Quote: (07-10-2017 09:39 AM)Hypno Wrote:
Tesla model 3 will have a max range of 215 miles, significantly less than some other models. But acceleration and handling should be comparable to a BMW 3.
I think we'll see the recharge times become comparable to a gasoline fill up within 5 years. Its in development.
Definitely not with the current battery chemistry.
And even if they do break the laws of physics to achieve such a thing
without seriously degrading the life of the battery--the current fast charging lowers the life of the battery more than normal charging--it would require the charging stations to be 1-2 orders of magnitude more powerful than they are now. Who's going to pay for that? Tesla already discontinued offering new S buyers free charging, and if they have to upgrade their charging infrastructure significantly, they're going to have to increase their charging fees commensurately.
On the issue of money, something that hasn't been discussed much is the fact that at some point, EVs are going to have to pay a road tax. A big chunk of the price of liquid fuel is a tax to pay for the roads. EVs are skipping out on that entirely.
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I also think we'll see EV vehicles take a much bigger share - may be 10 years where they'll be the majority. Volvo just announced they are quitting internal combustion. Volvo probably looked into the recharging issue and everything else before making that decision.
I doubt EVs will be anything close to a majority share in 10 years. They're second vehicles at best, and lots of people do things that EVs can't do. Nobody is going to replace an SUV or truck with an EV, if they actually need the features their current vehicles have.
Nobody in my large extended family could get by with an EV as a primary vehicle except maybe a couple of my unmarried city-dwelling cousins.
Anyway, the average cost of EVs will have to drop enormously for it to even be a possibility. I have a nice car, it's not a luxury car but it has heated seats, AWD, it's fun to drive, good fuel efficiency etc. It can even tow a little. It cost $21,000 new. Even the shitty little urban commuter EVs with 50-80 mile range cost more than that without tax credits, and some of them cost more
even with the tax credits.
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As for self driving, you can get this now. Why are you guys so skeptical?
Because I'm a software developer, I know how big the problem is, and how foolish it is to trust computers for such critical tasks. I will never, ever trust a self driving car. I guarantee you the software is not going through NASA-style rigorous auditing--they're beta testing their vehicles on public roads, FFS--and driving in traffic on the ground is perhaps counterintuitively
a lot more complicated than flying through almost completely empty air/space.
I don't even want to be on the road around them. Especially not on a motorcycle. There are already cases of riders who are crippled for life because a self driving car didn't see them and rear ended them at a stop light. I always put bright red LEDs on the back of my bikes that flash when I'm hitting the brakes, which I trust humans to notice and heed. Will a self driving car notice that? Not reliably. They don't see the same way humans do. If they see the lights at all, they have no good way of guessing where the lights are in terms of relative distance.
Ultimately I expect self driving cars, and as a consequence all vehicles, will require something like transponders to help mitigate the problem of shitty detection systems that don't work properly in non-ideal conditions. And that is just another way for the government and big data to track people, but that's getting into a whole different realm of problems so I'll move on.
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As for EVs, the real drawback is the range, but if they can solve the re-charge issue that goes away. The second drawback is battery life, but they are lasting longer than the skeptics thought, at least in moderate climates
EVs also should have better performance in a number of respects. First, they accelerate faster because there is no gearing. Second, they handle better because the absence of drive train means that the center of gravity can be lower. Third, there are fewer parts and less maintainance.
You're not going to get around the weight problem. A moderately lower center of gravity only goes so far; when your vehicle weighs 700-1000 pounds more than the other vehicle, you're not handling as well.
I already addressed the maintenance issue in a previous post.
If EVs are so great, I think the government needs to butt out, stop subsidizing their development and giving tax credits, and let them stand on their own. If they can't stand, so be it. Same with all the other retarded climate-panic-driven technology.
As it is, the push for EVs is just part of a larger social engineering effort that I am not at all interested in seeing succeed.