
A Brighter Future for Electric Cars and the Planet - devy
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/opinion/a-brighter-future-for-electric-cars-and-the-planet.html
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ProfessorLayton
I can't wait for electric cars to become more common and competitive with
conventional cars. I believe we're going to look back car's emissions the same
way we look back at the pre-sewage treatment days - when people used to dump
their sewage out the window and into their drinking water!

That being said, we haven't reached the EOL for this first generation of
electric cars, and figured out what happens next. Will replacement batteries
cost a reasonable price? Or will manufacturers use this as an opportunity to
try and get you to buy another car? Maybe you'll be able to replace the old
battery with a new one from a 3rd party, or maybe you won't because its loaded
with DRM.

Battery prices may go down for automakers, but perhaps consumers won't see a
huge benefit. A replacement battery for my hybrid still runs a few thousand
dollars and its only about 1 kilowatt-hour.

~~~
cowmix
Batteries are almost 100% recyclable. Also, with the Volt at least, zero
failures of the battery systems:

[http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt-
ba...](http://insideevs.com/zero-first-generation-chevrolet-volt-battery-
packs-replaced-due-general-capacity-degradation/)

~~~
greglindahl
This isn't true, in the sense that recovering lithium from batteries is more
expensive than mining new. The main reason for that is that lithium mining is
extremely energy efficient and hence cheap.

~~~
cowmix
The lithium is a small percentage of the battery by weight.

~~~
greglindahl
Yes.

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chiefofgxbxl
Obviously air pollution is the main thing to tackle here, but even _noise_
pollution is a nice benefit of electrics. When I test-drove the Tesla Model S
I was excited for a quiet future.

ICE cars simply produce far too much noise. They've disrupted my local
downtown area, making it undesirable as the 18-wheelers roar by. If not for
the emissions damaging public health, I'm surprised to see municipalities
tolerate this scourge of deafening noise.

And the death of artificially-loud pickup trucks will receive an ovation from
myself.

~~~
pdelbarba
I don't buy the noise argument. Above a certain speed, wind and tire noise far
exceed ICE noise. The pickups I've seen are mostly due to the use of course
off-road tires that buzz as they go down the road and the motorcycles won't
give up their not-super-legal aftermarket exhausts until people collectively
agree to stop running them over.

~~~
wanderr
In a downtown area the speeds are likely not high, and the traffic is likely
stop and go, with lots of opportunity for revving engines as drivers jam the
accelerator down from a dead stop. My previous apartment had a busy highway on
one side, and a busy street with a stop light right before an onramp to said
highway. The furious acceleration of cars going from a stop to highway speeds
as fast as they can was much worse than the monotonous general highway
whooshing sounds.

~~~
greglindahl
I've heard this called "breakthrough noise", and whenever I'm walking around
and hear an obnoxiously loud noise from a vehicle I exclaim, "My Tesla doesn't
make that noise!" Fortunately my walking companions generally find that
amusing.

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Teknoman117
You have to love the people in the comments section there. Few seem to
understand that one of the major points of electric cars is decoupling the
energy generation and expenditure. Sure, if your country generates all its
electricity with coal then of course electric cars aren't going to do anything
for you at first. The whole concept is that you reduce the number of sources
of pollution so that you have less things that you have to replace in the
future.

~~~
cowmix
Even if 101% of your electricity is coal generated, you are head of the game
with EVs.

My gen-1 Volt travels about 27 miles on the electricity/energy it takes to
refine one gallon of gas. Basically, if you stopped refining gas, you could
power almost all of the EVs on the road with the same energy.

~~~
konspence
Does this include the energy in the refined gas itself?

~~~
cowmix
That is the energy it takes to create the gas (and not the energy to extract
and move around).

Again, my EV goes the same distance as the average fuel economy for the same
amount of energy.

ICE double dip.. plus more.

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andys627
Or we could build our cities to walk, bike, and ride transit.

~~~
bdamm
Cities are already and will always be hybrid transportation hubs. There will
be walkable areas, there will be car-required areas, and a wide range of in
between mixes. These serve different markets and attract different citizens.
One thing that will not work will be to force a one-type-fits all
transportation strategy to all cities or all city areas.

~~~
andys627
I agree. America has generally forced a one-type-fits all transpo strategy -
personal autos. This is causing lots of problems regardless of the fuel source
of the car - oil, natural gas, or electricity from the grid or rooftop.

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jtlien2
One detail usually overlooked with having a fleet of electric cars is the
added weight of the battery and the extra wear and tear this will create on
our highways. There is a rule of thumb that says that highway damage goes up
by the 4th power of the axle weight. So an electric car that is 33% heavier
than the an ICE car, will cause (4/3)^4 = 3.16 times as much damage. So if we
all go to electric cars and if batteries do not become lighter, then expect
road to not last as long. Also, concrete production itself is a serious CO2
source.

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acomjean
For those of us city dwellers with on-street parking, there doesn't seem to be
much talk about getting public infrastructure to charge them. Public charging
stations? I'm not sure that will help a lot.

It seems like a future for those with suburban homes. I think those in cities
don't drive that much, so maybe those car bound people are a better place to
start.

I guess I can get an eBike at some point.

~~~
greglindahl
There's always at least one person in every electric car thread saying "but it
doesn't work for me!"

Many city dwellers who own cars don't park on the street, but it really varies
by city. There are a few on-street chargers out there, maybe there will be
more in the future if people advocate for them.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
On street parking in a biggish city sounds like a nightmare to me anyways.
It's really living on the edge of street cleaning, time limits, and so on...

~~~
bkjelden
There's also the constant threat of break-ins.

Forgot to put your sunglasses away? Have fun replacing a window!

------
Matt3o12_
One of the biggest drawbacks for electric cars is charging. I am not taking
about super charging – Tesla has shown that you can go almost anywhere with an
electric car.

I'm taking about home charging for people who rent apartments and park in the
street. For those, charging is a real problem because I do not think it is
practical for them to use quick charging all the time. Quick charging is great
for road trips. They give you enough power to go for another few hours while
you have a break (which you should take anyways after driving for a while).

Quick chargers are impractical for home charging for a couple of reasons:

1\. They are going to be crowded because people will spend 40min there on
average (see SF where a lot of people already do that).

2\. It sucks to wait for the car to finish charging. Going to a gas pump is
already annoying but charging a car for a extended amount of time is just
inconvenient and impractical.

Electric cars should really be charged just like mobile phones. When you get
home, you plug in the car. When you leave the car is full (or at the desired
charging level). This makes electric car superior because you do not have to
worry about "is my tank full enough for me to get to work and to the next gas
station or am I gonna be late in the office".

But until we have that, electric cars are unfortunately infeasible for a lot
of people who live in apartments.

What we need to do is provide charging and parking solutions for them. They
need to be able to park for 17+ without getting into trouble while charging.
One way to do that is by providing normal charger at people's work, so that
they arrive, plugin and wait until they have finished work and go home.

Another interesting solution is to use the power of street lamps. A British
startup is already working on that [1].

What we need IMO is to have both. Some people will charge in the streets and
some will at work. But until we have that (which might take the longest
because it is very expensive to install so many chargers), EVs are going to be
impractical for basically anybody who does not have a garage (and incredible
useful for those that do).

There are also a couple of other ways, though, im not sure how feasible they
are in the short term future: increase the speed of quick charging (I don't
think it is possible to charge a 70kwh battery in 5min without killing it in
the long term)

Have the cars charge them autonomously at big charging parks at night. While
this is my favorite we have yet to see when this really happens for non luxury
cars (the hardware for autonomy could already increase the purchase price by
many thousands of dollars and I don't know when all car manufacturers are
ready – I sincerely hope Tesla will not be the only car maker to have feasible
electric cars because seeing mostly Tesla would be kind of boring and kill
competition sooner or later which is always bad for the consumers).

[1]: [http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-
lamps...](http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/london-street-lamps-
electric-car-charging-points-ubitricity-tech-firm-hounslow-council-
richmond-a7809126.html)

~~~
jseliger
Someone already replied to this, in effect:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843081](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14843081)

~~~
greglindahl
On the plus side at least Matt3o12_ pointed out solutions! Still, he/she
appears to think that this is a huge issue because that's their personal
situation.

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dsfyu404ed
Until you can go on a road trip in an electric car without a lot of thinking
about where and when you'll fuel up they are not going to make headway as
primary vehicles.

People buy cars in order to have a fast mode of transportation available with
good uptime. The prospect of having a hr delay every several hundred miles in
the middle of an overnight trip to see a dying relative or in the middle of a
cross country vacation is a prospect that will cause many non-urban households
to retain fossil fueled powered vehicles for longer than some would like.

The HN crowd will buy electric econoboxes and fancy Teslas while they run the
SV rat race but when it comes time to raise kids in teh suburbs and really put
on the miles the convenience of range and fuel time will cause many people to
have at least one in the household fleet.

~~~
fein
I can't wait to be a hipster ICE collector.

Electric vehicles just feel and sound like shit. Auto racing is dead, for
example, if we move to all electric. No more rib rattling exhaust, the
wonderful smell of 2 stroke exhaust burping out of a bike, and the general
feeling of driving seven thousand contained explosions every minute.

Electric may be nice, but it's boring as hell.

~~~
greglindahl
There's already electric car racing, a couple of kinds, actually.

Lots of ICE cars with turbos already pipe fake engine noise into the car
cabin, all you need is loudspeakers and a stereo.

~~~
fein
Have you actually watched formula e? The race is so quiet and uneventful that
they have a dj playing shitty edm music.

~~~
greglindahl
I am merely noting that it exists.

If I want to see an event with electronic music that might involve carnage, I
watch SpaceX launches.

