Infrastructure for electric cars: a good or bad idea?

Aidan1 · 21-02-2013 5:40pm

Any decent diesel car is more efficient than them.

Of course, you mean it is cheaper to buy, rather than being mechanically more efficient.

How much do you drive a day btw? As others have said, the vast majority of people drive less than 45km per day, making EVs entirely practical for them, and there is no 'down time' associated with driving them (and its 15-20 mins for an 80% charge). For others (like me, for example) any time they do drive, they need far longer range and so EVs are not really a runner (for now at any rate). In simple terms, it may be 10-15 years before EVs can replace a 1.6-2.0 litre diesel 'family' car, but as a placement for a 1-1.2 litre urban run-about they are there or thereabouts already. Just too expensive, but that'll change.

Are there any figures out there on the total expenditure to date on EVs (infrastructure and grants) thus far in Ireland?

Sesshoumaru · 21-02-2013 6:31pm

MYOB wrote: »

I don't know many people who consider their time to be practically valueless. Do you?

The statistics are very clear, most people won't exceed the range of an EV like a Nissan Leaf on a daily basis for the vast majority of the time.

If you're nearly empty and want to get back to half full, it takes 12 minutes. My use of FCP's is usually like this these days, just a quick top up for maybe 10 minutes, on those rare days when I need a bit more range.

Time isn't the only concern or necessarily the most important concern for every person on the planet. The vast majority of the time, it takes me a few seconds to plugin my car. Pop open charging port, plugin charging cable and after that I wake up in the morning and it's charged. Our car starts every morning with a full tank and a toasty warm preheated cabin

Do you think petrol and diesel are priceless? That our reliance on one source of fuel for transport is without cost? is not a single point of failure?

L1011 · 21-02-2013 6:33pm

Aidan1 wrote: »

Of course, you mean it is cheaper to buy, rather than being mechanically more efficient.

In the case of a petrol plug-in hybrid, that's actually deeply in question too.

Aidan1 wrote: »

How much do you drive a day btw

80-90,000km a year over two vehicles - bulk on a diesel, last 10k on a petrol.

I couldn't even replace the petrol with a current or likely future EV as I need to be able to get to Donegal and Gorey in one go without a pissing-around stop.

The bulk of people I know that drive less than 45km a day shouldn't actually be driving daily anyway - its not like I live in a public transport wilderness. Its people dropping kids to a school that's walkable from everywhere in the town, driving to work on extremely frequent bus/train routes, or pootling to the shops. EVs if heavily promoted as being good for short distance driving have the potential to cause serious congestion problems.

Sesshoumaru · 21-02-2013 6:40pm

MYOB wrote: »

In the case of a petrol plug-in hybrid, that's actually deeply in question too.

80-90,000km a year over two vehicles - bulk on a diesel, last 10k on a petrol.

I couldn't even replace the petrol with a current or likely future EV as I need to be able to get to Donegal and Gorey in one go without a pissing-around stop.

The bulk of people I know that drive less than 45km a day shouldn't actually be driving daily anyway - its not like I live in a public transport wilderness. Its people dropping kids to a school that's walkable from everywhere in the town, driving to work on extremely frequent bus/train routes, or pootling to the shops. EVs if heavily promoted as being good for short distance driving have the potential to cause serious congestion problems.

I once heard that if EV's ever take off...

L1011 · 21-02-2013 6:40pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

Do you think petrol and diesel are priceless? That our reliance on one source of fuel for transport is without cost? is not a single point of failure?

Funny that, I could have sworn that we got the vast majority of our electricity from fossil fuels and imports...

Back of my current ESB bill has a fuel mix down as 9.9% renewable, 0.5% "other" - burning waste and imported nuclear - and the entire rest is fossil fuels.

12 minutes for half "a tank" is still the same is still 3x time waste over filling my car, then you have to consider that my tank can bring me further than you can even imagine.

Your posts all show me one thing - EVs appear to be perfect for people who probably don't actually need a car to begin with.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

I once heard that if EV's ever take off...

I have no idea what on earth you are trying to say here.

Sesshoumaru · 21-02-2013 6:46pm

MYOB wrote: »

Funny that, I could have sworn that we got the vast majority of our electricity from fossil fuels and imports...

Guess what! You can't put coal in your car

or nuclear or wind or solar or hydro power or most other things that it's possible to generate electricity with. Our electricity supply does not have one single point of failure e.g. OIL in your cars case.

L1011 · 21-02-2013 6:47pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

Guess what! You can't put coal in your car or nuclear or wind or solar or hydro power or most other things that it's possible to generate electricity with. Our electricity supply does not have one single point of failure e.g. OIL in your cars case.

The bulk of our power is made from CNG. ICE engines can run on CNG. Entire existing car stock, except the handful of EVs, could be converted without the absolutely insane environmental cost of making EVs.

Sesshoumaru · 21-02-2013 7:02pm

MYOB wrote: »

The bulk of our power is made from CNG. ICE engines can run on CNG. Entire existing car stock, except the handful of EVs, could be converted without the absolutely insane environmental cost of making EVs.

So we should all switch over to another finite, single point of failure fuel source for transportation? The promotion of EV's goes beyond our little shores, I would say most Western governments are promoting it, even in the US the Obama administration has allocated billions of US dollar towards research and development of EV's.

I would ask you, how much gas do we have left? how long will it last at current consumption rates? how long would it last if all cars started using it for transportation? how long would it last when you add all that together and then allow for normal yearly increases in consumption? as consumption of a resource like that rarely stays flat. What will that do to the price of CNG?

L1011 · 21-02-2013 7:06pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

So we should all switch over to another finite, single point of failure fuel source for transportation?

You're the one constantly promoting that people should switch fuel sources - not me.

You're also doing a damn good impression of Chicken Licken yourself now. Oh the irony of posting that rather contextually random image, eh.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

The promotion of EV's goes beyond our little shores, I would say most Western governments are promoting it, even in the US the Obama administration has allocated billions of US dollar towards research and development of EV's.

So let them. They've delivered nothing to date, and if they do we'll have spent money pushing what will then be outdated technology.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

I would ask you, how much gas do we have left? how long will it last at current consumption rates? how long would it last if all cars started using it for transportation? how long would it last when you add all that together and then allow for normal yearly increases in consumption? as consumption of a resource like that rarely stays flat. What will that do to the price of CNG?

If hydraulic fracturing can be cleaned up, probably enough that we don't need to worry about it for a number of lifetimes. If not, still sufficient for now. Artificially increasing the consumption of electricity isn't going to help, though.

Can also tell you that if we get CNG supply problems or significant price rises, one of the first things the ESB will be killing to save supply will be EV charging points - public and home.

Sesshoumaru · 21-02-2013 7:24pm

MYOB wrote: »

You're the one constantly promoting that people should switch fuel sources - not me.

You're also doing a damn good impression of Chicken Licken yourself now. Oh the irony of posting that rather contextually random image, eh.

So let them. They've delivered nothing to date, and if they do we'll have spent money pushing what will then be outdated technology.

If hydraulic fracturing can be cleaned up, probably enough that we don't need to worry about it for a number of lifetimes. If not, still sufficient for now. Artificially increasing the consumption of electricity isn't going to help, though.

Can also tell you that if we get CNG supply problems or significant price rises, one of the first things the ESB will be killing to save supply will be EV charging points - public and home.

This thread is about investing in an EV infrastructure (did you forget?). EV's can run off anything that can be used to produce electricity, including gas (without requiring a conversion to the EV to do so). The SEAI already have produced a report showing we could support around 200,000 EV's without any additional electricity generation, as statistics show most people don't exceed the range of an EV in their daily driving and therefore are quite happy to let them charge at night. At night time we produce more electricity than we use, so EV owners charging at night time is using energy we've paid for, that would normally go completely to waste.

You scaremongering at this stage has gone into completely insanely hilarious territory. I see you've taken in nothing that was said in older threads either e.g. lithium safety. I don't really have any desire to have to copy and paste my old rebuttals to your unsubstantiated scaremongering. Please continue to enjoy your ICE car for as long as you like. I enjoy my Ducati, which is petrol powered, so I've no desire to force EV's on anyone, which no one I know has suggested we do.

EV's are a choice and a damn good one for most people!

L1011 · 21-02-2013 7:41pm

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

This thread is about investing in an EV infrastructure (did you forget?).

If the EV owners and EV owners alone are willing to entirely foot the costs, sure, invest away.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

The SEAI already have produced a report showing we could support around 200,000 EV's without any additional electricity generation, as statistics show most people don't exceed the range of an EV in their daily driving and therefore are quite happy to let them charge at night.

So we can have 200,000 vehicles for people who don't actually need to own a vehicle full time then. Wonderful.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

You scaremongering at this stage has gone into completely insanely hilarious territory.

I'm not the one claiming we can run out of the most plentiful fuel on the planet.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

I see you've taken in nothing that was said in older threads either e.g. lithium safety.

A few references to EV websites claiming safety that a battery tech that I know from my day job to be unsafe isn't going to convince me of anything. There's nothing to take in.

Lithium batteries being inherently unstable is why the 787 is currently grounded, is why personal consumer devices are often brought to ridiculously short lifespans and so on. They're simply not safe or reliable, and the massive improvements in both safety and quality we've been told are coming for years simply haven't

That Nissan are "improving safety" by shoving more steel in just shows it all - they're clearly aware of the issues.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

I don't really have any desire to have to copy and paste my old rebuttals to your unsubstantiated scaremongering.

And I don't have any desire to continue reading the same greenwashed claims

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

so I've no desire to force EV's on anyone, which no one I know has suggested we do.

Certainly comes as news to me - and many others on here. You appear to do little other than push EVs.

Sesshoumaru wrote: »

EV's are a choice and a damn good one for most people!

So is a Leap card. One is a hell of a lot cheaper / better for the environment.

Merch · 22-02-2013 12:36am

MYOB wrote: »

80-90,000km a year over two vehicles - bulk on a diesel, last 10k on a petrol.

I couldn't even replace the petrol with a current or likely future EV as I need to be able to get to Donegal and Gorey in one go without a pissing-around stop.

The bulk of people I know that drive less than 45km a day shouldn't actually be driving daily anyway - its not like I live in a public transport wilderness. Its people dropping kids to a school that's walkable from everywhere in the town, driving to work on extremely frequent bus/train routes, or pootling to the shops. EVs if heavily promoted as being good for short distance driving have the potential to cause serious congestion problems.

I agree with some of what you are saying, but even in Dublin, its awkward to get around as the transport network isn't integrated properly and runs on a radial kind of system, you cant, say, hop on a bus at leixlip, scoot around the periphery on a tram/metro (or in thats actual absence, even a bus service running up and down the M50) and get off where you need or hop onto another radial service. You need to go into town,on the bus, maybe with kids? come back out, the transport system needs to be overhauled, will it, probably not.
In its absence, I wouldnt have a problem with non ICE vehicles as a mode of transport for people that do low miles, I preferred the idea of the earlier mentioned compressed liquid nitrogen (no battery mass to carry around, maybe? its possible the compressed storage of nitrogen could be done between peak demand periods?, no extra environmental damage from mining another resource and the Co2 emmisions from producing batteries, plus whats the cost of lithium and how accessible/how much is there).

There isnt a silver bullet to peoples needs for transportation on a small scale where it can be less planned for,
For some EV's may suit, LPG is definitely a good alternative, and existing fuels too.
I think a number of options should be considered for different types of users/usages.

L1011 · 22-02-2013 12:52am

Far easier and cheaper to integrate the public transport system than subsidise new cars and charging infrastructure for everyone, thankfully.

Merch · 22-02-2013 1:44am

MYOB wrote: »

Far easier and cheaper to integrate the public transport system than subsidise new cars and charging infrastructure for everyone, thankfully.

It should, though in some other country maybe,
There needs to be some will to do that, i dont think it exists
Too many people seem to not want that
people within unions want to undermine it, staff dont want to participate.
What does exist seems to be mismanaged and inefficient and in some cases unsafe.

Im sure thats a gross oversimplification
But I can see why people dont want to rely on public transportation

Personally, I think it shouldnt be all EV or nothing, LPG and some other form of non ICE powered vehicle hold possibilities, while Im not against EV's, Im not sure why some people think it is THE answer/the only solution.

Hotblack Desiato · 22-02-2013 2:06am

I would be more supportive of EVs if we had a dependable zero-carbon electricity source to power them.
Nuclear.

Hotblack Desiato · 22-02-2013 2:13am

maninasia wrote: »

Yeah except for the initial outlay, the fuel is practically free.

Yeah and your initial outlay is subsidised by a VRT rebate and your fuel is excise exempt and on reduced VAT rate.

If you can make EVs economically sound with VRT equivalent to fossil, motor tax equivalent to fossil, excise and VAT on charging energy equivalent to fossil, then grand - you've got off the back of the taxpayer - demonstrating that you're saving the planet is a little harder but for a first step, at least get off the back of the taxpayer.

Merch · 22-02-2013 2:28am

ninja900 wrote: »

I would be more supportive of EVs if we had a dependable zero-carbon electricity source to power them.
Nuclear.

Except Nuclear is not zero carbon
Far from it, its probably worse than most of the other options when the whole picture is looked at.

Right from the day the idea is put on paper until the day it starts operating its generating nothing other than CO2 and waste and continues to do so.
In the hope that the waste products that have to be stored and secured indefinitley can be used by some as of yet uninvented technology.

Nothing has NO impact, there is no silver bullet

maninasia · 22-02-2013 5:23am

Although this is off-topic, personally I think investment in LPG infrastructure and engines would have more impact on CO2 reduction and be a lot cheaper initially and avoid current range issues. It's a pity that this hasn't got as much attention as it is a practical and economic method to reduce emissions.

However it seems things are pushing towards electric cars and probably within 10 years electric cars will have a significant cost advantage against all types of ICE cars. ICE cars are hitting close to maximum efficiency and the engines cannot be made cheaper without reducing efficiency but battery cars have a huge amount of cost that can be reduced once battery production ramps up aswell as plenty of room for fast charging and high capacity upgraded technology.

bk · 22-02-2013 1:11pm

MYOB wrote: »

80-90,000km a year over two vehicles - bulk on a diesel, last 10k on a petrol.

At that distance you would save about €7,000 per year, first year you would have to make up the €5,000 for an EV, so just a €2,000 saving, but after that you would have €7,000 extra per year in your pocket!!

Just stop and think what you could do with an extra €7,000 per year.

I'm sure many people would be very happy to stop for 30 minutes from time to time to save €7,000 per year.

MYOB wrote: »

I couldn't even replace the petrol with a current or likely future EV as I need to be able to get to Donegal and Gorey in one go without a pissing-around stop.

Again, not true, a plug-in hybrid can do that today easily.

Now, I readily admit that a PHEV may or may not work out financially better for you, it depends on what percentage of the journeys you make are short commute types and what percentage are long distance.

However you have to realise you are far from the norm. 90,000 km puts you well into the extreme 1 or 2% territory where EV's maybe not suitable.

But try and remember that most people aren't like you, try and put yourself in other peoples shoes. The average yearly distance driven in Ireland is just 17,000 km or less then 50km per day. You are driving almost 250km per day!!

For the majority of people who are just driving 50km per day, EV's are a definitely viable today.

For very long milage people like yourself and for trucks and lorries, natural gas is probably the best solution.

BTW yes at the moment EV's and their infrastructure are subsidised. Just like petrol/diesel infrastructure was in the past. It makes sense for countries to subside EV's to help wean people off a single form of energy, which is running out and can only be gotten mostly from an extremely unstable part of the world.

The subsidies EV's have gotten is a fraction of the massive subsidies that the ICE manufacturing companies and the oil companies have gotten.

In time even these EV subsidies will decrease, as the price of EV batteries also decrease and end up matching the price of a normal ICE vehicle.

Merch · 22-02-2013 5:45pm

maninasia wrote: »

Although this is off-topic, personally I think investment in LPG infrastructure and engines would have more impact on CO2 reduction and be a lot cheaper initially and avoid current range issues. It's a pity that this hasn't got as much attention as it is a practical and economic method to reduce emissions.

However it seems things are pushing towards electric cars and probably within 10 years electric cars will have a significant cost advantage against all types of ICE cars. ICE cars are hitting close to maximum efficiency and the engines cannot be made cheaper without reducing efficiency but battery cars have a huge amount of cost that can be reduced once battery production ramps up aswell as plenty of room for fast charging and high capacity upgraded technology.

http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-xl1-fuel-efficient-electric-car-in-production--163345219.html

Ok, its a hybrid but, seems theres a means to extract more mileage, but it uses an small ICE.

Aidan1 · 22-02-2013 6:55pm

That car is a technology showcase - but the powertrain will appear in an Up! next year, and a variant will appear in the Golf and A3 also (with a 1.4T 148bhp petrol engine). Again, all of these are Plug in Hybrids, so for a lot of short journeys, the engine will never need to come on at all. The figures for the A3 E-Tron are of the order of 188mpg. There may well be full BEV versions of these cars later in the life cycle of the platform too.

L1011 · 22-02-2013 7:54pm

bk wrote: »

At that distance you would save about €7,000 per year, first year you would have to make up the €5,000 for an EV, so just a €2,000 saving, but after that you would have €7,000 extra per year in your pocket!!

Just stop and think what you could do with an extra €7,000 per year.

I'm sure many people would be very happy to stop for 30 minutes from time to time to save €7,000 per year.

To save €7,000 a year I would need to stop for anywhere from 30-90 minutes a day, 5 days a week. That's not "from time to time"

I could earn the 7k in that time. People who are only stopping from "time to time" are not saving 7k a year, they are likely losing money on the EV cost.

bk wrote: »

Again, not true, a plug-in hybrid can do that today easily.

Far more expensively than a diesel.

bk wrote: »

However you have to realise you are far from the norm. 90,000 km puts you well into the extreme 1 or 2% territory where EV's maybe not suitable.

There is a difference between what you consider as suitable and what I consider as suitable. I'd say its more like 1 or 2% of people where an EV actually makes financial sense.

bk wrote: »

BTW yes at the moment EV's and their infrastructure are subsidised. Just like petrol/diesel infrastructure was in the past.

Was it? By who, exactly?

bk wrote: »

The subsidies EV's have gotten is a fraction of the massive subsidies that the ICE manufacturing companies and the oil companies have gotten.

And again. Who exactly subsidised this and when?

bk wrote: »

In time even these EV subsidies will decrease, as the price of EV batteries also decrease and end up matching the price of a normal ICE vehicle.

So says everyone since 1990.

bk · 24-02-2013 7:57pm

MYOB wrote: »

To save €7,000 a year I would need to stop for anywhere from 30-90 minutes a day, 5 days a week. That's not "from time to time"

I could earn the 7k in that time. People who are only stopping from "time to time" are not saving 7k a year, they are likely losing money on the EV cost.

You keep saying this, but this isn't true for the vast majority of people.

You could only earn extra money if you are some sort of contractor on an hourly rate and can opt to actually take on more hours.

Most people are on a fixed salary/wage and get paid for a fixed number of hours. Even if they work extra hours they don't get paid more. So most people would be delighted to stop for 30 minutes and save so much money.

And it isn't like the time is totally wasted, they could use the time to have a lunch that they were going to have anyway. Or read a paper they were going to do anyway or reply to emails at work on their smartphone, etc.

Again you are thinking only through your own narrow view of the world and not realising that you are an extreme case where EV's might not be suitable for, but are for the vast majority of people.

MYOB wrote: »

There is a difference between what you consider as suitable and what I consider as suitable. I'd say its more like 1 or 2% of people where an EV actually makes financial sense.

Again the average daily driving distance is less then 50km, the average single journey is 10km, with EV's having range of well over 100km, then they are perfectly suited to the average driver and thus the majority of people.

MYOB wrote: »

Was it? By who, exactly?
And again. Who exactly subsidised this and when?

Ok, now you have to be taking the piss if you don't think the oil industry is heavily subsidised.

In the US alone, the oil industry receives $54 Billion worth of direct local, state and federal subsidies per year!! This figure doesn't include the environmental cost of oil, it doesn't include the cost of cleaning up oil spills, it doesn't include the 80 billion bailout of the US auto industry, it doesn't include the 1 trillion cost of war in Iraq (which lets be honest we all know is about oil).

The oil industry is one of the most heavily subsidised industries in the world.

And to be honest, I don't have any objection to that, it is important for governments to subsidise vital infrastructure for their countries. Either oil industry, electric infrastructure, internet, etc.

But now it is the turn of the EV industry to be subsidised, in order to get governments away to expensive, environmentally damaging, single source of energy in oil.

L1011 · 24-02-2013 8:06pm

bk wrote: »

You keep saying this, but this isn't true for the vast majority of people.

You could only earn extra money if you are some sort of contractor on an hourly rate and can opt to actually take on more hours.

Or take up another job - since, clearly, your personal time is of zero value in all your calculations.

bk wrote: »

Again the average daily driving distance is less then 50km, the average single journey is 10km, with EV's having range of well over 100km, then they are perfectly suited to the average driver and thus the majority of people.

And once again, the average driver is actually the person we should be targeting with getting to mode-shift, not just buy another new car.

bk wrote: »

Ok, now you have to be taking the piss if you don't think the oil industry is heavily subsidised.

In the US alone, the oil industry receives $54 Billion worth of direct local, state and federal subsidies per year!!

Firstly, I somehow doubt that figure is correct - if you can provide a citation that'd be useful. Additionally, any subsidy in the US is because the US has ideologically decided to move away from imported oil. Your claim was that it received subsidies to start up, though - which it clearly didn't. Nor does it receive subsidies in other countries to anywhere on that scale. Particularly as for many countries it is their main source of income

Seeing as its one of the highest taxed industries in the entire world, I doubt there is anything close to the same amount put in as taken out.

bk wrote: »

But now it is the turn of the EV industry to be subsidised, in order to get governments away to expensive, environmentally damaging, single source of energy in oil.

Subsidies that seem to be doing absolutely nothing other than letting a few zealots buy cars artificially cheaply.

Where are the advances in battery technology we keep being promised? What makes people so determined to believe that the car industry can make advances that the entire electronics industry has been trying, and failing, to do for a decade?

OssianSmyth · 24-02-2013 10:56pm

reduction in unit wholesale price of Li Ion batteries since 1995 in yen

source: METI http://www.meti.go.jp/english/statistics/index.html

L1011 · 25-02-2013 12:57am

OssianSmyth wrote: »

reduction in unit wholesale price of Li Ion batteries since 1995 in yen

source: METI http://www.meti.go.jp/english/statistics/index.html

Reducing in price != advancing in capacity and size to a sufficient level. And that has distinctly tailed off.

Hotblack Desiato · 25-02-2013 1:05am

You could post the same graph for many relatively recently developed technologies. Stuff hand-built in labs costs a fortune. If/when you figure out how to mass-produce it, it gets a lot cheaper and the more you produce the cheaper it gets.

Li-ion has got a lot cheaper but there's a limit to how cheap it can get. Just because Moore's Law has produced incredible cost/speed gains for integrated circuits doesn't mean that other technologies can or will advance at the same pace. A well known poster on boards who clearly has no idea of the physics of operation of a PV cell once told me that Moore's Law would make PV cells exponentially more efficient over time :rolleyes:

Li-ion also has issues in relation to 'bricking' (Tesla) and safety (Dell, Apple, Boeing...). We keep hearing that future batteries will have higher energy density, but it's never mentioned that the higher the energy density gets, the greater the risks.

maninasia · 25-02-2013 3:50pm

ninja900 wrote: »

You could post the same graph for many relatively recently developed technologies. Stuff hand-built in labs costs a fortune. If/when you figure out how to mass-produce it, it gets a lot cheaper and the more you produce the cheaper it gets.

Li-ion has got a lot cheaper but there's a limit to how cheap it can get. Just because Moore's Law has produced incredible cost/speed gains for integrated circuits doesn't mean that other technologies can or will advance at the same pace. A well known poster on boards who clearly has no idea of the physics of operation of a PV cell once told me that Moore's Law would make PV cells exponentially more efficient over time :rolleyes:

Li-ion also has issues in relation to 'bricking' (Tesla) and safety (Dell, Apple, Boeing...). We keep hearing that future batteries will have higher energy density, but it's never mentioned that the higher the energy density gets, the greater the risks.

Ah the auld safety canard, petrol cars crash and explode all the time, read about a rapper's recent death in Las Vegas as an example!

That's not an issue. What is an issue is range and price. Both are related issues that will be solved primarily by industrial scale up. A single car uses 100s of times the amount of batteries of a notebook. The demand is now there to drive investments for scale , primarily through hybrids and plugin hybrids at first moving towards full EVs as costs plummet.

For anybody who doubts this look at costs of PV in the solar industry over the last 5 years in particular. The breakthrough investments needed to justify scale up were brought about by feed in tarriff subsidies, yes sometimes subsidies work!

nokia69 · 25-02-2013 8:09pm

ninja900 wrote: »

You could post the same graph for many relatively recently developed technologies. Stuff hand-built in labs costs a fortune. If/when you figure out how to mass-produce it, it gets a lot cheaper and the more you produce the cheaper it gets.

Li-ion has got a lot cheaper but there's a limit to how cheap it can get. Just because Moore's Law has produced incredible cost/speed gains for integrated circuits doesn't mean that other technologies can or will advance at the same pace. A well known poster on boards who clearly has no idea of the physics of operation of a PV cell once told me that Moore's Law would make PV cells exponentially more efficient over time :rolleyes:

Li-ion also has issues in relation to 'bricking' (Tesla) and safety (Dell, Apple, Boeing...). We keep hearing that future batteries will have higher energy density, but it's never mentioned that the higher the energy density gets, the greater the risks.

there is a mild moores law for batteries, its about 8% a year, a small number, but in ten years it will make a big difference

as far as I know only one tesla roadster has been bricked and it looks like the owner wanted to brick the battery just to make EVs look bad, there was also a german roadster owener who put well over 100K miles on his roadster and had some problems with range, Tesla offered to take a look at the pack but I'm not sure what the end result was

so far there have been no problems with the model S, TBF its a new car so its far too soon to see any problems, but since the model S uses a better cell than the roadster and the pack will be a better design, my guess is that we will see very few problems

Boeing had problems because they built a bad battery pack, the problem is their design, not Li-ion batteries, Tesla are now working with boeing to help them fix the problem, If Musk can use Li-ion batteries in his dragon capsule which he sends to the ISS, then they should have no problem building a pack for the dream liner

there are batteries being worked on in the lab now which will result in 1000mile per charge electric cars in about ten years, but no doubt we will still get people doing reviews claiming they ran out of power miles before they got home

Aidan1 · 26-02-2013 12:59pm

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/Drives/Search-Results/First-drives/BMW-i3-2013-electric-car-test-ride/?content-block=0

First drive (that I've seen) of the new i3 BMW. 170bhp, rear engine, rear wheel drive. Mr Kacher likes it.

While batteries are getting better all the time, there are going to be real difficulties getting to the point where the power density is as good as (say) a 60 liter tank of petrol (let alone diesel) - even if EVs are far more efficient at converting that to motion. Moore's law fails to apply when you get to the point that physics (and chemistry) stand in the way, and you can't miniturise your way out of the situation. But for common battery sizes/types cost is actually a much more important factor. The tech in a 24kw/h battery in a Leaf is 6-7 years old - the next generation car will have something of the order of 32kw/h (not the 2013 car - the one after) and be cheaper. That's real progress. Couple of more iterations of that and you'll have something that can compete with mass market ICE vehicles (which have 125 + years of constant R&D activity behind them).

Infrastructure for electric cars: a good or bad idea?

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