Electric Vehicle Thread!

[cheapchips]

For an EV you want to charge at home or work, and the manufacturers are running out of people who can do that.

Agree with your points on urban accessibility to charging but you're way off on the remaining addressable market of driveway owners in the UK. Even in a reasonably wealthy commuter town like where my parents live, adoption % is in the low single digits.

Lamppost chargers are my favourite technical solution for kerbside charging. Most of the wiring's already there.

 

[MfA]

Lampposts are both not universal and too wide apart, the only universals are the sidewalk and the road.

 

[cheapchips]

Lampposts are both not universal and too wide apart, the only universals are the sidewalk and the road.

I only said it's one of my favourite solutions. People don't usually need to charge every night and not all on street parking is allocated to particular properties. Curb side sockets for every property would be cool, but things could work well enough in many circumstances without something that extensive.

 

[MfA]

When you have to charge, you have to charge. Finding parking is enough of a hassle without being forced to select from a massively oversubscribed 1:5 subset, you'll be a couple streets over before you find a spot once there's majority EVs at that rate. Half measures will have to be upgraded to full measures eventually, might as well start early.

When they lay fibre in a street, even if you don't subscribe you can get a junction box free ... going in halfsies is just a waste. Same reasoning applies for charging (also they should have done the prep work for charging when laying fibre, but that boat has mostly sailed).

 

[Mariner]

A country-wide charging network would be very complicated to develop and hugely expensive to build.

Which is why governments across the world pretend that they don't need to consider such an option and that 'the market will develop it'. Short-sighted thinking, of course. Modern politicians are too cowardly to step up and commit to the investment which is required to make a step change in this area.

 

[MfA]

A country-wide charging network would be very complicated to develop and hugely expensive to build.

If you can solve the technical problem of how to make a charging connector near the ground, for the non aligned parallel parking we are used to in most of Europe, then the rest is mostly just ground work. At the multimillion scale you can make some small metal box to plug in too with some electronics really cheap, even if you need a couple million of them.

I think the cost is then roughly the same cost as the fibre rollout ... it could have been a lot cheaper if most of it was done during the fibre rollout.

 

[Davros]

Curb side sockets for every property would be cool,

if that was the case wouldnt pedestrians have to be constantly stepping over cables unless you want the sockets on the very edge of the curb and how does that work for a towerblock?
it would be a nice little money maker for those that steal copper cables though

 

[MfA]

Yes, probably on the curb. Though some type of capacitively coupled connector might even be possible by building it into the road surface.

What do you expect them to do? Pull stuff out of the ground by hand and magically pull the copper line with it? If they want to bring an excavator to steal copper wire out of the ground, they can do that already.

 

[cheapchips]

how does that work for a towerblock?

Where to tower dwellers park today? Put slow chargers there, or at least a % of those spots, since people typically only need to charge a couple of time a week (in the UK).

 

[Davros]

What do you expect them to do? Pull stuff out of the ground by hand and magically pull the copper line with it?

No I expect them to steal the charging cables

Put slow chargers there

I meant how do you charge from home when you live in a tower block

 

[cheapchips]

I meant how do you charge from home when you live in a tower block

Put slow chargers where people park their cars. If they live in a tower blocks or apartments and have cars, they must park them somewhere! That's where availability of roadside/streetlamp/carpark/ workplace chargers need to expand more.

At present, if someone in the UK doesn't have a home/work charging option then a decision to switch will be very circumstantial. Someone living near us doing a typical < 30 mile commute could get away with a weekly charge when doing food shopping.

It's a transition and things will continue to evolve both with charging infrastructure and car charging speeds.

 

[MfA]

No I expect them to steal the charging cables

That's a problem regardless with EVs/society, even if they just persist in their foolhardy plan to add streetcharging piecemeal rather than universal. If it becomes an epidemic, I expect some company will start making low speed chargers cables using aluminium (with clear indication to tell the thieves to look elsewhere).

 

[tuna]

Fast charging is too expensive, still too slow and has too much wear and tear for routine use ... it's for road trips. For an EV you want to charge at home or work, and the manufacturers are running out of people who can do that.

I had an EV without my own charging before my condo put up chargers in our garages. You can do it if you want to, especially with new cars with much better battery capacity and faster charging.

 

[MfA]

It's a PITA and it's not going to get easier as competition for chargers increases. To make it convenient you have to get so close to universal, you might as well make it universal.

 

[wco81]

GM sold over 32,000 EVs in the third quarter, making it the second biggest EV manufacturer in the US, just edging out Hyundai.

General Motors (GM) continued its run this year, topping Wall Street’s estimates again in the third quarter. After outpacing Ford and Hyundai in Q3, GM is now the second-best-selling EV maker in the US despite offering fewer incentives.

With a record 32,095 electric vehicles sold in the third quarter, up 60% from Q3 2023, GM’s share of the US EV market neared double-digits.

Read in Electrek: https://apple.news/A2-nZPnpWSKqmx_ZThv90qw

Over 15k of that were the Chevy Equinox SUV, which is around $35k before the full $7500 tax credit. Actually I think they'd been selling a more expensive model and they just now started shipping the $35-36k version.

GM expects to produce (not necessarily sell) over 200k EVs this year and even make a profit from EV sales in Q4.

The other notable thing is that they didn't have sales incentives, at least not Q3, whereas Hyundai was aggressive with incentives. In fact, Honda advertised $200 leases for the Prologue, which is essentially the same as the Blazer EV.

I believe few months back, GM was saying that they were scaling back EV plans, maybe produce more hybrids. AFAIK, they're not selling many hybrids right now, though supposedly they would increase production.

 

[MfA]

Pretty much all new PHEVs are going to be EV first, unlike say the Prius. EREV is the better term for it, the energy carrier is hybrid but the drivetrain is no longer.

An upgrade to some alternate liquid fuel in the future, possibly with fuel cells, would be nowhere near as involved as when you need to mess with the drivetrain.

PS. dinosaurs who want to protect old investments might try to push hybrid power trains, but I don't think it will be sustainable for long and could lock them into a downward spiral.

 

[wco81]

9 month high for EV sales across the world, 1.69 million in September but 1.12 million of that was in China, where ICE sales have plummeted.

EVs - whether fully electric (BEV) or plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) - sold worldwide reached 1.69 million in September, Rho Motion data showed.
Sales in China jumped 47.9% in September and reached 1.12 million vehicles, while in the United States and Canada they were up 4.3% to 0.15 million.

In Europe, EV sales rose 4.2% to 0.3 million units, thanks to a 24% jump in the United Kingdom and gains in Italy, Germany and Denmark, Lester said.

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...r-china-shines-europe-recuperates-2024-10-14/

Considering that EU doesn't offer tax credits like those in the US, pretty pathetic that they had twice the sales volume.

There's a 13-month chart at the link. If the bars are proportional, it looks like US and Canada was even with EU sales in August or maybe even slightly ahead.

What we need though is the ASP of all these sales. Even with tax credits, US and Canada may have the highest ASPs.

 

[wco81]

Best selling car in South Korea is the Hyundai Casper, which can be purchased for as low as $7300 after tax incentives.

Price before tax incentives is $20 or $23k.

In Europe, it will be sold for €25k, with a WLTP range of 225 miles or 355 kilometers.

After opening pre-orders for its smallest and most affordable in July, starting at just $23,000 (31.5 million won), the Casper Electric is already Hyundai’s best-selling EV in Korea.


Hyundai followed it up by launching an even cheaper Casper Electric Premium model, starting at $20,000 (27.4 million won). With subsidies, Hyundai said the new compact electric SUV is available for as little as $7,300 (10 million own).


According to Hyundai, buyers are flocking to the new EV thanks to its “ample driving range” and low starting price.


The Casper Electric is rated with up to 196 miles (315 km) driving range in Korea. In Europe, the mini electric SUV is known as the Inster EV. It starts at under $27,000 (25,000 euros) and has WLTP driving range of up to 221 miles (355 km).

https://electrek.co/2024/10/25/hyundais-low-cost-casper-ev-spotted-in-us-first-time/

Hyundai plans to sell it in all regions except apparently North and South America.

I suppose the Nissan Leaf, including the recent variants which had a range around 200 miles, hasn't been huge sellers in the US either.? It may be a more appealing form factor than the Leaf, kind of CUV like. But only 2-doors and a hatch, not 4 doors and a hatch.

 

[cheapchips]

Best selling car in South Korea is the Hyundai Casper, which can be purchased for as low as $7300 after tax incentives.

I sat in one (the Inster as it is in the UK) at the Everything Electric show. As a tiny car for four adults the amount of space is utterly miraculous. It has more space in the back seats than stupid SUVs that are almost a meter longer.

I'd want one if we didn't have the dogs. My car lusts are based entirely maximum pragmatism though!

Sadly, the Inster's going to be £26,000+ here. If it was four figures or in the low teens it'd sell bucket loads.

 

[wco81]

I sat in one (the Inster as it is in the UK) at the Everything Electric show. As a tiny car for four adults the amount of space is utterly miraculous. It has more space in the back seats than stupid SUVs that are almost a meter longer.

I'd want one if we didn't have the dogs. My car lusts are based entirely maximum pragmatism though!

Sadly, the Inster's going to be £26,000+ here. If it was four figures or in the low teens it'd sell bucket loads.

So the boot is very limited, because it looks to be shaped kind of like a stub compared to SUVs?

Passenger space is okay but the cargo space seems more limited.

They also have the Niro and the Kona, which are $10-15k less than the Ioniq 5/Kia EV6 class of cars.

I think also in the US, they have grander expectations. They have a Kia 3-row SUV EV and they plan to introduce another under the Ioniq brand.

They might do better to introduce more of a minivan, with sliding side doors on either side. ICE minivans are popular in the US. VW introduced the ID.Buzz but the price is pretty high. I don't know if they're roomier than most SUV EVs but probably better for families with the side door.