Agreed. I drive a Leaf and I think the switchover is going to come faster than people think. Nonetheless its an interesting article despite its slightly sniffy attitude to electrics because it highlights the scary predicament that the big automakers find themselves in.
Yeah. I've got a couple of good old fashioned regular performance cars here in the SF bay area. I'd love to have the excuse (read: carpool lane access, long commute, whatever) to buy an electric but there's just no "need" in my life for a new vehicle.
That said, the penetration rate of electric vehicles as a proportion of new vehicles here is staggering. The Model S easily outsells any competitor's luxury car in the same class, you'd have to combine all A6 / 5 series / E Class sales to even hope to show the same numbers. And I can see why -- if you want to plunk down all this cash for a new car, why not get something truly new, not something outdated?
My uncle is very frugal and has spent years looking at buying a new car and then up and ordered a (very base) Model S with the reasoning, if I'm spending all this money, I want to spend the money on future tech, not old tech.
Even sitting in my 2016 car this morning, in the cold, I was thinking how silly it is that I have to wait for the coolant in the car to warm up before the heater starts blowing hot, and how funny all of the ICE cars look with steam coming out of the exhaust on a cold morning. It already feels out of date.
More than that, after six years of Leaf ownership it feels downright primitive. In our ‘81 VW it’s acceptable because, hey, it’s an old vehicle. You know, back when you could really feel what a car’s doing, blah, blah, blah. But in a modern $50K car? Turning mechanical gears to get that rattling contraption of an ICE going, gawd, I’m surprised you didn’t make me crank it by hand. To refuel it, I have to go out of my way to a specialist vendor? Not just plug it in when I get home?
Sounds silly unless you’ve owned an EV, but it truly represents my feelings even when driving our smooth, reliable Scion. But as the old canard goes, if I have to explain then you wouldn’t understand.
> You know, back when you could really feel what a car’s doing, blah, blah, blah.
There is an argument to be made for this. In most new cars, whether ICE or electric, electric power steering racks have almost removed all feedback through the wheel.
Feedback is good, it communicates what the wheels are doing, what the road surface is like, what traction is like, etc... and I'd argue that good steering feedback is important for safe driving.
There most certainly is, for a tiny, tiny minority of people who buy cars. That’s why I used it as example. Picture the older middle-aged guy going on about how “cars back then..” until your eyes glaze (and if you’ve met me, you’ll have a working example). Yeah, nobody cares, old man, my ‘08 Corolla was cheap.
I already typed this before you deleted, so I’m putting it here. :-)
In summary, I think “feel” matters to a small number of people. To those that notice (I count myself amongst them), it’s pretty important. To the vast majority of drivers I think that as long as the car gets them to work it’s good enough.
The reason I used it as an example is because the ones I find that will argue the importance of “feel” are old, rambling guys like me. IOW, I was originally making of myself to some degree.
You could argue that it’s not that drivers don’t care for good steering feedback, but most drivers never get to experience good steering feedback and therefore don’t know what it is and how much it improves the driving experience. It’s kind of a Catch 22.
You've hit the nail on the head. I'm a performance fan who pulls his car apart to make it exactly the way I want. However, I recommend the 3 (once the price comes down a bit) to friends. If you want a car that makes transportation easy, Tesla is winning that race. I'd love to see other electrics catch up.
I bought an E46 M3 for mostly this reason (feel), and also because it's old enough I can still wrench on it. There's nothing like feeling the road in a car built for it.
> Even sitting in my 2016 car this morning, in the cold, I was thinking how silly it is that I have to wait for the coolant in the car to warm up before the heater starts blowing hot, and how funny all of the ICE cars look with steam coming out of the exhaust on a cold morning. It already feels out of date.
The way we northerners deal with that is to have a remote starter installed in our car. By the time we're done putting on our coats and shoes, kissing our wives, and brushing the accumulated snow off the car, the heater is blowing hot and it is fairly comfortable inside. I will grant that this does burn some gas, but how much range in comparison does an electric car sacrifice by heating the cabin off battery power over your entire commute?
Pre-heating is great, but if your commute is very long it can't make much difference. Traditionally, vehicles are very poorly insulated and it isn't a big problem because their heat is a free waste product. Electric vehicles really need a level of insulation they haven't even considered yet.
> The Model S easily outsells any competitor's luxury car in the same class, you'd have to combine all A6 / 5 series / E Class sales to even hope to show the same numbers.
In the US, Tesla's home market, yes. But if you go to Europe, it changes completely - those three models you listed average a combined annual European sales volume north of 300 000, which is more than the global total of all Tesla cars ever sold.
The only way Tesla will be anything but an SV-hype-fueled anecdote is if they can actually deliver on the Model 3 next year, and it ain't looking too peachy. I mean, GM's outselling them on chargeable vehicles in the US this year.
December numbers will be available in a couple of weeks, and then we'll know for sure. Model 3 numbers have ramped up in December. In 2018, unless Tesla has serious unfixable production problems, it won't be close. I don't know how many Model 3s Tesla can make next year, but I know they can sell them all...
Does that make it less silly? I'm talking about the principles involved, not my lived experience. If it was merely a matter of being cold, you'd just say "put on another coat".
For your information, yes, I fire the car up, put on my seatbelt, close the garage door, put it in gear and go. But even in the mild bay area (it's been around 33-35 most mornings on the peninsula), I'm all the way across town before the coolant temp even comes off the low mark which is 124f, at which point SOME warm air starts coming out of the vents. But again, it's not a comfort complaint, it's a "electric cars make ICE cars seem dated" observation.
I changed the quote to include the entire clause, but the concept still makes no sense to me in a Bay Area context (heck, I'm wearing shorts today).
How many EVs produce passenger heat in meaningful amounts immediately (even ignoring the added battery drain), and how much of a burden is 50+-degree in-car temperatures for a few minutes while you're already in outdoor clothing?
Sure, in some areas. But it's a pretty annoying drawback when temperatures hover around 0F and the car can't even start defrosting the windshield for 10-15 minutes.
Few - Many electric cars use inefficient electric heat that draws as much battery power as the traction motors. Some have more efficient heat pumps, but not all. Regardless, heat is no more instant in an EV than a conventional vehicle.
A heat pump can be more than 100% efficient in the sense you seem to be talking about. It transfers heat from one area to another, and can bring in more heat to a space than the energy used could produce in heat through a resistive heating element.
So? The majority of Teslas aren't sold in SF. Having access to instant-on heat, rather than having to wait several minutes for the engine to warm up, is absolutely a benefit in places with cold winters.
I'm trying to redirect the conversation back to things that matter. The weather in SF last night doesn't matter, not really; it's just some ephemeral fact, and not even worth arguing about whether someone "needed" instant-on heat for it or not. What matters is electric vehicle models and sales worldwide, which is what the top-level article is about. Tesla is the most popular car manufacturer in Norway. You better believe that they appreciate instant-on heat there (as well as remote start), and that Teslas having these features gives them a competitive advantage.
I thought the killer feature of electric cars is recuperative braking. So I suppose that a reasonably lightweight electric car should be perfect for city commute with constant start / stop on traffic lights, and for congested roads of SV.
Long commute, OTOH, seems favorable for a well-built ICE car.
"there's just no "need" in my life for a new vehicle"
You mean no need in your life besides our shared need to reduce atmospheric carbon, oil extraction, and other automobile pollutants, to keep climate change to a level merely devastating rather than catastrophic, and to preserve a habitable planet for the generations to come?
Junking an older car with a newer electric car won't decrease your carbon footprint but increase it. But if you are in the market to buy a car going electric or hybrid should be the way to go. Obama fuel efficiency rules were good but didn't go far enough by now car manufacturer should not be allowed to sell non hybrid fuel cars at all.
I travel about 400 miles per month by car in a vehicle that gets 25mpg. That's 16 gallons/month or 281.6lb of CO2 per month.
What's the break-even on how many lbs of CO2 I'd have to pump into the atmosphere before it was more environmentally friendly to produce an entire new automobile with 800lbs of batteries?
I drive a Leaf and I think the switchover is going to come faster than people think
Yes. That's the other thing: the best argument for an electric car is driving one—particularly a Tesla. The minute most of the population has access to one (from a friend, family, whatever), they're going to want one.
I'm not sure how that would work. So far I see these obstacles/concerns:
1. Range. Right now I can drive ~400 miles on a fill. Can I get even close to that in EV?
2. Refills. I am pretty sure wherever I go, there would be a gas station within tens of miles. And I'm pretty sure most maps or GPS devices I would have would be able to point me to it. With electric car, not only I have to worry about finding charging station (or even plan the trip around its presence) but I'm not even sure how to find one. Would my GPS device show it? Would it work with my car (Tesla ones e.g. work only with Teslas)? Would I need some kind of subscription/registration to access it? I imagine being anxious about these things would be pretty annoying (unless it's already solved somehow - I have no idea).
3. Do I need to have charging station at home? What if I move - would I need to get a new one or pay to move it? What if I need to go somewhere at night and the car isn't charged yet? Would I need to buy special "fast charge" station? What if one day I'm too tired at the evening and forget to plug in the car for the night?
4. With ICE car, I am sure any competent mechanic would be able to take care of the most problems with my car. Electric cars are new, most mechanics had no training for them and no experience with them, and manufacturing solutions and practices would be very non-uniform - how I find the good service and how I make sure he doesn't use relative scarcity on the market to fleece me?
5. If I want to sell this car, what would the resale value be? Would I be able to resell it at all, or would it be the analogue of 5 year old smartphone, worth tiny fraction of the premium price it fetched only recently?
6. Wouldn't buying now, when the technology is still developing, lock me in with inferior first-try technology while superior one will show up in 5 years and make my car not only look like Flintstone's carriage but also drive its resale value down and maybe make it unusable due to chargers switching to newer superior standard of something?
1. My EV (Tesla Roadster, updated battery) goes 340 miles on one charge. Admittedly it is a small car. The new Tesla Roadster slated for 2020 goes 620 miles on one charge. Admittedly that is an expensive car. But you should be able to get good range in a less-expensive car at that point.
2. Newer Teslas (Model S, Model X, Model 3) have charger planning built into their standard map program. About other EVs, if I were an EV manufacturer I would do a license deal with Tesla to allow my cars to use their charging network. But maybe they'll build their own. The one Tesla built is pretty good ... if a small company can do that, GM can do way more, and do it faster. So even though "there's no infrastructure" has been raised as this huge problem for years, it does not in actuality look like much of a problem.
3. Good electric cars have their own charging circuitry built in, so you just plug it into the wall. You can even charge off 110 volts, though it takes a long time. A dryer socket is much more reasonable. Just being able to plug in your car, in your garage, is much more convenient than going to a gas station. (This presumes you have a garage to park in. If you park on the street, different story.)
4. Electric motors and drivetrains are much simpler and much more robust than mechanical engines and drivetrains. Electric cars just do not tend to need repair in the same way. (I have had my car for over 7 years and it has never yet needed a repair of this kind).
5. Tesla Roadsters still hold their value very well, considering. But this may be in part due to the fact that it's a rare car. I am not sure about the Leaf, etc.
1. Tesla Roadster is a luxury car. It is literally order of magnitude more expensive than a common middle-class car. There's no possibility it can ever be considered as a replacement for common cars. As a toy for rich people with money to burn - sure, why not. But if we're talking about people not spending 200-250K on a car - which is vast majority of drivers - there's no point in considering such cars.
2. Again, Tesla is a luxury car, so describing it when talking about replacing common cars is pointless. Even the cheapest one is sitting on very top of what common middle-class car could cost, and it's not even released. If you want to replace common cars, you can't have cheapest model to cost $35K. There's literally no possibility most people would be able to afford that.
3. Charging from 110V would require whole night and even more. My house has one (1) dryer socket, which surprisingly is occupied by the dryer. Which leads one to think to have such car one has to undertake a costly (min. hourly rate in CA is about $100) project requiring a contractor, licensed electrician, permits, etc. And if one lives in an apartment which doesn't have built-in charging station - no chance.
4. Great to hear it, but again that was Tesla, as I understand. Can I expect the same from a car that doesn't cost six figures? I don't know. And the fact that it's simpler doesn't help much if the mechanic doesn't know it. Well, maybe it'll break down less, but we need to find out if that's still true for cheap models used in mass-driving conditions.
5. That's exactly my point - there's no developed market, so very little can be said about how it would look like. Sure, luxuries are always valued by people who are into luxuries and have money to spend. But about non-luxury market, that's different.
1. Sure, Tesla's whole plan, since the foundation of the company, was to start out making expensive cars and then to continually make them cheaper until they are completely mass-market. They have consistently followed this plan. So I don't see why you think they'd suddenly stop?
2. See 1.
3. Actually charging from 110v would take more than overnight -- several days at least if you are empty! It's very slow (it's a lot slower than half a 220v because a certain amount of power goes to overhead like cooling the batteries during charging). Even so, I got by on 110v for years. As for having (1) dryer socket ... buy a splitter cord for 5 bucks? I am not sure why you think you need a contractor and permits, unless you are just trying to fabricate reasons why electric cars are a problem.
4. See 1.
5. The market today is tremendously more developed than it was in 2008 when Tesla started selling their first car, and everyone thought electric cars were just golf carts that were completely infeasible. Why do you think this trend would stop now? On the luxury point ... see 1.
1. Surely, and if they ever have a $15K model, or even $20K model, my estimate about how soon the transition would happen would change. As of now, I think the pricing points are such that only rich (and rich by SV standards, which are significantly higher then the rest of the country) people can afford it. So the transition has no way of happening. I am not saying it will never happen - I am saying it's not nearly close now.
3. I am speaking from experience of what doing non-trivial stuff takes. E.g., installing AC requires permits. Maybe installing proper (not "more than overnight") charger does not, if it's just using a splitter cord then it's good news.
5. I do not think it will stop now. I think it's still far from where we could see mass transition from ICE to electrical cars. In 10 years? Sure, why not. Right now? Don't see it.
There are a lot of electrics that aren't luxury cars and have range in 100-200 mile range. Most gas cars I've seen have a 300 mile range befor refueling..
The thing about an electric if you park at home the tank is always full in the morning. No more stopping for gas in the daily commute. Long road trips are a different story.
So these things you mention are the reason why it hasn't happened already. There's quite wide agreement that the changeover to electric is going to happen, which implicitly means these things will be addressed. The question is whether it will take 5 years, 10 years or 20 years.
1. Range: There are cars on the market now for $35k that have 200+ mile range. Range will continue to go up and price will continue to come down for the next few decades. Whether 200 miles is enough depends on your point no. 2 so...
2. Generally, you plug your car in at night and start each day with 100% range. For most European lifestyles 200 miles in a day will deal with 95% of days. Granted, the US is more spread out so people drive further.
But the crucial point is that 'going to the gas station' doesn't really have an equivalent with electric. On a long journey you recharge at highway stops, but the rest of the time you just charge at night. Highway chargers are fast and charge times are generally 20 to 40min to get to 80% range. I generally find that by the time I've got the kids out the car, had a wee, had a snack, the car is ready to go.
3. Yes ideally you need a charging station at home. In my country you get a 500 GBP grant from the government which covers the cost of installation in most cases. chargers are fairly simple to install. Granted, houses with no off-street parking are tricky.
4. Generally there are a lot fewer moving parts and less to go wrong but yes we will need mechanics. As more electric cars are sold, I expect more electric mechanics will appear.
5. True, resell for say Nissan Leaf is not that good, due to rate of improvement of new models over the old ones. Teslas hold their value quite well I hear, it remains to be seen how the Tesla model 3 will go. A lot of people buy their cars on 3 year PCP contracts in which the manufacturer offers to re-buy the car at 50% price after 3 years, I guess a lot of people might do that?
6. Yeah a bit, e.g. my 2016 Leaf isn't as good as the 2017 or 2018 one. But now that we've cracked 200 mile range (Bolt and Tesla Model 3) I think we're in the 'good enough' space.
Chargers are fairly settled, there are 2 or 3 standards that are widely supported and are not expected to change that much over the next few years. Adapters are generaly available to make most cars fit most chargers. Speeds and power of chargers will increase but the existing standards allow for that.
