1. True, EVs are more expensive and do need government subsidies to make up the difference
2. If you're measuring range as "don't stop at all, I'll pee in a bottle" range, then yes.
A better measurement would be "is the range enough for my normal daily use", then the answer is yes for a large number of people. Not everyone of course, some people actually _need_ to drive long distances daily without the ability to recharge. For those people an ICE car is the only valid option for at least a good 5 years.
3. The first thing you should forget is the "gas station" mentality, there shouldn't be any need to drive to a specific "charging station" and wait for 45 minutes doing nothing for the car to charge.
Recharging should always be done at home overnight (10+ hours of charge time, low power requirement), or during normal daily activities (work, shopping).
Quick recharges should only be needed if you're driving more in a day than the car's maximum range is. Road trips and traveling long distances mostly.
4. True, electric cars are sold as fast as they can be churned off the production line. The most popular ones have long queues.
> Recharging should always be done at home overnight (10+ hours of charge time, low power requirement), or during normal daily activities (work, shopping).
A big chunk of the world's population lives in dense cities without access to private parking.
A big chunk of that big chunk lives in developing countries where new infrastructure roll out is very slow, so readily available street charging is probably more than 5 years into the future.
My prediction: for the next 5 years EVs will be the domain of upper middle classes and for the next 10 years EVs will be the domain of middle classes. Poor people will keep using ICE cars until at least 2035, maybe more. And they will still account for probably half the cars on the road.
Private parking won't be an issue if you can charge the car during grocery runs, but yes, it's an issue.
Rolling out charging isn't much more complicated than rolling out streetlights. But it depends on what kind of "developing countries" we are talking about.
I agree with your prediction wholeheartedly, new car sales will slowly move to EV or PHEV during the next 10 years. After that they'll start to trickle down to the used car market with more affordable prices.
It will be a while before you can grab a $1k beater EV though.
True, but timing is everything. 2021 still seems to early for mass EV adoption, 2022 might see a proper ramp up and we will have to wait until 2025 or so, for better battery tech and cheaper batteries, to have EVs truly on an equal footing to internal combustion engine cars.
After that things will probably pick up and we'll get the hockey stick that leads to what you're saying.
> Does the EV cost as much as a regular car? Most of them are very expensive, comparatively, especially for cheap family cars.
The average price paid for new US cars was $40K [0]. There are now plenty of models below that without subsidy, including Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, VW ID4, Kia Niro, Hyundai Kona and even the low end of the Tesla 3. That's just the upfront price, of course TCO is lower than a same price ICE car because fuel and maintenance are lower.
That $40k price is just for the US. For the rest of the world prices are much lower, even in developed countries (the average EU car price is about $35k: https://www.statista.com/statistics/425095/eu-car-sales-aver...). And let's not get started with developing countries, where it's a lot more likely that the price is around $15k.
This is what EVs are fighting against. Not just against other new cars, but against used cars too.
Plus personally I've rarely convinced anyone to buy anything with TCO calculations. Maybe you've had more luck :-)
I think EVs are still a few years ago from real mass adoption. 2025 sounds a bit more realistic. I'd say that the second gen ones are the ones that will make it through (Tesla Model 3 2027 facelift, or whatever they'll call it, ID3/ID4 2028 facelift, etc.). Those will probably have access to well developed super charging networks and to 90-100k MWh batteries at a 25% lower price.
You've moved the goalposts from where you originally said EV's are "very expensive". "Very expensive" cannot mean less than the average price for a new car. You can argue more expensive than comparable quality or something but "very expensive" is wrong. As for used cars, I don't think there's enough data yet but I recall seeing an article where Teslas depreciated less than comparable ICE vehicles.
On the developing world front, in the last few months of the year the best selling EV in China cost $4,200.
> Plus personally I've rarely convinced anyone to buy anything with TCO calculations. Maybe you've had more luck :-)
The fuel costs ways less per mile, what don't you believe about that?
> I think EVs are still a few years ago from real mass adoption. 2025 sounds a bit more realistic.
This is what the projections I've read say as well, and battery prices will continue to decline, though not as steeply. That will be when the steepening of the adoption S curve happens.
> You've moved the goalposts from where you originally said EV's are "very expensive".
Very expensive for me, personally. I wouldn't pay the average US price of a car :-) Most of the world, including most Americans, seems to agree with me.
> As for used cars, I don't think there's enough data yet but I recall seeing an article where Teslas depreciated less than comparable ICE vehicles.
This is both good and bad. It's good, rationally, for TCO (but see my comment about TCO below), but it's bad because the second hand market price is higher, see my comment above :-)
> The fuel costs ways less per mile, what don't you believe about that?
I'm not saying I don't believe you, I'm saying that a big initial price is a much higher hurdle than you'd expect. People are not fully rational (otherwise the $9,99 psychological prices wouldn't work everywhere across the world) plus they don't fully/correctly factor in savings later. As they say: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
This is unnecessary though. You just plug your car in every night like a cell phone and you have full charge every day. Tesla's supercharger network is plenty fast for long trips and adds a nominal amount of extra time.
This is presuming you can charge at home. Many of us cannot. Many of us cannot charge at work. Many of us have to rely on gas station like infrastructure for getting any kind of range. (2-3 minute pit-stops to get full range back)
I suspect charging will be more prevalent in time. Charging in apartment buildings, on the street, etc.
Even now you can make trips to the super charger on occasion and just pick one where you can get dinner, though this is obviously not as convenient as gas.
You can also move to an apartment with an EV charger (I did) or have one installed. They’re becoming more common.
Free chargers are scattered around in a lot of places.
We have three Teslas out of six parking spots in our apartment building with no charging on site and we do fine.
I rarely use superchargers because the free options are so good, and free. And most of my supercharger visits are around 5-10 minutes which is not bad.
To be fair this is in a big city with a lot of resources.
I’d be the first to agree that not every place is like this, but it’s worth doing a careful check of your area because there are sometimes better options than you think.
Do you not travel and or enjoy road trips fairly frequently where you must re-fuel? I personally do(southern PA to central/Northern New York)!
Also, can I charge a Nissan Leaf and or Chevy Volt using all the Telsa charging stations? IF I can great if not still these cars aren't for me or people who enjoy frequent road trips. Especially those who expect the same UX as a gas car. In time sure, but not there yet!
One thing people don’t understand very well is that charging time is not linear - it takes a LOT longer to charge the last 1% than the first 1%. This is important during road trips.
On a typical trip from SF to LA in our Model 3 with 300 miles range, you would think you would stop once “for gas” and charge to 100% as that is the mental model coming from a gas car. However, it takes ~45-60 mins to charge to 100% and only ~10-12 mins to charge to 50%, so the much better option is to make 2 stops along the way and only charge to 50% each time.
When you look at it from that perspective, you need to take 10 mins to stretch your legs every 2-2.5 hours of driving or so, which really isn’t a big deal at all and probably good for you. Using that strategy an indefinitely long road trip in an EV really isn’t a burden at all.
> Tesla has offered access to their superchargers, but legacy car companies haven’t taken them up on the offer
Probably because Tesla demanded something that they knew other manufacturers won't give them.
They pulled the same PR stunt when they offered their pretty limited patent pool in exchange for all patents of the partaking manufacturers. Nobody wanted to take part because as a result Tesla would have had access to all patents while the others would only have had access to Tesla's patents. A pretty bad deal for everybody except Tesla.
I’m not sure how bad a deal that would have been for the legacy companies - I’d guess most of their patents are worthless (maybe good for defense).
The legacy car companies are held back by the dealer model and failing to execute for ten years giving tesla a massive head start.
I’m not sure they’ll be able to survive the transition. Refusing to support superchargers just makes whatever EVs they do come up with a non-starter. The Electrify America network sucks.
Those "legacy" companies are already selling more EV than Tesla in Norway. Norway taxes ICE to an extreme and was Tesla's PR example where they claimed to be the front-runner.
In 2020 from January to October the Model 3 was behind the Audi e-Tron, VW's aging e-Golf, the VW ID.3, the Hyundai Kona, and the Nissan Leaf.
Not at this time. Charging in 2-5 minutes for 300 miles of range is still 5-10 years away, and is likely to cause accelerated wear on the battery pack. Also charging locations will be more difficult as you now need to supply 1 megawatt per station rather than the 120-250kW you need now. The charging station will likely need to charge your car from a bigger battery at the station as power companies are not fans of people suddenly[0] connecting and disconnecting several 1MW loads.
Day to day charging of batteries is likely to remain around 6-8hrs just to reduce wear on the battery pack.
[0]: Sudden for most power companies is anything measured in minutes. Also, they will likely flat out prohibit you from turning on your load when the grid is near capacity, unless you want to pay ruinous rates, like $10+/kW/hr.
The Semi charger will probably be in the megawatt range on account of the larger battery. What will it take to power a truck stop with 100 chargers? Nuclear reactor maybe?
That's when I'm getting one!