
Ask HN: Opportunities in the EV market? - thisisit
There have been reading a lot of news recently about growth of EV:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15224578
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15219469
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15208565<p>While this change&#x2F;growth has a lot to do with car manufacturers, what kind of opportunities will it present for companies outside the auto or ride sharing space?
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PaulHoule
There are the big car manufacturers but then there are all kinds of smaller
and more distributed businesses that revolve around the car.

For instance, gas stations do not just sell gas, but they also sell groceries
and prepared food, drinks, beer, and other things. Maybe some will become
electric car charging centers. If it takes longer to charge your battery than
it does to gas up, you may spend more time there and possibly more money. On
the other hand, you may charge up most of the time at home or at work in which
case you do not go so often. No matter what, people are going to buy the non-
gas things they get at gas stations somehow.

Every three to six months you change the oil on your gas car. Electric cars
will need maintenance, but not the same kind. You'll still need tires, but
maybe you won't need to change your brake pads as often because you depend
more on regenerative braking. I knew a mechanic in 2002 who saw change coming
and decided to establish himself as a hybrid car expert and he started writing
service manuals for hybrids.

On the other hand, I have no idea how fast change is coming. A few years ago
people were talking about the "oil peak" but now people are buying GMC
Suburbans as fast they can make them. Some countries are saying big things
about the future, but it took Germany 30 years to really begin a promised
phase-out of nuclear power. Scares about the availability of lithium could
take the place of scares about the availability of petroleum...

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thisisit
Thanks for the insight.

Surely the speed of progress is surely a concern and given the amount of
petrol cars on the road it will surely take a long time coming.

My understanding on lithium is that it is abundant in nature.

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PaulHoule
Lithium abundance has issues.

It is not that common in the universe at large (compared to other elements
early in the periodic table) because it burns up very quickly in the core of
stars. People who have thought about this in terms of nuclear energy think
that lithium used for fusion is not all that likely to be a larger resource
than uranium used for fission in a plutonium economy.

Right now most lithium is mined from a few countries in Latin America that are
not globally minded so I could see politics getting in the way.

Certainly there are other reserves of lithium that we know of, probably more
that we don't know of. When we go looking we often find there are resources we
didn't know about. On the other hand, it takes time and money to develop
resources. A "baseline scenario" is that it is like oil and other commodities,
the price will go up and down.

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Jeremy1026
Charger networks. There are a few big players out there now, (ChargePoint,
EVGo, and SemaConnect), but none of them have, to me, really captured the
market.

