charge the car.

Someone was telling me the car is built around the batteries and are not replaceable???? So much for selling a used car.

[Dave Lehnert]

On average, What does it cost to charge a car?

[Mike Henderson]

Wonder how it will work if everyone goes to Grandma house for thanksgiving
1) there will only be one charger to use if she has on at all
2) If she does have a charger, she not going to want everyone to run up her electric bill to charge the car.

Someone was telling me the car is built around the batteries and are not replaceable???? So much for selling a used car.

The batteries are replaceable by the dealer or manufacturer - but not by the user. I think replacement batteries for a Tesla Model 3 are about $5,000. The batteries should last 150,000 miles, or more. They will degrade over that lifetime so you won't get the same range as when the car was new.

Mike

[Mike Henderson]

On average, What does it cost to charge a car?

Let's say you have a car with a 90 KiloWatt hour battery. You're not going to run the battery completely down, just like you generally won't run your car until the gas tank is empty.

So let's say it's half empty so you need to charge it with 45 Kilo Watt hours. Electricity prices vary depending on where you live but let's say you charge it a the minimum cost time, which I'll assume is $0.10 per Kilo Watt hour. That would be $4.50.

If your electricity is more expensive you can do the math - $0.20/kWhr would be $9.00.

Mike

[Actually, charging a battery is not 100% efficient, but it's very high. So it takes a bit more than 45 kWhr to put 45 kWhr into a battery.]