Fuji_Abound wrote:
So what needs to change for the uptake to improve
3 things: Incentives, incentives and incentives 
IMO it’s a snowball effect. Once you have tried it, you won’t go back. The clue is to get enough people trying it. There won’t be enough people trying it if it doesn’t make sense on a personal economical level. In the US the government gives you $7000 when buying a car. In China they give you €9000 (I think I have read). In Norway it is no tax, no VAT, free toll roads. The electricity is also cheap enough that you literally wont notice when you charge at home. The cold May we have had this year costs me more in a year. It’s basically zero operational costs. No complex and expensive engine to break down either. The car manufacturers also give you free fast charging (which sounds pretty cool, but makes only a small difference in real life).
Pretty soon, no incentives will be needed. This is linked to the falling price of battery packs. The electric car is an excellent study in the economics of scale, and how that economy will create a disruption reaching a certain point (but not without incentives, not “fast enough”). It’s pretty amazing. In 2014, when I got my first electric car, the forecast was crossing the “magic” $200 line in 2025 or something. It already happened last year. In 2014 the cost was around $600 per kWh. The $200 line represents a cross over line when an electric car can be produced for less than a fossil car. The disruption has started, no turning back, in 5-10 years the fossil car will be gone. It will be cheaper to own and operate an electric car.
In Norway
So what needs to change for the uptake to improve. I rarely see an electric car here in the UK.
Too many challenges, and the present solution (liquid fuels) works too well
Also remember the cost of the vehicle. Electric cars are still very expensive. That could change, of course. Better sell your Tesla shares fast if that looks anywhere near happening; visit your nearest T showroom and ask about pricing, for an explanation
The overnight charging issue (for people who have significant usage), and convergence, don’t have any obvious solutions. Exchangeable battery packs would solve these issues but the logistics, as well as the business model, would be really difficult to work out. You would need some sort of robotic setup where you drive up to the “battery pack station” and some “thing” slides the old pack out and slides the new pack in. But as mentioned above the end result would be everybody driving largely shagged battery packs, because heavy users would dominate the battery pack stock. It would be like the Honeywell extended warranty avionics pool where most of the stuff is ancient and shagged, and a lot of it contains intermittent faults (basically any item exchanged under warranty on which the fault is not immediately obvious has to end up back in the market, and it would be same with battery packs) Plus the packs will always be very big; this is not like a petrol station pumping a liquid out of an underground tank which lasts for a week, and processing vast numbers of cars during that time, making a tiny % gross margin (probably only a few %) but making good money overall due to the large value of the stock shifted.
LeSving – its a concept I find attractive but considering replacing my Audi and I find this;
The £82K of course strikes me, as does the 241 mile range, which the cynic in me and the mellow tones of Clarkson are warning that I probably will not get anything close to that in the real world, and then I notice the 50 minutes full charge time at a fast charger, and I am struggling to justify the economic or practical model as much as I would like to. To be fair, I rarely drive that distance in a day, but I probably do so once every couple of months, and when I do, I certainly dont want to stop for a 50 minute charge. The cynic in me is also telling me the car will depreciate at a frightening rate, and may well half in value over a few years, which is enough to buy a very low mileage one year old TT, which has better performance and none of the other drawbacks. Now I understading the running costs may be a lot less, but that is a hell of a sum to make good.
I also struggle with the make up of the initial cost. What am I paying for? I understand the R and D, and I understand that the market is very small. Whether I want to pay for a significant part of the R and D in the early days of a product, and support a niche market I always find difficult, in the same way that dissuaded me from buying a Diamond. I also understand that most of the bodywork and components should be similiar to a conventional car, but the engine should be a lot less expensive, so intrinsically the vehcile should be less, ignoring the other factors I have already mentioned. I also understand that the battery pack is a significant part of the cost, and how long will the life of that really prove to be?
I am one of those strange folk that have been sucked in to using an iPhone and a Mac and admit to buying a product in terms of the phone which is as difficult to justify on the basis of its price, so I possibly fit the model of embracing sexy technology, but I am struggling and I dont see the gap closing anytime soon.
Tell me I could change the battery pack on a longer journey (I dont really care if it is shagged, as long as I can keep changing it whenever the range / performance falls) because I consider this a merely consumbale component which either works or doesnt in much the same way as a tank of petrol and sell me the car for the same price as a TT, and I am in. Maybe I am just not a typical punter.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
I rarely see an electric car here in the UK.
There’s probably more around than you might expect or have noticed. Apart from Teslas, most electric cars don’t look any different to petrol ones. We have a fleet of electric vans (way better for town work – which is all stop-start, and not very economical in a diesel or petrol vehicle as the fuel economy will be poor and lots of wear and tear, which will be reduced with an electric vehicle with regenerative braking). But you wouldn’t know the vans were electric if you saw one – they are the same body shell as the diesel ones. Similarly with things like the Nissan Leaf, you wouldn’t know unless you were looking for them.
I ride my bicycle to and from work, and there are so many Leaves on the road you’d think it’s autumn (electric cars are really obvious on a bike – they aren’t actually quieter than a petrol car, they just whine instead of hum. The Nissan Leaf has a particularly distinctive electric noise). Very few Teslas despite the number of rich tax dodgers that live here.
Peter wrote:
visit your nearest T showroom and ask about pricing, for an explanation
Could you elaborate? I don’t venture anywhere near hell (oxford street)
Well, it depends on how many options you pick but you can get a pretty reasonable Aston Martin for the price
The last T showroom I went into was in a tatoo and body piercing county, some way from London… Base price of anything actually available was 75k.
But on the other hand, the typical Tesla buyer (the Tesla being a car with good utility, having plenty of space to put stuff) is probably not going to be in the market for an Aston Martin (a completely impractical car, that can’t even be used for the one thing it is good at – driving quickly – due to congestion and speed limits). But what do I know, I tend not to like spending more than £5k on a car, I’d rather spend the money on my aeroplane :-) After all, when you pull back on the steering wheel of a car, nothing happens.
Tell me I could change the battery pack on a longer journey (I dont really care if it is shagged, as long as I can keep changing it whenever the range / performance falls) because I consider this a merely consumbale component which either works or doesnt in much the same way as a tank of petrol and sell me the car for the same price as a TT, and I am in.
Forget about the battery pack. It’s not going to happen anytime soon ( the next 20-30 years).
Soon we will be in the situation (and many already are), that you can pay X each year for a car with 1200 km range, fills up in minutes, but is slow to accelerate, boring to drive, makes lots of noise and smells bad. Or you can pay 1/2 X each year for shorter range, fills up in 40-50 minutes, but accelerate like a Ferrari, is fun to drive, no noise, no smell, and will still do 99% of your driving on one charge.
Essentially what you are doing is sacrificing a world of coolness, fun and lots of money for the sole reason of not having to take a 40-50 minutes tea/coffee brake every other month. It makes no sense whatsoever IMO.
LeSving wrote:
Soon we will be in the situation (and many already are), that you can pay X each year for a car with 1200 km range, fills up in minutes, but is slow to accelerate, boring to drive, makes lots of noise and smells bad. Or you can pay 1/2 X each year for shorter range, fills up in 40-50 minutes, but accelerate like a Ferrari, is fun to drive, no noise, no smell, and will still do 99% of your driving on one charge.
Well, I shall look forward to that day arriving. I agree the coffee break is not that much of an inconvenience, please just let me know when Audi have one on the market for around £40K and is around a year old. I just cant bring myself to spending £80K on a car.
Have you checked the cost of getting 3 phase, about 50kW, to your house, Fuji?
This stuff just goes round and round. There is the “small matter” of the “smell” now being generated at the power station end of things (unless you are in Norway) and usually that one is coal fired (unless it is Norway) which is fine because you build them near your eastern border, so the country to the east gets the acid rain (unless it is Norway).
There is some way to go, beyond the hype.
