For EVs to become “No-Brainers” over ICE.

[Mach1E]

It is coming, sooner than you think. General rule: the smaller the ICE, the less efficient it is and pollutes (much) more.
Gasoline mowers prohibited for sale in CA, 2024. Regional Air Quality Council in Colorado proposing same.

Exactly my point.

It’s not coming because it’s better at getting the job done.

It’s government mandate.

Just like everything else in California…….. the cost of your lawn service just went way up.

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[woody]

There is actually a huge grid issue that I have seen almost nobody talk about and I really didn’t consider it until I read an article. It has nothing to do with capacity. It has to do with the aging distribution transformers all over the country. They are run fairly overloaded which is OK, But current methodology is they are unloaded at night and cool down. With charging at home they will be loaded 24/7 and their life cycle will reduce from 30 years to single digits. There will have to be a wholesale replacement of distribution transformers through the country.

YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THERE ARE CORPORATIONS IN THIS COUNTRY THAT DO NOT INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE? I'll be jiggered! Who'd a thunk it?

 

[MW1515]

There is a lot of "I don't trust scientists" sentiment in this forum which is dismaying to me as a scientist. Sure, there are bad scientists and bad science and science that is influenced by politics and other corrupting influences. But science has a number of things that are unique to the field in order to minimize this, and peer review of research is probably the most important one. I can tell you from personal experience that even other scientists in your same field are very critical of your publications when scientific journals ask them to review your work. This includes making sure all the proper controls were used and only conclusions based on the data are being made. A lot of climate science has been published in very well respected journals with very strict peer review. Unfortunately, the public lumps all science together and does not distinguish between this and some rogue "scientist" hired by an oil company or whatever and whom is quoted by some article on the web. The problem is not science or the vast majority of scientists, it is the inability of the public to discern good science from bad.

 

[woody]

Most utilities do not make massive profits. They are regulated and make a “set” profit. The problem is not tech, it is availability. There is a long lead time as it is now for transformers. The lead time will only get worse. Totally solvable over time but it will become an issue especially in poorer rural communities.

Small utilities earn "small" profits. Large utilities earn LARGE profits. Large utilities provide the vast majority of power in this country. That is why your portfolio owns utility stocks. Since their inception, utility stocks have provided an excellent (dividend) income. One hundred years ago great, great grandpa's portfolio was utility stocks and some real estate - the only way great, great grandma was going comfortably survive after he died. And more so after 1935.
In most of the country the utility company dictates to the legislative regulatory agency.

 

[SpaceEVDriver]

There is a lot of "I don't trust scientists" sentiment in this forum which is dismaying to me as a scientist. Sure, there are bad scientists and bad science and science that is influenced by politics and other corrupting influences. But science has a number of things that are unique to the field in order to minimize this, and peer review of research is probably the most important one. I can tell you from personal experience that even other scientists in your same field are very critical of your publications when scientific journals ask them to review your work. This includes making sure all the proper controls were used and only conclusions based on the data are being made. A lot of climate science has been published in very well respected journals with very strict peer review. Unfortunately, the public lumps all science together and does not distinguish between this and some rogue "scientist" hired by an oil company or whatever and whom is quoted by some article on the web. The problem is not science or the vast majority of scientists, it is the inability of the public to discern good science from bad.

Yep. It's been good business to attack science for the past several decades. It's especially bizarre to me when it's the same science that enables the existence of the technologies used to communicate the misinformation, or to create the car people are driving, or to find the oil being extracted from the ground. The dissonance is so weird.

 

[bbulkow]

EVs need a slam dunk reason for ICE buyers to convert over. IMO 3 things need to happen for EVs to become no-brainers over ICE vehicles for mass adoption.

1. 0-90% SOC in under 10 min on public charging networks.

2. Much greater range than ICE vehicles…think 400/500+ miles on a full charge.

3. Lower price of entry.

Competition is a great thing, I could see this happening in 5 years (maybe).

what are your thoughts?

ICE vehicles are cheap only because polluting is free. add in what we now know about the cost of co2 pollution, and every ice car would be off the road in no time.

A 25 minute charge time is great compared to walking.

 

[mkhuffman]

The problem is not science or the vast majority of scientists, it is the inability of the public to discern good science from bad.

Actually I think the problem is the public has been mislead by the news media, politicians and many (not all, of course) scientists way too many times.

It is sad, I agree. But they did it, not me. It isn't my inability to discern, it is their lack of integrity that has done it.

I am not going to reword Todd's post because he said it so well. But when they tell us NYC will be under water by the year 2000 due to global warming if we don't do anything, and we don't do anything, and does it does not flood, I KNOW they are liars. And that is just one example. Every time a prediction is wrong, they change the time frame.

They change the time frame because there has to be impending doom to get the policies they want. It isn't about the actual science, it is about how they can frighten the public into agreeing to policies like banning gas powered law mowers, which will have significant negative consequences on the people who need those tools to earn a living.

But those law service guys don't matter. And the people who are living paycheck to paycheck don't matter. It is more important to get rid of that gas powered lawn mower or else NYC will be under water in 10 years. It is always 10 years, by the way. Why is that?

It is not a simple issue, yet they say it is. There isn't one issue, yet they say there is only one issue we need to be worried about. Sorry, but they did it, not the "public". And the only way this gets fixed is for the news media, politicians and the scientists they use to be honest. We are doomed.

Anyway, I still love my car! And I will gladly pay for a 500 mile version when it is available! Well, as long as it doesn't cost $150k. I will pay more for a BEV, but not that much more.

I have a battery powered mower, by the way. And I love it. I got so sick of filling up the gas mower with gas, changing the oil, changing the spark plug, trying to get it to start. Now I just pop the battery in and it works. It takes three batteries to mow my lawn when it only took a tank of gas before, but it is worth it to me.

 

[RickMachE]

I just saw this article and it is very relevant:
Nyobolt Says It Charge EV Battery from Zero to 100% in 6 Minutes (autoweek.com)

So they are charging a 35 kWh battery 0-100% in 6 minutes. That's a 350 kW charger, I believe.

Who can really live with a 35 kWh battery? I think tiny two seater sport cars are cool, but they are certainly not practical. To move the size of car I really want, the battery needs to be much bigger than the MME battery. Lucid can get 500 miles out of 135 kWh, but that is a car. Even so, it will take a lot longer to charge a 135 kWh batter 0-100% even using the technology Nyobolt claims it has tested.

By the way, they claim "only" a 15% loss of charge after 2500 charges. Only. That's 85% SoH. Now their little car car only go 132 miles on a full charge. That's horrible.

It will be much easier to put bigger batteries in cars than to build out 350 kW chargers on every corner.

One of the challenges in having any debate is understanding that different people have different needs. Yes, I want an EV that goes further than 275 x 80% = 220 miles between stops on the highway, but only because a) there aren't enough chargers and b) charging takes too long. But, I don't need two cars that do that. For those that commute to work, many drive short distances. Having a 50 mile range vehicle might be just fine.

Is there anything happening that is actually reducing the cost of electricity? Every policy our wonderful politicians promote is driving electricity costs up, making the value case for EVs even more challenging.

If we could have one thing that drives mass adoption of BEVs it would be dirt cheap electricity.

Yes, cheap electricity MIGHT drive EV adoption. Problems include:

- Many don't understand their cost of electricity. You ask them and they say 5 cents. Then they figure out the fully loaded cost, and say 14 cents...
- Cheap electricity is often supplied by polluting plants.
- Electricity rates vary widely across the country, and even with a state / county. We were looking at relocating to an area in the SE, where the power is nuclear. One small pocket was a coop utility, buying from the nuclear utility, with much higher rates.

Most utilities do not make massive profits. They are regulated and make a “set” profit. The problem is not tech, it is availability. There is a long lead time as it is now for transformers. The lead time will only get worse. Totally solvable over time but it will become an issue especially in poorer rural communities.

I don't know all the financials of utility companies, but I'm going to challenge the statement that most utilities don't make massive profits. Mine has a market cap of $23 billion. Their net income is over $1B a year. Each year my rates go up. Despite having underground utilities, and being on the edge of a relatively large city (>100,000), we lose power 6 or more times some years. The utility kept trimming trees on the power feed to our neighborhood, with no improvement. So, they embarked on a massive clearing of trees "that you won't pay for". Then they asked for a rate increase to pay for that trimming that we weren't paying for. The CEO makes in excess of $10 million a year, and owns shares worth hundreds of millions.

After close to 20 years in our home, we bought a whole house generator due to the unreliability of our power. It has run for more than a day a handful of times in under a year. Cost me just over $10,000. And it's powered by natural gas, supplied by the same utility. Each kW of power provided costs me, as you would expect, much more than electricity would.

I don't believe that electricity costs are impacting those buying $60,000+ vehicles.

 

[Mach1E]

Yep. It's been good business to attack science for the past several decades. It's especially bizarre to me when it's the same science that enables the existence of the technologies used to communicate the misinformation, or to create the car people are driving, or to find the oil being extracted from the ground. The dissonance is so weird.

This is more the media’s fault.

They misuse science just as much as they attack it.

Why? Because their goal is to make people either fearful or angry when it comes to headlines.

“We are going to be ok” does absolutely nothing to draw views or readers or clicks.

I live in Florida and it’s hurricane season. Every time a storm comes around the media can’t resist blaming climate change.

That’s despite the fact that the trend for storm frequency and intensity is completely flat for the last 150 yrs (since we started measuring) and the fact that the prediction for the next 100 years with an increase in water temps? Also flat. But the science as a scapegoat makes great headlines.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/05pielke.pdf

Above is from the National Hurricane center’s government website.

“Debate over climate change frequently conflates issues of science and politics. Because of their significant and visceral impacts, discussion of
extreme events is a frequent locus of such conflation. Linda Mearns, of the National Center for Atmospher- ic Research (NCAR), aptly characterizes this context: “There’s a push on climatologists to say something about extremes, because they are so important. But that can be very dangerous if we really don’t know the answer” (Henson 2005). “

 

[phil]

...science has a number of things that are unique to the field in order to minimize this, and peer review of research is probably the most important one.

The credibility of scientific peer review has collapsed in recent years. Peer-reviewed journals are filled with published research that is based on fraudulent data, p-hacking, and findings that cannot be replicated.

Just this year, a Harvard behavioral scientist specializing in ethics and honesty (!) has been suspended for fabrication in multiple "peer-reviewed" studies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/business/economy/francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty.html

The problem is not science or the vast majority of scientists, it is the inability of the public to discern good science from bad.

No, "the public" is not to blame. The widespread corruption of peer-reviewed science is to blame.

 

[Mach1E]

The credibility of scientific peer review has collapsed in recent years. Peer-reviewed journals are filled with published research that is based on fraudulent data, p-hacking, and findings that cannot be replicated.

Just this year, a Harvard behavioral scientist specializing in ethics and honesty (!) has been suspended for fabrication in multiple "peer-reviewed" studies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/business/economy/francesca-gino-harvard-dishonesty.html



No, "the public" is not to blame. The widespread corruption of peer-reviewed science is to blame.

I am more inclined towards blame the messenger in this particular situation.

It’s the politicians and the news outlets that are shining spotlights and repeating the same misinformation.

Most scientists could draw the same conclusion. But one person comes up with a crazy idea that either fits the narrative or just sounds crazy enough to be interesting……. And that’s the study that shows up on the news.

Headline goes like “New study shows a connection between (fill in the blank) and (fill in the blank), are your children at risk? Tune in at 7 to find out more.”

 

[phil]

Most scientists could draw the same conclusion. But one person comes up with a crazy idea that either fits the narrative or just sounds crazy enough to be interesting……. And that’s the study that shows up on the news.

From the NYT article linked above:
"In 2015, a team of scholars reported that they had tried to replicate the results of 100 studies published in prominent psychology journals and succeeded in fewer than half the cases."

No, it's not just the messenger.

 

[Rory]

Personally, sweet spot is the following:

1When battery tech improves, smaller battery, not longer range. Less weight equals more fun. My MME has same 0-60 than a C5 corvette I had 21 years ago, but nowhere near the fun. It’s just too heavy (and I am too, but we won’t talk about that).

Of all the electric cars I’ve had (and I’ve had 5 different ones), the most fun one was the GM EV1. It had terrible range, but it was like driving a wild sports car (though with extreme torque steer). Very low cd (below .2), very low frontal area (as important for drag as Cd), very light weight—at least the NiMH ones were, don’t know about the earlier PbAcid ones.

 

[jeffMachE]

(trying to go back to the original list)
I'd offer that "getting people to adopt EV's" is not as monumental as some posit. Yes, the problems of charging if you are an apartment dweller are massive, and yes, being able to drive 400 miles in the winter without stopping is desirable (for some). But people are pretty adaptable.

Just 20 years ago, cell phones were still pretty scarce and were all dumb. If you told "the people" that everyone would carry around a pocket computer willingly, that they'd fork over $600 or $700 for a new one regularly, that they would always have it in their hand - disrupting their ability carry things, distracting their attention continuously, etc. - it would have sounded like an insurmountable task. And yet...

I personally think the momentum on EV's is building and people will adapt. We're in the trough of disillusionment (to steal from someone's chart about adoption), but as each new person buys an EV, some meaningful percentage of those purchasers will become a long-term convert and the momentum will continue to build.

For me, the original list would be a 15 minute charge, not 10, the abilty to drive 3+ hours in the winter without stopping, and purchase price parity. I think those are closer than we think.

 

[voxel]

I 100% agree with Doug's bad opinion... we need more public transit and car culture (excessive highway buildout) where we are forced to commute boring routes has lead to less enjoyment of our cars. More cars (EVs or ICE) are the problem and never a solution.

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