Hybrids were a nice stepping stone before modern EV tech, but I think they're fundamentally flawed.
They're constantly carrying around the weight AND space of both the EV (battery, internal charger, etc) and the ICE (gas, transmission, engine, etc).
This means that using either is quite inefficient in terms of total energy used to travel a distance, and neither can be very good. (Limited battery range, weaker engine)
They also have to deal with the wear and maintenance of both systems.
On one axis a plug-in hybrid is just objectively better than both ICE cars and EVs, it can use two sources of energy instead of one. But it comes with a bunch of other tradeoffs (which I don't know much about).
EVs work pretty OK in Norway. Some observations is that most/many choose to install a charger at home (or in the parking underneath their apartment), so the car starts every day fully charged. Another is that the grid is so built out that there is electricity "everywhere". Not necessarily enough for a super charger, but there is something. Most cabins have electricity for example. My hypothesis is that there are much fewer meters of road which is more than a kilometer from a source of electric power (at least in the south where most people live) in Norway compared to the US or Canada (relative to size).
I grew up where we would have a massive hurricane every few years that would knock out power for 2 weeks at a time minimum. I would never want an electric vehicle in this situation because you'd be completely stranded in an emergency. We'd keep ~100 gallons of gasoline in a caddy for generators and cars to use during these outages and it was ideal.
I'd pay a premium for a Plug-in Hybrid especially if I can use the motor as a generator for my house.
11 hours runtime at 4kW == 44kWh capacity. 44/7.5 gallon tank == 5.8 kWh per gallon. Lets say your EV has average efficiency of 3.5 miles per kWh, so that’s about 20 mpg off the generator. Apply a 13% efficiency loss while charging (https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a36062942/evs-explaine...) and it reduces to 18mpg. Better than a lot of cars still on the road.
That's a fair point however if you needed to go anywhere to fetch supplies anyone left at home wouldn't have power until you return. Gasoline just stores so much more energy than modern batteries and it can be pumped from the station without power I think it's more durable in an emergency.
Say you had to live in Kyiv for whatever reason right now. With the rolling outages would you rather have a plug-in hybrid or an EV?
If I'm just bopping around town, my EV seems to keep a charge for a remarkably long time. Regenerative braking is quite remarkable while idling consumes quite a bit of gasoline. The EV might be able to hold its charge completely through the disaster if you're only going out locally to get water, food and gas.
Newer cars with auto-stop engines might make the comparison a lot farier for the ICE, though.
> Norway is already at ~80% EVs for new car sales. There are gas stations that are ripping up their pumps for fast chargers.
What do you do about the snow plows, garbage trucks, ambulances, police cars, buses, etc....vehicles that are currently being used for several hours a day and can't have any downtime??
Speciality vehicles will probably be the last ones to be electrified. I've not yet seen an electric snow plow, or even an ambulance.
The city busses charge over night, and some (I believe) in the lull between morning and evening rush hours. High traffic routes can charge while running(!) using overhead wires (city used to have old trolley buses). See [1]. They'll connect and disconnect to the wired infrastructure on parts of their route. At 3:14 in [1] you'll see the moment of disconnect. At 4:20 it reconnects. These busses can run continuously.
Taxis in the city are 50/50 electric and hybrid (prius) I would guess, just based on what I see on the streets. By law they have to all be electric by october 2025 in this county. Taxis have fast chargers next to their stands.
There are electric excavators and the like for inner city construction. Apparently some can run for up to 6h using only onboard battery. They usually drop some huge containers with charge ports near the work sites, which I assume extend this run time (+slow charge from the grid). You often see them connected with huge cables to these containers during static work.
Garbage trucks where I live are a mix of diesel and electrics. Majority is still diesel. Afaik the electrics run for a full shift. They're trying hard to get rid of garbage trucks where possible though, using underground pipes. You swipe an RFID at a "terminal", it opens, you dump in your garbage, vacuum pulls it to the incinerator facility, it gets burned, water gets heated, and then pushed back to homes as district heating. Obviously won't work for suburbia or rural communities.
I am not sold on Battery EV, however Hybrid seems to be the worst parts of ICE and BEV combined to make terrible vehicles that have extreme long term maintenance costs, and liabilities as you now have both an expensive battery and expensive engine either one fail and the car is totaled
I would invest in oil companies if I were you. There are certainly going to be bottlenecks during the switchover since network capacity can't be increased sufficiently fast enough to accommodate all those BEV's.
The switchover is, however, unstoppable. Even though no one has asked themselves if this will save the environment (it won't). I've roughly calculated that we can half our oil usage if we all switch over to electric vehicles. But that's far from what's needed to save the world from climate change.
I also predict that BEV's will eventually be a lot cheaper than ICE cars. This will in itself have profound consequences since more people will want to use the road network and congestion is already a problem today.
This is going to require a whole lot of batteries, amps and cabling to move said amps. Can europe handle this? N America? Outside these regions? And what’s going to happen when the batteries need to be replaced?
And are all the ice cars going to be just left to die? Will people be reimbursed for their now-worthless scrap? Will companies and part suppliers survive the transition - they’re going to Osborne their product line!
>> And are all the ice cars going to be just left to die? Will people be reimbursed for their now-worthless scrap? Will companies and part suppliers survive the transition - they’re going to Osborne their product line!
Are we just going to let all the horse and buggys to die? Will people be reimbursed for their now worthless horses? What about coach companies and horse feed suppliers?
It's a transition just like anything else. There likely will be some deaths to some parts companies, if they can't pivot. That's healthy, although painful.
Also, Audi makes ~1.7 million cars a year. Replacing those all with EVs is a much, much easier task than replacing something like VW that makes ~8-9 M/yr cars.
There was no tax! People switched to cars simply because they wanted to, not because they were forced to. Whereas there is a tax levied on ICEs in many places.
"Examples from a number of countries show that this uptake can be enhanced by well-designed incentives and taxes."
"most European countries have based their vehicle taxation schemes on type-approval CO2 emission values and increased the number of incentives to purchase new electric vehicles."
To me it seems that ICE owners are taxed more compared to EV owners. I don't understand what exactly it is you argue against.
The same thing will happen to these ICE cars that has always happened to them. Demand wanes. Values decline. "Nicer" used ICE cars become available at a lower price. Owners can recover whatever value is left by selling at a time of their choice, like always.
Some folks will choose to keep ICE cars even after the majority have switched, and this is fine, too. At that point, parts, service, and fuel for those vehicles will be harder to obtain and more expensive. Modern batteries will be good until after most owners have already sold or traded the car, and battery swaps are fairly easy with "skateboard" type (modern) EV designs.
Will the market step up to provide access to charging, etc? Of course! There's money to be made and lots of it. Will ICE parts and service suppliers (or dealers) survive the change? No, most will not. Many of the most expensive and service-heavy parts of an ICE vehicle don't even exist on an EV, and most service will be done at home by a truck that visits your house. Likewise, EVs will not be stocked on lots like ICE cars are, so there goes a big chuck of the dealer sales/service model.
No one is going to toss out their ICE car as a long as you can still buy petrol. Manufacturers aren't going to physically be able to produce EVs much faster than they could produce ICE cars, so there will be a slow replacement as ICE cars get written off in crashes, or become uneconomical to repair with age
The lower cost of operation of an EV is quite an inducement to switch, and will leave many ICE cars behind as owners decide they are no longer desirable to own or drive. The range of electric car brands and options in Europe shows this to be true. EVs aren't just a new kind of car, they're better and cheaper to run.
Outside of some fringe scenarios, it's pretty hard to be worse in terms of cost of operation from an actual comparable ICE car. Even the slowest EV on the market is quite a bit more 'performance' oriented than something like a Prius... and if you start getting into faster cars (not even necessarily BMWs, but something like a top tier Accord), mpg drops accordingly down into the 30s and op cost goes back up.
Not really, for example the youtube channel Fast Lane truck did a simple towing test of the F150 Lightening and it cost them more per mile to charge at retail charging then it cost per mile to fill up with gas of a similar F150, and that was even with the inflated Gas Prices
Sure if you are only ever home charging, overnight, off peak then yea that will be cheaper than Gas
But if you have to use Fast Charging, from a retail station, chances are your cost to charge your EV will be pretty comparable to the cost of Gas.
I just read an article on ArsTechnica where companies are making synthetic gasoline from wind and solar power. What will happen if this takes off, I wonder?
This will never happen on any mass scale. Once cars get to about 10-15 years (depending on climate) it is not longer economically sensible to do certain repairs, eg engine swap. With EV conversions, it's the same - a lot of money creating a very subpar product - low range, low safety, unbalanced weight distribution, bolted on controls - all to keep a rusted frame and deteriorating upholstery going for a few more years.
EV conversions are a great idea for collectible cars / hobby cars. Classic VW Bug, Fiat 500s, etc.
Converting 100% of production commences a transition. If 95% of Audi cars are scrapped within 15 years and other manufacturers follow similar schedules, that means the infrastructure change has to be 95% complete by 2038.
My guess is that other manufacturers will do much the same, and in the regions/countries where the infrastructure isn't updated by 2035, a lot of people will then buy used ICE scrap from more progressive areas instead of the new cars they might prefer.
The market for ICE vehicles is going to dramatically change moving forward. Don't buy an expensive ICE vehicle looking ahead if you want to minimize the risk of high depreciation. (of course, this is a generalized statement, and as EVs continue to develop, the areas where EVs still can't compete will still provide stable markets for ICE vehicles. As that changes, expect changes.)
