Electric vehicle war, is gas soon to be toast?

[nfotiu]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

EVs seem great if you have a garage at home with a charger in it. Most people rarely have to find a charger.

This is the opposite of most use cases for rentals. You show up in a strange city, maybe knowing nothing about how to find EV chargers if you don't have an EV yourself, and it's just going to be frustrating.

Weird use case to chase. Things like runabout city fleet vehicles seem way more ideal to start with.

We've rented 3 Tesla's and the useless Mercedes EQB I mentioned above on vacation. 3 Florida trips and a California trip. The 3 Tesla rentals were as smooth as can be. Hotels mostly had chargers, and Tesla Superchargers were easy to find and use if we needed them.

This last trip with the Mercedes on the beach areas near Sarasota was a different story. Hotel didn't have a charger, and it was a bit of a wild goose chase finding a non-Tesla public charger. Half the chargers were broken, some would be in gated communities or inaccessible garages. They were slow too. Eventually found one a few miles away and left it there for the afternoon while we Ubered back and forth.

Generally, they've been a fun experience and nice way to try before you buy kind of thing, and were reasonably priced for fairly nice vehicles. I think I would make a point to try to stick to Teslas without having a home charger.

[cral12]

"Electric vehicles fail at a lower rate than gas cars in extreme cold"
https://electrek.co/2024/01/17/elect...-extreme-cold/

[Fuzz]

Dubious conclusions. It could also be the average age of gas vehicles are older, and EV's tend to be owned by people who can afford to keep them indoors. But the reality is, it's probably pretty similar.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Dubious conclusions. It could also be the average age of gas vehicles are older, and EV's tend to be owned by people who can afford to keep them indoors.

Could be that cosmic forces on a gas are not deflected by the magnetic aura created by a battery pack.

But the reality is, it's probably pretty similar.

Reality is fuel systems don't perform well in extreme cold, electrical components are more resilient. And before you go off, gas cars have a pile of electronics and motors.

[Fuzz]

Thanks man.

[TorqueDog]

It actually calls out that shortcoming of the analysis right in the article: "To be fair, this data doesn’t adjust for the age of the vehicles. Older gas-powered cars fail at a higher rate than the new ones and electric vehicles are obviously much more recent on average."

You'd probably want to compare model year to model year for failure rates of EV vs petrol.

[Azure]

And anyone with a shred of common sense knows that the newer your vehicle, the better it performs in cold weather, so when you don't actually adjust for the age of the vehicle, what is the point of writing that stupid article?

[zamler]

EVs don't degrade in the same way, reduced range but otherwise you don't have problems with aging emission controls, fuel system etc.

Plus far less moving parts.

[I_H8_Crawford]

I have ordered my EV, question is: I currently have 100 Amp service to my home - is it worth spending the $$$ and upgrading to 200 Amp?

I do run AC in the summer, but stove, furnace and hot water are all gas.

[zamler]

You can get away with it but not ideal especially since you have air conditioning.

[Regorium]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

I have ordered my EV, question is: I currently have 100 Amp service to my home - is it worth spending the $$$ and upgrading to 200 Amp?

I do run AC in the summer, but stove, furnace and hot water are all gas.

I went with the solution where I paid for a load management device on the 50A outlet and it counts as zero in the overall load calculation which meant it was feasible for 100A.

The device costed about $1000 on top of the outlet. The alternative to upgrade to 200A service was about $4500.

I didn't really see the point of paying extra.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

I have ordered my EV, question is: I currently have 100 Amp service to my home - is it worth spending the $$$ and upgrading to 200 Amp?

I do run AC in the summer, but stove, furnace and hot water are all gas.

1) it's likely not worth it to upgrade to 200A service. You can manage this with a load management device (already stated)
2) Depending on how much daily driving you do, you may not need a level 2 charger in your garage. I've got a pretty short commute, so I get by just fine with a level 1 charger. With this serious cold I've gone to a DC fast charger to top up, as the charging slowed down quite a bit (its an unheated garage), but otherwise it's working just fine. Depending on how far you drive on a normal day, I'd maybe recomend seeing how you get by just plugging into the wall before you commit to a level 2 charger (this is of course assuming your car comes with a level 1 charger, some manufacturers aren't including them anymore.

[Whynotnow]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

1) it's likely not worth it to upgrade to 200A service. You can manage this with a load management device (already stated)
2) Depending on how much daily driving you do, you may not need a level 2 charger in your garage. I've got a pretty short commute, so I get by just fine with a level 1 charger. With this serious cold I've gone to a DC fast charger to top up, as the charging slowed down quite a bit (its an unheated garage), but otherwise it's working just fine. Depending on how far you drive on a normal day, I'd maybe recomend seeing how you get by just plugging into the wall before you commit to a level 2 charger (this is of course assuming your car comes with a level 1 charger, some manufacturers aren't including them anymore.

I’ve chimed in on this earlier but want to reinforce it, been charging on level 1 for over a year now, only 3 times have needed to go to super charger. Would absolutely recommend giving it a try first and go from there. If you do install level 2 go with load management, almost no need to not manage it without increasing your service.

[underGRADFlame]

Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford

I have ordered my EV, question is: I currently have 100 Amp service to my home - is it worth spending the $$$ and upgrading to 200 Amp?

I do run AC in the summer, but stove, furnace and hot water are all gas.

Look into a DCC-10

[Street Pharmacist]

It's Toyota a stupid car company, or is it the stupidest?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...reach-30-share

https://twitter.com/user/status/Chairman Akio Toyoda believes battery electric vehicles will reach at most 30% market share, with the rest taken up by hybrids, hydrogen fuel cell and fuel-burning cars.

Hydrogen fuel cell? Still on that train? That train sailed almost a decade ago. And 30%? Why 30%? It's already above that in many markets. It's completely arbitrary

https://twitter.com/user/status/Last year, Chief Executive Officer#Koji Sato#said Toyota would sell 1.5 million battery EVs a year by 2026, and 3.5 million by 2030.

No. No you won't. What is Toyota at after 2023? 100,000 EVs with no substantial infrastructure scaling to meet this number? This is a projection they're not even trying to hit, just to keep some nervous shareholders happy

[TorqueDog]

I haven't really cared enough to look (mainly because petrol cars are the only ones on my radar and will continue to be so for a long time), but I don't get why hydrogen fuel cells aren't the next step instead of fully electric.

[zamler]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

It's Toyota a stupid car company, or is it the stupidest?

Toyota prides themselves as being a technology leader, hybrid is their crown jewel. Their next crown jewel was supposed to be hydrogen but that blew up in their faces. They didn't lead in EVs and are far behind which means Toyota would have to swallow their pride and follow. They can't do it. Toyota is going to make an EV with a fake clutch pedal and shifter. They can't let go.

In possibly the most epic blunder since Xerox and their GUI, in 2017 Toyota sold all their Tesla shares and dissolved the partnership.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I haven't really cared enough to look (mainly because petrol cars are the only ones on my radar and will continue to be so for a long time), but I don't get why hydrogen fuel cells aren't the next step instead of fully electric.

I think I remember being told by someone actually working on these analysis here at a company that hydrogen isn't going away but that the ideas are shifting from using hydrogen as a fuel vs hydrogen as energy storage. He said that hydrogen will be the future as a storage vs previous attempts at hydrogen as a fuel. They're rethinking the idea and throwing it a few steps down the road.

The biggest issue he said was storage. In first world countries, storage generally can be fine for how we do things, but energy storage rapidly becomes a problem in second world or third world countries. This is because current ideas of energy storage is mainly batteries or letting it flow in an electrical grid system. This is problematic in third world countries if the systems are inadequate or if the system is damaged in a natural disaster etc. Something like a canister of hydrogen swap would be faster than a supercharger concept and then you'd have the best of both worlds for EV and ICE.

That's why Toyota and a few Japanese automakers are supposedly going down the PHEV route or producing very little or smaller sized pure EV for primarily two main reasons:

1. They're looking beyond just the first world market.
2. They're also looking at a business alternative rather than being caught up with paying premiums on huge electrical cell requirements of pure EVs.

I don't know if this is purely accurate, but the logic that was suggested seemed to make sense to me. The biggest hurdle for ICE/Hybrid -> Hybrid/PHEV is that it's more complex with more to consider and the transition is more clunky than ICE -> EV -> EV/PHEV. Plus it has to deal with the transition of the fuel from gasoline/diesel vs hydrogen. But once it's done, it'll rapidly replace pure EV.

Development of a small, cleaner power creation system to run a pure electric motor and the balances of motor, fuel/energy and storage (ie: Battery) is the challenge right now)

I think the guy doing the analysis specifically was saying that hydrogen was going to be both the fuel and the storage (ie: Same as gas/diesel) vs electricity + battery are separated "fuel and storage". This conversation was like 2-3 years ago, so my memory on it was kinda fuzzy. The PHEV part wasn't part of the conversation with that guy, it was a discussion about another report somewhere or something with someone else and when I put the two concepts together, it started to make more sense.

Battery storage of electricity using stuff like lithium is the short term, but longer term, you need another alternative to store before running into major issues with supply with finite resources. I believe Japanese automakers are hoping to gamble and be at the forefront of the next exit on the path. This expectation is that it will be hydrogen storage of energy vs battery storage (ie: Lithium) of energy.

[photon]

Originally Posted by TorqueDog

I don't get why hydrogen fuel cells aren't the next step instead of fully electric.

Since we can't just dig up or find hydrogen, hydrogen is basically just a different kind of battery.

So at the end of the day

Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Fuel Cell -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

vs

Electricity -> Battery -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

The 2nd is probably going to be more efficient since you pretty much get out all the electricity you put into a battery. Making hydrogen isn't very efficient.

Hydrogen does have some theoretical advantages in that it's a chemical reaction so the energy density is higher, but in practice it's a very difficult gas to work with. If it was cheaper or easier to work with there might be a case for it (and maybe there still is in some applications), but it seems like just getting better batteries is a better overall path.

Jason at Engineering Explained had a good video on the Toyota hydrogen V8 combustion car and while it focuses on that (fuel cells would be way better than combustion hydrogen), a lot of the other issues with hydrogen still apply.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by photon

Since we can't just dig up or find hydrogen, hydrogen is basically just a different kind of battery.

So at the end of the day

Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Fuel Cell -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

vs

Electricity -> Battery -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

The 2nd is probably going to be more efficient since you pretty much get out all the electricity you put into a battery. Making hydrogen isn't very efficient.

Hydrogen does have some theoretical advantages in that it's a chemical reaction so the energy density is higher, but in practice it's a very difficult gas to work with. If it was cheaper or easier to work with there might be a case for it (and maybe there still is in some applications), but it seems like just getting better batteries is a better overall path.

Jason at Engineering Explained had a good video on the Toyota hydrogen V8 combustion car and while it focuses on that (fuel cells would be way better than combustion hydrogen), a lot of the other issues with hydrogen still apply.

That's a much more succinct way to put what I was trying to describe. For me, I think it was described a little bit more:

Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Fuel Cell -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

vs

Renewable/non-renewable fuel -> Electricity -> Battery -> Electricity -> Motor -> Zoom

Basically the same but you're shuffling the order. And the reason why hydrogen specifically is the thing selected is that it's common and considered green (for meeting carbon neutral requirements). IIRC I think he also mentioned he thinks hydrogen could meet certain industrial applications that pure EV might not, but I'm not sure because it was such a while ago.