lpickup said:
GRA said:
I think your estimate of the likely price drop is high, as typical profit on an ICE is only around 2-2.5% (it was a lot higher for big SUVs in their heyday), and I doubt the manufacturers will be making any money on EVs for a couple of years yet. I suspect it won't be more than a couple of grand, always dependent on sales volume.
Actually this was the part of my post where I was backing up your claim...so I thought you'd agree with me on this one! The phase out plan for the incentives calls for the incentives to phase to 50% ($3750) and then to 25% ($1875). I suspect that by the time the phaseouts start to occur (let's say the year before the drop to $3750) that Nissan will be at a point where the cost to build the car is competitive without the $7500 incentive, but the fact that the incentive is there will keep the MSRP artificially high (why would they NOT try to get an extra $7500 profit and try to recoup some of their losses (or at least lack of significant profit margin) in the early years? The following year when the incentive changes to $3750, I would expect the MSRP to drop by that amount. Or maybe in a less obvious fashion, they will offer additional features, and a more "basic" trim level that's cheaper. And yes, I think this will definitely be MANY years out.
Aha, I misunderstood your intent. Okay, call us in general agreement although differing on the amount of the drop.
lpickup said:
GRA said:
But using thousands of consumer batteries like the 18650 to power cars isn't viable for anyone other than Tesla,
No, but the basic Li-ion technology is shared between the consumer and automotive versions and just like Moore's law in the electronics world, the battery world is still enjoying a yearly decrease in battery costs due to such huge volumes and the fact that that attracts a lot of really smart people to improve the manufacturing process.
Now there I think I'll have to disagree. Whenever I see Moore's Law mentioned in the same breath as batteries, I feel it necessary to point out that Moore's Law is an outlier; the vast majority of technology development doesn't follow Moore's Law rates of improvement, and batteries never have. So, while there are lots of smart people hoping to make the next big breakthrough and cash in, all I can say is where are companies like Ovonics (NiMH) or Ballard Power Cells (fuel cells) now?
lpickup said:
GRA said:
While I agree that greater hybridization is likely, I don't believe the ICE is dead yet by a long ways. Five years ago, how many cars could claim 40 mpg? Now, every major manufacturer has one or more. Lighter materials, direct injection, VVT, cylinder shutdown, auto-shut-off, Atkinson cycles, radiator shutters, small turbos etc. are all becoming mainstream. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the ICE's death have been greatly exaggerated. :lol: Of course, they may be running on something other than gasoline.
I agree with you there. There are certainly many applications for ICE that EV cannot handle. And even if we were in a situation where EVs would be appropriate for ALL kinds of duty (long trips, hauling 8-12 passengers, light and heavy truck use, busses, construction vehicles, ...) it would still take years and years to phase them all out. So for the foreseeable future, ICEVs will continue to be built and improved. However, I do think that huge R&D efforts will be needed to significantly improve mileage. Instead it seems to me to be a better use of R&D to work on improving EVs to handle more duty and save the world's oil and other fossil fuel reserves for things that will be really hard for electric to handle.
I think we'll need both, and more. BTW, I don't know if you've read it, but I'd highly recommend "Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air" by David Mackay, a physicist at Cambridge. He shows how much energy is used by the UK, for what, what the sources are, how much renewable and other types of energy are actually available, and what it would take to replace/reduce all fossil fuels and/or nuclear. He then does the same thing for Europe as a whole, the U.S., and the world, all using simple math (algebra at most) and rounded numbers (appendices provide more detailed calcs for those who are so inclined).
He gives few if any conclusions, mostly just leaves it up to you to reach your own. This is the most accessible source of info on the subject for the general public; Indeed, everything inside the book other than copyrighted photos is free and can be found on the book's website, so you don't even have to buy it.
http://www.withouthotair.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
lpickup said:
GRA said:
I certainly hope you're right, but unfortunately suspect I am. I hope to be proven wrong. There are so many things that can go wrong, from inability to scale up laboratory results, lack of/high price of necessary materials like rare earths for PM motors (95% of world supply comes from China, which has now put limits on exports) and so on.
That's the thing though--I think we are out of the laboratory already! I wasn't around for all of the previous timeframes you mentioned in your post, but I was around for some. I remember seeing a grand total of ONE electric vehicle from the 1970's until the present. It was definitely niche for all those years. Not so today. Now we've got thousands of EVs rolling off assembly lines each month and charging stations are popping up. Yes, rare earth magnet supply from China does concern me, and while this possibly fits into the category of "breakthrough", there is work going on to produce motors that use fewer or no rare earths at all in the motors. And it's also worth pointing out that China controls so much of the world's supply not so much because they happened to get lucky enough to have all the rare earth minerals physically located within their boundaries, but because it's so cheap to mine and process there (and I get an uneasy feeling when I think of why that is). There are other sources in the world that right now are not competitive with China. But if they start holding back exports, that just makes it financially feasible for these sources to come online.
Molycorp has bought the only rare earth mine in the U.S. and is bringing it back into production, and scarcity will likely cause more prospecting and attempts to find work-arounds (as you note, i.e. Toyota and others working to develop PMs that don't use Neodymium).
I agree that EVs are a lot more available now than they were when I was selling AE systems a couple of decades ago (I had a few customers who owned them). In addition to cars there are millions of electric bicycles and scooters in the world, so we're a lot further along than we were. But I've been through a couple of 'EVs are here' cycles already, so I'm probably more sceptical than you. Certainly there've been far more Leafs and Volts made than EV1s, Rangers, RAV4s etc.