ICE epitaph

not sure i agree with 7, hope she's right though.

 

ah, missed the gender, thank you.

 

Great. Until the electrical grid crashes.

All electric vehicles will never take over. Not unless the city fathers and urban planners come up with a way to charge all those millions of cars.

Be practical. Most people have no place to plug-in an electric vehicle. I'm surrounded by 65 year old apartment buildings. Dozens of them. Most have no parking lots. All street parking. And Los Angeles has thousands of decades old apartments. There is no available land to build parking lots with charging ports. And most business centers are lucky to have only 2 charge ports. And there's 2 at Walmart. Plus the fact they will be vandalized in the crappy areas.

You guys that have houses, and a nice garage, you're all for it. But what about the millions of lower-income folks who can barely afford their rent? Or have no place to charge? We will always have gas vehicles. Maybe in 2075 someone will invent wireless charging. And Musk and all these other auto companies had better bring down the price of EVs to a reasonable level. Only a NUT would pay $100,000 for a Model S, and even 35K to 50K is way overpriced for the majority of working stiffs.

And there will never be enough charging ports. The crazy people here in LA would be fighting and shooting each other to get a charging port. Gas is here to stay. We better just stick with Hybrids.

 

Thankfully, Brown will be out of office in a couple months.

And people are dreaming if they think the private sector is going to PAY FOR all the needed changes to the infastructure? Nor the counties. Hell, we have a 50 year back log of just fixing sidewalks and pot holes!

And there will never be enough charging ports. I'm all for new technology, and less pollution, but an all EV world is just not practical. Yet. There will never be enough money available to do all the construction and re-configuring that needs to be done in the cities. But of course, some CA politician can always raise our taxes again and again and again... And Edison will raise rates because of the increased demand, and need to build more power plants.

And there's still the problem with all the thousands of apartment buildings, and nowhere to plug in. But heck, we can continue to dream... Next time your're stuck in bumper-to-bumper gridlock on the I-10 or 405, ask yourself... where in the heck are all these people going to plug in?!

I'm happy and thankful to just have a Hybrid. That's good enough. In your scenario, every airport parking spot, and every shopping mall parking spot, and every business parking spot, etc, etc, would need a charging plug. Just don't see it happening, not in my time anyway. I'm on death row.

 

if you live in an apartment, you have to drive somewhere to gas up, they usually don't come with pumps.

 

But there are PLENTY of gas stations. Be practical, sir.

Road Rage will be occurring at every charging plug if people have to get in line for them. But for those that own homes, and have a plug, hey, go for it. Buy a Jetsons car.

 

That is exactly why fuel-cell vehicles will co-exist with electric-only vehicles.

Hydrogen is a means of storing renewable electricity. Whether or not that is the best carrier of energy doesn't matter... especially with the hypocritical stance some EV supporters have taken, choosing to turn a blind-eye to guzzling electricity. When the sun is shining and the wind blowing, we'll have banks of batteries and tanks of hydrogen holding the electricity with what would otherwise be missed opportunity. The grid can only hold so much at a time. Also, production can be shifted to more practical locations.

It's really unfortunate so many early EV adopters don't think about those who won't have a plug readily available or where the electricity to recharge comes from.

 

Maybe they will FLY someday, too. High speed police chases in the air!

 

Whatever works. I like new technology. Hopefully it's reasonable & practical for everyone... And there is solid financing in place for it, without taxing the citizens to death. There would have to be HUGE private sector money involved... Great if it happens. But most cities / counties / states are so heavily in debt that I can't see them contributing much.

A good start would be converting all city buses over to electric. They have big maint. yards and could install lots of charging ports. And UPS placed an order with Tesla for EV trucks. That's good.

 

you think bev's will keep increasing without additional charge stations?

 

In a word, yes.

How many is the city of Boston going to build?

But definitely, they will need more. I don't know who's going to build them, whether it's private sector, or utility companies, or Musk and his billions? They will probably make them like parking meters and charge a fee when you plug-in. I seriously doubt all these charging stations are going to be free.

But you're talking a massive amount of electrical utility lines being run underneath streets and roads and parking lots. Who the heck is going to pay for all that?

But private delivery companies, and bus and taxi companies, they usually have large parking areas and maintenance yards. They could start converting most of their vehicles over to electric and have plenty of room for charging stations.

Fire stations too. Fire trucks are parked at the station most of the time, they could easily be plugged in. But again, you're talking about big money that most cities and counties don't have. And of course you would need a company to start building electric fire vehicles.

But the bottom line is, I still believe we are going to need many new power plants across the country. Or as the poster above mentioned, come up with some type of alternative means to produce electricity. That's way above my pay grade. My humble neighborhood and surrounding area is in the rolling blackout grid. I bet they don't do that In Beverly Hills!

 

Streetlight charging.

 

Meh, further electrical grid infrastructure build out can handle it. Infrastructure improvements will be required, but it's no technological stretch.

In less than 2 decades fast charging a BEV at the convenience store fuel stop should take no longer than ICE takes now. No more trouble than an apartment dweller without an outside plug going to get ones own gas now.

Even better, the vehicle that picks you up at that point in the future will have likely already charged itself. It will happed because markets and regulation will dictate it.

 

That doesn't sound like much... until you realize that over 1 billion new vehicles could be put on the road in the meantime.

 

How many smart phones were there 20 years ago?

 

A far less expensive device that doesn't require home infrastructure upgrades isn't an equivalent comparison... especially since they don't require a sizable quantity of fuel each day.

The point is change comes at a cost... totally worth it in this case... but not cheap and a massive logistical challenge.

 

2 billion smart phones today. Lithium Ion tech was a lot newer then, well established now. Many folks spend ~1k on them and upgrade every 2-3 years. Upscale is not a great challenge. Infrastructure is mostly already there so the challenge will not be that daunting.

Exactly, cost which will be there much sooner - just a few years from now. But it's a relative not nominal cost. In that sense, doesn't matter the cost - just has to be less than ICE and offer all the conveniences and more which it will achieve in less than 2 decades.