Electric vs Conventional - What Happens Over the Next Decade?
shailynn
They never tell you what you need to know.
I am still astonished at new and used car prices at the moment. I bought a used SUV a little over 5 years ago and I can almost sell it today for what I bought it for back then. We’re talking within $5,000 of what I originally paid for. When else could you drive a car for 5 years, and have it depreciate less than $1,000 a year???
It got me thinking, people paying insane prices for cars today, unless they are buying a Tesla or one of the few other EVs out there, are these cars trucks and SUVs going to be virtually worthless in 5 to 10 years down the road when we assume all new vehicles are EVs? For example if you go to your local Mercedes or Honda dealer in 5 years and each one has 8 different types of vehicles for sale, are 6 of them going to be EVs? All 8 of them? Or only 2 of them?
I don’t use my personal cars much so I can sit on the sidelines for now before purchasing another vehicle, I figure I will do so in the next 1-3 years depending on how the pricing goes. Wonder if that would be the last conventional vehicle I ever buy, or maybe if I wait for 2-3 years my next purchase WILL be an EV?
It got me thinking, people paying insane prices for cars today, unless they are buying a Tesla or one of the few other EVs out there, are these cars trucks and SUVs going to be virtually worthless in 5 to 10 years down the road when we assume all new vehicles are EVs? For example if you go to your local Mercedes or Honda dealer in 5 years and each one has 8 different types of vehicles for sale, are 6 of them going to be EVs? All 8 of them? Or only 2 of them?
I don’t use my personal cars much so I can sit on the sidelines for now before purchasing another vehicle, I figure I will do so in the next 1-3 years depending on how the pricing goes. Wonder if that would be the last conventional vehicle I ever buy, or maybe if I wait for 2-3 years my next purchase WILL be an EV?
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Green mandates will keep getting pushed back until this happens.
Comes with 4 120 volt outlets so it is literally a mobile workshop
He must be talking about Level 3 charging which would be equivalent to installing a Tesla Supercharger in every house. Most people will get a Level 2 charging system which can plug into an electric dryer outlet and can easily charge a sedan in less than 8 hours. You leave it plugged in to charge overnight like your cell phone.
I agree with Tetradon about Urban versus Rural.
I am surprised by the EV bullishness, but they seem to know that they are doing, 4th largest car maker in the world, employing 400,000 people. An impressive presentation.
EV day 2021 (works on FoxFire)
https://www.stellantis.com/en/investors/…
SJG
Think about it, if you got 500 mile range and the battery cost and weight would go down radically, why not. Seen now a couple of guys driving Porsche Tacans, and those things really move. And when they come to the next stop light it doesn't just all go into wearing out the brakes, it goes back into the battery.
SJG
Bill Evans '64 - '75
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco5FNbj…
I hope your theory is correct Meat, especially coming from someone who wants to buy probably 2 cars within the next 3 years. I don’t care about the resale value for my current cars, I just want to lowest price for whatever I’m going to buy next. Pre-pandemic prices please!!!
The computer chips thing I think is a non-issue. It would be nice for strategic reasons to get that 52 billion in Biden Bucks to build more of a domestic semiconductor industry. But as it stands, chip production capacity is still exactly what it was before COVID. And all the chips in a 2700lb automobile do now weigh much at all. So you don't need many shipping containers.
This shortage is just a wrinkle. And soon, no one will care about last years chips, they'll be on to next years chips.
I have been following Stellantis. They have announced small layoffs in North America. And they have announced they are dropping one shift and 1800 jobs at the Windsor Ontario plant which produces Chrysler Pacifica and a version branded as Volkswagen, in April. They site the chips problem. But I can't see that as continuing out that far.
What it really is is simply that our economic system has been broken since the 1870's and after this COVID collapse, this cannot be hidden any longer. Our system cannot create enough livable wage jobs, and it never will. So the economic squirrel cage will be running much more slowly, and leaving many more people out, and with less purchasing and less consumption.
Really we should celebrate this, but first our ethics and assumptions have to change.
SJG
Bill Evans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco5FNbj…
SJG
SJG
Got links?
SJG
The next 10 years will be a weird transition, because I believe that we will see greater adoption of EVs. Especially as new models that come out to address different types of drivers. The infrastructure will be built to make charging easier and faster. A single charge will likely yield greater fuel and cost efficiency than gas.
The challenges of sourcing enough rare earths and other natural resources to make EVs widely available and affordable has yet to be sorted out, but it will get sorted out. During the first few generations of gas automobiles, a good argument could be made that horses and wagons were still a better and more dependable option. But outside of Amish country and historic reenactments, I don't see a lot of horse and buggies in use.
Personally, I'm going to hold onto my non-EV car for as long as possible just to see how everything shakes out over the next few years. I want the technology to settle a bit before I invest. What I don't like is that as EV infrastructure builds up, the infrastructure for gas-only vehicles will go away. I like vintage trucks. Eventually, it's going to get harder to drive vintage and classic gas vehicles.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/blowing-hot-a…
We replace the heater matrix, which would have had engine coolant running through it, with an electric heater that has 400 volts running through it. The clever bit of the design is to ensure that we have a safe system that also minimises the drain on the car’s battery pack
So we use what’s called a Positive Temperature Coefficient (PTC) heater. It’s basically a resistor that increases its resistance as it heats up, thus limiting the current it can draw. That way it will never get too hot. Why do we use 400 volts for the heater? Well, unlike every other car, we’ve got 400 volts available, so we might as well use that — it means considerably reduced currents along the cables that run from the ESS at the back of the car to the heater at the front. And with the heater capable of pumping out 4 kilowatts, that should keep the cabin nice and toasty.
At the other end of the scale, we have fitted our cars with an all-electric air conditioning system to keep things cool. This uses a compressor similar to the one in a domestic fridge — only ours is blue and works off 400 volts. It’s at the front of the car, and pumps the refrigerant through the chiller unit in much the same way as a standard car’s system.
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This raises a lot of questions for me.
SJG
SJG
Once this car market nonsense calms down I’m going to be getting a car but I’m not making the switch yet. 10 years from now maybe but next year, na not yet.
Given how long it takes to build anything in this country, I don't see fast, easy, on-every-corner charging any time soon. In the meantime, I'm going to see which technologies become VHS and which become Betamax. Let others work out the kinks. Then I'll switch.
The political left seems to be pushing EVs mostly for environmental reasons. The major cause of environmental degradation in this country, though, probably is coming from the rapid population increases. These population increases are primarily fueled by uncontrolled immigration as the population increases when people move here and then increases even more as they have children after moving here. The political left has actually been encouraging this since most of the immigrants vote Democrat. So, the Democrats are willing to sacrifice the environment in order to gain a political advantage over the Republicans.
https://www.motortrend.com/vehicle-genre…
It was a third car that sat in the garage and had only 12K miles and mint condition. Listed it online and got offers from all over the country. It sold to someone in N Calif. Sort of miss the car now; it was very light-weight, smooth engine, and had tight, precise handling.
My wife wants an electric car, but I'm hesitant for many of the reasons mentioned above. Worried about it becoming a headache after the warranty expires.
Apropos, today's paper had a fun opinion piece about the direction of the auto industry (clear browser cookies to read for free):
"The Look of Cars Is Driving Me Out of My Mind"
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/01/opini…
There are places where EV’s are a great fit - but they aren’t the best fit for lots of Americans yet. A lot can change in 10 years - but this is a huge transition. I think there are some cool EV’s out there - but I think they are still a niche segment of the market.
I might purchase an EV as my next car. But it would be a second vehicle. My ICE SUV will be my long distance vehicle - and the EV would be for short commutes.
If this comes from foreign manufacturers - it’s possible. I think they can possibly pivot quicker if they don’t need to deal so much with unions.
However, I’m sorry, I’m not buying a car made by a Chinese manufacturer. I don’t want them tracking my every trip to my local Rub and Tug watering hole.
- How long do the manufacturers say the battery lasts?
- Can you replace particular cells, or is it something like "replace the entire battery in 5 years" kind of thing?
- What's it cost to replace the battery
- Do manufacturers tell you that fast-charging will reduce service lifetime?
Just curious! I figure my next car may be an EV but I haven't started really looking at the technology at all, and am curious about the batteries, whether used EVs just have a $5000 battery change expectation built into prices, etc
Battery warranties tend to be 7 years. That’s probably a good estimate of expected life.
I'm for EV's and all, but like others have said I think the transition may have to be a bit slower than some would like. And it'll require some changes to how we generate, transmit, and store power to achieve the sort of flexibility required to support emergency situations.
I wouldn't worry about an ICE being worthless in a few years. I'm not sure I'd buy a chain of gas stations without a plan to diversify their revenue though.The average age of a car today is something like 12yrs old. It's not like gas stations are going to be Blockbuster's in 5-10 years. If we went 100% EV tomorrow, plenty of ICE's would be on the road for at least a decade. Even the tree huggers have to realize that it's less damaging to the environment to continue operating a reasonably modern ICE than it is to scrap it. A large chunk of the damage is done during production for both types.
SJG
Frigid Pink
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttrHU9Py…
The technology for nuclear safety has improved dramatically sine the bad old days of three mile island, but it’s reputation hasn’t improved accordingly.
Small local generation, like roof top photovoltaics.
And then, we just need to use less.
SJG
As I posted in a previous thread, a lot of things in society have gone from analog to digital – the EV is the digital equivalent of the ICE car; it’s in many ways just a computer w/ wheels – I think most people are sold on the technology and see it as the way going forward – for the avg person the biggest bottleneck seems to be the charging issue – for one, not everyone has an enclosed garage to put a charger at home for their car; and many people probably feel the current charging infrastructure is still inadequate – people are used to getting in their cars and just going w/o having to worry about where to “gas up” and that it may take a while when they need to “gas up” – i.e. the combo of not as many charging stations and also that it takes longer to charge, means you don’t have the same convenience as w/ gas-stations where there’s usually one or more stations a few-minutes away from where you are and you can usually get in and out in less than 5-minutes – I assume it’s not uncommon to arrive at a charging station and have to wait to charge both b/c there aren’t enough stations and b/c a car is gonna hog-up a particular pump for a lot-longer while it charges.
A 2nd issue is currently not enough low-cost models for the masses – even the “entry level” Model-3s and Model-Ys seem to get above $50K once you add the extras you want – but this seems like something that won’t be a big-hurdle to overcome – seems the biggest hurdle for many is the charging issue and its practicality.
I “assume” the transition would happen sooner than later if the charging-issue and it’s practicality can be resolved – I think the demand and desire is there by the general public – the ICE and transmission are the most expensive things in a conventional car and having those things go away w/ an EV I would think is an attractive proposition for most people – and not having to deal w/ noise-pollution from particularly big-engines like muscle-cars or trucks and their loud-exhausts is also attractive IMO.
I think the avg person sees way more positives than negatives w.r.t. EVs – and there are also a lot of forces at play to kill ICE cars, from governments to environmental groups to big-business (e.g. a lot of tech companies are trying to come-up w/ their own EVs; and Amazon which is a behemoth is trying to go all electric w/ its delivery-fleet) – there has been a war against fossil-fuels where governments are often blocking production and putting pressure on banks to not lend $$$ to oil-producers so they can finance further exploration and extraction – there’s gonna be a lot of pressure put on ICE manufacturers to where they are gonna be forced to stop ICE production whether they want to or not – the ICE car is likely gonna get the same treatment as smokers but likely worse.
That Model S is huge, and very expensive.
But Stellantis has very big plans, and 4 platform sizes.
SJG
But as time has gone on, everyone has become more committed to fast charging and just straight p-EV.
You know that Frito Lay uses Smith EV trucks to deliver its potato chips.
I once tried to broker a deal to keep a supermarket from closing by getting charging stations put in. Their drivers have to stay in each store for about 1 hour, to arrange their merchandise. That would be enough time to charge their trucks.
Same if you make these Cold Car eutectic ice cream trucks on a p-EV chassis. Recharge and refreeze from ground power.
As costs and battery weight continue to drop, the change over seems inevitable. And Tesla has made a huge EV showing, making them into a status symbol.
Want to see some numbers of where they think the limits really are.
Watch a Porsche Tacan move. It is the most impressive.
SJG