As several of you pointed out, our video on electric vehicles which ran last week contained several mistakes and omissions. I was very unhappy about this and decided to revise and reupload it. Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Kudos for acknowledging the mistakes! Takes a pair to pull off! Given the climate I live in and huge distances involved in routine trips, EV will never be an option here simply from survival standpoint. I often have to park off the road during blizzard and wait the blizzard out inside the car (with the engine off - obviously - i have layers to survive -40 'F inside the car just fine). With the gasoline car, I know that I can simply wait it out, sleep in the car and survive. Try to take a wild guess how long will the EV battery last at -40 'F/ - 40'C and whether the car will start after , say, 8-10 hours out in the elements (full exposure to wind-chills down to -60 'F), especially after having driven 200-300 kms already, but if someone's aspiration is to win a Darwin's Award, hey - no judgement there :) That being said, EV could be a nice, fourth (not second, not third) summer car. I can see it could be used for about 3-4 months out of a year, probably 2, perhaps even 3 times per week for things like - getting an ice cream, picking up mail or visiting neighbors across the street :) On a second thought, for $80,000, I can probably imagine a nicer summer car than a typical fugly EV...
I haven't finished the video yet, but personally, I don't like how she seems to talk about the amounts of money needed for EV transitioning as if it's a fool's errand. As if that's waaayyy beyond what's reasonable for a country's expenditure. It makes it sound defeatist which isn't the kind of message we need.
@@VladR1024 EV batteries don't technically lose charge in the cold. You just can't get the energy out till they are warm again. (Which in your case would be a problem, I agree) But sodium batteries are coming and they work with close to 100% efficiency up to -20°C. Even at -40°C I'd expect them to work decently well, but time will have to tell there. Does your combustion car even start at that temperatures? Don't they need a block heater at that point? Before somebody asks why the range is worse in winter then: heating, winter tires and worse road conditions.
Hi Sabine, your mind set for AC home charging is based on combustion engine fuel tank refills. You go to the service station when your fuel tank is low. With an electric vehicle you top-up charge every time you drive into your car port or garage. On average most daily distance covered by a vehicle is less the 50km. This would require approximately 4 to 6 kwh of charging energy. With a 15 amp AC socket this will take approximately 2 hours or less. If you have solar and charge during the day the cost to do so will be small or nearly free. It's great having control of your own electric fuel supply at home. Will never go back to ICE vehicle.
I fully agree on the fuel tank refill analogy @henvan8737, several times during the video I found you, Sabine, try to apply "old-style" (i.e. petrol/energy) mindset one to one to BEVs. Another example is peak loads for the grid (transformers). This assumes energy generation and distribution will remain forever centralized, but we already see a disruption there happening right now due tue exponentially growth of renewable energies. So, yes the grid needs to change and become more flexible but mainly due to renewables and not BEV. And again, this is already happening. There are smart home chargers on the market which charge your car whenever there is cheap electricity (and low load to the grid). Also, every BEV and home owner will add solar to the roof, for purely economic reasons, thus effectively reducing load to grid. Not to mention vehicle to grid which you can already buy in some countries (e.g. in Germany: Volkswagen - E3DC) All of that (and more to come) is reducing load to grid and is part of a transformation, that is happening anyway due to solar+wind even if no BEV would exist on earth...
As a new EV owner, I was warned against daily charging. There is a limit to the number of times a battery can be charged. Topping off your EV battery is similar to keeping your phone or laptop always plugged in. It reduces the life span of the battery. I was told to use the battery for what it was intended. I drive my EV down to a charge level where the remaining distance is at or below 50 miles, unless I plan to drive a considerable distance. Then I charge it up to 80% to ensure I can make it back home.
@@lawrenceemke1866 yes it treu if lithium batteries are kept full they eat away at the catode best is to put it in staorage charge i think 3.7 volts per cell with the ev batteries but you want to have it full so when you want to drive you can go even having youre battery at at full for a week will damage it.i know this from drone racing and using lithium batteries we would store them at storage charge so they will keep there punch if you did not do that the batteries would get weak very quickly
@@jbcola74 yes it will if you want to store the ev you need to put it in storage charge but there is no option for that and fast chasrging will damage it to yes it can do it but if you charge slow the battery will last longer
Biphase in the US. Every house has 240V coming in, and it's split into 120V. You just need to run a 240 circuit to your driveway for the charger (it cost us about $900, but 30% was a direct federal income tax deduction). The problem is apartment buildings that don't have parking.
CARB liers about the efficiency of EVs. In their ARB/MSD/7---94 they claim that battery efficiency is 80% and motor is 90%. These are LIES!!!! Charging a battery in one hour is 5.88% efficient, in 15 minutes it is only 0.3675%. The motor depends on how many stops it makes. Ech time it starts the motor and system efficiency is almost ZERO!!!!
Sorry for being a week late with this comment. Thank you for taking pride in your work. Too many youtubers don't look back to correct their content. I appreciate all of your videos. I love the humor and the density of accurate scientific information.
We have been driving a Chevy Volt for 6 years. 90% of our charging is at home. Often you don’t use 100% of the power and don’t need to charge every night. And the big omission in the revised version is the cost savings of routine repairs. In six years: no brake pads replaced, no electric motor adjustments, no battery maintenance! Sure, replacing the whole battery would be expensive, but that is more like replacing an internal combustion engine rather than a gas tank. It happens, but very rarely. In my experience, the vast majority of EV drivers would never go back to the high cost of gas and routine maintenance. Thanks for asking for input Sabine. Your integrity is showing. 😊
Generaly, I agree with this article except the notion on brake pads: less used brakes will rust away quickly, so they will need to be replaced. Some EV manufacturers use good old drum brakes…
There are contrary anecdotes I'm seeing here on toob to yours . But I also read comments such as yours . The scales are for me tipping against the current approaches adopted to set up an EV world .. The disasters that occur in Tjyna for byd and Huawei have been censored/suppressed . I'd like to see EVs as auxiliary household vehicles for city and short range use with free registration if owners already possess an ice vehicle. Range be not too ambitious either in order to not cram cells hazardously too close .
Brake pad replacement is only an indicator of use. Lasting 6 years has nothing to do with electric or gas. My guess is you don't drive much. I operated a taxi for 10 years. Gas powered. New brake pads every 30 days. Lack of use will also help the battery last longer but you are soon coming up for replacement. Batteries degrade over time. I'm sure you're very happy with your EV, but there are good and bad points to everything.
I was looking for such a list. It's easy to miss important corrections, and you may be left with a mistaken idea because it wasn't explicitly pointed out.
Gasoline stations make very little money from selling gasoline, the markup is only about 1.2%. They make money from the sales of lottery tickets, convenience foods, beer, water, etc. So the basic infrastructure is there to set up an electric charging area, the main thing needed is actually convenient land areas close to highways to setup a charging station. A present day gasoline station has the conveniences a person having to wait 20 minutes or more to charge their vehicles need, bathrooms, food and drinks. Solar panel chargers set up to charge vehicles sitting at work sites would be no stress on the electrical system. A solar panel system at home would help take draws off the electrical system during the day to run home systems like air-conditioning. Being more decentralized in electricity production would help to allow the present system to not need huge upgrades to support an electric vehicle society.
Thank you for painting a more complete picture in this revised video. I'd like to point out, as an EV owner that is charging from a 230V wall socket, you don't need to charge for a whole day. Most of the time, you will not be at 0% but more around 50%. Also, even if you charge from empty, you still don't have to charge it to 100% if you don't need it! You charge what you need.
And even more importantly, we don't all charge from 20% to 80% every night. These calculations need to also include the average distance people drive each day and the average energy consumption of the EVs on the road to calculate the amount of energy needed to charge every night. And they never take solar and home battery uptake into account. I pretty much only need to charge once a week, and I do that from solar on my house, mostly on weekends. Most people doing the work commute will find one or two charging sessions a week will meet their needs easily. If your workplace has the sense to go solar and provides charging infrastructure for employees, then the problem goes away. All the talk about grid infrastructure needs is often partly driven by grid companies seeking to profit from investment in their networks. One of the real drivers of cleaning up our energy systems will be decentralisation, ideally behind the meter, through solar and home storage (and stationary batteries are a much easier target than mobile ones from the resource perspective). Some sensible investment, through low or no interest loans for people to buy locally manufactured home batteries would go a massive way towards grid resilience. Oh, and we get increased domestic security as a byproduct by massively increasing the number of targets an adversary has to hid to cripple our energy systems, and by onshoring more and more of our energy sources.
Yes, I think most of the projections for electricity usage by electric vehicles are inflated. It's advantageous to inflate them for both petrochemical interests and electric grid operators, not to mention various political groups. This paper presents what I think is an even-handed, trustworthy estimate: Low energy: Estimating electric vehicle electricity use - david s. rapson rapson.ucdavis.edu/uploads/8/4/7/1/84716372/bbrw_paper_nber_final.pdf At least, I think it is, but since I'm no energy expert I could be wrong.
"Time/energy to charge to 100%" is a completely irrelevant metric. EV manufacturers need to start advertising in terms of miles/hour of charging instead of whatever the hell they're doing now. My 2018 Leaf is 250km on a full charge of 40kWh, which means it charges 60km worth per hour on a Level 2 or 12km worth per hour on a standard 120V. If you commute to work every day and you spend only 10 hours at home, you'll still be able to top up every night plugging into your wall socket as long as your commute is less than 120km both ways. As far as charge times goes, that's literally the only figure that matters.
THIS is why I appreciate your channel, you updated a video based on your current understanding of the topic. IF everyone did this, it'd make things a lot simpler.
Since you asked, I’m driving a Subaru Solterra in Japan, and so far am absolutely loving it. The public chargers, while not ubiquitous, are at least common and have even some 100% free options if you’re willing to visit a public park in Tokyo. A quick charge at a highway stop is ¥800 with a ¥4000/mo membership fee, or double that without (break even at 3 charges/mo) and several malls such as those run by Mitsui and Aeon have chargers, some of which are free and only cost parking fees, which of course you can also waive by shopping. Many smaller shops have public chargers with the same card system as the highway rest areas, and if approved, businesses can install them completely on the government dime, equipment and construction both, if they’re available to the public, even when payment is required to use them. I have encountered situations where I couldn’t use the specific charger I wanted, the high amperage chargers are taken first of course, but I haven’t this far encountered a situation where I had to queue for an available charger. Then again, I only took delivery of the car last week, there’s plenty of time yet to be inconvenienced by the bad manners and whims of other drivers. The standard highway charger is 50kW, which can be awkward in a Solterra with a 71kWh battery. Public rapid chargers limit you to 30 minutes per use, and so while they add about 140 km of range, they in no way will push the battery from 20% to 80% in a single charging session. This is where my preference for said higher amperage chargers is from, and yet some infrastructure is as low as 25 kW, though that’s not typical. The one thing I do really like about the public charging infrastructure is that there is real-time usage reporting. From either an app or my car navigation, the available, usage or out of service state of chargers is visible, and my car at least lets you restrict searching to available chargers only. All of that is subject to change of course, but that’s been my experience thus far.
Hi Sabine! I've been driving my Tesla Model Y since June of 2021 and my experience has been as follows: - I never think about going to a gas station. No more calculating if I should stop at a gas station before or after my next destination (or wait until tomorrow). Just plug in at night and forget about it. - No more standing outside in the wind, rain and cold to fill up the tank. - On the rare occasion I do need to use a Supercharger, just plug right in. No swiping your credit card as the charger knows who you are and knows how to bill you. - Driving is tireless as I rarely need to use the brake. Letting off the accelerator automatically switches to regenerative braking which slows the car to a stop. No more switching your foot back and forth in slow traffic. - Tesla service staff comes to my house for certain service calls. Recalls have been handled via over-the-air software updates (thus far) - Charging costs less than half the equivalent gasoline (according to the app). Easy to configure off-peak charging.
I turned my bicycle into an electric bike. It weighs less than 30 pounds, has a top speed of 22 mph, and a range of 25 miles. With another six pounds of battery, the range doubles to about 55 miles.
Your videos are so great. I drive an EV, Volkswagen, and live in a cold climate. The most difficult thing that I didn’t anticipate when making the choice of which car to get was the significant, almost 40%, reduction in range when the temperatures are cold. It makes the effective range considerably lower than advertised for almost half of the year.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet heating isn't that bad. there's tons of resources and comparisons for that. but with improving heating, not much can be achieved. the insulation is already pretty good. better models are equipped with heat pumps. that's only helping so and so much, though. you've surfaces heated like the steering wheel, seats, and even armrests at times; which helps with lowering demand of overall cabin heat. the issue with reduced range really mostly stems from them batteries being so sensitive to the environmental conditions. this might get sorted in future with different battery technology.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet yes, what you describe may certainly help with range. maybe it worsens overall efficiency? (something everyone's concerned because of how expensive it this to adapt the power grid.)
I've heard that too. Not a particular concern where we live. Sabine noted that 50% of new car sales in Norway are electric. Norway is pretty cold in the winter. It doesn't seem like the cold weather is negatively affecting EV sales though.
@@brownro214 Norwegians are relatively rich, electricity thanks to ideal geological conditions plentiful and therefore their preferred choice. Norway is cold but where most people live (close by the sea) not even as cold as you might think. the south tip is where the still warm gulf stream passes by
@@brownro214 I expect that's because a car's normal daily use is substantially less than half the capacity of the battery & ample recharging can be achieved while the car is not in use (most cars are used less than 10% of the day).
I have a 2023 Mustang Mach E. I have a 40 amp, 240 volt charger (9600 watts) that can bring the car up overnight without fail. For 99% of the driving I do, it's all where I can return home without charging and charge at home. I schedule the charging between 11PM and 6AM where the grid is fairly unloaded -- the car allows one to specify charging times. My battery chemistry is NMC, and I normally charge to just 80% unless I'm doing a longer trip. I absolute love the car. Great video and seems very complete. Thanks.
I haven't had any issues with using an EV, and now I charge my car using solar, so my grid demand has actually gone down. I hope we'll see more community electricity storage so that solar production could be stored more broadly and efficiently than residential battery storage.
I hope so too - I work in the industry. EVs can use a similar amount of energy to the household before the EV arrived. The electrical industry has moved from resisting change, to working with the change to alternative power - they had no choice anyway. Distributed generation, both commercial and residential, will lighten the load on the established grid generation and transmission. The only thing in the way now is politics.
Well said. The other aspect of EV is Vehicle to Grid where the EV battery can feed the grid in order to balance the demand with supply. This V2G also reduces the need for upgrading electricity infrastructure by making it more efficient - presently the electricity infrastructure has been designed to deliver power to end points, like homes and factories, but as roof top solar and batteries (EV and/or home battery) homes and factories become the source of power sending power in the other ( currently unused ) direction.
@@MiniLuv-1984 the only problem I see with vehicle to grid is you are are putting wear on tear on your battery and unless you are making enough selling power you are gonna be stuck with a massive bill replacing your battery. At least grid operators can buy storage at scale to lower their costs.
Thanks for a great video Sabine. I’m using an EV since 2020 in India. At that time there were few fast chargers on the highways so had to request restaurants (Dhabas) on the way to plug in my portable (very slow) charger and order endless tea (chai) and pakoras! That situation has changed rapidly with many fast chargers on the highways set up by different power companies. At home, I put solar PV (grid connected with net metering) so now my car, AC cooling and cooking is practically free and green. Going by the immense change I have seen in India, I am more optimistic than your video!
The Tesla Charger always work easily. But charging at home is far easier and cheaper. A lot of us have 240 volt power in the US with up to 48 amp usable. You can charge at about 45 miles per hour with this setup.
I sold my diesel car in April 2022 and bought a secondhand 2018 BMW i3 94Ah. I drive about 15,000 miles (24,000kM) per year. At around the same time I had 40 solar panels with a peak output of 15.5kW fitted on my house roof and 45kW of battery storage. The latter was necessary in the UK because most houses only have a Single Phase supply, feed-in is therefore limited to 4kW and I didn't want to throw away available energy. 4kW is a ridiculous limit to impose. The peak output power from the panels had been factored to extend use of home generated electrical energy into October and March. Apart from longer journeys when I have to use fast chargers the car runs on home generated solar energy. I don't suffer 'Range Anxiety'. I plan journeys beforehand, use Eco Pro on the i3 by default and on motorway driving often opt for slip-streaming large lorries. The whole exercise has been fun (80% of the time - when my wife is with me she doesn't care for the risks I take with range but the closest we came to running out still left us with 3 miles when we reached a charger - she was not happy). I would certainly never go back to an ICE. I would say 70% of my mileage costs me nothing in electricity because it's "free" if you ignore the investment I've made. Why did I do it? Because I know someone who lives near Barmouth in Wales who has been told by the Environment Agency that their house, along with 220,000 other homes in England and Wales will be lost to the sea, as levels rise. We have also begun to see an exodus of climate refugees leaving equitorial regions to move to more Northern latitudes dying in small boats. We all owe a duty to reduce our use of carbon to help the rest of mankind. Where you are born is an accident of fate, not choice.
I'm glad you pulled the other video, it had a huge number of serious mistakes in it. This one is much better. I'll make some additions, simple things that people can remember: * A good rule of thumb for passenger-vehicle EV power consumption is 3 miles per 1 kWh. Tesla's get closer to 4, but 3 is a good conservative rule of thumb). From this it is easy to determine how much electrical energy is required, since statistics on miles driven are readily available and each individual has a pretty good idea how much they drive. * So in terms of charging at home, the charge rate you need for convenience depends entirely on the above. If you drive the average round-trip commute of 40 miles a day, you need (40 / 3) = 13 kWh worth of charging each day. At a space-heater rate of 1000W (1kW) this would take 13 hours with an L1 charger. With a L2 charger set to 16A it would be (16A x 240VACrms = 3.84 kW, so (13 / 3.84) = 3.4 hours. At 35A, even less time. For home charging, thus, it comes down to what is convenient for the consumer. A good rule of thumb is "overnight charging". L2 chargers are more convenient but to be very explicit here there is no need to charge at 35A. You can easily charge at 16A or even 8A or whatever, so being circuit-limited is not that big a deal. And if it came down to it, you could charge from a normal consumer outlet (120VACrms in the U.S., 12A = 1.4kW, or (13 / 1.4) = 9 hours to charge 40 miles. * This determines, more or less, how dependent on fast DC charging one is. If you have no outlets at all, say you park on the street and can't string an extension cable without someone getting angry at you, or if you drive a lot but can't get L2 charging, or if you are driving long distance all in one go, such as when taking a trip, then you need to use a fast DC charger for at least part of your trip. Most people do NOT need to use a fast DC charger for nominal work commutes. Not to mention that there is also such a thing as "destination charging" which is typically built-out by businesses that more and more EV commuters will be able to use over time. * This means that Fast DC charging is really only necessary for longer trips. There does need to be a build-out, and Europe is way ahead of the U.S. on that, but it isn't really a show-stopper. That is, there will be push and pull just like any other build-out, but it is not necessarily something that needs to be 100% government funded. Demand creates supply creates demand. -- This time around you made only two significant mistakes worth noting: (1) The first was confusing what parts of the grid have to be upgraded. To be clear, the ENTIRE EV rollout can occur with only minimal distribution-side upgrades and, in fact, no home services need to be upgraded. Sure, it might be convenient for some home owners to upgrade, but it is absolutely not a requirement for any home. The serious upgrading of the grid has to occur on the generation side because the renewables generation expansion is "a larger number of smaller generators" and those generators need feeders and backbones. That's 99% of the problem. Feeding residential power back to the grid does NOT require distribution line or transformer upgrades because backfeeds are limited to 20% of the service size anyway, which is less than peak consumption. But it MAY require a substation transformer upgrade... mostly the reason for this is to upgrade to a transformer with better voltage regulation automation. substations transformers have various taps that the substation can switch them between to change the voltage ratio of the transformer. When feeding power in the reverse direction, the voltage is being scaled up rather than scaled down and if a large subdivision is pushing a lot of power it is generally doing so near the top of the allowed voltage range. Which means that the step-up in the reverse direction can sometimes exceed the substation's intermediate voltage rating. Hence the need to upgrade that particular transformer. Distribution (e.g. pole) transformer upgrading is only a function of potential peak charging rates which for EVs can be significant, except that there is no actual requirement that an EV be charged at 35A. It can just as easily be charged at 8A or 12A or 16A, for example, which are far less stressful on distribution transformers. So is it actually a show-stopper? No. Just a convenience. The utility can simply require that homes with un-upgraded equipment charge at a slower rate until such a time as the equipment can be upgraded. That's it. That's the technical explanation. But it should be noted that substation upgrades are only required piecemeal. The entire substations / all substations do NOT need to be upgraded because neighborhoods just don't all upgrade to solar, let alone reverse EV feeding, overnight. The quoted dollar amounts or spectacularly over-estimated and completely ignore the dynamics of the rollout and adoption of EVs as well as the 30+ year time-frame involved. When you divide it all out, it really isn't as much money as people think it is. (2) You, like a lot of people, greatly misunderstand the power of industrial scale in production when it comes to the cost of building an EV. This is the primary mover. You also are still a bit behind on understanding battery chemistries. Cobalt and Nickel are used in NMC and NCA chemistries, but are NOT required in LFP chemistries (you mention LFP later but you clearly got lost on the significance). So neither Cobalt or Nickel are show-stoppers. Lithium is a very abundant element all over the world that requires only the mining to be scaled up. That is happening. Just because there is some push and pull doesn't mean that it's actually any sort of problem that would stick with us. You mention LFP, but you are a bit behind on the chemistry. Adding manganese (LFMP, for example), and other similar adjustments, has brought the energy density up to near the same levels of lithium ternary batteries (typically NMC) and this is clearly where the market is headed. Sodium batteries are NOT in scaled, volume production yet. LFP batteries are. Sodium batteries are a bit behind on the technology scale but they could very easily grow into a competitive alternative. == That's everything in a nutshell. You did a much better job this time around. Just remember that the technology is progressing VERY quickly, which means that you have to keep up with it at the same pace.
Thanks so much. One additional comment, not aimed at our dear Sabine in particular. Many alarmist EV discussions are "Oh my, EV' transition is such a huge problem, where will we possibly get XYZ materials!!" They completely leave out the alternatives. The growing demand in developing countries for more and more transport, in addition to more developed countries replacements. Without EVs, the world could not meet the much greater XYZ material demands and inefficiencies with ICE transport. EV's are already getting much more recyclable, for example. Fewer parts. Less pollution in use. Less pipeline and refining buildouts. Less oil spills. Fewer tanker trucks on our roads. Less sea bed drilling blowouts. Etc. The past and future environmental devastation caused by fossil fuel use MUST be included in any critical discussion of EVs.
The dollar amount of the upgrade to the grid is also overestimated because that upgrade is INSTEAD of normal upgrade that would have been done in any case during those same 30 years. The needed upgrade might cost more, but it's not all ADDITIONAL costs. But I can understand why estimating that is more difficult (it also depend on how much investment in grid maintenance is done by different utilities and that is very different in different countries)
I thought the main problem with Lithium supply was all the water it uses in the pools, Matt Ferrell (@UndecidedMF) did a video about companies trying to extract it in different ways but it didn't sound like they were near commercialisation yet. I agree about the grid, there is a lot of alarmist reporting out there, normally from media with big fossil fuel sponsors. 🙄 There are bound to be areas where the infrastructure has been ignored for too long and will need substantial investment, then there are areas which are already ready. I can't afford Patreon so I don't have access to the references, I was wondering how much charge was needed for each vehicle in the estimations at 10:20, not a question for you but something I wondered while listening. I didn't think many people drive further, every day, than a standard power plug can provide overnight, assuming people plug in when they get home and not the moment before they fall asleep. I think most of us spend more than 8-9 hours at home before leaving again. If they can get a V2G standard widely adopted they should be able to use the "smarts" to distribute the load around so nothing gets exceeded and everyone has enough charge for the next day. Of course this will require people to think ahead and set how much charge they'll need for days they'll travel more than usual, so it's probably headed to massive online and talkback radio bitching!
I'm very bullish on sodium-ion batteries. They probably won't be in long range cars anytime soon or ever, as they are competitive with LFP and some day maybe even with NMC in Wh/kg, but not Wh/l. But I think they will be in all low to mid range cars at some point. They just have amazing properties compared to existing lithium-ion batteries. While they are in mass production now, it's not at a big scale yet, that is for sure. CATL is very clear that current lithium-ion battery factories can be easily converted, but that is of course only half of the story. The materials used are completely different. So building up supply chains could take years. But let's hope it goes a bit quicker than that.
@@Cluuey the water that is used up in lithium mining is brine from salt lakes in which nothing can survive and that can be used for nothing else. Compared to mining other metals lithium is basically planting trees to grow back the rain forest or something like that. There are people saying that it magically makes fresh water disappear, but that doesn't make any sense. It's more likely that that is due to the big cattle herds in the area. If tens of thousands of cows are drinking water in a desert for decades, at some point there won't be any water left. Where is it supposed to come from? Rain? It's a desert.
I've been driving a Tesla for years now. And, a year ago, I got solar panels for my home. I live near Seattle, so the sunlight on my house is not as good for solar power as if I lived in sunny California or any other lower-latitude place. Even so, the solar panels can cover the needs of my car during most seasons of the year. A fossil fuel car always needs fossil fuels (or expensive synthetic fuels). An electric car doesn't care where its electricity comes from, and solar or wind power can run an electric car. I believe nearly all of the problems listed in this video can be solved quickly. As Tony Seba and others predicted, solar and wind power is growing at an exponential rate. If it really is a problem to have transformers working at night, then we simply need time-of-use pricing on electricity that encourages charging at the optimal time. In places with a lot of solar power installed, there is the famous "duck curve" where power is pushed onto the grid when it's sunny whether there is need for it or not; in such places, if the rates are cheapest during the day, people would be encouraged to charge their cars during the day and that "duck curve" power will be more likely to be put to good use. In the long run, electric transportation will reduce the impact of humans on the planet. It's true that it takes more minerals to make an electric car... my car has a battery pack that weighs around 1200 pounds (545 kg) and that battery pack holds 100 kWh, about the energy of 3 gallons of gas (11.4 litres). Yet the EPA estimated range of my car (when new) was 335 miles (539 km)! And that battery pack should work for at least a couple of decades, and then will be recycled, whereas fossil fuels, once burnt, are not only gone (needing to be totally replaced) but also add pollutants and carbon dioxide products to the atmosphere. Compare that battery pack weight with the weight of gasoline: I've computed that my old VW station wagon would burn about 3600 pounds of gasoline (1633 kg) each year I drive it. If we assume my electric car lasts 20 years, it (including all the minerals in it) would prevent the burning of 72000 pounds of gasoline (32660 kg)! Then consider the second-order savings. Gasoline is made out of atoms and must be hauled around: tanker ships bring crude oil, refineries make gasoline, trucks deliver gasoline to the filling station. In contrast, electricity flows through wires. (And I make most of the electricity I need from the roof of my house.) I've read that 40% of all ships on the ocean are hauling fossil fuels around (oil, natural gas, or coal). When the majority of our energy used is electricity, and the majority of generation is renewable, the pollution and waste associated with the fossil fuel economy will mostly disappear. Electric cars are a rare case where doing the right thing is no sacrifice. My electric car is the nicest car I've ever owned. The only thing wrong with it is that it cost a lot up front, but it's extremely inexpensive to operate it. (Especially considering I live in the state with the most expensive gasoline in the USA, but relatively inexpensive electricity. And once my solar panels are paid off, I'll get a great deal of electricity at no further cost to me.) I would be happy if all new houses were designed and built to have solar power generation on the roof, and a ground-source heat pump for heating and cooling. It will always be less expensive to design such things into the house and build at scale, than to build houses without them and retrofit later. And people won't mind the cost of solar or the heat pump if those costs are rolled into the mortgage.
Good lord, where to start on your comment, and do I even want to bother. There is not one easy fix to the problems she mentioned and if you think there are, you and I didn't watch the same video. You putting solar panels on your upper-middle-class Seattle home has nothing to do with the entire rework that's going to have to happen across the globe to accommodate this. Suffice it to say, before I go even an inch deeper into this: Unless we do something about China and India's emissions, the entire Western World could literally drop off the map tomorrow and make nary a dent in the bottom line global effect. That seems to be something conveniently ignored. We could commit cultural suicide in the West and go completely dark tomorrow, and nothing would change as far as hitting the climate "event horizon" tipping point. So, there's that. Just remember that unless you decarbonize China and India, nothing you or I do affects any outcomes. Too little way too late. The "exponential" solar growth has been largely subsidized by tax dollars, not market demand. It's also been a colossal cluster-f that has created a slave labor market due to lithium demand and truly offered very little. Even the most fluffed numbers are diresome. Your solution would require *extreme* government intervention to a degree and will require further reach into citizens' already-ailing pockets for a solution that will likely have no meaningful outcome on global temps. (Because again...China and India. I want everything I say here to be viewed from the lens that *nothing* we do matters unless China switches away from coal. They're building entire coal supply railroads to supply the hundreds of new plants they're building yearly...to ironically power their EVs) EV tech is a unidimensional view of environmental harm that ONLY takes the boogeyman of CO2 into account and not the entire Lithium battery pipeline and the actual LIFETIME environmental damage of an EV; The chemicals poured into the earth to refine lithium, the repair, the disposal of lithium, the slave child labor, the problem of there just not *being* enough lithium on the planet for us to go full EV. The smelting and maintenance of the blades, The entire species of migrating birds they're killing, the forests that have to be cleared to erect them. Oh, and solar panels. The toxic chemicals involved in their manufacturing and disposal are only the tip of the iceberg. So you may get some CO2 relief only to poison your water with the toxic manufacturing offshoots of lithium batteries and solar panels. A study I read recently estimates that, in the US, you're saving about 15% CO2 over the entire the life of an EV, when all things are taken into account. (Versus a state of the art economy-minded gasoline vehicle. This study was based in America, where the majority of power is produced by coal. An EV charged by a coal-fired plant is less efficient than many modern gasoline engines. If everyone had the money to kit their houses out with solar panels and buy a $50,000, EV we'd be in business. But until then, I see this new brand of environmentalism as an upper middle-class issue that only the rich have *time* to care about. Couple this with resistance to new nuclear technologies that I see coming from the loudest climate proponents, and I start to realize that many people care a whole lot less about carbon output than they do finding a way to track purchases and tack on new carbon taxes for things we're already paying taxes on. Until the loudest voices in the modern environmental movements take nuclear seriously, I can't take them terribly seriously. I'm on a phone, so unable to really phrase things how I'd like but. The bottom line is there's nothing easy about reworking the entire country's power grid and putting 7p trillions of dollars of new infrastructure to accommodate an electric future. It also ignores so many unintended consequences. The answer right now is nuclear. Maybe in 50 years we will have a viable solution, but that hasn't been invented yet. Current EV tech is pretty much for city-dwellers with minimal commutes who live in climates that don't get too hot or cold. (Because heat destroys a battery's longevity and cold destroys a battery's capacity) It's why most of the people who have such lovely experiences with EVs live on the west coast in temperate climates and drive 30mins or less to work. EV's are an upper middle class luxury right now and until they actually become affordable for the majority, it's going to remain that way.
@@jemima_brownthe battery won't last 20 years. I almost bought EV vans until I found out I'd be replacing the battery every 18 months to 2 years. My vans travel 3,500 miles per month
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet existing infrastructure, poor people can keep what they already have. 3rd world countries would be able to use it. No one would have to purchase anything. People would be able to keep their jobs in the industry
@@Bryan-Hensley Where did you get those crazy numbers from? Look into how many cycles LFP- and sodium-ion batteries can do. Your van will likely fall apart before the battery dies.
Thanks for bringing up the infrastructure Issue for BEVs. It was the most worrisome thing I considered when debating on getting an Bev. For my daily commute the overnight 120 works fine, but it is a concern that I hope gets resolved. I have seen 2 new chargers added to my area after buying my Bev so hopefully that's a good sign. So far, I love my car so much nicer than my old Honda.
(Recently retired from a Fortune 100 US electric company) The big time factor in building new transmission lines is acquisition of the right-of-way. The process often has a lot of dead ends, so the negotiations typically start with getting past choke points. Only after those are identified and commitments acquired can the less challenging parts be negotiated. NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - is still a problem, as is the perception by potential sellers that they have a unique commodity. 15 years is remarkably fast for these projects. The other infrastructure concern is electric availability: enough generation at the moment to meet demand. The load/generation curve commonly called the "duck curve" illustrates the breath-taking shortfalls in generation at sundown in particular areas like California and Hawaii. Today, the focus is rightly on grid level storage. Using EVs for storage is a distant possibility: their status is never known (are they full or empty? Will there be fewer or more tonight than last night?). None of these are insurmountable problems, but they are facets of the folly of politics driving the pace of changes. We can get there - whatever "there" actually looks like - but not nearly as fast as we might like. Fifty years would be very optimistic; 70-80 years more realistic. It is likely we will find we have made quite a few wrong turns on the way. I only know for certain when we get there we will marvel at how naive we are today.
I'm driving a used Tesla since 2018 that replaced our big car for the long trips. It had around 200.000km on the odometer when I bought it and it is still doing great. The battery is far from dying.
This is an exception, not the rule. At my small BMW dealership, we do at least 1 battery a month. The Porsche dealership has a similar turnaround rate. Batteries are also prone to burning for three days. That VW ship with $850,000,000 worth of vehicles had a hole melted in the hull, which sank it. Getting close enough to do anything, which is basically nothing, would've killed anyone. I know of three houses burnt down from faulty chargers. I've over 50 bad chargers that almost burnt their house down
And, LFP/LMFP batteries will last even longer than the Ternary batteries… and data is coming in on those early Ternary batteries which are showing lifespans in excess of 400k miles. My last ICE vehicle was falling to pieces after 170k miles… and it was a van, not something that was driven hard and fast. lol
@@chadcooper7348 Lithium technology is volatile garbage. It won't make the cut after Sodium Ion gets energy density on par with current Lithium cobalt. Also, batteries aren't rated in mileage for lifespan, it's a time over discharge/recharge table, not mileage, period. There's also a factor of chemical degradation in the cell after a period of time. Ie, most lead acid batteries are expected to last 3-5 years, Lithium cobalt, 6-8 years, less if you factor in cold weather usage.
@@andyfreeman6865Ever heard of major oil spoils, Ice cars burning in an accident, total engine overhauls, problems with transmissions, cooling systems, fuel system, clutch changes and so on. Evs are costly to buy and maintain on purpose, there is no free ride. There are cheap small city Evs but they don't give much profit to manufactures.
My wife and I drove ~10,000 km from the Vancouver BC area to southern Ontario and Toronto and back again in early May, in our Tesla Model 3 with an LFP battery. We had no problems during our drive, when we relied on the Tesla Supercharger (DCFCs with the Tesla NACS plug) network, and averaged just under 1000km/day during the eastward portion of our drive and our best time was just under 10 hours to drive ~950km and that included charging stops! We averaged about 7km/kwh for the whole trip. I bought the Model RWD with the LFP battery because it is the most efficient electric car available and because Tesla has introduced an adapter so that most newer Teslas can also charge at non-Tesla DC Fast Chargers (DCFCs with the CCS1 plug) which greatly increases the number of fast charging stations available, especially in rural areas. We usually charge at home but the availability of DCFCs makes long trips quite feasible. The DCFC charging network is rapidly expanding in North America and we had no problems driving from BC to SE Arizona and back again, last winter.
Your reasons for your car choice were the same as mine! I took delivery of a 2023 model-3 rwd on last November 28. I charge at home (7 kwh). In December we traveled from Michigan to Tennessee (670 miles), charged 4 times at superchargers. I'm spoiled, haha! Last Sunday we drove north 67 miles to visit friends, ate, saw a giant Sequoyah tree... drove home and still had 102 miles left.
However Scotty told us of some folk who took 9 hours to drive from New York to Washington DC. The trip would otherwise take 3 hours in an ice vehicle . The charging stations were a big disappointment in performance and availablity.
@@Philip-hv2kc Nonsense. That route has lots of chargers and it's only 226 miles!! I could drive it on a single charge! If you want to peddle fake news, at least make it believable.
I have been driving electric since 2012 and my family (2 cars) exclusive electric since 2014. We driving ~ 12k mi/year in each car, go on road trips, etc everything typical people do with cars. The picture you present does not reflect my experience in North America with Tesla; Superchargers are generally widely available and very VERY dependable (unlike the competition- a question of incentives) and home charging has been a complete non-issue. My other beef with your exposé is that it leans to heavily on the current state of things. Ford CEO not withstanding, battery prices _have_ been falling dramatically over this decade. Final thing that was frankly ridiculous: repair cost. Fact is: the maintenance of our Teslas have been far far cheaper than the ICE cars we had previously. And they are cheaper to operate (I have records to prove this).
Then another idea is instead of using charging stations along highways, is to have a electrical wire system the vehicle can connect to such as were used by electric trams in cities where a attachment on top of the tram connected to the overhead wires. No charging stations along highways needed at all, and the smaller battery packs only needed for local driving helps to conserve the materials the battery manufacturing requires. Gas stations along highways would be the losers in this scenario but as gasoline is being phased out they would disappear anyway to reappear as something else for land use.
Here in Korea, charging is just not really an issue. Most apartment complexes have charging in the car park now, as do supermarkets, libararies, etc. The grid doesn't seem to be overloaded, and electric cars are very popular now - projected to be about 15% of total units in circulation by the end of the year I just plug my car in at night, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, and it charges for about 20% of the cost it does for a petrol car. I can drive it for about 6-8 hours before needing to charge It's a no-brainer - just needs infrastructure
We need the military. Think of how much money is wasted producing the insane amount of movies produced. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on wasting people’s time and lives on a bunch of stupid recycled stories and plots. What an enormous waste.
Even Germany found a 100 billion for its military just lying around when it became clear that Russia was still a threat. On top of regular spending, of course.
Thanks for the video. I have been driving evs for 5 years from a leaf 24kwh to a 30kwh and now a 44 kwh BMW I3, these were all bought as as commuter cars, What is intresting is that they have gone from barely 12O kms range to 300kms range for the same budget,. I think energy efficiency is the Key to the EV transition, which is one of the motivations for buying the I3. More efficient vehicles would surmount a lot of the problems you correctly raise. I am a shareholder of Aptera motors which is a super efficient EV that can get a lot of its power from solar energy,
Apparently 45% of Americans have no access to public transport. Changing that might be less than the trillions needed to upgrade the electrical system but it is unlikely to happen, especially since devotion to cars is entrenched as it is.
@@frantavopicka5259 the problem with fusion power is for the last 60 years it's been 20-30 years away and still is. I do agree that nuclear is the way forward, and with next gen reactors able to burn up existing waste and producing much less and shorter lived waste we should be rolling that out instead of all these useless renewables.
As I commented last time: the overwhelming number of cars is parked more than 22hrs a day. So you could charge almost all of them all the time with low voltage. Meaning, you wouldn't have significant usage peaks at any time of the day at all. You just need comparably cheap plugs wherever cars are parked. The "alternative charging method in Germany" part is kinda hilarious, because electric trams have been around for 150 years and trains and also buses that are powered this way are not at all new technology.
I think most EVs by far in Norway are charged slowly over night, and quite a few are probably charged slowly at work. In the last video I think she mentioned transformers need to cool down over night in warmer climates. My average electricity consumption has increased by a huge amount since we got an EV so I’m not sure how significant of a problem that will actually be. But even if it is wouldn’t it just be a matter of increasing the size of the container for the transformer, so it has more surface area to cool from? The transformer itself doesn’t need to be bigger
Yeah I live in a condo with no garage (well it does have a garage but the gf parks there, only room for 1). Can't charge at work. And I like to go camping, and strangely the wilderness has no charging stations. So yeah, I'm keeping my ICE vehicle. And yeah I get annoyed when elites make policy. They don't understand how poorer people live. Not everyone has garages. In fact, I've never had a garage in 50 years of living.
The standard uses case is: Drive to work in the morning, drive home on the afternoon, du things with you car (one needs food and there is something called free time), so the car will be available for charging in the evening. That gives something between 8 and 10 hours of charging. And afaik that is not enough time to fully charge a car with normal voltage. And we would get the usage peak in the night that Sabine is talking about for sure. Also charging something with a powerline while driving is not the same as just using the power. But you are right, it works, but is is very expensive.
From many perspectives an excellent presentation of the situation, but Sabine! You once again omitted an extremely important point! Cars, electric or otherwise, are designed for things they are statistically never used for. Cars are driven short (
It's better to have the ability to travel long distances when you need to. I can tell you I would never buy one that is slow with less range than what I have. You can produce it but it's doubtful many would buy it.
Sorry Sabine, some more corrections.. 1. Producing hydrogen gas from electrolysis isn't bad to run on intermittent electricity because the reaction is "slow to ramp" up per se. It's because it becomes uneconomical when the capital cost of electrolysers is (currently) too large to have them "standing by and standing back" most of the time. 2. You stop at 80% most of the time because NMC (nickel, managese, cobolt) Li-on batteries don't like being fully charged & it goes slow at the end - this is not true if you have other battery chemistries like LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) or use an AC charger 11kw or lower. With NMC you should ideally go down only to 20% for the same battery care reasons. 3. Overall maintenance costs for EVs are often lower than ICE cars so long as you take care of the battery - there are far less moving parts that can wear out. At the same time EVs are more expensive to insure for the reasons you explained. One should do an total cost of ownership calculation for it to make any sense of this (fuel/repairs/insurance/interest costs), to see which is "cheaper".
1. I don't disagree, but I think that the problem I mention will be the more relevant in the long run. 2. Yes the statement at the beginning is for the currently most widely used batteries. I am very sorry I did not spell this out explicitly, I did not anticipate it would cause misunderstanding. 3. I am very sorry I did not spell out in more detail exactly what the cost breakdown comes from, but there's only so much you can cram into 20 minutes. Thanks for your interest.
i would very much see that 3 point as well, it is the crux of the issue after all, are we going from a better technology to a worse one or the other way. i would add total cost of ownership over lifetime comparison, which live for longer, which cost more upfront and what other indirect costs are added to own one. sorry for the last point as that rather directly goes against evs, but ive seen quite a lot of comments on it, its nice if you can afford things but its only IF you can afford them and most of the world population can not just jump from poor to rich in a day, it takes tremendous amounts of Work or in other words Energy, energy that must come from somewhere. Sure its nice and "cheap" to charge with your own solar, or heck a mini/residential nuclear power plant, but it will just cost up front in "fuel" rather than step by step in time. in the end i would like us to be realistic, not just have pink coggles on and then get to regret our decisions later in life, i dont really care it were gonna be an EV, ICE or more probably a mix* civilization in the future, i would rather like our efforts to go in the right place and do what they purportedly do than to just appease our feelings, rather shallowly, and make things worse then they are in the long run. *the right technology for the right things
I'm actually proud to say as an American, that I've lived my entire life without owning a car. I don't ever expect anyone around me to acknowledge that as an accomplishment, but with the money I saved, I was able to buy my own house. At this point in my 40's, it's paid off and I'm completely debt free. I live in a large city on the East Coast, a quarter mile from a supermarket in either direction, and a Home Depot. There tons of restaurants & parks close by, and I ride my bike wherever I go. Never have to worry about parking, and the bike lanes are constantly improving. I feel like I'm living the new American dream. Hopefully, someday everyone else will join me :)
@@kfireven Friend of mine lives in a larger German city and never owned a car. He does borrow one from time to time though. Not owning one doesn't mean you never use one.
@@EngineersFear yeah, I really don't mind about owning or using a car, I'm very satisfied with public transportation and like OP I also got everything I need around my house and I have much more important things to waste my money on. The problem starts when you begin dating, the ladies have high demands (at least here in Israel), they think that everything, all the chores will be on the one who owns a car - for arrangements, kids going to kindergarten/school, medical emergencies, travel, etc... so it's good as long as you're single, but the changes to find a partner with the same mindset is very low
I was born brain damaged and I'm now blind. I live in London and obviously have never been medically allowed to drive a car. I have relied on public transport and my own two feet, traveling the 10 miles to school on my own via train since the age of 8. I would severely severely struggle in the countryside but London is very connected with public transport albeit not perfect but definitely good enough. I do use taxis when my health is poor or its a really tricky journey to make (like going to Guys & St Thomas's Hospital absolutely need a taxi for that). But I live independently and nobody within 75 miles that I know can drive a car. So I'm pretty much car free except for the occasional taxis. London is great for being able to go car free although there are obviously some limitations.
I’ve driven a plug-in hybrid for the past four years and a full battery electric for one year. I also have a solar array on my roof that generates a surplus, so my charging costs are very low. In my experience, the full electric vehicle requires some changes in lifestyle and planning to avoid prematurely degrading the battery or running out if power on a road trip. My plug-hybrid requires almost no change in ordinary habits, except for what is perhaps the most important feature - - home charging - which means only having to visit a gas station for long road trips with 90% of local driving powered by the battery. My full battery electric car is fun to drive and I’m happy that I bought it. But for the average household, I think that a plug-in hybrid with at least 40 miles of battery range is currently the best option.
In Australia, the biggest problem with EV uptake is cost. And we will very soon have EVs which cost the same or less than smelly cars. Many residences in Australia are detached houses with garages and 240v systems that can support a Type 2 charger charging at 7 kW per hour. More and more Australian houses are installing rooftop solar which can be used for daytime charging. EVs use less domestic energy than old electric hot water services and replacing old hot water services with heat pump systems would just about offset EVs. (The big electricity drain is air conditioning.)
Indeed. Here in Germany, electricity delivered through the public grid is actually going down, despite electric cars and electric heat pumps becoming more and more common. Because ... well, rooftop solar. Some supermarkets have started roofing their parking lots with solar panels, so customers keep their cars out of the sun and can charge a bit for free while shopping. Not sure why Sabine found only sources expecting a need for big and expensive grid updates.
@@jemima_brown Doing a good guess on how much charge one needs per week is a good idea. If your commute is less than 20% of your EV's range, you can ride all 5 workdays from one charge and refill on the weekend. Also, kind employers have solar at their office/factory and allow to charge from that. If all this fails, one can always fall back to charging from the grid, so no fear of stranding with empty batteries somewhere. Even with regularly charging a portion from the grid it's still a lot cheaper than gasoline/diesel.
@@jemima_brown You make good points. Home batteries at the moment are too small and expensive for EV charging at night. However, many people now work from home and even one hour of charging on a 7 kW charger will put about 40 km of range in an EV. Even if the family EV is not at home for charging during the day, solar can supply power for the house during the day and the EV can be charged at night; this can take much of the peak demand off the grid and remove the necessity for grid upgrades. Many businesses have large roof areas which could support panels for daytime charging of employee cars as an incentive for employees to work in the office.
@@traumflug Impressive. And yes, I think there are a number of smaller things such as solar panels, home batteries, reverse cycle air conditioners and heat pump hot water systems that can take pressure off the electricity systems.
One thing which I think is underrated and rarely mentioned is that the switch to EV is a catalyst towards other changes. It's something visible which brings the message home and starts people thinking. They are a gateway drug leading people to look at Solar, insulation and home batteries and from there many other improvements. I think we massively under value the impact EVs have on public awareness of climate change and showing that change is not just possible....it can be better.
I agree with that. Even since getting an EV I started thinking about getting solar for the house as well and pay way more attention to what kind of fuel sources my energy company uses to make the electricity.
@@MD-mf4fj Just don't demand the immediate shutdown of our present fossil fuel fired electric power plants...to effect power shortages and way higher price.
@@mrblc882 If you have to fund it all yourself. But there are lots of grants, schemes and offers out there to help for some people. As the costs of energy rise more and more people are taking the plunge to invest now to save money in the future.
Sabine, there are a few points you missed I'd add but I'll mention just one. "Range Anxiety" has become rather a media trope and, 6yrs in on my 2nd EV, you get to know your range pretty quickly in different conditions - hot, cold, wet or windy. "Charger Anxiety" is a more accurate description, knowing whether the units at the next stop will work or have a queue when on a longer trip. Of course a Tesla heading to the Tesla network has this mostly sorted. Larger charging hubs more closely spaced will eventually solve all but the busiest of times.
I have been driving EV's for nearly 6 yrs and in that time it has changed dramatically. The nearest charging hub to me had just 3 chargers, now it has 64. In my town there was just 1 rapid chargers now there are 8 rapids and 40 destination chargers. When I first started I needed to plan my trip but now there are enough chargers not to worry about it, plus the car will take me to one when it needs it. Driving EV's is great fun and so relaxing with the one pedal driving ie press your foot down to go and lift it to brake. Of course I now drive a Tesla and I never get tired of that acceleration, it never fails to put a smile on my face
@@bilahn1198 I sold my last EV for £16k but life has been good. My only advice is not to buy a new ICE vehicle at the moment, they arent selling and people are just holding off until the price of an EV drops a bit more, Tesla will be making a new model next year which will sell for £25k and with very low running costs that makes it cheaper to own than an ICE vehicle, also MG make some very good EV's now for £25k, not a good time to buy an ICE car
@@bilahn1198I bought a used Chevy Bolt in 2021 for $20K. The only thing that sucks about it is that the DC fast charging is slow (it’s based on 2016 speeds; you have to stop for 60-75 minutes if you’re on a road trip). Otherwise, it’s a great little car. EVs still need to get cheaper, but things are moving the right direction. Especially if you consider the total cost of ownership; EVs tend to cost more at the beginning but less over the life of the car due to fewer things that can break, no oil changes, and lower fuel costs.
LOL. The % of breathable Oxygen in our air has decreased at a rate which, by 2100, will leave us breathing like sherpas or carrying Oxygen concentrators. Not sure how other animals will adjust. We will all be vegan, perhaps.
And the mining of rare earth minerals keeps all those African children busy and learning geology. And it is necessary to cut down gorests and crowd our open spaces forvwind mills and solar arrays because why not?
@@huntera123 - cobalt is not a rare earth - after dye production most cobalt is used in desulfurizing gasoline and diesel. So if you are concerned about the children in Africa, maybe stop driving your gas guzzler. - a lot of EV batteries don't even have any cobalt in them at all - lithium is also not a rare earth and predominantly mined in Australia and Chile - nobody is cutting down forests to put up solar panels or wind turbines. They are cutting down forests to feed cows. So if you are concerned about forests, you know what you have to do. You are so extremely uninformed it's not even funny. How can you even have such a profound lack of actual information? Do you get your news from the raccoon by the train tracks or something?
AS I mentioned on the first iteration: using my EV for 2,5 months now and had zero issues. I was always able to find charging stations fpr a reasonable price. I also did a trip over 1800km from southern Germany to Dresden, through Tzech Republic and back. Really nice driving. Only thing I have adjusted is my speed of travel as i ever go over 120km/h and most of the time drive 110km/h. Range anxiety has vanished with this trip too as it is nearly always possible to find a opportunity to recharge as the electrical grid is nearly everywhere.
@@SurLaMer_ you don't even know if my car is running a battery with cobalt as there were already models in 2021 with alternatives: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery But yeah just blame anyone with electric car xD Do you do this too under every apple/samsung keynote video? Burning more oil surely is not the way forward mate.
@@SurLaMer_ who dug up the cobalt used to extract the sulfur from the gasoline you use in your car? Happy miners on the moon or maybe those same child laborers in the Congo? You know most EV batteries have very little cobalt in them, some have none. All gasoline and diesel production uses a boatload of cobalt for desulfurization
Dear Sabine, thank you for all your interesting videos. YES, I'm driving an full E-vehicle, and that fact came in my life with different other events, all of them making sense together. First of all; I bought this car when I was 67, and liberated from professional pressure (I'm not sure it would have been possible if I was 40). Second point: I finally became strongly conviced about climat change and the absolute need of decarbonizing our lives. What means: accepting change, accepting reduction of expenses, reduction of consumption. What means: reduction of mobility. I don't fly anymore, I stopped eating beef, and try to convince my neighbours and family about reduction of green house gasses emissions, what is a sometimes a painfull challenge. So, I bought a LITTLE e-vehicle (Opel Corsa). I therefore abandonned my dream of driving a beautifull Volvo XC40 (abandonning dreams is also challenging). I charge aat homs, at night, and don't drive mors than 200 km/day. Living in Belgium, a little country where everithing is close to you, makes that not too difficult. For longer distances, I stop using the car and take the train. Decarbonizing our lives is an absolute piority!!!
Well mate I live in rural Australia and am now 77 years old and on a limited income like many others plus this also include those on a low income - unlike I suspect you might not be and simply could never afford to own an EV even if we wanted to which I might add I will not do under any circumstances. Even if I did the infrastructure for charging out here is simply not there and the distances we have to travel are far greater than you do in Belgium. This push for carbon reduction is in my mind at least 30-40 years too late something should have been done about it way back then. I will admit that there were stricter regulations put on ICE vehicles back then but ti sems to have sputtered to a halt right now and should be further investigated.
What really matters isn't range, it is sufficient range to do the next journey. For commercial vehicles there is an interesting business model being trialled in Australia, lorries with standard swappable batteries; the lorry doesn't charge its battery it goes to a swap station and in 5 minutes can have a fully charged battery put in. The transport company buys lorries without batteries and the charged battery is supplied as a service.
Electric lorries/trucks make sense. To move a large mass of cargo requires a large amount of torque at first movement. Electric motors generate torque at first movement, and without the need for gearbox transmission.
There is a hydrogen version of this where hydrogen is stored chemically bonded to some substance (can't recall what of course) in a canister that you swap out instead of pumping hydrogen into your tank, but with similar output as a pressurized tank. Sabine is too quick to dismiss H2 as an energy storage solution IMO. The same source energy issues she sites for H2 are also there for electric, but fails to compare them point by point. What matters are efficiency factors and the H2 people are quickly catching up.
Picked up a second hand leaf in the UK, 40,000 miles on the clock. It's great and I'm finding plenty of charging spots for my needs. I forgot to charge yesterday and drove to a rapid charger nearby and was able to get back to what I needed to in 3 minutes. I also have an electric bike, and use that a lot for shopping and getting around. Though I'm sure living in the city helps a lot in my case.
If the UK had clean electrical production then it would be an ideal place for EV's... As your travel distances are short with plenty of villages & towns in between long trips...
@@davidhollenshead4892 I mainly charge at home and use a green energy supplier, so even though technically the electricity I use isn't necessarily green I'm voting with my wallet for change, as much as can be. You are 100% right though, this is something that really works for me in my specific case, hopefully as more modern EVs enter the second hand market it'll become more attainable for more people as the ranges increase.
Love my EV... bought a 1st gen Nissan Leaf... the most reliable and least expensive car I have ever owned... it is 12 years old now... still going strong... though has lost some range... but still plenty for running around town and is our daily driver... the only downside... it can no longer take us very far out of town... and my partner suffers from range anxiety... so we do have a second petrol car... but to be honest it mostly just sits in the driveway... serving to relieve my sweetie's anxiety by its presence... and despite rarely being driven, being a money pit... the electric car has been wonderful... no regrets...
Nissan leaf is what I almost bought used. Then I found out what it was going to cost to replace the battery, at only 90,000 miles. Turned me completely away from EVs. $14,000 for a battery that lasts 90,000 miles. I did some calculations and it was more economical to drive a vehicle getting 14 mpg. I now have two full size Chevy express vans that will travel 450 miles without refueling. Which only takes 5 minutes. I can even camp in them
I have a bycicle to go around the city - I live in a city with over 3M habitants. Cars themselves are the problem, they are responsible by enormous waste of space, energy and materials.
I recently bought a used 2012 leaf. the 50 mile range is far enough for my daily needs, but I am worried about the heater issues these early leafs had.
@@Bryan-Hensley The Leaf is regrettably infamous for poor battery life. Not only has the battery tech improved substantially since the Leaf hit the market, Nissan decided to rely on passive battery cooling to save costs. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as high battery temperatures murder those older cells. They STILL don't use active cooling, not even forced air. Everyone else uses at least forced air, or in most cases liquid cooling. For this reason alone I couldn't recommend a Leaf even brand new these days which is a shame because otherwise they're great. Point being that the idea of having to spend umpteen-thousand-dollars on a new battery every few years is a myth based entirely on anti-EV FUD and, again regrettably, the Nissan Leaf...
My wife and I drive a 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S RWD and just love it! We are located on Vancouver Island on Canada's West coast. I am the moderator of two Facebook groups (Canadian EV Supersite and Canadian ID.4 Electric Vehicles). I focus a lot on innovations, the public charging infrastructure and the supporting public policy around electric vehicles.
I live in Ireland and drive an EV. Last year did three continental road trips and made it to Germany in all three. Great fun! I would note a full switch to EVs would have some knock-on effects. No need for a lot of fuel delivery runs for instance. And it makes a stronger case for rooftop solar for many people.
yes, it is true. the drilling, processing, and distribution of oil already costs quite some energy that's saved when no one needs this anymore because everyone's charging at home. I've heard some people even say that about half of the energy used to charge an EV gets saved this way. not saying that this doesn't come with negative knock off-effects as well like the need for more power plants and the very expensive investment into a more capable power grid to handle the additional load.
@@KevinLyda this is true! you'd need to have a form of electronic communication with the grid operator. most people probably prefer to charge over night so it's ready for the morning. ideally, it also serves as a stabilizing backup to cover peak demands. this sounds very good in theory, but I haven't seen much of this happening in the real world. unsure whether there's technical limitations; or people just unwilling to provide their expensive car battery for the common good. 🤷♂️ California definitely already runs into issues of having too much electricity generated during daytime from that solar roof mandate (paying Arizona to take some of their extra electricity.) but massively struggle to fulfill the overall demand (Diablo Canyon, cough.)
@@HxTurtle This is why some are pushing for workplace charging. Yes, EVs can flatten the demand curve at night which was great when we had a fossil fuel powered grid. But with a grid with lots of solar panels, we need more demand during the day. Workplace charging could deliver that. So can electric school buses, electrified public transit, etc.
@@KevinLyda yes, that makes sense. it might be easier for the employer to provide the infrastructure necessary (you've one single point of construction required) than everyone doing something at home. it might also be easier to observe that no one abuses or pranks them charging vehicles (like it's easy to see with street side parking and charging during nighttimes.) this could either be tax incentivised or an outright legal requirements for companies above a certain size to offer. ideally for free of charge so that more people feel to urge to capitalize from this fact. yes, sounds doable. 👍 (especially when electricity is free at work, people won't charge up their vehicle unreasonably during night. just enough to make it to work.)
Been driving an EV for quite a few years now. They are excellent for daily commuter use, and very competitive even for long road trips (my longest single day drive was about 900 miles/1450km). We have chargers at our house and that's super convenient too. I really like NEVER having to go to a gas/petrol station.
In New Zealand, BP is a significant player, but not the biggest, in providing charge points at each petrol station (or working on it anyway). I stop there for a quick get me home charge in my leaf sometimes. They charge 3x the market rate per unit or kWh, but that's good... There are free chargers around, but everyone queues for those. Not for the pay stations. Remember, you only have to recharge what you used. If you only drive 40km in a day, that's 3 hours on a slow home charge outlet, without any special wiring.
This was great to see - thank you for responding to the comments. Some of the issues you brought up had a much better balance this time. Please take a look at RethinkX and respond to their analysis of this problem of economic cost and benefits of this transition. A few points I'd like to make: 1) Electric vehicle costs are declining quickly and not increasing. As an example, Jim Farley's Ford has cut the price of the F150 pickup by roughly $10k US in the past week. 2) Maintenance costs for electric vehicles are significantly lower than internal combustion vehicles. This is proven across manufacturers and includes collision repair. 3) If you include oil and gas production as mineral extraction (which you should), electric vehicles require significantly less minerals. (Some simple math => 150,000 miles at 25 miles per gallon times 6 pounds per gallon equals 16.4 tons of fuel - none of which can be recycled).
Agreed...although I've read that Ford is losing $billions on its electric vehicles (but you gotta play the game!) and also that insurance companies are "totaling" Teslas for what otherwise would be repairable collision impacts.
The point "good luck finding a charger outside of Paris" has a lot of missed detail. Generally speaking, public chargers only have relevance in cities where people who live in apartment buildings with no garage may live. Anybody living semi-rural has a garage or a parking space, the cost of installing a level 2 charge is cheap compared to public charger rates, and will almost exclusively charge from home. Those who don't match this pattern will likely not buy an EV yet until some condition changes. As a long-time rural resident who drives 15-20,000km/year, I use a public charger less than once a month, and I use a DC fast charger around once a year. If you have a garage, you charge at home, and the whole first part of the video is irrelevant. Another missing detail is that if you have a roof, then installing solar and charging from your own sunlight is a financial no-brainer. Compared to energy rates or public charging prices, a solar system on your roof is a win, and that leads to zero-carbon charging for some fraction of EV's. Predictions and estimates for costs and quantities never seem to account for a large section of the EV ownership and charging patterns. Nobody I know who is an early adopter of EV's doesn't have solar and doesn't primarily charge from sunlight.
Great review Sabina. I am basically an environmental petrol head! Our home is now fully self sufficient for power water and outputs. We are actually on our second complete solar system. Technical efficiency has improved dramatically over the last 18 years and costs fallen dramatically. Our new battery hybrid 8.6kw system cost less than our original 2kw system! Everyone said back in 2009 when bought our Prius ITech that the batteries wouldnt last that it wasnt viable etc but the main batteries are still original and operating to specification. The only thing replaced was the inverter in 2022. So full EVs will be both better and worse than people expect IMO. There will always be a fundemental issue where mass is involved. For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. And so people are going to be faced with transformative change. Travelling long distances hauling caravans or trailers will be much more difficult. When you consider that the most popular new vehicle in Australia and the USA is 4wd SUV utility many are going to find change difficult.
"For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. " I agree ! I bought a diesel car precisely for that reason. But that is only for a transition period. New battery technology will be mass produced end 2023-2024 (CATL & BYD) with a range of 750 miles/1000Km and charging from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes. The technology is improving fast, and mass production takes less than 2 years now. So I bought my diesel car because my old diesel is not allowed to drive in the city due to political "environmental" reasons. I therefore needed a solutiion until 2027-2028 when the EV with a longer range faster charging batteries will be available, and affordable.
They won't find change difficult because they won't change. Large countries with vast swaths of land like US or Australia or Russia will simply continue using fossil fuel cars until maybe hydrogen becomes trendy
I've been driving a plugin hybrid (Honda Clarity) with >40 mile electric capability for several years now, and while doing so is probably not adding much pressure on industry to improve the charging network (I charge mainly at home and at work), it has been a very satisfying experience for me. I probably average >90% running on electricity, and have zero range anxiety. I understand that I'm not getting all the benefits of all-electric vehicles (low mechanical complexity), but it's a very good tradeoff for me personally, and the car doesn't lug around a battery that is way oversized for 90% of the use cases. The very few times a year I need long range, and/or drive in a rural area, I use gasoline once the battery runs out. It's a shame the technology isn't catching on more.
Thanks Sabine, you do an amazing job with your videos. I ordered a battery EV car last week. Tested it a few weeks ago and it was some really cool experience, and that's an understatement. Why now? Well, because the technology reached the point to be practical _in the place where I live in_, and that's a very important distinction. The car has a 77kWh battery, that gives you around 550km of range. The island where I live in (Gran Canaria) is perfect for this kind of range, in fact with a fully charged battery I could drive round-trips around the whole island 3 times and still have a quite a bit of battery left, so the range anxiety depends a lot on the circumstances of every individual driver and the place where the car will be used. I will have a 7.2kW charging station at home, so the battery will be full every morning easily, and I don't think I will have to ever go to a public charging station at all. So at the end for the question "Are EV cars practical?" the answer is "Depends on where you live". At some places, like where I live, it is already, by far. But, for some other bigger places where you may have to drive for hundreds of kilometers in a single day, the situation can be more complicated, and depends too much on charger infrastructure.
I think the range anxiety depends even more on your lifestyle than where you live, commuting long distances everyday is also lifestyle dependent. I work from home most days so charging at home is more than enough. Living in rural areas solar is probably a good choice and should be enough.
Great review, your opening comment says it all, reduce your need to drive. Everything you have stated I have researched. We do 10,000KM a year in my 2017 Euro 6 diesel. My calculations have worked out in the UK with the energy generation mix of 285 grammes of CO2 per KWh it would take 29 years to offset the CO2 of a new electric car. A lot of people are being completely conned by being "pious in their Prius" by buying an electric car. I should point out that we are virtuality carbon nuetral at home including a wood fired heating system, bore hole and solar panels. Hence the reason I researched buying an EV. If you live in Norway and Northern Sweden yes👍
Contemporary design is focussing on prestige cars requiring more power long range capability. A different mind set is required. It's not just about transportation.
In Norway, 8 of 10 new personal vehicles sold are in 2023 electric and soon 24% of the entire vehicle stock is already electric. It is about four times more expensive to drive a diesel or pertrol car than an EV in that country when considering just the fuel costs. Most people of course charge their cars at home and super-chargers are mostly used during long-distance driving. Hence, the problem with lack of charging infrastructure is somewhat overstated. Smart grid solutions will enable electricity production that is vastly more efficient than it is today. Even in countries where the energy mix is mostly made up of brown coal, it is a lot easier to reduce CO2 emissions from power stations than it is from individual vehicles. The "problem" with cobalt in battery production is very soon a thing of the past. With respect to the cost of fuel it is easy to forget that a finite resource only can get more expensive, while renewable sources can only become cheaper over time. The cost of battery production will also be significantly reduced over time with evolving battery technologies and capacity. Even if 90% of all new vehicles in Europe would be electric by 2030 it will still likely take a hundred years until we stop producing oil and gas. One should also not forget the subsidies that have been and still are paid each year to the oil industry when comparing costs.
Thankyou for the better researched update. I initially commented on your original version saying how disappointed I was with the errors but then deleted my comment at that time ( my bad). I’m very pleased to be able to say ‘good job’ this time. Oh and yes I am an EV driver here in the U.K. and I’m fortunate enough to be able to charge at home for 7.5pence per kW. on green energy. I recently learned once a population reaches about 25% on acceptance of an idea the rest tend to follow.
In the US, the average driving distance per day is 37 miles, so roughly 10 hours of charging on a 120 volt standard outlet is enough, which all houses will have. Assuming you want a faster charge, simple devices to share a plug for a dryer charger are available. The amount of extra capacity needed is less than the amount from adding air conditioning which was added to most homes since the 1960s. Also, the video does not consider economies of scale. Already cost per kWh for batteries has dropped since the release of this video about 6 months ago. And renewable electricity generation has increased as well, making a cleaner grid. With things changing so fast, Sabine will have to update this every six months! And that is a good thing.
Its a shame you didn’t include how many of EV owners do almost all their charging from home! Most of us manage just topping up at home on cheap rate electricity and NEVER. need to use other chargers. I’ve been electric for over 3 years and have still to use anything other than a home, or destination charger. There is also a joy of not going to a filling station ever week. . . One final point; my Taycan is a lot better than ICE.
You can tell when someone doesn't own an EV... They always say that fast chargers are a big reason we can't switch to EVs. Then you ask someone who owns an EV and they scratch their head why everyone keeps talking about fast charging.
Charging at home is great if you have a detached home. Which is a rapidly shrinking part of the population. Meantime apartments and condo buildings do hot have chargers.
70% of all people need public chargers as they are living in large cities and do not even have an own parking lot. Not all people are living in their own villa.
@@sooocheesyYou can tell when someone is well-off or living in a small town and have their own parking lot. Lots of people isn't and can't, many are even driving a single used car bought cheap. Additionally, EVs are not as climate-friendly as supposed. But EVs are binding huge amounts of money that could be used much more efficiently to decelerate climate change. It's a big misinvestment.
@@ulrikof.2486 Did you actually watch the video? Sabine addresses that. There's a point at which they have a better carbon footprint than traditional ICE vehicles, which depends on how green the electricity is, so Norway does really well, and Poland badly.
Really enjoyed your video… thanks for bringing up lots of perspectives on science. Question: How about the deforestation and carbon emissions from those increased mining? Not only from the battery production but also the infrastructure upgrading (copper, aluminum etc). Also the issues facing recycling of batteries. Will we be ‘front loading’ the carbon foot print for changing to EV?
Yep batteries don't grow on trees, in fact often the opposite is involved. Not to mention dealing with all the toxic waste from their production from the mines all the way to final assembly, and the toxic waste from the renewables (resins for turbine blades, lots of forever chemicals and poisonous metals from solar panels). Still better than pumping carbon and fossil poisons out the ground and into the atmosphere. They definitely need a method of dealing with the waste before starting this "green" transition.
Well done, Sabine. You managed to discuss electric vehicles without mentioning the shortcomings of the currently dominant EV power source, namely lithium-ion batteries. Leaving aside the whole raw materials issue and the fact that Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, said at a recent industry conference that there simply isn't enough lithium in existence to meet demand, there's the issue of the chemistry. While the dangers of Li-Ion may very well have been overstated, the fact is that they have very real consequences on the motor trade. Among them: The escalating severe depreciation of EVs that can now be measured on a weekly basis; the scrapping of battery packs with only superficial damage to the outer casing (which usually means writing off the entire vehicle because of the cost of replacement); the refusal of used car dealers to take them as trade-in or to buy them at auction; the increasing reluctance of insurance companies to insure them and steeply rising premiums for everyone, EV owner or not; the inability of local mechanics to repair them because, amongst other things, manufacturers (especially Tesla) refuse to supply them with parts because they are not authorised repairers; and the increasing unwillingness of body shops to take in crashed EVs because of the danger that a damaged battery pack will ignite and burn everything to the ground. Note that I haven't even mentioned all the problems with battery disposal at end of life. As things stand, spent Li-Ion batteries go straight to landfill because they cannot be recycled and that means that they will be oozing toxic chemicals into the land and water for decades if not centuries to come. Battery electric vehicles are an environmental disaster in the making. In fact, it's already happening in China. Maybe in the near future solid state batteries will arrive to save the day but right now what you have is a bunch of scientifically illiterate politicians pushing a suicidal agenda that will do lasting environmental harm down our throat for the purpose of establishing their green credentials.
Well put, it's nice to see a voice of criticism during this, what some would call, mass schizophrenia event. 😢 I would add another point, regarding safety. In case of accident, or catastrophic battery failure one is dealing with a fire that is hard to extinguish. Since battery burns independently from oxygen supply, conventional methods and extinguishers are u effective. Fire itself is a chemical reaction that will run its course for anywhere of up to 36 hours. As we already know, although rare, spontaneous ignition of a lithium based batteries happen. Imagine one of such EV, being parked in the underground parking of apartment building. That just might be a reason to insurance companies behind reluctant about EV. Recycling of batteries is a big issue that no one wants to talk about. Public is well attuned and oposes nuclear waste storages while turning the head other way when we have similar r problem but on much bigger scale with all renewables. In fact recycling is the biggest problem of all renewables. Recycling is a daunting, ridiculously expensive and notoriously not included in energy cost forecasts. Why? Because then they would be totally unappealing solution, as EV are now. Same goes for solar panel and wind turbines on a smaller scale. In general all prognosis seem to be well to optimistic, loke not even taking demographic decline as factor in near future. This obviously not popular opinion in the doctrine of climate change. Don't get me wrong, let's get off fossil fuels but in a sensible, not a reckless way. Imho, by the way and means of introduction, lack of sensible debate and exercise in scaremongering, whole industry smell fishy to say the least.
We have two cars at home and one is a BEV. We have a garage and a nearby 240V outlet. If you plan on replacing one of your cars and can charge it at home, you have no calculations to make. If you can supply all the charging yourself it is absolutely a no-brainer. Even if you have no environmental concerns, do it for the money. I am saving well over 50% of the total previous household fuel costs. We got the new car last December. I have tried quick changing on trips but in Costa Rica, it is still far from dependable. I plan a longer trip to a rural area for the end of the year. That trip will be in my old car.
In most places in the USA, you are unable to survive without a car of some type. Public transportation is just not up to the task, and we are spread out.
Most cities have buses. My issue with them is the high crime rate we have on our buses where I live. I would never take them. Unless people can be more civil to each other, I'll never take public transportation if I can help it.
I have walked for almost four years and use mass transit once a month. My life has changed, but not fr the worst; I can live well without charms and babbles. 👍
When there's room for streets, there's also room for solar panels. Think streets roofed with such panels. Problem solved. On top one can put panels on house roofs, parking lots, fields, ... in 20 years we'll have a lot more electricity than we can consume.
I am glad you revise a video if needed! I drive a Tesla model 3 for 4 years now. And I drive a lot. More than 40.000 km per year. I drive mostly long distances between Holland and the south of France. 4 years ago I had to plan a bit more, to be sure to find superchargers when needed. Now there are almost dubble the amount. So now it’s a breeze. No worries at all. With my previous car I also took a break every 2 or 3 hours just to stay alert and healthy. Now I do the same, at the supercharger. So almost no extra time for me. I would never go back to fuel. Apart from driving cleaner with a BEV, I like how it drives!
I think you’re wrong that EV’s will get more expensive. Jim Farley’s (Ford) comments were in the context that the Mach e is losing over 100% per car - naturally they can’t contemplate easily lowering prices. Tesla is making around 20% profit per car now and their next gen platform is targeting the $25,000 market. Prices will come down (driven by Tesla) and quite quickly I reckon.
Did you see the cheap Chinese cars just now hitting the SE Asian markets? There's an amazing demand for affordable EVs. China is blowing everyone away.
Mass production leads to that prices will go down when the companies learn how to optimize the production and can spread out engineering costs on more vehicles. The cost of construction and designing of the cars will lower per unit if you manufacture 1 000 000 rather than only 20 000 per model and year.
I'm not through the video yet. She said that? Uh that's a horrible take. Batteries are just going to become cheaper, especially with sodium-ion going into production and batteries are the most expensive part. In China competition has already sorted prices so much you can get a VW ID.3 for 15.000€. that's way less than you'd pay for a VW golf.
@@4203105 Is that 15K E price in China or EU? In the UK a new ID.3 is £37,000. 15,000 Euros in China is a lot more dough than 15,000 Euros in Europe. It's a lot of dough for Chinese.
Instead of setting legislative goals for individual citizens, governments could be setting legislative goals for producers of energy, but that would make too much sense.
I saw some chargers at a UK motorway service station recently that were out of action because they could not get a connection to the grid. It's mind boggling to think of every car in a motorway service area connected to a 100 kW charger. How much power will that require?
Lots, but at least a lot of the Tesla supercharger stations have megapack batteries installed which charge up when power is cheap. A lot also have solar roofs connected to the batteries.
@@MarkT-v7f Large batteries and solar power will help but an expansion of the grid will also be necessary. A typical solar panel might produce 200 W per m2 so to power one 100 kW charger you would need 500 m2 of panels or 5400 ft2. You'll need even more to keep one charging station going 24 hours/day.
Invariably the hold up for connections is not due to technical challenges. Politics, planning, arguments over competition rights etc etc. Largest site in USA has 120 bays. Presently Tesla in Europe are maxing at 40 bays. By the time you get above 16 or so bays the turnover is very swift so I would think that 40 could be an optimum for large motorway service areas in the future.
@@AlanRPaine I think the worry about the grid is somewhat overstated - Gigabatteries are being installed in many locations, virtual power stations mean that communities with domestic batteries (like Powerwall) can feed back into the grid when needed, and accept excess power. I believe the rise of EVs and sustainable energy will help stabilise and protect the grid.
Another great video. Thank you. We have an EV (Bolt 2021) and solar panels (and 2 Tesla Powerwalls). Our panels create enough power to run our home and fuel up the EV. We put up the panels in December and so far the panels handle all our power needs from March forward (winter months the panels help a lot but do not cover all our electric needs). We still have some gas appliances, but our plan is to convert them to electric (e.g. water heater, furnace, and oven).
One negative that Pro/Cons on EV don't often consider. SF6. SulfurHexaflouride is 25,000 times more powerful as a green house gas as is CO2. It is essential to high voltage electric switching, which would need to be expanded 200-300% to power EVs. 1 ton of SF6 = 25,000 tons of CO2. Unlike CO2, it doesn't break down in the atmosphere or be absorbed by plants; it will last in the atmosphere 10,000 years building up. EVs have another serious counter point to consider.
Hi Sabine, Love your direct presentation style and balanced presentation of data. The origin impetus for us buying our first EV, the Leaf, was to allow us to better benefit from the electricity our PV was generating rather than exporting it to the grid at a much lower rate than our imported electricity costs. We are presently upsizing our PV to allow us to satisfy the higher AC charging rate our Polestar will accept. My point is that many EV owners either do, or aspire to, charging their vehicles from their own solar generation. Apart from the cost benefits there is also the advantage of knowing that their EV is using fully renewable fossil fuel free electricity, AKA running your EV on sunshine. Also in regard to the demand on grid infrastructure that you identify the charging of EVs from generation in the immediate vicinity (home or workplace) mitigates this grid demand. In addition the adoption of V2G and V2H functionality will further buffer both peak grid demand and peak daytime generation from PV which it is used as the charging source. Much has been said by futurists such as Tony Seba in this regard and on the changing ways we will source energy and the uses we will put it to in the coming decades. EVs are just part of a much wider network that will change hugely in the coming years.
I think most people believe they will charge their EV via an electrical socket off the grid (with many here still stating "oh 100% efficient magic from that socket"); but perhaps "aspire to the off the grid existence" I do think sounds so doable - but I used to read Popular Science and such in the old days and they made moon bases seem so easy and doable too, and sure many will say that is still true but it is so expensive and a long path of .. if there are not other variable such as world events and bad behaviors taking place.
Model YLR owner i charge off my solar panels. I have not payed anything for elect for 6 years. My solar gives back in the day time and helps the grid. I plug in at night and start charging at 12 AM this helps the utility balance the load and helps wast by ramping up in the day and down at night.
Funny, more than once during this video I said to myself "but what about..." then you promptly talked about the what. Nicely done. I would love to hear a deeper dive on recycling of the various types of battery packs. It seems there are only two types of recycling videos, terrible recycling or awesome recycling. The awesome recycling videos tend to have more real data than opinions. We've had a Model Y long range for two years and we love it. I find it cumbersome and awkward when I am required to drive a gas car now. The lag in throttle response and having to switch to the brake pedal every time you stop or slow down is annoying. I also like the 8 year, 125,000 mile drivetrain and battery pack warranty.
Yes a deeper dive would be nice. Until then, the short version is that several researches (including one done by AU Govt) has shown that recycling 90% of batteries is totally feasible and economical. There will be some difficulties, but it can be done. One of the current difficulties simply is the demand for that at the moment. There are a few companies around that are already completely recycling batteries, but those are very few and far between. Again simply because there is not a big demand for needing more at the moment. And there likely will not be a strong demand for that quite some time to come. As batteries, especially those for vehicles and generally some sort of lithium base, will have a second life purpose elsewhere for a very long time. For instance a battery bank for a vehicle can easily last well over a decade as its life expectancy. But that life expectancy is going to be about 70% SoC. So those will unlikely be recycled as you will likely be able to sell it for a second purpose use for better price than recycling company can make. And that battery bank will last another very long time. You are easily talking about decades before it needs recycling. There will be a demand down the road in the future, in like say 30 years or longer. Batteries banks will more than likely in most cases outlast the vehicle before it even reaches its life expectancy, and then see a second life elsewhere, although there will always be exceptions of course.
6:33 That's the main fallacy. You can only charge your car at home if you live in a detached house. townhouse? forget it. owned flat? forget it. rented flat? totally forget it. Electric mobility will not be feasible for the lower half of the income spectrum even in rich countries...
I'm glad you pointed out the grid issue. Tesla power stations are at most buc-ees. The issue with BMW drivers using Teslas is dangerous as they overheat the batteries.
I appreciate this latest video with the corrections and additions to the previous video. Sabine, you presented a good presentation for the challenges for the complete conversion for electric vehicles. One challenge that you mentioned is the need for added capacity (MW) of generation for charging especially at night. I did a rough calculation for the state that I reside in and found that to meet the charging demand if all the EVs were charging at the same time will require new generation that is twice the installed generation that we have today. This would need the generation capacity will be three times the capacity that we have today. Most likely the demand of electricity for charging will be less due to habits in charging, but this may be a nightmare for predicting the evening demand when people are plugging their EVs, not knowing for sure on how many EVs will be charging and how many generators need to be dispatched. One would need generators that can rapidly pick up load. Conventional steam turbines are too slow. Also new generation will require building more transmission lines or upgrading existing lines to higher voltages. This was a good video.
In practice, not every EV will be charging at the same time. To keep the numbers simple, suppose a car does 4miles per kWh and is driven 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. That means is needs 3,000kWh per year or 8.2 kWh per day. In the UK, a standard 3-pin socket can provide 230V x 10Am = 2.3kW. So it takes an average of 3.6 hours per day to charge. A single phase home charger runs at 7kW, so it would charge in an average of 1.2 hours. In the US, the voltage is about half, 110V, so charging times might be longer.
@@grahamf695 In the USA towns are more spread out and one would like to be able to cover the distant travel. An EV with 120mile range may be suitable. So in my thinking one would go with an EV with a range of 360 miles. Charging requirements is 117kW-hr for 8hr charge with average power requirement about 14kW. In the state that I reside the population is 20 million people of which half live in a major city. The other half lives in rural or suburban areas. Looking at the means of the rural and suburban people, we'll reduce the population to 8 million to account for seniors who do not drive. Assuming a household of 4 people we have 2 million households. Most likely there are 2 EVs in the household. So, we are looking at 4 million EVs. The worst condition is all 2 million EVs are charging at the same time. Then the power required is 56,000MW. The present installed capacity is about 25,000MW. Granted that not all EVs will be charged at the same time. I did a simulation by dividing 56,000MW to a group of 7,000MW with different charging habits. One group charged their EV once every day. The next group once every 3 days, and so on. In the simulations the average is about 3 groups, but on day 370 there were 7 groups (49,000MW) charging their EV. This will be a nightmare for the grid system operator to predict. Also note that I had not addressed the conversion from ICE to EV in the big city. That will add to the numbers that I am giving above. Granted the numbers can come down for 120-mile range. Regardless for the electrical utility industry the complete conversion from IGE to EV will be a challenge.
@@louishannett356 I certainly agree that converting from ICE to EV will be a challenge. Your simulation approach is interesting. The challenge is that it depends critically on the assumptions that you are making, which may or may not be valid. Doing the research to make them reasonable might possibly merit a PhD! My personal experience is that I charge between 12:00-7:00 am, because the electricity is less than half price at that time. The current peaks in UK electricity usage come at half-time or just after a penalty shoot out in the Football (soccer) Association Cup Final, or a big World Cup came That is when everybody switches on their kettle for a cup of tea or coffee. For EVs, the peak might be at Christmas, New Year, Easter, or Thanksgiving when lots of people take a trip to visit relatives. I checked out average car mileage in the US. It varies from 12k miles per year in New York & Florida (similar to UK) to 22k miles in Wyoming. I am considering moving to the Intelligent Octopus service, which automatically charges your car when the grid is quietest and adjusts the tariff accordingly. I think sometimes it even pays you to use electricity, because of over-supply. Such approaches help to smooth out usage. Some people are installing solar power and batteries, which will also help. However in the UK and possibly the EU, gas central heating boilers will be banned in new homes from 2025. This will force people to install either hydrogen boilers or more likely electric heat pumps. That will add further load to the grid.
Graham, thanks for reply. When I did the calculations it was to get a rough idea where things are going. A detailed study would indeed give someone a PHD or a research grant. As one person that worked with said, "I'm an engineer, not a scientist." I took that attitude for the calculations, which are rough, but they give you an idea what to conclude. I'm a retired electrical engineer who had worked in the power field. I have ICE and most likely they would be the last vehicles that I will drive. I have battery power lawn mower and I love. It is lighter in weight and the cost for charging compared to cost of fuel for gasoline mower is 4 cents to 75 cents to mow my whole yard. Also there is less maintenance. Electrical rates from my utility provider is fixed per kWh usage. So time of day does not matter. My son-in-law has solar panels on his roof. On a clear day the peak generation is 11kW. He got less than half during the week when we had the smoke from Canada.
In the U.S. homes have 240 volts at the service (circuit breaker) panel. We use 3 wires from the utility source with two hot wires that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other and a neutral wire. Across the two hot wires you will measure 240 volts, from the neutral to a hot wire you will measure 120 volts. The neat thing about this is the neutral wire only carries the difference of the amperage between the two hot wires. We use 120 volts mainly for wall outlets to power small appliances TVs, lighting, etc. 240 volts is used for high current devices ie. clothes dryers, water heaters, air conditioning and so on. There is also a separate wire tying all grounding points together to Earth ground. Finding 240 volts for charging is no problem in U.S. homes. The question is, is the service drop and grid robust enough to handling charging and every other current draw along with vehicle charging. Another problem are people that park their cars on the street in the evening, in some areas that's going to be a whole lot of extension cords carrying 240 volts across the yard...
"In 2021, China set a goal for renewable capacity - including wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power - to exceed fossil fuel capacity by 2025, a target that it has hit two years ahead of schedule, Reuters reports. Renewable sources, as China defines them, now make up 50.9 percent of the country's power capacity.Jun 12, 2023."
I drive a plug-in hybrid car and find that it is perfect for a small city. The approximate 35 km electric range from charging at home takes me anywhere in the city the next day. I rarely need to fill with gas, but never have "range anxiety". As a bonus, I love the smoothness, quietness, and strong torque of the electric motor.
$2.5 Trillion for upgrades? Could be easily achieved by cutting fossil fuel subsidies. Now grid operators need to finally do something for their money, in germany most of them just maintain, don't develop and it prints cash for them (guaranteed rate of return here).
I remember those from my childhood in Brighton, UK! They would keep losing power when they went round corners and the power pickup lost contact with the overhead line. Or maybe I'm misrememberng - it was a loooong time ago.
The biggest change I noticed was in the number of miles required by an EV to compensate for the coal electricity. I was shocked when I saw those numbers before. And now it seems reasonable.
The terrible mileage isn't the only big problem with EVs. They're totally impractical and UNaffordable . An unsustainable vehicle - extreme fire hazard and a waste depository nightmare.
@@kellikelli4413Agree.. the whole scenario is a pipe dream.. great in theory .. but impractical in reality. Common sense will tell anyone this, but no.. FEAR and cynical political manuvering have the microphone and probably will continue to sing the 'song' even after screwing economies and free democracies into the ground. ,.. We didn't do anything wrong.. .. how could we have known ?..
Batteries are valuable, and can be 98% recycled today. Fuel/oil, tanks, tanker ships, and drilling rigs are extremely dirty/explosive and cannot be recycled
@@thomasreese2816 The batteries we've been using for years are recyclable... NOT the EV batteries... The EV batteries are COMBUSTIBLE (dangerous) more so even than fossil fuels. People must stop regurgitating the narrative lies to convince you otherwise and do some serious research on the subject‼️
I’ve owned an EV for the last 5 years. I bought it cheaply 2nd hand. I’ve never had it serviced and the only maintenance has been new brake pads and wiper blades. It costs nothing to run (charged by solar) , has low tax, low insurance. It’s a no-brainer. It’s also fabulous to drive, especially in traffic.
Love your videos and great to see you fixing errors! I have been driving my EV for the past two and a half years, including an 870mile round trip from Lincolnshire to Disneyland Paris. It was an easy trip and I love my EV, just plug in at home, do whatever I want, go to sleep and wake up to a car with a range of 220 to 260 miles depending on my charge level. Over 95% of all my charging is at home powered via my solar panels or overnight cheap energy.
Isn't it funny how nothing was said about SAFETY ! Did anyone see the container ship ablaze carrying 500 Ev's this week ? Spewing out copious volumes of toxic gas & smoke ? The only way to put out the fire was to wait untill it burnt out itself . Can you imagine being in an underground car park & an EV caught fire that was sitting next to say another 20 EV's hhmmmm NOT a place Id like to be in .....
Thanks for this video. I'm curious how much more effective it would be to simply change city design to allow for greener forms of transportation that are less expensive like cycling, walking or taking public transit. As well as making cities denser with more housing and shops closer together. This seems like a cheaper solution, so I'm curious how fast that would bring down emissions!
GREAT point, which is almost always overlooked in discussions of public policy. A corollary is that people won't willingly live in energy-efficient areas (i.e., dense cities) if those are not safe, pleasant, and affordable. Personally, I was raised in a large city and prefer it in many ways. I would much rather walk everywhere than drive everywhere. However, I live in a small suburban city because the large cities near me are unsafe, unpleasant, and unaffordable. I am sorry to say this, but the wealthier neighbors I have don't rob my house, steal my stuff, shoplift, carjack, join gangs, filth things up, ruin the schools, and overburden the safety net. I have to drive to everything, which I hate, but it's a great defense against undesirables. (BTW, this isn't closet racism. My neighborhood is very multi-racial. They're just not criminals and deadbeats. And yes, I recognize how classist that is. But when urban governments don't protect the productive people, they protect themselves by moving away. And that's a huge driver for carbon emissions, which liberals refuse to even discuss. And, to be politically balanced, part of the reason for large city failures has been off-shoring caused by not charging for carbon emissions and pollution by means of taxes and import duties, which conservatives refuse to even discuss.)
@@davidmackie3497 I'm with you. I live in a clean, quiet neighborhood in the suburbs, and I would rather die than live in a densely populated city with high crime.
Effective? Yes, there are way more effective ways to remodel our cities to allow for all kind of EVs (trams, trains, subway, bikes, scooters, bicycles) AND walkable ones at the cost of people's sanity, as you'd have to squeeze everyone together if you were to make everything walkable, you'd have to stack people on top of each other in smaller housing and tall towers. Now, it's not realistic at all, i'd say it's even more unrealistic than anarchism and/or communism. We could make new cities based around that concept, but who would even move there in the first place? When the reason they've moved to the big cities is because everyone is there and everything they need is already there, despite how uncomfy it may be, so you'd have to forcefully evict and rehome everyone on the new comfortable and efficient city. Changing cities to accomodate for better transportation and transit so people can use efficient EVs, public transport and still have all the vehicles needed to restock stores and deliver big objects or big amounts of materials to people's houses is outright impossible from an economic point of view. You would have to cut many roads to install trams, have lanes for public transports and you'd still need to have accessible roads for trucks everywhere to restock stores or to move furniture and other big stuff around.
@@davidmackie3497 :: Well, during the Pandemia we learned that some jobs can be done in home, at least partially. We have the roofs that are areas where we can place solar batteries, Public transportation can be upgraded and augmented, China, Australia and the USA had immense desert areas where solar (and wind) can generate electrical energy. The Sahara is also immense. Also, there is that concept of solar-wind chimneys that take advantage of the Mountains height to embed in them chimneyes that can be as high as one kilometer, the base-to-top differential in temperature and pressure can be used to generate electricity with turbines.
Love this! One factor that I think is not covered is increase in car ownership rates. Right now only ~10% of people own a car, largely because most people in emerging economies can't afford one. However, this is likely going to shift fast as incomes increase. Even if electric cars are 80% lower emissions over the lifetime, if 5x more people have cars (50% of the world) then you are not going to reduce any emissions. Maybe really good public transport is the only way??
Great video, and shared! You didn't touch on residential renewables and their part to play in the future. I am looking forward to purchasing my first EV after testing several and being very impressed. They are ideal on small tropical islands where distances aren't far and an abundance of sun and tradewinds, can be used cost effectively to help that payback offset. Some points I raised in a conversation earlier today, was the move away from long distance trucking, and a push to invest more in rail infrastructure and stock. This will more efficiently move freight around over longer distances, and use smaller trucks/vehicles for last kilometer/miles delivery. The Dutch have shown us how to change the urban traffic design and infrastructure to be more pedestrian friendly with cycling and small EVs. So I'm sure some of these factors could reduce the mining and production requirements, and may be more efficient in the long-term reduction of our overall carbon footprint
Take your bicycles and walking any distance to places like Sanfrancico or any mountain side city and pickup milk and bread or lunch supplies for the kids including your selves. 😮😢. Add in a broken crank chain ouch.
@@kevinoneill41 you would be surprised at the amounts of people in these locations, that do have bikes. Another point, is how unhealthy our lifestyles have become, so there's a health benefit too. I walked to and from school, from a hill location, did me no harm ;-) For me, and E-Cargo bike is very much on the radar too.
@@kevinoneill41I rode bicycles and motorcycles all year round in Scotland for 16yrs, no problem. Wind, snow, sleet, frost, rain, sun and hail, and it didn't do me any harm.....if anything, it made me a better driver. 🙂
Thanks for an interesting video that addressed issues that I was not aware of. I wonder what a similar analysis would find when applied to the existing infrastructure needed for ICE vehicles. How much has been spent to build all the gas stations and distribution networks? How much more is needed to maintain and clean up the environmental damage when the storage tanks inevitably wear out and leak.
These are excellent questions. The cost of change is important to consider, but the status quo has a lot of hidden costs that are swept under the rug. Not to mention the gargantuan cost of the climate catastrophe that would result if we continue to burn fossil fuels.
This is exactly what I was thinking. It's true that improving the electric grid will be expensive, but operation and upkeep should be much less expensive than keeping the whole fossil fuel distribution network running.
@@Peter-rw1wt Rare earth metals are not used in EV batteries. They are used in catalytic converters for ICE vehicles. And in cell phones and other consumer electronics. Some EV motors do use rare earth metals, but many EV motors do not. I believe these can be recycled, unlike catalytic converters. I wonder, when was the first time you thought about the mining of rare earths? Was it during the process of consuming anti-EV propaganda? Or did you think about them ever, for even one second, when they were only being used in your gasoline (petrol) powered car?
Another issue currently of serious concern about Lithium based EVs is water. Right now the 130,000 tons of lithium produced in 2022 took 1% of all the fresh water on earth. To grow production by 10x would take 10% of all fresh water; as much as in Lakes Michigan and Erie. Chilean legislators want to be lithium mining because it is using 65% of the water in the region. Lithium is a total dead end for EV production if a better safer, cheaper chemistry isn't identified.
As several of you pointed out, our video on electric vehicles which ran last week contained several mistakes and omissions. I was very unhappy about this and decided to revise and reupload it. Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Can we please have a bullet point list of correction for those who don't want to watch it again?
Enjoying the jokes just as much the second time. 😊
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Thank you my dear lady for your consideration for us.
@@thearpox7873 No! 🤣🤣🤣
Full credit for owning any mistake and improving the final product. This is why I will keep watching you.
Just found and why i subscribed
Kudos for acknowledging the mistakes! Takes a pair to pull off!
Given the climate I live in and huge distances involved in routine trips, EV will never be an option here simply from survival standpoint.
I often have to park off the road during blizzard and wait the blizzard out inside the car (with the engine off - obviously - i have layers to survive -40 'F inside the car just fine). With the gasoline car, I know that I can simply wait it out, sleep in the car and survive.
Try to take a wild guess how long will the EV battery last at -40 'F/ - 40'C and whether the car will start after , say, 8-10 hours out in the elements (full exposure to wind-chills down to -60 'F), especially after having driven 200-300 kms already, but if someone's aspiration is to win a Darwin's Award, hey - no judgement there :)
That being said, EV could be a nice, fourth (not second, not third) summer car. I can see it could be used for about 3-4 months out of a year, probably 2, perhaps even 3 times per week for things like - getting an ice cream, picking up mail or visiting neighbors across the street :)
On a second thought, for $80,000, I can probably imagine a nicer summer car than a typical fugly EV...
I haven't finished the video yet, but personally, I don't like how she seems to talk about the amounts of money needed for EV transitioning as if it's a fool's errand.
As if that's waaayyy beyond what's reasonable for a country's expenditure.
It makes it sound defeatist which isn't the kind of message we need.
@@VladR1024 EV batteries don't technically lose charge in the cold. You just can't get the energy out till they are warm again. (Which in your case would be a problem, I agree)
But sodium batteries are coming and they work with close to 100% efficiency up to -20°C. Even at -40°C I'd expect them to work decently well, but time will have to tell there.
Does your combustion car even start at that temperatures? Don't they need a block heater at that point?
Before somebody asks why the range is worse in winter then: heating, winter tires and worse road conditions.
@@VladR1024 what cars are you looking at that $80.000 is your go-to? There are so many, so much cheaper EVs.
Hi Sabine, your mind set for AC home charging is based on combustion engine fuel tank refills. You go to the service station when your fuel tank is low.
With an electric vehicle you top-up charge every time you drive into your car port or garage. On average most daily distance covered by a vehicle is less the 50km. This would require approximately 4 to 6 kwh of charging energy. With a 15 amp AC socket this will take approximately 2 hours or less. If you have solar and charge during the day the cost to do so will be small or nearly free.
It's great having control of your own electric fuel supply at home. Will never go back to ICE vehicle.
I fully agree on the fuel tank refill analogy @henvan8737, several times during the video I found you, Sabine, try to apply "old-style" (i.e. petrol/energy) mindset one to one to BEVs.
Another example is peak loads for the grid (transformers). This assumes energy generation and distribution will remain forever centralized, but we already see a disruption there happening right now due tue exponentially growth of renewable energies. So, yes the grid needs to change and become more flexible but mainly due to renewables and not BEV.
And again, this is already happening. There are smart home chargers on the market which charge your car whenever there is cheap electricity (and low load to the grid).
Also, every BEV and home owner will add solar to the roof, for purely economic reasons, thus effectively reducing load to grid.
Not to mention vehicle to grid which you can already buy in some countries (e.g. in Germany: Volkswagen - E3DC)
All of that (and more to come) is reducing load to grid and is part of a transformation, that is happening anyway due to solar+wind even if no BEV would exist on earth...
As a new EV owner, I was warned against daily charging. There is a limit to the number of times a battery can be charged. Topping off your EV battery is similar to keeping your phone or laptop always plugged in. It reduces the life span of the battery. I was told to use the battery for what it was intended. I drive my EV down to a charge level where the remaining distance is at or below 50 miles, unless I plan to drive a considerable distance. Then I charge it up to 80% to ensure I can make it back home.
@@lawrenceemke1866that's why most ev top up to 80% , 60% to 80% top up will not degrade your battery
@@lawrenceemke1866 yes it treu if lithium batteries are kept full they eat away at the catode best is to put it in staorage charge i think 3.7 volts per cell with the ev batteries but you want to have it full so when you want to drive you can go even having youre battery at at full for a week will damage it.i know this from drone racing and using lithium batteries we would store them at storage charge so they will keep there punch if you did not do that the batteries would get weak very quickly
@@jbcola74 yes it will if you want to store the ev you need to put it in storage charge but there is no option for that and fast chasrging will damage it to yes it can do it but if you charge slow the battery will last longer
Biphase in the US. Every house has 240V coming in, and it's split into 120V. You just need to run a 240 circuit to your driveway for the charger (it cost us about $900, but 30% was a direct federal income tax deduction).
The problem is apartment buildings that don't have parking.
CARB liers about the efficiency of EVs. In their ARB/MSD/7---94 they claim that battery efficiency is 80% and motor is 90%. These are LIES!!!! Charging a battery in one hour is 5.88% efficient, in 15 minutes it is only 0.3675%. The motor depends on how many stops it makes. Ech time it starts the motor and system efficiency is almost ZERO!!!!
Sorry for being a week late with this comment.
Thank you for taking pride in your work. Too many youtubers don't look back to correct their content. I appreciate all of your videos. I love the humor and the density of accurate scientific information.
Well said.
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We have been driving a Chevy Volt for 6 years. 90% of our charging is at home. Often you don’t use 100% of the power and don’t need to charge every night. And the big omission in the revised version is the cost savings of routine repairs. In six years: no brake pads replaced, no electric motor adjustments, no battery maintenance! Sure, replacing the whole battery would be expensive, but that is more like replacing an internal combustion engine rather than a gas tank. It happens, but very rarely. In my experience, the vast majority of EV drivers would never go back to the high cost of gas and routine maintenance. Thanks for asking for input Sabine. Your integrity is showing. 😊
Generaly, I agree with this article except the notion on brake pads: less used brakes will rust away quickly, so they will need to be replaced. Some EV manufacturers use good old drum brakes…
There are contrary anecdotes I'm seeing here on toob to yours . But I also read comments such as yours . The scales are for me tipping against the current approaches adopted to set up an EV world .. The disasters that occur in Tjyna for byd and Huawei have been censored/suppressed . I'd like to see EVs as auxiliary household vehicles for city and short range use with free registration if owners already possess an ice vehicle. Range be not too ambitious either in order to not cram cells hazardously too close .
Brake pad replacement is only an indicator of use. Lasting 6 years has nothing to do with electric or gas. My guess is you don't drive much.
I operated a taxi for 10 years. Gas powered. New brake pads every 30 days.
Lack of use will also help the battery last longer but you are soon coming up for replacement. Batteries degrade over time.
I'm sure you're very happy with your EV, but there are good and bad points to everything.
Great that Sabine is willing to update the video with fixes. Is there a list of corrections?
Never make a list of your mistakes and let anyone see it.
@@bugsbunny8691 why?
I was looking for such a list. It's easy to miss important corrections, and you may be left with a mistaken idea because it wasn't explicitly pointed out.
quite a few corrections, but still many more needed.
@@hcubicsuch as?
Gasoline stations make very little money from selling gasoline, the markup is only about 1.2%. They make money from the sales of lottery tickets, convenience foods, beer, water, etc.
So the basic infrastructure is there to set up an electric charging area, the main thing needed is actually convenient land areas close to highways to setup a charging station. A present day gasoline station has the conveniences a person having to wait 20 minutes or more to charge their vehicles need, bathrooms, food and drinks.
Solar panel chargers set up to charge vehicles sitting at work sites would be no stress on the electrical system. A solar panel system at home would help take draws off the electrical system during the day to run home systems like air-conditioning. Being more decentralized in electricity production would help to allow the present system to not need huge upgrades to support an electric vehicle society.
Thank you for painting a more complete picture in this revised video.
I'd like to point out, as an EV owner that is charging from a 230V wall socket, you don't need to charge for a whole day. Most of the time, you will not be at 0% but more around 50%.
Also, even if you charge from empty, you still don't have to charge it to 100% if you don't need it! You charge what you need.
..or charge what you can get, be it 60% or 87%. Charging an EV is like grazing instead of gobbling.
@@salipander6570 Or do it when you're sleeping. Most people do.
And even more importantly, we don't all charge from 20% to 80% every night. These calculations need to also include the average distance people drive each day and the average energy consumption of the EVs on the road to calculate the amount of energy needed to charge every night. And they never take solar and home battery uptake into account. I pretty much only need to charge once a week, and I do that from solar on my house, mostly on weekends. Most people doing the work commute will find one or two charging sessions a week will meet their needs easily. If your workplace has the sense to go solar and provides charging infrastructure for employees, then the problem goes away. All the talk about grid infrastructure needs is often partly driven by grid companies seeking to profit from investment in their networks. One of the real drivers of cleaning up our energy systems will be decentralisation, ideally behind the meter, through solar and home storage (and stationary batteries are a much easier target than mobile ones from the resource perspective). Some sensible investment, through low or no interest loans for people to buy locally manufactured home batteries would go a massive way towards grid resilience. Oh, and we get increased domestic security as a byproduct by massively increasing the number of targets an adversary has to hid to cripple our energy systems, and by onshoring more and more of our energy sources.
Yes, I think most of the projections for electricity usage by electric vehicles are inflated. It's advantageous to inflate them for both petrochemical interests and electric grid operators, not to mention various political groups.
This paper presents what I think is an even-handed, trustworthy estimate:
Low energy: Estimating electric vehicle electricity use - david s. rapson rapson.ucdavis.edu/uploads/8/4/7/1/84716372/bbrw_paper_nber_final.pdf
At least, I think it is, but since I'm no energy expert I could be wrong.
"Time/energy to charge to 100%" is a completely irrelevant metric. EV manufacturers need to start advertising in terms of miles/hour of charging instead of whatever the hell they're doing now.
My 2018 Leaf is 250km on a full charge of 40kWh, which means it charges 60km worth per hour on a Level 2 or 12km worth per hour on a standard 120V.
If you commute to work every day and you spend only 10 hours at home, you'll still be able to top up every night plugging into your wall socket as long as your commute is less than 120km both ways. As far as charge times goes, that's literally the only figure that matters.
THIS is why I appreciate your channel, you updated a video based on your current understanding of the topic.
IF everyone did this, it'd make things a lot simpler.
That's how science should work. Unfortunately, this process is hindered by commercial pressure. Thank you Sabine for doing science the proper way
@@jurjenbos228 There are plenty of inaccuracies, the fact that many people think this as an accurate presentation makes me lose faith in humanity.🤒
One is reminded of the old question "When is the best time to plant a tree?" Answer - "Fifty years ago! The second best time? Now!"
Since you asked, I’m driving a Subaru Solterra in Japan, and so far am absolutely loving it.
The public chargers, while not ubiquitous, are at least common and have even some 100% free options if you’re willing to visit a public park in Tokyo.
A quick charge at a highway stop is ¥800 with a ¥4000/mo membership fee, or double that without (break even at 3 charges/mo) and several malls such as those run by Mitsui and Aeon have chargers, some of which are free and only cost parking fees, which of course you can also waive by shopping. Many smaller shops have public chargers with the same card system as the highway rest areas, and if approved, businesses can install them completely on the government dime, equipment and construction both, if they’re available to the public, even when payment is required to use them.
I have encountered situations where I couldn’t use the specific charger I wanted, the high amperage chargers are taken first of course, but I haven’t this far encountered a situation where I had to queue for an available charger. Then again, I only took delivery of the car last week, there’s plenty of time yet to be inconvenienced by the bad manners and whims of other drivers.
The standard highway charger is 50kW, which can be awkward in a Solterra with a 71kWh battery. Public rapid chargers limit you to 30 minutes per use, and so while they add about 140 km of range, they in no way will push the battery from 20% to 80% in a single charging session. This is where my preference for said higher amperage chargers is from, and yet some infrastructure is as low as 25 kW, though that’s not typical.
The one thing I do really like about the public charging infrastructure is that there is real-time usage reporting. From either an app or my car navigation, the available, usage or out of service state of chargers is visible, and my car at least lets you restrict searching to available chargers only.
All of that is subject to change of course, but that’s been my experience thus far.
Hi Sabine! I've been driving my Tesla Model Y since June of 2021 and my experience has been as follows:
- I never think about going to a gas station. No more calculating if I should stop at a gas station before or after my next destination (or wait until tomorrow). Just plug in at night and forget about it.
- No more standing outside in the wind, rain and cold to fill up the tank.
- On the rare occasion I do need to use a Supercharger, just plug right in. No swiping your credit card as the charger knows who you are and knows how to bill you.
- Driving is tireless as I rarely need to use the brake. Letting off the accelerator automatically switches to regenerative braking which slows the car to a stop. No more switching your foot back and forth in slow traffic.
- Tesla service staff comes to my house for certain service calls. Recalls have been handled via over-the-air software updates (thus far)
- Charging costs less than half the equivalent gasoline (according to the app). Easy to configure off-peak charging.
That is all well and good, but let us know when a software glitch locks you inside the car and battery starts burning.
I turned my bicycle into an electric bike. It weighs less than 30 pounds, has a top speed of 22 mph, and a range of 25 miles. With another six pounds of battery, the range doubles to about 55 miles.
I bet its fun trying to get several bags of groceries home with that.
@@michaelfried3123 With proper panniers, no problem. I do that for some years now.
@@michaelfried3123I have a trailer on one bike.. holds loads
@@1puppetbike I'd be too afraid of a car smashing into me where I live to use it as a grocery getter. Sadly.
Woah how did you do that??!!!
Your videos are so great. I drive an EV, Volkswagen, and live in a cold climate. The most difficult thing that I didn’t anticipate when making the choice of which car to get was the significant, almost 40%, reduction in range when the temperatures are cold. It makes the effective range considerably lower than advertised for almost half of the year.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet heating isn't that bad. there's tons of resources and comparisons for that.
but with improving heating, not much can be achieved. the insulation is already pretty good. better models are equipped with heat pumps. that's only helping so and so much, though. you've surfaces heated like the steering wheel, seats, and even armrests at times; which helps with lowering demand of overall cabin heat. the issue with reduced range really mostly stems from them batteries being so sensitive to the environmental conditions.
this might get sorted in future with different battery technology.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet yes, what you describe may certainly help with range.
maybe it worsens overall efficiency? (something everyone's concerned because of how expensive it this to adapt the power grid.)
I've heard that too. Not a particular concern where we live. Sabine noted that 50% of new car sales in Norway are electric. Norway is pretty cold in the winter. It doesn't seem like the cold weather is negatively affecting EV sales though.
@@brownro214 Norwegians are relatively rich, electricity thanks to ideal geological conditions plentiful and therefore their preferred choice.
Norway is cold but where most people live (close by the sea) not even as cold as you might think. the south tip is where the still warm gulf stream passes by
@@brownro214 I expect that's because a car's normal daily use is substantially less than half the capacity of the battery & ample recharging can be achieved while the car is not in use (most cars are used less than 10% of the day).
I have a 2023 Mustang Mach E. I have a 40 amp, 240 volt charger (9600 watts) that can bring the car up overnight without fail. For 99% of the driving I do, it's all where I can return home without charging and charge at home. I schedule the charging between 11PM and 6AM where the grid is fairly unloaded -- the car allows one to specify charging times.
My battery chemistry is NMC, and I normally charge to just 80% unless I'm doing a longer trip.
I absolute love the car.
Great video and seems very complete. Thanks.
I haven't had any issues with using an EV, and now I charge my car using solar, so my grid demand has actually gone down. I hope we'll see more community electricity storage so that solar production could be stored more broadly and efficiently than residential battery storage.
I hope so too - I work in the industry. EVs can use a similar amount of energy to the household before the EV arrived. The electrical industry has moved from resisting change, to working with the change to alternative power - they had no choice anyway. Distributed generation, both commercial and residential, will lighten the load on the established grid generation and transmission. The only thing in the way now is politics.
Congratulations! You are better prepared for any gas price disruptions, wars etc. This prepper attitude will allay range anxiety for many, I think.
Well said. The other aspect of EV is Vehicle to Grid where the EV battery can feed the grid in order to balance the demand with supply.
This V2G also reduces the need for upgrading electricity infrastructure by making it more efficient - presently the electricity infrastructure has been designed to deliver power to end points, like homes and factories, but as roof top solar and batteries (EV and/or home battery) homes and factories become the source of power sending power in the other ( currently unused ) direction.
Yes Officer this one here, he's advocating against energy monopoly. can't have that.
@@MiniLuv-1984 the only problem I see with vehicle to grid is you are are putting wear on tear on your battery and unless you are making enough selling power you are gonna be stuck with a massive bill replacing your battery. At least grid operators can buy storage at scale to lower their costs.
Thanks for a great video Sabine. I’m using an EV since 2020 in India. At that time there were few fast chargers on the highways so had to request restaurants (Dhabas) on the way to plug in my portable (very slow) charger and order endless tea (chai) and pakoras! That situation has changed rapidly with many fast chargers on the highways set up by different power companies. At home, I put solar PV (grid connected with net metering) so now my car, AC cooling and cooking is practically free and green. Going by the immense change I have seen in India, I am more optimistic than your video!
You own a nexon ev?
Will you pay billions for your grid upgrade?
In India, the sun shines almost every day, but what about countries farther from the equator?
@@piotrrossudowski2758skill issue + plenty of other options than sun
If you have an EV in India you are probably very upper class and well off. People like that seem to have more hope for the future for some reason...
The Tesla Charger always work easily. But charging at home is far easier and cheaper. A lot of us have 240 volt power in the US with up to 48 amp usable. You can charge at about 45 miles per hour with this setup.
Nice! Wouldn't it be easier to be in Park while charging?
@@alib6060
It would certainly save on extention cords.
I sold my diesel car in April 2022 and bought a secondhand 2018 BMW i3 94Ah. I drive about 15,000 miles (24,000kM) per year. At around the same time I had 40 solar panels with a peak output of 15.5kW fitted on my house roof and 45kW of battery storage. The latter was necessary in the UK because most houses only have a Single Phase supply, feed-in is therefore limited to 4kW and I didn't want to throw away available energy. 4kW is a ridiculous limit to impose. The peak output power from the panels had been factored to extend use of home generated electrical energy into October and March.
Apart from longer journeys when I have to use fast chargers the car runs on home generated solar energy. I don't suffer 'Range Anxiety'. I plan journeys beforehand, use Eco Pro on the i3 by default and on motorway driving often opt for slip-streaming large lorries.
The whole exercise has been fun (80% of the time - when my wife is with me she doesn't care for the risks I take with range but the closest we came to running out still left us with 3 miles when we reached a charger - she was not happy). I would certainly never go back to an ICE. I would say 70% of my mileage costs me nothing in electricity because it's "free" if you ignore the investment I've made.
Why did I do it? Because I know someone who lives near Barmouth in Wales who has been told by the Environment Agency that their house, along with 220,000 other homes in England and Wales will be lost to the sea, as levels rise. We have also begun to see an exodus of climate refugees leaving equitorial regions to move to more Northern latitudes dying in small boats. We all owe a duty to reduce our use of carbon to help the rest of mankind. Where you are born is an accident of fate, not choice.
I'm glad you pulled the other video, it had a huge number of serious mistakes in it. This one is much better. I'll make some additions, simple things that people can remember:
* A good rule of thumb for passenger-vehicle EV power consumption is 3 miles per 1 kWh. Tesla's get closer to 4, but 3 is a good conservative rule of thumb). From this it is easy to determine how much electrical energy is required, since statistics on miles driven are readily available and each individual has a pretty good idea how much they drive.
* So in terms of charging at home, the charge rate you need for convenience depends entirely on the above. If you drive the average round-trip commute of 40 miles a day, you need (40 / 3) = 13 kWh worth of charging each day. At a space-heater rate of 1000W (1kW) this would take 13 hours with an L1 charger. With a L2 charger set to 16A it would be (16A x 240VACrms = 3.84 kW, so (13 / 3.84) = 3.4 hours. At 35A, even less time.
For home charging, thus, it comes down to what is convenient for the consumer. A good rule of thumb is "overnight charging". L2 chargers are more convenient but to be very explicit here there is no need to charge at 35A. You can easily charge at 16A or even 8A or whatever, so being circuit-limited is not that big a deal. And if it came down to it, you could charge from a normal consumer outlet (120VACrms in the U.S., 12A = 1.4kW, or (13 / 1.4) = 9 hours to charge 40 miles.
* This determines, more or less, how dependent on fast DC charging one is. If you have no outlets at all, say you park on the street and can't string an extension cable without someone getting angry at you, or if you drive a lot but can't get L2 charging, or if you are driving long distance all in one go, such as when taking a trip, then you need to use a fast DC charger for at least part of your trip.
Most people do NOT need to use a fast DC charger for nominal work commutes. Not to mention that there is also such a thing as "destination charging" which is typically built-out by businesses that more and more EV commuters will be able to use over time.
* This means that Fast DC charging is really only necessary for longer trips. There does need to be a build-out, and Europe is way ahead of the U.S. on that, but it isn't really a show-stopper. That is, there will be push and pull just like any other build-out, but it is not necessarily something that needs to be 100% government funded. Demand creates supply creates demand.
--
This time around you made only two significant mistakes worth noting:
(1) The first was confusing what parts of the grid have to be upgraded. To be clear, the ENTIRE EV rollout can occur with only minimal distribution-side upgrades and, in fact, no home services need to be upgraded. Sure, it might be convenient for some home owners to upgrade, but it is absolutely not a requirement for any home. The serious upgrading of the grid has to occur on the generation side because the renewables generation expansion is "a larger number of smaller generators" and those generators need feeders and backbones. That's 99% of the problem.
Feeding residential power back to the grid does NOT require distribution line or transformer upgrades because backfeeds are limited to 20% of the service size anyway, which is less than peak consumption.
But it MAY require a substation transformer upgrade... mostly the reason for this is to upgrade to a transformer with better voltage regulation automation. substations transformers have various taps that the substation can switch them between to change the voltage ratio of the transformer. When feeding power in the reverse direction, the voltage is being scaled up rather than scaled down and if a large subdivision is pushing a lot of power it is generally doing so near the top of the allowed voltage range. Which means that the step-up in the reverse direction can sometimes exceed the substation's intermediate voltage rating. Hence the need to upgrade that particular transformer.
Distribution (e.g. pole) transformer upgrading is only a function of potential peak charging rates which for EVs can be significant, except that there is no actual requirement that an EV be charged at 35A. It can just as easily be charged at 8A or 12A or 16A, for example, which are far less stressful on distribution transformers. So is it actually a show-stopper? No. Just a convenience. The utility can simply require that homes with un-upgraded equipment charge at a slower rate until such a time as the equipment can be upgraded. That's it.
That's the technical explanation. But it should be noted that substation upgrades are only required piecemeal. The entire substations / all substations do NOT need to be upgraded because neighborhoods just don't all upgrade to solar, let alone reverse EV feeding, overnight.
The quoted dollar amounts or spectacularly over-estimated and completely ignore the dynamics of the rollout and adoption of EVs as well as the 30+ year time-frame involved. When you divide it all out, it really isn't as much money as people think it is.
(2) You, like a lot of people, greatly misunderstand the power of industrial scale in production when it comes to the cost of building an EV. This is the primary mover. You also are still a bit behind on understanding battery chemistries. Cobalt and Nickel are used in NMC and NCA chemistries, but are NOT required in LFP chemistries (you mention LFP later but you clearly got lost on the significance). So neither Cobalt or Nickel are show-stoppers. Lithium is a very abundant element all over the world that requires only the mining to be scaled up. That is happening. Just because there is some push and pull doesn't mean that it's actually any sort of problem that would stick with us.
You mention LFP, but you are a bit behind on the chemistry. Adding manganese (LFMP, for example), and other similar adjustments, has brought the energy density up to near the same levels of lithium ternary batteries (typically NMC) and this is clearly where the market is headed.
Sodium batteries are NOT in scaled, volume production yet. LFP batteries are. Sodium batteries are a bit behind on the technology scale but they could very easily grow into a competitive alternative.
==
That's everything in a nutshell. You did a much better job this time around. Just remember that the technology is progressing VERY quickly, which means that you have to keep up with it at the same pace.
Thanks so much. One additional comment, not aimed at our dear Sabine in particular. Many alarmist EV discussions are "Oh my, EV' transition is such a huge problem, where will we possibly get XYZ materials!!"
They completely leave out the alternatives. The growing demand in developing countries for more and more transport, in addition to more developed countries replacements. Without EVs, the world could not meet the much greater XYZ material demands and inefficiencies with ICE transport. EV's are already getting much more recyclable, for example. Fewer parts. Less pollution in use. Less pipeline and refining buildouts. Less oil spills. Fewer tanker trucks on our roads. Less sea bed drilling blowouts. Etc.
The past and future environmental devastation caused by fossil fuel use MUST be included in any critical discussion of EVs.
The dollar amount of the upgrade to the grid is also overestimated because that upgrade is INSTEAD of normal upgrade that would have been done in any case during those same 30 years. The needed upgrade might cost more, but it's not all ADDITIONAL costs.
But I can understand why estimating that is more difficult (it also depend on how much investment in grid maintenance is done by different utilities and that is very different in different countries)
I thought the main problem with Lithium supply was all the water it uses in the pools, Matt Ferrell (@UndecidedMF) did a video about companies trying to extract it in different ways but it didn't sound like they were near commercialisation yet.
I agree about the grid, there is a lot of alarmist reporting out there, normally from media with big fossil fuel sponsors. 🙄
There are bound to be areas where the infrastructure has been ignored for too long and will need substantial investment, then there are areas which are already ready. I can't afford Patreon so I don't have access to the references, I was wondering how much charge was needed for each vehicle in the estimations at 10:20, not a question for you but something I wondered while listening.
I didn't think many people drive further, every day, than a standard power plug can provide overnight, assuming people plug in when they get home and not the moment before they fall asleep. I think most of us spend more than 8-9 hours at home before leaving again.
If they can get a V2G standard widely adopted they should be able to use the "smarts" to distribute the load around so nothing gets exceeded and everyone has enough charge for the next day. Of course this will require people to think ahead and set how much charge they'll need for days they'll travel more than usual, so it's probably headed to massive online and talkback radio bitching!
I'm very bullish on sodium-ion batteries.
They probably won't be in long range cars anytime soon or ever, as they are competitive with LFP and some day maybe even with NMC in Wh/kg, but not Wh/l.
But I think they will be in all low to mid range cars at some point. They just have amazing properties compared to existing lithium-ion batteries.
While they are in mass production now, it's not at a big scale yet, that is for sure.
CATL is very clear that current lithium-ion battery factories can be easily converted, but that is of course only half of the story. The materials used are completely different. So building up supply chains could take years. But let's hope it goes a bit quicker than that.
@@Cluuey the water that is used up in lithium mining is brine from salt lakes in which nothing can survive and that can be used for nothing else. Compared to mining other metals lithium is basically planting trees to grow back the rain forest or something like that.
There are people saying that it magically makes fresh water disappear, but that doesn't make any sense. It's more likely that that is due to the big cattle herds in the area. If tens of thousands of cows are drinking water in a desert for decades, at some point there won't be any water left. Where is it supposed to come from? Rain? It's a desert.
I've been driving a Tesla for years now. And, a year ago, I got solar panels for my home. I live near Seattle, so the sunlight on my house is not as good for solar power as if I lived in sunny California or any other lower-latitude place. Even so, the solar panels can cover the needs of my car during most seasons of the year.
A fossil fuel car always needs fossil fuels (or expensive synthetic fuels). An electric car doesn't care where its electricity comes from, and solar or wind power can run an electric car.
I believe nearly all of the problems listed in this video can be solved quickly. As Tony Seba and others predicted, solar and wind power is growing at an exponential rate. If it really is a problem to have transformers working at night, then we simply need time-of-use pricing on electricity that encourages charging at the optimal time. In places with a lot of solar power installed, there is the famous "duck curve" where power is pushed onto the grid when it's sunny whether there is need for it or not; in such places, if the rates are cheapest during the day, people would be encouraged to charge their cars during the day and that "duck curve" power will be more likely to be put to good use.
In the long run, electric transportation will reduce the impact of humans on the planet. It's true that it takes more minerals to make an electric car... my car has a battery pack that weighs around 1200 pounds (545 kg) and that battery pack holds 100 kWh, about the energy of 3 gallons of gas (11.4 litres). Yet the EPA estimated range of my car (when new) was 335 miles (539 km)! And that battery pack should work for at least a couple of decades, and then will be recycled, whereas fossil fuels, once burnt, are not only gone (needing to be totally replaced) but also add pollutants and carbon dioxide products to the atmosphere. Compare that battery pack weight with the weight of gasoline: I've computed that my old VW station wagon would burn about 3600 pounds of gasoline (1633 kg) each year I drive it. If we assume my electric car lasts 20 years, it (including all the minerals in it) would prevent the burning of 72000 pounds of gasoline (32660 kg)!
Then consider the second-order savings. Gasoline is made out of atoms and must be hauled around: tanker ships bring crude oil, refineries make gasoline, trucks deliver gasoline to the filling station. In contrast, electricity flows through wires. (And I make most of the electricity I need from the roof of my house.) I've read that 40% of all ships on the ocean are hauling fossil fuels around (oil, natural gas, or coal). When the majority of our energy used is electricity, and the majority of generation is renewable, the pollution and waste associated with the fossil fuel economy will mostly disappear.
Electric cars are a rare case where doing the right thing is no sacrifice. My electric car is the nicest car I've ever owned. The only thing wrong with it is that it cost a lot up front, but it's extremely inexpensive to operate it. (Especially considering I live in the state with the most expensive gasoline in the USA, but relatively inexpensive electricity. And once my solar panels are paid off, I'll get a great deal of electricity at no further cost to me.)
I would be happy if all new houses were designed and built to have solar power generation on the roof, and a ground-source heat pump for heating and cooling. It will always be less expensive to design such things into the house and build at scale, than to build houses without them and retrofit later. And people won't mind the cost of solar or the heat pump if those costs are rolled into the mortgage.
Good lord, where to start on your comment, and do I even want to bother.
There is not one easy fix to the problems she mentioned and if you think there are, you and I didn't watch the same video.
You putting solar panels on your upper-middle-class Seattle home has nothing to do with the entire rework that's going to have to happen across the globe to accommodate this.
Suffice it to say, before I go even an inch deeper into this: Unless we do something about China and India's emissions, the entire Western World could literally drop off the map tomorrow and make nary a dent in the bottom line global effect.
That seems to be something conveniently ignored. We could commit cultural suicide in the West and go completely dark tomorrow, and nothing would change as far as hitting the climate "event horizon" tipping point.
So, there's that.
Just remember that unless you decarbonize China and India, nothing you or I do affects any outcomes. Too little way too late.
The "exponential" solar growth has been largely subsidized by tax dollars, not market demand. It's also been a colossal cluster-f that has created a slave labor market due to lithium demand and truly offered very little. Even the most fluffed numbers are diresome.
Your solution would require *extreme* government intervention to a degree and will require further reach into citizens' already-ailing pockets for a solution that will likely have no meaningful outcome on global temps. (Because again...China and India. I want everything I say here to be viewed from the lens that *nothing* we do matters unless China switches away from coal. They're building entire coal supply railroads to supply the hundreds of new plants they're building yearly...to ironically power their EVs)
EV tech is a unidimensional view of environmental harm that ONLY takes the boogeyman of CO2 into account and not the entire Lithium battery pipeline and the actual LIFETIME environmental damage of an EV; The chemicals poured into the earth to refine lithium, the repair, the disposal of lithium, the slave child labor, the problem of there just not *being* enough lithium on the planet for us to go full EV.
The smelting and maintenance of the blades, The entire species of migrating birds they're killing, the forests that have to be cleared to erect them. Oh, and solar panels. The toxic chemicals involved in their manufacturing and disposal are only the tip of the iceberg.
So you may get some CO2 relief only to poison your water with the toxic manufacturing offshoots of lithium batteries and solar panels.
A study I read recently estimates that, in the US, you're saving about 15% CO2 over the entire the life of an EV, when all things are taken into account. (Versus a state of the art economy-minded gasoline vehicle.
This study was based in America, where the majority of power is produced by coal. An EV charged by a coal-fired plant is less efficient than many modern gasoline engines.
If everyone had the money to kit their houses out with solar panels and buy a $50,000, EV we'd be in business. But until then, I see this new brand of environmentalism as an upper middle-class issue that only the rich have *time* to care about.
Couple this with resistance to new nuclear technologies that I see coming from the loudest climate proponents, and I start to realize that many people care a whole lot less about carbon output than they do finding a way to track purchases and tack on new carbon taxes for things we're already paying taxes on.
Until the loudest voices in the modern environmental movements take nuclear seriously, I can't take them terribly seriously.
I'm on a phone, so unable to really phrase things how I'd like but. The bottom line is there's nothing easy about reworking the entire country's power grid and putting 7p trillions of dollars of new infrastructure to accommodate an electric future.
It also ignores so many unintended consequences.
The answer right now is nuclear. Maybe in 50 years we will have a viable solution, but that hasn't been invented yet.
Current EV tech is pretty much for city-dwellers with minimal commutes who live in climates that don't get too hot or cold. (Because heat destroys a battery's longevity and cold destroys a battery's capacity)
It's why most of the people who have such lovely experiences with EVs live on the west coast in temperate climates and drive 30mins or less to work.
EV's are an upper middle class luxury right now and until they actually become affordable for the majority, it's going to remain that way.
Synthetic fuel would be cheap if the power is cheap or free to produce it
@@jemima_brownthe battery won't last 20 years. I almost bought EV vans until I found out I'd be replacing the battery every 18 months to 2 years. My vans travel 3,500 miles per month
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet existing infrastructure, poor people can keep what they already have. 3rd world countries would be able to use it. No one would have to purchase anything. People would be able to keep their jobs in the industry
@@Bryan-Hensley Where did you get those crazy numbers from? Look into how many cycles LFP- and sodium-ion batteries can do. Your van will likely fall apart before the battery dies.
Thanks for bringing up the infrastructure Issue for BEVs. It was the most worrisome thing I considered when debating on getting an Bev. For my daily commute the overnight 120 works fine, but it is a concern that I hope gets resolved. I have seen 2 new chargers added to my area after buying my Bev so hopefully that's a good sign. So far, I love my car so much nicer than my old Honda.
At least she is educating the dense about this massive issue.
@@jeffwads dense or slow?
We have 230v in Australia, my house has 3 phase so we can charge at 11kW.
Funny thing is we don’t actually need more than 3.6kW
@@lindam.1502 In South Africa, the same. In fact, with our planned power outages (load shedding) a bi-directional BEV is ideal.
(Recently retired from a Fortune 100 US electric company) The big time factor in building new transmission lines is acquisition of the right-of-way. The process often has a lot of dead ends, so the negotiations typically start with getting past choke points. Only after those are identified and commitments acquired can the less challenging parts be negotiated. NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - is still a problem, as is the perception by potential sellers that they have a unique commodity. 15 years is remarkably fast for these projects.
The other infrastructure concern is electric availability: enough generation at the moment to meet demand. The load/generation curve commonly called the "duck curve" illustrates the breath-taking shortfalls in generation at sundown in particular areas like California and Hawaii. Today, the focus is rightly on grid level storage. Using EVs for storage is a distant possibility: their status is never known (are they full or empty? Will there be fewer or more tonight than last night?).
None of these are insurmountable problems, but they are facets of the folly of politics driving the pace of changes. We can get there - whatever "there" actually looks like - but not nearly as fast as we might like. Fifty years would be very optimistic; 70-80 years more realistic. It is likely we will find we have made quite a few wrong turns on the way. I only know for certain when we get there we will marvel at how naive we are today.
I'm driving a used Tesla since 2018 that replaced our big car for the long trips. It had around 200.000km on the odometer when I bought it and it is still doing great. The battery is far from dying.
You have 2-3 more years before you'll eat those words.
This is an exception, not the rule. At my small BMW dealership, we do at least 1 battery a month. The Porsche dealership has a similar turnaround rate. Batteries are also prone to burning for three days. That VW ship with $850,000,000 worth of vehicles had a hole melted in the hull, which sank it. Getting close enough to do anything, which is basically nothing, would've killed anyone. I know of three houses burnt down from faulty chargers. I've over 50 bad chargers that almost burnt their house down
And, LFP/LMFP batteries will last even longer than the Ternary batteries… and data is coming in on those early Ternary batteries which are showing lifespans in excess of 400k miles. My last ICE vehicle was falling to pieces after 170k miles… and it was a van, not something that was driven hard and fast. lol
@@chadcooper7348 Lithium technology is volatile garbage. It won't make the cut after Sodium Ion gets energy density on par with current Lithium cobalt. Also, batteries aren't rated in mileage for lifespan, it's a time over discharge/recharge table, not mileage, period. There's also a factor of chemical degradation in the cell after a period of time. Ie, most lead acid batteries are expected to last 3-5 years, Lithium cobalt, 6-8 years, less if you factor in cold weather usage.
@@andyfreeman6865Ever heard of major oil spoils, Ice cars burning in an accident, total engine overhauls, problems with transmissions, cooling systems, fuel system, clutch changes and so on. Evs are costly to buy and maintain on purpose, there is no free ride. There are cheap small city Evs but they don't give much profit to manufactures.
My wife and I drove ~10,000 km from the Vancouver BC area to southern Ontario and Toronto and back again in early May, in our Tesla Model 3 with an LFP battery. We had no problems during our drive, when we relied on the Tesla Supercharger (DCFCs with the Tesla NACS plug) network, and averaged just under 1000km/day during the eastward portion of our drive and our best time was just under 10 hours to drive ~950km and that included charging stops! We averaged about 7km/kwh for the whole trip. I bought the Model RWD with the LFP battery because it is the most efficient electric car available and because Tesla has introduced an adapter so that most newer Teslas can also charge at non-Tesla DC Fast Chargers (DCFCs with the CCS1 plug) which greatly increases the number of fast charging stations available, especially in rural areas. We usually charge at home but the availability of DCFCs makes long trips quite feasible. The DCFC charging network is rapidly expanding in North America and we had no problems driving from BC to SE Arizona and back again, last winter.
Your reasons for your car choice were the same as mine! I took delivery of a 2023 model-3 rwd on last November 28. I charge at home (7 kwh). In December we traveled from Michigan to Tennessee (670 miles), charged 4 times at superchargers. I'm spoiled, haha!
Last Sunday we drove north 67 miles to visit friends, ate, saw a giant Sequoyah tree... drove home and still had 102 miles left.
However Scotty told us of some folk who took 9 hours to drive from New York to Washington DC. The trip would otherwise take 3 hours in an ice vehicle . The charging stations were a big disappointment in performance and availablity.
@@Philip-hv2kc Nonsense. That route has lots of chargers and it's only 226 miles!! I could drive it on a single charge! If you want to peddle fake news, at least make it believable.
@@dmunro9076 peddle or do like the Flintstones.
I have been driving electric since 2012 and my family (2 cars) exclusive electric since 2014. We driving ~ 12k mi/year in each car, go on road trips, etc everything typical people do with cars. The picture you present does not reflect my experience in North America with Tesla; Superchargers are generally widely available and very VERY dependable (unlike the competition- a question of incentives) and home charging has been a complete non-issue.
My other beef with your exposé is that it leans to heavily on the current state of things. Ford CEO not withstanding, battery prices _have_ been falling dramatically over this decade.
Final thing that was frankly ridiculous: repair cost. Fact is: the maintenance of our Teslas have been far far cheaper than the ICE cars we had previously. And they are cheaper to operate (I have records to prove this).
Then another idea is instead of using charging stations along highways, is to have a electrical wire system the vehicle can connect to such as were used by electric trams in cities where a attachment on top of the tram connected to the overhead wires. No charging stations along highways needed at all, and the smaller battery packs only needed for local driving helps to conserve the materials the battery manufacturing requires.
Gas stations along highways would be the losers in this scenario but as gasoline is being phased out they would disappear anyway to reappear as something else for land use.
Here in Korea, charging is just not really an issue. Most apartment complexes have charging in the car park now, as do supermarkets, libararies, etc. The grid doesn't seem to be overloaded, and electric cars are very popular now - projected to be about 15% of total units in circulation by the end of the year
I just plug my car in at night, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, and it charges for about 20% of the cost it does for a petrol car. I can drive it for about 6-8 hours before needing to charge
It's a no-brainer - just needs infrastructure
I have to say that tens of billions doesn't really sound that much if one considers that the USA spends hundreds of billions on military each year...
We need the military. Think of how much money is wasted producing the insane amount of movies produced. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on wasting people’s time and lives on a bunch of stupid recycled stories and plots. What an enormous waste.
Even Germany found a 100 billion for its military just lying around when it became clear that Russia was still a threat. On top of regular spending, of course.
@@cougar2013 you need about a tenth of your current military. In its current form is pure socialism.
@@cougar2013 We need an inhabitable planet even more.
@@4203105 To be fair, they also found 200 billion for fighting climate change ("Klima- und Transformationsfonds"). It's indeed not a money problem.
Thanks a bunch for all your work, Sabine! 😊
Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Aliens 😂
Thanks for the video. I have been driving evs for 5 years from a leaf 24kwh to a 30kwh and now a 44 kwh BMW I3, these were all bought as as commuter cars, What is intresting is that they have gone from barely 12O kms range to 300kms range for the same budget,. I think energy efficiency is the Key to the EV transition, which is one of the motivations for buying the I3. More efficient vehicles would surmount a lot of the problems you correctly raise. I am a shareholder of Aptera motors which is a super efficient EV that can get a lot of its power from solar energy,
The true solution is cheap, clean and reliable public transport systems for both commuters and freight.
Apparently 45% of Americans have no access to public transport. Changing that might be less than the trillions needed to upgrade the electrical system but it is unlikely to happen, especially since devotion to cars is entrenched as it is.
Or fusion power which would solve the energy requirements and energy production carbon footprint.
@@frantavopicka5259 the problem with fusion power is for the last 60 years it's been 20-30 years away and still is. I do agree that nuclear is the way forward, and with next gen reactors able to burn up existing waste and producing much less and shorter lived waste we should be rolling that out instead of all these useless renewables.
I appreciate the corrected video, und MEHR SABINE/SWTG IST IMMER GUT!
As I commented last time: the overwhelming number of cars is parked more than 22hrs a day. So you could charge almost all of them all the time with low voltage. Meaning, you wouldn't have significant usage peaks at any time of the day at all. You just need comparably cheap plugs wherever cars are parked. The "alternative charging method in Germany" part is kinda hilarious, because electric trams have been around for 150 years and trains and also buses that are powered this way are not at all new technology.
I think you mean low power, not low voltage.
I think most EVs by far in Norway are charged slowly over night, and quite a few are probably charged slowly at work.
In the last video I think she mentioned transformers need to cool down over night in warmer climates. My average electricity consumption has increased by a huge amount since we got an EV so I’m not sure how significant of a problem that will actually be. But even if it is wouldn’t it just be a matter of increasing the size of the container for the transformer, so it has more surface area to cool from? The transformer itself doesn’t need to be bigger
Yeah I live in a condo with no garage (well it does have a garage but the gf parks there, only room for 1). Can't charge at work. And I like to go camping, and strangely the wilderness has no charging stations. So yeah, I'm keeping my ICE vehicle.
And yeah I get annoyed when elites make policy. They don't understand how poorer people live. Not everyone has garages. In fact, I've never had a garage in 50 years of living.
I wish I didn’t have to drive and could just chill on a tram or train 😢
The standard uses case is: Drive to work in the morning, drive home on the afternoon, du things with you car (one needs food and there is something called free time), so the car will be available for charging in the evening. That gives something between 8 and 10 hours of charging. And afaik that is not enough time to fully charge a car with normal voltage. And we would get the usage peak in the night that Sabine is talking about for sure. Also charging something with a powerline while driving is not the same as just using the power. But you are right, it works, but is is very expensive.
From many perspectives an excellent presentation of the situation, but Sabine! You once again omitted an extremely important point! Cars, electric or otherwise, are designed for things they are statistically never used for. Cars are driven short (
It's better to have the ability to travel long distances when you need to. I can tell you I would never buy one that is slow with less range than what I have. You can produce it but it's doubtful many would buy it.
Investing in public transportation and building the right infrastructure for it would help with this problem too
@@JustanotherhumanonthenetBike? ;)
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet In these types of areas, where everything is just a million miles away, cars make 100% sense.
Sorry Sabine, some more corrections..
1. Producing hydrogen gas from electrolysis isn't bad to run on intermittent electricity because the reaction is "slow to ramp" up per se. It's because it becomes uneconomical when the capital cost of electrolysers is (currently) too large to have them "standing by and standing back" most of the time.
2. You stop at 80% most of the time because NMC (nickel, managese, cobolt) Li-on batteries don't like being fully charged & it goes slow at the end - this is not true if you have other battery chemistries like LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) or use an AC charger 11kw or lower. With NMC you should ideally go down only to 20% for the same battery care reasons.
3. Overall maintenance costs for EVs are often lower than ICE cars so long as you take care of the battery - there are far less moving parts that can wear out. At the same time EVs are more expensive to insure for the reasons you explained. One should do an total cost of ownership calculation for it to make any sense of this (fuel/repairs/insurance/interest costs), to see which is "cheaper".
Same with coal power stations. But if you let them run, they’re extremely efficient
Recycling might be the main source of lithium in the future. I think China is closer to 50% of energy from renewables than 15%.
1. I don't disagree, but I think that the problem I mention will be the more relevant in the long run.
2. Yes the statement at the beginning is for the currently most widely used batteries. I am very sorry I did not spell this out explicitly, I did not anticipate it would cause misunderstanding.
3. I am very sorry I did not spell out in more detail exactly what the cost breakdown comes from, but there's only so much you can cram into 20 minutes.
Thanks for your interest.
@@SabineHossenfelder thanks, I appreciate your effort!
i would very much see that 3 point as well, it is the crux of the issue after all, are we going from a better technology to a worse one or the other way.
i would add total cost of ownership over lifetime comparison, which live for longer, which cost more upfront and what other indirect costs are added to own one.
sorry for the last point as that rather directly goes against evs, but ive seen quite a lot of comments on it, its nice if you can afford things but its only IF you can afford them and most of the world population can not just jump from poor to rich in a day, it takes tremendous amounts of Work or in other words Energy, energy that must come from somewhere.
Sure its nice and "cheap" to charge with your own solar, or heck a mini/residential nuclear power plant, but it will just cost up front in "fuel" rather than step by step in time.
in the end i would like us to be realistic, not just have pink coggles on and then get to regret our decisions later in life, i dont really care it were gonna be an EV, ICE or more probably a mix* civilization in the future, i would rather like our efforts to go in the right place and do what they purportedly do than to just appease our feelings, rather shallowly, and make things worse then they are in the long run.
*the right technology for the right things
I'm actually proud to say as an American, that I've lived my entire life without owning a car. I don't ever expect anyone around me to acknowledge that as an accomplishment, but with the money I saved, I was able to buy my own house.
At this point in my 40's, it's paid off and I'm completely debt free.
I live in a large city on the East Coast, a quarter mile from a supermarket in either direction, and a Home Depot. There tons of restaurants & parks close by, and I ride my bike wherever I go.
Never have to worry about parking, and the bike lanes are constantly improving. I feel like I'm living the new American dream. Hopefully, someday everyone else will join me :)
I just had to like your comment. That is genuinely quite an achievement, and you at least get a high-5 from me!
it isn't easy to not own a car if you're married with kids I could guess
@@kfireven Friend of mine lives in a larger German city and never owned a car. He does borrow one from time to time though. Not owning one doesn't mean you never use one.
@@EngineersFear yeah, I really don't mind about owning or using a car, I'm very satisfied with public transportation and like OP I also got everything I need around my house and I have much more important things to waste my money on. The problem starts when you begin dating, the ladies have high demands (at least here in Israel), they think that everything, all the chores will be on the one who owns a car - for arrangements, kids going to kindergarten/school, medical emergencies, travel, etc... so it's good as long as you're single, but the changes to find a partner with the same mindset is very low
I was born brain damaged and I'm now blind. I live in London and obviously have never been medically allowed to drive a car. I have relied on public transport and my own two feet, traveling the 10 miles to school on my own via train since the age of 8. I would severely severely struggle in the countryside but London is very connected with public transport albeit not perfect but definitely good enough. I do use taxis when my health is poor or its a really tricky journey to make (like going to Guys & St Thomas's Hospital absolutely need a taxi for that). But I live independently and nobody within 75 miles that I know can drive a car. So I'm pretty much car free except for the occasional taxis. London is great for being able to go car free although there are obviously some limitations.
I’ve driven a plug-in hybrid for the past four years and a full battery electric for one year. I also have a solar array on my roof that generates a surplus, so my charging costs are very low. In my experience, the full electric vehicle requires some changes in lifestyle and planning to avoid prematurely degrading the battery or running out if power on a road trip. My plug-hybrid requires almost no change in ordinary habits, except for what is perhaps the most important feature - - home charging - which means only having to visit a gas station for long road trips with 90% of local driving powered by the battery. My full battery electric car is fun to drive and I’m happy that I bought it. But for the average household, I think that a plug-in hybrid with at least 40 miles of battery range is currently the best option.
"... a plug-in hybrid with at least 40 miles of range ...."
I assume you meant 40 miles of electric range.
@@calamityjean1525 Thanks, I edited my comment for clarity.
In Australia, the biggest problem with EV uptake is cost. And we will very soon have EVs which cost the same or less than smelly cars. Many residences in Australia are detached houses with garages and 240v systems that can support a Type 2 charger charging at 7 kW per hour. More and more Australian houses are installing rooftop solar which can be used for daytime charging. EVs use less domestic energy than old electric hot water services and replacing old hot water services with heat pump systems would just about offset EVs. (The big electricity drain is air conditioning.)
Indeed. Here in Germany, electricity delivered through the public grid is actually going down, despite electric cars and electric heat pumps becoming more and more common. Because ... well, rooftop solar. Some supermarkets have started roofing their parking lots with solar panels, so customers keep their cars out of the sun and can charge a bit for free while shopping.
Not sure why Sabine found only sources expecting a need for big and expensive grid updates.
@@jemima_brown Doing a good guess on how much charge one needs per week is a good idea. If your commute is less than 20% of your EV's range, you can ride all 5 workdays from one charge and refill on the weekend. Also, kind employers have solar at their office/factory and allow to charge from that.
If all this fails, one can always fall back to charging from the grid, so no fear of stranding with empty batteries somewhere. Even with regularly charging a portion from the grid it's still a lot cheaper than gasoline/diesel.
@@jemima_brown You make good points. Home batteries at the moment are too small and expensive for EV charging at night. However, many people now work from home and even one hour of charging on a 7 kW charger will put about 40 km of range in an EV. Even if the family EV is not at home for charging during the day, solar can supply power for the house during the day and the EV can be charged at night; this can take much of the peak demand off the grid and remove the necessity for grid upgrades. Many businesses have large roof areas which could support panels for daytime charging of employee cars as an incentive for employees to work in the office.
@@traumflug Impressive. And yes, I think there are a number of smaller things such as solar panels, home batteries, reverse cycle air conditioners and heat pump hot water systems that can take pressure off the electricity systems.
@@traumflug Yes, I work on getting 40 km range per hour from my 7 kW Zappi charger.
One thing which I think is underrated and rarely mentioned is that the switch to EV is a catalyst towards other changes. It's something visible which brings the message home and starts people thinking. They are a gateway drug leading people to look at Solar, insulation and home batteries and from there many other improvements. I think we massively under value the impact EVs have on public awareness of climate change and showing that change is not just possible....it can be better.
I agree with that. Even since getting an EV I started thinking about getting solar for the house as well and pay way more attention to what kind of fuel sources my energy company uses to make the electricity.
@@MD-mf4fj Just don't demand the immediate shutdown of our present fossil fuel fired electric power plants...to effect power shortages and way higher price.
If you are really rich, maybe, but for most people, it's either EV or other improvements because it's all expensive and have long ROI.
@@mrblc882 If you have to fund it all yourself. But there are lots of grants, schemes and offers out there to help for some people. As the costs of energy rise more and more people are taking the plunge to invest now to save money in the future.
"We talked about the hydrogen economy, the biggest problem beeing that it doesnt exist" amazing :D
Sabine, there are a few points you missed I'd add but I'll mention just one. "Range Anxiety" has become rather a media trope and, 6yrs in on my 2nd EV, you get to know your range pretty quickly in different conditions - hot, cold, wet or windy. "Charger Anxiety" is a more accurate description, knowing whether the units at the next stop will work or have a queue when on a longer trip. Of course a Tesla heading to the Tesla network has this mostly sorted. Larger charging hubs more closely spaced will eventually solve all but the busiest of times.
Range or Charge. same difference. ps who needs more anxiety in their lives?
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity! charging in pone hour is 5.88% efficient. In 15minutes it is only 0.3675%!!! Check out Joule's law!!!
@@anthonytrujillo106where did you get those numbers from? They are outrageously low.
I have been driving EV's for nearly 6 yrs and in that time it has changed dramatically. The nearest charging hub to me had just 3 chargers, now it has 64. In my town there was just 1 rapid chargers now there are 8 rapids and 40 destination chargers.
When I first started I needed to plan my trip but now there are enough chargers not to worry about it, plus the car will take me to one when it needs it.
Driving EV's is great fun and so relaxing with the one pedal driving ie press your foot down to go and lift it to brake. Of course I now drive a Tesla and I never get tired of that acceleration, it never fails to put a smile on my face
Nice you can afford a Tesla. I just bought a new car for twenty thousand. That's all I can afford.
@@bilahn1198 I sold my last EV for £16k but life has been good.
My only advice is not to buy a new ICE vehicle at the moment, they arent selling and people are just holding off until the price of an EV drops a bit more, Tesla will be making a new model next year which will sell for £25k and with very low running costs that makes it cheaper to own than an ICE vehicle, also MG make some very good EV's now for £25k, not a good time to buy an ICE car
@@bilahn1198I bought a used Chevy Bolt in 2021 for $20K. The only thing that sucks about it is that the DC fast charging is slow (it’s based on 2016 speeds; you have to stop for 60-75 minutes if you’re on a road trip). Otherwise, it’s a great little car.
EVs still need to get cheaper, but things are moving the right direction. Especially if you consider the total cost of ownership; EVs tend to cost more at the beginning but less over the life of the car due to fewer things that can break, no oil changes, and lower fuel costs.
You’re so right. Drilling for oil , refining, distribution are all free. And the pollution exercises the lungs which is a little known benefit.
LOL. The % of breathable Oxygen in our air has decreased at a rate which, by 2100, will leave us breathing like sherpas or carrying Oxygen concentrators. Not sure how other animals will adjust. We will all be vegan, perhaps.
And the mining of rare earth minerals keeps all those African children busy and learning geology. And it is necessary to cut down gorests and crowd our open spaces forvwind mills and solar arrays because why not?
An oil spill here or there allows for more dynamic migration of fish and birds, strengthening their organizms in the long run.
@@huntera123
- cobalt is not a rare earth
- after dye production most cobalt is used in desulfurizing gasoline and diesel. So if you are concerned about the children in Africa, maybe stop driving your gas guzzler.
- a lot of EV batteries don't even have any cobalt in them at all
- lithium is also not a rare earth and predominantly mined in Australia and Chile
- nobody is cutting down forests to put up solar panels or wind turbines. They are cutting down forests to feed cows. So if you are concerned about forests, you know what you have to do.
You are so extremely uninformed it's not even funny. How can you even have such a profound lack of actual information? Do you get your news from the raccoon by the train tracks or something?
@@NimbleBard48 Yes, we can anticipate exciting new evolutionary changes where organisms derive their energy directly from oil
AS I mentioned on the first iteration: using my EV for 2,5 months now and had zero issues. I was always able to find charging stations fpr a reasonable price. I also did a trip over 1800km from southern Germany to Dresden, through Tzech Republic and back. Really nice driving. Only thing I have adjusted is my speed of travel as i ever go over 120km/h and most of the time drive 110km/h. Range anxiety has vanished with this trip too as it is nearly always possible to find a opportunity to recharge as the electrical grid is nearly everywhere.
The child laborers in the Congo who dug out the cobalt by hand that went into the EV batteries are happy that you're pleased with your car.
@@SurLaMer_ you don't even know if my car is running a battery with cobalt as there were already models in 2021 with alternatives: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
But yeah just blame anyone with electric car xD Do you do this too under every apple/samsung keynote video? Burning more oil surely is not the way forward mate.
@@SurLaMer_ who dug up the cobalt used to extract the sulfur from the gasoline you use in your car? Happy miners on the moon or maybe those same child laborers in the Congo?
You know most EV batteries have very little cobalt in them, some have none. All gasoline and diesel production uses a boatload of cobalt for desulfurization
Dear Sabine, thank you for all your interesting videos. YES, I'm driving an full E-vehicle, and that fact came in my life with different other events, all of them making sense together. First of all; I bought this car when I was 67, and liberated from professional pressure (I'm not sure it would have been possible if I was 40). Second point: I finally became strongly conviced about climat change and the absolute need of decarbonizing our lives. What means: accepting change, accepting reduction of expenses, reduction of consumption. What means: reduction of mobility. I don't fly anymore, I stopped eating beef, and try to convince my neighbours and family about reduction of green house gasses emissions, what is a sometimes a painfull challenge. So, I bought a LITTLE e-vehicle (Opel Corsa). I therefore abandonned my dream of driving a beautifull Volvo XC40 (abandonning dreams is also challenging). I charge aat homs, at night, and don't drive mors than 200 km/day. Living in Belgium, a little country where everithing is close to you, makes that not too difficult. For longer distances, I stop using the car and take the train. Decarbonizing our lives is an absolute piority!!!
BALONEY. FOOL
There needs to be more people like him@@NineInchTyrone
Well mate I live in rural Australia and am now 77 years old and on a limited income like many others plus this also include those on a low income - unlike I suspect you might not be and simply could never afford to own an EV even if we wanted to which I might add I will not do under any circumstances. Even if I did the infrastructure for charging out here is simply not there and the distances we have to travel are far greater than you do in Belgium. This push for carbon reduction is in my mind at least 30-40 years too late something should have been done about it way back then. I will admit that there were stricter regulations put on ICE vehicles back then but ti sems to have sputtered to a halt right now and should be further investigated.
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity and will INCREASE pollution!!!!
What really matters isn't range, it is sufficient range to do the next journey. For commercial vehicles there is an interesting business model being trialled in Australia, lorries with standard swappable batteries; the lorry doesn't charge its battery it goes to a swap station and in 5 minutes can have a fully charged battery put in. The transport company buys lorries without batteries and the charged battery is supplied as a service.
Electric lorries/trucks make sense. To move a large mass of cargo requires a large amount of torque at first movement. Electric motors generate torque at first movement, and without the need for gearbox transmission.
There is a hydrogen version of this where hydrogen is stored chemically bonded to some substance (can't recall what of course) in a canister that you swap out instead of pumping hydrogen into your tank, but with similar output as a pressurized tank. Sabine is too quick to dismiss H2 as an energy storage solution IMO. The same source energy issues she sites for H2 are also there for electric, but fails to compare them point by point. What matters are efficiency factors and the H2 people are quickly catching up.
Picked up a second hand leaf in the UK, 40,000 miles on the clock. It's great and I'm finding plenty of charging spots for my needs. I forgot to charge yesterday and drove to a rapid charger nearby and was able to get back to what I needed to in 3 minutes.
I also have an electric bike, and use that a lot for shopping and getting around. Though I'm sure living in the city helps a lot in my case.
If the UK had clean electrical production then it would be an ideal place for EV's...
As your travel distances are short with plenty of villages & towns in between long trips...
@@davidhollenshead4892 I mainly charge at home and use a green energy supplier, so even though technically the electricity I use isn't necessarily green I'm voting with my wallet for change, as much as can be.
You are 100% right though, this is something that really works for me in my specific case, hopefully as more modern EVs enter the second hand market it'll become more attainable for more people as the ranges increase.
Love my EV... bought a 1st gen Nissan Leaf... the most reliable and least expensive car I have ever owned... it is 12 years old now... still going strong... though has lost some range... but still plenty for running around town and is our daily driver... the only downside... it can no longer take us very far out of town... and my partner suffers from range anxiety... so we do have a second petrol car... but to be honest it mostly just sits in the driveway... serving to relieve my sweetie's anxiety by its presence... and despite rarely being driven, being a money pit... the electric car has been wonderful... no regrets...
we have a 2020 40kw leaf and love it. saves us a fortune on petrol servicing and road tax
Nissan leaf is what I almost bought used. Then I found out what it was going to cost to replace the battery, at only 90,000 miles. Turned me completely away from EVs. $14,000 for a battery that lasts 90,000 miles. I did some calculations and it was more economical to drive a vehicle getting 14 mpg. I now have two full size Chevy express vans that will travel 450 miles without refueling. Which only takes 5 minutes. I can even camp in them
I have a bycicle to go around the city - I live in a city with over 3M habitants. Cars themselves are the problem, they are responsible by enormous waste of space, energy and materials.
I recently bought a used 2012 leaf. the 50 mile range is far enough for my daily needs, but I am worried about the heater issues these early leafs had.
@@Bryan-Hensley The Leaf is regrettably infamous for poor battery life. Not only has the battery tech improved substantially since the Leaf hit the market, Nissan decided to rely on passive battery cooling to save costs. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as high battery temperatures murder those older cells. They STILL don't use active cooling, not even forced air. Everyone else uses at least forced air, or in most cases liquid cooling. For this reason alone I couldn't recommend a Leaf even brand new these days which is a shame because otherwise they're great.
Point being that the idea of having to spend umpteen-thousand-dollars on a new battery every few years is a myth based entirely on anti-EV FUD and, again regrettably, the Nissan Leaf...
My wife and I drive a 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S RWD and just love it! We are located on Vancouver Island on Canada's West coast. I am the moderator of two Facebook groups (Canadian EV Supersite and Canadian ID.4 Electric Vehicles). I focus a lot on innovations, the public charging infrastructure and the supporting public policy around electric vehicles.
I live in Ireland and drive an EV. Last year did three continental road trips and made it to Germany in all three. Great fun!
I would note a full switch to EVs would have some knock-on effects. No need for a lot of fuel delivery runs for instance. And it makes a stronger case for rooftop solar for many people.
yes, it is true. the drilling, processing, and distribution of oil already costs quite some energy that's saved when no one needs this anymore because everyone's charging at home. I've heard some people even say that about half of the energy used to charge an EV gets saved this way. not saying that this doesn't come with negative knock off-effects as well like the need for more power plants and the very expensive investment into a more capable power grid to handle the additional load.
@@HxTurtle though loads of batteries plugged into the grid can soak up excess power from solar/wind. I already do that at home with my panels.
@@KevinLyda this is true! you'd need to have a form of electronic communication with the grid operator. most people probably prefer to charge over night so it's ready for the morning.
ideally, it also serves as a stabilizing backup to cover peak demands. this sounds very good in theory, but I haven't seen much of this happening in the real world. unsure whether there's technical limitations; or people just unwilling to provide their expensive car battery for the common good. 🤷♂️
California definitely already runs into issues of having too much electricity generated during daytime from that solar roof mandate (paying Arizona to take some of their extra electricity.) but massively struggle to fulfill the overall demand (Diablo Canyon, cough.)
@@HxTurtle This is why some are pushing for workplace charging. Yes, EVs can flatten the demand curve at night which was great when we had a fossil fuel powered grid. But with a grid with lots of solar panels, we need more demand during the day. Workplace charging could deliver that.
So can electric school buses, electrified public transit, etc.
@@KevinLyda yes, that makes sense. it might be easier for the employer to provide the infrastructure necessary (you've one single point of construction required) than everyone doing something at home. it might also be easier to observe that no one abuses or pranks them charging vehicles (like it's easy to see with street side parking and charging during nighttimes.)
this could either be tax incentivised or an outright legal requirements for companies above a certain size to offer. ideally for free of charge so that more people feel to urge to capitalize from this fact.
yes, sounds doable. 👍
(especially when electricity is free at work, people won't charge up their vehicle unreasonably during night. just enough to make it to work.)
Been driving an EV for quite a few years now. They are excellent for daily commuter use, and very competitive even for long road trips (my longest single day drive was about 900 miles/1450km). We have chargers at our house and that's super convenient too. I really like NEVER having to go to a gas/petrol station.
We had quite similar positive experiences with our EV, driven since 2016 already.
In New Zealand, BP is a significant player, but not the biggest, in providing charge points at each petrol station (or working on it anyway). I stop there for a quick get me home charge in my leaf sometimes. They charge 3x the market rate per unit or kWh, but that's good... There are free chargers around, but everyone queues for those. Not for the pay stations.
Remember, you only have to recharge what you used. If you only drive 40km in a day, that's 3 hours on a slow home charge outlet, without any special wiring.
This was great to see - thank you for responding to the comments. Some of the issues you brought up had a much better balance this time. Please take a look at RethinkX and respond to their analysis of this problem of economic cost and benefits of this transition.
A few points I'd like to make:
1) Electric vehicle costs are declining quickly and not increasing. As an example, Jim Farley's Ford has cut the price of the F150 pickup by roughly $10k US in the past week.
2) Maintenance costs for electric vehicles are significantly lower than internal combustion vehicles. This is proven across manufacturers and includes collision repair.
3) If you include oil and gas production as mineral extraction (which you should), electric vehicles require significantly less minerals. (Some simple math => 150,000 miles at 25 miles per gallon times 6 pounds per gallon equals 16.4 tons of fuel - none of which can be recycled).
Agreed...although I've read that Ford is losing $billions on its electric vehicles (but you gotta play the game!) and also that insurance companies are "totaling" Teslas for what otherwise would be repairable collision impacts.
The point "good luck finding a charger outside of Paris" has a lot of missed detail. Generally speaking, public chargers only have relevance in cities where people who live in apartment buildings with no garage may live. Anybody living semi-rural has a garage or a parking space, the cost of installing a level 2 charge is cheap compared to public charger rates, and will almost exclusively charge from home. Those who don't match this pattern will likely not buy an EV yet until some condition changes. As a long-time rural resident who drives 15-20,000km/year, I use a public charger less than once a month, and I use a DC fast charger around once a year. If you have a garage, you charge at home, and the whole first part of the video is irrelevant.
Another missing detail is that if you have a roof, then installing solar and charging from your own sunlight is a financial no-brainer. Compared to energy rates or public charging prices, a solar system on your roof is a win, and that leads to zero-carbon charging for some fraction of EV's. Predictions and estimates for costs and quantities never seem to account for a large section of the EV ownership and charging patterns. Nobody I know who is an early adopter of EV's doesn't have solar and doesn't primarily charge from sunlight.
Sabine, your thoughts on using solar/wind as a power source for the additional load? Love your work!!! ❤
Outstanding ‘fact based’ and intelligent content. I really appreciate your videos and your subtle but brilliant humour!
Great review Sabina. I am basically an environmental petrol head! Our home is now fully self sufficient for power water and outputs. We are actually on our second complete solar system. Technical efficiency has improved dramatically over the last 18 years and costs fallen dramatically. Our new battery hybrid 8.6kw system cost less than our original 2kw system! Everyone said back in 2009 when bought our Prius ITech that the batteries wouldnt last that it wasnt viable etc but the main batteries are still original and operating to specification. The only thing replaced was the inverter in 2022. So full EVs will be both better and worse than people expect IMO. There will always be a fundemental issue where mass is involved. For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. And so people are going to be faced with transformative change. Travelling long distances hauling caravans or trailers will be much more difficult. When you consider that the most popular new vehicle in Australia and the USA is 4wd SUV utility many are going to find change difficult.
"For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. " I agree ! I bought a diesel car precisely for that reason. But that is only for a transition period. New battery technology will be mass produced end 2023-2024 (CATL & BYD) with a range of 750 miles/1000Km and charging from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes. The technology is improving fast, and mass production takes less than 2 years now. So I bought my diesel car because my old diesel is not allowed to drive in the city due to political "environmental" reasons. I therefore needed a solutiion until 2027-2028 when the EV with a longer range faster charging batteries will be available, and affordable.
I used to agree with you about trucks, but check out Tesla big trucks that Pepsi is using wow!
Electric trucks are the way to go.
My current electric vehicle has a 500km range & is brilliant at towing trailers. The penalty on range is about 30% which still makes it economical!
They won't find change difficult because they won't change. Large countries with vast swaths of land like US or Australia or Russia will simply continue using fossil fuel cars until maybe hydrogen becomes trendy
I've been driving a plugin hybrid (Honda Clarity) with >40 mile electric capability for several years now, and while doing so is probably not adding much pressure on industry to improve the charging network (I charge mainly at home and at work), it has been a very satisfying experience for me. I probably average >90% running on electricity, and have zero range anxiety. I understand that I'm not getting all the benefits of all-electric vehicles (low mechanical complexity), but it's a very good tradeoff for me personally, and the car doesn't lug around a battery that is way oversized for 90% of the use cases. The very few times a year I need long range, and/or drive in a rural area, I use gasoline once the battery runs out. It's a shame the technology isn't catching on more.
No one's perfect. Thanks for your work.
Thank you too!
Re-upload or not, it's always good to see Sabina.
She is high-value, indeed! 😊✨👌
Thanks Sabine, you do an amazing job with your videos.
I ordered a battery EV car last week. Tested it a few weeks ago and it was some really cool experience, and that's an understatement.
Why now? Well, because the technology reached the point to be practical _in the place where I live in_, and that's a very important distinction. The car has a 77kWh battery, that gives you around 550km of range. The island where I live in (Gran Canaria) is perfect for this kind of range, in fact with a fully charged battery I could drive round-trips around the whole island 3 times and still have a quite a bit of battery left, so the range anxiety depends a lot on the circumstances of every individual driver and the place where the car will be used. I will have a 7.2kW charging station at home, so the battery will be full every morning easily, and I don't think I will have to ever go to a public charging station at all.
So at the end for the question "Are EV cars practical?" the answer is "Depends on where you live". At some places, like where I live, it is already, by far. But, for some other bigger places where you may have to drive for hundreds of kilometers in a single day, the situation can be more complicated, and depends too much on charger infrastructure.
I think the range anxiety depends even more on your lifestyle than where you live, commuting long distances everyday is also lifestyle dependent. I work from home most days so charging at home is more than enough. Living in rural areas solar is probably a good choice and should be enough.
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity and will increase pollution!!!!!
@@anthonytrujillo106 Really? Please explain
Great review, your opening comment says it all, reduce your need to drive. Everything you have stated I have researched. We do 10,000KM a year in my 2017 Euro 6 diesel. My calculations have worked out in the UK with the energy generation mix of 285 grammes of CO2 per KWh it would take 29 years to offset the CO2 of a new electric car. A lot of people are being completely conned by being "pious in their Prius" by buying an electric car. I should point out that we are virtuality carbon nuetral at home including a wood fired heating system, bore hole and solar panels. Hence the reason I researched buying an EV. If you live in Norway and Northern Sweden yes👍
Contemporary design is focussing on prestige cars requiring more power long range capability. A different mind set is required. It's not just about transportation.
In Norway, 8 of 10 new personal vehicles sold are in 2023 electric and soon 24% of the entire vehicle stock is already electric.
It is about four times more expensive to drive a diesel or pertrol car than an EV in that country when considering just the fuel costs. Most people of course charge their cars at home and super-chargers are mostly used during long-distance driving. Hence, the problem with lack of charging infrastructure is somewhat overstated.
Smart grid solutions will enable electricity production that is vastly more efficient than it is today.
Even in countries where the energy mix is mostly made up of brown coal, it is a lot easier to reduce CO2 emissions from power stations than it is from individual vehicles.
The "problem" with cobalt in battery production is very soon a thing of the past. With respect to the cost of fuel it is easy to forget that a finite resource only can get more expensive, while renewable sources can only become cheaper over time. The cost of battery production will also be significantly reduced over time with evolving battery technologies and capacity.
Even if 90% of all new vehicles in Europe would be electric by 2030 it will still likely take a hundred years until we stop producing oil and gas.
One should also not forget the subsidies that have been and still are paid each year to the oil industry when comparing costs.
Thankyou for the better researched update. I initially commented on your original version saying how disappointed I was with the errors but then deleted my comment at that time ( my bad). I’m very pleased to be able to say ‘good job’ this time.
Oh and yes I am an EV driver here in the U.K. and I’m fortunate enough to be able to charge at home for 7.5pence per kW. on green energy.
I recently learned once a population reaches about 25% on acceptance of an idea the rest tend to follow.
In the US, the average driving distance per day is 37 miles, so roughly 10 hours of charging on a 120 volt standard outlet is enough, which all houses will have. Assuming you want a faster charge, simple devices to share a plug for a dryer charger are available. The amount of extra capacity needed is less than the amount from adding air conditioning which was added to most homes since the 1960s. Also, the video does not consider economies of scale. Already cost per kWh for batteries has dropped since the release of this video about 6 months ago. And renewable electricity generation has increased as well, making a cleaner grid. With things changing so fast, Sabine will have to update this every six months! And that is a good thing.
Its a shame you didn’t include how many of EV owners do almost all their charging from home! Most of us manage just topping up at home on cheap rate electricity and NEVER. need to use other chargers.
I’ve been electric for over 3 years and have still to use anything other than a home, or destination charger. There is also a joy of not going to a filling station ever week. . .
One final point; my Taycan is a lot better than ICE.
You can tell when someone doesn't own an EV... They always say that fast chargers are a big reason we can't switch to EVs. Then you ask someone who owns an EV and they scratch their head why everyone keeps talking about fast charging.
Charging at home is great if you have a detached home. Which is a rapidly shrinking part of the population. Meantime apartments and condo buildings do hot have chargers.
70% of all people need public chargers as they are living in large cities and do not even have an own parking lot. Not all people are living in their own villa.
@@sooocheesyYou can tell when someone is well-off or living in a small town and have their own parking lot. Lots of people isn't and can't, many are even driving a single used car bought cheap. Additionally, EVs are not as climate-friendly as supposed. But EVs are binding huge amounts of money that could be used much more efficiently to decelerate climate change. It's a big misinvestment.
@@ulrikof.2486 Did you actually watch the video? Sabine addresses that. There's a point at which they have a better carbon footprint than traditional ICE vehicles, which depends on how green the electricity is, so Norway does really well, and Poland badly.
Really enjoyed your video… thanks for bringing up lots of perspectives on science. Question: How about the deforestation and carbon emissions from those increased mining? Not only from the battery production but also the infrastructure upgrading (copper, aluminum etc). Also the issues facing recycling of batteries. Will we be ‘front loading’ the carbon foot print for changing to EV?
Agree, i feel like this aspect of the process is often swept under the rug
Yep batteries don't grow on trees, in fact often the opposite is involved. Not to mention dealing with all the toxic waste from their production from the mines all the way to final assembly, and the toxic waste from the renewables (resins for turbine blades, lots of forever chemicals and poisonous metals from solar panels). Still better than pumping carbon and fossil poisons out the ground and into the atmosphere. They definitely need a method of dealing with the waste before starting this "green" transition.
Well done, Sabine. You managed to discuss electric vehicles without mentioning the shortcomings of the currently dominant EV power source, namely lithium-ion batteries. Leaving aside the whole raw materials issue and the fact that Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, said at a recent industry conference that there simply isn't enough lithium in existence to meet demand, there's the issue of the chemistry.
While the dangers of Li-Ion may very well have been overstated, the fact is that they have very real consequences on the motor trade. Among them:
The escalating severe depreciation of EVs that can now be measured on a weekly basis;
the scrapping of battery packs with only superficial damage to the outer casing (which usually means writing off the entire vehicle because of the cost of replacement);
the refusal of used car dealers to take them as trade-in or to buy them at auction;
the increasing reluctance of insurance companies to insure them and steeply rising premiums for everyone, EV owner or not;
the inability of local mechanics to repair them because, amongst other things, manufacturers (especially Tesla) refuse to supply them with parts because they are not authorised repairers; and
the increasing unwillingness of body shops to take in crashed EVs because of the danger that a damaged battery pack will ignite and burn everything to the ground.
Note that I haven't even mentioned all the problems with battery disposal at end of life. As things stand, spent Li-Ion batteries go straight to landfill because they cannot be recycled and that means that they will be oozing toxic chemicals into the land and water for decades if not centuries to come.
Battery electric vehicles are an environmental disaster in the making. In fact, it's already happening in China. Maybe in the near future solid state batteries will arrive to save the day but right now what you have is a bunch of scientifically illiterate politicians pushing a suicidal agenda that will do lasting environmental harm down our throat for the purpose of establishing their green credentials.
Well put, it's nice to see a voice of criticism during this, what some would call, mass schizophrenia event. 😢
I would add another point, regarding safety.
In case of accident, or catastrophic battery failure one is dealing with a fire that is hard to extinguish.
Since battery burns independently from oxygen supply, conventional methods and extinguishers are u effective. Fire itself is a chemical reaction that will run its course for anywhere of up to 36 hours.
As we already know, although rare, spontaneous ignition of a lithium based batteries happen. Imagine one of such EV, being parked in the underground parking of apartment building.
That just might be a reason to insurance companies behind reluctant about EV.
Recycling of batteries is a big issue that no one wants to talk about. Public is well attuned and oposes nuclear waste storages while turning the head other way when we have similar r problem but on much bigger scale with all renewables.
In fact recycling is the biggest problem of all renewables. Recycling is a daunting, ridiculously expensive and notoriously not included in energy cost forecasts. Why? Because then they would be totally unappealing solution, as EV are now. Same goes for solar panel and wind turbines on a smaller scale.
In general all prognosis seem to be well to optimistic, loke not even taking demographic decline as factor in near future.
This obviously not popular opinion in the doctrine of climate change.
Don't get me wrong, let's get off fossil fuels but in a sensible, not a reckless way.
Imho, by the way and means of introduction, lack of sensible debate and exercise in scaremongering, whole industry smell fishy to say the least.
We have two cars at home and one is a BEV. We have a garage and a nearby 240V outlet. If you plan on replacing one of your cars and can charge it at home, you have no calculations to make. If you can supply all the charging yourself it is absolutely a no-brainer. Even if you have no environmental concerns, do it for the money. I am saving well over 50% of the total previous household fuel costs. We got the new car last December. I have tried quick changing on trips but in Costa Rica, it is still far from dependable. I plan a longer trip to a rural area for the end of the year. That trip will be in my old car.
In most places in the USA, you are unable to survive without a car of some type. Public transportation is just not up to the task, and we are spread out.
Most cities have buses. My issue with them is the high crime rate we have on our buses where I live. I would never take them. Unless people can be more civil to each other, I'll never take public transportation if I can help it.
I have walked for almost four years and use mass transit once a month. My life has changed, but not fr the worst; I can live well without charms and babbles. 👍
When there's room for streets, there's also room for solar panels. Think streets roofed with such panels. Problem solved. On top one can put panels on house roofs, parking lots, fields, ... in 20 years we'll have a lot more electricity than we can consume.
I am glad you revise a video if needed!
I drive a Tesla model 3 for 4 years now. And I drive a lot. More than 40.000 km per year. I drive mostly long distances between Holland and the south of France. 4 years ago I had to plan a bit more, to be sure to find superchargers when needed. Now there are almost dubble the amount. So now it’s a breeze. No worries at all. With my previous car I also took a break every 2 or 3 hours just to stay alert and healthy. Now I do the same, at the supercharger. So almost no extra time for me.
I would never go back to fuel. Apart from driving cleaner with a BEV, I like how it drives!
Yes. Ditto
I think you’re wrong that EV’s will get more expensive. Jim Farley’s (Ford) comments were in the context that the Mach e is losing over 100% per car - naturally they can’t contemplate easily lowering prices. Tesla is making around 20% profit per car now and their next gen platform is targeting the $25,000 market. Prices will come down (driven by Tesla) and quite quickly I reckon.
Did you see the cheap Chinese cars just now hitting the SE Asian markets? There's an amazing demand for affordable EVs. China is blowing everyone away.
Mass production leads to that prices will go down when the companies learn how to optimize the production and can spread out engineering costs on more vehicles. The cost of construction and designing of the cars will lower per unit if you manufacture 1 000 000 rather than only 20 000 per model and year.
tesla folds if the government ends subsidies.
I'm not through the video yet. She said that? Uh that's a horrible take. Batteries are just going to become cheaper, especially with sodium-ion going into production and batteries are the most expensive part.
In China competition has already sorted prices so much you can get a VW ID.3 for 15.000€. that's way less than you'd pay for a VW golf.
@@4203105 Is that 15K E price in China or EU? In the UK a new ID.3 is £37,000.
15,000 Euros in China is a lot more dough than 15,000 Euros in Europe. It's a lot of dough for Chinese.
Instead of setting legislative goals for individual citizens, governments could be setting legislative goals for producers of energy, but that would make too much sense.
I saw some chargers at a UK motorway service station recently that were out of action because they could not get a connection to the grid. It's mind boggling to think of every car in a motorway service area connected to a 100 kW charger. How much power will that require?
Lots, but at least a lot of the Tesla supercharger stations have megapack batteries installed which charge up when power is cheap. A lot also have solar roofs connected to the batteries.
@@MarkT-v7f Large batteries and solar power will help but an expansion of the grid will also be necessary. A typical solar panel might produce 200 W per m2 so to power one 100 kW charger you would need 500 m2 of panels or 5400 ft2. You'll need even more to keep one charging station going 24 hours/day.
Invariably the hold up for connections is not due to technical challenges. Politics, planning, arguments over competition rights etc etc. Largest site in USA has 120 bays. Presently Tesla in Europe are maxing at 40 bays. By the time you get above 16 or so bays the turnover is very swift so I would think that 40 could be an optimum for large motorway service areas in the future.
@@AlanRPaine I think the worry about the grid is somewhat overstated - Gigabatteries are being installed in many locations, virtual power stations mean that communities with domestic batteries (like Powerwall) can feed back into the grid when needed, and accept excess power. I believe the rise of EVs and sustainable energy will help stabilise and protect the grid.
I love your humour and your knowledge is magnificent. Thanks from Aussie James.
Another great video. Thank you. We have an EV (Bolt 2021) and solar panels (and 2 Tesla Powerwalls). Our panels create enough power to run our home and fuel up the EV. We put up the panels in December and so far the panels handle all our power needs from March forward (winter months the panels help a lot but do not cover all our electric needs). We still have some gas appliances, but our plan is to convert them to electric (e.g. water heater, furnace, and oven).
One negative that Pro/Cons on EV don't often consider. SF6. SulfurHexaflouride is 25,000 times more powerful as a green house gas as is CO2. It is essential to high voltage electric switching, which would need to be expanded 200-300% to power EVs. 1 ton of SF6 = 25,000 tons of CO2. Unlike CO2, it doesn't break down in the atmosphere or be absorbed by plants; it will last in the atmosphere 10,000 years building up. EVs have another serious counter point to consider.
Hi Sabine, Love your direct presentation style and balanced presentation of data.
The origin impetus for us buying our first EV, the Leaf, was to allow us to better benefit from the electricity our PV was generating rather than exporting it to the grid at a much lower rate than our imported electricity costs. We are presently upsizing our PV to allow us to satisfy the higher AC charging rate our Polestar will accept.
My point is that many EV owners either do, or aspire to, charging their vehicles from their own solar generation. Apart from the cost benefits there is also the advantage of knowing that their EV is using fully renewable fossil fuel free electricity, AKA running your EV on sunshine. Also in regard to the demand on grid infrastructure that you identify the charging of EVs from generation in the immediate vicinity (home or workplace) mitigates this grid demand.
In addition the adoption of V2G and V2H functionality will further buffer both peak grid demand and peak daytime generation from PV which it is used as the charging source.
Much has been said by futurists such as Tony Seba in this regard and on the changing ways we will source energy and the uses we will put it to in the coming decades. EVs are just part of a much wider network that will change hugely in the coming years.
I think most people believe they will charge their EV via an electrical socket off the grid (with many here still stating "oh 100% efficient magic from that socket"); but perhaps "aspire to the off the grid existence" I do think sounds so doable - but I used to read Popular Science and such in the old days and they made moon bases seem so easy and doable too, and sure many will say that is still true but it is so expensive and a long path of .. if there are not other variable such as world events and bad behaviors taking place.
Solar generation is idiotic..
Are you familiar with the principle of One way energy entanglement?
Another Scam, pushed by the elites, they think they're special,!
Model YLR owner i charge off my solar panels. I have not payed anything for elect for 6 years. My solar gives back in the day time and helps the grid. I plug in at night and start charging at 12 AM this helps the utility balance the load and helps wast by ramping up in the day and down at night.
@@billthompson9482 Yeah.. No, your solar array doesn't "help the grid" it just passes your bills to the rest of society..
110 years ago, gas stations were rare
And should have stayed that way.
In 30 years they will be rare again.
Funny, more than once during this video I said to myself "but what about..." then you promptly talked about the what. Nicely done.
I would love to hear a deeper dive on recycling of the various types of battery packs. It seems there are only two types of recycling videos, terrible recycling or awesome recycling.
The awesome recycling videos tend to have more real data than opinions.
We've had a Model Y long range for two years and we love it. I find it cumbersome and awkward when I am required to drive a gas car now. The lag in throttle response and having to switch to the brake pedal every time you stop or slow down is annoying. I also like the 8 year, 125,000 mile drivetrain and battery pack warranty.
Yes a deeper dive would be nice.
Until then, the short version is that several researches (including one done by AU Govt) has shown that recycling 90% of batteries is totally feasible and economical. There will be some difficulties, but it can be done. One of the current difficulties simply is the demand for that at the moment. There are a few companies around that are already completely recycling batteries, but those are very few and far between. Again simply because there is not a big demand for needing more at the moment.
And there likely will not be a strong demand for that quite some time to come. As batteries, especially those for vehicles and generally some sort of lithium base, will have a second life purpose elsewhere for a very long time. For instance a battery bank for a vehicle can easily last well over a decade as its life expectancy. But that life expectancy is going to be about 70% SoC. So those will unlikely be recycled as you will likely be able to sell it for a second purpose use for better price than recycling company can make. And that battery bank will last another very long time. You are easily talking about decades before it needs recycling. There will be a demand down the road in the future, in like say 30 years or longer. Batteries banks will more than likely in most cases outlast the vehicle before it even reaches its life expectancy, and then see a second life elsewhere, although there will always be exceptions of course.
6:33 That's the main fallacy. You can only charge your car at home if you live in a detached house. townhouse? forget it. owned flat? forget it. rented flat? totally forget it. Electric mobility will not be feasible for the lower half of the income spectrum even in rich countries...
I live in a rented flat and I could run an extension cord out the window if I had an EV.
@danielstapler4315 that's extremely impractical. How would you do that when you live on the 4th floor? Or the 13th floor?
Yes I drive an electric vehicle, an ebike to be precise and i love it 😍and for longer trips I use public transport.
Make sure you park it outside away from anything flammable
@@Bryan-Hensley Make sure that you don't keep devices with Li-po batteries at home. Like phones, laptops, power banks and battery power tools...
I'm glad you pointed out the grid issue. Tesla power stations are at most buc-ees.
The issue with BMW drivers using Teslas is dangerous as they overheat the batteries.
I appreciate this latest video with the corrections and additions to the previous video. Sabine, you presented a good presentation for the challenges for the complete conversion for electric vehicles. One challenge that you mentioned is the need for added capacity (MW) of generation for charging especially at night. I did a rough calculation for the state that I reside in and found that to meet the charging demand if all the EVs were charging at the same time will require new generation that is twice the installed generation that we have today. This would need the generation capacity will be three times the capacity that we have today. Most likely the demand of electricity for charging will be less due to habits in charging, but this may be a nightmare for predicting the evening demand when people are plugging their EVs, not knowing for sure on how many EVs will be charging and how many generators need to be dispatched. One would need generators that can rapidly pick up load. Conventional steam turbines are too slow. Also new generation will require building more transmission lines or upgrading existing lines to higher voltages.
This was a good video.
In practice, not every EV will be charging at the same time. To keep the numbers simple, suppose a car does 4miles per kWh and is driven 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. That means is needs 3,000kWh per year or 8.2 kWh per day. In the UK, a standard 3-pin socket can provide 230V x 10Am = 2.3kW. So it takes an average of 3.6 hours per day to charge. A single phase home charger runs at 7kW, so it would charge in an average of 1.2 hours. In the US, the voltage is about half, 110V, so charging times might be longer.
@@grahamf695 In the USA towns are more spread out and one would like to be able to cover the distant travel. An EV with 120mile range may be suitable. So in my thinking one would go with an EV with a range of 360 miles. Charging requirements is 117kW-hr for 8hr charge with average power requirement about 14kW. In the state that I reside the population is 20 million people of which half live in a major city. The other half lives in rural or suburban areas. Looking at the means of the rural and suburban people, we'll reduce the population to 8 million to account for seniors who do not drive. Assuming a household of 4 people we have 2 million households. Most likely there are 2 EVs in the household. So, we are looking at 4 million EVs. The worst condition is all 2 million EVs are charging at the same time. Then the power required is 56,000MW. The present installed capacity is about 25,000MW. Granted that not all EVs will be charged at the same time. I did a simulation by dividing 56,000MW to a group of 7,000MW with different charging habits. One group charged their EV once every day. The next group once every 3 days, and so on. In the simulations the average is about 3 groups, but on day 370 there were 7 groups (49,000MW) charging their EV. This will be a nightmare for the grid system operator to predict. Also note that I had not addressed the conversion from ICE to EV in the big city. That will add to the numbers that I am giving above. Granted the numbers can come down for 120-mile range. Regardless for the electrical utility industry the complete conversion from IGE to EV will be a challenge.
@@louishannett356 I certainly agree that converting from ICE to EV will be a challenge. Your simulation approach is interesting. The challenge is that it depends critically on the assumptions that you are making, which may or may not be valid. Doing the research to make them reasonable might possibly merit a PhD! My personal experience is that I charge between 12:00-7:00 am, because the electricity is less than half price at that time. The current peaks in UK electricity usage come at half-time or just after a penalty shoot out in the Football (soccer) Association Cup Final, or a big World Cup came That is when everybody switches on their kettle for a cup of tea or coffee. For EVs, the peak might be at Christmas, New Year, Easter, or Thanksgiving when lots of people take a trip to visit relatives. I checked out average car mileage in the US. It varies from 12k miles per year in New York & Florida (similar to UK) to 22k miles in Wyoming. I am considering moving to the Intelligent Octopus service, which automatically charges your car when the grid is quietest and adjusts the tariff accordingly. I think sometimes it even pays you to use electricity, because of over-supply. Such approaches help to smooth out usage. Some people are installing solar power and batteries, which will also help. However in the UK and possibly the EU, gas central heating boilers will be banned in new homes from 2025. This will force people to install either hydrogen boilers or more likely electric heat pumps. That will add further load to the grid.
Graham, thanks for reply. When I did the calculations it was to get a rough idea where things are going. A detailed study would indeed give someone a PHD or a research grant. As one person that worked with said, "I'm an engineer, not a scientist." I took that attitude for the calculations, which are rough, but they give you an idea what to conclude. I'm a retired electrical engineer who had worked in the power field. I have ICE and most likely they would be the last vehicles that I will drive. I have battery power lawn mower and I love. It is lighter in weight and the cost for charging compared to cost of fuel for gasoline mower is 4 cents to 75 cents to mow my whole yard. Also there is less maintenance. Electrical rates from my utility provider is fixed per kWh usage. So time of day does not matter. My son-in-law has solar panels on his roof. On a clear day the peak generation is 11kW. He got less than half during the week when we had the smoke from Canada.
In the U.S. homes have 240 volts at the service (circuit breaker) panel. We use 3 wires from the utility source with two hot wires that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other and a neutral wire. Across the two hot wires you will measure 240 volts, from the neutral to a hot wire you will measure 120 volts. The neat thing about this is the neutral wire only carries the difference of the amperage between the two hot wires. We use 120 volts mainly for wall outlets to power small appliances TVs, lighting, etc. 240 volts is used for high current devices ie. clothes dryers, water heaters, air conditioning and so on. There is also a separate wire tying all grounding points together to Earth ground. Finding 240 volts for charging is no problem in U.S. homes. The question is, is the service drop and grid robust enough to handling charging and every other current draw along with vehicle charging. Another problem are people that park their cars on the street in the evening, in some areas that's going to be a whole lot of extension cords carrying 240 volts across the yard...
"In 2021, China set a goal for renewable capacity - including wind, solar, hydro, and nuclear power - to exceed fossil fuel capacity by 2025, a target that it has hit two years ahead of schedule, Reuters reports. Renewable sources, as China defines them, now make up 50.9 percent of the country's power capacity.Jun 12, 2023."
"Capacity" comparisons is a way to mislead, since solar and wind have exceptionally high "capacities" but produce little on average.
I drive a plug-in hybrid car and find that it is perfect for a small city. The approximate 35 km electric range from charging at home takes me anywhere in the city the next day. I rarely need to fill with gas, but never have "range anxiety". As a bonus, I love the smoothness, quietness, and strong torque of the electric motor.
$2.5 Trillion for upgrades? Could be easily achieved by cutting fossil fuel subsidies.
Now grid operators need to finally do something for their money, in germany most of them just maintain, don't develop and it prints cash for them (guaranteed rate of return here).
Fossils fuels are highly taxed in most parts of the world, so already anti-subsidised. That's good, but just sayin.
10:00 OMG, they re-invented the trolleybus!
I remember those from my childhood in Brighton, UK! They would keep losing power when they went round corners and the power pickup lost contact with the overhead line. Or maybe I'm misrememberng - it was a loooong time ago.
The biggest change I noticed was in the number of miles required by an EV to compensate for the coal electricity. I was shocked when I saw those numbers before. And now it seems reasonable.
The terrible mileage isn't the only big problem with EVs.
They're totally impractical and UNaffordable .
An unsustainable vehicle - extreme fire hazard and a waste depository nightmare.
@@kellikelli4413Agree.. the whole scenario is a pipe dream.. great in theory .. but impractical in reality.
Common sense will tell anyone this, but no.. FEAR and cynical political manuvering have the microphone and probably will continue to sing the 'song' even after screwing economies and free democracies into the ground.
,.. We didn't do anything wrong..
.. how could we have known ?..
Batteries are valuable, and can be 98% recycled today. Fuel/oil, tanks, tanker ships, and drilling rigs are extremely dirty/explosive and cannot be recycled
@@thomasreese2816 I believe this but there aren't any significant players doing this yet
@@thomasreese2816
The batteries we've been using for years are recyclable... NOT the EV batteries...
The EV batteries are COMBUSTIBLE (dangerous) more so even than fossil fuels.
People must stop regurgitating the narrative lies to convince you otherwise and do some serious research on the subject‼️
I’ve owned an EV for the last 5 years. I bought it cheaply 2nd hand. I’ve never had it serviced and the only maintenance has been new brake pads and wiper blades. It costs nothing to run (charged by solar) , has low tax, low insurance. It’s a no-brainer. It’s also fabulous to drive, especially in traffic.
French ?
@@Clyde-2055 French what?
Love your videos and great to see you fixing errors! I have been driving my EV for the past two and a half years, including an 870mile round trip from Lincolnshire to Disneyland Paris. It was an easy trip and I love my EV, just plug in at home, do whatever I want, go to sleep and wake up to a car with a range of 220 to 260 miles depending on my charge level. Over 95% of all my charging is at home powered via my solar panels or overnight cheap energy.
Isn't it funny how nothing was said about SAFETY ! Did anyone see the container ship ablaze carrying 500 Ev's this week ? Spewing out copious volumes of toxic gas & smoke ? The only way to put out the fire was to wait untill it burnt out itself . Can you imagine being in an underground car park & an EV caught fire that was sitting next to say another 20 EV's hhmmmm NOT a place Id like to be in .....
Thanks for this video. I'm curious how much more effective it would be to simply change city design to allow for greener forms of transportation that are less expensive like cycling, walking or taking public transit. As well as making cities denser with more housing and shops closer together. This seems like a cheaper solution, so I'm curious how fast that would bring down emissions!
GREAT point, which is almost always overlooked in discussions of public policy. A corollary is that people won't willingly live in energy-efficient areas (i.e., dense cities) if those are not safe, pleasant, and affordable. Personally, I was raised in a large city and prefer it in many ways. I would much rather walk everywhere than drive everywhere. However, I live in a small suburban city because the large cities near me are unsafe, unpleasant, and unaffordable. I am sorry to say this, but the wealthier neighbors I have don't rob my house, steal my stuff, shoplift, carjack, join gangs, filth things up, ruin the schools, and overburden the safety net. I have to drive to everything, which I hate, but it's a great defense against undesirables. (BTW, this isn't closet racism. My neighborhood is very multi-racial. They're just not criminals and deadbeats. And yes, I recognize how classist that is. But when urban governments don't protect the productive people, they protect themselves by moving away. And that's a huge driver for carbon emissions, which liberals refuse to even discuss. And, to be politically balanced, part of the reason for large city failures has been off-shoring caused by not charging for carbon emissions and pollution by means of taxes and import duties, which conservatives refuse to even discuss.)
@@davidmackie3497 I'm with you. I live in a clean, quiet neighborhood in the suburbs, and I would rather die than live in a densely populated city with high crime.
Effective? Yes, there are way more effective ways to remodel our cities to allow for all kind of EVs (trams, trains, subway, bikes, scooters, bicycles) AND walkable ones at the cost of people's sanity, as you'd have to squeeze everyone together if you were to make everything walkable, you'd have to stack people on top of each other in smaller housing and tall towers.
Now, it's not realistic at all, i'd say it's even more unrealistic than anarchism and/or communism. We could make new cities based around that concept, but who would even move there in the first place? When the reason they've moved to the big cities is because everyone is there and everything they need is already there, despite how uncomfy it may be, so you'd have to forcefully evict and rehome everyone on the new comfortable and efficient city.
Changing cities to accomodate for better transportation and transit so people can use efficient EVs, public transport and still have all the vehicles needed to restock stores and deliver big objects or big amounts of materials to people's houses is outright impossible from an economic point of view. You would have to cut many roads to install trams, have lanes for public transports and you'd still need to have accessible roads for trucks everywhere to restock stores or to move furniture and other big stuff around.
@@davidmackie3497 :: Well, during the Pandemia we learned that some jobs can be done in home, at least partially. We have the roofs that are areas where we can place solar batteries, Public transportation can be upgraded and augmented, China, Australia and the USA had immense desert areas where solar (and wind) can generate electrical energy. The Sahara is also immense. Also, there is that concept of solar-wind chimneys that take advantage of the Mountains height to embed in them chimneyes that can be as high as one kilometer, the base-to-top differential in temperature and pressure can be used to generate electricity with turbines.
Love this! One factor that I think is not covered is increase in car ownership rates. Right now only ~10% of people own a car, largely because most people in emerging economies can't afford one. However, this is likely going to shift fast as incomes increase. Even if electric cars are 80% lower emissions over the lifetime, if 5x more people have cars (50% of the world) then you are not going to reduce any emissions. Maybe really good public transport is the only way??
Great video, and shared!
You didn't touch on residential renewables and their part to play in the future.
I am looking forward to purchasing my first EV after testing several and being very impressed.
They are ideal on small tropical islands where distances aren't far and an abundance of sun and tradewinds, can be used cost effectively to help that payback offset.
Some points I raised in a conversation earlier today, was the move away from long distance trucking, and a push to invest more in rail infrastructure and stock. This will more efficiently move freight around over longer distances, and use smaller trucks/vehicles for last kilometer/miles delivery.
The Dutch have shown us how to change the urban traffic design and infrastructure to be more pedestrian friendly with cycling and small EVs. So I'm sure some of these factors could reduce the mining and production requirements, and may be more efficient in the long-term reduction of our overall carbon footprint
Take your bicycles and walking any distance to places like Sanfrancico or any mountain side city and pickup milk and bread or lunch supplies for the kids including your selves. 😮😢. Add in a broken crank chain ouch.
How about rain, wind, snow, ice, sun etc. We built vehicles for convenience as well as protection from the elements.
@@kevinoneill41 you would be surprised at the amounts of people in these locations, that do have bikes.
Another point, is how unhealthy our lifestyles have become, so there's a health benefit too.
I walked to and from school, from a hill location, did me no harm ;-)
For me, and E-Cargo bike is very much on the radar too.
@@kevinoneill41I rode bicycles and motorcycles all year round in Scotland for 16yrs, no problem. Wind, snow, sleet, frost, rain, sun and hail, and it didn't do me any harm.....if anything, it made me a better driver. 🙂
Thanks for an interesting video that addressed issues that I was not aware of. I wonder what a similar analysis would find when applied to the existing infrastructure needed for ICE vehicles. How much has been spent to build all the gas stations and distribution networks? How much more is needed to maintain and clean up the environmental damage when the storage tanks inevitably wear out and leak.
These are excellent questions.
The cost of change is important to consider, but the status quo has a lot of hidden costs that are swept under the rug. Not to mention the gargantuan cost of the climate catastrophe that would result if we continue to burn fossil fuels.
This is exactly what I was thinking. It's true that improving the electric grid will be expensive, but operation and upkeep should be much less expensive than keeping the whole fossil fuel distribution network running.
How about the completely unregulated mining of rare earth metals, or do we ignore that because it is far away ?
@@Peter-rw1wt Rare earth metals are not used in EV batteries. They are used in catalytic converters for ICE vehicles. And in cell phones and other consumer electronics.
Some EV motors do use rare earth metals, but many EV motors do not. I believe these can be recycled, unlike catalytic converters.
I wonder, when was the first time you thought about the mining of rare earths? Was it during the process of consuming anti-EV propaganda? Or did you think about them ever, for even one second, when they were only being used in your gasoline (petrol) powered car?
Once again, a great presentation with real and usable information that is not given with any political bias. Thank you!
The political bias was already baked in.
Another issue currently of serious concern about Lithium based EVs is water. Right now the 130,000 tons of lithium produced in 2022 took 1% of all the fresh water on earth. To grow production by 10x would take 10% of all fresh water; as much as in Lakes Michigan and Erie. Chilean legislators want to be lithium mining because it is using 65% of the water in the region. Lithium is a total dead end for EV production if a better safer, cheaper chemistry isn't identified.