Article: "Electric Vehicles Close to ‘Tipping Point’ of Mass Adoption" (first vehicle, Mini Cooper)

[BugsyPal]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

They should save that kind of plan for taxpayer supported transition to EVs for a few years until the next generation of products emerges and the commercial charging networks further mature. Things are already progressing quickly and to me we just aren't there yet for the compelling case for these products as a proposition to the average consumer. If you do it now, I think you'll certainly get a lot more EV owners, but many of them won't be real happy. In another 3-5 years, I think we'll have products and infrastructure that most mainstream buyers will be happy with.

Read something several weeks ago in (NYT?) about Biden and democrats huge government spending plans and how the intend to once again have Washington, D.C. influencing people's lives in a more significant way.

One bit was about EVs; one man stated a short cross state drive to see his parents that took < two hours in a petrol powered vehicle was > five hours due to lack of charging infrastructure.

NYt piece went on that private sector isn't going to build up a national EV infrastructure for a few reasons. One was that they themselves haven't sorted out a common charging platform. The other huge reason was cost, a Maine to California EV charging infrastructure is just too much for even wealthiest private companies to do on their own. This means some sort of government or private/public partnership is only way to go.

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by BugsyPal

Read something several weeks ago in (NYT?) about Biden and democrats huge government spending plans and how the intend to once again have Washington, D.C. influencing people's lives in a more significant way.

One bit was about EVs; one man stated a short cross state drive to see his parents that took < two hours in a petrol powered vehicle was > five hours due to lack of charging infrastructure.

NYt piece went on that private sector isn't going to build up a national EV infrastructure for a few reasons. One was that they themselves haven't sorted out a common charging platform. The other huge reason was cost, a Maine to California EV charging infrastructure is just too much for even wealthiest private companies to do on their own. This means some sort of government or private/public partnership is only way to go.

EVs are definitely less convenient than ICE vehicles for long trips, and especially in certain states that have little commercial charging infrastructure. But most current models offer at least 250 miles range and can be conveniently charged overnight on a home charger. So a 2hr trip should be no problem. When you *do* need to charge on the road on a longer trip, it will take some time, but if you find a DC fast charger, and don't wait to charge all the way to 100% (the last 10-20% goes significantly slower), it should take about an hour with current model vehicles - you can do that while you eat lunch, for example. So while it's clearly less convenient, I think it's already a good deal better than that man described, at least along major highways and near big cities, where DC fast chargers are located.

Along many of the biggest interstates, there is already good coverage of DC fast-chargers. So I think cross-country road trips, if you choose your route with a little care can easily be done today. But this still doesn't come close to the coverage of gas stations. DC fast chargers are indeed quite expensive, I've read about $200,000 dollars each! That's why, although there are a lot of commercial chargers, there still aren't too many DC fast chargers (last I read it was around 5,000 DC fast chargers out of 40,000+ charging stations?). There's been a lot of progress, but we're still on that leading edge of the technology curve. Things are improving at a strong pace, but we're not there yet today.

P.S. As far as a common charging platform - there are really only 2 systems that are common and going forward in the USA - the Tesla system and the J1772 system, which is used by everyone else... and there are some adapters to cross that divide. Of course it's not as well settled as ICE fueling, where you can just as readily go to ANY gas station without thinking about it and have the same experience, but it's not so bad, and that should improve over time also.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by RayinAK

Have I said that hazardous chemicals used at home should be eliminated or not? It is a fact that the air we breath at home usually is more polluted than the air outdoors, even with the automobile exhaust. Some people have the means to construct their homes so that radon does not penetrate the floors or walls, and also have fresh air intake filters, but the average person does not.

Yea, I agree no one would be so silly as to say that eliminating one source isn't worthwhile if you don't eliminate all of them. Getting rid of tailpipe emissions does help in terms of direct pollutants in your hyperlocal area, so that's just one of several benefits EVs have over ICE vehicles even though doing that doesn't radon-proof your house which isn't something that people usually expect out of their vehicles.

[RayinAK]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Yea, I agree it would be incredibly silly to tell someone that says they're happy to have eliminated once source of direct pollutants in their neighborhood such as tailpipe emissions from the vehicle by using an EV instead of an ICE powertrain by then pointing out that there are still other hazardous chemicals at home as if eliminating at least one source is meaningless. No one would be so silly as to say that eliminating one source isn't worthwhile if you don't eliminate all of them.

Perhaps you should have read what I posted before (my original post), which by the way wasn't directed to you. Where did I say that one versus the other should be eliminated? Take radon gas, for example: how can you "eliminate it"? The same for the boiler and furnace exhaust at home. How can you eliminate these? See..you are assuming without basis, since I haven't suggested eliminating anything.

[mojo101]

The Eurpean government heavily subsidie your purchase of EV-NOrway,Germany and also China.
bUt it Is still a very small percentage of total worldwide sales.
One tends to forget people dont rush out and buy an EV,if their ICE is running fine,think of the sales tax you have to pay for buying a new car?
or if your ICE car is all payoff,why not put some money into saving or invest in stock market

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

EVs are definitely less convenient than ICE vehicles for long trips, and especially in certain states that have little commercial charging infrastructure. But most current models offer at least 250 miles range and can be conveniently charged overnight on a home charger. So a 2hr trip should be no problem. When you *do* need to charge on the road on a longer trip, it will take some time, but if you find a DC fast charger, and don't wait to charge all the way to 100% (the last 10-20% goes significantly slower), it should take about an hour with current model vehicles - you can do that while you eat lunch, for example. So while it's clearly less convenient, I think it's already a good deal better than that man described, at least along major highways and near big cities, where DC fast chargers are located.

Along many of the biggest interstates, there is already good coverage of DC fast-chargers. So I think cross-country road trips, if you choose your route with a little care can easily be done today. But this still doesn't come close to the coverage of gas stations. DC fast chargers are indeed quite expensive, I've read about $200,000 dollars each! That's why, although there are a lot of commercial chargers, there still aren't too many DC fast chargers (last I read it was around 5,000 DC fast chargers out of 40,000+ charging stations?). There's been a lot of progress, but we're still on that leading edge of the technology curve. Things are improving at a strong pace, but we're not there yet today.

P.S. As far as a common charging platform - there are really only 2 systems that are common and going forward in the USA - the Tesla system and the J1772 system, which is used by everyone else... and there are some adapters to cross that divide. Of course it's not as well settled as ICE fueling, where you can just as readily go to ANY gas station without thinking about it and have the same experience, but it's not so bad, and that should improve over time also.

Good points. Two hours of driving even if booking it at 80 mph all the way would still be only 160 miles total. There are now about a dozen EVs to choose from that have well over 200 miles rated range that can make that trip without once stopping for a refill, and someone who has the ability to charge at home can also embark on their trips with a full "tank"

Is that the cost for a DC fast charger or a station with multiple chargers? I assume this also has to include a lot electrical infrastructure upgrades and probably some level of local storage whether capacitors or batteries.

Arguably there are two very incompatible ICE fueling standards with gasoline and diesel. Sure, there's an inner diversity among say gasoline with regular, premium, ethanol-blends, etc., but those are still mostly compatible.

[PacoMartin]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

Of course it's not as well settled as ICE fueling, where you can just as readily go to ANY gas station without thinking about it and have the same experience, but it's not so bad, and that should improve over time also.

As of December 31, 2017 there were an estimated with 17,526 EV public and private charging locations (sites) in the US, being available to the public. At the same time there are 168,000 retail locations in the U.S. that sell fuel to the public.

In Washington DC people commute along the river on a Parkway which has no gasoline stations and a limited number of exits. When it snows you can be trapped on that parkway for 4-5 hours. Obviously some people run out of gasoline, and have to return with a gas can and dig out there car which has probably been pushed into a snowbank.
RAV4 Prime

But it is not just "range anxiety" that frightens potential EV owners.

But anybody who believes that we are at the "tipping point" consider the following statistic. A hybrid (not a plug in hybrid) involves the least amount of committment in time and money of any electrified vehicle. Toyota's best selling (none pickup) vehicles are available in regular ICE engine, or hybrid. The four models are listed below with the difference between the hybrid MSRP and the ICE MSRP.

1. RAV4 $2,250
2. CAMRY $2,225
3. COROLLA $3,575
4. HIGHLANDER $3,650

Yet 79.1% of these vehicles purchased in 2021 were ICE versions. So if 4 out of 5 customers won't pay this much extra to drive a hybrid and save 100-200 gallons of gasoline per year, than why should I believe that people are ready to mass adopt EVs at a much higher price and with more technical difficulties?

I think perceptions are skewed because Tesla sell the model 3/Y for $37K to $60K MSRP. That is not that much money for such a high performance car with accelerations that you used to have to pay over $100K to get. As a bonus they don't have to feel guilty since they can tell their friends that they care about the environment. But the important factor is these people are paying for performance. Just like Toyota it wont transfer to large percentages when you are discussing more modestly priced vehicles.

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

:
Is that the cost for a DC fast charger or a station with multiple chargers? I assume this also has to include a lot electrical infrastructure upgrades and probably some level of local storage whether capacitors or batteries.
:

So I read that in a newspaper article and don't think they had a lot of specifics - sorry. You made me curious about finding some :-). So far, in terms of real data, all I have been able to find is this - the ChargePoint Express 250 CPE250, which offers 62.5kW Level 3 charging will run you $40,800.00 per unit over at Smart Charge America, and then there'll be installation costs of course.
https://smartchargeamerica.com/elect...t-express-250/

This is on the lower end for Level 3 charging units these days, and as you know, charging customers are excited about 175kW and even 350kW chargers. I can't find a pricing for these, but given that it's normally going to be sales to businesses, not consumers, I guess that's not too surprising.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by PacoMartin

As of December 31, 2017 there were an estimated with 17,526 EV public and private charging locations (sites) in the US, being available to the public. At the same time there are 168,000 retail locations in the U.S. that sell fuel to the public.

In Washington DC people commute along the river on a Parkway which has no gasoline stations and a limited number of exits. When it snows you can be trapped on that parkway for 4-5 hours. Obviously some people run out of gasoline, and have to return with a gas can and dig out there car which has probably been pushed into a snowbank.
RAV4 Prime

But it is not just "range anxiety" that frightens potential EV owners.

But anybody who believes that we are at the "tipping point" consider the following statistic. A hybrid (not a plug in hybrid) involves the least amount of committment in time and money of any electrified vehicle. Toyota's best selling (none pickup) vehicles are available in regular ICE engine, or hybrid. The four models are listed below with the difference between the hybrid MSRP and the ICE MSRP.

1. RAV4 $2,250
2. CAMRY $2,225
3. COROLLA $3,575
4. HIGHLANDER $3,650

Yet 79.1% of these vehicles purchased in 2021 were ICE versions. So if 4 out of 5 customers won't pay this much extra to drive a hybrid and save 100-200 gallons of gasoline per year, than why should I believe that people are ready to mass adopt EVs at a much higher price and with more technical difficulties?

I think perceptions are skewed because Tesla sell the model 3/Y for $37K to $60K MSRP. That is not that much money for such a high performance car with accelerations that you used to have to pay over $100K to get. As a bonus they don't have to feel guilty since they can tell their friends that they care about the environment. But the important factor is these people are paying for performance. Just like Toyota it wont transfer to large percentages when you are discussing more modestly priced vehicles.

There are a few bits of context to put into that. 2017 was a long time ago in terms of EV charging stations with the vast majority of EV charging stations installed in the US having come after that. Meanwhile, the fast charging stations and vehicles able to charge at faster speeds have come more recently with those charging stations and vehicles having much, much higher throughput for number of miles added per minute. On top of that, a very large proportion of charging is essentially done at home which is not how gas or diesel refueling is done. This means you almost certainly do not need the number of publicly available fast charging stations as there are gas / diesel stations.


Being stopped at a standstill or particularly slow stop and go traffic on the DC parkway isn't that big of an issue for modern EVs. When an EV is at a standstill, the engine doesn't idle and so doesn't use much of its "fuel" since the only thing it needs to power are subsystems like climate control and at that point you're spending that bit of energy maintaining cabin temperature unless you somehow decided to open all the windows in the middle of winter while blasting the heat which would seem like a poor decision. Stop and go driving is actually fine for EVs since there's little aerodynamic drag in that instance and you can recover some of your energy in your stops. This is why EVs often have higher EPA city driving mpg-e than they do highway mpg-e.



A hybrid means having both an electric motor and battery as well as an internal combustion engine, so it could be more expensive than going with just one or the other. A full EV eschews the internal combustion engine and its price point is much more directly correlated to the price of battery capacity per kWh which is what's rapidly improving. Those price improvements will help hybrids only just a little bit since they generally aren't outfitted with very large batteries and therefore the impact of these improvements in battery costs aren't going to do all that much in driving the overall costs down for them. The whole point is that getting rid of the internal combustion engine greatly simplifies the vehicle powertrain, so it's likely that the hybrid will fall out of favor as EVs improve. Hybrids aren't really a middle step to EVs--they're more of a different segment entirely. Toyota offers no full on battery electric vehicles in the US right now, so it's among the worst automakers to use an indicator for how well BEVs compare. Most of its hybrids are not plug-in hybrids and generally have fairly small batteries which means little power available for full EV mode (which probably isn't offered anyhow). There's no additional convenience either since you can't charge at home. The RAV4 Prime does have a sizable battery pack, but it's supply-constrained currently and apparently people are getting them for substantially over MSRP.


The Model 3/Y are entry-level luxury performance vehicles, so it's more than just the performance that goes into the price. There's also stuff like how quiet and smooth the powertrain is which is also something that gets prioritized in luxury vehicles and which an EV sort of gets you by default. Their trim levels offer more features generally than say a Toyota Camry on average and therefore are usually pitted against similar vehicles offered by Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Infiniti, Acura, etc. and it performs pretty well there as Motor Trend named the Model 3 the top of the luxury compact segment this year. The Teslas also offer the benefit of being able to charge at home and having a pretty tank at the start of every day so it also has an additional bonus of convenience though with a drawback in longer total trip times on very long road trips. Even though it's in the entry level premium sedan category, a Model 3's 5 year total cost of ownership accounting of the Model 3 versus that for the Camry supposedly still swings in favor of the Model 3 provided you can charge at home and that's with a vehicle in a "lower" segment--the difference is really that the initial purchase price is more expensive. Moreover, Tesla isn't magic. It was certainly an oddity, but now you have many of the major automakers pursuing EVs that are increasingly well-priced in their segments against their ICE counterparts.

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

So I read that in a newspaper article and don't think they had a lot of specifics - sorry. You made me curious about finding some :-). So far, in terms of real data, all I have been able to find is this - the ChargePoint Express 250 CPE250, which offers 62.5kW Level 3 charging will run you $40,800.00 per unit over at Smart Charge America, and then there'll be installation costs of course.
https://smartchargeamerica.com/elect...t-express-250/

This is on the lower end for Level 3 charging units these days, and as you know, charging customers are excited about 175kW and even 350kW chargers. I can't find a pricing for these, but given that it's normally going to be sales to businesses, not consumers, I guess that's not too surprising.

It'll be interesting to see if these prices do come down. I believe Electrify America has mostly been installing 350kW capable chargers and they're already at ~3,000 stalls in the US. If it's at 200K per, then they're blowing through a lot of money in a very short amount of time.

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Good points. Two hours of driving even if booking it at 80 mph all the way would still be only 160 miles total. There are now about a dozen EVs to choose from that have well over 200 miles rated range that can make that trip without once stopping for a refill, and someone who has the ability to charge at home can also embark on their trips with a full "tank"

Is that the cost for a DC fast charger or a station with multiple chargers? I assume this also has to include a lot electrical infrastructure upgrades and probably some level of local storage whether capacitors or batteries.

Arguably there are two very incompatible ICE fueling standards with gasoline and diesel. Sure, there's an inner diversity among say gasoline with regular, premium, ethanol-blends, etc., but those are still mostly compatible.

The problem remains that it will then have to be charged for hours before returning home. People like me often drive 200+ miles each way, with more driving at the destination, then home the same day. Mostly from here in the Seattle area to either Portland, Oregon or Vancouver, B.C. Canada. We go to several places and then back home, stopping maybe 30 minutes at most for a meal.