mschuyler

OF COURSE it is different and OF COURSE it would start in places where it is economically most feasible. That makes perfect sense. But it represents a trend in western countries. The ball is rolling now and it's going to start going faster and faster. Think California. All trends like this start out slowly before they go exponential. Read Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity." The basic building blocks are in place. They do not need to be invented. Governments are beginning to push, some more heavily than others. It's not just about availability of gas; it's about carbon emissions. And car companies are beginning to respond, even ponderously slow ones like GM, to wit:


2023--FIVE years from now, 20 vehicles from GM alone. In ten years, if you are a commuter, you will have an electric car in your garage--and you can pretend you never claimed otherwise.

Cosmo Kramer

Personally, I think the engineers have pushed the ICE about as far as they can. (Mazada's new HCCI engine looks promising, however. http://autoweek.com/article/technolo...ine-technology) Given the ever increasing strict CAFE and pollution standards imposed by the various governments, electric cars will make up a significant portion of cars sold in the near future. Think about it, electric cars perform better than ICE cars and don't burn fossil fuels or pollute. Currently, the problem with an electric car is range. If they can (and they will) get the range over 500 miles, kiss the ICE goodby for passenger cars.

jimmbbo

The electricity to CHARGE the batteries is likely produced by fossil fuels.

Foosh

That's true east of the Mississippi, but less so in the west.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph.../power-plants/

z06inVB

I just don't see electric being dominant in the next 10 years. The same goes for self driving cars.

As as long as fossil fuels are fairly cheap and plentiful there is no real incentive to buy electric. And I don't buy the it's better for the ecology argument since the electricity produced to run them is often from fossil fuels or coal.

jimmbbo

Oh, boy! Dueling graphs!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...Energy2012.png

Cosmo Kramer

The future of electric power is nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. Fossil fuel power plants will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Maxpowers

^^^
This

99% of the population will not move from ICE until there is a financial reason to do so.

jimmbbo

True, but most renewable technologies must mature several generations to contribute meaningfully to the demand for cheap, available, reliable high density energy currently provided by fossil fuels.
The key is keeping the gooberment out of the market and letting the market work, otherwise we end up with another ethanol or Solyndra disaster.

Cosmo Kramer

As I stated above, ICE will not be able to meet future CAFE and pollution standards. As such, the car manufactures will be forced to switch over to electric cars. From a financial point of view, the Chevrolet Bolt cost about $30k (after tax credit,) has a range of about 300 miles, and uses zero gasoline. I’d bet that within five years, electric cars (the low end) will sticker for $20-$25k and have a range of 500+ miles.

Foosh

They're not dueling graphs, they are just expressing the same data in different ways. My point was that the heavily-populated east is fossil-fuel dominated, and the west is less so.

Averaging the data for total US consumption still puts fossil fuel way on top.

mschuyler

The range issue is over-stated. It's called "range anxiety" and is more paranoia than reality. You need not have a 500-600 mile capability because you rarely do that. If you go on a road trip, take the other car. Realistically about 100 miles is plenty good enough. A "high" daily commute is 50 miles round trip. A typical grocery run is less than 20. Go home. Plug it in. That's all you need. And if you charge after midnight when rates are low (or should be) it's cheap. Water flows over the dams at midnight just as heavily as noon. I have a friend who has a Vette as well as a Cadillac ELR, a hybrid that has been discontinued. It runs on electric for about 60 miles before gasoline kicks in. He told me that after a solid year the Cadillac message center told him it was going to force him to use a tank full of gas because he hadn't used gas at all in a year and it was getting too old. As his in-town daily driver, he simply never used the gas engine.

THAT is the initial market for electric and represents, by far, the major use of gasoline today. You don't need range; you just think you do. It's really a non-issue.

As to the idea that electricity has to come from somewhere, and if it comes from fossil fuels you haven't gained anything, well, that's a pretty poor argument. The trend of using fossil fuels to generate electricity is going down, not up, and government will continue to push that direction. After all, we have over 200 years of coal left in the ground, but who is going to let you burn it? Want to heat your house with wood? Sorry, you can't do it. Half the time it's not allowed. It's the same with fossil fuel power plants. Solar has made tremendous gains in the last few years. Believe it or not, it is even economically feasible to go solar in the Pacific Northwest. My cousin has done it. He has solar panels and drives a Tesla and his net worth is a whole lot less than mine. The whole thing is about to go exponential. The 'Lectric Vette in ten years, guaranteed.

F4 Phantom

I do. I own an environmental services firm and have jobs all over Southern California. My MY 14 C7 has 63K+ miles, almost all of it business. I would need big range. I know lots of other business owners who are in the same boat.

dbirdhouse1

with the choice of three(?) turbo charged engines.....

mschuyler

Sure you do. Do you think you're the average commuter? Of course not. Do you honestly think "lots of other business owners" is anywhere near a majority? That's anecdotal information at best. There will always be people who drive a zillion miles a day, but YOU are not who all this is aimed at. It's aimed at the AVERAGE commuter, who represents the large majority of miles driven per day. The fact that are outliers to the average (meaning yourself) is irrelevant to the larger issue. Think beyond your own headlights to the average Joe Schmoo commuter out there who commutes 20-50 miles a day, five days a week, month after month after month. According to the US Census Bureau, the average commute time is 25.9 minutes, which is well within the range of CURRENT battery technology. And the range will double within the next couple of years to 400-600 miles between charges, thus enveloping a greater and greater number of people who now say "it won't work for me."

The thing is, it doesn't matter if it won't work for you because you are an ever-shrinking minority of drivers out there. There is legislation in California right now that proposes to eliminate (not restrict, but eliminate) new ICE cars by 2040. Is California crazy? Oh, yeah! For sure! But this is not little Norway or Europe where gas prices are high. It's right here. Will this bill pass? Maybe not, but the trend is obvious. And California doesn't give a **** whether you think this is okay.

Steve_R

Mid-engine won’t be a new model of C7.

b4i4getit

If anyone has driven a Tesla P100D they will understand why the future belongs to electric cars.