OT: Talking Cars Tuesday - It's electric
Better late than never!
Anyway - on to our topic for the week. The big Auto news (somewhat befuddling to me) is the Tesla Model 3 and how excited folks are for it. So - electrics. Do you think you'd buy one? What would it take to get you to buy electric? Are you waiting for something? I'll answer in the comments as per normal...
The Tesla 3 is on my list. I normally don't gravitate toward four-door cars, but like that one.
What do you drive now? On a full tank I only get about 300-350 miles in my GTI (damn tiny gas tank...)
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I get about 450 on my car.
Cars are expensive, owning a special "road trip car" is not especially convenient. A lot of families own exactly two (or one) cars and they get used daily. But you usually (within reason) by a car to meet your heaviest use need. Sure, maybe you only need 5 seats and a big cargo area once a month, but that's often enough that buying a big minivan or SUV makes sense, and you've already got it so why not make that your daily driver? Same deal with range.
I really like the model 3 and would consider one for my daily driver, but it can't do everything a regular car does (drive cross country without significant planning) and until it can I'd need to maintain a gas burner.
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only due to the instituationalized and intentional delays in bringing that technology to the consumer. The oil and gas industry (and others) killed the implementation of electric car use decades ago, and the fact we are only seeing precious few models now is a fucking abomination. We could have severely and drastically reduced the use of fossil fuels many years ago...
First, you'll pry my clutch pedal from my cold, dead left foot. Second, I don't think that battery energy density is there yet. Someday I think electric cars will be ubiquitous, but I don't think that'll be for 20-40 years.
I don't think I'll ever have ONLY an electric car. There's a chance that I'd have an electric as a commuter and a "fun" car, but I could also just have a better "fun" car. We'll see.
Also, I live in Chicago. I don't have a garage. I couldn't buy one now if I wanted to.
Have you driven a tesla? I test drove one a few months ago for shit's and giggles as there is no way i could afford one. The most noticable thing is the instant power. It doesn't have to rev at all. You just launch.
For me, the price needs to come down. I'd also like more range so I can do long road trips. I've looked at the non teslas as well and they all have too low range for me.
I think you are wrong about the energy density thing. I've worked on energy tech for awhile and there are alternatives to the batteries they are using (such as supercaps) which could make a leap in desity and c rate.
I have not driven a Tesla. I would given the opportunity, but I wouldn't purchase one (cost and other reasons... maybe I'll do a mini rant, we'll see).
Regarding energy density - I'm definitely right. You're not wrong though. Energy density keeps getting better and better, and with Super Capacitors and other stuff they may (may!) eventually catch up and pass gasoline and diesel. In fact, I'd bet lots of money that they will. But the tech being ready in a lab and the tech being ready on the road are two very different things.
I highly reccomend driving a Tesla. It's a lot of fun.
You make a good point about lab vs road ready. I didn't consider that auto companies are notorious slow movers when it comes to new tech. I still think the timeline for supercaps is shorter than you stated.
I'd drive one if given teh opportunity for sure.
And it's not just that auto companies are low-risk and slow moving (many are) it's the environment.
You've got to make a product that works perfectly at -40 to 120F in rain/wind/sleet/hail/snow/deathly sun/etc. That climate controls its cabin. That can safely and smoothly transport people at speeds they were (physically) never meant to go. That works on roads as shitty as those you see in Michigan. That can't break (warranty and reliability wise). That's expected to function perfectly at all times (unless you're Tesla).
Cars are pretty good today. That's part of electric cars' problem - the incumbent does a good job.
I highly reccomend driving a Tesla. It's a lot of fun.
You make a good point about lab vs road ready. I didn't consider that auto companies are notorious slow movers when it comes to new tech. I still think the timeline for supercaps is shorter than you stated.
Thank you for mentioning the low energy density of batteries.
If I lived in a city I would buy one for sure. I hate our insistence on burning fossil fuels.
I however live in a small community and I'm not sure that it would be a good idea to buy electric at this point. I'm open to it, and hopefully within the next couple of years I'll drive electric.
What would change in the next few years? More range? Living situation? Better quality controls/etc? What would push you over the edge?
I'd want more charging stations in my area. Currently there is 1 in about a 50 mile radius.
That's really all I need.
well that and to make more money..
Yes. The need for public chargers is grossy overstated when you have a 215 mile range (the model E). A public charging network is nice to have, but is by no means necessary, to launch the electric vehicle market. People will charge at home and love it. No more irritating stops at the gas station.
68% of the electricity that would go into your electric vehicle is generated via fossil fuels. So with an electric, you're still burning fossil fuels; you're just doing it in a power plant instead of the car itself.
And roughly half of the electricity generated is lost to heat in transmission.
End to end, electric cars are still more efficient / more environmentally friendly. Maybe if you're using power from a particularly nasty coal plant it would offset most of it but otherwise...
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Even if charged 100% by the dirtiest coal (not the future), EV's have much less emmissions than gas cars. The engines are simply much more efficient at moving you around.
have a dog in this fight: If electric makes economic and logistical sense for people I completely understand why they would want to go that way. I'm a pilot and I saw a prototype aircraft at Oshkosh years ago that ran entirely on electric, and the nickel or dollar's cost per hour (or whatever; it was low) to run it seemed appealing.
But you cannot say you're not burning fossil fuels if you simply move their combustion upstream from you. You're still burning them. And the BTU yield per gallon or pound whether it's done centrally vs in the vehicle seems a bit more controversial than what you've asserted.
Heresy? Good! Sacred cows make the best cheeseburgers.
Burning fossil fuel for electricity is not the future. Clean energy and EV's are like peanut butter and jelly, they will dominate as a pair.
I'd always heard the 50% value and after your comment looked it up. It is (according to NEMA) around 6.1%. I stand corrected.
https://www.nema.org/Products/Documents/TDEnergyEff.pdf
The mileage between charges and the charging time are preventing me from pulling the trigger on an electric vehicle. If I had to, I would go the Volt route where you are guaranteed to not be stuck (unless you run out of gas). Plug-in hybrids are the way to go until an electric vehicle can get me to my cottage without a recharge.
An electric car with a generator onboard that can utilize the existing gasoline infrastructure makes a lot of sense. I'm actually surprised that there isn't more development along this route compared to "straight" electrics. The Volt and the i3 are really the only ones doing this today.
I agree - eventually I can see myself in an electric car, but it would be a PHEV like the Volt or Fusion Energi.
Reason is long trips. I don't believe electrics will ever have a charge rate similar to filling a gas tank. I read an analogy that charging a battery is like filling a glass of water all the way to the top. You have to slow down toward the end to make sure you don't spill over. Gas pumps have that automatic shutoff. It's trickier for chargers. Tesla's supercharging stations only get you to 80%, which they figure is good for 170 miles (in ideal conditions of course) to get you to the next charging station - and it still takes half an hour. There's going to be some huge diminishing marginal returns on the efforts to make chargers catch up to filling a gas tank.
And if for some reason you run out of gas, it's a simple matter of getting a jerry can. No such thing as a jerry can of electricity.
Now all they have to do is not sacrifice everything else. The Fusion Energi looks like a regular Fusion, until you open the trunk and find it has room for like one loaf of bread.
"No such thing as a jerry can of electricity."
The word you're looking for is "battery."
But all joking aside, I get what you're saying.
That's probably the solution though:
Have an easily changable battery. Then you pull up to a "charging station". Swap batteries in say 5-10 min. And be on your way.
Much faster. Leave your spent battery for charging and pick up one that is already charged. The person coming behind you will pick up the one you just left.
There was a company, Better Place, that has already come and gone with this idea. Way, way, way ahead of their time. Standardizing swapping seems tricky to me with the battery bank being such a large (and heavy) component of the vehicle. EV's are basically designed around them.
Didn't read this before replying to an above comment. Plus 1 for being first
I'm guessing you have to put the car on a hoist to swap out the battery. Just a guess on that, but with the battery taking up the entire area underneath the car, it's not likely to be an easy procedure even if it's a fast one.
Also, you had to sign up for an appointment to do a battery swap two days in advance and they cost $80. You can't just drive up and say "make it happen" and the $80 is more than anyone wants to pay. Tesla needed about a week to decide nobody wanted to do that.
The thing I don't like is this. Here's a quote from Elon Musk:
The Superchargers are fast enough that if you're driving from LA to San Francisco, and you start a trip at 9AM, by the time you get to, say, noon, you want to stop, and you want to stretch your legs, hit the restroom, grab a bite to eat, grab a coffee, and be on your way, and by that time, the car is charged and ready to go, and it's free.
It's nice that they've decided that LA to San Francisco is the only benchmark anyone would ever need (Musk seems to really like that trip, with the Hyperloop he's pushing) but the real-life combination of trips people might make is in the tens of millions, not just LA-SF all the time. And speaking personally, I don't always want to "stretch my legs, hit the restroom, grab a bite and coffee," I just want to be off the road and back on it in five minutes. Electric cars still require that every three hours or so, and that's not going to change any time soon. Elon sounds like my old urban planning professor - his favorite phrase was "imagine if." He's designing a system that works for a small percentage of real-life trips. Pure electrics will probably always have that limitation.
There are longer stretches of "nothing" along the Interstate system than civilization. It's a good idea to start it on a particular well traveled route, but at the end of the day one would need charging stations along I-10 in Texas. About five charges before one can cross the whole state in a Model 3.
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Want to import a morgan?
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Seriously debating if future (as in when I can afford one used) "fun" car is a 2016 Cayman or a 3-Wheeler.
That's on my list of things to buy if I ever have more money than I know what to do with.
Not sure that is accurate. Right now there are performance electric cars that go over 200 miles. Maybe not as affordable as you want but the technology is there.
I have been waiting on the Tesla Model S but trying to be practical so I put down my deposit on the Model 3. It's not cheap but $35,000 for a car that goes 0-60 in under 6 seconds (semi-performance) and gets 200 miles on a charge sounds pretty enticing. Oh, and it looks pretty cool also.
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