Seems clear that Tesla has some meaningful technical advantages over their competitors since they seem perpetually a few years ahead in terms of batteries, motors, efficiency, etc.
Tesla definitely has an advantage with their cars. It seems like every time I see a new EV announced, I get a little excited... until I see the range and battery size. For example, the new Mustang Mach-E's highest range model has a battery pack (98.8 kWh) around the size of the Model S (100 kWh) to match the (long range, 75 kWh) Model 3's range. It is worthwhile noting that Tesla doesn't set reserves on their battery packs, but other companies do. The Mach-E mentioned earlier actually only gives you access to 88 kWh.
This is why I think swappable batteries should be receiving more attention. If manufacturers could align to a battery pack standard, you could make cars with three battery pack bays in their skateboard. For most of your day to day driving, you just use a single battery pack. Or people that have a longer commute could use two. If you're going on a road trip, you fill up all three. You're on your road trip and need to refill. You just swap out your packs and you're on your way. No need for high speed charging. The packs stored at the swap stations can double as grid storage. When you're not on big road trips, you're not dragging all the extra weight around. In general, it seems like you wouldn't have as much wasted unneeded battery capacity sitting in cars for trips people take once or twice a year. It just seems like the advantages to swappable batteries goes on and on. There is a company in China that's made significant progress pursuing this, but I don't think its going to take off.Tesla definitely has an advantage with their cars. It seems like every time I see a new EV announced, I get a little excited... until I see the range and battery size. For example, the new Mustang Mach-E's highest range model has a battery pack (98.8 kWh) around the size of the Model S (100 kWh) to match the (long range, 75 kWh) Model 3's range. It is worthwhile noting that Tesla doesn't set reserves on their battery packs, but other companies do. The Mach-E mentioned earlier actually only gives you access to 88 kWh.
It's a new paradigm, but it is still being imposed on our current world and infrastructure. Bridging over/under most downtown intersections isn't going to happen any time soon in the US and people want to make cities more pedestrian friendly, not less, so I doubt crossings will be eliminated. Somewhere like South Korea this is more realistic since it has already been in many large cities.pedestrian issues can be solved with overhead/underground crosses. It's not like that is difficult to deal with, and yes, reducing driving lanes is also *a good idea* if you are going to limit urban road traffic to AVs. automatons that actually obey order and communicate in real time regarding all ongoing situations would eliminate the need for all that asphalt--you can convert those lanes to bus/tram lanes and bicycle traffic.
and as Zorba says, yeah, restricting speeds to 30mph is likely, and also completely reasonable. It's not like that isn't already the default speed in these areas, anyway, because you can't realistically drive much faster than that in dense areas. and, these cars would almost certainly be faster from point to point at 30mph in an all-AV system compared to the current system where humans are allowed to drive up to 45mph in certain areas--you aren't dealing with humans constantly intentionally causing gridlock at every fricking intersection.
a lot of traffic lights and intersection stops could be eliminated if you start routing pedestrians over and under the robot cars.
Another thing I wanted to mention: when considering the current infrastructure for vehicular traffic and what we currently think is the gold standard for improvement: more cars means we need more lanes! the end! --you have to understand that this strategy is completely designed around humans driving cars. We have decades and decades of data that has fed this paradigm, and it isn't exactly wrong. But when imagining a completely different paradigm, where human behavior is removed from the equation, you have to completely alter your thinking. Essentially everything that has been established through the last century of human mobility is essentially irrelevant in this new system. Those standard arguments simply do not apply when you remove the most toxic variable from the system. It's difficult, but you literally have to tell your brain to stfu and tackle this problem from a completely foreign angle.
Tesla was moving in that direction for a bit, before shorters started trying to implode the company with overstated stories of fires related to damage to the undercarriage, so they started armoring them instead. In retrospect, it's probably still smarter to armor the underside than make them swappable, as I care more for the safety of the drivers than how annoyed they may be for having to charge multiple times on their weekly cross-country excursions everyone seems to be making.This is why I think swappable batteries should be receiving more attention. If manufacturers could align to a battery pack standard, you could make cars with three battery pack bays in their skateboard. For most of your day to day driving, you just use a single battery pack. Or people that have a longer commute could use two. If you're going on a road trip, you fill up all three. You're on your road trip and need to refill. You just swap out your packs and you're on your way. No need for high speed charging. The packs stored at the swap stations can double as grid storage. When you're not on big road trips, you're not dragging all the extra weight around. In general, it seems like you wouldn't have as much wasted unneeded battery capacity sitting in cars for trips people take once or twice a year. It just seems like the advantages to swappable batteries goes on and on. There is a company in China that's made significant progress pursuing this, but I don't think its going to take off.
It's a new paradigm, but it is still being imposed on our current world and infrastructure. Bridging over/under most downtown intersections isn't going to happen any time soon in the US and people want to make cities more pedestrian friendly, not less, so I doubt crossings will be eliminated. Somewhere like South Korea this is more realistic since it has already been in many large cities.
Have you ever heard the story about how the width of two horses asses created a basic design restraint on the space shuttle? http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html
But even with no stopping, intersections, even with full ideal AV result in slow downs and bottle necks because you still have to create room for the cross traffic. Way better than today, but no where close to infinite capacity.
It seems like you could do both, armor the bottom and still have the batteries swappable.Tesla was moving in that direction for a bit, before shorters started trying to implode the company with overstated stories of fires related to damage to the undercarriage, so they started armoring them instead. In retrospect, it's probably still smarter to armor the underside than make them swappable, as I care more for the safety of the drivers than how annoyed they may be for having to charge multiple times on their weekly cross-country excursions everyone seems to be making.
It might end up being a wash, if you still have to make 3x the number of batteries to account for vehicles + capacity at battery exchanges. You also have to ask who buys the batteries? If it's tethered to the car, it's the owner. If it's sitting at the battery exchange fuel depot, do they buy it? Does Tesla foot the bill?It seems like you could do both, armor the bottom and still have the batteries swappable.
While the longer charging times would be annoying, to me the bigger issue is the wasted battery capacity. If people are all getting cars with 120+ kWH batteries, and most of their needs would be met with 30 kWH batteries, that is a lot of wasted natural resources we are mining and refining.
I think we are drifting away from the original point, which was AV rideshares could basically eliminate mass transit within current road sizes. It'll likely improve throughput, but it could not fully replace PT in major urban areas, is my point.heh, I'm familiar with the railroad standards, and that when Russia built there's, they were off by the European standard, so the same train cars couldn't directly travel between countries when crossing that border. ...this created a much bigger problem when the USSR became a thing and started invading, illegally occupying, and murdering off northern and eastern European countries (..OK, I went off track, but it's still true!), because now their occupied states represented a new barrier for supplies going in, and occupied "dissidents" being shipped back to the Gulag. Russian trains couldn't pass in the Baltics and into Poland, and I think also the Ukraine--not sure about that one.
That still exists today, I think.
oh, and as we're creating new tunnels/overpasses for peds, we can work on installing more traffic circles at intersections, such that automated traffic has much less slowdown and stops!
but yeah, as I mentioned earlier, while all of this is *more than* theoretically possible, it does require a major overhaul in city design and our common ways of doing things, daily life experiences. This is usually the biggest hurdle when making such huge shifts.
...but at the same time, I saw some time last year or earlier some numbers that pointed to a general decline in car ownership/driver's licenses being awarded, in the younger sectors of our population, compared to previous generations at those ages. It looks as though the concept of owning a personal vehicle/actually learning how to drive doesn't have much momentum in the general "how to live life" for today's youngins, on average. All of these trends and technological advancements influence each other, of course, and so current assumptions about the difficulty in making this stuff happen might also be somewhat unfounded, because those of us that will actually be living in that world and making their kids in it, actually want that to happen, and don't really see that paradigm as contradictory to the world as they see it.
I don't think it would end up being a wash, not once BEVs go mainstream. You have around 300 million vehicles, as opposed to 170 thousand gas stations. You probably wouldn't need that many battery swap stations, since the majority of the time people would just charge at home, but we can still use that number. The number I see from most people is that they want 500 mile range before they wouldn't feel range anxiety anymore. For a passenger car, that requires about a 120 kWH battery. So if most people used 1 40 kWH battery pack for their day to day driving, you would be looking at saving around 500 million battery packs. Even if each station had 100 battery packs (extremely excessive) on site for swapping, that would be 170 million, so you would still be saving over 300 million battery packs.It might end up being a wash, if you still have to make 3x the number of batteries to account for vehicles + capacity at battery exchanges. You also have to ask who buys the batteries? If it's tethered to the car, it's the owner. If it's sitting at the battery exchange fuel depot, do they buy it? Does Tesla foot the bill?
Further issues arise when it comes to different platforms, different manufacturers, etc. I know the whole premise is to work on a standard, but even with basically a single company developing the entire basis of the infrastructure, you've already got competitors who feel they need to make different damned plugs for the things, much less batteries.
I'd rather stick with a one-manufacturer, one-battery, one-connector ecosystem.
At least the connectors should be a mandated standard. The problem was SAE was late to the game and Tesla didn't want to wait.It might end up being a wash, if you still have to make 3x the number of batteries to account for vehicles + capacity at battery exchanges. You also have to ask who buys the batteries? If it's tethered to the car, it's the owner. If it's sitting at the battery exchange fuel depot, do they buy it? Does Tesla foot the bill?
Further issues arise when it comes to different platforms, different manufacturers, etc. I know the whole premise is to work on a standard, but even with basically a single company developing the entire basis of the infrastructure, you've already got competitors who feel they need to make different damned plugs for the things, much less batteries.
I'd rather stick with a one-manufacturer, one-battery, one-connector ecosystem.
The trouble with a comparison with the propane bottles is that propane is more expensive than the container. It's inverted for batteries, they cost far more than the electricity that powers them. Who's going to finance a battery swap station that gets some trickle of payments for battery swaps + charging when you have to fund hundreds of thousands of dollars for batteries that you also have to replace. Taking Tesla's 100kWh battery as an example, and from what I'm seeing cited as around $100/kWh to produce, that means those batteries cost 10k each to produce right? Even assuming the swap stations got them at cost, that thing's gotta get charged and 'leased' 1250 times ($.08/kWh here) just to get into the black. Even assuming there's no damage to them, and assuming it's fine with the cycle count (I'm seeing 1k-2k cycles before degradation), that's very tight profit margins. It's almost a public service at that point.At least the connectors should be a mandated standard. The problem was SAE was late to the game and Tesla didn't want to wait.
If a battery swap were to work, I'd assume it'd be like the propane bottle exchanges. Some third party owns the batteries and you pay a premium for the power in the swapped batteries than you would from a charger. The batteries not in use provide return peak shaving the duck curve on the grid.
This is why I think swappable batteries should be receiving more attention. If manufacturers could align to a battery pack standard, you could make cars with three battery pack bays in their skateboard. For most of your day to day driving, you just use a single battery pack. Or people that have a longer commute could use two. If you're going on a road trip, you fill up all three. You're on your road trip and need to refill. You just swap out your packs and you're on your way. No need for high speed charging. The packs stored at the swap stations can double as grid storage. When you're not on big road trips, you're not dragging all the extra weight around. In general, it seems like you wouldn't have as much wasted unneeded battery capacity sitting in cars for trips people take once or twice a year. It just seems like the advantages to swappable batteries goes on and on. There is a company in China that's made significant progress pursuing this, but I don't think its going to take off.
That's would be the pro of what @mech is saying. You buy the car sans batteries, and you pay a lease/membership for the batteries. Something like a set per day price, and a small fee for swaps. Different memberships let you go from 1 to 3 for a week, etc.The trouble with a comparison with the propane bottles is that propane is more expensive than the container. It's inverted for batteries, they cost far more than the electricity that powers them. Who's going to finance a battery swap station that gets some trickle of payments for battery swaps + charging when you have to fund hundreds of thousands of dollars for batteries that you also have to replace. Taking Tesla's 100kWh battery as an example, and from what I'm seeing cited as around $100/kWh to produce, that means those batteries cost 10k each to produce right? Even assuming the swap stations got them at cost, that thing's gotta get charged and 'leased' 1250 times ($.08/kWh here) just to get into the black. Even assuming there's no damage to them, and assuming it's fine with the cycle count (I'm seeing 1k-2k cycles before degradation), that's very tight profit margins. It's almost a public service at that point.
For it to really work, ownership has to transfer from the car owner to some third party. Or at least for practical purposes.My issue with swapping battery packs is how do you guarantee that I don't get one in worse condition? For example, my Model 3is 2.5 years old with only 23k miles. I've never charged it to 100%; I've gone on a handful of trips where I charge to 95%, but it's mostly charged to 80%. Now, imagine if I stopped off at a battery swap, and I got a battery pack from an EV that's used heavily for distance travel... or a battery from an older car? If I don't go on many trips, I'd be stuck with the weaker battery until I swap again, and even then, I'm playing the lottery.
Oh, and speaking of batteries... I didn't realize this until my friend told me of his dilemma. Apparently, the 12V battery in his Model X was going bad and his car told him that. Sounds great, right? I'm sure we've all had a 12V battery die and the car just doesn't start one day. The problem is that Tesla doesn't make these batteries easy to swap. They're typically located beneath the frunk's plastic shell with other things potentially running over it. They're also not standard 12V batteries that you see in other vehicles. (I forget the term for them....) His worry was that he had to wait for Tesla's Mobile Service to replace his battery but he had no idea if it would die between now and then. (In my experience, when you schedule an appointment with Mobile Service, it's often 2-4 weeks out.)
Heck, my 12V gel battery in my Grand Cherokee is located under the driver seat. I probably should look on youtube, but i have no earthly idea how that thing can be extracted without removing the monster power seat, which is the owner of all kinds of items never to be seen again.My issue with swapping battery packs is how do you guarantee that I don't get one in worse condition? For example, my Model 3is 2.5 years old with only 23k miles. I've never charged it to 100%; I've gone on a handful of trips where I charge to 95%, but it's mostly charged to 80%. Now, imagine if I stopped off at a battery swap, and I got a battery pack from an EV that's used heavily for distance travel... or a battery from an older car? If I don't go on many trips, I'd be stuck with the weaker battery until I swap again, and even then, I'm playing the lottery.
Oh, and speaking of batteries... I didn't realize this until my friend told me of his dilemma. Apparently, the 12V battery in his Model X was going bad and his car told him that. Sounds great, right? I'm sure we've all had a 12V battery die and the car just doesn't start one day. The problem is that Tesla doesn't make these batteries easy to swap. They're typically located beneath the frunk's plastic shell with other things potentially running over it. They're also not standard 12V batteries that you see in other vehicles. (I forget the term for them....) His worry was that he had to wait for Tesla's Mobile Service to replace his battery but he had no idea if it would die between now and then. (In my experience, when you schedule an appointment with Mobile Service, it's often 2-4 weeks out.)
This is why I think leasing is the best solution. It also spreads out the risk for failed batteries. The swapping stations would charge batteries, and would also check battery health. Batteries with health below a certain threshold would get pulled and sent for refurbishment or repurposed for permanent grid storage. You could order batteries based on health, and they could price the leases based on the battery health. You only need 30 miles of range a day? Lease an older battery for a lower cost. The biggest hurdle seems to be getting everyone to play along and to agree to a standard.My issue with swapping battery packs is how do you guarantee that I don't get one in worse condition? For example, my Model 3is 2.5 years old with only 23k miles. I've never charged it to 100%; I've gone on a handful of trips where I charge to 95%, but it's mostly charged to 80%. Now, imagine if I stopped off at a battery swap, and I got a battery pack from an EV that's used heavily for distance travel... or a battery from an older car? If I don't go on many trips, I'd be stuck with the weaker battery until I swap again, and even then, I'm playing the lottery.
Oh, and speaking of batteries... I didn't realize this until my friend told me of his dilemma. Apparently, the 12V battery in his Model X was going bad and his car told him that. Sounds great, right? I'm sure we've all had a 12V battery die and the car just doesn't start one day. The problem is that Tesla doesn't make these batteries easy to swap. They're typically located beneath the frunk's plastic shell with other things potentially running over it. They're also not standard 12V batteries that you see in other vehicles. (I forget the term for them....) His worry was that he had to wait for Tesla's Mobile Service to replace his battery but he had no idea if it would die between now and then. (In my experience, when you schedule an appointment with Mobile Service, it's often 2-4 weeks out.)
I think we are drifting away from the original point, which was AV rideshares could basically eliminate mass transit within current road sizes. It'll likely improve throughput, but it could not fully replace PT in major urban areas, is my point.
Redesigning an already built out urban environment with traffic circles and tunnels is not that likely, IMHO. Yes, I believe infrastructure will evolve as things change, but just like a bat will never evolve into a tree, NYC isn't going to evolve into the ideal AV infrastructure where 5M people can commute into work in ~20 roadway lanes. Even when neglicting those AV still consume space and must have places to drop off and pick up.
Cities need to evolve towards more transit, more walking, more bikes and less cars, not more mystical cars.
The difference is a full tank of gas even for the largest consumer vehicle costs around $100 and weighs around 250 lbs. The tank itself is negligible in terms of price and resources, so there's no point. On the other hand, you could be looking at a difference of over a ton for a battery capable of driving 500 miles vs a battery driving 150 miles. You are also using three times the resources to produce the battery, which isn't negligible like it is to produce a gas tank that is three times the size.EVs are quickly falling subject to their own version of Moore's Law, this one being that charging times will halve every 18 months. Right now, it takes about an hour to fully charge a Model 3 on a supercharger. In about 18 months, Tesla or a competitor will halve that to 30 minutes. In 3 or so years, 15 minutes. And so forth until in less than a decade they will recharge as quickly as refilling a tank of gas. And nobody ever talks about changing out gas tanks to get a full tank of gas, do they?
A lot of this improvement in charging times is going to come from increasing the voltages. And it also works both ways, meaning discharge rates improve with charging rates. Meaning (among other things) that EVs are poised to destroy the drag strip in the near future.
I think the biggest issue with continuing to bump the charging times will be the stations getting that much power allotment.EVs are quickly falling subject to their own version of Moore's Law, this one being that charging times will halve every 18 months. Right now, it takes about an hour to fully charge a Model 3 on a supercharger. In about 18 months, Tesla or a competitor will halve that to 30 minutes. In 3 or so years, 15 minutes. And so forth until in less than a decade they will recharge as quickly as refilling a tank of gas. And nobody ever talks about changing out gas tanks to get a full tank of gas, do they?
A lot of this improvement in charging times is going to come from increasing the voltages. And it also works both ways, meaning discharge rates improve with charging rates. Meaning (among other things) that EVs are poised to destroy the drag strip in the near future.
No. The biggest issue with fossil fuels isn't the extraction process itself, but rather the emissions when burning the fossil fuels. There are certain locations we would prefer not to extract fossil fuels, such as pristine wilderness areas, but we recognize mining will have to happen. We just need to do it in an environmentally responsible way. Even with the current energy grid, electric cars reduce green house gas emissions over their total life cycle except for in a very few states where the grid is extremely coal dependent. This will only improve with time.Wouldn’t all these electric cars be an environmental disaster? You’re exchanging mining for Dino fuel with mining for battery compounds. Manufacturing of batteries at that scale causes mass pollution. You have to constantly charge these batteries and currently that’s done with polluting power plants. Then there’s the whole non-existent battery recycling program.
Think small reactors powered by .... wait for it... water. Just saying, batteries as we know them will be changing. Carbon nano tubes, D2, graphine. The patents are flying.
Wouldn’t all these electric cars be an environmental disaster? You’re exchanging mining for Dino fuel with mining for battery compounds. Manufacturing of batteries at that scale causes mass pollution. You have to constantly charge these batteries and currently that’s done with polluting power plants. Then there’s the whole non-existent battery recycling program.