[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

The Euro 1000 in fixed cost is never taken into account in any of the cost calculation or calculators I have seen.

True that.

I digress from the subject of discussion but am trying to understand this. Coming back to the fixed cost, are you saying that its 1000 Euro a year (repeating) + whatever you use that is charged on the meter? Can you buy power units in advance at a discounted rate?

[Nithesh_M]

I had an option to pick between a petrol Creta 1.5 S and a Tata Nexon EV for 16lakhs OTR.
I just needed to remember that my brand new phone batteries eventually lose their charge rapidly with age and that battery replacement is a headache after certain years.

So went with a petrol car. Didn't pick diesel seeing NGT rubbing their hands with glee.

[no_fear]

Has anyone actually read the article in its entirety.

I have posted a link below.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...8VEwaqIGhNk%3D

First, this is an article that was done through a survey of 1227 California residents. Not US, just California.

2nd, it is an article that uses probability and likelihood to estimate how many EV owners are likely to drive less, use EV less, or give up EV, based on certain factors.

3rd, most researchers like to extrapolate data to apply to entire population. It makes for fancy titles but the truth is often different. Best examples - exit polls for West Bengal elections, Covid death counts in India

4th, the article is sponsored by the National Center for Sustainable Transportation, a rather new research body, headed by mostly PHD students and researchers. I went through the list and didn't note any industry professionals. Most of the members are a bunch of PHD students and university professors, who are safely cocooned in the world of academia and look at life though graphs and charts and data. Moreover UC Davis and the UC system believes more in the growth of public transport at the expense of individual car ownership.

Articles like this are very catchy and help the researchers to secure grants, but ultimately its just a theoretical exercise with no real world outcome. Been there and done that myself. I studied in California and was a doctoral student with my research grant funded by Caltrans (California department of Transportation).


I have not met any single person in California or US who has given up their EV to go back to ICE simply because it takes longer to charge. Battery charging technology is rapidly advancing and most EVs can hit 25% charge in under 30 minutes, enough to reach their destination or the next charging station.

Also, the cost benefits of EV are much much higher. Yearly maintenance costs are minimal (no oil / filter change), government subsidies are high + as a single commuter you get to use the high occupancy vehicle (HOV) line on US Freeways in California.

I learned more about how people perceive EV ownership on this forum than from the article.

[Tgo]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I mean 110-120VAC! Not many countries still running 110/120VAC.

Still, if you want to charge your typical EV overnight, it means that almost every single homeowner will need to upgrade their electrical connection.

Never thought of this aspect when it comes to EV charging at home. Guess the rest of the world was doing something right and had foresight.

[RGK]

What about the swapping of batteries at the EV charging stations. This will save time.

I heard(not verified) many of the Chinese manufactured cars do this in the USA.

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Coming back to the fixed cost, are you saying that its 1000 Euro a year (repeating) + whatever you use that is charged on the meter?

Yes, that is correct. It is a monthly fixed fee, irrespective of usage.
In fact, I have 10 solar panel and they generate about 3000kWh on an annual basis. Which is more than I use. I still have to pay the fixed charge!!

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Can you buy power units in advance at a discounted rate?

In theory the electricity market is a “free market”. So consumers can shop around to find the best deal. There are dozen of providers. Most will offer you a “welcome discount” for joining. If you sign up for several years it goes up.

I am in the habit of changing every 12 month. Loyalty is not awarded, so every year I look around for the best 12 month deal. The difference between usage charge are usually minimal, it’s the welcome discount that makes the difference.
But you will only receive that discount at the end of your contract period. You can switch provider any time, but you won’t get your discount.

Jeroen

[Lobogris]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

EV charging points will mushroom in the next few years at parking lots, malls, and what have you. Never under estimate the tug of demand-supply. I am very confident EV charging points will become ubiquitous in 5 to 7 years time.

I recently drove an MG EZS for two weeks in Delhi NCR along with a trip to Chandigarh. I had no range anxiety and no charging issues. In Delhi alone there are several dozen fast chargers. I used one at a petrol pump right inside the Select City Walk mall. In addition, the mall itself provides free charging points. I also charged for free at the Mall of India in Noida as well as at the Cyberhub in Gurgaon. There was a charger within a few kms all around NCR. Going to Chandigarh was a breeze with a fast charger at a restaurant near Panipat and then several fast chargers in Chandigarh itself. Similarly there are fast chargers in Agra and on the way to Jaipur as well as Jaipur itself. I planned a Delhi to Goa trip as an exercise and found that it was quite possible even today with the existing fast charger network. Tata power and several other apps show you the available chargers and allow you to easily charge and pay online.

Originally Posted by QuentinTino

This reminds me of a road trip my friend took from Delhi to Dehradun recently in his Nexon EV. Poor guy took almost 16 HOURS to cover a 240km journey. Since there were no “fast chargers” on the way, he had to stop twice to charge up his EV- once at a local Tata dealership (which didn’t even have a wall charger) and once at a local dhaba, using a TMT bar and metal wire for Earthing! Still he had to push his car for the last few metres as it ran out of juice *just* before reaching. Moral of the Story for him - NEVER think of an out station journey in an EV in India. Says he won’t take it out of the NCR at least for the next 3-4 years now till there’s some charging infrastructure.

Nexon is the cheapest EV and has the lowest range. The same trip is easy in an MG ZS. Even in a Nexon, there are fast chargers on the north side of Ghaziabad and then you have about 200kms which is doable. More chargers should come up soon.

Originally Posted by RGK

What about the swapping of batteries at the EV charging stations. This will save time.

I heard(not verified) many of the Chinese manufactured cars do this in the USA.

EV batteries are large and are spread all across the bottom of the vehicles. They can’t be removed without stripping the car and spending hours if not days. They are not tiny like 12v car batteries. Hence swapping is not possible. Only two wheeler and some three wheeler batteries can be swapped.

[antz.bin]

Swappable batteries are a pipe dream.

On cars, the batteries are part of the chassis. Designing them for being swappable may compromise structural rigidity.

They may be made swappable on scooters, but when was the last time you ran your petrol powered scooter for > 100km in a day? It's fairly easy to design for that range and keep charging the thing at home.

Point being, swappable batteries are infeasible for vehicles that can truly benefit from it. Whereas on vehicles where it is feasible (scooters), less than 0.1% users will end up using it.

Any money spent on developing the tech can be better spent on working on fast charging tech. That is what should help solve the highway range problem. Tesla has already shown the way. Why reinvent the wheel?

[jithin23]

EV's can be bought as a second car or bike in the house in the current scenario and the IC engined car be used for highway runs. It's not too far that businesses might come up with a food court+rest stop along with a charging station. Highway star in Kolar has a shell petrol pump and a huge choice of restaurants. If they come up with an EV charging station, it's a win win for all but at a slightly higher cost to the car owner for parking charges.

For EV's to plug in the IC engine gap I guess it'll take another 10-15 years. This is somewhat similar to smartphone boom and someday or the other, everyone will be onto this.

[allajunaki]

Allow me to present a slightly different perspective :
1. Home Charging : You don’t need to home charge always. If you don’t travel a lot, plugging into a 10amp regular socket and Charging at 8amps will s give around 80-100kms overnight. If EVs have about 300-400 kms range, then you don’t have to plug-in every night. Biggest point to consider though is, if you can charge at home, you are unlikely to visit a charging station unless you are on long trip.
2. Long trip / outside Charging : unlike traditional cars, you don’t have to wait by the pump. If there are fast chargers available, then you would need 30-40 minutes to charge up from 5% to 80-85%. 200kms would take anywhere from 2 - 5 hours to travel. At that point, you would need a bio break. A lot ev users don’t top upto 100, they top up to whatever is necessary to reach their destination/ next stop. Which with right infrastructure would mean 10-15 mins stop.
3. Untapped opportunity cost : Cost to entry for setting up a fast charger is power supply. Malls can become a charging infrastructure provider. They have a new untapped revenue stream. It will also drive footfall into the shops. They now have guaranteed 30-40’mins of a customer. Presently a few malls are providing charging infrastructure (for free) and guess what, those spots are used up by Evs, their owners not in the car, but at the mall. I would imagine malls would eventually start charging people for charging their cars, or allow a third party charging provider to setup their stalls. In remote locations on highways, solar arrays linked charging stations with shops on lease would become popular.
4. Increased power grid loads : Power supply grids would have a perceptible increase in load. But if you look at countries with high solar adoption rates, you’d find power surplus and cost of wholesale power going negative. Encouraging ev’s would help absorbing the excess power generation.
5. National Interests : A lot of countries are importing crude and their inflation is heavily tied to cost of fuel. Ev transition would reduce this reliance, help meet emissions target that countries committed to. Remember, even a coal powered ev is still greener than an ICE car. More importantly, the additional load of ev would most likely be fed by renewables. Renewables in electric grid makes the grid a bit more unstable since their production is easily influenced by time of day and prevailing weather conditions.
6. Emergent Technologies : this is where it gets really interesting. Some of the auto manufacturers are now toying with the idea of Vehicle To Load, V2L for short. Which is a fancy way of saying the car is essentially a moving inverter. This aspect makes it very interesting because it enables V2G (grid) which can feed spare power back to grid much like solar panels can do in Smart grids (perfect complement to volatile supply by renewables). This raises interesting opportunities like malls being able to offer perks like free parking for few kilowatts of power in peak. Or being able to camp with the car using car as portable inverter. Hyundai Ioniq5 is the first car to have this feature (though there are rumours that Tesla’s have bidirectional inverters bulit into them, though they haven’t enabled the feature).

Apologies if it’s a long post, but I believe the original research was done at a stage where electric vehicles were in their nascent stage. The overall experience of old BEVs were poor. I don’t think that will be the case for next crop of cars.
In any case both US and Europe are abandoning ICE, and not many companies are investing into petrol car development.
Even my dream car, c63 is now a 2L in-line 4 hybrid. How long before they decide to drop the in-line 4 entirely.

[low_rider]

The research interpretation is tweaked to make a catchy headline.

It can equally be concluded that 4 out of 5 EV owners are satisfied and want to continue with EVs rather than going back to fossil fuels. And 80% satisfaction rate (4/5) for a new technology is not bad considering that the infra is yet to grow.

[longhorn]

Solid state batteries are the latest fad in the electric scene. There is only so much you can do with lithium ion batteries. The main difference from lithium ion is that you get rid of the liquid, thereby greatly improving energy density and reducing weight, both of which lead to better efficiency and thus greater distance between recharges.

[sreenivass]

Wouldn't it be a good idea to quickly swap battery with a fully recharged one. They can make it like swappable in 5 mins if designed well. That makes it a lot easier and time comparable to refuelling with petol/ diesel.

This does not need a great technology innovation. One thing may come in the way, "mine is a new battery, I'd not swap it with a recharged old one"! To address this, they can have an option of 'take it back fully recharged on the way back or later"

[Shresth_EV]

Originally Posted by sreenivass

Wouldn't it be a good idea to quickly swap battery with a fully recharged one. They can make it like swappable in 5 mins if designed well. That makes it a lot easier and time comparable to refuelling with petol/ diesel.

This does not need a great technology innovation. One thing may come in the way, "mine is a new battery, I'd not swap it with a recharged old one"! To address this, they can have an option of 'take it back fully recharged on the way back or later"

Nio from China operates several 100s of these swapping stations. However as you might’ve guessed, it’s for their cars alone — for reasons obvious : manufacturers don’t use standard shapes and sizes of battery packs like we have for alkaline cells AA, AAA etc.

Further, one must also look at the economics of this :

1. Surplus batteries : Batteries aren’t cheap. The need for surplus batteries will be reflected in the pricing models for swapping.

2. The charging station can hold and charge limited number of batteries. And it needs chargers for charging them. Lets say they have 10 batteries in store and 50kW chargers to charge them. It would take 500kW power supply to charge them in parallel and would take 2h for each battery.

3. It’s not standard thus only few have access to it : Unlike charging ports which are standard (CCS/Chademo/GB-T), a specific swapping station either has to store multiple types of batteries or cater to only specific brands. Increases need for more swapping stations.

4. Cost itself : This article pegs the cost of setting up a 4 booth Tesla supercharging station at $100,000-175,000. These are 250kW chargers, mind you.

In my opinion, with private entities, it’s the cost barrier preventing swapping — non standardisation only worsens it by limiting your target audience — it’s not a separate point but one which is amplifying cost indirectly.

Tesla must’ve figured it’s more economic to deploy superchargers than pay for surplus batteries and install swapping stations which also have the same amount of chargers you could’ve otherwise directly deployed as booths.

[maddy42]

From a perspective of the US market, EVs will face issues on the home charging front. A lot of the 3 and Y buyers live in apartments and you cannot install a charger in one apartment and then rip it apart and move to the other one. Also do note that long journeys become a hassle and rental cars are no more a cheap option with bankruptcies by one of the major player. A lot of people bought into electric as a fad without understanding the product well enough. There is a huge change in behaviour needed and not just a fill it shut it and forget it mindset. A gas station or a rest stop is the last place one wants to hang out in especially after dusk. Its scary and creepy to say the least.

Lastly the main name in the game is Tesla and followed by Nissan leaf which are the affordable variants.

India:
Indian govt can incentivise the switch to electric but also the govt gets funded by our oil purchase. So very much a catch 22 situation.

Before the Personal 4 wheeler adoption, the focus should be on electric scooters, autos and large fleet operators for LCVs. When the price is right you will see a switch in consumer behaviour which is visible with scooters in city limits. A eicher lcv comes at about 20 lacs these days. Is there anything in the market which can replace IC engines in this segment?

Rural adoption of EVs will occur at the end and atleast not in the next ten years.

Maddy