No need for 2d car

Just editorial, but if it's a slow day for the moderators, maybe report the first post, ask if they could change the "2d" in the title to "2nd"?

I know, obsessive...

 

not sure what post set you off like that, everyone sounds reasonable to me, mostly agreeing phev's have their place right now.

 

Why so much hate against 2d cars?

 

No post, but I did read the article and that is where the argument of PHEVs lugging an ICE everywhere they go was presented.

 

as did i, but i missed that. i think after we cross the phev bridge, bev's will be cheaper, and that is when they'll really start to proliferate.

there's nothing cheap about building either right now, and that will slow progress until gas prices rise

 

Agreed. BEVs MUST (and WILL) get cheaper as the price of batteries decreases. It's just a much simpler vehicle if you do not stuff self-driving, etc. into it. Function for function a BEV is a much less complicated vehicle than ICE powered one. It WILL get cheaper than ICE and the gas prices will increase as that resource becomes more scarce (not sure of the time frame on that one). Batteries are getting cheaper and Chinese Tesla gigafactory will only help that. More supply, prices will go down. To my mind, the battery prices can only go down, whereas the cost of ICE components has already been reduced to the minimum over the past 100 years. All the traditional car makers need to wake up, but even if they wake up right now, it's too late. They are dead, they just don't know it yet.

But back to the topic, PHEVs are an awesome intermediate technology and the more people use those the more easily they will transition to BEVs when the time comes (and it will) when having ICE truly WILL be ridiculous or serve the purpose of a niche hobby (like horses).

 

I suspect in the long view, personal cars will become a niche hobby too.

 

As the article points out, the charging infrastructure is still the primary limiting factor to BEV uptake, and not just in North Dakota. While it's possible to find a place to charge in many areas of the country, that doesn't mean it's easy or close; you generally have to plan ahead. Contrast that with the ability to refuel an ICE in pretty much any small town in America. There are literally 10 times as many gas stations as Tesla Superchargers.

Charging times are an issue, too. With rates ranging around 5-6 mi/minute, it's far quicker to put, say, 400 miles of fuel in a ICE than in a Tesla Model S. (And that's about the best case currently.) Aside from the delay to one's trip, that means each gas station can provide many more refuelings per hour than the Superchargers can. To completely replace ICEs, we would need a BEV charging infrastructure at least a couple of orders of magnitude larger than the current one. That's a significant challenge that will take years to meet.

That's not to say that BEVs' day won't come. But it's not just about the vehicle. Unless and until really fast charging is nearly as ubiquitous as gas stations, I don't see how BEVs can be a one-size-fits-all solution. They are viable only for a small percentage of vehicles on the road with the currently available charging infrastructure. Great for local use and occasional trips on well-traveled corridors; still not there for random travel when away from home by large numbers of vehicles. Not yet, and likely not soon.

That being the case, PHEVs are likely the best compromise for some time to come. Most of the benefits of a BEV for home-based local driving, with the refueling benefits of an ICE when away from home. Someone in one of the article comments said PHEVs will be obsolete in 10 years. Maybe, though I suspect longer. But if I can buy a PHEV today and drive it for 10 years, I'm OK with that.

 

one thing about the author who moved from a phev to bev and now regrets it, it seems most priuschatters have more wisdom, which is a sad thing for an electric car writer

 

I think a BEV might already equal an ICE in terms total ownership cost for markets like Europe. I don't know how many car buyers actually look at that though. The BEV will have a higher purchase cost. Less complicated in terms of parts, but those parts generally are higher value materials. An engine is mostly iron and steel, or maybe aluminum. A motor has a lot of copper.

It already is several magnitudes higher considering the large majority of charging is done at home.

Fast charging networks need to expand for supporting longer range travel, and slower networks are needed to support plug ins that can't be charged at home. There is more flexibility in stalling those than gas stations when it comes to permitting and required space. Some communities are already wiring chargers up to street lamps for example.

I don't call for BEVs are the single solution, but they can work for far more people than many give credit for. The majority of households in the US have more than one car. It is a minority of that group that needs two or three of those cars to be long range. Most of the ICE cars of those households are only being used for local use, for which a BEV will work.

I don't see PHEVs becoming obsolete. I see them shifting away from the plug in hybrid design to a range extended EV one; Prime and Niro PHEV to i3 REx and upcoming Mazda MX-30. Having an EV range of 80 miles or more with a smaller ICE working in series mode. Perhaps a fuel cell, or an Al-air battery will replace that.

 

One big question for bev’s is battery repair/replacement after warranty.

Tesla has just updated the s/x warranty for degradation, but I don’t recall any bev manufacturers with a price policy

 

Just wondering - what was the reason for removing those charging stations already in place ?

If they were free to use to the car owners as an incentive to go to that location and patronize the businesses there, and the businesses had to pay for their use then later felt they were not benefitting enough to justify the continued expense I could understand.

I'm not really sure how that works, just guessing, but I have heard some charging stations are free to use and some charge. (I haven't had the need to use one yet, still waiting on delivery of our Prius Prime, but would likely do about 95% of our charging at home anyhow unless free charging stations start popping up at businesses we frequent)

 

I'm interested but not convinced, personally. So far it looks like I can get a secondhand EV that I like better than the RAV plus a secondhand gasburner that I like better than the RAV and still spend a good bit less than the price of the RAV. Now, when there's a healthy supply of secondhand RAV PHEVs around? That will change things. But the gap between is looking long enough to be worth the two-car adventure.

 

Michigan is backwards thinking, Don't get me going. I could give you million examples. No the ICE owners blocked the chargers most of the time at Celebration Cinema. I would pull up to the location a SUV would be in the spot. Out of 500 or more spots the MORON SUV owners would park the Yukon in the spot while 300 others spots were available. ChargePoint was free and I would eat dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings or catch a movie. Maybe an hour or two at most. 4 spots and chargers and now they are gone. Maybe I am just jaded with backward thinking people that want to mine oil and live in the 1900 - 1999 years. Just think we could do better. But at least the new Hummer will be electric ( can't be any worse than the original POS that was too big and was unreliable.) A few still availavle in Grand Rapids and the surrounding areas.

 

Wow, that is a definite bummer, I wonder if they parked there for spite or was just oblivious to it being restricted to plug-in only ?

I think I read where some area of the country was going to (or already had) made it a ticket-able offense with a fine and even subject to being towed if they parked an ICE car in a charger space.

I wonder if the ICE owners blocking the chargers most of the time at Celebration Cinema was the reason the chargers were removed ?

 

OK. The fact remains that not every type of automobile is optimum for every style and type of driving. If your primary use is long-haul driving, it's hard to beat the conventional ICE for ease of speedy re-fueling.

But, for many people whose daily driving pattern is a hundred miles or less, BEVs work fine because they can be re-charged at home overnight. For some of us, our trip patterns are even shorter and our PHEV (Prime, Volt, etc.) still fits the vast majority of our daily needs in electric mode and has the bonus of having a gasoline engine to fall back on.

Alas, for many people, limits may be psychologically problematic and more imagined than real. Those are the folks who drive only in the city but own all-wheel-drive SUVs because they just know that they may someday want to go off-roading someplace or other. They never will, but they'll feel reassured and are willing to live with 14 mpg to have that option.

The historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote about growing up as a boy in Boston in the late 1890s. At that time, Boston had begun filling in the tidal flats along the Charles River to make more land for development. Morison recalls his father saying how upset one of their neighbors was because he could no longer keep a row boat tied up behind his house. Morison pointed out that the neighbor did not own a row boat and never had one tied up behind his house. "Well," explained Morison's father, "he always wanted to, never did, and now he can't."

Such is human nature.

 

Here's an interesting article I just found (click on link below)

Legislation Reference – Reserved Parking for Plug-In Vehicle Charging
States with laws to prohibit non plug-in cars from blocking electric vehicle charging stations.

Legislation Reference - Reserved Parking for Plug-In Vehicle Charging | PlugInSites

The above link not only lists the areas with such laws, it includes some photos of areas and pics of these signs: