ICE v Electric: Cost and Emissions

Battery swapping makes the most sense to me. Fuel stations could be reimagined instead of abandoned. The cost of the battery is very high and is a barrier for most people. If you bought a base EV sans battery it brings the price way down. Batteries can be utilized through a subscription based on usage. This takes the high cost risk of battery replacement away from the customer. The swap is now under 10 minutes and getting faster all the time. The swapping stations are more costly to build though so that’s why the plug will be the cheap go to for a while. Parking lots at urban hubs with charging stations and solar roofs will most likely come first.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

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I think most people here are doing more driving miles than the average person. Think about how many miles you drive in a typical day when you are not heading to the slopes on the weekend. I drive 32 miles round trip to work and back and maybe add three or 4 more miles if I do an errand on the way home. If I'm not skiing on the weekends and run a few errands I do maybe 10 to 12 miles per day. At that rate I would have to charge about every 1.5 weeks. Granted many people commute farther but most people could get by with a Plug-In Hybrid like Marz's and use very little gas except for longer trips. A two car family could easily have one electric and one Plug-In Hybrid for longer trips. Just looking around my office, most people could use a Plug-In Hybrid and never use gas except for their once a year vacation trip.
 
trackbiker said:
A two car family could easily have one electric and one Plug-In Hybrid for longer trips.
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This. My wife could totally drive an EV, she drive 40 miles most days.
 
Ripitz said:
Battery swapping makes the most sense to me. Fuel stations could be reimagined instead of abandoned. The cost of the battery is very high and is a barrier for most people. If you bought a base EV sans battery it brings the price way down. Batteries can be utilized through a subscription based on usage. This takes the high cost risk of battery replacement away from the customer. The swap is now under 10 minutes and getting faster all the time. The swapping stations are more costly to build though so that’s why the plug will be the cheap go to for a while. Parking lots at urban hubs with charging stations and solar roofs will most likely come first.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

www.bloomberg.com
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There are a number of problems with swapping.
1. Car companies will never agree to any standards for swapping.
2. The infrastructure to safely move the heavy battery+store+charge+maintain an inventory of batteries is astronomical. What company wants to inventory one of the most expensive parts of the vehicle? That is dead money. Additionally, until somebody convinces the authorities and population that Small Modular Reactors are safe, the power generation needed is off the charts. There are also potentially huge fire hazards storing batteries.
3. The batteries can be liquid cooled and are major structural components of many EVs. This makes them almost impossible to replace.
4. In the example above, buying a vehicle without a battery will probably require an ongoing subscription and a charge to swap. These batteries might have smaller capacity/range/no liquid cooling leading me to believe this would be an entry level situation. The profit in vehicles is not found in the entry level class.

Why do you think Tesla did not go down this path? Currently, it takes 3-13 hours to replace a model S battery. The cost of the battery is $12k-$15K. How much would it cost Tesla to inventory enough batteries to accommodate Tesla owners?
 
MC2 said:
Isn’t the power grid generally stressed during the day & then less stressed at night?
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Different issue. I am wondering if there will be enough stations in cities for all these vehicle owners to get at one when they need to.
 
DomB said:
B - I think that we'll all have home chargers in the burbs and rural (NEMA 14-50 [dryer plug on 240]) will charge all but the largest vehicles over night, and the numbers on how far most commute each day are way less than that. I think for urban you will get a mix where every parking lot has a good percentage of L2 (15-30 miles an hour) and perhaps over time staggered charging spots on streets.
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I saw a charger in downtown Raleigh. Or was it two? It was in the district with state and county government buildings, plus a couple of big museums for history and science.

There is "urban" like Raleigh and then there is "urban" like Manhattan. In Raleigh the percentage of people limited to on street parking is pretty small. Very different story in Manhattan. Although perhaps early adopters of EV are more likely to have garage parking in their apartment building.

My friends who live in Cleveland who bought a RAV4 Prime are in a condo complex with an indoor garage. Recently faster chargers were installed. Then rules for how to make use of them were put in place. Mainly a time limit so that someone doesn't just park their car there overnight. They had to buy a faster charging cable since a full charge with the standard cable takes 11-12 hours.
 
The way the Tesla SuperChargers are set up at the gas stations in VA and other states I've gone through in the past year, there are 8 stations. 4 are limited to 10 minutes. 4 are unlimited so presumably okay to leave the car for 20-30 minutes and go in to get something to eat. I've seen more Teslas actively charging in recent months at the station I stop at in Lynchburg, VA. There seemed to be a line the last time, which was around lunch time midweek.

Sheetz is partnering with Tesla. Saw a gas/convenience store company on the way to Colorado that had the same set up.
 
DomB said:
The background on this is cool. They were supposed to get a media car, but it apparently had an accident coming off the delivery truck. An employee owner at the shop they were picking it up at was like, just take mine. That's why in one of the tests they lined the bed with plywood.
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Is this the video you were thinking about with the bed of the R1T lined with plywood?

 
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