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Speculating about the next years, Fred Lambert writes that once there are good all-electric options across the car market internal combustion engines will be as good as dead.
Before 2025, there's going to be a point where there's not going to be a single car buyer in their right mind who's going to want to buy a new gasoline car. Not a single one. Because they're going to look at the market, they're going to look at what's out there, and all the different electric car models that are out there now. By that point, by 2025, there's going to be dozens and dozens of more EV models than what's available today. And attractive ones!
It's going to be hard for someone to justify buying a gas-powered car at that point, because they're going to think about the resale value of it.
I think the resale value of gasoline cars is going to drop massively in the next five years, and predicted value is going to drop even more drastically. Buying a gasoline car right now is a bad choice. Buying a gasoline car within the next five years is going to be just a financial suicide for most people.
Earlier on SN:
Every Electric Vehicle on Sale in the US for 2019 and Its Range (2019)
Australian Plan to Ban Petrol and Diesel Cars (2019)
Have We Reached Peak Car? (2018)
(Score: 3, Informative) by dltaylor on Tuesday July 09 2019, @10:55AM (4 children)
There are far too many places in the USA. Canada, Mexico, not mention Asia, Australia, Africa, Central and South America (oops, I did mention them) that will not have usable electric infrastructure by 2025. Large cities MAY be able to pull it off, but the current progress shows no sign of that, either.
Perhaps the USA Interstates could have a buildout (big rigs might help drive that if the range is sufficient for several hundred miles hauling a load), but have you ever driven (or ridden a motorcycle) across the western USA? These states are BIG and, mostly, EMPTY, and it will be decades before there's a sufficient set of chargers off the Interstates for electrics to be really usable.
City demand may dry up most of the new ICE production, but used ICE cars/trucks/bikes will sell at a premium if/when that happens.
BTW, where are we going to get the metals used to make efficient batteries and motors for a billion vehicles?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 09 2019, @11:18AM
It's a slightly different problem space, but I think electric boats have made a great study of what is not yet sufficient about electric vehicle tech: the batteries.
If all you need a motor on a boat for is puttering slowly for a few minutes a day, it's great, we're there, hell you can even put enough solar panels on a boat to do that - in the right parts of the world.
However, when we go out in our boat, sometimes we sail, but sometimes we motor for 3-4 hours, and we're just going on little pleasure cruises in a circle back to the same dock. That kicks up the cost of batteries from maybe $1K for a 30 minute capable system to $10K+ for something that might run for 5 hours - and if you want to actually cruise down the coast, running 16 hours a day, on diesel that's just an 8 gallon fillup, but on electric now you need a $30K battery bank, and a dock with a 50A hookup if you want to hope to charge enough in 8 hours to run the next 16.
Cars have access to better infrastructure, but not everywhere. Cars do often run little out-and-back missions from home to work or shopping and back, but not always. Even when "fast" charging stations are plentiful along your route (2025 is optimistic for much of the US), the time to tank up the equivalent of 20 gallons of petrol in electric is... unattractive.
As a kid in my late teens, I bought cars for under $1000 (call that under $3000 today) that I could fuel with money from my minimum wage job and take 1000 mile trips just for the hell of it. The barrier to entry with electric is much much higher, and will continue to be so until they make another 10x improvement in battery tech cost and charging time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 09 2019, @03:33PM (1 child)
I think there is a bit of a problem with this argument.
If electric cars displace gasoline cars in a significant fraction it is likely that many existing gasoline stations will close because selling gasoline will in many places no longer be a viable business, and the price of gasoline at the remaining pump stations is likely to rise substantially. This would probably make gasoline cars less useful overall due to cost and lack of infrastructure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 10 2019, @01:34AM
Probably, many of those gas stations that people use only make a slim percentage of the money from selling gas. The bulk of the station profit comes from the convenience store that's attached. If fewer people come through and buy things, it wouldn't take much to put them out of business.
The bulk of the profits from the gas sales are made by the company that has the logo on the station, not necessarily the station owner.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:31PM
sudo mod me up