Electric cars

NigeWick · 21 March 2018 at 10:58AM

zeupater wrote: »

starting today you simply couldn't build enough EVs to replace over half of the vehicles on the road within the next decade

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I say that because as autonomous battery electric vehicles (ABEVs) become the norm, there will be far less need for today's number of vehicles.

One projection is that we'll only need 10-20% of today's car numbers if they're ABEVs. And, it offers the thought that if all governments authorise ABEVs on all roads by 2021, all new vehicles will be ABEVs by 2030. The bloke who is predicting this rapid takeup produced graphs showing the cost of batteries coming down to prove his point. It turns out that costs are reducing faster than his projections. VW reckon their BEVs will have batteries costing Euros110 per kWh and that is just about what they need to be to make BEVs the same purchase price as fossil burners.

NigeWick · 21 March 2018 at 11:04AM

Herzlos wrote: »

You do raise a new issue; how do we cope with charging multi car households?

If young Master Tony Seba is correct, there likely won't be multi car households in 13 years time. In fact most will be no car households.

That said, having more than one electric socket would do it. As most people sleep 7 - 8 hours at night, that'll be the time to charge the cars with little requirement for any extra electricity generation even if there are the same number of vehicles as now.

AdrianC · 21 March 2018 at 11:10AM

Ah, the joys of applying urban-mindset thinking to personal-transport fortune-telling.
Why are cars even needed in urban environments?
Outside urban environments, autonomous car-sharing is going to involve a lot of empty distance between locations. Wake me up when mobile phone coverage - let alone the mobile data required - is blanket.

But let's separate car-sharing and autonomy, because they are very separate things.

Even if we ignore the subtle detail that what's being talked about by "autonomous car-sharing" is just a taxi without the wetware behind the wheel, car-sharing within urban environments has been large-scale commercial reality for nearly a decade. With electric cars. This is not the future.

Autonomy is a long way off commercial reality - and the showstopper will be legal liability, not the technology. As Uber are proving right now.

bugslet · 21 March 2018 at 12:24PM

Around 80% of my miles take place with three hairy dogs, one of them rather large - I suspect I'll have my own vehicle for a long time;)

zeupater · 21 March 2018 at 12:26PM

NigeWick wrote: »

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I say that because as autonomous battery electric vehicles (ABEVs) become the norm, there will be far less need for today's number of vehicles.

One projection is that we'll only need 10-20% of today's car numbers if they're ABEVs. And, it offers the thought that if all governments authorise ABEVs on all roads by 2021, all new vehicles will be ABEVs by 2030. The bloke who is predicting this rapid takeup produced graphs showing the cost of batteries coming down to prove his point. It turns out that costs are reducing faster than his projections. VW reckon their BEVs will have batteries costing Euros110 per kWh and that is just about what they need to be to make BEVs the same purchase price as fossil burners.

Hi

:think: ..... So starting today, that's late March 2018 you maintain that autonomous vehicles will be fully developed, tested & approved for mass release onto the open road all over the world within the next few months (or years) & that within 10 years over half of the vehicles on the road (all over the world, in every country) will be EVs :question: .... because that's what would be necessary!

By 2030 there will be little change from the current ownership model, taxi's will still be the norm throughout the country & shared autonomous vehicles will have made little impact apart from within major urban areas in the most affluent, eco-friendly & tech-savvy cities with lower than average age demographics ...

If all, yes that's all!, global automotive manufacturers can switch production to electrified vehicles at the same rate as VW (say 25% by 2025) and could double that by 2030 with no battery supply issues, then you could expect somewhere close to 6.2million electrified vehicles on UK roads by 2030 ... at the moment there's ~32million cars on UK roads and so far this century that's been growing by ~1%/year, so by 2030 it's likely to be around 36million, so in basic terms an ambitious 17% (6.2/36) electrified vehicle market penetration ...

If all of those 6.2million cars were autonomous (which effectively means that they would need to be approved for road use today and there to be absolutely no delay related technology or accident issues!), to form 50% of vehicles on the road you'd need the fleet to be around 12million by 2030, so 2 out of every 3 cars on the road today would need to be scrapped and not replaced and of those remaining, half scrapped and replaced with fully autonomous vehicles ... 5 out of every 6 cars on the road in 2020 scrapped by 2030! ... that's just about the scale of things, so there are two major questions - is it technically possible? & is it socially acceptable?

There's being ambitious and there's being over-ambitious to a point where basic logic fails ...

HTH
Z

AdrianC · 21 March 2018 at 12:28PM

zeupater wrote: »

There's being ambitious and there's being over-ambitious to a point where basic logic fails ...

Careful... Pointing that out doesn't tend to go down well among some.

silverwhistle · 21 March 2018 at 12:46PM

I've no idea what will happen but I can't help thinking that the dynamics of domestic PV with EVs will change significantly.

At the moment in spite of looking into it I'm nowhere near getting an EV. For me that will require an expansion of the second-hand market, and at the moment although I could afford an early Leaf, the range just doesn't fulfill my requirements. If I were commuting a regular distance it might make economic sense, but in the circumstances it doesn't.

But with 4kWp on the roof I have the potential, with my surplus, in doing a significant proportion of my annual miles on self generated power. At the moment I divert spare power to my immersion and even in winter I sometimes have a full hot tank and then export (or use an electric heater for a time). That source of power would be more valuable for a vehicle and I would simply use gas a bit more.

The argument against hybrids doesn't acknowledge the realities both of the manufacturers (and battery supply) and the demands of drivers. I have no argument against the technical elegance of an electric only solution, but given that a (say) 25 mile range would cover my day to day stuff, and many others too, a plug-in hybrid would work for me.

silverwhistle · 21 March 2018 at 2:00PM

NigeWick wrote: »

One projection is that we'll only need 10-20% of today's car numbers if they're ABEVs. And, it offers the thought that if all governments authorise ABEVs on all roads by 2021, all new vehicles will be ABEVs by 2030. The bloke who is predicting this rapid takeup produced graphs showing the cost of batteries coming down to prove his point.

I'm another who thinks that on this point you're being wildly optimistic, and the issue really isn't the cost of batteries when it comes to autonomous cars.

They've got to start somewhere but what might work on the boulevards of a Californian campus or broad laid out town streets isn't going to work on in our cluttered road system, whether my village or the nearest city.

But in all these comments whatever your point of view, what is missing is the acknowledgement that transport should be looked at as a system. There are various ways of getting from A to B, and concentrating on one at the expense of another fails us all.

I've a car and use it, but in different circumstances I walk, cycle, take the train, use a taxi about once a year and in a few years when I get a bus pass might also use a service which strikes me as very expensive. Having lived in Italy for a number of years _all_ UK public transport strikes me as expensive, but at least we don't have the extortionate mototway tolls I had to put up with. That will no doubt come to replace fuel tax!

AdrianC · 21 March 2018 at 2:20PM

silverwhistle wrote: »

...but at least we don't have the extortionate mototway tolls I had to put up with. That will no doubt come to replace fuel tax!

Yep, increased VED on full-EVs is imminent - you only need to look at last year's VED changes to see that. CO2 taxing has been too successful at reducing VED income, with the average 2016 new car being £30/year, an absolute rate not seen since the mid 70s.

Once the fuel duty/VAT income starts to dip significantly, the hole in the exchequer is going to have to be filled somehow.

This is not new news, either.
2017 - https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/26/treasury-tax-electric-cars-vat-fuel-duty
2012 - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/9267078/Government-faces-13bn-black-hole-from-fuel-duty-slump.html

silverwhistle · 21 March 2018 at 10:39PM

A further point on the development of autonomous cars: I've just read the following in a newspaper report on the fatal accident in Tempe:

Tempe police said Herzberg was not in a crosswalk when she was hit, though some have argued that the car still should have stopped.

Too bl**dy right! It was doing 40mph and it didn't stop or slow down.

As federal investigators have begun their inquiry, local police officials have appeared to cast blame on the victim, saying Uber may not have been at fault, sparking further backlash from the woman!!!8217;s friends.

And again..

In my large village there is one "crosswalk" near the middle, but elsewhere in a 30mph zone you cross wherever you have the need. As a driver I'm aware of cyclists, pedestrians (particularly children), cats and dogs, and may slow down from instinct or precaution.

I may move over into the marked cycle lane if safe if I can see a lorry in the distance will need to pull out for a stopped bus. I'll repeat that I'd be very surprised if autonomous vehicles are yet up to the anticipation needed, although no doubt they can probably brake faster at the last moment. Although not in the tragic Tempe case..

Electric cars

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