What a trip

[Bill_Rockoff]

UK market (or other European country of your choice as a substitute) is the size of (insert mid-size US state here) with the population of (other US state.) The problems, and the possible solutions, are not the same. My first ever dip into the Internet world of FJ thr international FJ Brotherhood involved the difference in size between the UK and the US, vis a vis "highway pegs for an FJ." To wit: i had just ridden further in a day in one direction  than a British rider could do without a passport and a ferry (or the Chunnel) and the things we need solutions for in the US aren't typically a problem for you over there. Battery range is a lot less of a factor for you, just because most of your public transportation evolved to serve a larger percentage of your population and your distances are less of an obstacle for a 120km range.

Similarly, your government is (for now) a bit less beholden to the whims of its electorate than ours. If your government decides "don't know what you're going to do instead, but you can't keep burning diesel to get around, either find another way or don't go" then you-all will either find anither way, or you won't go. (And my money is on you finding another way, which in my view  is one of the things that truly makes a society great.)  The third option is "fire them and hire someone else who will tell you it's okay to keep doing what you want." You are closer to that than I recall you being in my lifetime. But who am I to talk, my country has basically fired its triathlon-competing personal trainer and hired a guy who tells us we are already the biggest and strongest, so of course we can keep eating hamberdere and have two scoops of ice cream instead of just one, and that exercise uses up our finite supply of bodily energy so we shouldn't exercise.

Initially, *all* cars were luxury purchases. Same with computers.

To br realistic, the current petro distribution scheme is also highly subsidized. The US has an enormous military spend, and an awful lot of it 1) serves  as a reliable energy customer, giving economies of scale, and 2) implements foreign policy to make sure the oil business stays in business. Our infrastructure for public transportation in the US isn't bad because we are dumb here, it's bad because we grew in a manner that benefited from / demanded Private vehicle ownership. And the folks who stood to profit from that were only too happy to pitch in and help tear up the public streetcars and repave the roads to help drive demand. if we decided that "battery powered cars, and the ectrical power capacity to run them" were as important to us as a twenty year war on terror and a thirty year war on drugs, you better roll up your pants because you will be knee deep in silent cars within Dick Cheney's lifetime.

If Elon is smart (and "all signs point to Yes" to quote  the Magic 8 Ball) his next round of investment will be in US politics. It's one thing to solve problems, but getting to help decide what constitutes a problem that needs to be solved is next-level business strategy. The US auto industry got successive lifetimes of profitability because they got to fund development of a road infrastructure versus rail infrastructure.

Then again, maybe he's playing the longer game and is already investing in Chinese manufacturing and politics. In which case, it seems like quite a ride for a few years to come, because that's a whole different set of problems, and solving those may not be profitable at all because that economy (like Russia's) has a LOT of money in it, but a completely different set of rules than we are used to. Think "master builder who builds the most beautiful church the world has ever seen, and then has his eyes put out by the clergy  afterwards so he can never build a nicer one" levels of "what the fuck?" anathema to our expectations of fairness.

Pardon the ramblings, it's the wee hours here and I'm multi tasking.

This would be a great bunch of stuff to discuss around campfires with motorcycles in the background and beer / booze in the foreground.

[ribbert]

I don't believe the electric cars being touted now are the future, their development is just an exercise in being seen to be green, something that has become an indispensable part of govt and big business if they wish to remain in power and stay in business. The achievements are not as important as the targets, just be on the green wagon, set impossible but publicly popular targets, make all the right noises about a renewables only future, shut down anything that has the word "coal" in it, mention wind and solar and at every opportunity and everyone's happy. The govt will get voted in the companies will sell product.

Elon Musk, amongst other things, is a salesman and what he's flogging is what govt's and business know are essential to their survival, to be seen to embrace a renewables future. Taking nothing away from the guy's significant achievements, I see a lot of "smoke and mirrors" about his business, the showmanship financing the research.

Most of the world has embraced the idea of a clean future, a noble pursuit indeed but business's looking for customer approval and govt's keen to curry favour with the voters, are setting targets way ahead of the technology needed to achieve them. We are not talking about further development of existing technology here but stuff that hasn't even been invented or discovered.

As has been alluded to by others, where do the materials for billions of huge batteries come from, what about disposal, what about manufacturing emissions, what about the national fleet all wanting to charge their cars around the same time when they get home from work when your only power is wind and solar, charging times etc. We are a very long way from getting rid of fossil fuel cars, planes and ships.

We have the world's biggest Lithium-ion (Tesla) battery here. It is charged by renewable (wind) energy. Last year in a grid power failure, it came on line in 140 milliseconds. According to the govt, which has a vested interest in embellishing it's performance, it provided power for 30,000 homes for 10 mins. Keep in mind, average daytime power use in homes is very low. That doesn't seem like much of a return for $50 million but it is exactly the sort of project that keeps the doors open and maintains his pin up boy status. I don't reckon the govt would let him go broke.



This for you Pat, I know you love this stuff.

I believe the electric vehicles of the future (in the absence of some other means of powering them) will be more about changing how we get around and what we get around in rather than discovering alternate ways to power vehicles as we currently use them.
Only changing the propulsion system of a current day motor car seems like a very short sighted goal. I think the car as we know it is doomed (based on known technology) as is how we use them.

Noel

Usual disclaimers apply, it's only my opinion and yes Pat, I know, I don't own one so I don't know what I'm talking about......

[Pat Conlon]

..... Watch the VW group introduce a true EV Volkswagen.
Things will get interesting when real competition enters the picture.....

....When the big players really get into affordable EV manufacture (and I firmly believe they will), I worry that Tesla will be left out in the cold with an overpriced product in a low price commodity market....

Bingo! ^^^^ I give Tesla another 2 years before the VW group smokes them....just a hunch.

Dean, I'm gonna follow your wife's advice sooner rather than later.
I have already recouped double my initial Tesla investment, so today I am playing with house money.
Crazy times indeed....

[T Legg]

It's too bad Pat. Everyone's negative opinion caused Tesla's stock to drop 18% this morning. This site has a lot of influence.

[Millietant]

Your geography is right Bill, the U.K. Is only the size of some US states, but with a population of over 65 million, we're a market of around 1/5th of the size of the USA, whereas in land mass terms we're about 1/50th.

We are still a "big" market for the car makers - and in terms of business mileage, our employees tend to drive a lot further per person, than in the USA. Because everything "seems" so close, and other transportation modes are so expensive, we tend to drive a lot more for business travel than we ideally should, and than others do in other countries.

We're also, as you can imagine a very densely populated country, with much higher average traffic densities than the vast majority of the USA and having to stop for "extended" re-charging times (compared to a 5 minute fuel fill-up) is a major dis-incentive for business users.

Indeed, my employer won a very long term "service" contract, and after the award, we were asked to switch to using BEV's for all of our small vans (which were the majority of our fleet) to improve their "environmental credibility", with the customer expecting "savings", but agreeing to cover any extra costs should they be incurred. We did so and we started to operate using all BEV vans, but when the first results came in, the customer was horrified at the cost increases because the contract was to run a 24 hour service, albeit in a small geographic area. With each van covering around 350 miles per day, this means a minimum of 3 charging periods for each day per van (at 6 hours per charge), which obviously meant that we couldn't provide the service without more than doubling the number of vans we used - as they were spending so much time recharging rather than operating. The customer wanted chapter and verse on the costs, which we gave them, which they understood and within 6 months we were asked to prepare a costed plan to switch back to diesel powered vehicles. By the end of the first year of the contract, all of the BEV's had been returned and we were operating with less than half the previous fleet number. That was a very sobering experience for me, as I had been championing BEV's (as instructed by my employer, who saw significant marketing benefits from offering "green alternative" solutions) and had become a bit of an advocate, based on all of the supplier information. Unfortunately, a lot of the "data" for BEV's on range, costs and charging times is based on use in specific "ideal" situations, which are not really clarified to buyers up front.

As has been said elsewhere on here, BEV's are one "cleaner" option, but if we really want to make great strides then we need to look further than just replacing ICE engines with electric motors and batteries - and politics and policies designed to maintain political success (and tenure if office) seem to be pushing us that way and are often at odds with REAL progress.

Again, like your analogy of the Blackberry, unless they really move forward, Tesla will be just be playing in the periphery with a "simple/limited" solution, while someone else corners the bulk market with real innovations.

I love discussing this topic and truly hope to sit by the campfire with you at a FJ Rally some time in the near future (in the next 5 years) and chew the fat over this - I think we have so much common ground that we could have a really good and enjoyable discussion.

Next time I'm out on an Oset, I'll get some photo's to post - they truly are awesome machines for what they are and I love the fact that they are so quiet and so tractable in off-road, countryside use.

[PaulG]

My other worry is, where are all of the batteries going to come from to not only sustain annual sales of 17 million cars, but also all of the other Battery Power Storage systems being touted for household use - and what of the earths resources are going to be destroyed to get at the rare minerals required for these.

Bolivia  https://wccftech.com/bolivias-massive-reserves-of-lithium-are-about-to-become-available-to-western-companies/

That coup wasn't about "democracy".  They have upwards of 70%  of known lithium reserves.  They were negotiating with western companies for mining contracts, the corporations didn't like the terms. So Morales signed with the Chinese.  Literally the next day the army came into the picture.

IMO If they can extract this at a reasonable cost, any newer power sources will be put on the back burner until every last $$ can be stripped out of it.  That's usually how the game goes.  Instead of oil power politics, the new kid on the block will be lithium power politics. After that... who knows?

Don't want to turn this into a debate. Just wanted to expand the picture a bit.

Even in a perfect world if the majority of power sources were electrified this will not stop oil production.  Look around your house/work and see what items are the result of oil refining like plastics, rubber, teflon, fabrics, etc.  Take oil out of the picture and see how much of it would disappear.  How much of your car would be left over for example?

The elimination of fossil fuels is only a small part of the equation.  How society consumes, creates, lives, travels etc. will need to undergo a massive transformation.  Not just physically but psychologically and emotionally. Something bigger than even the industrial revolution of the 18th &19th centuries. 

At the moment I don't think we're capable of that.  Unless Thanos appears and snaps his fingers. 

Too much time on my hands at work...

[Millietant]

And just think of the environmental damage mining that lithium is going to do, especially considering the amount of other material that has to be "mined" to get at the lithium - and similarly for all the cobalt that's needed which is  only available in the quantities we'll need in the future (for BEV's) from the ocean floor !!!

There is unfortunately no easy answer - but at least as it's Bolivia, the rest of the world won't care as long as they get their lithium  (I'm pretty sure that's the sarcasm emoji !)

[PaulG]

Don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but I seem to be constantly reminded of the classic movie Three Days Of The Condor.  Especially the final scene between Robert Redford and Cliff Robertson (one of my favourite actors from a bygone era )

https://youtu.be/1XKFQVJlmZY

[Pat Conlon]

Pat, I'd hold onto that Tesla stock. The guy isn't in the "electric car" business, the guy is in the "energy storage and management" business, and Tesla is where Ford was 100 years ago.....

The guy is in the "energy storage" business.... A good call for sustaining EV production according to this article:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-batteries-vertical-integration-proven-right/
I didn't know the other EV guys were struggling with battery production.

Glad to see TSLA stock settle down...

[Millietant]

I think the website name gives away the potential for a slight bias in its reporting Pat  - "Teslarati"

[Pat Conlon]

Yea Dean, I caught that, definitely pro Tesla,  but I didn't know about the battery supply issues Jaguar and Mercedes experienced. Tesla's investment in battery production now makes me think that their lead in the EV arena will be longer than I thought.

This validates Bill Rockoff's astute observation he made 2 years ago.... it's not about EV's, it's about batteries.

Good call Bill