What will it take to make you seriously consider an EV?

Sodium battery solution is picking up steam. I am not sure how viable it is or if its one of those pipe dream 'right around the corner' solutions like solid state.

 

Daily at home charging is not an issue. MDU's and renters have a big problem too. People with access to a 220 in their garage is pretty small.
Range anxiety will certainly get better with more charging stations. It sucks it takes 25 minutes to supercharge. Its the days where someone might expect to do more than 2 hours of driving is an issue.[/quote]

I didn't realize EV batteries were being repurposed into energy storage. Interesting solution to increase the life of batteries.

I certainly can see the cost of battery production being much cheaper than recycled. Hopefully better solutions come about.

Unfortunately population centers are too dense to take full advantage of solar for the masses. I would like to install solar at my house but its not economic feasible nor would the HOA be cool with it. It would be great to see more economic solutions like Tesla's solar roof. I generally don't recommend people to put solar panels on their roof in high wind areas.

 

Pretty interesting. I've been pro solar panels, though we don't have them on our little house in the fogbelt near the CA coast, BUT near some family in central TX, I witnessed a bunch of totally wrecked solar arrays on rooftops after one of their massive summer hailstorms last year. Weather is a serious concern I'd never really considered, beyond sunny days / cloudy days.

 

There are already Chinese auto manufacturing companies bringing out sodium battery EV's this year - or supposed to, anyway. Solid state batteries would be awesome and Toyota/VW seem to be at the forefront in bringing those out, but they're probably still a few years away for mass consumption.

 

The one in "South Houston" your buddy is talking about is probably in Angleton. Just like the one in Australia, Tesla is the manufacturer of the Megapack construction in Angleton, too. I don't know if it's been built or being built, but it was announced at least 2 or 3 years ago.

 

I think Elon used the winter freeze for some free promo but here it is nonetheless.

 

Yeah, I think I posted that video in this thread a while back. I wasn't sure if it was operational, a promotional video, or what.


Meanwhile, I forgot to post this the other day, and it potentially could be EV-related. Microsoft and AI getting in on the battery action :

How Microsoft found a potential new battery material using AI

Satya Nadella on the bigger vision behind Microsoft’s new battery

 

Appropriate gif for me.

But seriously, I thought solar panels could handle hail, but these panels were absolutely demolished. I mean, they had baseball-sized hail and a lot of things got ruint. But we ... Californians... don't have to deal with that.

 

Yeah, I'm fairly optimistic about both technologies, but this also seems like a space where things look like
Bruno Caboclo: permanently 2 years away from being 2 years away. I know there are things like switching to silicon anodes (which *seems* simpler than these other changes), and even that seems like it will take a couple more years at least before they're available in mass market EVs.

Again I'm optimistic, but I can understand people who might be skeptical on some of this stuff (especially in the short-term).

Yeah, I know it isn't easy, but it does seem ideal to just repurpose used EV batteries for grid storage. Been reading about that for a few years now:
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/what-happens-to-old-batteries/

EVs in general seem like an opportunity to rethink a lot of things about energy storage, even when the EV is still being used. Not sure exactly how it would work, but we could have a good chunk of homes with 60-100kWh (or more) batteries just sitting in garages. Could we reduce energy production in peak hours by just incentivizing people to run their homes off their car batteries for a few hours? Or things of that nature. For comparison, Google told me the average home uses ~30kWh per day.

Don't know if users want to waste cycles doing stuff like that, though the better batteries get with that stuff, the less of a concern that is.

 

https://www.barrons.com/articles/hertz-ev-loss-fleet-blame-tesla-5aa589a4
Hertz Has a Loss on Its EV Fleet. Blame Tesla Pricing Decisions.

lol. Hertz went full R and bought EVs at the peak of pandemic pricing....especially from Tesla.

 

• Lucid produced 2,391 vehicles during Q4 and delivered 1,734 vehicles during the same period.

https://www.benzinga.com/markets/equities/24/01/36594872/why-lucid-group-shares-are-sliding-today

waiting for bankruptcy news...

 

Yep, that must be it. Thanks for sharing.

Home scale and gride scale batteries is the future. Generating electricity on-demand is massively complicated and expensive.

Hydro-electric dams are essentially the same principle as grid-scale batteries. The reservoir is stored energy. AKA, a big battery. Unfortunately, water is becoming increasingly scarce, unreliable, and expensive. Next up, batteries.

One idea. Promote everyone to get EVs and give credits if you are willing to backfill the grid. If 500k people hook up their EVs to the grid, that isn't insignificant. Not a perfect idea but it's a thought.

 

That gotta hurts for hertz

 

Can't read the article, but Hertz (and some European rental company) curbed their Tesla purchases due to the repair costs last year. I think they also said the price-cuts shot any resale value for them.

 

In addition to any other EV worries on pricing... who wants to rent an EV on business or vacation travel? Like, I really want to worry about my carbon footprint when I've already booked air travel? No, I just want convenience, and having a reliable range with the option of quick refueling makes the most sense to most customers.

 

Getting an EV for vacation purposes doesn't make sense.
More and more hotels are adding chargers so I can understand for business purposes.
Hertz was trying to be edgy. They should leave that to @tinman

 

"hi i would like additional headache during my vacation"

 

I think most people that rent EVs are just renting them because they're already used to them or maybe want to test one out if they don't own one. I know in years past people would rent performance cars, bolt performance parts onto them and then race them, but I'm sure those are in the minority. The latter is also a reason why I would never buy a rental car. You don't know how they've been abused. lol.

 

2023 EV SHARE OF TOTAL BRAND SALES

https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q4-2023-ev-sales/



Tesla remains the undisputed champion of EV sales in the U.S., capturing 55% of the EV market in 2023. That’s down from 65% in 2022, but lower prices are clearly fortifying the company’s position. Tesla’s share increased in Q4 after falling to an all-time low in Q3. Notably, the Model Y accounted for 33% of all EVs sold in 2023.