EV vs ICE

[stoveliker]

Amazon here drives cargo vans that are electric. Many many of them.
Not sure if that's the type of cargo van you were referring to?

 

[begreen]

Chevrolet canceled the BrightDrop this year. Too bad, it looks like a nice van. I saw one the other day. Some dealers are accepting low ball offers. Unfortunately, most have the mid-sized battery pack. The Max range versions are rare.

 

[EbS-P]

I think Amazon has some Rivian vans. Those and the bright drop fall into the full size category. Fine for fleets. Nothing the general public would be interested in.

Now Mercedes has a hybrid (GLE I think) that has the same motor and transmission as my van. They sell it as a plug in hybrid in Europe with a 30 ish kWh battery. That package, gasoline or diesel, in a medium size van similar to the PV5 would be a real game changer. 30-50 miles of electric range. 100-130 electric HP and lots of electric torque plus the ICE engine. I’m not sure who this would appeal to. Mercedes stopped selling the Metris in the US. It had cargo and passenger versions. In the US market size wins. Bigger the better. Makes EVs a tougher sell.

 

[DBoon]

It will be interesting to see what happens to the manufacturing infrastructure that was initiated by the IRA and has now been written down as a loss.

Some of the battery manufacturing capacity is already pivoting to utility-scale storage, which continues to be a fast-growing market.

 

[DBoon]

So I guess I didn't think that Biden could really pull the adoption curve forward more than a couple years. Neither do I think Trump can push it back more than a couple (short an outright or effective ban on sales, which has not happened).

My long experience in the technology field is that technologies can seem stalled from the perspective how most people see them but underneath the surface there is tremendous innovation (improvement, cost reductions, etc.) happening. And suddenly the technology breaks out into mass market adoption, seemingly from nowhere (from most people's perspective).

The efforts to "kill" electric cars would have been far more successful 10 years ago before the adoption curve accelerated (similar to now for offshore wind in the US). I recall that solar PV was something like 1% of US electric generation 10 years ago, and now it is something like 10% of US electric generation now (and will continue to grow, regardless of policy and tax changes).

At some point, you can't stop cheaper, more reliable, and better. Cheaper is here today in terms of total cost of ownership (though this is not well understood by most people, or they are misinformed) and will be also true in 5 years for initial purchase cost, and more reliable and better driving experience are here today. The one hurdle is larger vehicles (i.e., trucks), but the opening seems large for the right company to launch a low cost smaller pickup truck that just happens to be electric, which will begin the adoption process for the half of truck buyers who really don't need to tow anything. Even battery size/cost for large vehicles will not be an issue 10 years out, nor will ability to charge if you are an apartment renter or lack a home. Then (2035 or so) the only reasons people will be buying fossil-fuel vehicles will because of simple stubbornness or political fealty, and if they are willing to pay more then that is their choice.

 

[EbS-P]

Some of the battery manufacturing capacity is already pivoting to utility-scale storage, which continues to be a fast-growing market.

The model in that segment is profitable. Peak demand electricity prices are really high.

, but the opening seems large for the right company to launch a low cost smaller pickup truck that just happens to be electric, which will begin the adoption process for the half of truck buyers who really don't need to tow anything.

Most truck owners think they will need to tow something ignoring all their past lack of towing. The truck market will be hard and I think the last holdout to go all electric, but could have been a leader in innovation with the right PHEV.

 

[DBoon]

Item by item I have phased out fossil fueled devices from our household. The only one left is the garden tractor for which I have not found a strong and reliable substitute

Same here - I have eliminated every large user of fossil fuels and replaced it with something electric. I'm not dogmatic about getting rid of everything to get to zero fossil fuel use - eliminating 97% of that seems like a pretty good result and I don't worry about the balance.

Personally, I really dislike engines and they dislike me - I have no ability to repair them and they mostly seem to fail me when I really need them. Gone are all the small yard implement engines (replaced with electric). Having said that, it is not really realistic to replace everything. I am down to:

• My Ford 8N tractor (maybe uses 25 gallons of gasoline a year) that I use for bush hogging and firewood hauling - there is no practical electric replacement for this in the 10-year horizon. If it fails, I'll buy a newer used tractor of the same size that also uses gas (or diesel).
• My lawn tractor - I've looked at the EGO lawn tractors - they are expensive ($4-5k) and seems pseudo-klugey (just uses a bunch of their standard battery packs). I have reduced the size of my mowed yard from ~2 acres to about 1/2 an acre (I am turning the rest into pollinator habitat that gets a once/year brush hog mowing). I expect to get rid of the gas lawn tractor this summer (every winter mice seem to get into it and cause $500 of damage, no matter what I do) and replace it with a self-powered EGO push mower (realistically, I only mow every 2 to 3 weeks, and I'll just mow half of my half acre every weekend or so). This might be just as fast as the lawn tractor given that I have a lot of perennial beds that are hard to work around when mowing with a large (not zero turn) lawn tractor. Having said that, gas usage is probably only about 5 or so gallons a year with the lawn area reductions and my mowing schedule.
• Walk-behind BCS tractor - there is no practical electric replacement for this in the 10-year horizon, but it maybe only uses 2-3 gallons of gas a year. It also functions as my snowblower if we get a big snowstorm. This got heavy work last year converting a half acre of field across from my house into what will become a wildflower bed, with another half acre to go.
• Chain saw - again, there are electric chain saws but these are not practical for getting through a couple of cords of hickory a half a mile from my house every fall. Having said that, most branch wood is cut with an electric chop saw and the gas usage is only 1 or so gallons a year.
• Log splitter - there is no practical electric replacement for this in the 10-year horizon, again I'd be shocked if I used even 2 gallons a year for this.