Are EVs really dead?

Just for the irony, there is a place for EVs.

 

Let’s say if EVs were to dominate the market and charging stations become as busy as our current gas stations….which takes more time to “fill up”, how do you think that would work? Many people don’t have a driveway and have to park on the curb, how would they charge at home? What about apartment dwellers, would the apartment complex need a charge cable at every parking spot? Each apartment complex would need to have their electricity service/power lines upgraded as well as the substations that supply them.
We can produce the electricity power required but we can’t distribute it because of our antiquated grid. We would need ~100k miles of new power cables/sub stations nationwide to distribute that much additional energy, it would take at least a couple decades to complete. (NIMBY)People don’t like power poles/overhead lines so much would need to be buried which is much more expensive/time consuming. Would you prefer overhead lines or buried lines in front of your house? Not to mention lengthy environmental and right-of-way court fights.
MASSIVE grid upgrades and advanced battery technology will be required for EVs to rival ICE in overall practicality.

 

As far as I understand, if there is less demand for gasoline, OPEC countries will refine less to reduce supply. So I doubt any price drops will be long-term.

 

I think the biggest factor determining whether or not an EV would work for someone is if they have the ability to charge it at their home. You can't get much more convenient than that, getting home from work, plugging your vehicle in, and having a fully charged battery everyday.

I commute 60 mi a day, and I would love to have an EV for this purpose, as long as I had access to a combustion or hybrid for road trips. Or if I could recharge in 15 or 20 minutes, that wouldn't even be an issue.

Unfortunately for me, my living situation is a apartment building about 130 years old that does not have off street parking, so I probably wouldn't even be able to install a charger if I wanted to. So that pretty much kills the whole EV thing for me, because my employer doesn't have chargers, and I don't see any chargers anywhere on my commute.

I'm not sad the incentives went away, I mostly agree that these things shouldn't need to be incentivized. On the other hand, I also don't agree with states that are issuing extra taxes on them. I understand the loss of gas tax revenue, but some of these states are talking about levying taxes & fees that would be multiple times what the average driver would pay in fuel tax. I take that as those states are trying to disincentivize people from buying them, which is even worse, IMO.

End of day, I think the consumer should be able to purchase what they want.

One place where I do think EVS make a lot of sense is for local delivery vehicles or municipal type vehicles that sit around idling all day. I think instead of an explorer interceptor sitting there idling all day at a traffic detail, utilize some sort of EV that will have plenty of juice to run all the lights and AC all day. I can see the reduced maintenance and fuel cost as being a big savings on a vehicle used like that.

 

EVs now get to compete in a fair market. I'm sure adoption will slow

 

The market was never fair, fuel is already artificially cheap in the US and newer technologies are more expensive in general.

Think about what Mercedes has had in their cars years before a given feature trickled down to economy models.

Some of what you’re doing is looking through electric cars through the lens of gas being “default”

Where there’s electricity, one can charge and planning capacity buildouts aren’t insane.

Crypto already uses enough energy to power a 51st state, the “AI” data center boom is in full swing and I don’t see anyone talking about capacity there.

(and electrical demand trends down overnight when most will be charging, combined with the fact that most won’t be charging from 0-100 every day)

Outside of long-distance travel, electric car charging is done at home and at destinations, not at gas stations like today so given the nature of that technology, of course a Costco Electric Car charging station modeled after the current gas station looks stupid.

and Yes, there’s a lot of “but what about’s” like apartments, etc. but it doesn’t mean everything has to be tossed out.

Imagine if electric cars were what people were used to. Charging at home or at destinations and then gasoline shows up.
I’m sure folks will pooh-pooh the idea of going to a specific place to refuel, not starting each day with a full charge and the inefficiency of supplying them by tankers that drive all over the nation to each station. (of course we know it works today, but just pointing out folks are used to what they are used to and oversee the downsides)

Yes, it is obviously not a magic bullet that does everything better, but what is?

 

None of what you state can become future reality without grid upgrades. I never mentioned CAPACITY…..DISTRIBUTION of a huge increase of electrical energy consumption is the issue, AKA grid. ONE gallon of gas = 33.7kwh of energy.

 

Grid/capacity upgrades are a fact of life more, cheaper energy is generally an economic plus - why is that some “gotcha!”

As for the regulatory environment, that can always change.

I know you said states, but we already have the federal executive branch ignoring laws left and right. (which of course comes with plenty of issues but that’s something else)

It’s the current plan but I’m betting it’s aggressive for manufacturers to have a target. I went and looked at the FAQ’s for the California regulation in question and it’s pretty comprehensive.

https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/resources/do...cks-are-going-zero-frequently-asked-questions

I won’t pretend it covers every edge case or acknowledges every concern, but the notable part for me is that it includes PHEV’s, so the Ramcharger would theoretically be welcome still. (Devil will be in the details, but PHEV’s are called out as “zero emission” compliant.)

10 years ago in 2015, we had the BMW i3, Model S, Nissan Leaf 1, Kia Soul EV, that Mercedes B-class and early PHEV’s, most I wouldn’t be interested in.

I know I can’t see the future, maybe a meteor strikes, but barring that and as development accelerates worldwide, imagine what we might see in a decade.

(Probably new 6th gen 4Runners still but who knows?)

 

It DOES NOT matter about who makes the best, most advanced EV. We CANNOT distribute the electric energy required to satisfy future EV needs without MASSIVE GRID upgrades.
ONE gallon of gas = 33.7kwh of energy that would need to be transmitted over power lines.
Our goverment continues to put the cart before the horse.
I have nothing against EVs, just the unbelievably stupid way they are ignoring the elephant in the room.

 

Once more, I’m not trying to be the argumentative jerk around here. But yes, capacity issues are being talked about… a lot.

 

^^ This. The biggest issue that I have and I suspect many have is: There needs to be an infrastructure in place for ALL the ev's they want to push onto consumers. This means:

1) Building all the components to make EV charging stations (hopefully they're the fast charging kind).
2) Installing 100's of thousands of charging stations through the U.S.
3) Tying those stations into the local power grid. That means running power lines, cables, etc. Lots of manual labor. It'll get costly very fast.
4) Updating the power grid for each state to handle the added work load we'll be throwing at it.
5) Hiring people to deal with the maintenance that will need to be done on a regular basis to maintain the equipment.

Who pays for that? The government? The manufacturers? The power companies? Does the cost get passed on to the consumer when it's rolled into the price of the vehicle?

Basically there are more questions (and problems) than answers right now. I think they're trying to do to much too fast. It will catch on, but it'll take another 40 years to be "the standard" vehicle that consumers choose. I won't call out one political party over another, but sometimes they expect Rome to be built in a day.

 

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And that, ladies and gentlemen,is the bottom line.

 

You’re not accounting for the efficiency of turning that kWh into movement so that’s not a 1:1 calculation, over half of that 33.7 is lost as heat in an ICE.

Use won’t be a flat increase 24/7 either and it’s not on top of peak use as well.

Same way people don’t necessarily need a service upgrade to their home or living with a 15A level 1 charger to add an EV.

Smart panels can be configured to ensure you don’t charge the car when you’re running your electric dryer, etc.

I follow! But it’s not some crazy insurmountable challenge. We built out electricity to the farthest (ok not literally but the point still stands) reaches of the country, grid upgrades are also planned for in advance.

You also don’t need all the infrastructure to exist and be ready before beginning any transition.

And even if the 2035 deadline for light-duty EV/PHEV/fuel cell (but yea that last one’s a non-starter) sticks around, that’s just those several states.

Existing ICE/hybrid cars will stick around and keep on not plugging in, new ICE vehicles will keep on selling elsewhere so that’s still personal vehicles that won’t need to be accounted for short-term.

I can certainly think of plenty of billions of dollars going places today I rather be put into the electric grid for the future, but of course getting everyone to agree on what to spend/cut is the rub.

Of course I’m not saying there will never be a single problem, I’m saying planning will go a lot farther than taking every car, multiplying it and dumping it on top of current generation capacity makes it seem.

 

Amen, brother!

 

The other thing to think about is where the power is coming from. Around here most of it is created from burning fossil fuels. Does it really make much sense to burn oil or natural gas to create electricity then push it through the grid to charge a car? Electricity rates here are also very expensive compared to other parts of the country. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense unless you can create your own power through solar or wind.

 

Haha. In California the fuel tax is 68¢/gallon. So the price of gas is simultaneously artificially cheap and artificially expensive.

BTW, the initial goal of those taxes when they were enacted was to encourage people to use less gas, and not as a revenue source. And now that they’ve raised the taxes sufficiently high that those taxes are having the desired effect, they put a tax on electric vehicles too. Which removes the incentive to use less gas.

Many California wildfires are caused by transmission lines that are close to 100 years old. How far in advance are they planning those upgrades?

However, not yet considered in this thread is the idea of swappable batteries in electric cars. There are two benefits: first, if one could simply drive through a “battery station” where a depleted battery is replaced with a fresh one in the time it takes to fill up at a gas station, that would remove the inconvenience of charging time from the equation. That battery would then go into a charging dock to be charged and ready to be put into another vehicle. Second, having centralized EV battery charging would simplify the distribution issue. Just spitballing here.

 

Its more efficient to produce electricity in a power plant than in an ICE vehicle.

And there should be more solar on top of buildings. Even if the panels just off set the cooling needs of a building, that’s moving in the right direction. But then that raises the question of what do we do when the panels are trash, kind of like what do we do with the nasty emissions from an ICE? There are pros and cons to everything, we need to move towards things with an open mind, but remember what’s good for me doesn’t mean that’s good for you.

 

I would need to see a full lifecycle analysis comparing an EV and Ice vehicle to see which is truly more energy efficient before making a real decision on which is better for the planet. Who knows how much energy is used to mine the raw materials and manufacturing of batteries, refining oil, transporting it around the world and all the other million processes involved in making each vehicle. Then there’s everything used over the life of the vehicle like oil, tires and replacement parts. At the end of life there’s the recycling process and how much can be reused vs tossed in the landfill and the energy to do such. You never hear any politicians talking about any of these facts.

 

Very true.

 

I assume this was said in jest, but nowadays you can never be sure...

Care to elaborate?

 

I wired my garage with 60A line and its own breaker box about 6 years ago, anticipating I'd have an electric car soon. I yet to find anything EV appealing to me.

 

I still use a water wheel down by the creek for power, just to charge my cellphone. So I’m basically off the grid

 

A little in jest, but I strongly doubt something doesn't already exist that the government has been hiding. Way too many "coincidental" conspiracy's....