
All vehicles will be electric by 2025, says expert - kimsk112
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/05/14/petrol-cars-will-vanish-2025-says-us-report/
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compsciphd
I don't understand these articles

zero marginal cost in fuel?

Take a chevy volt (I have one, so speaking from experience). it takes over
20kwh of electricity to fully charge (there's at least 10% loss) and get a bit
over 50 miles on charge.

Lets equate this to a prius, that gets about 50mpg.

the cheapest electricity rates in the bay area is about 11.5 cents kwh. or if
it takes 20kwh to charge, one is looking at at least $2.30 to "Fill it up".
That's not much cheaper than it costs to go 50 miles in a prius.

If gasoline prices crater (as the article expects), it make gas cars even more
affordable. Now arguably the electrical generation can be better for the
environment than the car itself burning gas, but the argument on fuel costs
seems very weak.

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kimsk112
This is a link that is not required you to be a member:

[http://www.afr.com/business/energy/oil/petrol-cars-will-
vani...](http://www.afr.com/business/energy/oil/petrol-cars-will-vanish-
in-8-years-says-us-report-from-stanford-economist-20170514-gw4r0u)

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DamonHD
Clickbait really: I don't think even the most ardent EV fan would claim that
suddenly all (new) fossil cars will be forbidden and that the infrastructure
for recharging will magically available everywhere, or that the grids would be
happy with such a quick change in usage patterns!

Still, would be good at face value.

~~~
serhei
The prediction is also dependent on mass adoption of self-driving cars (as the
only plausible way that existing internal-combustion cars would end up
scrapped _en masse_ in such a short timeframe). The timeframe for that is
still unknown and dependent on societal/regulatory factors in addition to
getting the technology right. It's safe to bet that regulatory factors will
move slow.

~~~
Fricken
2025 sounds a little ambitious to me, pretty much everything would have to go
right for that to happen, but the regulatory gears are turning pretty hard
now, and they were set in motion years ago, first by Google beginning in 2012,
but now by every major automaker and they've been lobbying pretty hard.

[https://www.enotrans.org/article/washington-preparing-
action...](https://www.enotrans.org/article/washington-preparing-action-
automated-vehicles/)

Personally, I think if anything delays the adoption of electric robotaxis to
anywhere near the degree Tony Seba is anticipating, it will be battery
production capacity. Tesla, with their gigafactory is the only company that's
really serious about anticipating that kind of demand, and western
manufacturers be in competition with China for all the raw materials needed to
mass produce batteries at that scale. That's where I'm anticipating the
biggest hangups.

