Electric Vehicles: Will they save or destroy us?
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Transportation is a major contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. Will electric vehicles be the key to stopping climate change or will they wreck the electrical grid? What are the major issues and drawbacks of electric vehicles? For this video, we have collected all you need to know for the ongoing transition to electric vehicles.
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
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00:00 Introduction
00:55 Current Situation
04:32 Regulations
05:17 Charging Availability
10:16 Grid Issues
13:39 Carbon Footprint
15:37 Production
16:27 Raw Materials
19:49 Human Resources
21:25 Summary
22:15 A Better Way for Reading News
#science #environment
As several of you pointed out, our video on electric vehicles which ran last week contained several mistakes and omissions. I was very unhappy about this and decided to revise and reupload it. Thank you all for your feedback, I really appreciate it.
Can we please have a bullet point list of correction for those who don't want to watch it again?
Enjoying the jokes just as much the second time. 😊
❤❤❤
Thank you my dear lady for your consideration for us.
@@thearpox7873 No! 🤣🤣🤣
Full credit for owning any mistake and improving the final product. This is why I will keep watching you.
Just found and why i subscribed
Kudos for acknowledging the mistakes! Takes a pair to pull off! Given the climate I live in and huge distances involved in routine trips, EV will never be an option here simply from survival standpoint. I often have to park off the road during blizzard and wait the blizzard out inside the car (with the engine off - obviously - i have layers to survive -40 'F inside the car just fine). With the gasoline car, I know that I can simply wait it out, sleep in the car and survive. Try to take a wild guess how long will the EV battery last at -40 'F/ - 40'C and whether the car will start after , say, 8-10 hours out in the elements (full exposure to wind-chills down to -60 'F), especially after having driven 200-300 kms already, but if someone's aspiration is to win a Darwin's Award, hey - no judgement there :) That being said, EV could be a nice, fourth (not second, not third) summer car. I can see it could be used for about 3-4 months out of a year, probably 2, perhaps even 3 times per week for things like - getting an ice cream, picking up mail or visiting neighbors across the street :) On a second thought, for $80,000, I can probably imagine a nicer summer car than a typical fugly EV...
I haven't finished the video yet, but personally, I don't like how she seems to talk about the amounts of money needed for EV transitioning as if it's a fool's errand. As if that's waaayyy beyond what's reasonable for a country's expenditure. It makes it sound defeatist which isn't the kind of message we need.
@@VladR1024 EV batteries don't technically lose charge in the cold. You just can't get the energy out till they are warm again. (Which in your case would be a problem, I agree) But sodium batteries are coming and they work with close to 100% efficiency up to -20°C. Even at -40°C I'd expect them to work decently well, but time will have to tell there. Does your combustion car even start at that temperatures? Don't they need a block heater at that point? Before somebody asks why the range is worse in winter then: heating, winter tires and worse road conditions.
@@VladR1024 what cars are you looking at that $80.000 is your go-to? There are so many, so much cheaper EVs.
Hi Sabine, your mind set for AC home charging is based on combustion engine fuel tank refills. You go to the service station when your fuel tank is low. With an electric vehicle you top-up charge every time you drive into your car port or garage. On average most daily distance covered by a vehicle is less the 50km. This would require approximately 4 to 6 kwh of charging energy. With a 15 amp AC socket this will take approximately 2 hours or less. If you have solar and charge during the day the cost to do so will be small or nearly free. It's great having control of your own electric fuel supply at home. Will never go back to ICE vehicle.
I fully agree on the fuel tank refill analogy @henvan8737, several times during the video I found you, Sabine, try to apply "old-style" (i.e. petrol/energy) mindset one to one to BEVs. Another example is peak loads for the grid (transformers). This assumes energy generation and distribution will remain forever centralized, but we already see a disruption there happening right now due tue exponentially growth of renewable energies. So, yes the grid needs to change and become more flexible but mainly due to renewables and not BEV. And again, this is already happening. There are smart home chargers on the market which charge your car whenever there is cheap electricity (and low load to the grid). Also, every BEV and home owner will add solar to the roof, for purely economic reasons, thus effectively reducing load to grid. Not to mention vehicle to grid which you can already buy in some countries (e.g. in Germany: Volkswagen - E3DC) All of that (and more to come) is reducing load to grid and is part of a transformation, that is happening anyway due to solar+wind even if no BEV would exist on earth...
As a new EV owner, I was warned against daily charging. There is a limit to the number of times a battery can be charged. Topping off your EV battery is similar to keeping your phone or laptop always plugged in. It reduces the life span of the battery. I was told to use the battery for what it was intended. I drive my EV down to a charge level where the remaining distance is at or below 50 miles, unless I plan to drive a considerable distance. Then I charge it up to 80% to ensure I can make it back home.
@@lawrenceemke1866that's why most ev top up to 80% , 60% to 80% top up will not degrade your battery
Biphase in the US. Every house has 240V coming in, and it's split into 120V. You just need to run a 240 circuit to your driveway for the charger (it cost us about $900, but 30% was a direct federal income tax deduction). The problem is apartment buildings that don't have parking.
CARB liers about the efficiency of EVs. In their ARB/MSD/7---94 they claim that battery efficiency is 80% and motor is 90%. These are LIES!!!! Charging a battery in one hour is 5.88% efficient, in 15 minutes it is only 0.3675%. The motor depends on how many stops it makes. Ech time it starts the motor and system efficiency is almost ZERO!!!!
Sorry for being a week late with this comment. Thank you for taking pride in your work. Too many youtubers don't look back to correct their content. I appreciate all of your videos. I love the humor and the density of accurate scientific information.
Well said.
😊😊😊😊
I turned my bicycle into an electric bike. It weighs less than 30 pounds, has a top speed of 22 mph, and a range of 25 miles. With another six pounds of battery, the range doubles to about 55 miles.
I bet its fun trying to get several bags of groceries home with that.
@@michaelfried3123 With proper panniers, no problem. I do that for some years now.
@@michaelfried3123I have a trailer on one bike.. holds loads
@@1puppetbike I'd be too afraid of a car smashing into me where I live to use it as a grocery getter. Sadly.
Woah how did you do that??!!!
We have been driving a Chevy Volt for 6 years. 90% of our charging is at home. Often you don’t use 100% of the power and don’t need to charge every night. And the big omission in the revised version is the cost savings of routine repairs. In six years: no brake pads replaced, no electric motor adjustments, no battery maintenance! Sure, replacing the whole battery would be expensive, but that is more like replacing an internal combustion engine rather than a gas tank. It happens, but very rarely. In my experience, the vast majority of EV drivers would never go back to the high cost of gas and routine maintenance. Thanks for asking for input Sabine. Your integrity is showing. 😊
Dear Sabine, thank you for all your interesting videos. YES, I'm driving an full E-vehicle, and that fact came in my life with different other events, all of them making sense together. First of all; I bought this car when I was 67, and liberated from professional pressure (I'm not sure it would have been possible if I was 40). Second point: I finally became strongly conviced about climat change and the absolute need of decarbonizing our lives. What means: accepting change, accepting reduction of expenses, reduction of consumption. What means: reduction of mobility. I don't fly anymore, I stopped eating beef, and try to convince my neighbours and family about reduction of green house gasses emissions, what is a sometimes a painfull challenge. So, I bought a LITTLE e-vehicle (Opel Corsa). I therefore abandonned my dream of driving a beautifull Volvo XC40 (abandonning dreams is also challenging). I charge aat homs, at night, and don't drive mors than 200 km/day. Living in Belgium, a little country where everithing is close to you, makes that not too difficult. For longer distances, I stop using the car and take the train. Decarbonizing our lives is an absolute piority!!!
BALONEY. FOOL
There needs to be more people like him@@NineInchTyrone
Well mate I live in rural Australia and am now 77 years old and on a limited income like many others plus this also include those on a low income - unlike I suspect you might not be and simply could never afford to own an EV even if we wanted to which I might add I will not do under any circumstances. Even if I did the infrastructure for charging out here is simply not there and the distances we have to travel are far greater than you do in Belgium. This push for carbon reduction is in my mind at least 30-40 years too late something should have been done about it way back then. I will admit that there were stricter regulations put on ICE vehicles back then but ti sems to have sputtered to a halt right now and should be further investigated.
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity and will INCREASE pollution!!!!
One is reminded of the old question "When is the best time to plant a tree?" Answer - "Fifty years ago! The second best time? Now!"
Great that Sabine is willing to update the video with fixes. Is there a list of corrections?
Never make a list of your mistakes and let anyone see it.
@@bugsbunny8691 why?
I was looking for such a list. It's easy to miss important corrections, and you may be left with a mistaken idea because it wasn't explicitly pointed out.
quite a few corrections, but still many more needed.
@@hcubicsuch as?
Great review Sabina. I am basically an environmental petrol head! Our home is now fully self sufficient for power water and outputs. We are actually on our second complete solar system. Technical efficiency has improved dramatically over the last 18 years and costs fallen dramatically. Our new battery hybrid 8.6kw system cost less than our original 2kw system! Everyone said back in 2009 when bought our Prius ITech that the batteries wouldnt last that it wasnt viable etc but the main batteries are still original and operating to specification. The only thing replaced was the inverter in 2022. So full EVs will be both better and worse than people expect IMO. There will always be a fundemental issue where mass is involved. For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. And so people are going to be faced with transformative change. Travelling long distances hauling caravans or trailers will be much more difficult. When you consider that the most popular new vehicle in Australia and the USA is 4wd SUV utility many are going to find change difficult.
"For hauling loads long distance EVs cannot compete with efficiency of the modern Turbo Diesel. " I agree ! I bought a diesel car precisely for that reason. But that is only for a transition period. New battery technology will be mass produced end 2023-2024 (CATL & BYD) with a range of 750 miles/1000Km and charging from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes. The technology is improving fast, and mass production takes less than 2 years now. So I bought my diesel car because my old diesel is not allowed to drive in the city due to political "environmental" reasons. I therefore needed a solutiion until 2027-2028 when the EV with a longer range faster charging batteries will be available, and affordable.
I used to agree with you about trucks, but check out Tesla big trucks that Pepsi is using wow! Electric trucks are the way to go.
My current electric vehicle has a 500km range & is brilliant at towing trailers. The penalty on range is about 30% which still makes it economical!
They won't find change difficult because they won't change. Large countries with vast swaths of land like US or Australia or Russia will simply continue using fossil fuel cars until maybe hydrogen becomes trendy
Outstanding ‘fact based’ and intelligent content. I really appreciate your videos and your subtle but brilliant humour!
Hi Sabine! I've been driving my Tesla Model Y since June of 2021 and my experience has been as follows: - I never think about going to a gas station. No more calculating if I should stop at a gas station before or after my next destination (or wait until tomorrow). Just plug in at night and forget about it. - No more standing outside in the wind, rain and cold to fill up the tank. - On the rare occasion I do need to use a Supercharger, just plug right in. No swiping your credit card as the charger knows who you are and knows how to bill you. - Driving is tireless as I rarely need to use the brake. Letting off the accelerator automatically switches to regenerative braking which slows the car to a stop. No more switching your foot back and forth in slow traffic. - Tesla service staff comes to my house for certain service calls. Recalls have been handled via over-the-air software updates (thus far) - Charging costs less than half the equivalent gasoline (according to the app). Easy to configure off-peak charging.
THIS is why I appreciate your channel, you updated a video based on your current understanding of the topic. IF everyone did this, it'd make things a lot simpler.
That's how science should work. Unfortunately, this process is hindered by commercial pressure. Thank you Sabine for doing science the proper way
@@jurjenbos228 There are plenty of inaccuracies, the fact that many people think this as an accurate presentation makes me lose faith in humanity.🤒
Sabine, there are a few points you missed I'd add but I'll mention just one. "Range Anxiety" has become rather a media trope and, 6yrs in on my 2nd EV, you get to know your range pretty quickly in different conditions - hot, cold, wet or windy. "Charger Anxiety" is a more accurate description, knowing whether the units at the next stop will work or have a queue when on a longer trip. Of course a Tesla heading to the Tesla network has this mostly sorted. Larger charging hubs more closely spaced will eventually solve all but the busiest of times.
Range or Charge. same difference. ps who needs more anxiety in their lives?
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity! charging in pone hour is 5.88% efficient. In 15minutes it is only 0.3675%!!! Check out Joule's law!!!
Since you asked, I’m driving a Subaru Solterra in Japan, and so far am absolutely loving it. The public chargers, while not ubiquitous, are at least common and have even some 100% free options if you’re willing to visit a public park in Tokyo. A quick charge at a highway stop is ¥800 with a ¥4000/mo membership fee, or double that without (break even at 3 charges/mo) and several malls such as those run by Mitsui and Aeon have chargers, some of which are free and only cost parking fees, which of course you can also waive by shopping. Many smaller shops have public chargers with the same card system as the highway rest areas, and if approved, businesses can install them completely on the government dime, equipment and construction both, if they’re available to the public, even when payment is required to use them. I have encountered situations where I couldn’t use the specific charger I wanted, the high amperage chargers are taken first of course, but I haven’t this far encountered a situation where I had to queue for an available charger. Then again, I only took delivery of the car last week, there’s plenty of time yet to be inconvenienced by the bad manners and whims of other drivers. The standard highway charger is 50kW, which can be awkward in a Solterra with a 71kWh battery. Public rapid chargers limit you to 30 minutes per use, and so while they add about 140 km of range, they in no way will push the battery from 20% to 80% in a single charging session. This is where my preference for said higher amperage chargers is from, and yet some infrastructure is as low as 25 kW, though that’s not typical. The one thing I do really like about the public charging infrastructure is that there is real-time usage reporting. From either an app or my car navigation, the available, usage or out of service state of chargers is visible, and my car at least lets you restrict searching to available chargers only. All of that is subject to change of course, but that’s been my experience thus far.
I'm glad you pulled the other video, it had a huge number of serious mistakes in it. This one is much better. I'll make some additions, simple things that people can remember: * A good rule of thumb for passenger-vehicle EV power consumption is 3 miles per 1 kWh. Tesla's get closer to 4, but 3 is a good conservative rule of thumb). From this it is easy to determine how much electrical energy is required, since statistics on miles driven are readily available and each individual has a pretty good idea how much they drive. * So in terms of charging at home, the charge rate you need for convenience depends entirely on the above. If you drive the average round-trip commute of 40 miles a day, you need (40 / 3) = 13 kWh worth of charging each day. At a space-heater rate of 1000W (1kW) this would take 13 hours with an L1 charger. With a L2 charger set to 16A it would be (16A x 240VACrms = 3.84 kW, so (13 / 3.84) = 3.4 hours. At 35A, even less time. For home charging, thus, it comes down to what is convenient for the consumer. A good rule of thumb is "overnight charging". L2 chargers are more convenient but to be very explicit here there is no need to charge at 35A. You can easily charge at 16A or even 8A or whatever, so being circuit-limited is not that big a deal. And if it came down to it, you could charge from a normal consumer outlet (120VACrms in the U.S., 12A = 1.4kW, or (13 / 1.4) = 9 hours to charge 40 miles. * This determines, more or less, how dependent on fast DC charging one is. If you have no outlets at all, say you park on the street and can't string an extension cable without someone getting angry at you, or if you drive a lot but can't get L2 charging, or if you are driving long distance all in one go, such as when taking a trip, then you need to use a fast DC charger for at least part of your trip. Most people do NOT need to use a fast DC charger for nominal work commutes. Not to mention that there is also such a thing as "destination charging" which is typically built-out by businesses that more and more EV commuters will be able to use over time. * This means that Fast DC charging is really only necessary for longer trips. There does need to be a build-out, and Europe is way ahead of the U.S. on that, but it isn't really a show-stopper. That is, there will be push and pull just like any other build-out, but it is not necessarily something that needs to be 100% government funded. Demand creates supply creates demand. -- This time around you made only two significant mistakes worth noting: (1) The first was confusing what parts of the grid have to be upgraded. To be clear, the ENTIRE EV rollout can occur with only minimal distribution-side upgrades and, in fact, no home services need to be upgraded. Sure, it might be convenient for some home owners to upgrade, but it is absolutely not a requirement for any home. The serious upgrading of the grid has to occur on the generation side because the renewables generation expansion is "a larger number of smaller generators" and those generators need feeders and backbones. That's 99% of the problem. Feeding residential power back to the grid does NOT require distribution line or transformer upgrades because backfeeds are limited to 20% of the service size anyway, which is less than peak consumption. But it MAY require a substation transformer upgrade... mostly the reason for this is to upgrade to a transformer with better voltage regulation automation. substations transformers have various taps that the substation can switch them between to change the voltage ratio of the transformer. When feeding power in the reverse direction, the voltage is being scaled up rather than scaled down and if a large subdivision is pushing a lot of power it is generally doing so near the top of the allowed voltage range. Which means that the step-up in the reverse direction can sometimes exceed the substation's intermediate voltage rating. Hence the need to upgrade that particular transformer. Distribution (e.g. pole) transformer upgrading is only a function of potential peak charging rates which for EVs can be significant, except that there is no actual requirement that an EV be charged at 35A. It can just as easily be charged at 8A or 12A or 16A, for example, which are far less stressful on distribution transformers. So is it actually a show-stopper? No. Just a convenience. The utility can simply require that homes with un-upgraded equipment charge at a slower rate until such a time as the equipment can be upgraded. That's it. That's the technical explanation. But it should be noted that substation upgrades are only required piecemeal. The entire substations / all substations do NOT need to be upgraded because neighborhoods just don't all upgrade to solar, let alone reverse EV feeding, overnight. The quoted dollar amounts or spectacularly over-estimated and completely ignore the dynamics of the rollout and adoption of EVs as well as the 30+ year time-frame involved. When you divide it all out, it really isn't as much money as people think it is. (2) You, like a lot of people, greatly misunderstand the power of industrial scale in production when it comes to the cost of building an EV. This is the primary mover. You also are still a bit behind on understanding battery chemistries. Cobalt and Nickel are used in NMC and NCA chemistries, but are NOT required in LFP chemistries (you mention LFP later but you clearly got lost on the significance). So neither Cobalt or Nickel are show-stoppers. Lithium is a very abundant element all over the world that requires only the mining to be scaled up. That is happening. Just because there is some push and pull doesn't mean that it's actually any sort of problem that would stick with us. You mention LFP, but you are a bit behind on the chemistry. Adding manganese (LFMP, for example), and other similar adjustments, has brought the energy density up to near the same levels of lithium ternary batteries (typically NMC) and this is clearly where the market is headed. Sodium batteries are NOT in scaled, volume production yet. LFP batteries are. Sodium batteries are a bit behind on the technology scale but they could very easily grow into a competitive alternative. == That's everything in a nutshell. You did a much better job this time around. Just remember that the technology is progressing VERY quickly, which means that you have to keep up with it at the same pace.
Thanks so much. One additional comment, not aimed at our dear Sabine in particular. Many alarmist EV discussions are "Oh my, EV' transition is such a huge problem, where will we possibly get XYZ materials!!" They completely leave out the alternatives. The growing demand in developing countries for more and more transport, in addition to more developed countries replacements. Without EVs, the world could not meet the much greater XYZ material demands and inefficiencies with ICE transport. EV's are already getting much more recyclable, for example. Fewer parts. Less pollution in use. Less pipeline and refining buildouts. Less oil spills. Fewer tanker trucks on our roads. Less sea bed drilling blowouts. Etc. The past and future environmental devastation caused by fossil fuel use MUST be included in any critical discussion of EVs.
The dollar amount of the upgrade to the grid is also overestimated because that upgrade is INSTEAD of normal upgrade that would have been done in any case during those same 30 years. The needed upgrade might cost more, but it's not all ADDITIONAL costs. But I can understand why estimating that is more difficult (it also depend on how much investment in grid maintenance is done by different utilities and that is very different in different countries)
I thought the main problem with Lithium supply was all the water it uses in the pools, Matt Ferrell (@UndecidedMF) did a video about companies trying to extract it in different ways but it didn't sound like they were near commercialisation yet. I agree about the grid, there is a lot of alarmist reporting out there, normally from media with big fossil fuel sponsors. 🙄 There are bound to be areas where the infrastructure has been ignored for too long and will need substantial investment, then there are areas which are already ready. I can't afford Patreon so I don't have access to the references, I was wondering how much charge was needed for each vehicle in the estimations at 10:20, not a question for you but something I wondered while listening. I didn't think many people drive further, every day, than a standard power plug can provide overnight, assuming people plug in when they get home and not the moment before they fall asleep. I think most of us spend more than 8-9 hours at home before leaving again. If they can get a V2G standard widely adopted they should be able to use the "smarts" to distribute the load around so nothing gets exceeded and everyone has enough charge for the next day. Of course this will require people to think ahead and set how much charge they'll need for days they'll travel more than usual, so it's probably headed to massive online and talkback radio bitching!
I'm very bullish on sodium-ion batteries. They probably won't be in long range cars anytime soon or ever, as they are competitive with LFP and some day maybe even with NMC in Wh/kg, but not Wh/l. But I think they will be in all low to mid range cars at some point. They just have amazing properties compared to existing lithium-ion batteries. While they are in mass production now, it's not at a big scale yet, that is for sure. CATL is very clear that current lithium-ion battery factories can be easily converted, but that is of course only half of the story. The materials used are completely different. So building up supply chains could take years. But let's hope it goes a bit quicker than that.
@@Cluuey the water that is used up in lithium mining is brine from salt lakes in which nothing can survive and that can be used for nothing else. Compared to mining other metals lithium is basically planting trees to grow back the rain forest or something like that. There are people saying that it magically makes fresh water disappear, but that doesn't make any sense. It's more likely that that is due to the big cattle herds in the area. If tens of thousands of cows are drinking water in a desert for decades, at some point there won't be any water left. Where is it supposed to come from? Rain? It's a desert.
Your videos are so great. I drive an EV, Volkswagen, and live in a cold climate. The most difficult thing that I didn’t anticipate when making the choice of which car to get was the significant, almost 40%, reduction in range when the temperatures are cold. It makes the effective range considerably lower than advertised for almost half of the year.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet heating isn't that bad. there's tons of resources and comparisons for that. but with improving heating, not much can be achieved. the insulation is already pretty good. better models are equipped with heat pumps. that's only helping so and so much, though. you've surfaces heated like the steering wheel, seats, and even armrests at times; which helps with lowering demand of overall cabin heat. the issue with reduced range really mostly stems from them batteries being so sensitive to the environmental conditions. this might get sorted in future with different battery technology.
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet yes, what you describe may certainly help with range. maybe it worsens overall efficiency? (something everyone's concerned because of how expensive it this to adapt the power grid.)
I've heard that too. Not a particular concern where we live. Sabine noted that 50% of new car sales in Norway are electric. Norway is pretty cold in the winter. It doesn't seem like the cold weather is negatively affecting EV sales though.
@@brownro214 Norwegians are relatively rich, electricity thanks to ideal geological conditions plentiful and therefore their preferred choice. Norway is cold but where most people live (close by the sea) not even as cold as you might think. the south tip is where the still warm gulf stream passes by
@@brownro214 I expect that's because a car's normal daily use is substantially less than half the capacity of the battery & ample recharging can be achieved while the car is not in use (most cars are used less than 10% of the day).
From many perspectives an excellent presentation of the situation, but Sabine! You once again omitted an extremely important point! Cars, electric or otherwise, are designed for things they are statistically never used for. Cars are driven short (
Thanks Sabine, you do an amazing job with your videos. I ordered a battery EV car last week. Tested it a few weeks ago and it was some really cool experience, and that's an understatement. Why now? Well, because the technology reached the point to be practical _in the place where I live in_, and that's a very important distinction. The car has a 77kWh battery, that gives you around 550km of range. The island where I live in (Gran Canaria) is perfect for this kind of range, in fact with a fully charged battery I could drive round-trips around the whole island 3 times and still have a quite a bit of battery left, so the range anxiety depends a lot on the circumstances of every individual driver and the place where the car will be used. I will have a 7.2kW charging station at home, so the battery will be full every morning easily, and I don't think I will have to ever go to a public charging station at all. So at the end for the question "Are EV cars practical?" the answer is "Depends on where you live". At some places, like where I live, it is already, by far. But, for some other bigger places where you may have to drive for hundreds of kilometers in a single day, the situation can be more complicated, and depends too much on charger infrastructure.
I think the range anxiety depends even more on your lifestyle than where you live, commuting long distances everyday is also lifestyle dependent. I work from home most days so charging at home is more than enough. Living in rural areas solar is probably a good choice and should be enough.
Fast charging wastes most of the electricity and will increase pollution!!!!!
@@anthonytrujillo106 Really? Please explain
Thank you for painting a more complete picture in this revised video. I'd like to point out, as an EV owner that is charging from a 230V wall socket, you don't need to charge for a whole day. Most of the time, you will not be at 0% but more around 50%. Also, even if you charge from empty, you still don't have to charge it to 100% if you don't need it! You charge what you need.
..or charge what you can get, be it 60% or 87%. Charging an EV is like grazing instead of gobbling.
@@salipander6570 Or do it when you're sleeping. Most people do.
And even more importantly, we don't all charge from 20% to 80% every night. These calculations need to also include the average distance people drive each day and the average energy consumption of the EVs on the road to calculate the amount of energy needed to charge every night. And they never take solar and home battery uptake into account. I pretty much only need to charge once a week, and I do that from solar on my house, mostly on weekends. Most people doing the work commute will find one or two charging sessions a week will meet their needs easily. If your workplace has the sense to go solar and provides charging infrastructure for employees, then the problem goes away. All the talk about grid infrastructure needs is often partly driven by grid companies seeking to profit from investment in their networks. One of the real drivers of cleaning up our energy systems will be decentralisation, ideally behind the meter, through solar and home storage (and stationary batteries are a much easier target than mobile ones from the resource perspective). Some sensible investment, through low or no interest loans for people to buy locally manufactured home batteries would go a massive way towards grid resilience. Oh, and we get increased domestic security as a byproduct by massively increasing the number of targets an adversary has to hid to cripple our energy systems, and by onshoring more and more of our energy sources.
Yes, I think most of the projections for electricity usage by electric vehicles are inflated. It's advantageous to inflate them for both petrochemical interests and electric grid operators, not to mention various political groups. This paper presents what I think is an even-handed, trustworthy estimate: Low energy: Estimating electric vehicle electricity use - david s. rapson rapson.ucdavis.edu/uploads/8/4/7/1/84716372/bbrw_paper_nber_final.pdf At least, I think it is, but since I'm no energy expert I could be wrong.
"Time/energy to charge to 100%" is a completely irrelevant metric. EV manufacturers need to start advertising in terms of miles/hour of charging instead of whatever the hell they're doing now. My 2018 Leaf is 250km on a full charge of 40kWh, which means it charges 60km worth per hour on a Level 2 or 12km worth per hour on a standard 120V. If you commute to work every day and you spend only 10 hours at home, you'll still be able to top up every night plugging into your wall socket as long as your commute is less than 120km both ways. As far as charge times goes, that's literally the only figure that matters.
Thanks for a great video Sabine. I’m using an EV since 2020 in India. At that time there were few fast chargers on the highways so had to request restaurants (Dhabas) on the way to plug in my portable (very slow) charger and order endless tea (chai) and pakoras! That situation has changed rapidly with many fast chargers on the highways set up by different power companies. At home, I put solar PV (grid connected with net metering) so now my car, AC cooling and cooking is practically free and green. Going by the immense change I have seen in India, I am more optimistic than your video!
You own a nexon ev?
Will you pay billions for your grid upgrade?
In India, the sun shines almost every day, but what about countries farther from the equator?
@@piotrrossudowski2758skill issue + plenty of other options than sun
If you have an EV in India you are probably very upper class and well off. People like that seem to have more hope for the future for some reason...
My wife and I drive a 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 Pro S RWD and just love it! We are located on Vancouver Island on Canada's West coast. I am the moderator of two Facebook groups (Canadian EV Supersite and Canadian ID.4 Electric Vehicles). I focus a lot on innovations, the public charging infrastructure and the supporting public policy around electric vehicles.
Well done, Sabine. You managed to discuss electric vehicles without mentioning the shortcomings of the currently dominant EV power source, namely lithium-ion batteries. Leaving aside the whole raw materials issue and the fact that Rio Tinto, the world's largest mining company, said at a recent industry conference that there simply isn't enough lithium in existence to meet demand, there's the issue of the chemistry. While the dangers of Li-Ion may very well have been overstated, the fact is that they have very real consequences on the motor trade. Among them: The escalating severe depreciation of EVs that can now be measured on a weekly basis; the scrapping of battery packs with only superficial damage to the outer casing (which usually means writing off the entire vehicle because of the cost of replacement); the refusal of used car dealers to take them as trade-in or to buy them at auction; the increasing reluctance of insurance companies to insure them and steeply rising premiums for everyone, EV owner or not; the inability of local mechanics to repair them because, amongst other things, manufacturers (especially Tesla) refuse to supply them with parts because they are not authorised repairers; and the increasing unwillingness of body shops to take in crashed EVs because of the danger that a damaged battery pack will ignite and burn everything to the ground. Note that I haven't even mentioned all the problems with battery disposal at end of life. As things stand, spent Li-Ion batteries go straight to landfill because they cannot be recycled and that means that they will be oozing toxic chemicals into the land and water for decades if not centuries to come. Battery electric vehicles are an environmental disaster in the making. In fact, it's already happening in China. Maybe in the near future solid state batteries will arrive to save the day but right now what you have is a bunch of scientifically illiterate politicians pushing a suicidal agenda that will do lasting environmental harm down our throat for the purpose of establishing their green credentials.
Well put, it's nice to see a voice of criticism during this, what some would call, mass schizophrenia event. 😢 I would add another point, regarding safety. In case of accident, or catastrophic battery failure one is dealing with a fire that is hard to extinguish. Since battery burns independently from oxygen supply, conventional methods and extinguishers are u effective. Fire itself is a chemical reaction that will run its course for anywhere of up to 36 hours. As we already know, although rare, spontaneous ignition of a lithium based batteries happen. Imagine one of such EV, being parked in the underground parking of apartment building. That just might be a reason to insurance companies behind reluctant about EV. Recycling of batteries is a big issue that no one wants to talk about. Public is well attuned and oposes nuclear waste storages while turning the head other way when we have similar r problem but on much bigger scale with all renewables. In fact recycling is the biggest problem of all renewables. Recycling is a daunting, ridiculously expensive and notoriously not included in energy cost forecasts. Why? Because then they would be totally unappealing solution, as EV are now. Same goes for solar panel and wind turbines on a smaller scale. In general all prognosis seem to be well to optimistic, loke not even taking demographic decline as factor in near future. This obviously not popular opinion in the doctrine of climate change. Don't get me wrong, let's get off fossil fuels but in a sensible, not a reckless way. Imho, by the way and means of introduction, lack of sensible debate and exercise in scaremongering, whole industry smell fishy to say the least.
Thanks a bunch for all your work, Sabine! 😊 Stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Aliens 😂
I haven't had any issues with using an EV, and now I charge my car using solar, so my grid demand has actually gone down. I hope we'll see more community electricity storage so that solar production could be stored more broadly and efficiently than residential battery storage.
I hope so too - I work in the industry. EVs can use a similar amount of energy to the household before the EV arrived. The electrical industry has moved from resisting change, to working with the change to alternative power - they had no choice anyway. Distributed generation, both commercial and residential, will lighten the load on the established grid generation and transmission. The only thing in the way now is politics.
Congratulations! You are better prepared for any gas price disruptions, wars etc. This prepper attitude will allay range anxiety for many, I think.
Well said. The other aspect of EV is Vehicle to Grid where the EV battery can feed the grid in order to balance the demand with supply. This V2G also reduces the need for upgrading electricity infrastructure by making it more efficient - presently the electricity infrastructure has been designed to deliver power to end points, like homes and factories, but as roof top solar and batteries (EV and/or home battery) homes and factories become the source of power sending power in the other ( currently unused ) direction.
Yes Officer this one here, he's advocating against energy monopoly. can't have that.
@@BenMitro the only problem I see with vehicle to grid is you are are putting wear on tear on your battery and unless you are making enough selling power you are gonna be stuck with a massive bill replacing your battery. At least grid operators can buy storage at scale to lower their costs.
I have a 2023 Mustang Mach E. I have a 40 amp, 240 volt charger (9600 watts) that can bring the car up overnight without fail. For 99% of the driving I do, it's all where I can return home without charging and charge at home. I schedule the charging between 11PM and 6AM where the grid is fairly unloaded -- the car allows one to specify charging times. My battery chemistry is NMC, and I normally charge to just 80% unless I'm doing a longer trip. I absolute love the car. Great video and seems very complete. Thanks.
We have two cars at home and one is a BEV. We have a garage and a nearby 240V outlet. If you plan on replacing one of your cars and can charge it at home, you have no calculations to make. If you can supply all the charging yourself it is absolutely a no-brainer. Even if you have no environmental concerns, do it for the money. I am saving well over 50% of the total previous household fuel costs. We got the new car last December. I have tried quick changing on trips but in Costa Rica, it is still far from dependable. I plan a longer trip to a rural area for the end of the year. That trip will be in my old car.
My wife and I drove ~10,000 km from the Vancouver BC area to southern Ontario and Toronto and back again in early May, in our Tesla Model 3 with an LFP battery. We had no problems during our drive, when we relied on the Tesla Supercharger (DCFCs with the Tesla NACS plug) network, and averaged just under 1000km/day during the eastward portion of our drive and our best time was just under 10 hours to drive ~950km and that included charging stops! We averaged about 7km/kwh for the whole trip. I bought the Model RWD with the LFP battery because it is the most efficient electric car available and because Tesla has introduced an adapter so that most newer Teslas can also charge at non-Tesla DC Fast Chargers (DCFCs with the CCS1 plug) which greatly increases the number of fast charging stations available, especially in rural areas. We usually charge at home but the availability of DCFCs makes long trips quite feasible. The DCFC charging network is rapidly expanding in North America and we had no problems driving from BC to SE Arizona and back again, last winter.
Your reasons for your car choice were the same as mine! I took delivery of a 2023 model-3 rwd on last November 28. I charge at home (7 kwh). In December we traveled from Michigan to Tennessee (670 miles), charged 4 times at superchargers. I'm spoiled, haha! Last Sunday we drove north 67 miles to visit friends, ate, saw a giant Sequoyah tree... drove home and still had 102 miles left.
The Tesla Charger always work easily. But charging at home is far easier and cheaper. A lot of us have 240 volt power in the US with up to 48 amp usable. You can charge at about 45 miles per hour with this setup.
Nice! Wouldn't it be easier to be in Park while charging?
@@alib6060 It would certainly save on extention cords.
(Recently retired from a Fortune 100 US electric company) The big time factor in building new transmission lines is acquisition of the right-of-way. The process often has a lot of dead ends, so the negotiations typically start with getting past choke points. Only after those are identified and commitments acquired can the less challenging parts be negotiated. NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard - is still a problem, as is the perception by potential sellers that they have a unique commodity. 15 years is remarkably fast for these projects. The other infrastructure concern is electric availability: enough generation at the moment to meet demand. The load/generation curve commonly called the "duck curve" illustrates the breath-taking shortfalls in generation at sundown in particular areas like California and Hawaii. Today, the focus is rightly on grid level storage. Using EVs for storage is a distant possibility: their status is never known (are they full or empty? Will there be fewer or more tonight than last night?). None of these are insurmountable problems, but they are facets of the folly of politics driving the pace of changes. We can get there - whatever "there" actually looks like - but not nearly as fast as we might like. Fifty years would be very optimistic; 70-80 years more realistic. It is likely we will find we have made quite a few wrong turns on the way. I only know for certain when we get there we will marvel at how naive we are today.
I am glad you revise a video if needed! I drive a Tesla model 3 for 4 years now. And I drive a lot. More than 40.000 km per year. I drive mostly long distances between Holland and the south of France. 4 years ago I had to plan a bit more, to be sure to find superchargers when needed. Now there are almost dubble the amount. So now it’s a breeze. No worries at all. With my previous car I also took a break every 2 or 3 hours just to stay alert and healthy. Now I do the same, at the supercharger. So almost no extra time for me. I would never go back to fuel. Apart from driving cleaner with a BEV, I like how it drives!
Yes. Ditto
Thanks for bringing up the infrastructure Issue for BEVs. It was the most worrisome thing I considered when debating on getting an Bev. For my daily commute the overnight 120 works fine, but it is a concern that I hope gets resolved. I have seen 2 new chargers added to my area after buying my Bev so hopefully that's a good sign. So far, I love my car so much nicer than my old Honda.
At least she is educating the dense about this massive issue.
@@jeffwads dense or slow?
We have 230v in Australia, my house has 3 phase so we can charge at 11kW. Funny thing is we don’t actually need more than 3.6kW
@@lindam.1502 In South Africa, the same. In fact, with our planned power outages (load shedding) a bi-directional BEV is ideal.
I have been driving electric since 2012 and my family (2 cars) exclusive electric since 2014. We driving ~ 12k mi/year in each car, go on road trips, etc everything typical people do with cars. The picture you present does not reflect my experience in North America with Tesla; Superchargers are generally widely available and very VERY dependable (unlike the competition- a question of incentives) and home charging has been a complete non-issue. My other beef with your exposé is that it leans to heavily on the current state of things. Ford CEO not withstanding, battery prices _have_ been falling dramatically over this decade. Final thing that was frankly ridiculous: repair cost. Fact is: the maintenance of our Teslas have been far far cheaper than the ICE cars we had previously. And they are cheaper to operate (I have records to prove this).
I've been driving a plugin hybrid (Honda Clarity) with >40 mile electric capability for several years now, and while doing so is probably not adding much pressure on industry to improve the charging network (I charge mainly at home and at work), it has been a very satisfying experience for me. I probably average >90% running on electricity, and have zero range anxiety. I understand that I'm not getting all the benefits of all-electric vehicles (low mechanical complexity), but it's a very good tradeoff for me personally, and the car doesn't lug around a battery that is way oversized for 90% of the use cases. The very few times a year I need long range, and/or drive in a rural area, I use gasoline once the battery runs out. It's a shame the technology isn't catching on more.
Thanks for the video. I have been driving evs for 5 years from a leaf 24kwh to a 30kwh and now a 44 kwh BMW I3, these were all bought as as commuter cars, What is intresting is that they have gone from barely 12O kms range to 300kms range for the same budget,. I think energy efficiency is the Key to the EV transition, which is one of the motivations for buying the I3. More efficient vehicles would surmount a lot of the problems you correctly raise. I am a shareholder of Aptera motors which is a super efficient EV that can get a lot of its power from solar energy,
Investing in public transportation and building the right infrastructure for it would help with this problem too
@@JustanotherhumanonthenetBike? ;)
@@Justanotherhumanonthenet In these types of areas, where everything is just a million miles away, cars make 100% sense.
I'm driving a used Tesla since 2018 that replaced our big car for the long trips. It had around 200.000km on the odometer when I bought it and it is still doing great. The battery is far from dying.
You have 2-3 more years before you'll eat those words.
This is an exception, not the rule. At my small BMW dealership, we do at least 1 battery a month. The Porsche dealership has a similar turnaround rate. Batteries are also prone to burning for three days. That VW ship with $850,000,000 worth of vehicles had a hole melted in the hull, which sank it. Getting close enough to do anything, which is basically nothing, would've killed anyone. I know of three houses burnt down from faulty chargers. I've over 50 bad chargers that almost burnt their house down
And, LFP/LMFP batteries will last even longer than the Ternary batteries… and data is coming in on those early Ternary batteries which are showing lifespans in excess of 400k miles. My last ICE vehicle was falling to pieces after 170k miles… and it was a van, not something that was driven hard and fast. lol
@@chadcooper7348 Lithium technology is volatile garbage. It won't make the cut after Sodium Ion gets energy density on par with current Lithium cobalt. Also, batteries aren't rated in mileage for lifespan, it's a time over discharge/recharge table, not mileage, period. There's also a factor of chemical degradation in the cell after a period of time. Ie, most lead acid batteries are expected to last 3-5 years, Lithium cobalt, 6-8 years, less if you factor in cold weather usage.
@@andyfreeman6865Ever heard of major oil spoils, Ice cars burning in an accident, total engine overhauls, problems with transmissions, cooling systems, fuel system, clutch changes and so on. Evs are costly to buy and maintain on purpose, there is no free ride. There are cheap small city Evs but they don't give much profit to manufactures.
Funny, more than once during this video I said to myself "but what about..." then you promptly talked about the what. Nicely done. I would love to hear a deeper dive on recycling of the various types of battery packs. It seems there are only two types of recycling videos, terrible recycling or awesome recycling. The awesome recycling videos tend to have more real data than opinions. We've had a Model Y long range for two years and we love it. I find it cumbersome and awkward when I am required to drive a gas car now. The lag in throttle response and having to switch to the brake pedal every time you stop or slow down is annoying. I also like the 8 year, 125,000 mile drivetrain and battery pack warranty.
Yes a deeper dive would be nice. Until then, the short version is that several researches (including one done by AU Govt) has shown that recycling 90% of batteries is totally feasible and economical. There will be some difficulties, but it can be done. One of the current difficulties simply is the demand for that at the moment. There are a few companies around that are already completely recycling batteries, but those are very few and far between. Again simply because there is not a big demand for needing more at the moment. And there likely will not be a strong demand for that quite some time to come. As batteries, especially those for vehicles and generally some sort of lithium base, will have a second life purpose elsewhere for a very long time. For instance a battery bank for a vehicle can easily last well over a decade as its life expectancy. But that life expectancy is going to be about 70% SoC. So those will unlikely be recycled as you will likely be able to sell it for a second purpose use for better price than recycling company can make. And that battery bank will last another very long time. You are easily talking about decades before it needs recycling. There will be a demand down the road in the future, in like say 30 years or longer. Batteries banks will more than likely in most cases outlast the vehicle before it even reaches its life expectancy, and then see a second life elsewhere, although there will always be exceptions of course.
I always have trouble understanding what is wrong with Bicycles, feet & public transport! Still, Thanks Sabine for another great info-video! Dave.
_Bicycles, feet & public transport!_ Bicycles and cars do not mix. Feet hurt on rough hot roads. Public transport is not door-to-door. (Sometimes cars are not door-to-door either.)
Urban planning, mostly. The typical modern city - especially in the US - was really built around the car. There are zoning rules that separate residential and commercial areas, so there isn't anywhere within walking distance - all shops and workplaces are in a different part of the city from the homes. The road layout is made to maximise efficiency for car transport, with little regard to cyclists or pedestrians. The suburbs are especially bad, as their population density is too low to even support public transport - the houses are spaced so far apart that no matter where you put a bus stop or subway station, there wouldn't be enough people in walking distance to support it. If they could even reach it without having to cross dangerous six-lane roads. Public transport and walkable/bikable cities would be great, but it's hard to undo a century of city design. Politically difficult too, in that you'd have to change a lot of laws which still have public support: People like the comfortably spread-out suburban sprawl where they can live in a mini-mansion and be happy that none of the icky poor people can afford to live nearby. There are a few youtube channels dedicated to the issue of poor urban planning, especially the impact of car-focused design. I'd suggest www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes and www.youtube.com/@strongtowns
I have used each many times, commuting on foot for a few days and by bicycle for a few months at a time, amounting to about two years out of my 48 years working. I have several times lived in urban areas where bus service was non-existent. Bicycling is not for the timid. I have been caught in downpours, blinding sandstorms, and had cars turn in front of me while they were still beside me.
Fine and dandy if you are fit enough but many people are too old and some are disabled.
@@user-jb7uz4hs2i Selective respect never sounded like respect to me. The Good Samaritan parable has lost its meaning entirely. It is a sociopathic culture that is terribly short of STEM values./rant
I recently got a Tesla model 3, I love it. From the hassle free purchase without having to deal with a rip off car dealer to the ease of charging at home, it is wonderful.
I bought my first Tesla in 2015, and my second in 2018, and the car is … adequate. But the dealerships all suck! By far the worst dealership experiences of my life have all been with Tesla. Prior to my first Tesla I had mostly owned BMWs and M-Bs, with the occasional Audi and a few Lotus, so perhaps comparing to Ford or Chrysler wouldn’t make Tesla look so bad, but I doubt even Big-3 dealers lie as much as Tesla lies about their cars, and the service experience is simply atrocious, it’s a good thing Teslas need essentially zero maintenance.
@@jemima_brown fixed price means everyone pays the same price, which means that people in a weak bargaining position aren’t unfairly at a disadvantage. For example, women, minorities, people with less than stellar credit… at a traditional dealership where the price reflects the privilege of the buyer, all those people would have to pay a higher price than the white man with a great job and fantastic credit. At a dealership that charges a fixed price, people in a weaker negotiating position aren’t forced to subsidize the purchases of the people of privilege in a strong negotiating position.
This was great to see - thank you for responding to the comments. Some of the issues you brought up had a much better balance this time. Please take a look at RethinkX and respond to their analysis of this problem of economic cost and benefits of this transition. A few points I'd like to make: 1) Electric vehicle costs are declining quickly and not increasing. As an example, Jim Farley's Ford has cut the price of the F150 pickup by roughly $10k US in the past week. 2) Maintenance costs for electric vehicles are significantly lower than internal combustion vehicles. This is proven across manufacturers and includes collision repair. 3) If you include oil and gas production as mineral extraction (which you should), electric vehicles require significantly less minerals. (Some simple math => 150,000 miles at 25 miles per gallon times 6 pounds per gallon equals 16.4 tons of fuel - none of which can be recycled).
Agreed...although I've read that Ford is losing $billions on its electric vehicles (but you gotta play the game!) and also that insurance companies are "totaling" Teslas for what otherwise would be repairable collision impacts.
The point "good luck finding a charger outside of Paris" has a lot of missed detail. Generally speaking, public chargers only have relevance in cities where people who live in apartment buildings with no garage may live. Anybody living semi-rural has a garage or a parking space, the cost of installing a level 2 charge is cheap compared to public charger rates, and will almost exclusively charge from home. Those who don't match this pattern will likely not buy an EV yet until some condition changes. As a long-time rural resident who drives 15-20,000km/year, I use a public charger less than once a month, and I use a DC fast charger around once a year. If you have a garage, you charge at home, and the whole first part of the video is irrelevant. Another missing detail is that if you have a roof, then installing solar and charging from your own sunlight is a financial no-brainer. Compared to energy rates or public charging prices, a solar system on your roof is a win, and that leads to zero-carbon charging for some fraction of EV's. Predictions and estimates for costs and quantities never seem to account for a large section of the EV ownership and charging patterns. Nobody I know who is an early adopter of EV's doesn't have solar and doesn't primarily charge from sunlight.
Very informative video. Two points need coverage 1. Recycling of mountains of used batteries and its environmental impact. 2. This is relevant in countries of the third world- power theft, that will ruin utilities and also bring down the grid.
One thing which I think is underrated and rarely mentioned is that the switch to EV is a catalyst towards other changes. It's something visible which brings the message home and starts people thinking. They are a gateway drug leading people to look at Solar, insulation and home batteries and from there many other improvements. I think we massively under value the impact EVs have on public awareness of climate change and showing that change is not just possible....it can be better.
I agree with that. Even since getting an EV I started thinking about getting solar for the house as well and pay way more attention to what kind of fuel sources my energy company uses to make the electricity.
@@MD-mf4fj Just don't demand the immediate shutdown of our present fossil fuel fired electric power plants...to effect power shortages and way higher price.
If you are really rich, maybe, but for most people, it's either EV or other improvements because it's all expensive and have long ROI.
@@mrblc882 If you have to fund it all yourself. But there are lots of grants, schemes and offers out there to help for some people. As the costs of energy rise more and more people are taking the plunge to invest now to save money in the future.
"We talked about the hydrogen economy, the biggest problem beeing that it doesnt exist" amazing :D
I have a Nissan Leaf 62 kWh now two years old.and has completed only 7000 miles. At first I got free charging from Tesco. When that programme finished I luckily had my Wallbox home charger installed. I rarely need to pay for charging away from home but I have an account PodPoint and carry an Electroverse card which I know for sure works with Shell cabinets. As I am disabled I also use a heavy Mobility Scooter about 15 miles per week - weather permitting. In my car boot I carry a folding power wheelchair which does only. 2 miles a month taking me into Supermarkets. I have an electric hoist to make light work of its stowage and deployment. To. Complete the picture I have an electric stairlift. For me the EV is great. I don’t need to pump smelly fuels and seldom venture more than 150 miles from home, I do not suffer from Range Anxiety but I do plan my more distant excursions using PodPoint Map and ZapMap to identify charging locations. The Tory supporting Press as hard at work decrying EVs. A retired neighbour enuir3 d about my car’s range. When I told him 180 to 220 miles he exclaimed nobody could go anywhere on that!
Great video and analysis of the problems with the role out of electric vehicles. Would love to also see a spotlight done on the lack of technology in regards to recycling electric cars once their lifespan is over and a comparative analysis of electric car lifespan to internal combustion car lifespan.
I appreciate the corrected video, und MEHR SABINE/SWTG IST IMMER GUT!
I have been driving EV's for nearly 6 yrs and in that time it has changed dramatically. The nearest charging hub to me had just 3 chargers, now it has 64. In my town there was just 1 rapid chargers now there are 8 rapids and 40 destination chargers. When I first started I needed to plan my trip but now there are enough chargers not to worry about it, plus the car will take me to one when it needs it. Driving EV's is great fun and so relaxing with the one pedal driving ie press your foot down to go and lift it to brake. Of course I now drive a Tesla and I never get tired of that acceleration, it never fails to put a smile on my face
Nice you can afford a Tesla. I just bought a new car for twenty thousand. That's all I can afford.
@@bilahn1198 I sold my last EV for £16k but life has been good. My only advice is not to buy a new ICE vehicle at the moment, they arent selling and people are just holding off until the price of an EV drops a bit more, Tesla will be making a new model next year which will sell for £25k and with very low running costs that makes it cheaper to own than an ICE vehicle, also MG make some very good EV's now for £25k, not a good time to buy an ICE car
@@bilahn1198I bought a used Chevy Bolt in 2021 for $20K. The only thing that sucks about it is that the DC fast charging is slow (it’s based on 2016 speeds; you have to stop for 60-75 minutes if you’re on a road trip). Otherwise, it’s a great little car. EVs still need to get cheaper, but things are moving the right direction. Especially if you consider the total cost of ownership; EVs tend to cost more at the beginning but less over the life of the car due to fewer things that can break, no oil changes, and lower fuel costs.
I’ve driven a plug-in hybrid for the past four years and a full battery electric for one year. I also have a solar array on my roof that generates a surplus, so my charging costs are very low. In my experience, the full electric vehicle requires some changes in lifestyle and planning to avoid prematurely degrading the battery or running out if power on a road trip. My plug-hybrid requires almost no change in ordinary habits, except for what is perhaps the most important feature - - home charging - which means only having to visit a gas station for long road trips with 90% of local driving powered by the battery. My full battery electric car is fun to drive and I’m happy that I bought it. But for the average household, I think that a plug-in hybrid with at least 40 miles of range is currently the best option.
Thanks for this video. I'm curious how much more effective it would be to simply change city design to allow for greener forms of transportation that are less expensive like cycling, walking or taking public transit. As well as making cities denser with more housing and shops closer together. This seems like a cheaper solution, so I'm curious how fast that would bring down emissions!
GREAT point, which is almost always overlooked in discussions of public policy. A corollary is that people won't willingly live in energy-efficient areas (i.e., dense cities) if those are not safe, pleasant, and affordable. Personally, I was raised in a large city and prefer it in many ways. I would much rather walk everywhere than drive everywhere. However, I live in a small suburban city because the large cities near me are unsafe, unpleasant, and unaffordable. I am sorry to say this, but the wealthier neighbors I have don't rob my house, steal my stuff, shoplift, carjack, join gangs, filth things up, ruin the schools, and overburden the safety net. I have to drive to everything, which I hate, but it's a great defense against undesirables. (BTW, this isn't closet racism. My neighborhood is very multi-racial. They're just not criminals and deadbeats. And yes, I recognize how classist that is. But when urban governments don't protect the productive people, they protect themselves by moving away. And that's a huge driver for carbon emissions, which liberals refuse to even discuss. And, to be politically balanced, part of the reason for large city failures has been off-shoring caused by not charging for carbon emissions and pollution by means of taxes and import duties, which conservatives refuse to even discuss.)
@@davidmackie3497 I'm with you. I live in a clean, quiet neighborhood in the suburbs, and I would rather die than live in a densely populated city with high crime.
Effective? Yes, there are way more effective ways to remodel our cities to allow for all kind of EVs (trams, trains, subway, bikes, scooters, bicycles) AND walkable ones at the cost of people's sanity, as you'd have to squeeze everyone together if you were to make everything walkable, you'd have to stack people on top of each other in smaller housing and tall towers. Now, it's not realistic at all, i'd say it's even more unrealistic than anarchism and/or communism. We could make new cities based around that concept, but who would even move there in the first place? When the reason they've moved to the big cities is because everyone is there and everything they need is already there, despite how uncomfy it may be, so you'd have to forcefully evict and rehome everyone on the new comfortable and efficient city. Changing cities to accomodate for better transportation and transit so people can use efficient EVs, public transport and still have all the vehicles needed to restock stores and deliver big objects or big amounts of materials to people's houses is outright impossible from an economic point of view. You would have to cut many roads to install trams, have lanes for public transports and you'd still need to have accessible roads for trucks everywhere to restock stores or to move furniture and other big stuff around.
@@davidmackie3497 :: Well, during the Pandemia we learned that some jobs can be done in home, at least partially. We have the roofs that are areas where we can place solar batteries, Public transportation can be upgraded and augmented, China, Australia and the USA had immense desert areas where solar (and wind) can generate electrical energy. The Sahara is also immense. Also, there is that concept of solar-wind chimneys that take advantage of the Mountains height to embed in them chimneyes that can be as high as one kilometer, the base-to-top differential in temperature and pressure can be used to generate electricity with turbines.
Picked up a second hand leaf in the UK, 40,000 miles on the clock. It's great and I'm finding plenty of charging spots for my needs. I forgot to charge yesterday and drove to a rapid charger nearby and was able to get back to what I needed to in 3 minutes. I also have an electric bike, and use that a lot for shopping and getting around. Though I'm sure living in the city helps a lot in my case.
If the UK had clean electrical production then it would be an ideal place for EV's... As your travel distances are short with plenty of villages & towns in between long trips...
@@davidhollenshead4892 I mainly charge at home and use a green energy supplier, so even though technically the electricity I use isn't necessarily green I'm voting with my wallet for change, as much as can be. You are 100% right though, this is something that really works for me in my specific case, hopefully as more modern EVs enter the second hand market it'll become more attainable for more people as the ranges increase.
Hi Sabine, Love your direct presentation style and balanced presentation of data. The origin impetus for us buying our first EV, the Leaf, was to allow us to better benefit from the electricity our PV was generating rather than exporting it to the grid at a much lower rate than our imported electricity costs. We are presently upsizing our PV to allow us to satisfy the higher AC charging rate our Polestar will accept. My point is that many EV owners either do, or aspire to, charging their vehicles from their own solar generation. Apart from the cost benefits there is also the advantage of knowing that their EV is using fully renewable fossil fuel free electricity, AKA running your EV on sunshine. Also in regard to the demand on grid infrastructure that you identify the charging of EVs from generation in the immediate vicinity (home or workplace) mitigates this grid demand. In addition the adoption of V2G and V2H functionality will further buffer both peak grid demand and peak daytime generation from PV which it is used as the charging source. Much has been said by futurists such as Tony Seba in this regard and on the changing ways we will source energy and the uses we will put it to in the coming decades. EVs are just part of a much wider network that will change hugely in the coming years.
I think most people believe they will charge their EV via an electrical socket off the grid (with many here still stating "oh 100% efficient magic from that socket"); but perhaps "aspire to the off the grid existence" I do think sounds so doable - but I used to read Popular Science and such in the old days and they made moon bases seem so easy and doable too, and sure many will say that is still true but it is so expensive and a long path of .. if there are not other variable such as world events and bad behaviors taking place.
Solar generation is idiotic.. Are you familiar with the principle of One way energy entanglement?
Another Scam, pushed by the elites, they think they're special,!
Model YLR owner i charge off my solar panels. I have not payed anything for elect for 6 years. My solar gives back in the day time and helps the grid. I plug in at night and start charging at 12 AM this helps the utility balance the load and helps wast by ramping up in the day and down at night.
@@billthompson9482 Yeah.. No, your solar array doesn't "help the grid" it just passes your bills to the rest of society..
Great review, your opening comment says it all, reduce your need to drive. Everything you have stated I have researched. We do 10,000KM a year in my 2017 Euro 6 diesel. My calculations have worked out in the UK with the energy generation mix of 285 grammes of CO2 per KWh it would take 29 years to offset the CO2 of a new electric car. A lot of people are being completely conned by being "pious in their Prius" by buying an electric car. I should point out that we are virtuality carbon nuetral at home including a wood fired heating system, bore hole and solar panels. Hence the reason I researched buying an EV. If you live in Norway and Northern Sweden yes👍
I sold my diesel car in April 2022 and bought a secondhand 2018 BMW i3 94Ah. I drive about 15,000 miles (24,000kM) per year. At around the same time I had 40 solar panels with a peak output of 15.5kW fitted on my house roof and 45kW of battery storage. The latter was necessary in the UK because most houses only have a Single Phase supply, feed-in is therefore limited to 4kW and I didn't want to throw away available energy. 4kW is a ridiculous limit to impose. The peak output power from the panels had been factored to extend use of home generated electrical energy into October and March. Apart from longer journeys when I have to use fast chargers the car runs on home generated solar energy. I don't suffer 'Range Anxiety'. I plan journeys beforehand, use Eco Pro on the i3 by default and on motorway driving often opt for slip-streaming large lorries. The whole exercise has been fun (80% of the time - when my wife is with me she doesn't care for the risks I take with range but the closest we came to running out still left us with 3 miles when we reached a charger - she was not happy). I would certainly never go back to an ICE. I would say 70% of my mileage costs me nothing in electricity because it's "free" if you ignore the investment I've made. Why did I do it? Because I know someone who lives near Barmouth in Wales who has been told by the Environment Agency that their house, along with 220,000 other homes in England and Wales will be lost to the sea, as levels rise. We have also begun to see an exodus of climate refugees leaving equitorial regions to move to more Northern latitudes dying in small boats. We all owe a duty to reduce our use of carbon to help the rest of mankind. Where you are born is an accident of fate, not choice.
I have to say that tens of billions doesn't really sound that much if one considers that the USA spends hundreds of billions on military each year...
We need the military. Think of how much money is wasted producing the insane amount of movies produced. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent on wasting people’s time and lives on a bunch of stupid recycled stories and plots. What an enormous waste.
Even Germany found a 100 billion for its military just lying around when it became clear that Russia was still a threat. On top of regular spending, of course.
@@cougar2013 you need about a tenth of your current military. In its current form is pure socialism.
@@cougar2013 We need an inhabitable planet even more.
@@4203105 To be fair, they also found 200 billion for fighting climate change ("Klima- und Transformationsfonds"). It's indeed not a money problem.
Re-upload or not, it's always good to see Sabina.
She is high-value, indeed! 😊✨👌
I really appreciate your videos, and your accountability. If a similar analysis of energy use comes up again, I would ask that you consider a gentle reminder of the laws of thermodynamics... and a review of urban heat islands. I live in a terrible heat island (Las Vegas, NV), and many people think the heat island will be ameliorated by a transition to renewables. But our energy use, which is heavily dominated by air conditioners and vehicles, is still increasing, and there are strong pro-development forces. Development will increase the mass of "energy storage" in a manner that will not be helpful.
I drive a plug-in hybrid car and find that it is perfect for a small city. The approximate 35 km electric range from charging at home takes me anywhere in the city the next day. I rarely need to fill with gas, but never have "range anxiety". As a bonus, I love the smoothness, quietness, and strong torque of the electric motor.
Here in Korea, charging is just not really an issue. Most apartment complexes have charging in the car park now, as do supermarkets, libararies, etc. The grid doesn't seem to be overloaded, and electric cars are very popular now - projected to be about 15% of total units in circulation by the end of the year I just plug my car in at night, maybe once every 2 weeks or so, and it charges for about 20% of the cost it does for a petrol car. I can drive it for about 6-8 hours before needing to charge It's a no-brainer - just needs infrastructure
10:00 OMG, they re-invented the trolleybus!
I remember those from my childhood in Brighton, UK! They would keep losing power when they went round corners and the power pickup lost contact with the overhead line. Or maybe I'm misrememberng - it was a loooong time ago.
Since you asked... We bought our first Tesla in 2019, only maintenance was cabin filter and tires. Practically no brake wear as we use regenerative braking. No coolant/Oil to worry about. No engine to turn on for heating and cooling. No range anxiety, 100% reliable superchargers. We have one home charger in the garage, plenty for our family fleet of, now 4, Teslas. Also fun and safe to drive. No going back to ICE cars...
I have an electric vehicle, solar panels and a remote job. I charge my car during peak sunlight hours. Remote work is something we should be pushing to help the environment.
Thankyou for the better researched update. I initially commented on your original version saying how disappointed I was with the errors but then deleted my comment at that time ( my bad). I’m very pleased to be able to say ‘good job’ this time. Oh and yes I am an EV driver here in the U.K. and I’m fortunate enough to be able to charge at home for 7.5pence per kW. on green energy. I recently learned once a population reaches about 25% on acceptance of an idea the rest tend to follow.
AS I mentioned on the first iteration: using my EV for 2,5 months now and had zero issues. I was always able to find charging stations fpr a reasonable price. I also did a trip over 1800km from southern Germany to Dresden, through Tzech Republic and back. Really nice driving. Only thing I have adjusted is my speed of travel as i ever go over 120km/h and most of the time drive 110km/h. Range anxiety has vanished with this trip too as it is nearly always possible to find a opportunity to recharge as the electrical grid is nearly everywhere.
The child laborers in the Congo who dug out the cobalt by hand that went into the EV batteries are happy that you're pleased with your car.
@@SurLaMer_ you don't even know if my car is running a battery with cobalt as there were already models in 2021 with alternatives: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery But yeah just blame anyone with electric car xD Do you do this too under every apple/samsung keynote video? Burning more oil surely is not the way forward mate.
@@SurLaMer_ who dug up the cobalt used to extract the sulfur from the gasoline you use in your car? Happy miners on the moon or maybe those same child laborers in the Congo? You know most EV batteries have very little cobalt in them, some have none. All gasoline and diesel production uses a boatload of cobalt for desulfurization
Another problem in the US is that many like to do long road trips and a 10-min. gas refill every 300-350 miles is far preferable to a few hour recharge every 180-300 miles for them.
It is not correct to say that it takes a “few hours” to charge an EV on a road trip. In the US it is easy to drive a Tesla 200+ miles and then charge for less than a half an hour at a Tesla Supercharger. I know this because I’ve been doing it for a decade.
A few items to consider. The energy used to generate U.S. electricity is currently about the same order of magnitude as the total energy from gasoline and diesel for transportation. So it will be a huge challenge if we are to phase out generation from natural gas and coal and replace the electricity with generation from solar panels and wind turbines while steadily doubling the demand caused by converting to EV's. You did a good job highlighting the problems with infrastructure for charging and transmission. However, you could add more for sources of electricity. Current plans are to depend on solar panels (mostly from China) and wind turbines. However, solar panels only provide an average of 25% of rated capacity and wind turbines 35% compared to 94% for nuclear. The problem with solar panels is they don't work at night and work poorly in the morning, evening and when it is cloudy. Average demand for U.S. electricity is highest in August, but U.S. average generation from wind turbines is not only lowest in August, it is frequently lowest at mid day when electricity demand is highest. You mentioned that most people will likely charge their EV batteries at night. But if say 25-30% of our electricity comes from solar panels, that won't work. We might use wind turbines, but we would probably need 5-10 times the number calculated to meet average demands to account for the daily variability in the wind and solar panels only being effective about 6-8 hours per day. We might consider large banks of batteries. Iron flow batteries are a promising technology, but energy density is too low to be cost effective for cars. Iron is not toxic and does not burn like lithium does when exposed to water and iron is very abundant. But then there is the same question as we have for EV's about when to charge them. If the batteries are designed to be used at night when solar is not available, when do we charge the batteries? During the day won't work because demand is highest then unless we have a lot more solar panels, but then there is the liability on cloudy days. I built an economic model to represent 3 days of electricity supply and demand in 4 hour time slices. The only way I got utility scale batteries to be useful is to charge them during the day using electricity from the coal and natural gas plants that are supposed to be shut down. Nuclear should still be considered a clear option especially the Integral Fast Reactor designed by Argonne National Laboratory. They built a very effective one, but the program was cancelled for political reasons by President Clinton based on a strong push from John Kerry (our climate czar). This article is a good start. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor
I just listened to a KZhead presentation from Peter Zeihn, discussing deep geothermal heat as a source for generating electricity. This source takes advantage of developments from shale oil technology. He pointed out that the footprint for shale oil sites is smaller and a new shale site can be in production in just a few weeks and costs less. In his presentation he reports that a pilot geothermal installation exists to prove the viability of the source. The advantage of deep geothermal heat is that this source is not subject to time of day or the weather. Therefore It can even be considered as a base load generator. If adopted country wide, depending on how it is implemented the need for transmission grid updates might be reduced. Every state would want one or more. One problem is the possibility of a paradigm shift from thinking big. Suppose the generator could fit into the area of a substation. (even if it could be used for very large generator equipment). With smaller generators, the impact of a network generator failure would be reduced. It would increase redundancy Deep heat is everywhere, and abundant. Would companies accept a smaller but more numerous generator environment? Probably not, just as legacy auto makers rejected single casting of the car body, until Tesla proved its power, and showed it possible. The human mind set beliefs are hard to change. It is easier to bring up objections because that is the way it has always been done.
Yes I drive an electric vehicle, an ebike to be precise and i love it 😍and for longer trips I use public transport.
Make sure you park it outside away from anything flammable
@@Bryan-Hensley Make sure that you don't keep devices with Li-po batteries at home. Like phones, laptops, power banks and battery power tools...
I'm glad you pointed out the grid issue. Tesla power stations are at most buc-ees. The issue with BMW drivers using Teslas is dangerous as they overheat the batteries.
Sorry Sabine, some more corrections.. 1. Producing hydrogen gas from electrolysis isn't bad to run on intermittent electricity because the reaction is "slow to ramp" up per se. It's because it becomes uneconomical when the capital cost of electrolysers is (currently) too large to have them "standing by and standing back" most of the time. 2. You stop at 80% most of the time because NMC (nickel, managese, cobolt) Li-on batteries don't like being fully charged & it goes slow at the end - this is not true if you have other battery chemistries like LFP (Lithium iron phosphate) or use an AC charger 11kw or lower. With NMC you should ideally go down only to 20% for the same battery care reasons. 3. Overall maintenance costs for EVs are often lower than ICE cars so long as you take care of the battery - there are far less moving parts that can wear out. At the same time EVs are more expensive to insure for the reasons you explained. One should do an total cost of ownership calculation for it to make any sense of this (fuel/repairs/insurance/interest costs), to see which is "cheaper".
Same with coal power stations. But if you let them run, they’re extremely efficient
Recycling might be the main source of lithium in the future. I think China is closer to 50% of energy from renewables than 15%.
1. I don't disagree, but I think that the problem I mention will be the more relevant in the long run. 2. Yes the statement at the beginning is for the currently most widely used batteries. I am very sorry I did not spell this out explicitly, I did not anticipate it would cause misunderstanding. 3. I am very sorry I did not spell out in more detail exactly what the cost breakdown comes from, but there's only so much you can cram into 20 minutes. Thanks for your interest.
@@SabineHossenfelder thanks, I appreciate your effort!
i would very much see that 3 point as well, it is the crux of the issue after all, are we going from a better technology to a worse one or the other way. i would add total cost of ownership over lifetime comparison, which live for longer, which cost more upfront and what other indirect costs are added to own one. sorry for the last point as that rather directly goes against evs, but ive seen quite a lot of comments on it, its nice if you can afford things but its only IF you can afford them and most of the world population can not just jump from poor to rich in a day, it takes tremendous amounts of Work or in other words Energy, energy that must come from somewhere. Sure its nice and "cheap" to charge with your own solar, or heck a mini/residential nuclear power plant, but it will just cost up front in "fuel" rather than step by step in time. in the end i would like us to be realistic, not just have pink coggles on and then get to regret our decisions later in life, i dont really care it were gonna be an EV, ICE or more probably a mix* civilization in the future, i would rather like our efforts to go in the right place and do what they purportedly do than to just appease our feelings, rather shallowly, and make things worse then they are in the long run. *the right technology for the right things
Hi! Quick question, is the initial manufacturing emissions delta between EVs and ICE negligible?
I drive a BEV here in NZ. LFP battery pack(BYD). The only time I ever use fast chargers is when I travel on holiday. Plugging in at night is usually just part of my parking when I get home. (I use a bicycle for trips around town for shopping and recreation). With the conservative way I drive I get 480km on a full charge so range anxiety is non-existent. (20km travel per day usually, with 100km at most) Since I really only use an approximately 1.4kW charger I'm not feeling guilty about overloading the local grid. It never bothers me to just leave the car on charge at home as my car begins the nightly charging cycle during a 3 hours of free charging provided by my power payment plan. My employer also is happy to allow me to charge at work when I'm on the 100km days, it's much cheaper than petrol vouchers. It's all been about planning ahead and charging before I need it, so I don't need to worry about charging. NZ generates at least 40% of it's power using renewables at present, my batteries contain no Ni or Co, and I've had almost no running costs in a year. (wiper fluid and an occasional fancy car-wash) So I'm not feeling very guilty. :)
Great video, and shared! You didn't touch on residential renewables and their part to play in the future. I am looking forward to purchasing my first EV after testing several and being very impressed. They are ideal on small tropical islands where distances aren't far and an abundance of sun and tradewinds, can be used cost effectively to help that payback offset. Some points I raised in a conversation earlier today, was the move away from long distance trucking, and a push to invest more in rail infrastructure and stock. This will more efficiently move freight around over longer distances, and use smaller trucks/vehicles for last kilometer/miles delivery. The Dutch have shown us how to change the urban traffic design and infrastructure to be more pedestrian friendly with cycling and small EVs. So I'm sure some of these factors could reduce the mining and production requirements, and may be more efficient in the long-term reduction of our overall carbon footprint
Take your bicycles and walking any distance to places like Sanfrancico or any mountain side city and pickup milk and bread or lunch supplies for the kids including your selves. 😮😢. Add in a broken crank chain ouch.
How about rain, wind, snow, ice, sun etc. We built vehicles for convenience as well as protection from the elements.
@@kevinoneill41 you would be surprised at the amounts of people in these locations, that do have bikes. Another point, is how unhealthy our lifestyles have become, so there's a health benefit too. I walked to and from school, from a hill location, did me no harm ;-) For me, and E-Cargo bike is very much on the radar too.
@@kevinoneill41I rode bicycles and motorcycles all year round in Scotland for 16yrs, no problem. Wind, snow, sleet, frost, rain, sun and hail, and it didn't do me any harm.....if anything, it made me a better driver. 🙂
As I commented last time: the overwhelming number of cars is parked more than 22hrs a day. So you could charge almost all of them all the time with low voltage. Meaning, you wouldn't have significant usage peaks at any time of the day at all. You just need comparably cheap plugs wherever cars are parked. The "alternative charging method in Germany" part is kinda hilarious, because electric trams have been around for 150 years and trains and also buses that are powered this way are not at all new technology.
I think you mean low power, not low voltage.
I think most EVs by far in Norway are charged slowly over night, and quite a few are probably charged slowly at work. In the last video I think she mentioned transformers need to cool down over night in warmer climates. My average electricity consumption has increased by a huge amount since we got an EV so I’m not sure how significant of a problem that will actually be. But even if it is wouldn’t it just be a matter of increasing the size of the container for the transformer, so it has more surface area to cool from? The transformer itself doesn’t need to be bigger
Yeah I live in a condo with no garage (well it does have a garage but the gf parks there, only room for 1). Can't charge at work. And I like to go camping, and strangely the wilderness has no charging stations. So yeah, I'm keeping my ICE vehicle. And yeah I get annoyed when elites make policy. They don't understand how poorer people live. Not everyone has garages. In fact, I've never had a garage in 50 years of living.
I wish I didn’t have to drive and could just chill on a tram or train 😢
The standard uses case is: Drive to work in the morning, drive home on the afternoon, du things with you car (one needs food and there is something called free time), so the car will be available for charging in the evening. That gives something between 8 and 10 hours of charging. And afaik that is not enough time to fully charge a car with normal voltage. And we would get the usage peak in the night that Sabine is talking about for sure. Also charging something with a powerline while driving is not the same as just using the power. But you are right, it works, but is is very expensive.
Thanks, Sabine for saying very important things that aren't heard anywhere else. I heard "subsidies" in this video many times, and sadly this is true. However, we observe that governments deal with it in two ways: 1. They put additional requirements and costs on energy distributors and producers (ETS costs and others), those regulations increase the cost of producing energy which is the reason why prices of energy in the EU are one of the highest in the world and still rising. One of the craziest regulations was to force energy distributors to buy power generated privately from solar or wind generators even if that power cannot be sold, or can only be sold at a fraction of what that private producer gets for it. This also needs to be financed from higher bills for homeowners. It also makes the energy market chaotic, green power is not produced in places that need that power, it is wasted and we pay for that waste. 2. They do indeed make subsidies, which need to be financed, from taxes of course, which makes the EU a place with the sharpest rising taxes in the last years, and more are in the way.
Then another idea is instead of using charging stations along highways, is to have a electrical wire system the vehicle can connect to such as were used by electric trams in cities where a attachment on top of the tram connected to the overhead wires. No charging stations along highways needed at all, and the smaller battery packs only needed for local driving helps to conserve the materials the battery manufacturing requires. Gas stations along highways would be the losers in this scenario but as gasoline is being phased out they would disappear anyway to reappear as something else for land use.
No one's perfect. Thanks for your work.
Thank you too!
Sabine, your thoughts on using solar/wind as a power source for the additional load? Love your work!!! ❤
One negative that Pro/Cons on EV don't often consider. SF6. SulfurHexaflouride is 25,000 times more powerful as a green house gas as is CO2. It is essential to high voltage electric switching, which would need to be expanded 200-300% to power EVs. 1 ton of SF6 = 25,000 tons of CO2. Unlike CO2, it doesn't break down in the atmosphere or be absorbed by plants; it will last in the atmosphere 10,000 years building up. EVs have another serious counter point to consider.
Sabine. Really appreciate all of your videos. Informative and NOT boring. We own a 2014 Tesla Model S and a 2022 Tesla Model 3. We just completed the installation of 17 kW of roof mounted solar panels and two Tesla Powerwall 2 batteries. I will be in the dog house for a while yet as my lovely wife is not happy about the cost. I am looking at the long term. Living in northern Vermont (USA) we have limited solar input and during winter months there’s not much Solar with clouds and the sun being so low on the mountainous horizon. Living in such a beautiful place means compromises. Worth it. Our electricity is 90% combination of hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear. Natural gas is used for times of heavy demand and emergencies. We charge at our house and at Tesla Superchargers when on the road. Tesla has nailed it with their Superchargers. Reliable, frequent and convenient. Not a fan of how Elon Musk has evolved but Tesla really excels with their cars and batteries. Thank you for your work.
I appreciate this latest video with the corrections and additions to the previous video. Sabine, you presented a good presentation for the challenges for the complete conversion for electric vehicles. One challenge that you mentioned is the need for added capacity (MW) of generation for charging especially at night. I did a rough calculation for the state that I reside in and found that to meet the charging demand if all the EVs were charging at the same time will require new generation that is twice the installed generation that we have today. This would need the generation capacity will be three times the capacity that we have today. Most likely the demand of electricity for charging will be less due to habits in charging, but this may be a nightmare for predicting the evening demand when people are plugging their EVs, not knowing for sure on how many EVs will be charging and how many generators need to be dispatched. One would need generators that can rapidly pick up load. Conventional steam turbines are too slow. Also new generation will require building more transmission lines or upgrading existing lines to higher voltages. This was a good video.
In practice, not every EV will be charging at the same time. To keep the numbers simple, suppose a car does 4miles per kWh and is driven 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. That means is needs 3,000kWh per year or 8.2 kWh per day. In the UK, a standard 3-pin socket can provide 230V x 10Am = 2.3kW. So it takes an average of 3.6 hours per day to charge. A single phase home charger runs at 7kW, so it would charge in an average of 1.2 hours. In the US, the voltage is about half, 110V, so charging times might be longer.
@@grahamf695 In the USA towns are more spread out and one would like to be able to cover the distant travel. An EV with 120mile range may be suitable. So in my thinking one would go with an EV with a range of 360 miles. Charging requirements is 117kW-hr for 8hr charge with average power requirement about 14kW. In the state that I reside the population is 20 million people of which half live in a major city. The other half lives in rural or suburban areas. Looking at the means of the rural and suburban people, we'll reduce the population to 8 million to account for seniors who do not drive. Assuming a household of 4 people we have 2 million households. Most likely there are 2 EVs in the household. So, we are looking at 4 million EVs. The worst condition is all 2 million EVs are charging at the same time. Then the power required is 56,000MW. The present installed capacity is about 25,000MW. Granted that not all EVs will be charged at the same time. I did a simulation by dividing 56,000MW to a group of 7,000MW with different charging habits. One group charged their EV once every day. The next group once every 3 days, and so on. In the simulations the average is about 3 groups, but on day 370 there were 7 groups (49,000MW) charging their EV. This will be a nightmare for the grid system operator to predict. Also note that I had not addressed the conversion from ICE to EV in the big city. That will add to the numbers that I am giving above. Granted the numbers can come down for 120-mile range. Regardless for the electrical utility industry the complete conversion from IGE to EV will be a challenge.
@@louishannett356 I certainly agree that converting from ICE to EV will be a challenge. Your simulation approach is interesting. The challenge is that it depends critically on the assumptions that you are making, which may or may not be valid. Doing the research to make them reasonable might possibly merit a PhD! My personal experience is that I charge between 12:00-7:00 am, because the electricity is less than half price at that time. The current peaks in UK electricity usage come at half-time or just after a penalty shoot out in the Football (soccer) Association Cup Final, or a big World Cup came That is when everybody switches on their kettle for a cup of tea or coffee. For EVs, the peak might be at Christmas, New Year, Easter, or Thanksgiving when lots of people take a trip to visit relatives. I checked out average car mileage in the US. It varies from 12k miles per year in New York & Florida (similar to UK) to 22k miles in Wyoming. I am considering moving to the Intelligent Octopus service, which automatically charges your car when the grid is quietest and adjusts the tariff accordingly. I think sometimes it even pays you to use electricity, because of over-supply. Such approaches help to smooth out usage. Some people are installing solar power and batteries, which will also help. However in the UK and possibly the EU, gas central heating boilers will be banned in new homes from 2025. This will force people to install either hydrogen boilers or more likely electric heat pumps. That will add further load to the grid.
Graham, thanks for reply. When I did the calculations it was to get a rough idea where things are going. A detailed study would indeed give someone a PHD or a research grant. As one person that worked with said, "I'm an engineer, not a scientist." I took that attitude for the calculations, which are rough, but they give you an idea what to conclude. I'm a retired electrical engineer who had worked in the power field. I have ICE and most likely they would be the last vehicles that I will drive. I have battery power lawn mower and I love. It is lighter in weight and the cost for charging compared to cost of fuel for gasoline mower is 4 cents to 75 cents to mow my whole yard. Also there is less maintenance. Electrical rates from my utility provider is fixed per kWh usage. So time of day does not matter. My son-in-law has solar panels on his roof. On a clear day the peak generation is 11kW. He got less than half during the week when we had the smoke from Canada.
In the U.S. homes have 240 volts at the service (circuit breaker) panel. We use 3 wires from the utility source with two hot wires that are 180 degrees out of phase with each other and a neutral wire. Across the two hot wires you will measure 240 volts, from the neutral to a hot wire you will measure 120 volts. The neat thing about this is the neutral wire only carries the difference of the amperage between the two hot wires. We use 120 volts mainly for wall outlets to power small appliances TVs, lighting, etc. 240 volts is used for high current devices ie. clothes dryers, water heaters, air conditioning and so on. There is also a separate wire tying all grounding points together to Earth ground. Finding 240 volts for charging is no problem in U.S. homes. The question is, is the service drop and grid robust enough to handling charging and every other current draw along with vehicle charging. Another problem are people that park their cars on the street in the evening, in some areas that's going to be a whole lot of extension cords carrying 240 volts across the yard...
The fact that I didn't notice any mistakes in the first video serves as a reminder not to blindly trust _all_ the brilliant and funny theoretical physicists we're subscribed to... 😎
Trusting Sabine, as this update shows, is the best
It was mostly outdated information. Which is kinda understandable. If you find numbers in astrophysics from 5 years ago, they don't suddenly be wrong, if you find numbers regarding EVs from 5 years ago, those are garbage now.
I live in Scotland. Until April 2023 it was free to charge your car, in early 2023 getting a charger was becoming more and kore difficult as more and more people bought electric cars. As of April 2023 you are now charged either 33p pkw or 50p pkw, depending on the charger. Now all the charger stations are empty as it is cheaper to charge at home. If you have a jome charger installed for free by your power company, it will cost you 12p pkw. Far cheaper and no hunting around for a charging point. Clean air and fast than most petrol cars.
We run 2 electric vehicles, one for high mile journeys and one for short journeys. Last April i drive to the Alps for skiing. The infrastructure in France in the main motorways was very good in France, better than our uk infrastructure. Otherwise i mostly charge at home on a slow charger and rapid charger. Love the style of your presentation. So nice to see a non emotive presentation that can see difficulties but does not suggest that the 'experiment' be ended.
France has good nuclear power regulation making it's electricity low in Carbon Emissions...
I have one car for low mileage and high mileage.
I was excited to see a new video, but even more excited when I learned you were revising your work!
Really enjoyed your video… thanks for bringing up lots of perspectives on science. Question: How about the deforestation and carbon emissions from those increased mining? Not only from the battery production but also the infrastructure upgrading (copper, aluminum etc). Also the issues facing recycling of batteries. Will we be ‘front loading’ the carbon foot print for changing to EV?
Agree, i feel like this aspect of the process is often swept under the rug
Yep batteries don't grow on trees, in fact often the opposite is involved. Not to mention dealing with all the toxic waste from their production from the mines all the way to final assembly, and the toxic waste from the renewables (resins for turbine blades, lots of forever chemicals and poisonous metals from solar panels). Still better than pumping carbon and fossil poisons out the ground and into the atmosphere. They definitely need a method of dealing with the waste before starting this "green" transition.
I’ve owned an EV for the last 5 years. I bought it cheaply 2nd hand. I’ve never had it serviced and the only maintenance has been new brake pads and wiper blades. It costs nothing to run (charged by solar) , has low tax, low insurance. It’s a no-brainer. It’s also fabulous to drive, especially in traffic.
French ?
@@Clyde-2055 French what?
I've been driving my first electric car (Kia eNiro) since just over 2 years. Wouldn't go back to an ICE. Solar charging at home 80% for local/regional driving, 20% charging on the road for long drives. The infrastructure is getting better, and we are getting better at dealing with any issues. I keep on trying to promote adoption amongst friends, with some success. Living near Munich.
In Australia, the biggest problem with EV uptake is cost. And we will very soon have EVs which cost the same or less than smelly cars. Many residences in Australia are detached houses with garages and 240v systems that can support a Type 2 charger charging at 7 kW per hour. More and more Australian houses are installing rooftop solar which can be used for daytime charging. EVs use less domestic energy than old electric hot water services and replacing old hot water services with heat pump systems would just about offset EVs. (The big electricity drain is air conditioning.)
Indeed. Here in Germany, electricity delivered through the public grid is actually going down, despite electric cars and electric heat pumps becoming more and more common. Because ... well, rooftop solar. Some supermarkets have started roofing their parking lots with solar panels, so customers keep their cars out of the sun and can charge a bit for free while shopping. Not sure why Sabine found only sources expecting a need for big and expensive grid updates.
@@jemima_brown Doing a good guess on how much charge one needs per week is a good idea. If your commute is less than 20% of your EV's range, you can ride all 5 workdays from one charge and refill on the weekend. Also, kind employers have solar at their office/factory and allow to charge from that. If all this fails, one can always fall back to charging from the grid, so no fear of stranding with empty batteries somewhere. Even with regularly charging a portion from the grid it's still a lot cheaper than gasoline/diesel.
@@jemima_brown You make good points. Home batteries at the moment are too small and expensive for EV charging at night. However, many people now work from home and even one hour of charging on a 7 kW charger will put about 40 km of range in an EV. Even if the family EV is not at home for charging during the day, solar can supply power for the house during the day and the EV can be charged at night; this can take much of the peak demand off the grid and remove the necessity for grid upgrades. Many businesses have large roof areas which could support panels for daytime charging of employee cars as an incentive for employees to work in the office.
@@traumflug Impressive. And yes, I think there are a number of smaller things such as solar panels, home batteries, reverse cycle air conditioners and heat pump hot water systems that can take pressure off the electricity systems.
@@traumflug Yes, I work on getting 40 km range per hour from my 7 kW Zappi charger.
I saw some chargers at a UK motorway service station recently that were out of action because they could not get a connection to the grid. It's mind boggling to think of every car in a motorway service area connected to a 100 kW charger. How much power will that require?
Lots, but at least a lot of the Tesla supercharger stations have megapack batteries installed which charge up when power is cheap. A lot also have solar roofs connected to the batteries.
@@user-gg4is6db4u Large batteries and solar power will help but an expansion of the grid will also be necessary. A typical solar panel might produce 200 W per m2 so to power one 100 kW charger you would need 500 m2 of panels or 5400 ft2. You'll need even more to keep one charging station going 24 hours/day.
Invariably the hold up for connections is not due to technical challenges. Politics, planning, arguments over competition rights etc etc. Largest site in USA has 120 bays. Presently Tesla in Europe are maxing at 40 bays. By the time you get above 16 or so bays the turnover is very swift so I would think that 40 could be an optimum for large motorway service areas in the future.
@@AlanRPaine I think the worry about the grid is somewhat overstated - Gigabatteries are being installed in many locations, virtual power stations mean that communities with domestic batteries (like Powerwall) can feed back into the grid when needed, and accept excess power. I believe the rise of EVs and sustainable energy will help stabilise and protect the grid.
Standard single phase residential voltage in the USA is 240v (effective average absolute potential) 60hz. The way we reference it to the ground it alternates from -170v to +170v (peaks of sine wave), and so low power recepticals can operate at half potential, or 120v(average), by using either of the two legs with a ground conected neutral conductor. But in short all homes in the USA have 240v power, very old homes with non-electric heat having 100amp and most newer homes 200amp service. (150 is common also in a few regions, and very large homes, those with a substantial workshop(welding and such) or sharing a connection with a commercial business will have 400amp) A few appartment buildings use 208v/120v but that is a 3phase which is higher total power and they inherently have easy access to any other 3phase voltage, wye or delta up to ~13kV (the common streetside voltage and occationally used directly in heavy industry. Trunk distribution is 115kV up to 1000kV). In practice 480v/277v is very common, 600v in industrial settings and 4.2kV for special purposes.
Reasons why the development of super-conductors is so important: reducing the impact on the electrical grid, AND facilitating the manufacture of more efficient powerful magnets to build tokamak fusion reactors. To increase the capacity of the electrical grids, is going to require a lot of copper and aluminum unless we can acquire super conductors with Tc’s greater than 100C.
I wish some other youtube presenters were also prepared to correct errors. Thanks for the update, and I always look forward to your segments.😊😊😊
I doubt there were any errors she more than likely just found out more info on the topic and wanted to add it to the video
@@Name.......... Possible.... but I watched it again as the topic and presentation was interesting.
What really matters isn't range, it is sufficient range to do the next journey. For commercial vehicles there is an interesting business model being trialled in Australia, lorries with standard swappable batteries; the lorry doesn't charge its battery it goes to a swap station and in 5 minutes can have a fully charged battery put in. The transport company buys lorries without batteries and the charged battery is supplied as a service.
Electric lorries/trucks make sense. To move a large mass of cargo requires a large amount of torque at first movement. Electric motors generate torque at first movement, and without the need for gearbox transmission.
There is a hydrogen version of this where hydrogen is stored chemically bonded to some substance (can't recall what of course) in a canister that you swap out instead of pumping hydrogen into your tank, but with similar output as a pressurized tank. Sabine is too quick to dismiss H2 as an energy storage solution IMO. The same source energy issues she sites for H2 are also there for electric, but fails to compare them point by point. What matters are efficiency factors and the H2 people are quickly catching up.
I drive an electric vehicle already. It is a hyundai kona with 300 Km range. We use the car for 22.000 km a year. We live in a small town on the countryside of northern Germany. A lot of people go electric here. I think there have been misconceptions of BEVs from the start. They thought of them as small vehicles for the city. But there is no charging infrastructure. Here, on the countryside almoust everyone has a house and a parking space next to it. They all charge at home. Furthermore: almoust every household here has two or more cars, but no one needs them both to have 700 km range. So they often first change one of their cars to electric. Our experience is: We rarely need a car with more than 300 km of range. We don´t care if we had to wait 30 minutes on a longe trip to recharge. On the other side we save a lot of money and time during normal working weeks with charging at home. We don´t miss the gas station. Also the comfort in an BEV is much higher, the music sounds better without engine noises.
Sabine thank you for the sequence on EVs. i am using electrify america charging station in the bay area (CA) and from my personal experience at least 50% are broken. this is pretty sad and makes charging very time consuming. I am using EA because my car came with a 3 year free charging for the EA network. the stations are usually broken for month. maybe you can try to find out why charging station repair is so slow and also why do they fail so frequently in the first place. i thought power electronics is around for quite a while.
Tesla make sure their chargers stay up - I’ve only had to be no. 2 once with a couple of minutes’ wait time - which I bypassed since I had ample juice to get home and in any case my car had told me 50km out that the chargers were getting a bit busy so no surprise there. Range anxiety really only lasts a day or two as you quickly see just how accurate the cars’ instrumentation is -they take account of weather, your own driving technique, temperature, elevation changes etc etc.
Contemporary design is focussing on prestige cars requiring more power long range capability. A different mind set is required. It's not just about transportation.
I live in an apartment in Los Angeles that I can barely afford. It's a one room studio. I have no parking. My flat is on the same wiring as the apartment building, i.e. utilities included. If I run my air conditioner and the toaster it pops the circuit breaker on main board for the building. All of the building lights and the laundry room go dark. I don't think, even if I had a parking place, that I could charge an EV here. And my work schedule and commute leave me just enough time for 8 hours of sleep and a few hours in the morning for breakfast and chores, so I'm not going to spend that time driving to wait in line at a fast charging point that will then take hours to charge my car. My whole life would then be driving to work, working my shift, driving home, sleeping, waking up, driving to a charging place and waiting, waiting, waiting, then driving to work. I would need a 5 minute charge time, to full, because my commute isn't short. Secondly, there is no room in my budget to even buy another car. I'm driving a 1996 Honda that I had bought for $300. There is no part of my income that can be directed to a new car. I used to have a short commute until my workplace moved. I don't fly anywhere, I live in 300 sq ft of space, while others live in lavish 11,000 sq ft homes, jet set to Europe multiple times per year, consume on a much grander scale than I can even imagine, but oh, they drive Teslas and are saving the world.
Sounds like LA needs a good bus system. Maybe self-driving cars will provide a service like Uber by 2030, except cheaper. Then you could ditch your car and not pay for insurance or gas, just cheap Ubery-thing. Other possibilities... car-pooling, electric bike (bring the battery inside to charge) or star in a TV series called "One Broke Guy" and have a limo drive you around.
LA is a big city. There should be amazing public transport. I know in the case of LA there is not, but you guys should really work on that. I agree, EVs are not the highest priority for you.
Instead of setting legislative goals for individual citizens, governments could be setting legislative goals for producers of energy, but that would make too much sense.
Another issue currently of serious concern about Lithium based EVs is water. Right now the 130,000 tons of lithium produced in 2022 took 1% of all the fresh water on earth. To grow production by 10x would take 10% of all fresh water; as much as in Lakes Michigan and Erie. Chilean legislators want to be lithium mining because it is using 65% of the water in the region. Lithium is a total dead end for EV production if a better safer, cheaper chemistry isn't identified.