How long before 40% of cars on the road in your part of the world are electric?

[El Presidente]

How long before 40% of cars on the road in your part of the world are electric?

I have to say that it is happening faster than I would have thought given the limited infrastructure here. 

5 years 

10 years

15 years

20 years

25 years +

Have a crack at the poll but let us know the work going on behind the scenes in your area to cater for Electric cars. 

 

 

 

 

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[Fuzz]

For Australia, 25+ years. Just look at our NBN scheme, how long it takes to build a second international airport for Sydney, or a rail line from Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne. It's obvious we have take our sweet bloody time to do anything related to infrastructure.

[El Presidente]

42 minutes ago, Fuzz said:

For Australia, 25+ years. Just look at our NBN scheme, how long it takes to build a second international airport for Sydney, or a rail line from Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne. It's obvious we have take our sweet bloody time to do anything related to infrastructure.

 That was my thought as well. However i am seeing a Ton of tesla's on the road at the moment in Brisbane.  if you are driving 400 km a week and you can plug in at home, what infrastructure do you need?

[Fuzz]

28 minutes ago, El Presidente said:

 That was my thought as well. However i am seeing a on of tesla's on the road at the moment in Brisbane.  if you are driving 400 km a week and you can plug in at home, what infrastructure do you need?

At home? A 3 phase power point, and more than dinky solar or wind powerstations to charge it.

Personally, I'd love an electric sports car, but I'll hold off until we have plenty of fast charge stations all over the city. Problem is if you forget to charge your car and run out of battery power. Either you stuff the battery (Tesla warns you never to fully discharge the battery), hope somebody nearby can charge your car, or have it towed. It's not like you can walk to the nearest servo and get a jerry can of electricity.

[Auspaul]

I am saying 20 years Australia is hopeless with infrastructure   look at the NBN . Could have had a 6 lane concrete highway built by the US after world war 2  on the East Coast from the top to the bottom  but our government said no. Currently the party in power want to get more revenue from electric car owners because they don't pay for petrol and don't contribute to paying for roads through the excise and tax on petrol

[gweilgi]

The Germans have been at it for years, and they got nowhere even with five-figure cash in hand subsidies.

Until they sort out range and recharge times, we won't be seeing mass electric cars anytime soon, IMHO.  And when they do come, it will be service vehicles and public transport first, rather than private cars.  

[GrouchoMarx]

I don't see it going gangbusters very soon - 10 years is way too soon, 15 at least.

You still have to re-charge them - more often that a gas car. Plus there's till very limited places to do so. PLUS I can fill up my car in 5 minutes - versus.... hours? 

Oh - and that happy electricity has to come from somewhere.

Nope, not going to happen all that soon, in spite of what the green wackos want.

[fastkiller13]

I think we’ll see self driving cars before we see electric cars. In the US at least the power companies have a very firm grasp on all solar power. Be it limiting your panels if you’re attached to the grid or buying up patents for any new tech. 

I think everyone with a smart cell phone knows how much battteries suck. So my thought is that until we see some real movement in small flexible and efficient solar charging people aren’t giving up the convenience of filling up and driving off in under 10 minutes. 

Oh and we’re all vain assholes, at least Americans, so we’ve also got to wait until those imaginary small efficient flexible panels get pretty before we drive a car covered in them. 

[fitzy]

20 minutes ago, fastkiller13 said:

I think we’ll see self driving cars before we see electric cars. In the US at least the power companies have a very firm grasp on all solar power. Be it limiting your panels if you’re attached to the grid or buying up patents for any new tech. 

I think everyone with a smart cell phone knows how much battteries suck. So my thought is that until we see some real movement in small flexible and efficient solar charging people aren’t giving up the convenience of filling up and driving off in under 10 minutes. 

Oh and we’re all vain assholes, at least Americans, so we’ve also got to wait until those imaginary small efficient flexible panels get pretty before we drive a car covered in them. 

Speaking of self driving cars California just removed the requirement of having to have a driver behind the wheel. 

[benfica_77]

In 15-20 years I truly believe in more progressive countries i.e. Scandinavian countries hopefully Canada as well we will see a big shift into. The autonomous cars is a bit of a mind F$ck. It will revolutionize the trucking industry, taxis etc. A friend of mine works at Tesla and the staff there work like dogs but they are moving humanity into a new era.

I understand that in Australia electricity bills are insanely high, hopefully with Elon Musk's other venture Solar City and the Powerbanks he's also created it will help drop the price of electricity which would make electric cars more viable.  

[BrightonCorgi]

Are you defining electric car as fully electric or a hybrid?

[JamesKPolkEsq]

I bought a second hand Nissan Leaf, and I have lots of good things to say about electric conveyances. 

You can get a "level 2" charger installed for relatively cheap - in the US it is a 220v charger - that makes charging up really quick. 

I, however, have never needed it, as I just plug it in every night like a smartphone. 

It wouldn't be possible to have it be my only car at this point, but if the family goes on a longer than 60 mile round-trip, we take the wife's car. 

There is no maintenance (no transmission, no breakjobs, no engine wear) and it is actually pretty zippy. 

Still, I can't see it happening faster than 15 years, even in places where the infrastructure is being deployed rapidly. The interia behind gas powered vehicles is just too big a hurdle to overcome more quickly than that.... 

[NSXCIGAR]

Since fully electric is impractical and unprofitable electric cars will only reach those kinds of levels when governments mandate it and/or drive gasoline-powered out of existence by force.

The whole thing is bizarre to me. Charging isn't cheap--only about half the cost of gasoline on average in the US. Also, if EV ever did reach levels close to 40%, the tax revenues lost to gasoline would be significant, and as much of those taxes are used for infrastructure I'd expect the taxes to shift toward electric. And of course the cost of electricity would rise due to demand. 

EVs are also still more expensive to purchase than gasoline for equivalent models so there's still additional cost that must be offset over time. And of course, for all you greenies, the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV from the point of manufacture is virtually identical to gasoline as the batteries are extremely taxing on the environment from manufacture to disposal. 

[LGC]

Not gonna happen... batteries are expensive, oil is big business, building charging stations in the middle of nowhere is expensive, expanding the power grid is expensive, fossil fuels needs to be consumed to generate electricity

[planetary]

California I think has about 14 million vehicles on the road vs. a population of 40 million -- one car for every 3 people.

The governor has set a goal of 5 million EVs on the road by 2030.

Assuming 10% population growth every 10 years, the population of California will be about 50 million by 2030, yielding approx 17M cars by 2030.  If we hit the governor's goal, that will 5M EVs / 17M total cars = 30%.

Assuming most of this growth is back-loaded, it would probably take another 5 years to reach 40% of the total vehicles?  Call it 2035, which means just under 20 years.

...And I'm going to guess that California have far more EVs that most other locations in the world.

[kwsaw63]

Given that Singapore is so small and cars need COEs that only last 10 years, I can envisage 40% of cars being electric in 10 years time. We’re already seeing car sharing schemes with electric cars and it’s not uncommon to see electric cars on the road. I have access to an electric Renault Fluence ZE at work and it is an absolute hoot to drive. I love having 100% of the torque available all the time. Traffic light getaways have never been so easy & fun!

[Hammer Smokin']

not sure how long it'll take, but man, is there ever a TON less maintenance on an electric motor vs a combustion engine.

not a lot of "average joes" understand how much less is involved in an electric motor.

[gweilgi]

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

Since fully electric is impractical and unprofitable electric cars will only reach those kinds of levels when governments mandate it and/or drive gasoline-powered out of existence by force.

There is that, yes.  

A somewhat related case in point: a court in Germany has just handed down a verdict permitting cities to impose blanket bans on diesel cars on grounds of pollution.  At a stroke, a whole class of internal combustion vehicle has been rendered unsaleable and effectively worthless.  This may not be much of an issue in the US where diesel is not very popular, but in Germany, fully one third of all vehicles on the road are oil-burners ... including most delivery vehicles and public transport.  So this is precisely the sort of pressure you are talking of...

 

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

The whole thing is bizarre to me. Charging isn't cheap--only about half the cost of gasoline on average in the US. Also, if EV ever did reach levels close to 40%, the tax revenues lost to gasoline would be significant, and as much of those taxes are used for infrastructure I'd expect the taxes to shift toward electric. And of course the cost of electricity would rise due to demand. 

I'd actually expect the tax burden to shift to the vehicles themselves, rather than the fuel -- specifically, a tax per mile driven.  Electricity usage is too varied, too ubiquitous to be taxed fairly.  It is so essential to our society and economy that the people would not stand for it.  A straightforward usage tax, on the other hand, can be sold: you pay for what you use.  Simple.  

 

4 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

EVs are also still more expensive to purchase than gasoline for equivalent models so there's still additional cost that must be offset over time. And of course, for all you greenies, the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV from the point of manufacture is virtually identical to gasoline as the batteries are extremely taxing on the environment from manufacture to disposal. 

Isn't it funny how green eco-warriors never bother to calculate the carbon footprint of their preferred technologies from "dust to dust"?  Talk about power generation, and they will extol the virtues of solar or wind and how many CO2 molecules will be saved without a care in the world how dirty the manufacture of a single solar panel really is -- talk about coal, and they will happily tot up every last carbon molecule produced from digging up the black stuff to the socket in your wall.  The same with cars: making batteries is *immensely* dirty business (and they will typically last only 5-7 years) but that, somehow, mystically, does not matter because we are consuming magically clean energy.  

 

[ayepatz]

Where I live in Surrey, people are too fond of their Chelsea Tractors to give them up, so the local council have done diddlysquat about charging points. They barely even bother with road maintenance. They’ve signally failed, as usual, to grit the roads, despite the fact that everyone has known about this Siberian weather front well in advance of it actually hitting.

Contrast this with Amsterdam, where I was working last month, and there are charging points everywhere, and most of the Taxi fleet appear to be Teslas.

[Ethernut]

Not in my lifetime.. and I have probably 40 years left..

USA

[Cigar Surgeon]

I think you're going to see a that percentage of autonomous level 4 vehicles on the road before electric vehicles. 

[SCgarman]

Here in the USA gasoline and diesel aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I will be long dead by that time.

[Magus]

In the US it will be incredibly hard to beat the convenience of gas. Throw in the cost of an electric car and how long a car will be kept on the road here (e.g. poverty cars) and I don't see it happening with the current technology.

Another issue would be the power grid. Did some really rough numbers and to get to 40% we'd need to increase the current generation by 10%+. Which doesn't sound like much, but we already have cities that go through rolling blackouts during the summer.

[PigFish]

Hmmm... My diesel Jetta. About 700 mile range and almost 50 mpg... Cost at the pump, 40 to 50 bucks. Make that electric and sell it to me for less and you got a potential owner here!

Yep, and people in hell are still waiting on ice-water!

I guess the question is, when will people in hell stop waiting on ice-water?

-Piggy

[Hookmaker]

I was one of the first to get a Tesla Model S in Europe, been stuck in it for almost 5 years now. NOTHING beats it! At first I believed - but my own country Denmark doesn't move at all. Our neighbours in Norway are moving though. Almost 50% of all new car sales are electric/hybrid. I don't give a S*** about all the "against" comments, one thing is indisputable: BIG OIL is on the way out, the Koch brothers are soon heading down under (6 feet) and so it should be: Most of the wars in the last 50-60 years at least have been fought over this black S***, that for certain.