Would you buy an electric vehicle - Why or why not?

Transport
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It’s reasonable to expect there are a variety of scenarios that fall between the widest differences of view.

For one commuter.

That’s the case for Nanda Nalluri, an emergency services worker living on the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne.
Since switching to an electric car a year ago, he has driven more than 37,000 kilometres, mostly commuting for work.
“I’m basically saving, between petrol and servicing, $5,500 to $6,000 a year,” he told the ABC.
“I’m doing easily a 100-kilometre round trip for just a shift, and sometimes it goes up to 200km. Over a week, I can easily do 700km.”

That story the ABC backed up with further cost details and the basis of the estimate. Electric car sales in Australia's outer suburbs take off as commuters pocket 'ridiculous' savings - ABC News

The option is there for any one who sees an issue with the content or the way an article is presented to contact the ABC directly. Without meaningful feedback it will be as it is.

Not the only motivation for purchasing a new motor vehicle. The NRMA guide to the cheapest cars to run is all BEVs. What are the cheapest cars to run? | The NRMA

It’s a more complex decision when we take into account the upfront purchase price. Perceived value, real value and owner needs are put through the blender. We typically ad an emotive comment to our decision making.

For many the choice of model reflects how we perceive ourselves, and/or how we want others to see us.

It’s an incomplete comparison to be looking purely at price points. Some prioritise minimising the impact of minimal carbon emissions. Others on having a plush leather interior, heated seats, and a customised external styling and accessories package. Optionally with a turbo and ICE engine note a critical requirement.

Evidence we spend more than we need is ICE based and BEV come in models at different price points. Most often the lowest standard cheapest vehicle does the same job equally well as the more expensive options. It’s rarely a decision purely on least cost.

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I didn’t take the comment as being a different trip. The comment was that if the LC was used instead of the EV, it would have cost $1200 in fuel (while the EV was $12 taking a slightly longer route). It wasn’t talking about an old trip of a different type, but direct comparison with a EV.

I don’t recall seeing that in the first version of the article and it may have appeared in response to some negative criticisms about the information ABC has been presenting. The numbers conveniently draw the presented conclusion, but, and outlined above 25/L is highly unlikely for a LC road used and isn’t therefore a direct comparison.

Agree it isn’t a true comparison for most people, if one assumes that the exaggerated figures were correct.

It is widely acknowledged and agreed by possibly anyone who has looked into EVs, that the energy cost of an EV is significantly less than that for an equivalent traditional ICE vehicle. This is due to a number of reasons including raw energy cost, excises and taxes imposed (where EVs currently don’t pay an fuel type excise which is purported to be used for road infrastructure) etc. As it is widely known that this is the case, there isn’t a need to present information which is a wild exaggeration and incorrect. When such information is found out to be a misrepresentation of the facts, it only further strengthens the arguments for some not to change to an EV. This is where such disingenuous information will do the most damage.

Agree, and this is the crux of the issue at hand.

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Worthy of a separate topic if that is what is driving this part of the current topic’s discussion.

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Not a reason many might consider. One that leverages the technology of the most popular BEV brand sold in Australia.

As an aside the Tesla is also used to drive from Rockhampton to Brisbane and return. Approx 650km each way on the Bruce Highway. Slightly shorter via Woolooga and Biggenden, (the recommended Apple/Google maps route). Best not to if one needs to avoid straying cattle on winding unfenced country roads, the dirt and Tesla invisible kangaroos.

Are we there yet???

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The problem is self driving in the true sense doesn’t exist and in the US Telsa has been subject to legal action from authorities for misleading its customers.

I personally would not like to be on the road with a fellow consumer who is using Telsa self drive functions, thinking they work and can be relied upon. I value my own life.

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There were times when many of us considered sharing space with guide dogs (an original version of an AV) or need for ramps as well as stairs and accessible facilities an impossibility.

We already share the road with Teslas and other cars operating at lower levels of autonomy, and conditional on the person behind the wheel. I’m inclined to encourage progress. Consider there may be a number of different solutions to how someone with different mobility capabilities can be given a level of control appropriate for the level of autonomy available. For another topic if one would like to consider further?

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That is very different to going down a highway at 100-110km/hr. Tesla autopilot is known to be flawed and not fully self drive. The marketing spin emitted by Telsa is coming back to bit them, including many court cases in the US where there have been deaths and injury because of its flaws.

I wouldn’t be buying a Telsa based on it bring self drive, and the one needs to be careful of repeating Telsa’s marketing spin as they could be exposed to future liabilities.

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Anyone remember the Ford Capri? Now re-incarnated as an EV (looking nothing like the original):

Back in the 1970s in Brisbane, the Capri was the vehicle model most frequently stolen (so was expensive to insure). Usually taken for a joyride (they’d often been ‘hotted up’), then dumped. They were ubiquitous and even easier to break into than most other vehicles of the time.

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The Chinese are claiming to have made solids state batteries which overcome many of the challenges of current battery technologies. If the claims are correct, it might make current battery technologies redundant:

The cost reduction would also potentially make EV purchase prices similar to ICE vehicles, making EVs a more attractive financial position. The batteries also avoid using lithium which has it’s own environmental challenges.

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The best technologies do not always win the market or the day.

An example was Sony Beta that was superior to VHS yet VHS became the standard for most of us outside the broadcasting industry. It depends on marketing, establishing market share quickly, advertising, pricing, licensing - the entire product ecosystem.

Why did the Boeing 747 become the jumbo? Boeing made a conscious decision to get it in service before McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, or Airbus and did whatever it needed to. eg the earliest B747s were shimmed and hammered however they had to be to get them out the door. It led to market share and thus market leadership. Was the B747 a better aeroplane than the DC-10, L1011 or A300? The rest is history as Boeing tactics prevailed, although accepting the market also changed over decades.

Will vehicles be prone to the same pains with BEV winning the day even as technology rapidly progresses? Will hydrogen eventually prove better for enough customers to create competition to displace BEVs? Will the still questionable product cycle and personal economics of BEVs and their near computer-like depreciation matter during these relatively early days?

So many questions but the answers will only come when they come over time.

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You have missed a key condition of unequal technological market dominance: first in exclusion. The VHS/Beta situation can only evolve with the lesser tech dominant if early success can then exclude the better tech from catching up in market position.

If these new batteries can easily replace current tech and there is no network or support system that needs to be established that is unique to each tech, then it is very likely that the best tech will win not the first in.

In this context EV versus hydrogen is more similar to VHS/Beta as each requires its own support network. The first to get unit numbers and network dominance wins. EV has a big head start with both.

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We have all heard those sort of arguments before. They were also used when Li-ion batteries where first tabled a couple of decades ago…they won’t replace NiCd batteries. Look where things have come within a decade in relation to change from NiCd to Li-ion.

The change from Li-ion to sodium solid state batteries is a big step in technology. It isn’t an slight change to existing battery technologies or tinkering around the edges. If it was a slight change or tinkering, I possible would agree with you…

While I am a little sceptical about news from China, if the information is correct, the step change in battery technology removes a lot of the barriers associated with the uptake of Li-ion battery EVs. It also makes hydrogen as a private fuel source less attractive. This is where such technologies will succeed, where existing technologies haven’t.

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And repeated in smaller scale in the Next Format War i.e. HD DVD v. Blu-ray.

One factor is how the perception of a format war (compatibility war) affects consumer demand. That is, consumers, perceiving that they could get left with a white elephant, sit on the sidelines. It is believed that that was a factor in the HD war, with consumers having been burnt in the Beta v. VHS war.

For sure we know, in the context of general appliances, that it is a significant problem when you have a perfectly good device but with a battery that is too old to use (degraded battery performance) and the battery model is no longer manufactured. So a perfectly good device may have to be eWaste.

In the case of a car, the white elephant would be far more expensive than anything contemplated in the context of general appliances or audio-visual content !

When this scenario happens it can be win-win for the two warring sides to create interoperability. (And if you ask me governments could benefit even existing EVs by stepping in and demanding greater interoperability.)

In neither of the above format wars did technical prowess really make a difference. In the case of the HD war it was all about corporate alliances. So on the one hand we have battery manufacturers == content creators and on the other hand we have car manufacturers == optical disk drive manufacturers / general IT corporates (particularly Microsoft and HP).

Do any of these musings guarantee what’s going to happen in the future for non-stationary energy? Nope.

Anyway, from your link

Last year, Toyota claimed to have created new solid-state battery technology that would enable it to halve the costs, weight, and size of EV batteries.

The biggest carmaker in the world claimed that it can create batteries with a 745-mile (1,200-kilometer) range and rapid charging times of roughly 10 minutes utilizing its new solid-state battery architecture. The company announced that it will start producing cars featuring its new battery technology in 2027.

So I guess we’ll see how things go in only a few years time.

Is that correct?

I’m no battery tech but it seems as if
a) the anode may still be Li while the article is talking about the electrolyte, and
b) the electrolyte (LPSO) may still contain Li anyway - the acronym is not expanded in the article (poor subediting) but I think that is Lithium-Phosphorus-Sulphur-Oxygen

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I think you’re right on both counts. This is about reducing the cost of solid-state batteries, not about removing Lithium.

This new LPSO based electrolyte is an important breakthrough, because it performs at least as well as but would be a lot cheaper to manufacture than the existing Li2S based solid state electrolytes.

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From what I have seen, the plan is lithium won’t be used or the base metal for the batteries. This recent article provides a summary:

As I have indicated above, I am a little skeptical in relation to the Chinese announcement as it suggests the Chinese have overcome known challenges with using sodium. Only time will tell if the released information is something a hat can be hung on.

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Fair enough. I was commenting only on the text that you typed next to the article that you linked to, which article makes no mention of sodium and does mention lithium. I guess your brain was too far ahead of your fingers. :wink:

Even sticking with lithium, any substantial reduction in the cost of batteries will be a game changer, both for EVs and, equally importantly, for dedicated storage for the grid (whether household, community scale or industrial scale).

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