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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday July 09 2019, @07:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the electrifying-news dept.

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)


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  • (Score: 2) by ledow on Wednesday July 10 2019, @10:45AM (2 children)

    by ledow (5567) on Wednesday July 10 2019, @10:45AM (#865335) Homepage

    Solar power is entirely the wrong source for such things. Too low power, far too concentrated and intense a peak load to supply locally (your employer putting panels on all their buildings won't be enough to charge the cars in the car park significantly).

    Batteries haven't changed in decades. The lithium modules in a Tesla are industry standard from the early days of Li-ion. You have literally count mainstream battery technologies on your hand: Alkaline, lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, NiMH, Li-ion, Li-poly. And even there the last is still small-scale and experimental. That's every viable battery technology since almost the days of Volta. You can no more get a Li-ion with a huge capacity now than you could ten years ago. They might be a little cheaper, but the tech is virtually identical.

    I've lived in / know people who live in apartment complexes where there is no Internet, no TV - every flat has to do them themselves. My flat gets a maximum 10Mbps ADSL. I use 4G instead, and refused to use the landlords enforced-ISP / telephony provider (sorry, but I can do better, cheaper, with my mobile phone). There are flats all down my street with their own satellite dish on their outside wall because there is no central TV provision (I myself use online services rather than a TV anyway). I'm not a million miles from Central London, this is still the case, and my flat costs a fortune - people are very impressed that I earn enough to live where I do and pay the rent I pay. Hell, my flat still has a pre-pay electric meter that runs Economy 7 (two-rate electric for day and night, a hangover from the 70's blackouts), storage heaters and an immersion hot-water heater (so if you want a bath tomorrow, better remember to put the hot water on tonight!). You can't even swap it out for a smart-meter because of the legacy installation.

    Sorry, but I know people who live in Ealing (incredibly expensive!) who don't own a car because they'd rather live there and sacrifice the car rather than pay parking, try to park anywhere each day, etc. They have to rent a car each day to get to work using Zipcar. People aren't going to change their lifestyle to do without a car, but neither are landlords going to go all-out to capture electric car owners when they're making money hand-over-fist for virtually zero outlay.

    Electric cars are going to suffer from the same problems as ICE cars... plus you just can't charge them anywhere.

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:00PM (1 child)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday July 10 2019, @06:00PM (#865444) Journal

    Then it seems the critical breakthrough is not more capacity, but much, much faster charging that doesn't greatly shorten battery life or do anything else unacceptably detrimental. A rate of 10km of range gained per minute would make a huge difference. The current recharge rate is something like 0.25km per minute, on a 240V, Level 2 connection.

    If not batteries, there's other energy tech such as fuel cells, supercapacitors, solar cells, flywheels. There are so many fronts on which research is advancing that I really think it's only a matter of time.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @03:06AM (#865646)

      There might not be enough copper for the wires to support widespread charging at the high rate you propose, you are talking megawatts (which is the sort of rate when you fill up a tank with gasoline).