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Biggest challenge is the U.S. market is owned by Tesla, just as the hybrid market is owned by Toyota. With the supercharger advantage, Tesla is reinforcing this strength.
That brings up another point. Currently the charging infrastructure is a hodgepodge of different standards, and charging speeds. The fastest chargers are company proprietary and company owned. Gas cars wouldn’t be so popular if gas stations were company proprietary and fuel nozzles were all different sizes. “We can’t stop here, there’s no Ford gas stations”.Even if a standardized supercharger standard was created today, there’s so many non standardized chargers all over the country it would still be a mess for years to come.
Tesla’s strengths might be in supercharger stations if long distance travel was a priority. Unfortunately Tesla’s weaknesses include a poor reputation for reliability and quality, poor part support, and few service stations.
There’s also the education factor. DC fast charging frequently wears out the battery. So does topping off to 100 and draining to 0 charge. Driving in cold weather significantly reduces range. Then there’s learning the different adapters, charging speeds, having several different cards and accounts for public chargers, wiring a new circuit breaker in your garage and buying a home charger along with very little repairability once the car is out of warranty. All this compared to simply buying another gas car and just living life as you did before. In my experience, only true enthusiast bother to learn all the quirks and engineering behind their car. Everybody else just wants to turn the key and go.
You’re making too much of EV fun to drive factors. People don’t drone on about how fun a Leaf or Bolt is. Even a non performance Model 3 accelerates at a mainstream 5.5 seconds or so. Like the “collectors edition” example you’re so hung up on, EV’s only put out impressive numbers when you throw more money and horsepower at them and get a performance edition model specifically tuned for the purpose.
I personally don’t understand why people buy BMWs or Audi’s at all. They almost never make a good value proposition and there are cheaper cars that out perform them. People still buy them anyway. Cars are more of an emotional decision than a logical one. This forum is full of people driving what I consider lame, boring cars. They like them because they’re reliable, inexpensive, and/or paid off.
Surely you don’t think everybody actually writes a pro/con list for cars they are cross shopping. Very few people follow the same logic you do right now, what makes you think they will in the future?
A lot of these performance editions are simply dealer forced fed packages and the same more is better mentality.
A lot of seniors and non-enthusiasts bought Audi S-series cars and M editions because they wanted all the bells and whistles.
My parents always chose the under-powered cars because they think powerful cars are dangerous. It maybe true.
I've seen several old fellas drive Tesla Model S performance editions that are close to $200k mark and drive like a Prius owner. In fact most Tesla drivers drive like Prius owners usually before 60mph on the highway and rarely ever change lanes. They're buying it for the driver assists then why bother getting the souped up performance edition. Don't matter it's their money, I just hope they sell it for a loss so I can pick it up on the cheap later on.
People don't drone on about how fun a Leaf or Bolt, but it's likely a good chunk of people would feel they're zippier than their ICE equivalents. That's the general point. You brought the collector's edition performance car up as an example, remember? You know, in a comparison to a mass production full-size sedan?
Yea, people value different things, there's no disagreement on that. However, EVs today fit a larger spectrum of what different individuals value than perhaps most people expect. Do I think everyone writes a pro/con list? No, I don't. I do actually put in time to consider large purchases and I don't think I'm the only one who would do a more drill down look on a relatively large purchase. Since the topic is about what would make EVs happen, as in majority of new car sales are EVs, it essentially needs to be pretty mindless that the EVs are either a better option or a general feeling that it is a common option rather than a niche one.
That entails EVs making improvements like energy density on batteries to increase range while lowering costs and faster and more ubiquitous chargers so that more of the people who do some actual research before making a large purchase are in a position where the EVs are a better value proposition. When there's enough of that, then it becomes more and more normalized as people see them as increasingly common which is what then increasingly brings in more people who don't really try to work out the details.
Enough with the collectors edition performance nonsense already. You bring up a top performance spec Tesla as representative of all EVs. My top performance spec is better than your top performance spec.
It reminds me of arguing with turbo 4 cylinder fanboys back when I was into V8s.
"Your car has no torque"....
"I know, but who needs torque, it's got a lot of power at 9000 rpms".
"But your car has no power either"....
"yeah but it's more fun"....
"That's impossible, you have slow 0-60 times and your quarter mile time is pathetic. You have the trap speeds of a Uhaul, and you even get poor gas mileage"
"yeah but it's just more fun"....
"but that makes no damn sense!!!"
On what grounds would you say EVs fit a larger spectrum of what different individuals value? Fuel efficiency? Look around, nobody values that. Fun to drive? Look around, nobody values that.
I have little evidence to believe people do their research at all. Much like most of the EV crowd, at most they find a car they like and justify it later (hence the Model 3 is cheaper than a Camry shenanigans).
Yes it might help if battery density increased, range increased, cost decreased, chargers became more ubiquitous and faster, if they drove themselves, could fly, etc. What's to say that everything else doesn't get cheaper and better as well? Currently the Prius Prime is only $27K and gets 24 mile electric range and 54 miles to the gallon. In my area, our recent gas price drop means it's as cheap to run on gas as it is on electricity. Cheaper, denser batteries also opens up other non EV possibilities that don't require fast charging or additional infrastructure. It's not like all other technology remains static.
Enough with the collectors edition performance nonsense already. You bring up a top performance spec Tesla as representative of all EVs. My top performance spec is better than your top performance spec.
It reminds me of arguing with turbo 4 cylinder fanboys back when I was into V8s.
"Your car has no torque"....
"I know, but who needs torque, it's got a lot of power at 9000 rpms".
"But your car has no power either"....
"yeah but it's more fun"....
"That's impossible, you have slow 0-60 times and your quarter mile time is pathetic. You have the trap speeds of a Uhaul, and you even get poor gas mileage"
"yeah but it's just more fun"....
"but that makes no damn sense!!!"
On what grounds would you say EVs fit a larger spectrum of what different individuals value? Fuel efficiency? Look around, nobody values that. Fun to drive? Look around, nobody values that.
I have little evidence to believe people do their research at all. Much like most of the EV crowd, at most they find a car they like and justify it later (hence the Model 3 is cheaper than a Camry shenanigans).
Yes it might help if battery density increased, range increased, cost decreased, chargers became more ubiquitous and faster, if they drove themselves, could fly, etc. What's to say that everything else doesn't get cheaper and better as well? Currently the Prius Prime is only $27K and gets 24 mile electric range and 54 miles to the gallon. In my area, our recent gas price drop means it's as cheap to run on gas as it is on electricity. Cheaper, denser batteries also opens up other non EV possibilities that don't require fast charging or additional infrastructure. It's not like all other technology remains static.
You brought up the example of the Demon. I pointed out how silly that is. Now you want it to stop, =(
Who values paying less overall for the same class of car? A good number of people. For whom would some EVs be cheaper overall than their equivalent ICE vehicle? Some people. This is with current day technology. And yea, some people find a car they like, but if they're not going to articulate every reason why, there's probably still some reason to it. There are going to be a lot more EVs offered in the next few years. So in your world where people just arbitrarily like stuff with no particular reason, then there's just going to be more of this stuff on offer soon.
Sure, ICE vehicles can get better. I'm all for that. Will they get better faster than EVs do? There's pretty little indication of that. And of course, better EVs means better hybrids. I'm not discounting hybrids, but it's also possible that other people are since there have been a couple of prominent hybrids dropped recently and a lot of major automakers having already put down substantial sums shifting to EVs rather than hybrids. The thing with EVs getting better though is that there's a pretty visible track record of how quickly they've been getting better and a clear pathway to improvements for the foreseeable future as in the next several years.
Are we really going to argue that battery density improvements is about to flatline anytime soon? No, there's little to support that argument. Are we really going to argue that faster charging and more of these fast chargers are going to be deployed in the next several years? No, because that's pretty ridiculous given the last several years and the roadmap that so many large companies have already laid out. So what is it that you apparently like tracking back to? Is it the same argument for how you think everyone chooses cars? That it's just arbitrary because there's a future you like and that's going to be it regardless of what recent history and likely near-term projections point to? Okay, sure, that's fine, but then you're not arguing with any rationale underlying what you're saying.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 08-27-2019 at 01:42 PM..
You brought up the example of the Demon. I pointed out how silly that is. Now you want it to stop, =(
Who values paying less overall for the same class of car? A good number of people. For whom would some EVs be cheaper overall than their equivalent ICE vehicle? Some people. This is with current day technology. And yea, some people find a car they like, but if they're not going to articulate every reason why, there's probably still some reason to it. There are going to be a lot more EVs offered in the next few years. So in your world where people just arbitrarily like stuff with no particular reason, then there's just going to be more of this stuff on offer soon.
Sure, ICE vehicles can get better. I'm all for that. Will they get better faster than EVs do? There's pretty little indication of that. And of course, better EVs means better hybrids. I'm not discounting hybrids, but it's also possible that other people are since there have been a couple of prominent hybrids dropped recently and a lot of major automakers having already put down substantial sums shifting to EVs rather than hybrids. The thing with EVs getting better though is that there's a pretty visible track record of how quickly they've been getting better and a clear pathway to improvements for the foreseeable future as in the next several years.
Are we really going to argue that battery density improvements is about to flatline anytime soon? No, there's little to support that argument. Are we really going to argue that faster charging and more of these fast chargers are going to be deployed in the next several years? No, because that's pretty ridiculous given the last several years and the roadmap that so many large companies have already laid out. So what is it that you apparently like tracking back to? Is it the same argument for how you think everyone chooses cars? That it's just arbitrary because there's a future you like and that's going to be it regardless of what recent history and likely near-term projections point to? Okay, sure, that's fine, but then you're not arguing with any rationale underlying what you're saying.
Since you refuse to take the context of the Demon example, then I want you to stop bringing it up.
You don’t value paying less for the same value of car. You weren’t shopping for value. If you were, you picked an interesting choice, given the high initial price and the unknown resell value, energy efficiency is the least of your problems. Is it a better deal than a BMW 3 Series? Maybe, but that choice isn’t a value proposition either. You basically had a very specific itch to scratch and decided on a Model 3.
Outside Tesla’s fanbase, EV’s aren’t doing so hot. That’s why they require government incentives and mandates. Most EV’s are poor sellers. Plug in hybrid’s? Not really taking off. Volt has already been canceled. Smart went all electric and their sales got cut in half. The plug in hybrid Pacifica is the same price as the gas Pacifica before the tax credit, and still only makes up 5% of all Pacifica sales. Nobody cares about energy density or fast charging. They want reliable vehicles with a proven track record that can go anywhere that doesn’t require camping out on EV websites to navigate the vast network of charging options and etiquette. Tesla’s the big name in EV’s and its track record is horrible.
Yes I think densities and cost will flatline much sooner than the US will start accepting them. Barring any game changing technology advancement, improvements to existing technologies are asymptotic. If you witnessed a 30% improvement before, expect a 15% improvement later next, then a 7.5% improvement etc. The problem with lithium batteries is the cost were so astronomical to begin with. It went from insanely expensive to less insanely expensive. I’ve yet to see a lithium powered golf cart.
Fast charging is available now, but only at the detriment of battery life. Being able to use fast charging means all existing EV’s would have to be disposed of and upgraded to the new battery chemistry that can handle it without degrading the battery.
The only thing it will take is gas prices to shoot up to astronomical prices, which after 100 years still seems to be trending down.
I just bought a Prius, while only a hybrid, it has been a lot of fun for me to drive. Fun is different for everyone. It is not fun in the same way my X5M is, but it is a fun car to drive anyway.
Thanks for the link. They still look like a $2k difference from the lead acid model though. I’m probably looking for a set of new batteries soon. The lead acid pack runs about $600. I considered a lithium conversion so I don’t need to worry about topping off the water, but lithium is still a little rich for my blood.
Gasoline cars are soon going to be like the VCR and digital camera...obsolete.
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