Comment by grecy
9 hours ago
There is also an enormous amount of money tied up in old power, guaranteed profits for companies that run old plants and political games denying climate change and turning the population against renewables.
Nobody wants to predict a future they know will be unpopular and make a lot of people angry.
I.e. when I say you won’t even be able to buy a new ICE vehicle on roughly 10 years people get very confrontational and angry
You'll be able to buy ICE vehicles. But you won't want to and the people that could sell you one will be dealing with the economic effects of most of their customer base evaporating. Mostly poorly probably. Think factory closures, reduced market shares, etc.
But ten years sounds about right for the following things to happen:
- new EVs will be cheaper to buy than ICE vehicles. Right now they are cheaper to own. But once prices drop low enough, few people will want to spend more on a lesser vehicle.
- EV production will ramp up to eclipse ICE vehicle production by the end of this decade. More EVs will be produced than ICE vehicles.
- Commercial fleets will be largely electrical for the simple reason it's already cheaper and only getting cheaper. Anger doesn't factor into this. Businesses that don't adapt will go out of business.
- Private owners will follow but a bit slower. Lots of private owners have older vehicles and don't actually drive that much. So, economic drivers are there but not that important for them.
- For the same reason, roads are actually dominated by commercial traffic. Most miles driven will be electric. Most of the intensively used vehicles will be electric. That will become really visible on the roads. It's already very visible in some places.
- That same effect will also impact revenue from petrol/diesel sales. That's already starting to happen as well. This will impact pricing and availability. Which feeds into decision making.
> You'll be able to buy ICE vehicles.
Depends on the country. I think 2035 is a realistic date for an ICE ban for personal vehicles, and I'm willing to bet that several countries will have implemented a ban by then. Norway targets 2025. Netherlands is looking at 2030.
Most other countries are saying 2040, but if EVs become cheap and good enough by 2030 it's not unthinkable that some of them will move up the timeline. Keep in mind that by 2035 we will probably feel the consequences of climate change even more severely. Perhaps we will see a year with practically no polar ice cap in summer. And the 2040 goal may anyway make it so it's practically impossible to buy an ICE personal car by 2035 because what auto-maker or dealership will want to focus at all on a rapidly shrinking market that they know will be completely gone in 5 years? A few sports car and recreational vehicles, maybe? But a car you want to daily drive, probably not.
> That same effect will also impact revenue from petrol/diesel sales. That's already starting to happen as well.
Yeah, this is a very good point that I don't think many are considering. In the area in Norway with highest EV share the sale of gasoline started falling 30% every year. I've seen gas stations change all but 1-2 pumps to charging stations recently.
That's why I think the last few years of this transition may see larger fall in sale of ICE vehicles than you'd expect from a gradual transition, as people who would otherwise have bought a new ICE vehicle may try harder to hold on to their old one.. because why buy a brand new car that's going to be extremely inconvenient to fuel in a few years? Even if EV prices go up to due spike in demand caused by this panic, people may still hesitate to buy ICE.
By the tail end of this, people may be reading news from Norway and Netherlands that you can't easily find gas stations anymore.. We've got lots of German tourists coming by car in Norway. That could make Germans think even if they don't have their own ban.
All that said, this all depends on whether we can make enough batteries. That's a huge challenge. There are many multi GWh factories being constructed now. But still.. there could be limitations on say lithium mining. So perhaps we need Sodium-Ion to go mainstream for the really low cost vehicles.
Three or four years ago, I would have agreed with your statement about ICE vehicles. Now I question it, at least for the US market. The initial wave of EVs that followed Tesla’s success has ebbed. American manufacturers are dropping, rather than adding EV models. European and Asian manufacturers are not releasing their EV models in the US market (eg VW ID.3), because there’s too little demand. Given all that, I don’t know how the market will reach the critical mass necessary to ensure that charger infrastructure gets built.
I don't get why people get confrontational about not being able to buy a new ICE vehicle. Who cares about that, if you can buy an electric vehicle with similar performance for the same money? It's actually a superior choice, since you can easily install a charger into your home, while you can't turn your home into a gas station easily.
How can I install a charger for my car in my apartment?
With ICE I can drive to the nearest gas station and be done in 5 minutes. With ICE I don't even think about it, I just drive to a station that's on the way to wherever I'm going
This problem is already solved in places with more developed infrastructure:
• Workplaces can have chargers in their parking lots. In places where cars are parked for many hours, slow chargers are sufficient, which makes them relatively cheap and easy to install, so they can be plentiful.
• Malls, supermarkets, gyms, restaurants, etc. can have medium and high power chargers. BEVs need 20-30 minutes to recharge from a high power charger. You can do your weekly shopping while your car recharges.
• Charging posts can be installed along roads with on-street parking. In some places even lamp posts can be modified to have charging sockets.
Modern EVs used for commuting need to be charged only about once a week (BEVs are most efficient in city driving, and the median US commute is 1/10th of good BEVs city range).
With the infrastructure in place, daily use of BEVs is more convenient than ICE, because you never need to go to a gas station. BEVs charge unattended, so you don't even spend the 5 minutes refuelling. You plug your car in and leave to do whatever you wanted to do at the destination you were going to anyway.
1 reply →
> if you can buy an electric vehicle with similar performance for the same money
It's because you can't.
Electric vehicles cost more. And I personally would never buy an electric vehicle with less than 600 miles range - and even then I would hesitate because I'd have to figure out how to charge at my destination.
Superchargers on the road or whatever don't meet my needs - I'm not willing to wait to charge. I eat in the car, and any rest stop that takes more than 10 minutes is no go for me.
Personally I'd be most interested in a plug in hybrid, with 100 miles (or even less) of battery range. Use battery for city trips and gas for long trips.
> since you can easily install a charger into your home
No you can't. People in apartments can't install them at all, people with only on-street parking can't install them (for example most of New York City is basically without chargers for that reason), and people in houses need some expensive work to run the necessary wires.
Where I live only about 1/4 of the houses on my street (mostly single family) can install chargers - parking is too unpredictable to be able to charge with on-street parking, although some of my neighbors try, and beg other neighbors to not "take their spot".
There's a reason EV sales are dropping.
> and any rest stop that takes more than 10 minutes is no go for me.
You're pretty uncompromising. There are already BEVs that need 18 minutes to recharge. That's close to a 10-minute rest stop + gas station stop.
In real world scenarios good BEVs are currently about 10% slower on long-range road trips than ICE. Not ideal, but also you can relax a bit and not piss in a hurry.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42203545
> there's a reason EV sales are dropping.
You've been reading some sensationalized headlines. Outside of short-term fluctuations, only the second derivative of EV sales has been dropping — the rate of growth has slowed down, which means the sales are still going up and share of EVs is growing, just not as quickly as it used to.
I’m curious what ICE vehicle you drive now that has a 600 mile range?
1 reply →