If your brother can run an electric dryer, he can charge an electric car.
You can either say "EVs are not viable until they can be used in exactly the same way as an ICE, including all the weird workarounds we've developed for the weaknesses of ICE cars over the past century", or you can say "how can we make this work given the different attributes of this mode of transport"? It turns out the latter is a lot more productive and effective.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
True in charging. But if its 130 miles to the nearest McDonald's, plugging into a wall socket and waiting (however long it would take our theoretical EV) to charge to go home 130 miles isn't an option, not yet. And I don't think they'd be opposed to electric cars because they also raced R/C with me for those 30+ years.
True, if you're driving 5 hours round trip just to get a Big Mac, EVs are not quite for you :)
Note that you wouldn't necessarily need to add 130 miles of range in this scenario. You'd only have to charge until you got to 130 miles of range. So if your EV has a 200 mile range, you'd need to add 60 miles. If the EV has a 250 mile range, you need 10 miles. Yes, yes, margins but you get my point. That 60 miles would take about as long as it takes to savor a Big Mac with current EVs.
That's part of the "thinking differently" with EVs. Once you're home, the car will be returned to fully charged status overnight. It's like a reset on the available range, unlike an ICE which will stay at the same fuel status until you go to visit a refueling station. This is obviously more true for those who have access to a dedicated parking area, but the intersection of high density urban dwellers and Montanans with hankering to drive 5 hours for a burger is a small one.
I'm still confused.
Most EVs are ugly. Most ICE vehicles since the 70s, that are priced for normal people to afford!!, are ugly.
Why the argument about looks?
Just since the turn of the century, I can only think of a handful of attractive vehicles under $100k, regardless of fuel type.
The 04 STI and its Evo7 equivalent, the C8 Vette looks pretty good after a few drinks, umm BMW Z4 in the right shade. I'll concede the new Broncos but I haven't seen any in the flesh yet.
Yea that's pretty much my list. Everything else is either boring, or an exercise in how hideous a vehicle can be designed.
Even over $100k, Lamborghini lost their looks when they killed the Diablo, arguably even before that. Ferrari, aside from their track only cars are just meh, SLS AMGs were pretty nice in their day. Buggatis are a hideous way to spend a million bucks. Porsche has been selling the same Damn car for 70 years now.
Something like 83% of the US population lives in urban centers. i don't know that your brother in Montana is the best litmus test for whether adoption of EV's is feasible. I will grant that population density in US cities is lower than major euro cities, but a much higher proportion of those people live in single family homes with dedicated parking, so you could argue that Americans are better prepared for this change because they aren't as reliant on public infrastructure for charging. My friend with the Model 3 has owned it for almost a year and commutes to the other side of Atlanta and has literally never plugged it in anywhere outside her home. edit: Keith kinda beat me to it.
I'm not actually opposed to the idea of EVs, I've driven several, and for what they are they are OK I suppose, just not for me. I'm a die-hard manual transmission fanatic, when I was in the Navy, I tried to list "Stick-Shift" as my official religion. 
Seriously, the only time in my life I've ever had a non stick-shift car as my personal driver is when I had a company car, or once when I sort of inherited my wife's old Montero Sport for a few months. So I'm never going to be truly happy in an EV. I admit, the acceleration of the Tesla Model S is impressive, but as a driving platform that is about all that impressed me. Despite all the electronic trickery, I was constantly aware of the massive weight of the thing and all that goes along with that. Elon Musk may be a genius, but he isn't immune to the laws of physics. All the star-trek like stuff about the Tesla that makes people go all googly-eyed, doesn't really mean all that much to me. I admire the car from an engineering and innovation perspective, but when I drive a car, I really don't want the car to do even more of the tasks of driving for me. I like doing those tasks. Even after 40+ years of driving, I still truly enjoy driving as an activity, even mundane commuting and running errands. I prefer a car that depends on me to do the driving tasks. Cruise-control and ABS are about as far as I really want to go in automotive automation. I'm not a "Luddite", far from it, all my professional background is in Electronics and IT, I'm a true "Tech Geek", but I guess as far as cars and driving go, I'm pretty old fashioned.
What perplexes me most about the current state of EV development and marketing is the power source. I just can't see the battery-storage EV as anything but a technological dead-end. The greater efficiency possible in the EV drivetrain package is a given, and very tempting obviously, but I can't see how it can ever possibly overcome the poor energy-density limitations of battery storage, particularly as compared to fossil fuels. Gasoline has roughly 100 times the energy density of even the very latest and greatest storage batteries. I can't see how the EV can ever be efficient enough to overcome that. Then there is the issue of "refuel time". Stopping to fill up with gasoline or diesel takes les tha 15 min, and that's only if you buy something to drink and use the bathroom while refueling. When I'm on a road-trip, my fuel stops are rarely over 5 min. Recharging an EV takes much, much longer. I'm not willing to accept that limitation. Also, I would have to constantly live with what can only be described as almost crippling levels of range anxiety...... Also, there is the issue of electrical distribution grid capacity. As more and more battery-based EVs hit the roads, there will be significantly increased demand on power grids that in many cases are just barely keeping up as it is. California for example already experiences brownouts and blackouts on a level that is shocking in a first-world country. Adding tens of thousands of charging EVs to that will only make it worse. Fixing that issue alone will be horrendously expensive and would probably take decades. In the end, I doubt that "fuel cost" for an EV will be that much cheaper, at least not as much as the proponents of battery EVs would like everyone to believe.
I suppose if you live in a large urban area, and rarely or never take trips beyond the out-and-back range of your EV, and fly everywhere else, there might be a logical case for the EV, but I love to take long road trips. I've done several 2000+ mile trips just this year , so on that basis alone, a battery-based EV just isn't a compromise I'd be willing to even consider.
What I don't get is this. There are obvious benefits to having an EV, beyond just the environmental aspect. They should and could be much more reliable, durable, and simpler to maintain over the long term, again, the battery in today's EV is the limiting factor. There is a much better alternative out there, using decades-old, proven, and pedigreed technology, with little development needed, and no real engineering hurdles to be overcome. The Hydrogen Fuel Cell has been around for over 100 years, in the 60's and 70's NASA pretty much perfected the Fuel Cell as a reliable, powerful and robust source of electrical power. Some Gemini and all Apollo spacecraft relied on them for their electrical power, without any serious in-flight issues. They are "green", water is the only "exhaust". Toyota has had fuel-cell cars on the road in the People's Republic of California for years now, and even though they are ugly as Jetson-era sin, the owners I have spoken to love them. Hyundai now sells a fuel cell SUV that looks like any other small SUV (All small SUV's look alike anyway). All that is needed is the infrastructure to provide hydrogen refilling across the country. That isn't as daunting a hurdle as it sounds like, with current technology, there is no need to transport huge tanks of liquid hydrogen across the country, as we do with Gasoline, the hydrogen can be produced on-site at the refueling station, and filling up with hydrogen takes around the same amount of time as filling up with gas, and is just about as simple for the end-user. Unfortunately, the only place in the country, as far as I know, that has hydrogen fuel stations open to the public is California, and not even the whole state, mainly they are found clustered in the coastal urban areas, LA, San Francisco and like that. There was one about 2 miles from the condo in Redwood City where wil lived for a few years until moving to Houston over the holidays (Thank God!!!).
So a switch to hydrogen power offers all the benefits of an EV, and removes most of the drawbacks. I have no idea what the roadblock is. Perhaps the companies involved can't see how to make more profit from it than they currently do, taking about vehicle manufacturers and energy suppliers here. The cost of developing and rolling out a nation-wide hydrogen refueling infrastructure will be high, to be sure, but probably significantly less than the cost of increasing the electrical generating capacity and beefing up the power transmission grid nationwide to accommodate a predominately battery-EV world, and hydrogen based EVs would just be more lifestyle-friendly. Not to mention, that during electrical power outages, from weather or natural disaster, you could just use your hydrogen EV as a generator to keep your home lighted, heated or cooled. 
I could see myself adding an EV to the family fleet, probably as my wife's car, but only if it was a hydrogen-powered one, and didn't look like something from a B-movie knock-off of Bade Runner....... 
I'm not knocking people who love the current crop of battery EVs. To each his (or her) own. If you love cars and driving, I'm your friend. We all drive what works for us and makes us happy. I just can't understand the appeal of the EV at this stage of development and marketing. To me, the practical, every day, downsides simply outweigh the benefits by a considerable margin. I could be wrong. That happens with annoying regularity.....
ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) said:Something like 83% of the US population lives in urban centers. i don't know that your brother in Montana is the best litmus test for whether adoption of EV's is feasible. I will grant that population density in US cities is lower than major euro cities, but a much higher proportion of those people live in single family homes with dedicated parking, so you could argue that Americans are better prepared for this change because they aren't as reliant on public infrastructure for charging. My friend with the Model 3 has owned it for almost a year and commutes to the other side of Atlanta and has literally never plugged it in anywhere outside her home. edit: Keith kinda beat me to it.
I think part of Rob's point is that in Urban centers a lot of people do not live in a SFH where charging is feasible. Apartments, condos, townhouses, etc. all have limited charging capacity. Heck a lot of SFH homes closer into urban areas are not capable of charing more than one 1 car, and some are street parking only.
In reply to mikedd969 :
The roadblock to hydrogen fuel cells is (and probably always will be) the transportation of a pressurized canister of the worlds most explosive diatomic molecule. I think I would rather have a small plutonium reactor in a car. At least then I die with a glow on my face instead of scooped up with a shovel and buried in a mason jar. The other big downside to hydrogen is that the primary source of commercial H2 is currently from fossil fuels. Developing an entire infrastructure that is able to source H2 from other sources appears to be a non-starter. Its much like bio fuels. As of about 10 years ago, (reading a book on biofuels) our energy consumption on the planet was about 20 times what we could sustain even if every form of agricultural biomass on earth was converted to bio fuel, including livestock tallows, corn, soy, algae, all of it. The basic thrust of the problem outlined by that book is that the first step in developing sustainable energy technology is for the consumers of that energy to do the work of reducing its use. I was reading that book while I lived in Los Angeles. When you're stuck in traffic surrounded by massive SUVs with one person in them, I can see their point.
We humans tend to not accept change unless it is progress. We won't fully embrace electric cars unless they're better in every way than an ICE car. We (as a conglomerate people) won't take a step backward. Right now we have what we have, and accepting a trade-off for something less isn't acceptable. I, for one, wouldn't mind multiple drawbacks to an electric car. I don't have to have perfectly predictable commute times, I can just leave 5 minutes earlier. I don't need to expect my electric car to go cross-country on one charge. If I have to drive for 200 miles and then wait 30 minutes while it recharges, I just adjust my expected travel time. These are things that the general population won't accept. We will fight tooth and nail until the industry gives us everything we want and more. Or we could already be there if we recognized our entitlement and made concessions.
Hydrogen makes insane booms happen if it develops a leak or ruptures in a collision. It is also colorless, odorless, and nearly impossible to detect leaks until it's too late.
I do look forward to newer battery technology. I'm not sure we'll ever get where we need to be in terms of weight/storage/speed of recharging, but I don't think hydrogen is the answer.
Jesse Ransom (FFS) said:It's like a Defender but without the subtlety and nuance.
THIS.
Or proportion.
mikedd969 said:Despite all the electronic trickery, I was constantly aware of the massive weight of the thing and all that goes along with that. Elon Musk may be a genius, but he isn't immune to the laws of physics.
Fun fact - the E39 M5 weighs almost exactly the same as a dual motor Model 3. Car guys rarely complain about the massive weight of the best M5 built. Meanwhile, the Model 3 has AWD, more power and a much more intelligent torque vectoring system. Doesn't make the cool noises, though.
Hydrogen has a bunch of problems. While it can technically be produced on-site, that requires massive amounts of electricity or you do it by splitting natural gas which is very much not green. Then you've got the storage problem on-site. And the fact that you only get fast refill times if the feed tank is at high pressure, which means that one or two people get a fast fill and then it's chug chug chug.
Fuel cells make sense in a spacecraft where there is no oxygen available for combustion and where recharging is problematic. But take away those two constraints and it becomes less compelling. Note that the ISS and the SpaceX Dragon do not use fuel cells.
Hydrogen has been just 20 years away for decades. I don't think it's going to be viable for anything other than possibly long haul trucks.
In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :
Indeed a larger proportion live in single-family dwellings. But a significant portion do not.
Ex: On my block there are 13 buildings, only one is a single-family dwelling. I live in a densely populated urban area, and how to meet the charging here, when there are no dedicated overnight parking areas and/or parking lots to have dedicated chargers is a difficult one. The EVs have to either work more like an ICE with a refueling station or we have to come up with a decent way to get EV overnight charging to apartment buildings that lack dedicated parking.
This isn't a problem unique to my area, it's a common problem in many cities. Once you get outside the core urban sprawl you have more space and apartments with dedicated parking, this becomes much less problematic.
I'm also that urban dwelling weirdo who will drive 5-hours for a hamburger. I recognize my driving habits break significantly from 90% of the public. But until we can achieve the same flexibility at roughly the same cost as our current ICE fuel-based system, an EV system cannot be the dominant one. Not that I'm suggesting we shouldn't try to develop the system, we should. But in 30-years we might have a viable nationwide EV system, not in 15 or 20. Unless there is a significant battery tech breakthrough.
If you want to know what percentage of Americans live in detached or single-family dwellings, just check the census results. It's even broken down by the size of urban area. Go to the source. I was able to find that about 65% of Americans lived in detached homes in 1990, I did not try to see what newer results looked like.
Note that EVgo is concentrating on putting chargers at places like movie theaters and shopping malls, which should help to service the "cannot charge at home" urban dweller. I know that's already the case in Denver - there are high speed chargers at Park Meadows Mall and IKEA, both places where you will find the car is done with its business before you are.
We have so far determined that EVs do not work for people who live in cities or for people who live outside cities.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Well 10 years ago (crap had it really been that long?) When I moved to Lincoln CA, I was impressed that all the drop malls had charging sections next to the handicapped spots. Now I'll grant that it's an "older" area, and they pushed a lot of NEV, neighborhood electric vehicles, for the retirement crowd, but a few extra breakers and conduit runs when building a strip mall isn't that expensive or hard to come up with.
If people want to pretend nothing gets built or renovated anymore that's fine, but aside from full on generation and distribution, I find it harder and harder to accept the "infrastructure can't handle it" excuse.
Generation and distribution do pose their own problems to a point, but again, it's not like the whole country is going to be charging at the same time.
I hate how every single EV thread turns into the same stupid arguments. I'll be generous and say we, the Royal forum we, use our vehicles more than 80% of the rest of the country. That makes us the minority standout crowd. But especially after watching Teslas finish One Lap, and knowing how exponentially the charging situation is growing even since then, you've *really* got to be a standout isolate case to not be able to find any sort of charging on a trip these days, let alone 5, 10, 15 years from now.
If you can see that far in the future, go play the power ball.
I wasn't able to charge at work, so a 440V DC fast charger near my office in downtown Atlanta saved my bacon a few times when I forgot to plug in my EV overnight at my home or had errands to run after work. Fast charging would add about 60 miles of range to my Soul EV in 15 minutes.
Quick charging isn't cheap, but the ability to top-up quickly gives 'in-town' EV drivers a useful way to charge if they can't plug in at home.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Indeed, it's perspective in addition to "different".
People on the ICE paradigm are like "With an EV, I can't go a whole (arbitrary time period) before I have to plug it in, the way I shop for gasoline"
People on the electric paradigm are like "I don't have to stop every (arbitrary time period) and pump gas in my car, I just plug it in when I get home every night"
When it's cold and rainy and windy, that five or ten minutes at the pump feels like an eternity... I wouldn't miss it.
RevolverRob said:In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :
Indeed a larger proportion live in single-family dwellings. But a significant portion do not.
Ex: On my block there are 13 buildings, only one is a single-family dwelling. I live in a densely populated urban area, and how to meet the charging here, when there are no dedicated overnight parking areas and/or parking lots to have dedicated chargers is a difficult one. The EVs have to either work more like an ICE with a refueling station or we have to come up with a decent way to get EV overnight charging to apartment buildings that lack dedicated parking.
This isn't a problem unique to my area, it's a common problem in many cities. Once you get outside the core urban sprawl you have more space and apartments with dedicated parking, this becomes much less problematic.
I'm also that urban dwelling weirdo who will drive 5-hours for a hamburger. I recognize my driving habits break significantly from 90% of the public. But until we can achieve the same flexibility at roughly the same cost as our current ICE fuel-based system, an EV system cannot be the dominant one. Not that I'm suggesting we shouldn't try to develop the system, we should. But in 30-years we might have a viable nationwide EV system, not in 15 or 20. Unless there is a significant battery tech breakthrough.
So keep your ICE. But please do me a favor? Raise your eyesight. What will happen when 20% or more of the population drive EV's? Don't you think the city knows how to hook up curbside chargers? You'll put your credit card in just like at the gas pumps and the city will take a slice off for the installation and to replace lost gasoline revenue. It will still be cheaper than an ICE to operate.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Unless, of course, you can't plug it in at home at night.
Then you're back to an ICE paradigm. "I have this arbitrary range or period of time, before I have to find a charging station and plug it in."
In reply to mikedd969 :
The lack of transmissions in EVs is entirely because of the need for regen braking; that recovery happens in the motor itself so the "transmission" you build has to spin two-ways, so you have to have straight cut gears and thus, gear whine. Which makes modern buyers sad :(
... but it also means another use for Lencco racing boxes that are super cheap secondhand...
Since other's got the parts about Liquid Hydrogen (Another small detail onto Curtis's comment- for every 3 watts of power you use to make Hydrogen via Electrolyzing water 2 just heat it, Water's a good insulator and thus, it's just better to dump that into a battery) I'll answer the issue of Fuel Cells.
Fuel cells are bad! There's tons of types, but (literally) just like how the catalysts in a car's catalytic converter eventually clog and die there isn't a Fuel Cell around that doesn't have a HARD 15-year lifespan. Here's a neat report from the department of energy from 2019 that details how Solid Oxide Fuel cells (in this case, there''s tons of different types) at best have a Stack Life of 5 years with current technology (essentially the catalyst itself; it has to heat up to over 800C and crap at that temp just doesn't cool and shrink at the same rate) and this GREAT writeup from Hindenburg Research on BLOOM energy also goes deep into it as well. Fuel cells allso would fill the same role as a gas engine generator since you cannot simply "increase" the rate of production; at that point, why not just make a hyper-efficient generator, like wiith how Mazda is now using rotaries for their EVs? And that's not even getting to how you're car is still a Battery EV (why not just DC Charge it), what "Fuel" your fuel cell consumes (Hydrogen? Methanol? Ammonia? Alll of them work and can be bought on the market) and finally, why do any of that instead of more being put into Ethanol (the problem that affects most Synthetic gas alternatives).
Also, claims about "Grid capacity" and "Muh infastructure!" are myths. We already have solar cells with their own level 2 charge battery systems out in the hills of Colorado as proof-of-concept, and any home in America can run a dryer; have a 220 volt pulg, that's 22-25 miles of range each hour and more than 90% only drive 40-50 miles a day at most.
In reply to frenchyd :
Anyone who wants to buy an EV should do so. Many people can use them as effectively as they do their ICE cars. Some folks (quite a few actually) cannot.
Again, I am not suggesting we halt development of the technology or infrastructure, at all.
RevolverRob said:In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Unless, of course, you can't plug it in at home at night.
Then you're back to an ICE paradigm. "I have this arbitrary range or period of time, before I have to find a charging station and plug it in."
Please look beyond right now? Overnight the whole country isn't going to switch to EV's. The grid has a lot of flexibility to it already. That's why most high demand times in the summer can be met.
In addition personal solar panels/wind generators are dropping in costs and becoming more and more common. Due to a lack of transmission losses their impact is bigger than their actual size or output.
Finally cities have street lights, stop lights. They understand how to install things at the curb. How long before the revenue stream from curbside meters becomes so attractive they start installing them?
Don't mix up SOFC (natural gas fed, stationary) and PEM FC (H2, automotive) they have very different use cases and requirements. In addition the life is quite different, you can't say what's true of SOFC is the same as PEM FC.
I don't disagree that anything with H2 gen has worse round trip efficiency, but that's the price you pay for *trying* to make it all green. There is really no other way to decarbonize certain industries other than making green H2 and by the time you do, you have a robust fuel source for other end uses, including transportation and grid services (in that order IMO). Don't forget you still can burn H2 in gas turbines (when designed for it) so you don't need a FC at the other end unless you don't want to burn.
As a fuel hydrogen isn't so bad other than the transport question which there are many companies working on. I agree with Keith that long haul trucking is the one to watch for broad adoption.
In reply to frenchyd :
I think we're merely talking past each other and are more in agreement than disagreement. The future should bring innovative solutions and I do not oppose them. Installing curbside chargers will be an interesting solution.
I question how effective it will be in areas where vandalism and crime are high. How the city will maintain something that is more complex than a street light (they have trouble doing that here) is another issue. I have no idea how corrosion will effect chargers.
Such things can be solved, but I also recognize the solution isn't, "We'll just install more chargers everywhere and folks will adopt a different mindset." That way lies madness and ignores the fact that there are many people with different cultural views about these things. And solutions have to be presented in a cohesive and inclusive way to be effective and adopted.
Might I ask, for those people living the densely-populated urban dream, why does every household where you live need one to two cars? I thought the point of living downtown was to be within walking distance of amenities, and walking or public transportation distance of work? What's the point of living like that if you're all still commuting 20 minutes or more to work in a car by yourself? My preconceived notions of dense urban living is that you do it because it puts you closer to things and provides access to good buses and rail systems so you have less reason to own a car at all.
Limited parking in dense urban areas like this is already a thing, limited access to chargers in these areas seems no different to me.
Then again, I also cringe whenever I see someone say they drive to work and their commute is less than 5 miles or less than 5 minutes, because that seems exceedingly wasteful and unnecessary to me, but that's not what we're talking about here.
In reply to mikedd969 :
Mike I understand your preference and nobody is going to force you to drive what you don't want to. Well except for fincial inducements like a Job or practical inducements like your wife's car.
My Grandmother was like you. She never would learn to drive, because she was used to talking to horses. Whoa!!!!! she yelled, as she pulled back on the steering wheel. Of coarse Grandpa's pickup ignored her and drove through the back wall of the garage.
Change is hard for some people to adapt to. Luckily you won't have to. Assuming you're in your 50's you'll likely pass away before fuel and other expenses get out of reach. If that should happen before you're ready to quit driving you can just call for a Uber or whatever replaces the taxicab of the future.
In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :
I dont think it's more of "Are are EVs Feasible?" because they are. It's more of how long will it take electric to surpass fuel it terms of practically. If the mass banning of ICE by 2035 is a reality, rural citizens have to be accounted for. I'm hoping the next 14 years of development are mind blowing.
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