Cars
Published on October 26th, 2015
by Roy L Hales
68
October 26th, 2015 by Roy L Hales
Originally published on the ECOreport
People working in automotive development labs today see cars which will hit the road in a couple of years’ time and know their internal combustion counterparts cannot compete — they see the tipping point today. For most of us, it is still a future event. Today’s electric vehicles need to become more affordable. They need longer range and an infrastructure to support them. Fastned’s CEO, Michiel Langezaal, says everything will move quickly after these issues are addressed. Everybody could be driving EVs in 10-15 years.
Phase One: The Netherlands
Fastned is currently in what Langezaal calls phase one, building up a network of charging stations in the Netherlands.
“Every light is green. There is no red light, or even yellow signal. Revenues are growing; usage of the network is growing. The signs that we see at the Tesla superchargers – waiting lines – are indications of what we will see in the coming year at Fastned as well. We have to work hard on procuring permits, building the infrastructure and finance it,” said Langezaal.
When the ECOreport interviewed him last December, Langezaal did not believe the Netherlands would reach the national goal of 200,000 electric cars on the road by 2020. He is no longer as certain. If the government adopts the right incentive program, it could put as many as 300,000 EVs on the road. Otherwise, it will be lucky to reach 160,000.
Phase Two: A Pan European Network
“A couple of years down the road, I expect to see an increase in luxury cars with much more range and the introduction of medium-range full-electric cars in the low end segment. This is the moment when electric cars will become available to the masses,” said Langezaal.
Around 5-10% of the population might adopt electric vehicles during phase two.
Fastned is taking the initial steps to expand beyond the Netherlands. It is in discussion with Germany’s Ministry of infrastructure and is also working towards the deployment of teams in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Austria.
Phase Three: Becoming Everyone’s Car
Phase three, the mass adoption of electric vehicles, is not as far away as people think.
“People often overshoot in their initial estimates and undershoot their long time goal,” said Langezaal.
Who could have predicted the extent that the internet caught on? Or digital photography?
When everything is ready, Langezaal expects electric vehicles to take over in much the same way.
Photo Credits: Projected growth of the Fastned network during Phase 1- Courtesy Fastned; Battery developments in the next five years, Low end EVs will probably go 300 km per charge – Courtesy Fastned; a Fastned Charging Station
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Tags: European EVS, Fastned, Michiel Langezaal
About the Author
Roy L Hales is the editor of the ECOreport (www.theecoreport.com), a website dedicated to exploring how our lifestyle choices and technologies affect the West Coast of North America and writes for both CleanTechnica and Planetsave on Important Media. He is a research junkie who has written over a thousand articles since he was first published in 1982. Roy lives on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.
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I was surprised to see that it would be 2020 or greater to see a luxury car with 500 km of range (310 miles). The top Tesla in range now is somewhere around 256 miles (EPA). I expect to see a Tesla with well over 300 miles in the 2017 – 2018 timeframe. As soon as the Model 3 comes out with 200+ miles for around $35,000, there will have to be a Model S with significantly more range in order to stay at the current price point.
How much market do you think there is for EVs with ranges more than the current Tesla S?
How many people driving luxury cars make 500, 600 mile drives in one day? Wouldn’t most fly?
Just the possibility to produce your own fuel on your rooftop is argument enough to go for an EV. Battery capacity will improve in the next 2-5 year as nano-technology will
increase energy density and charging time.
That is an excellent argument, but for low mileage drivers the economics are not there, and high mileage drivers need more range. The translation- cheaper EVs with longer ranges is the answer. That relies on cheaper, more efficient batteries becoming available.
The cost of fuel also needs to be part of the equation.
From your lips to God’s ears. We’re all hoping for quantum leaps in battery technology, but I’m not holding my breath.
Off Topic
Herb, I found a company building (proposing to build?) hybrid concrete/steel wind towers like you were talking about. (I’m afraid they’re a bit aesthetically challenged.)
http://www.tindallcorp.com/wind-energy/
And here’s a comparison of concrete and steel for towers.
http://www.fabcon-usa.com/products/wind-turbine-towers/
We don’t need quantum leaps in battery technology. If batteries never improved at all we have the ability to build 200 mile range EVs cheaper than ICEVs.
Worst case, people living in very cold places might need to add a small ethanol heater to their cars to warm batteries and passengers like the one Volvo developed.
I’d say, in terms of ICEV evolution, we’re in the Model T phase and should be in the Model A phase by 2018. The Model A was a very functional car that one could drive almost anywhere. The Model A and cars from other manufacturers basically replaced horses.
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BTW, once car manufacturing started at a serious level, a few years into the Model T run, it took less than 30 years to replace horses. Even in the 1930s one doesn’t see pictures of city streets with horses except in parades.
Just saw a program on TV about the upcoming second season of Formula-E electric racing cars. One of the changes they made for this year was that each team can design their own drive train. With plenty on money behind them many of them are coming up with new and innovative ways of improving their car’s speed and reliability. Just like the moon landings, a lot of these new technologies and designs will make their way into common road EVs.
Now this is what I call useful.
The organizers of the race are using EV racing competition to accomplish what cutting edge internal combustion races like Formula One have accomplished for decades and decades: killer innovation, which in the near future will make its way into production vehicles.
The next gen of EV will not need plugs or hybrid gas
All they will need is incredible marketing.
With used 3 year Nissan Leaf’s selling at below $10,000 dollars and the range of the Chevy Bolt to be 200 miles to a charge, why would anybody want to buy a gas car that is more expensive to maintain with oil changes, and expensive transmissions, and engines that will cost thousands to repair, if a breakdown occurs. The price of dirty gas cars is just to expensive when you factor in the high cost of maintenance.
I can think of many reasons, but the most obvious is that there are virtually no Nissan leafs available and that a base Nissan Micra in Canada starts at under 10,000.
Due to the usual suspects, for most people EVs currently simply lack credibility. This has so far, particularly in the US, resulted in disappointing residuals, more than nullifying, particularly for lower mileage users, the reduced running costs.
We just have to wait for the ‘virtuous circle’ to rotate, which won’t take long.
Give them an FCEV with 20 mile battery range and reforming diesel on board for 400 mile range at $30,000 then maybe.
We could just give humanity a gun with which they could shoot themselves in the head.
I don’t think they would like that as much as a nice car.
Yes, much better idea than using the land to grow something as old fashioned as food.
We should get rid of diesels completely, not give them another chance to pollute our air. A good diesel is a scrapped diesel.
Reforming diesel onboard sounds even more complex than using hydrogen so it doesn’t sound viable anyway. Renewable diesel production is also miniscule at the moment and there is no known/viable pathway for doing it from renewable energy so it looks like a non-starter.
Battery EVs are well-known technology and quickly becoming viable and affordable. The next generation (Bolt, Leaf, Model3) are at the corner and going to mainstream battery EVs. Their fuel can be 100% renewable energy easily (e.g. solar panels on your roof or at the utility power plant) and they do not pollute in the cities at all (not even water which can be a problem on roads, in cold climates, if FCEVs become widespread).
this is incorrect. Everyone could be passengers of self-driving electric cars in 10-15 years. Driving is so old fashioned.
Exactly!
A few crafty moves will speed up this transition. Notice Boris Johnson outlawing internal combustion engines in the center of London. Apply that to all major American cities and see how fast the switch to serial hybrid and EV happens.
Extremely over optimistic! Just some predictions without much basis.
The last picture is very misleading. A woman checking her messages while her BMW i3 ‘refuels’. Gives the impression that her wait will be over in few minutes.
While, Europe, and even US moves to more electrification. Rest of the world will keep driving gasoline power cars for foreseeable future.
driving gasoline cars is way more expensive than driving electric cars. With that amount of gasoline that goes to ICE car, you could buy 600 km ranged electric car.
I guess EVs will also rust away.
depends on rust protection and materials used. Aluminium most certainly does not rust. Rusting is a part of planned obsolescence.
Most EVs are made of steel the Model 3 will be large parts made of steel.
EVs will rust. Most of the suppliers will stay the same and they will supply parts that rust like we are used to.
Will carbon be better. I doubt it. If it cracks you can buy a whole new part.
If EVs/batteries last longer than ICEVs we may see more emphasis on rust prevention.
Check out 2 mm thick paint coatings on GE LED streetlight fixtures.
“The surface is protected by corrosion-resistant polyester powder paint
applied at a minimum thickness of 2.0 mil to accommodate the long
life of the fixture.”
http://www.gelighting.com/LightingWeb/na/images/OLP3060-GE-Evolve-Roadway-Lighting-LED-Brochure_tcm201-61690.pdf
Well let’s see what big markets there are outside of Europe and US. That would be China and India. Those two countries have huge pollution problems, so EVs will spread there very fast. The government is gonna make sure of that. You can already see that in China. They push hard for EVs.
There is South America (with more Auto penetration then India and China). South East Asia, Africa, etc.
People in poorer countries drive cars for much longer time also. The pollution in emerging economies is mainly due to Coal burning, Bus Truck Diesel exhaust and untreated gasoline exhaust (motorcycles, Motor Rickshaws (Tuk, Tuk) and old carburetor based gasoline cars).
Used Nissan Leaf’s and Mitsubishi I-Meav’s are selling for less than $10,000, with few miles on them. With no oil changes required and expensive transmissions and engines to break down, cost will drive EV.s to overtake dirty gas cars. EV;s have far fewer moving parts and the batteries are dropping in price, so gas cars will die like the dinosaurs because they are too expensive to maintain.
How much oil changes do you need? I just refill a liter every 50k km.
Never had a motor or transmission problem (the car got 403000km so far)
There is no EV that could substitute my car at this time… much less for under 10k€.
Things that need fixing will also need fixing on an EV.
Not yet there.
I would be the first to buy that 300km EV minivan for under 15k € even if I only get half the range in Winter.
The EV drive train is WAY more simple than the typical ICE drive train, this is trivia.
Transmission failures are quite common on ICEs before 400K here in the EU (manual transmission in most cars, easy to abuse).
I don’t know the statistics but I never had a transmission or motor failure nor do I know anybody who had in the last 15 years.
Even my Golf 2 was not dead after 400k km (only had a 5 digit odometer).
I always bought old and used cars. The last Golf III (Variant) I owned was bought for 3k€, repaired for 1000 and was good for another 100k km without any service apart from new winter tires which will be needed for EVs too. Even with fuelcost (over 7 years) I would not have hit the 10k for a used LEAF.
Cheap electric Vehicles where promised 10 years ago. I don’t doubt that we are getting there but we are not there yet.
When EVs get cheaper used cars will get cheaper accordingly first. For the average driver (14k km/a) a used ICE will be the cheapest option for the next 5 years minimum.
You were extremely lucky with your Golf. I owned two (1986 and 1995) and they were horrible as far as reliability goes. I am never buying another VW.
I do agree that EV’s have some way to go before they become ubiquitous.
Possibly. I always had luck with used cars. Sold the Golf III to Africa for 1000€ too. It was fully equipped with AC and stuff.
We also don’t know yet how used EVs will do.
Would be interesting what you have to do on an 10 year old LEAF.
There you have it. Abuse by poor driving habits. I doubt an EV would be immune.
OK, your post seems insincere. Did I understand you to say that you don’t ever have to change your oil? What does “………I just refill a liter every 50k km…….” mean? It sounds like you are saying that you add a litre of oil every 50 thousand kilometers. This is nonsense.
You also say “…….Things that need fixing will also need fixing on an EV……..” What? What does that mean? That is exactly wrong. Most of what costs money in an older car has to do with the engine. Are you aware that there is not an engine in an EV? If you see one on the street, lift the hood (or bonnet, or whatever it is called where you live). Please notice that there is no engine. No oil changes, no fluid changes, no timing belts, no head gaskets blown, etc., etc., etc.
In more than one of your posts you imply that you drive hundreds and hundreds of thousands of kilometers without having any expenses to speak of.
The whole thing seems very fishy. Say, do you work at Halliburton or Exxon-Mobil?
I refilled 3 liters of oil over the last 40k km. That’s 3 years of driving.
The car has 402000km on. The last thing I had to repair was the brakes which you will also have to service on your EV.
There where one other thing that needed fixing over the last 3 years…the rear brakes and an electric motor…
The preowner drove 360000km mostly on the Autobahn.
Granted he could have saved a lot of fuel if there was an EV available in that size and with that range. (Compact van, 7 seater.) It’s a Toyota…they once where the most reliable brand…don’t know if this holds true but there is also a Prius in Vienna that has clocked over 1.000.000km without problems to the drivetrain or gas engine (Taxi).
The biggest different in cost is due to taxes btw.
We don’t pay motor taxes on EVs (yet). The tax is kinda stupid because it rises with HP. My Golf 3 was 50€ less in monthly cost because it had 75HP vs. 150HP in my current car.
Taxing efficiency would make more sense.
Agree with all that, however the discussion here is the time period during which this will happen.
For some perhaps. I do my own maintenance and drive very carefully. Maintenance is so cheap as to be a non issue.
In 60 years of driving, I have never had to replace a transmission other than in a 30 year old model A. The one engine I blew (broken timing belt), I cured by replacing the car with a newer, lower mileage identical model. Total cost about the same as replacing the engine.
EV, battery, and charging technology will be a no compromise solution in less than 10-15 years but cars have a long life span an there are many on the road that people will be unwilling to scrap while they still have useful life. I believe Elon’s timeline for a full changeover is longer than 15 years.
Most people could be buying EVs in 10 to 15 years. I doubt “everyone” will. There will likely some people who will be buying their last ICEV 15 years from now. I’d love to be proven pessimistic.
But past the time at which ICEV sales are essentially finished it will take 10 -15 year to flush out most of the ICEVs. Unless it gets hard to find fuel people will be driving the 2025 Gasmobile in 2040.
The chance is high that ICEVs will be banned in almost every major city in 15 years. So I’m not sure if many people want to buy cars that you can’t drive in a city anymore.
Banned because?
Emissions, I presume
Do you really have to ask?
A ban would be a great incentive for plug-ins, but people don’t seem to be concerned about emissions. Air quality is terrible where I live, but almost no one is complaining. I have seen maybe six plug-ins in the area in the last year. If someone proposed a ban, there would be a backlash.
Just take a deep breath at the tailpipe of a diesel and you will figure it out quickly.
If bans were politically viable because of emissions, we would have had them by now.
Indeed, and the political backlash against diesel is already underway. We live in the countryside and really notice the vile air quality in London, especially near busy roads and roundabouts. We are probably only one credible report into respiratory illnesses in children away from having charge levied on diesels in urban areas.
There should be plenty of medical studies about respiratory illness and auto emissions right now. Are there government incentives to buy plug-ins in the UK?
Are there government incentives to build large state of the art air filters in parks?
Your last sentence may provide the answer; the huge capital and infrastructure resources required to extract, refine, store, deliver and retail petrol and diesel only work with volume. Once those volumes diminish, the investment won’t be made. Finding a petrol station could be as difficult as finding an EV charging station was three years ago.
No. People will be willing to pay for gasoline and people will be willing to supply it. Sure, operating margins might increase a little, but the system won’t fall apart just because people are using 50% or 90% less petrol and diesel. After all, back in 1940 when oil consumption was only one tenth what it was now, the oil still flowed and petrol and diesel was supplied.
So do you think that the price of petrol/diesel is irrelevant?
If the volumes drop by 50%, as you suggest, all those capital and operating costs would have to be covered by half the volume. Unit costs would double. You don’t think that this might be a deterrent to consumers when choosing a car?
The other point about the 1940s is that oil was then the energy of the future and investment capital was flooding into it. It’s going the other way now.
It’s worth considering what might happen as the oil sector of the world economy gets smaller.
For most of the world, not sending billions of dollars a month to the middle east will provide an economic lift. Within the oil producing nations the situation is more complex.
On the one hand, the Islamic State’s main source of revenue is oil, and oil underwrites everyone else’s military budget in the region. Without oil drilling, the region becomes less worth fighting over, so the US and Russia may give up and go home.
On the other, the middle east imports lots of food, paid for by oil revenues, which will trend downward just as agriculture is becoming more difficult due to climate change-driven desertification.
Saudi Arabia, which buys its citizens’ acquiescence with oil revenues, can’t continue if those revenues diminish. Egypt’s huge population growth over the last decades has mirrored the rise of its oil industry. Now that that’s drying up, the place is unsustainable.
In the end, solar desalination and solar power will increase the region’s ability to support large populations, but the next couple of decades will be challenging. Further waves of emigration are likely.
90trillion in US per year, one year will balance out budget, payoff all student loans and fix everything…
The US Mid West is said to be the “Saudi Arabia” of wind!
“It’s worth considering what might happen as the oil sector of the world economy gets smaller.” If Riyadh continues on to become the “Detroit” of Saudi Arabia, hopefully it can continue on to become a Pittsburgh type of City. A city that has moved on from resource extraction and heavy fossil fuel burning to become a very nice (but smaller) place.
“the Islamic State’s main source of revenue is oil”
True. Why aren’t right wingers pushing plug-in cars as a way to fight ISIS and other terror groups? Our presidents wouldn’t have to bow to and kiss the Saudi king any more.
Really, Epicurus . . . the only president who’s bowed so deeply that onlookers got a slipped disk, and then kissed the Saudi King’s ring is your hero, President Empty Suit. And he didn’t do it because of any power or influence that the Saudis have. He did it eagerly and enthusiastically because he’s a Jew-hating, Muslim-sympathizing waste-of-skin.
And bear in mind that if we went full-on in a national effort to reduce our (U.S.) transportation dependence on oil, it would take us at least 15 years to make a significant dent in our national auto fleet and make meaningful progress for it to be reconstituted with hybrids and plugins. I’m not saying we shouldn’t proceed in that direction, but it will definitely take time. Nothing’s going to happen overnight. But the fact is battery technology is not sufficient at this point to satisfy the transportation needs of many people.
The truth is, until we can build 5-megawatt land-based turbines so we can make a big jump in wind power production, plugins are not an improvement over gasoline vehicles. Once again even with a full-on effort with subsidies and tax incentives, etc., it would take 15 years to make any kind of significant dent in our current mix of electricity production — and that’s assuming that we had today the wind turbine technology that we won’t have until some point in the next five to ten years. And wind power production has to proceed slightly ahead of electric vehicle production in order for it to reduce emissions.
All of which means that the technology isn’t quite there yet in either wind production or plug-in vehicles to make the big leaps that so many posters on here keep demanding. It’s just not yet technologically or economically feasible. It’s close, but we’re not there yet. The whole changeover is going to take 30 to 40 years. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy world.
Herb, here’s your hero playing smoochie face with oil.
Bob, the link didn’t post.
Give it a bit of time. Refresh if necessary.
—–
” he’s a Jew-hating, Muslim-sympathizing”
No, Herb. We have a president who is deeper thinking than we some we’ve had. PBO fully understands that
All Muslims are not evil.
All Jews are not evil.
All of any group are not evil, even Republicans. ;o)
We have some in almost any group who are a-holes.
If you have any experience in the real world you probably know that you can go into the countries with the biggest a-hole leaders and find most of the people very nice.
“Until we can build 5-megawatt land-based turbines so we can make a big jump in wind power production, plugins are not an improvement over gasoline vehicles.”
That’s not logical. If we don’t get above 3 MW onshore turbines we just have to build more. Plus there is solar. And offshore wind. (Japan just hooked up a 7 MW floater.)
“All of which means that the technology isn’t quite there yet in either wind production or plug-in vehicles to make the big leaps that so many posters on here keep demanding. It’s just not yet technologically or economically feasible”
Wind and solar are technologically and economically feasible. Wind, natural gas and solar are the three least expensive ways to bring new capacity online. NG and solar are roughly tied in second place with solar prices dropping.
What needs to be done to make long range EVs affordable is to increase battery production volume. Tesla, LG Chem, and BYD are doing that right now. Three companies (GM, Nissan and Tesla) have announced affordable long range EV to be sold in 2017.
” The whole changeover is going to take 30 years MINIMUM — and probably much, much longer. Anyone who thinks otherwise is living in a fantasy world.”
The whole changeover. How do we define “complete changeover”? Might it be ICEVs 5% of all cars on the road, 2% or do we call it when the last gas car holdout finally dies? (It’s like how we define when the Arctic Ocean is “ice free”. Do we or do we not require every single “ice cube” lurking in some shady inlet to be melted?)
If changeover is 5% ICEVs then 30 years is not out of reach. Give us ten years to bring the price of EVs below the price of ICEVs, large numbers of rapid chargers installed, and people comfortable with the idea of driving an EV. The 15-20 years of flushing out the ICEVs.
Increase concern over climate change (59% of Republicans are now concerned) and we’re likely to use carbon taxes or something similar to speed the move off fossil fuels.
They are coming. I believe that the majority of new cars in the next 10-15 years will have a plug.
Creative Commons (CC) article source: https://cleantechnica.com/2015/10/26/everyone-driving-evs-10-15-years/