Comment by boringg
5 days ago
Interesting but North America has different needs for vehicles. Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.
I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future.
FWIW downvoters - I have a PHEV - but I live in the real world and a likely future!
> Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.
I don't know about the whole national electric grid, but at my house, I didn't really have to upgrade anything and didn't even notice an increase in electric bill when I started plugging in my EV. I don't think my car is even 20% of my household electricity usage. I'd hope we can increase our national grid's capability by at least 20% in the next 20 years. (Also, aren't datacenters causing that massive demand right now, whether or not the upgrades are even there yet? As I understand this is causing massive price increases?)
> I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future.
As you kind of hint at, whether or not the vehicle is EV or ICE has nothing to do with whether it has subscription models, tracking, etc. and car manufacturers are racing towards both of those things in a way that makes the drivetrain irrelevant.
Two points.
1. Infra will need to upgrade in order to handle heavy charging in neighborhoods with wholesale change in the fleet. It would change our electrical use model considerably in terms of times of use -- and we would be adding all the energy used from gas powered cars to the electrical grid - which is somewhat significant.
2. While you are correct technically -- I think what I am implying is older cars (ICE) will be the ones without all the tracking and software - whereas all EVs will have that embedded as they are all relatively new. There is no world where they remove that from new car production.
It's a myth that EV charging requires an upgrade to a 100 amp connection. Scheduling charging to times when you're not using appliances will still result in a charged vehicle by morning.
The Youtube channel Technology Connections has an interesting video where it describes a successful transition to a fully-electric house while remaining on a 50 amp electrical connection. (it requires a smart circuit breaker)
3 replies →
Just gotta hope that slate auto is successful!
We are a net oil exporter. I have no idea where everyone around here thinks all this electricity to charge cars is going to come from.
7 replies →
> Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.
And if 100% of EV's sold this year were electric, it would take ~24 years for basically all of the vehicles on the road were electric. (The average age of registered cars in the US is 12 years old).
Estimates are that a 100% EV fleet would increase electricity demand by 20%. So that's < 1 % a year.
Approximately how much demand increases due to increasing A/C usage in the US.
And a lot less than AI/crypto is increasing demand.
And that's not to mention that EV charging is a relatively easy demand to meet -- most EV owners charge when it's cheapest, so you can shape demand via price signals.
So, EVs would reduce electricity usage in the long term (by eliminating the growth in demand from air conditioning).
On top of that, things like balcony and rooftop solar are much more economically attractive if you have a lot of load at your house, so people that buy EVs are likely to also self-generate a lot of electricity.
You can somewhat change the profile by price signals -- however if all vehicles are EVs there is a good portion of that demand that is inelastic. You will also need to be able to handle larger volumes of demand for faster charging stations and that entire effort of infra.
Its all doable but it is not as a simple as every plugs in at home. Its a large co-ordinated infrastructure effort.
You also brought up some other valid issues -- right now we are looking at the being undersupplied for electricity across NA without a wholesale swap to EVs. Maybe the upside of the oversupply of AI is that we have a lot of stranded assets for electrical charging infra/generation afterwards..
So if EV's cause electricity demand to go up by less than 1% per year, it'll cause inelastic demand to go up a small fraction of 1%. If operators can't expand at that low a rate, we have bigger problems.
2 replies →
>Long time before our electrical systems to be able to compensate for that kind of whole sale change. Will be at least 20 years if it ever happens.
There's little to no reason that the electrical grid itself needs to change for the sake of EV's.
The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with. So, everyone wants DC fast that mimics a gas station experience, even if it's completely unnecessary for almost everyone's use cases.
Land is limited, new builds like that are expensive, slower to earn returns, and make little sense with so few EVs in the US - which leads to a viscous cycle. It's a bit of TotC.
>I would also say that any ICE vehicle that has 0 subscription models, upgradable firmware, tracking software will probably have a value premium to it in the not distant future.
Consumers do not care about this. If they did, such cars would not sell. No one is going to pay extra for fewer features.
> The biggest problem is that while slow charging (L2) in your own garage would be perfect for 99%+ of people in the US, and isn't even very expensive, that's a barrier to entry most people do not want to screw with.
I feel like this is only an opinion that people who have never actually used an EV have. Plugging in my car overnight at home every few days is infinitely more convenient than needing to drive somewhere to plug it in somewhere else. The actual charge time is irrelevant as long as it's not more than ~12 hrs.
I leval 1 charge my car and that is always enough. Salesmen who sold it to me says he does the same. It depends on your commute, (i typically ride my bike if the weather isn't too bad) and the other trips you make (why I bought it - there is a once a week trip I make outside of bike range)
> No one is going to pay extra for fewer features.
Right, what people want is to pay less for fewer features.
If EVs with all their limitations are going to replace ICE cars for daily use, they need to be cheap. We need the Ford Focus or Toyota Tercel of EVs, with the same set of features (i.e. very few) that those cars had when they were introduced.
Otherwise I'll just go buy a used ICE Tercel or Focus.
When Tesla showed the world that an EV didn't have to look like a middle school science project and drive like a golf cart, it made sense that they went upmarket. They had to recover development costs. That won't work to get mass conversion.
You can get a new Model 3 base model for $36k. A Hyundai Ioniq 5 MSRP is $35k. A Chevy Bolt is $30k.
A non-EV Toyota Camry is $30k (hybrid and ICE).
We are almost there. For buyers on a budget, the used car market is liquid for EVs as of now.
3 replies →
Geely Xingyuan is $10000. Wuling Mini is $5600.
You're saying?