SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Battery powered cars will soon be cheaper to buy than conventional gasoline ones, offering immediate savings to drivers, new research shows.
Automakers from Renault SA to Tesla Inc. have long touted the cheaper fuel and running costs of electric cars that helps to displace the higher upfront prices that drivers pay when they buy the zero-emission vehicles.
Now research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance indicates that falling battery costs will mean electric vehicles will also be cheaper to buy in the U.S. and Europe as soon as 2025. Batteries currently account for about half the cost of EVs, and their prices will fall by about 77% between 2016 and 2030, the London-based researcher said.
"On an upfront basis, these things will start to get cheaper and people will start to adopt them more as price parity gets closer," said Colin McKerracher, analyst at the London-based researcher. "After that it gets even more compelling."
The secret is in the battery.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:21PM (13 children)
When it happens, it happens. At that point in time, a lot of people will weigh the pros and cons, and some of them will decide one way, others will decide the other way. But, everyone on the internet is accustomed to hearing about this or that breakthrough, or some great application, or even the greatest of all operating systems - then never seeing anything after the claims are made.
Bring on the cheap electric cars, and we'll discuss them.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:29PM (9 children)
A product that already exists on the market is not vaporware.
Elementary microeconomics predict falling costs and rising levels of production will lead to lower prices.
Now you know the least you could have done would have been to allege price fixing in an industry where all producers of electric cars agree to increase their profits instead of passing savings along to consumers.
Troll harder, scumbag.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Spamalope on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:40PM (7 children)
Lets see one that's cheaper without the tax breaks for the manufacturer and the purchaser, and includes the cost of replacement batteries and dealing with any toxic chemicals in them.
I think that day will come for short distance vehicles, but the viability is via subsidy at the moment. On the plus side, chargers will be more common if the sales volume gets high enough.
Really though, self driving electric car public transportation is the thing. Cars that don't sit parked all the time, and that can be switched out if the charge is low. (i.e. A fleet of electric 'personal busses' that recharge between trips, and get another to meet you for a transfer if they run low on power) Then you need fewer, and can really reduce the number of vehicles in the inner city. Not paying for parking space will partially offset the cost.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:27PM (4 children)
Fair enough.
Well, let's see a gasoline car that includes free clutches, brake pads, and engine rebuilds for life, too!
With use, cars wear out and need predictable rebuild/replacement of certain components. Somehow we're used to this for gasoline cars, but when it turns out electric cars are the same way, people like you try to make it look like some sort of ripoff or scam.
Yes, a new battery costs more than an engine rebuild, but that's a difference of degree, and is at least partly compensated by the likelihood that you'll get a significant capacity boost from a new battery, thanks to five years or more of advancement in the field.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Thursday June 01 2017, @09:09PM (2 children)
Those are things that are in electric cars also.
I don't know if electric motors need less manteinance than gas motors, but, leaving aside motor, electric cars have the same mecanic problems than gasoline cars... plus an expensive battery instead of oil change.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @10:37PM (1 child)
I probably shouldn't have put brakes in there -- I was thinking of the reduced wear from regenerative breaking (the usage most destructive of friction brakes is exactly the usage where regenerative breaking most xompletely substitutes for them), but it was too much trouble to explain that argument in detail, so I should have removed it entirely.
As for the others, nope. Electric cars typically don't have clutches (most in fact have single-ratio gearing), the exceptions being some homebrew conversions of existing manual-transmission cars, where the gearbox and clutch are retained, and the electric motor fitted with a bogus flywheel. Everyone knows this is a mechanically silly arrangement, but hobbyists don't have a lot of options.
As for engine rebuilds, if you don't know, why are you asserting that engine rebuilds "are in electric cars"? Even if you're using a brushed DC motor, we're talking a 15-minute job, and that's the only routine maintenance needed. The bearings will eventually need replaced, but because they don't see the literal hammering that goes on every rotation of a piston engine, they need replaced far less often -- and it's a much simpler task, too. To say that any part of this is the same as a gasoline engine rebuild is just ridiculous.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday June 02 2017, @07:01PM
Drive Unit replacements have been common in early Tesla cars.
Some users have had as many as 4 replacements. All at no cost to them.
Tesla Forums thread documents 271 such replacements, mostly with early models:
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/drive-unit-replacement-poll.29834/ [teslamotorsclub.com]
Most of these are minor noise issues, but Tesla will apparently swap the DU on the slightest complaint, until they found out that many of them were due to the need of a 50 cent shim.
Unsubstantiated horror stories of $15,000 replacement aside, apparently Tesla internally bills a Drive Unit replacement [teslamotorsclub.com] at around $6000, but the customer walks away not paying a cent.
The warranty goes to 8 years and 128,000 miles, but apparently DUs are covered much longer than that.
So lets say you had to have a DU replaced on Tesla after some LONG period of time. At $6000 its not substantially different then buying a new crate motor to drop in your car.
The thing is, you can easily expect 200,000 miles without an ICE engine rebuild (top only in most cases), to say nothing about replacement.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday June 02 2017, @04:04AM
You have never seen a Prius? It has no clutch, has brake pads that are good for longer than you care to count (I never changed them, and my Prius was bought in 2005 - already past its projected lifetime,) and neither the engine is expected to be rebuilt, nor the traction battery replaced. The future that you are eagerly awaiting is already here.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aclarke on Thursday June 01 2017, @08:37PM
Let's see the cost of petrol and diesel include all environmental and health externalities. I'd love to see this for batteries, but far more important for the present is the future externalized cost of our fossil fuel usage that we're not including in the cost to drive a car.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday June 02 2017, @03:29PM
You're overlooking the elephant in the room - the multi-billion dollar oil-industry subsidies.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:39PM
is this really necessary
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:42PM (1 child)
First one redneck neighbor buys one. Now 3. In last six months.
1-2yrs ago they all thought these to be worthless hippie fruitcake items.
Small sample. They still laugh at my electric mower though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday June 01 2017, @06:19PM
They will laugh right up until the day they get one themselves. Then it will be a brilliant decision.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 01 2017, @05:46PM
How about 20k Euros [wikipedia.org] before rebates, for a 130-miles range, normal-looking car?
(requires leasing the battery, but the flip-side is that's the greatest depreciating piece).
That compares favorably to gas-powered econoboxes of the same size.