By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely, and India claims it will ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles. By 2040 (18 years from now) over half of all new cars sold will be electric, and the UK and France claim they will ban the sale of ICE-only vehicles.
However, there's still not a plan that makes all that sustainable, as we need 30% more grid capacity, an insanely higher number of chargers (1 out of 4 are duds) / service companies / land, China still controls most of the resources for production (of raw resources, manufacturing, & assembly) and now they want the chips too. And the climate picture isn't great either, with not enough new clean energy capacity going online, and only 8 million barrels of crude will be displaced by the estimated number of new EVs. Even with all of this new work, there will be only a small reduction in carbon emissions.
Basically there are so many things that can go wrong in the next 18 years, and so many things we don't even have a plan for, that all the estimates we've been given will result in dysfunction, increased prices, and soaring secondary markets. A lot of people are going to make money just from preparing for things to go wrong.
We literally have no vision for optimization, we just seem to obsess about and creating one problem to solve another for the sake of capacity and scalability.
The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation, which has so far been extremely difficult because most voters choose "let's make things a bit easier for you today" over "we should all sacrifice now to make things probably better later".
The apartment I moved into last year is in a neighborhood with grocery stores, some restaurants and a gym. It's not the epitome of walkability but it gets the job done. While at my old place I found myself getting into my car every day to go places, now I find myself only using it 1-2 times per week.
Also weather is a major factor. When I visited my friend in Florida last month I decided to walk to McDonalds one morning. By the time I got back I was drenched in sweat from the humidity. By comparison I make a similar length walk almost every morning and don't think anything of it. There even if the place was super walkable, folks would still drive because of the heat and humidity.
I think that's fine. Most over time will realize they don't need 2 or more cars if they're living in a true walking city because driving will be more inconvenient than walking, and eventually either paying for or building a garage (or having it used up by 2 cars that are seldom used) or paying for street parking or other things will cause people to change habits. It just takes time if you have a walkable city.
Personally I think the sweet spot is one crossover SUV, highly walkable and bikeable city, and probably street cars that run up and down main commerce arteries. At that point you really do cover almost every conceivable local transit need or chore that you might have to undertake.
Not necessarily, because it is significantly more expensive (depending on how you implement it). But one way to get people off their cars and onto public transport could be make people pay for their cars. Nowadays, people do pay quite a lot for their cars (insurance, registration fees, vehicle tax, etc), but the payments pale in comparison to the overall costs of having cars as a primary mean of mobility. Putting that cost burden onto the people that produce those costs would lead to many people reconsidering their need for a car.
The YouTube channel NotJustBikes has gained a lot of notoriety over the last couple of years, and he made an interesting point that driving is more pleasant in Amsterdam. [0]
The issue is mainly car dependency not cars per se.
You know what is even nicer than that, Living in a Rural area with a population density of less than 500 people per sq mile (310 people per sq km)
>The only way to fix it is by passing taxes or other restrictive legislation
That is far from the only way to fix it, and it is very regressive, making the burden fall upon poor people, and often the elderly.
Using tax code to affect behavior is one of the most unethical things government does, and I always find it odd that the same people that complain about the rich, and how we should do more for the poor are the ones that also want to impose these heavily regressive tax schemes because "they know best"
I find this way of thinking unrealistic and paternalistic. It might work in an authoritarian society, or in a society where the alternative to car culture is appealing.
But, let's get very realistic for a moment. I telecommute, and my wife has an in-person job. I'd even go so far as to say that most jobs are like hers: in-person, because she isn't a knowledge worker.
We go to the grocery store. Even though it's a reasonable walk, we take our car because it's not reasonable to lug the groceries back home. It's also not reasonable to bring groceries onto public transport. (My boss, who doesn't drive, uses an Uber for grocery shopping.) An alternate way of living would need to figure this out.
Even though most of our trips are very close to home, we do about 18k miles a year. Our family (and many friends) do no live in town. We also prefer to travel by car. It's much easier when going on a family vacation compared to lugging kids and baggage through all kinds of trains and bus transfer.
And... Where we live is mildly rural. Regular bus routes, (or similar) don't make sense.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1230-marc...
All of those could certainly be replaced with something more sensible. How many times have you hopped into the car to go to the store and grab one thing? Probably a lot in your life. With car culture, we basically have a mindset of using a big axe for every cutting job, even those where a butter knife would do.
I live in a very walkable neighborhood near lots of public transit.
Yesterday someone was shot in the head two floors up. A month ago I watched a racially charged conflict that only didn't end with a stabbing because a dude couldn't find anything appropriate in the unoccupied security desk. A week ago I witnessed a charged situation with a couple of dozen people at a bus stop. Someone was murdered on a bus at 11pm two blocks away over who got a cigarette on the floor. A friend was visiting me and someone got stabbed at the bus stop she used 45 minutes after she passed through.
There are exactly 0 units available in my building appropriate for a family of 4 unless you really aspire to live packed in like sardines, the units you could do so which still don't have much space in them go for significantly more than a 6 bedroom house on a half acre within a few miles.
What will happen if left-wing idealists try to force city density and public transit on people is a hard right wing turn when the consequences of one party trying to take freedoms away for idealistic reasons becomes a bigger burden than the consequences of the freedoms the other party wants to take away.
I really don't care about my own safety, but when it comes time for a family I would never subject any of them to the safety nightmare which is high density public-transit heavy living.
When the same people fighting to abolish the car are fighting to abolish the police, I don't think there's going to be much hope for either happening.
Shutting yourself off from society is a fragile and imperfect solution - if you look at South Africa, where elites have essentially tried to use razor wire and walled communities to insulate themselves, people's lives are still dominated by the threat and reality of the society they've tried to shut out.
Now solar panels are mostly made in China (as are almost all consumer electronics), but that seems like a far more general problem to solve.
For example, just to provide enough chargers for Philadelphia's 1.5M residents (63% of them drive to work), one of every ~6 car lengths on every residential sidewalk would need concrete dug up and a charger installed. The city will never pay for that, and it would be a logistical and political nightmare. Even if individuals went through a city process to get a permit to do it themselves and pay for & install their own charger, and assuming there was a posted parking limit for only EVs, some jerk down the street with a Tesla will take the spot, and you may have to drive blocks and blocks to find a free charger. Many people may decide to just stick to ICE.
Obviously not an ideal solution but a good example of the kind of stop gaps we'll be seeing over time.
I'm also already seeing rapid chargers frequently in strip malls and stuff. So maybe doing errands and spending at least an hour there once a week will be another stop gap.
Considering how often streets get repaved and that we're talking about gradual change over the next decade or two, and that there are inferior but workable stopgaps as mentioned above (that will allow people to get by, yet also incentivize them to loudly demand better) I think there's time to add the charging stations necessary as needed without any serious issues.
Adding charging to a garage or parking lot is easier than on the street, and you don't have to worry about not being able to access "your" spot.
Production does not mean capacity.
Obvious one is Tesla. has alot of solar capacity but doesn't make alot of sales since they are at the high end of the market. Same with Misson Solar and Solaria.
If we took a hard stance on trading with China it would hurt alot of the big name players, there would be alot of constraints for a while, but would give smaller, US Based manufacturers with more capacity than sales time to shine.
There is no way around the labor equation in products without effective legislation.
That, at least to me, seems to be the more likely scenario.
Also keep in mind that fueling behavior for EV owners is different than for ICE vehicle owners. Fast chargers are useful for road trips, but unnecessary and expensive for day-to-day driving. Most commuters will simply charge at home/work/the store/etc, where the raw inputs to charging infrastructure (car-adjacent space and electricity) are already in place and slower, cheaper charging is sufficient.
So what happens when 1/4 of all their customers disappear? Many will close and when that happens there will be less competition, driving up gas prices which will result in more people buying electric cars. It's a cycle that--once it kicks off--is going to move very quickly. Faster than people, cities, and society are prepared for, that's for sure!
This is going to hit harder and than people realize. There are so many really great EV options from nearly every manufacture. And their sales figures are growing at a solid clip. According to Cox, EVs are 12% of new car sales in 22, and it's the only segment that grew YoY (the overall market fell 20% YoY).
Or use battery swapping, like China is doing. This enables many gas stations to remain viable, allows far better battery health monitoring/remediation, permits slower, less stressful charging & greatly reduces the grid issue, eliminates the battery as a limitation of the car’s lifespan, etc.
EVs are going to take over no matter what because in their end state they're better than ICE vehicles in nearly every way. Quieter, smoother, simpler, faster, cleaner (air pollution), and potentially cheaper.
That said, I absolutely disagree with the amount of shade you're throwing at the technology in the context of climate, emissions, and fuel:
> we need 30% more grid capacity
That's not very hard, especially since EVs are being phased in gradually. We had the same problem with air conditioners and it was no big deal.
> an insanely higher number of chargers
Which will happen because there is a clear financial incentive to build them. They're cheaper to run and maintain than gas stations and the fuel is transported much more easily.
> service companies
Are service companies a finite resource?
> land
What land do you mean? Car-based infrastructure already uses and has a bunch of land. Where is it that EVs need more of it?
> China still controls most of the resources for production
We already have this situation with the Middle East/Russia with oil
Here's the biggest issue I have with your comment: you're minimizing massive reduction in oil usage:
> and only 8 million barrels of crude will be displaced by the estimated number of new EVs
That's a lot! Globally, 43.7 million barrels of oil are used per day for transportation fuel. [1]
That means that EVs will reduce crude oil usage for transportation by 18.3%! That's really significant!
While we can cheer for EVs reducing emissions, it will do nothing to stop the actual problem with climate change, which is global catastrophe from runaway warming. Add to that the problems we are setting ourselves up for with failure to properly handle the coming EVs and the picture looks grim.
As I mentioned, I'm all for the reduction of automobile usage as a generality, but that's not as low-friction as a transition to EVs.
We can lament our situation all we want, EVs are what they are. I am not saying they're a full climate solution.
Automakers are switching over them purely as a product decision, with relatively little government regulation pushing them in that direction. (Any regulatory bans on ICE vehicles were easily enacted without industry protest because automakers already know that ICE vehicles will not be competitive products by 2030)
From what I understand, it involves replacing nearly every local distribution station in existence, because nobody prepared for this.
When I had my charger installed, my electrician mentioned that I was at capacity for the service line. To upgrade it, I would have to pay to have the sidewalk and road dug up and repaired, for a couple of city blocks.
I don't think "not very hard" is the appropriate framing.
Do you believe this? I know its a stated goal, but is there anything to hold the company's accountable or is this just a promise? I can't imagine them giving up a cash cow and something they've been doing for decades. EV sales in the USU are 5.6% of the market. I just find the claim that these companies will just seamlessly switch over to electric when they can't even get a decent touch screen in a car a decade after the first iPad.
There are a lot of built-in incentives for manufacturers to switch to electric once the market demand exists.
Less moving parts to warranty means potentially less long-tail costs for parts as well as less capital allocation for potential warranty service claims paid to dealerships. Less moving parts that can fail. Less parts in general. AWD in electrics is typically done with a front and rear motor configuration versus using moving parts to transfer power from the front to the rear.
More opportunities to upsell with lower capital costs. Model stratification by power output in ICE typically means more complex engineering (forced induction) or larger engine; both of which require significantly more R&D, testing, and validation. Once you sink capital investments into an ICE engine and manufacturing line, you need to reuse it over many years across a large range of vehicles to recoup the cost.
Model stratification in electrics is via bigger battery packs (stuff more of the same cells in there) and multiple motors.
Basically, electric cars are fiscally better for manufacturers in every way -- so long as consumers are willing to pay the premium AND willing to live with the inconveniences (less infrastructure for refueling, longer refueling, range anxiety).
What Tesla did was de-risk the market by showing that consumers will buy the product despite its flaws.
I suspect that is where many of us can disagree — the when.
Tesla is sexy, sure. But I don't think they proved that people want electric cars. Tesla still sells very few cars (~3%). The giants sell a lot more cars
I agree electric cars are better, but nothing stopped the car giants from making them decades ago. Tesla didn't come around at the right time, even Musk admits as much. The car giants could have worked on electric cars in the past, but for whatever reason didn't. It would have even been easier for them considering their expertise in manufacturing and distribution. Not to mention that politicians don't really like Tesla for whatever reason. If you listen to Biden talk about electric cars he often suspiciously leaves out Tesla, which is weird considering their cars are made in US and dominate 75% of the electric market in the US.
Manufactures are already quietly sunseting ICEs. It just doesn't read as significant right now, because the models which are going away are not the big, important ones. But manufactures are setting the stage for the transition of popular nameplates to EVs (see: Mustang, F150)
They anticipate increased costs for ICE vehicles and increased profit from EV which is why they're moving forward. They don't control the segments of the market they need to make it happen, so it's a risky bet. However, the manufacturers that are switching first are largely luxury brands, so they make a healthy enough profit that even if they stumble they wont be under water.
I will say also, any government promises or actions more than 1 election cycle out are pipe dreams by those governments, When we get to 2030, I will be SHOCKED if even 20% of the nations promising to ban ICE sales will actually do it
Why do you have the impression "nobody" is planning for these things? These topics are talked about endlessly in every medium by laypeople. Billions of dollars in public and private sector investment is being funneled into everyone of these topics.
The complaint about grid capacity baffles me. The USA used to regularly growth capacity by well over 30% a decade. It only stopped expanding because energy efficiency standards were so damn successful that net usage declined in spite of population growth, and the majority new capacity went to displacing coal production.
> By 2030 (8 years from now) at least six manufacturers will have stopped making ICE vehicles entirely.
If those two seem out of step with one another then I propose that one of them will relent with regard to the other. (No one is making these six manufacturers stick to their forecasts.)
I'm also worried about the future of cars, of course. I'm an optimist, though -- I hope that the oncoming car dystopia leads to a rejection of cars by a bigger chunk of society. And a more sustainable, quiet, walkable, bikeable world for those of us who embrace it.
I love cars, trucks, and the things they enable me to do. Literally most of the things that make my life worth living are tied to using one.
Perhaps people can segregate into different cities or areas based on their preferences .
Edit. I'm sure Musk and Tesla are super proud of the CO2 savings their company provides, so it shouldn't be hard to find the data they are publishing showing the net cost to carbon for the entire manufacturing and life time use of their product.
"The emissions from Materials production and refining of the ICE are roughly 40 per cent less than for the BEV" [0]
Therefore, forcing people to scrap working vehicles and buy new ones, in such a short time period, is going to dump massive quantities of CO2 in to the atmosphere in very order. This sounds extremely dangerous. I don't understand their reasoning.
Surely they need to fix the EV electric energy mix to make it more renewable, before forcing people to buy the EVs
[0]https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/project/contentpl...
Now for reality instead: since people have developed the direst situation of being "brainless", I have been near vehicles you would praise, and the noise they make is _unbearable_. That is because some satanic critters, which unfortunately constitute empowered components in management, marketing and public, believe it a "good idea" to replace traditional engine noise with synths of '90s operating system boot samples.
This happens because people have lost their nature, of feedback-based machines, and can go on living after being shot (they will not know about it).
--
Edit: an hybrid in electric mode just parked near me, in real time, and the noise was not the most particularly annoying - it's a Hyundai - but it was definitely upsetting and irritating (though much better than other hellish nightmares I have heard driving near me). I assess that normal individuals would probably be not that bothered when they pass on the streets many yards distant - but I am not sure, it really depends which audio bands will reach you. I am pretty sure that others I have experienced will be fully unbearable at a much longer distance.
Edit2: they just left now, and the noise at the start was quite acceptable now - just a mildly loud fan, nothing perverse. It seems Hyundai has guessed a few effects properly. (Issue is, others have not - and this logically opens for more.)
Those evidences of hell on earth are driving by clearly unregulated - and it is doubtful that given the mental state of nowadays earth crawlers they will ever be regulated (you need a clean humanity still capable of being bothered by noise for that).
And for what the single sniper that hit this post is concerned - likewise for silence, let us refrain to spend much verbal judgement.
Is this true over the life time of the car? Studies indicate this may be a widely believed myth.
If there are not enough chargers, won't that create an incentive to build more? And yeah, you probably can't build them fast enough, or the grid capacity will not be sufficient, but won't people then just move to places where they can? Or switch to alternative modes of transportation?
I think the fallacy is that people just want to replace ICE cars with EVs as they are, and then realize you need a lot of space and grid capacity to charge them, etc. But because of the scaling problems you mention, there will be a very large pressure to build better public transport. If people can't charge their EV, or can't afford a car, or don't have good transportation, they will move somewhere else. This is structural change, and yeah it is going to be inconvenient and expensive (and we could have done it better with more foresight), but ultimatively we will figure it out.
This sounds fine to you? Not having enough grid capacity means much higher prices and more frequent blackouts. Not having enough charging infrastructure means many people may be unable to fuel their vehicles. "Sorry, but this city is shit now, I guess you're going to have to move to Texas for their great electric grid" doesn't seem like a position we should be aiming to put many people in.
What's going to happen is that at some point having a car gets slightly more expensive. Some people will put off buying a car for a little while. And they'll vote for candidates who promise to build more power infrastructure, or public transport. When people are moving the next time, they'll take the infrastructure into account in their decision, and move preferentially to cities with more capacity.
It's not like we are going to put 100 million EVs out there tomorrow. Some places will become marginally shittier, some will become better, and there will be plenty of time for everything to equilibrate.
> Basically there are so many thing sthat can go wrong in the next 18 years ...
There has to be a name for this particular kind of response to change (usually positive change[0]). Please don't read this as crapping on your points -- they're all valid.
The problem is that it's identifying problems that "may occur in the future" using what technology we have, today, to solve them. It also presents those in a vacuum and ignores the unknown of what the world could look like after new vehicles sales gradually transition to 80% electric. We can speculate more easily on the negative, but it's a lot harder to predict the positive -- at least, the "societal changing positive effects".
Consider that newer EVs can power your home during a power loss, or integrating EVs into the grid, itself. Reliance on traditional automobiles and how we rely on them is changing, as well. My driving habits, due to the vast availability of fully-remote work and the purchase of a OneWheel have been drastically reduced[1]. I went from ~20 gallons/week to ~10 gallons/month of gas. I've done the math a few times and it's stupid for me to own an ICE vehicle. I own it out of a desire of convenience that could probably be eliminated with Uber and when my kids are out of the house, I probably will no longer own a car. Until then, however, my car could basically be filling in that 30% gap (or whatever the gap happens to be at this very moment).
Articles that recently hit the front page of HN related to Geothermal conversion of Coal Plants[2], the myriad of posts related to companies attempting the modern-day alchemy called "Nuclear Fusion", there's a lot of energy/money being spent in the space, much of it having nothing to do with reducing climate change but providing for an increasingly electricity dependent future.
Even the incredibly slow-moving electric companies have made some pretty serious progress. I think back on my short life; I happen to currently live in the city I grew up in -- losing the power for a few days in the summer was a "normal thing", as was losing it during every miserable thunderstorm. The price of whole-home generators and the hardware to integrate it were so cost-prohibitive that few people owned one. I still do not, however, I've lost power maybe four times this year for under ten seconds. I've lost power once in three years for over an hour (still restored in under four hours).
[0] I'm thinking something succinct like Hanlon's Razor.
[1] 2,800 miles and going since I bought it. I grocery shop with it ... it's a good upper body workout carrying 6 bags back 1-3 miles.
[2] Filed under "I'll believe it when I see it" but still.
Because, unless we get a tremendous breakthrough in the next 5 years, electric battery vehicles will be a very big pain.
-Batteries are terribly expensive (and prices are not going down as fast as expected)
-Batteries degrade too fast
-Batteries take too long to charge
-Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to take advantage of the boom (and blaming the war, and everything else to justify it's rise)
-Batteries pollute a lot more than previously though
-recycling Batteries is hard
-Batteries component materials are rare
-if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost the price of a new vehicle
Can we bet a little more on the most abundante substance on the universe?
I know it also has it's problems... But they do seen less...
Those speaking of a successful experience with home charging describe a very personal experience: many people do not have any "home charging infrastructure" (the car won't do the stairs), nor the same «driving needs». The statement «batteries take too long to charge» deserves referential (and even reverential) noticing of the current standard, which is "I refill within one first minute on the clock".
Also the efficiency of a cycle of storing energy into gaseous hydrogen and then recovering it is limited by fundamental reasons to low values.
For cars, it is likely that batteries will remain the best solution, due to the high efficiency of a charge-discharge cycle.
For long term storage of energy, further improvements of fuel cells might make them the best solution for recovering energy stored in chemical form, but not using gaseous hydrogen for storage, but other more appropriate substances, e.g. hydrocarbons, alcohols, ammonia or solid carbon.
There are fuel cells for the other fuels mentioned above and the only advantage of the hydrogen fuel cells is that they currently have the greatest power density, i.e. the speed of reaction of the hydrogen per area of electrode is for now the greatest (leading to the greatest electrical current density), but only either at high temperatures or when using expensive catalysts.
The mitochondria from all the cells of our body are a demonstration that it is possible to make a very high efficiency fuel cell using hydrocarbons as fuel and without using any rare or expensive materials for catalysts.
While the solar cells already exceed the efficiency of plants at capturing solar energy, the artificial fuel cells have a long way until becoming competitive with those used by the living beings.
Enlighten me in a lot of subjects and with H2 downsides I can accept.
I confess I know a bit more about batteries that the H2...
What is "too fast"?
Much of the fear about battery degradation was from projections and warranty terms at the very beginning of modern EV deployments.
Real world observations have shown the battery packs maintaining >85% of their capacity after 150,000mi/241,000km.
Also, battery components aren't rare. They're called "rare" because they are not found in large centralized deposits but rather spread somewhat uniformly throughout the earth. They are actually some of the more abundant elements on earth. For every two atoms of silicon on earth, there is almost one of lithium, which makes it much more abundant than hydrocarbons. If battery component extraction was subsidized to the degree hydrocarbon extraction is, they would be much less expensive, and more available on the market, than hydrocarbons.
>-if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost the price of a new vehicle
The battery makes up approximately 1/3rd the price of a new EV. As anyone who has had to pay for auto repair can attest, labor is almost always the main cost. It is inconceivable to me that replacing a battery and motors is more costly than an engine, except due to a shortage of qualified personnel commanding higher hourly rates. There is a video on YouTube of an elderly wheelchair-bound man completely rebuilding a Nissan Leaf battery pack in a workshop so I have no doubts that it is a skill that can be taught to any able-bodied person who is willing to learn.
As far as battery recycling goes, they're working on it: https://www.ornl.gov/news/automated-disassembly-line-aims-ma...
I would like to see battery degradation beat that. (yeah, the tech is new. We'll probably get there... In 10 years)...
About the materials... There is a few reports on their problems... Mining and other problems of getting it
About the battery cost: that's not what I've been reading! It seems batteries are the most expansive part...
That we don't hear about hydrogen fuel cell vehicles actually suggests to me that they are not a viable option.
I presume, stupidly perhaps, that there are bigger thinkers than me (or certainly people in positions that have a lot more to lose or gain in this field) that have already counted the beans and still see the electric (battery) vehicles as the current future path of least resistance.
At the very least, swapping batteries for fuel cells seems to be a fundamentally simpler step than swapping ICE for electric. Going to electric cars generally, regardless of the source of power is a big move for the auto industry.
How the h... did my simple comment, based on my PERSONAL opinion on the subject got into this witch-hunt?!
Enough with the torches and forks!
This is not propaganda! It's MY PERSONAL conclusion on everything I've read! - the word -PERSONAL- is the key here.
If any of you think I don't like electric vehicles you are wrong! Anything that does not pollute is welcome(to try to undo the shirt we all did)!
But I have to say it: ATM - personal view, again - to me, electric vehicles based on batteries S-U-C-K!!! And they SUCK big time!!! I don't see them as decent alternative!!!
Sure! Environment-friendly it's the best we have! But they suck! And hydrogen has much more promise! Not developed enough? Yeah! It's not. But then again... Let me say it again: electric vehicles based on batteries suck.
And unless they get at least the first 3 points fixed you won't be changing my mind! 50.000 for a car that takes 25 min to charge and that if, for some reason, the battery goes the way of the Dodo I can expand ALMOST another 50.000?
Sorry, I'm not payed enough for that.
You guys must all have big pay checks every month... But I don't!
Not really.
>-Batteries degrade too fast
No, they don't, at least not the well-temperature-controlled ones. Larger EV packs should outlast most ICE cars.
>-Batteries take too long to charge
They really don't, unless you have no way to charge at home - the vast majority of charging happens overnight even on a 120V plug. We only visit chargers when on roadtrips.
>-Electricity prices are already going up terribly fast to take advantage of the boom (and blaming the war, and everything else to justify it's rise)
Not really true, at least in our corner of the US. I think we're sitting at ~$0.14/kwh, which works out to around $0.04-$0.05/mi, or 20-25 miles per $. And any rise in methane prices is going to hit hydrogen harder, given that most H2 is produced by cracking CH4.
>-Batteries pollute a lot more than previously though
Source? What kind of pollution? More than the steel that goes into making a car?
>-recycling Batteries is hard
Not really? Tesla claims a materials yield of 92% on their packs, and 100% of the packs recycled. Recyclers are willing to pay quite a bit for broken packs, which should tell you something.
>-Batteries component materials are rare
Newer chemistries are better about this.
>-if you get into a crash your Battery will most likely be affected - which means you will probably have to spend almost the price of a new vehicle
Yeah, Teslas aren't great on this front, even wrt the bodywork. But battery pack replacements don't cost nearly as much as a new EV.
Gaseous hydrogen has a lot of problems, and you'd need to build a whole distribution network. Which we already have with electricity...
The only reason a person should ever need to charge at a station is on a long haul trip, and that problem is getting better all the time.
I do however agree that existing battery technology is _still_ severely disadvantaged, not only in terms of efficiency and density but the rare materials they need to manufacture (same for H2 solutions).
It's annoying because ICE engines are not great (big, heavy, complicated with related reliability issues), yet they consume an easy to transfer high density liquid fuel; Electric engines are fantastic (small, light, simple, highly efficient, powerful, great torque), but they consume electricity which is hard to efficiently transfer with no where near the energy density per unit weight or space storage solutions.
However! ICE exists, all of it's issues are mitigated by mass adoption, and in the short term it's not environmentally responsible to ditch 1 billion cars. I think the best plan I've seen so far is to scale up synthesising hydrocarbons from solar... electric cars can continue to be developed and we can find more reasonable electric storage solutions without undermining the purpose of switching to electric by forcing the world into an immature solution and throwing away 1 billion ICE vehicles and all related infrastructure (manufacturing EVEs has an environmental cost).
We like simple to understand solutions, but the solution that minimises environmental impact must not underscope itself - the whole picture has to be considered, costs of manufacturing and switching are not external to planet Earth, which means there is some ideal conversion rate that must be determined.
If you have a car that works, the environmentally responsible decision is -- unless it's an absurdly inefficient vehicle -- to keep using that car instead of purchasing a newly-manufactured EV. Even EV advocates acknowledge and proclaim this.
The point of the EV transition is to provide a more environmentally responsible solution for those people who are already in the market for a new car, as an alternative to manufacturing another billion polluting ICE cars.
I think there are solutions to the show stoppers of H2. But the package isn't very appealing, at least not for individual transport.
Also what makes EVs appealing, they've reached a state of convenience that makes them feasible for most use cases. And for the rest it seems some hacky solutions are possible.
Of course the waste of switching from ICEs to non-ICEs will be incredible. But well, hard to see any alternative..
What is the "electric" car iPhone moment?
One of those problems is there is no abundant source of hydrogen in isolated form here on earth. You have to use a catalytic agent or an energy-intensive process like electrolysis to get usable hydrogen for your fuel cell.
H2, from what I know is nowhere near ready as batteries are.
But I believe with more investment it can get there!
Batteries can be very efficient but that is not an apples-to-apples comparison. You have to get the energy somewhere. Good solar systems are about 30% efficient. Turbines are about 30% efficient.
Energy efficiency isn't the problem with hydrogen and fuel cells. They have other problems.
I have hopes it builds up to the hype.
But it's not a guarantee, naturally.
Let's cross fingers. Lol
